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Most Americans are too uninformed, out-of-touch and indifferent to real threats they face, not phony headlined ones happening with increased frequency.

The LA Times reported it this way, headlining “Unprecedented school closures leave LA inconvenienced, annoyed but undaunted,” saying:

An alleged bomb threat “turned out to be false, fear and confusion inevitably followed.” Parents had their “workday routines thrown into turmoil…Some teachers made long commutes” for nothing.

Schools reopened Wednesday. City officials said the threat was “not credible.” Why it was issued in the first place matters most.

It has all the earmarks of false flag pretense – selling fear, part of a national strategy to enlist public support for escalated imperial wars, along with harsher crackdowns on fast disappearing fundamental freedoms.

The only terrorist threat Americans need fear is state-sponsored. Post-9/11, no other ones occurred on US soil. Official claims otherwise were Big Lies .

Innocent Muslim victims were falsely charged, prosecuted and imprisoned for alleged offenses they never committed or planned.

Unverified email threats were sent to public school officials on both coasts, arriving Monday night, claiming jihadists intended attacks with guns, bombs and nerve gas. Los Angeles alone shut down.

LA schools chancellor Ramon Cortiones told reporters at a 7:00AM Tuesday news conference he wasn’t “going to take a chance with the life of a student.”

New York school authorities dismissed the threat as a hoax. One major US city dominating Tuesday headlines was enough, likely ratcheting up public fear more than already, people wondering nationwide when the next shoe would drop, maybe near them.

Later on Tuesday, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti said

“(w)e can now announce the FBI has concluded this is not a credible threat. It will be safe for our children to return to schools tomorrow.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said

“(w)e’ve come to the conclusion that we must continue to keep our school system open. (It’s) very important not to overreact in situations like this.”

The damage was done, hyped irresponsibly by media scoundrels, instead of urging readers and viewers to go on with their daily lives normally, stressing no credible threat exists.

Anyone viewing US cable television reports yesterday got virtually nonstop fear-mongering, scaring the public to believe in a nonexistent threat.

Actual incidents when occurring are false flags or ones unrelated to terrorism. Gun violence claims about 100,000 US lives annually, double that number of people injured. Cop killings this year exceeded 1,000.

The latest headline incident occurred in Los Angeles County last Saturday. Sheriff deputies lethally shot a defenseless Black man, based on fabricated reports about him acting erratically.

Video evidence indicated no threatening behavior. It showed a man, later identified as 28-year-old Nicholas Robertson, walking calmly away from police, murdered in cold blood from behind, more shots fired at his helpless body on the ground.

A loaded 45-caliber handgun found at the scene was likely planted by police – standard procedure nationwide to avoid culpability. Dead victims can’t contest.

These type incidents happen multiple times daily across America, nearly always unaccountably. Black and Latino communities are victimized by state-sponsored violence – much like how Israel brutalizes the entire Palestinian population, including multiple daily cold-blooded executions since October 1.

Americans are being manipulated…

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 increase in the level of terrorist activities of ISIL in Afghanistan has recently been the topic of various reports being published in the international media. Along with the massacre of the local population which seems to be a trademark of this Islamist group it has recently entered in a direct confrontation with the Taliban. It’s now safe to assume that there’s well over two thousand ISIL militants operating in Afghanistan.

A significant number of reports suggests that ISIL militants that infiltrated Afghanistan are engaged in recruiting locals, spreading radical propaganda, and establishing training camps. Additionally, some articles suggest that former members of the Taliban are pledging their allegiance to ISIL in the southern provinces of the country.

Thus, The Independent quotes the statement of the Afghan army General Qadam Shah Shahima that said that ISIL managed to overshadow ISIL in the Afghan province of Helmand.

In turn, The Times states that the ISIL has launched a major offensives to the south of Jalalabad – the capital of the Afghan province of Nangarhar. Around 1,600 ISIL militants established control over four districts, while using particularly ruthless methods of demanding obedience, like the do in Iraq and Syria, which led to a massive exodus of the local population. The Afghan army units are engaging them daily to prevent ISIL from advancing any further. According to this newspaper, Afghan security forces are losing up to 500 soldiers monthly in different parts of the country due to terrorist activities.

Western experts are convinced that ISIL is pursuing the goal of creating a new province of the “caliphate” on the border with Pakistan, and that their success is the direct result of the departure of US and British troops from Afghanistan and the split within the Taliban ranks. It is often noted that former supporters of the Taliban and other groups are deflecting to ISIL.

The West is using such reports to present the situation in Afghanistan in the grimmest colors one could imagine to persuade the general public to support the expansion of the US military presence in the country. We are being told that Washington, which is allegedly the ardent fighter of ISIL, won’t be able to do anything once the US military forces leave the country. Western media sources argue that Afghan troops are not strong enough, so should the US get through the door, we are going to witness a sharp aggravation of the internal political situation.

However, back in November NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that the members states are generally satisfied with the situation in Afghanistan. What’s even more curious is that a senior Italian diplomat at the recent meeting of NATO has even labeled Afghanistan a “NATO’s success story”.

To properly assess the situation on the ground in Afghanistan we must recall what has been happening there all along.

Back in 2014 one could start noticing initial reports on ISIL making attempts to extend its activities to Afghanistan, when the so-called “masked men” started appearing in the province of Kunar. At that time nobody could have thought those were actual supporters of ISIL, since they were mistaken for Pakistani secret service officers that used to train the Taliban fighters.

But it didn’t take long before the the activities of armed men under the black flag to become more vicious and apparent. In 2015 a spokesman for ISIL’s leader Abu Muhammad Al Adnani released a video message that was announcing the creation of the province of Khorasan of the Islamic State, that should have absorbed Afghanistan, Pakistan and certain areas of India, Iran, and China. It has also been announced in the video that Hafiz Saeed Khan has been appointed the governor of this province to be, and his deputy – Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadem, a former Guantanamo prisoner.

Experts argue that the Taliban project, which essentially is nothing more than Washington’s brainchild, just like al-Qaeda, has outlived its days and will be brought down. It will be replaced by a new project – the so-called Islamic State, that is a US creation too. Taliban’s ideology is pretty close to the one pursued by ISIL, and those two groups have similar goals and methods they would use to achieve them. The Taliban has been demolishing historical monuments just like ISIL, they harbored jihadi supporters and carried out public executions. The Taliban has forced thousands of people from their homes and massacred those who would show any form of resistance. This tactics, designed to spread panics and fear, has now been adopted by ISIL. It’s not a coincidence that Afghan experts are calling the Taliban and ISIL “two sides of the same coin.”

One shouldn’t downplay the fact that the current leader of ISIL Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi received training in the Mujahideen camps in Afghanistan back in the eighties. A former Pakistani intelligence chief Hamid Gul claimed in an interview with the news agency Antalya that he personally saw al-Baghdadi in those camps in 1988. It’s also noteworthy that Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al-Baghdadi himself maintained close, friendly relations with the leaders of the Mujahideen, and worked closely with them. According to reports in the Afghan media, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at one time was entrusted with the mission of maintaining the security of Herat province, and in a short while he was running a Taliban training camp near the town of Islam Qala that could simultaneously prepare up to two thousand fighters.

Under these conditions, instead of saying that ISIL is expanding its influence in Afghanistan, as the Western media tries to convince us, we can speak about the United States using its creation to destabilize Afghanistan once again, which will allow it to get closer to its geopolitical rivals – Russia and China, by using the methods that have already been tested in Iraq, Syria and across the Middle East.

Martin Berger is a Czech-based freelance journalist and analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.

During his visit to Moscow, Secretary of State John Kerry talked at length with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and came out of those talks with a shocking declaration that “the United States and its partners are not seeking regime change in Syria.”

The declaration is not only bizarre, in that many of America’s “partners” in Syria are rebel factions formed explicitly to oust the government, but because Kerry himself, as well as other high-ranking US officials, have been openly demanding unconditional regime change for several years now.

Kerry went into his Moscow visit saying Assad’s future would be a topic of discussion with Russian officials, which itself raised eyebrows since US officials have long insisted Assad has no future. Kerry doubled down on this, however, insisting that the US and Russia see Syria’s future fundamentally the same way.

Russian officials have been much more forthcoming about their specific view of Syria’s future than the US previously has, offering proposals for a settlement between Assad and secular rebels leading to the drafting of a new constitution and free elections. The US had previously been seen objecting to that plan on the grounds that it didn’t rule out Assad and other key government officials participating in future elections, with Russia has long maintained they don’t want to dictate who is allowed to run.

The US has previously had officials hint that their stance on Syria could change, but this is the first time such a high-profile official has openly renounced regime change. That it was Kerry is particularly noteworthy since Kerry led the failed 2013 effort to get Congress to approve of a US invasion to impose regime change there, repeatedly likening Assad to Hitler during the effort

The Australian Federal Police and Dutch police and prosecutors investigating the cause of the crash of Malaysian Airlines MH17 believe the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) has failed to provide “conclusive evidence” of what type of munition destroyed the aircraft, causing the deaths of 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.

Testifying for the first time in an international court, Detective Superintendent Andrew Donoghoe, the senior Australian policeman in the international MH17 investigation, said a “tougher standard than the DSB report” is required before the criminal investigation can identify the weapon which brought the aircraft down, or pinpoint the perpetrators. Their criminal investigation will continue into 2016, Donoghoe told the Victorian Coroners Court (lead image) on Tuesday morning. He and other international investigators are unconvinced by reports from the US and Ukrainian governments, and by the DSB, of a Buk missile firing. “Dutch prosecutors require conclusive evidence on other types of missile,” Donoghoe said, intimating that “initial information that the aircraft was shot down by a [Buk] surface to air missile” did not meet the Australian or international standard of evidence.

The Coroners Court in Melbourne is the first in the world to hold an inquest into the MH17 crash on July 17, 2014, and the cause of death of those on board. Iain West (right), the deputy state coroner presided, after the state coroner, Judge Ian Gray, withdrew at the last minute. The inquest opened for a single hour of hearing on Tuesday. A second hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, when West will announce his findings. In the UK, where an investigation into the death of 10 British nationals, is being supervised by Leicestershire coroner, Catherine Mason, all court proceedings have been suspended without a date being set for inquest. It was reported in the Melbourne court that British post-mortem experts participated in the Dutch investigations, alongside Australian, Dutch, and German teams, plus a joint Indonesian-Malaysian group.

In the Melbourne courtroom press reporters outnumbered representatives of the families of several of the victims. Of the 28 Australian citizens killed, 11 were from Victoria state; 10 were permanent residents of Australia; and 3 had close ties to Australia. A local newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch reported from the courtroom “the Kuala Lumpur-bound Malaysia Airlines flight… was hit by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine”. In fact, Donoghoe of the AFP said this was an unverified claim by the DSB for “a missile of a type previously provided to Ukraine.”

In court, in addition to members of the Coroner’s staff, there was one government intelligence agent who kept his official identification tag inside his coat, and refused to say whether he was an Australian or American national.

Donoghoe (below, left) was the lead witness. He continues to direct a team of 22 Australian police, forensic specialists and intelligent agents stationed in The Netherlands and Ukraine. He was followed by Dr David Ranson (right), a Victorian pathologist who led a team of 4; they worked at the Dutch military base at Hilversum in July and August of 2014, after the bodies of the MH17 victims were taken there for identification and forensic analysis. Donoghoe said a full report by the AFP had been included in the coroner’s evidence. Ranson has filed two reports with the coroner – one of August 25, 2014, and one on December 16, 2014. So far the Coroner has classified these documents as secret. For details, read this.

Testifying on oath, Donoghoe revealed for the first time that the Australian government had quietly negotiated two agreements to investigate the crash site in eastern Ukraine. The first, he said, was with the Ukrainian government in Kiev for security around the crash site. The second was with Novorussian leaders in order for the Australians to carry out their searches for victims’ bodies, personal property and other evidence, as well as to run a command post in Donetsk city. Political recognition by the Australians of the separatists has never been acknowledged before. Donoghoe refused to say who signed the agreement for the Novorussians.

For the first time also, Donoghoe acknowledged publicly that the international investigators had had “no ability to collect aircraft parts or other debris”. It was not until May 2015, he added, that forensic examination of the aircraft began.

DUTCH SAFETY BOARD TAMPERING WITH MH17 FUSELAGE EVIDENCE

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The recovered aircraft wreckage was first photographed and registered in The Netherlands by the DSB. Image-1 shows the first DSB photograph, with a single hole visible. Image-2 shows that a new photograph published by DSB reveals a second hole. See here.

In his testimony Donoghoe said that ten months after the crash, and after Kiev officials had handed over less than half the fuselage fragments to the Dutch, the discovery was made of “some fragments not consistent with debris of the aircraft”. Had he found shrapnel from an explosive device, missile or cannon? Donoghoe refused to answer. The deaths of the passengers, he testified, had been caused by “inflight breakup [of the aircraft] and immediate decompression”, not by munitions. The lack of shrapnel as evidence of cause of death is analysed here.

Australian police calls for Ukrainian witnesses on the ground, who may have seen or heard what happened on the fateful day, were issued in March 2015, and then again in June. Some of those who came forward to testify refused to do so, Donoghoe said Tuesday, unless the Australian and Dutch police protected them in “a safe location”; excluded Ukrainian government officials; and kept the identities of the witnesses secret.

Asked whether there had been any evidence of disrespect towards the victims’ bodies on the ground – as has been claimed in reporting by the Murdoch media — Donoghoe testified: “there was no evidence of disrespect towards the bodies.”

Ranson, who is an associate professor of forensic pathology and deputy director of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, told the court he and his team had spent two and half weeks studying the victims’ bodies at Hilversum. There, he confirmed, X-rays and CT scans were carried out and more than 700 autopsies. He testified that when the Australian victims’ bodies were repatriated to the morgue at the Coroners Court, another CT scan was taken of each body, and matched against the scan taken at Hilversum. Ranson’s reports ruling out the presence of shrapnel from a missile strike in any of the MH17 bodies have been kept secret to date.

On oath, Ranson told Coroner West the deaths of the passengers had been caused by the aircraft breaking up. He dismissed the possibility that an oxygen mask found on a body on the ground had been worn by the victim. There was no DNA evidence to support that, and little likelihood, Ranson said, that the high-speed airflow through the aircraft at decompression would have left oxygen masks on the victims, if they had time to put them on. Death came too fast, Ranson believes.

The court heard that the survivors of the crash victims have been regularly briefed and counselled by Australian Government officials. They have also been coached not to answer press questions, although one admitted his family had been allowed to meet lawyers. Three statements were given in evidence at the inquest by representatives of the victims. One from members of the Van Den Hende family — Shaliza Dewal, her husband Hans Van Den Hende and their three children Piers, 15, Marnix, 12, and daughter Margaux, 8, were killed – said media reports of the crash were unreliable and unconvincing: “we are unsure who or what to believe.”

Note from author and BAR editor: The methods of repression that are now directed against Muslims and Arabs in the United States were developed to oppress Black Americans and will return tomorrow “when the state and public opinion turns against the latest expressions of black opposition popularly characterized as the black lives matter movement.”

For collective self-interest and in the spirit of the Black Radical Tradition, Blacks should reach out to Arabs and Muslims and “share with them our experiences surviving racial totalitarianism.”

“The lack of concern for the human rights of Arabs and Muslims reflects the fact that their lives, like the lives of black people, don’t really matter.”

It’s been a sad and pathetic spectacle: Muslim and Arab spokespersons summoned to examination by a new Christian inquisition. This time, however, the grand inquisitors are the members of the corporate media who force the beleaguered spokespersons to defend their communities while simultaneously proclaiming their loyalty to the idea of “America.”

The inquisitors questioned them with authentic incredulousness on their effort to stem the radicalization of members of their communities and lecture them on the need for their communities to be even more obsequious, even as their communities face escalating violence and police state intimidation. The obvious contradiction between the supposed American values of tolerance, freedom of religion, individual rights and non-discrimination and the demand that the spokespersons surrender those rights in order to prove loyalty is lost on the inquisitors and the audience who have come to expect members of minority communities to perform humiliating rituals for the psychological comfort of the majority.

The consequences of Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments have been dramatic, infecting the whole culture and all sectors of the population.

Even in the African American communities anti-Muslim sentiments are increasingly voiced, which is particularly interesting because until recently African Americans made up the largest and oldest Muslim population in the country. There are comments about the “A-rabs” and Muslims exploiting black people and some have even gone so far as to give support to the social discrimination and governmental monitoring of Muslims by state authorities.

“The de-valuation of Arab and Muslim lives has been an operative principle of U.S. policies in the Middle-East since it became the hegemonic power in the region.”

Individuals who hold those views don’t quite understand that calls for more monitoring, control and curtailment of the rights of Muslims on the part of the state is no more than the “niggerization” of these communities. What this means is that, if accepted and normalized, it only increases the certainty that repression in black communities will continue to intensify as we are also increasingly identified as a “radicalized” internal enemy.

When Muslims and Arabs are de-humanized and reduced to a distorted figment of the national imagery, Guantanamo gulags, drone strikes, torture, mass surveillance, social exclusion and national destruction by the military apparatus and national security state are the appropriate and even expected responses demanded by the public to the Muslim “threat.”

That is why the hypocrisy of political leaders in the U.S. is so galling. The de-valuation of Arab and Muslim lives has been an operative principle of U.S. policies in the Middle-East since it became the hegemonic power in the region.

There is not much space between Hillary Clinton’s joke about the murder of Muammar Gaddafy – “We came, we saw, he died” – which of course took place during a murderous NATO assault on Libya that by conservative estimates killed tens of thousands, and the positions of various governors on the issue of Syrian refugees and even with Donald Trump’s latest proposal to temporarily ban Muslim immigration.

Yet we are supposed to believe that these leaders are now outraged about Trump’s comments.

What African Americans must remember is that before the post-9/11 criminalization of Arab and Muslim communities, the playbook for how to police and repress a captured community was written in our communities.

“Calls for more monitoring, control and curtailment of the rights of Muslims on the part of the state is no more than the “niggerization” of these communities.”

Before the registration of young Arab and Muslim students after 9/11, local police forces compiled massive biographical databases of young African Americans as a means of monitoring so-called gangs and controlling crime. Stop and Frisk, mass incarceration, police executions, torture, governmental infiltration of our organizations, raids, house to house searches, were perfected and normalized in our communities.

The systematic state terrorism being carried out in Muslim communities in France today under their state of emergency and the criminalization, social ostracism, violence and official discrimination directed at Muslims in the U.S. today will be most certainly directed at black activists and our communities tomorrow when the state and public opinion turns against the latest expressions of black opposition popularly characterized as the black lives matter movement.

That is the terrible reality that we know is coming our way. And those of us who will maintain an unrelenting critique of this sick society and the oppressive apparatus will be labeled as the “radicalizers” of this black opposition.

What was once labeled as racist demagoguery in the short liberal post-war period has now been rehabilitated and given a new respectability in relationship to Muslims and Arabs. Since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, individual Muslims have been assaulted, mosques firebombed and threats sent to Muslim community and civic organizations with almost no coverage from the corporate press.

This lack of concern for the human rights of Arabs and Muslims reflects the fact that their lives, like the lives of black people, don’t really matter. Is there any other way to explain the still overwhelming support for Israel and even the dismissal of Bernie Sanders commitment to continue Obama’s drone terror program even though it is clear that thousands of non-white innocents have lost their lives as a result?

We must have no illusions.

“We should reach out to Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. to share with them our experiences surviving racial totalitarianism, so that we both can learn and survive together.”

The “orientalist” construction of the Arab that occupies the consciousness of Westerners as blood-thirsty, violent, irrational with a strange sexist religion is just the flip side of the racist colonialist coin in which global anti-blackness is on the other. Both constructions make the Arab-Muslim and the black “killable.” And when you are both black and Muslim, it is a deadly combination that can end up in a situation that Iman Luqman Abdullah faced in Detroit when he was murdered by FBI agents.

Totalitarianism applied to specific peoples can exist side by side with the current practices of liberal democracy especially when the majority is unaware, silent or both. Like the Palestinians who reached out to the resisters in Ferguson to counsel them on how to deal with the Israeli trained police forces, we can and should reach out to Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. to share with them our experiences surviving racial totalitarianism, so that we both can learn and survive together.

But collective self-interest is not the main motivation for why African Americans should oppose the growing neo-fascist sentiments and legislative policies directed at Arabs and Muslims.

Opposing efforts that expand the repressive power of the state and undermine the fundamental human rights of individuals and groups is consistent with our history and principles. This stance represents the foundational principles of the black radical tradition. Opposition to all forms of individual and collective oppression is the mandatory call to action for this tradition and serves as the basis for attempting to establish relations of solidarity, even if that solidarity is not returned.

So in the face of the growing repression of this community, we must stand with our Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters. We know from our painful history that within the dark corners of the imagination of the racist settler-colonialist, Muslims are today’s Native “savages” and rebellious niggers that are both feared and hated as an existential threat.

Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist, organizer and geo-political analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. He is a contributor to “Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence” (Counterpunch Books, 2014). He can be reached at www.AjamuBaraka.com

Nobody needs to read Zbigniew Brzezinski’s  “Grand Chessboard” 1997 opus to know US foreign policy revolves around one single overarching theme: prevent – by all means necessary – the emergence of a power, or powers, capable of constraining Washington’s unilateral swagger, not only in Eurasia but across the world.

The Pentagon carries the same message embedded in newspeak: the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.

Syria is leading all these assumptions to collapse like a house of cards. So no wonder in a Beltway under no visible chain of command – the Obama administration barely qualifies as lame duck – angst is the norm.

The Pentagon is now engaged in a Vietnam-style escalation of boots on the ground across “Syraq”. 50 commandos are already in northern Syria “advising” the YPG Syrian Kurds as well as a few “moderate” Sunnis. Translation: telling them what Washington wants them to do. The official White House spin is that these commandos “support local forces” (Obama’s words) in cutting off supply lines leading to the fake “Caliphate” capital, Raqqa.

Another 200 Special Forces sent to Iraq will soon follow, allegedly to “engage in direct combat” against the leadership of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, which is now ensconced in Mosul.

These developments, billed as “efforts” to “partially re-engage in Iraq and Syria” are leading US Think Tankland to pen hilarious reports in search of “the perfect balance between wide-scale invasion and complete disengagement” – when everyone knows Washington will never disengage from the Middle East’s strategic oil wealth.

All these American boots on the ground in theory should be coordinating, soon, with a new, spectacularly surrealist 34-country “Islamic” coalition (Iran was not invited), set up to fight ISIS/ISIL/Daesh by no less than the ideological matrix of all strands of Salafi-jihadism: Wahhabi Saudi Arabia.

Syria is now Coalition Central. There are at least four; the “4+1” (Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq plus Hezbollah), which is actually fighting Daesh; the US-led coalition, a sort of mini NATO-GCC combo, but with the GCC doing nothing; the Russia-France direct military collaboration; and the new Saudi-led “Islamic” charade. They are pitted against an astonishing number of Salafi-jhadi coalitions and alliances of convenience that last from a few months to a few hours.

And then there’s Turkey, which under Sultan Erdogan plays a vicious double game.

Sarajevo All Over Again?

“Tense” does not even begin to describe the current Russia-Turkey geopolitical tension, which shows no sign of abating. The Empire of Chaos lavishly profits from it as a privileged spectator; as long as the tension lasts, prospects of Eurasia integration are hampered.

Russian intel has certainly played all possible scenarios involving a NATO Turkish army on the Turkish-Syrian border as well as the possibility of Ankara closing the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles for the Russian “Syria Express”. Erdogan may not be foolish enough to offer Russia yet another casus belli. But Moscow is taking no chances.

Russia has placed ships and submarines capable of launching nuclear missiles in case Turkey under the cover of NATO decides to strike out against the Russian position. President Putin has been clear; Russia will use nuclear weapons if necessary if conventional forces are threatened.

If Ankara opts for a suicide mission of knocking out yet another Su-24, or Su-34, Russia will simply clear the airspace all across the border via the S-400s. If Ankara under the cover of NATO responds by launching the Turkish Army on Russian positions, Russia will use nuclear missiles, drawing NATO into war not only in Syria but potentially also in Europe. And this would include using nuclear missiles to keep Russian strategic use of the Bosphorus open.

That’s how we can draw a parallel of Syria today as the equivalent of Sarajevo 1914.

Since mid-2014 the Pentagon has run all manner of war games – as many as 16 times, under different scenarios – pitting NATO against Russia. All scenarios were favorable to NATO. All simulations yielded the same victor: Russia.

And that’s why Erdogan’s erratic behavior actually terrifies quite a few real players from Washington to Brussels.

Let Me Take You on a Missile Cruise

The Pentagon is very much aware of the tremendous heavy metal Russia may unleash if provoked to the limit by someone like Erdogan. Let’s roll out an abridged list.

Russia can use the mighty SS-18 – which NATO codenames “Satan”; each “Satan” carries 10 warheads, with a yield of 750 to 1000 kilotons each, enough to destroy an area the size of New York state.

The Topol M ICBM is the world’s fastest missile at 21 Mach (16,000 miles an hour); against it, there’s no defense. Launched from Moscow, it hits New York City in 18 minutes, and L.A. in 22.8 minutes.

Russian submarines – as well as Chinese submarines – are able to launch offshore the US, striking coastal targets within a minute. Chinese submarines have surfaced next to US aircraft carriers undetected, and Russian submarines can do the same.

The S-500 anti-missile system is capable of sealing Russia off from ICBMs and cruise missiles. (Moscow will only admit on the record that the S-500s will be rolled out in 2016; but the fact the S-400s will soon be delivered to China implies the S-500s may be already  operational.)

The S-500 makes the Patriot missile look like a V-2 from WWII.

Here, a former adviser to the US Chief of Naval Operations essentially goes on the record saying the whole US missile defense apparatus is worthless.

Russia has a supersonic bomber fleet of Tupolev Tu-160s; they can take off from airbases deep in the heart of Russia, fly over the North Pole, launch nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from safe distances over the Atlantic, and return home to watch the whole thing on TV.

Russia can cripple virtually every forward NATO base with tactical – or battlefield – small-yield nuclear weapons. It’s not by accident that Russia over the past few months tested NATO response times in multiple occasions.

The Iskander missile travels at seven times the speed of sound with a range of 400 km. It’s deadly to airfields, logistics points and other stationary infrastructure along a broad war theatre, for instance in southern Turkey.

NATO would need to knock out all these Iskanders. But then they would need to face the S-400s – or, worse, S-500s — which Russia can layer in defense zones in nearly every conceivable theater of war. Positioning the S-400s in Kaliningrad, for instance, would cripple all NATO air operations deep inside Europe.

And presiding over military decisions, Russia privileges the use of Reflexive Control (RC). This is a tactic that aims to convey selected information to the enemy that forces him into making self-defeating decisions; a sort of virus influencing and controlling his decision-making process. Russia uses RC tactically, strategically and geopolitically. A young Vladimir Putin learned all there is to know about RC at the 401st KGB School and further on in his career as a KGB/FSB officer.

All right, Erdogan and NATO; do you still wanna go to war?

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The outcome of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which concluded over the weekend in Paris, has been hailed almost universally by politicians and the press as a triumph of international collaboration that will pull mankind back from the brink of ecological disaster.

The New York Times called the deal a “historic breakthrough.” The BritishGuardian declared that it demonstrated “just how much can be achieved by determined diplomacy, even while working within the unbending red lines of jealously sovereign states.”

President Obama hailed the deal “an enduring agreement that reduces global carbon pollution and sets the world on a course to a low-carbon future.” He went to say it has “shown that the world has both the will and the ability to take on this challenge.”

Any examination of the agreement, however, makes clear that it is entirely without substance. The “landmark” pact consists of nothing more than a general promise that governments will make an effort to keep any “increase in the global average temperature to well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels,” and will seek to achieve “global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.”

There are no specific measures mandated for countries that ratify the deal besides a general appeal to be “ambitious” and pursue policies “with the view to achieving the purpose of this Agreement.” There are no specific targets and no enforcement mechanisms, meaning countries that sign the treaty can do whatever they want.

Leading climate scientist James Hansen characterized the deal a “fraud” and a “fake,” declaring, “It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises.”

Even if, by some miracle, all of the signatories did their part to achieve the stated goal, global temperatures would still rise by some 2 degrees by the end of the century, a level Hansen calls “highly dangerous.” It would produce a rise in sea levels by several meters, a circumstance that would inundate many of the world’s major metropolises and lead to “hundreds of million[s] of climate refugees.”

Amid the effluvium of official praise for the climate pact, that of French President Francois Hollande stood out as the most ludicrous. Hollande declared,

“The 12th of December 2015 will remain a great date for the planet. In Paris, there have been many revolutions over the centuries. Today it is the most beautiful and the most peaceful revolution that has been just accomplished—a revolution for climate change.”

In reality, what prevails among the leading signatories of the climate deal is not “peaceful revolution,” but violent counterrevolution, or what Lenin called the hallmark of imperialism: “reaction all down the line.” The inability to deal with the enormous danger posed by climate change is one expression of a bankrupt would economic and social order that is hurtling mankind toward catastrophe.

The climate summit took place under siege conditions following the imposition of a three-month state of emergency in the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks. As the leaders of the world’s imperialist powers patted themselves on the back, climate activists in Paris were placed under house arrest and forced to wear ankle bracelets, having been neither tried nor convicted of any crime. Peaceful demonstrators were snatched off the street by plainclothes police, and riot cops converged on groups of protesters, attacking them with pepper spray and batons.

As part of the drive to expand war and domestic repression, the ruling classes of all the imperialist powers have stoked up nationalism and political reaction. The European powers have responded to the influx of people seeking refuge from the sectarian wars ignited by the US and NATO in the Middle East by sealing their borders, building concentration camps and preparing mass deportations, while legitimizing the parties of the extreme right.

On the sidelines of the conference, in between photo-ops and invocations of international peace and collaboration, the leaders of the imperialist powers made plans for carving up Syria. The climate deal was announced in the aftermath of the decision by France, Britain, Germany and the United States to escalate the proxy war in Syria, which has already displaced half the country’s population and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

As the climate summit progressed, the US and its Western allies continued to carry out provocations against Russia, including an agreement to accept Montenegro into NATO. Poland requested that NATO station nuclear weapons on its territory following the downing of a Russian jet by NATO member Turkey last month.

The agreement comes a month after the United States conducted a “freedom of navigation” exercise in which it sent a guided missile destroyer within 12 miles of territory claimed by China, threatening a full-scale military confrontation in the Pacific.

Under conditions where nationalism and war-mongering prevail among the world’s ruling classes, the very idea that an international pact for peace and progress could be brokered by the United Nations is absurd on its face. The UN, an instrument of imperialist policy, is itself now routinely bypassed as the major powers launch wars and invasions without even bothering to seek a UN mandate.

The inability of capitalist society to make any progress toward averting an ecological disaster is an expression of the same contradictions that make it impossible to deal with any of the major crises facing mankind, from war and the refugee crisis to poverty and inequality. The capitalist world order rests on competing nation-states whose basic purpose is to facilitate the enrichment of the financial oligarchy that dominates each country.

The technical means to halt and reverse climate change exist. The problem is not technological, but social and political. The vast resources squandered on the self-enrichment of the world’s billionaire oligarchs and on armaments and military violence must be expropriated and utilized to meet social needs. A halt to climate change depends on rational and scientific planning carried out on an international basis. This requires putting an end to the subordination of social needs to private profit and the division of the world among rival nation-states.

That means the overthrow of the present social order and its replacement by a socialist society. Only the working class, the only genuinely international social force, is capable of accomplishing this world-historical task, on which the future existence of human civilization depends.

Sadly, eyes often glaze over at the latest massacre in Syria, because the story is so repetitive. But what story? A double massacre by ‘moderate rebels’ in Homs and Damascus, and the subsequent re-spinning of the story, show the wall of disinformation we face.

Through an agreement with the Syrian Government, on 8 December, hundreds of what the western media has come to call “anti-Assad rebels” (a mixture of Syrian and Jabhat al Nusra terrorists) and their families were bussed out of the last part of occupied Homs city.

They were sent to northern Idlib, to join their colleagues in another sectarian coalition called the ‘Army of Conquest’, sent in from Turkey eight months ago and currently being battered back by Russian bombing and a Syrian Army counter-offensive.

Two days later, as a parting shot, the terrorists detonated two bombs in the al-Zahra district of the city. The Governor of Homs, Talal al-Barazi, told the Syrian News Agency (SANA) that 16 people has been killed and 54 others injured, some of them critically.  

The first explosion was said to have been from a suicide car bomber; the second was in a nearby shop a few minutes later. Although al-Zahra is home to minorities, the victims of such bombings are quite random.

ISIS claimed responsibility, but that means little as the group alternately works with the others or competes for the ‘credit’ of each new massacre. Ordinary Syrians pay little attention to the various brand names of terrorist groups.

A day later, on 13 December, a friend in Damascus sent me these phone messages:

“Rockets came down on my building today … and one across the road … I’m on the other side of the building but I’m sure it landed in someone’s bedroom while they were asleep … I’ve been told to stay inside.”

Where did the rockets come from, I asked?

“I don’t know, but they’re still coming”.

Later on she confirms they are coming from Jobar, notorious for its mortar attacks on the capital and now a wasteland next to Douma, an outer north-eastern suburb of Damascus which the Islamic Front and Jabhat al Nusra have jointly occupied for at least three years.

Recent stories that the Syrian Airforce was ‘barrel bombing’ civilians in Douma were quite false. The last large evacuations of civilians, well publicised, were in January 2015. Syria was bombing hated terrorist groups.

I told my friend I had read that Russian planes responded by bombing Douma. “Good … but they did take a while to go out. Mortars started at 7am, planes came out at 8.30, probably because there was heaps of fog … many [were] killed”. She went on “smashed cars and broken glass are all around my neighbourhood … it was a massacre.”

I asked her which areas were hit. “Malki, Abu Rummani, Bab Touma, Jisr al Raes (President’s bridge), Sharq Hospital, [and] Ain al Karesh where students were targeted” she responded.

The Syrian News Agency, picked up by Iran’s Press TV, gave these details:

“At least three civilians, including a child, have been killed in a series of attacks carried out by foreign-sponsored Takfiri militants against residential areas in Syria’s capital city of Damascus … Separately, two civilians were killed and 30 others were injured when mortar shells fired by militants struck the al-Wafideen Camp (Damascus countryside). Most of the victims are said to be school students.”

Several other sites were hit.

I went to check western media stories, searching for ‘rockets’ and ‘Damascus’. There was a flood of stories (from AFP to Antiwar.Com) saying that “civilians including children” had been killed by the Russian attacks on Douma. However there were virtually no stories on the actual attacks on civilians in Damascus, but for one which mentioned “tit for tat” attacks.

The ‘Antiwar.com‘ story read:

“At least 45 civilians were reported killed today, including 10 children, as a flurry of rocket fire out of Syrian military-held territory rained down on the Eastern Ghouta region, the suburb of Damascus which remains in rebel hands.”

The terrorist HQ seems to have an endless supply of children and civilians.

This story, as all the others, had as its main source the ‘Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’ (SOHR), a single Muslim Brotherhood man Rami Abdul Rahman, based in Coventry, England. A bitter opponent of the Syrian Government, he flies the flag of the armed FSA groups on his website.

In English-language media terms, the terrorist attacks on Damascus had virtually disappeared. In their place the military response to terrorist atrocities was presented as a slaughter of civilians and children. The toxic marriage of sectarian sources and western media, once again, turned events on their head. Sectarian fanatics became innocent victims, while the actual civilian casualties disappeared into thin air.

Such is the disinformation of the dirty war on Syria.

What Makes Recep Run? The Making of a Modern Pasha

Erdoğan began his ascent to power as a social reformer in opposition to the power elite; he was a rabble-rouser for popular Islam and social welfare. Once he takes political power he enriches his family and the business elite and purges adversaries and rivals.

With political power and economic connections, he amasses personal wealth through illicit business transactions.

With political power and personal wealth, he seeks prestige andstatus among the Western elites by serving imperial interests: He shoots down a Russian military jet over Syrian territory and thereby threatens hundreds of Turkish businesses and loses a major source of personal enrichment. When the Russians threaten to cut off energy exports to Turkey, Erdoğan’s opponents suggest he heat his own palace and villas with cow dung this winter.

The Two Faces of Erdoğan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a long and ignoble history of betraying political associates, trading partners and military allies; of pledging friendship and then bombing his ‘friends’ and murdering citizens; of negotiating ‘in good faith’ and then killing rivals; of playing democrat then behaving like an ordinary demagogic dictator.

Erdoğan appeals to the plebian and austere values of the Anatolian provincial petty bourgeoisie, while building the largest luxurious presidential palace in the world – fit for a 21^st century Pasha. He repeatedly pronounces his fealty to the ‘Turkish Nation’, while he robs the Turkish treasury by repeatedly accepting bribes and pay-offs from building contractors who then double charge for publically-funded projects.

More recently, Erdogan claims to oppose terrorism and fight ISIS, while the major Turkish and regional newspapers, journalists and most domestic observers document the massive flow of illegal arms across the Turkish-Syrian border to ISIS terrorists.

Erdoğan’s ‘Carnal Relation’ with ISIS

Erdoğan supports ISIS by bombing the Syrian Kurdish fighters who resist the jihadi mercenaries; by shooting down a Russian military jet defending the Damascus government against the terrorists; by smuggling and selling oil which ISIS had stolen from Iraq and Syria; by providing medical assistance to wounded ISIS fighters; and by training and arming ISIS terrorists in Turkish bases.

There is a reciprocal relationship: Erdoğan uses ISIS operatives to terrorize his own domestic opposition, including terror bombing a gathering of Kurdish ‘socialist youth’ in the town of Suruç on July 20, 2015, which killed 33 and the massive bombing in Ankara on October 10 of a ‘peace and justice’ march, which killed over 100, targeting trade unionists, leaders of professional associations, community activists and members of a democratic Kurdish electoral party and wounded many hundreds.

During the legislative election of 2015 ISIS terrorists and thugs from Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) attacked the offices, meetings and candidates of the opposition parties, especially of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), to ensure that Erdoğan secured a super-majority.

In other words, Erdoğan has three uses for ISIS serving his external and internal interests:

(1) To attack and destroy secular Kurdish forces resisting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, thus preventing the formation of an independent Kurdish state on the Turkish border.

(2) To attack and destroy Syria’s independent Baathist government under Bashar Al-Assad, dismantle the multicultural secular state apparatus and install a Sunni Islamist client in Damascus subordinate to Erdoğan’s AKP.

(3) To attack and terrorize the Turkish domestic opposition, including the broad-based Kurdish HDP, and the leftist trade union confederation (DISK).

Erdoğan has a decade-long strategic alliance with the militant Wahhabi terrorists who now make up ISIS. He intends to ‘remake’ the map of the Middle East to serve his own expansionist ambitions. In part this explains why Erdoğan has provided large-scale arms and material to the terrorists, trained thousands of mercenaries and provided medical aid to wounded ISIS fighters. It also explains why Erdoğan took the unprecedented and extremely provocative step of shooting down a Russian military jet over Syrian territory, which had been bombing Erdoğan’s ISIS allies. Russian and Syrian Army successes against ISIS have threatened his ambitions.

Erdoğan’s transformation from ‘Muslim democrat’ to bloody authoritarian Islamist ruler with pretensions of becoming the dominant Middle Eastern Pasha has to be seen in light of his rise to power over the past 40 years.

What Makes Recep Run?

Erdoğan, early on, showed his affinity for extremist Islamist politics. In the 1970’s he was head of the youth branch of theIslamist Salvation Party (MSP), a virulent anti-communist, anti-secular party committed to converting Turkey, a huge multi-ethnic secular state, into a theocratic regime (along the lines of contemporary ISIS).

After the military coup of 1980 the MSP was dissolved and reappeared as the Welfare Party. Erdoğan became a leader of the new (re-named) Islamist party.

Erdoğan and the Welfare Party exploited Turkish mass discontent with the corrupt and authoritarian military. The Welfare Party embraced a populist social welfare program with Islamist religious undertones in order to build a formidable grassroots organization in the working class neighborhoods in Istanbul. Erdoğan was elected mayor of Turkey’s largest city in 1994.

As Mayor, Erdoğan over-reached his power by preaching militant Islamism and was convicted in 1998 of sedition against the secular state. He served 4 months of a 10-month sentence.

Henceforth he changed tactics: His Islamist fanaticism wasdisguised. He changed the party name from Welfare to the modern sounding Justice and Development Party (AKP). Erdoğan then launched a series of political maneuvers, in which he cleverly manipulated adversaries to gain power and then… stabbed each of them in the back.

Erdoğan: Embrace and Back-Stab

Despite his earlier conviction for sedition against the secular state, the ‘reformed’ Erdoğan allied with the Kemalist, secularRepublican Peoples Party (CHP) to overturn the military’s ban on his participation in politics in 2002. He was elected Prime Minister in 2003. After the AKP won the general election it cut its ties with the CHP. Erdoğan was re-elected Prime Minister in 2007 and 2011.

Erdoğan allied with the pro-US Islamist leader Fethullah Gülen’sHizmet or Cemaat Movement, which was influential within the judicial system, police and army. Together they launched a purge against secular military and judicial officials, journalists and media critics.

The Erdoğan – Gülenist state apparatus arrested and jailed 300 secular military officers, judges and journalists and replaced them with Erdoğan and Gülen loyalists – all Islamists.

Dubbed “Operation Sledgehammer” the entire purge was based on fabricated charges of treason and conspiracy. Yet it was described by the Western media in terms that flattered Erdoğan’s democratic credentials, calling it an ‘effort to consolidate democracy’against the military.

It had nothing to do with democracy: The purge consolidated Erdoğan’s personal power and allowed him to pursue policies that were more overtly neo-liberal and Islamist. The purge of the judiciary further allowed Erdoğan to enrich crony capitalists and family members.

Erdoğan: The Birth of a Neoliberal Pasha

Erdoğan then embraced an IMF-designed ‘stabilization and recovery’ program, which reduced wages, salaries and pensions while privatizing public sector enterprises and activities. This attracted a large inflow of capital as foreign investors and cronies snapped up the goodies at bargain prices. Most emblematic of this ‘free-for-all cronies’ approach to the economy was the Soma coal mine disaster in May 2014 when over 300 miners were killed in a previously state-owned mine, which had suffered a breakdown of worker safety conditions after it had been privatized to an Erdoğan-crony.  Despite local and international outrage, Recep ignored the scandal and unleashed police on the demonstrating miners.

Erdoğan’s combination of Islam with brutal neo-liberalism attracted support from Brussels, Wall Street and the City of London. Large inflows of speculative foreign capital temporarily inflated Turkey’s GNP and Erdoğan’s wealth and ego!

In the beginning of his rule Erdoğan’s concessions, tax incentives, government contracts to big capital were broadly distributed to most sectors, but especially to his crony capitalists within the construction and real estate sectors.

As the capitalist boom continued and his power increased, Erdoğan became more obsessed with his role as the savior of Turkey. By 2010, a serious difference developed between Erdoğan and his Gülenist partners over the division of power. Erdoğan moved rapidly and brutally. He launched another massive purge of suspected ‘Gülenist officials’. He arrested, fired, jailed and relocated Gülen sympathizers among judges, police and civil servants despite the fact that these were officials who had served him well during the earlier purge of the secular military.

Erdoğan is not willing to share power with any other party, movement or group. Pasha Recep wanted to monopolize power. He has attacked critical newspapers, businesses and conglomerates claiming these were ‘Gülen controlled’. Erdoğan ensured that only capitalists completely loyal to him would receive regime patronage. In other words, he strengthened the size, strength and importance of crony capitalists: especially in the real estate and construction sector.

Pasha Recep’s Assault on Civil Society

Turkey, under Erdoğan’s absolute power, has seen a geometric increase in corruption and mindless ‘development projects’, leading to the degradation and usurpation of public spaces. His arbitrary and destructive policies have provoked sustained civil society protests, especially in the center of Istanbul – during the Gezi Park demonstrations, which began in May 2013.

In response to civil society demonstrations, Erdoğan shed all pretensions, ripping off his ‘modern democratic’ mask and brutally repressing the peaceful protestors in the heart of Istanbul– resulting in 22 deaths, hundreds wounded and more arrested and sentenced to long jail term. Erdoğan subsequently targeted liberal critics and business leaders, who had criticized his brutal use of force.

2013, the year of the Gezi Park Movement, was a turning point – Erdoğan and family members were implicated in a $100 million-dollar corruption scandal while liberal critics of the regime were purged.

Facing opposition from sectors of the elite as well as popular classes, Erdoğan became more rabidly ‘Islamist’, chauvinistic and megalomaniacal – ‘Neo-Ottoman’.

In short order, he re-launched his attack on the Turkish Kurds and increased his support to the Islamist terrorists in Syria, including what would become ISIS. These policies were designed to complement his ongoing war against the secular Kurds in Iraq and Syria.

Erdoğan: Backstabbing Secular Syria and “Best Friend” Russia

From the beginning of his rule, Erdoğan cultivated the ‘best of relations’ with Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He signed dozens of trade agreements with Damascus and Moscow. Putin was welcomed to Ankara and Erdoğan to Moscow where they signed billion-dollar energy deals and mutual co-operative agreements.

Up to 3 million Russian tourists visited Turkish resorts each year, a bonanza for one of Turkey’s major industries.

Erdoğan’s regime was ebullient, effusive, embracing Moscow and Damascus while systematically preparing the ground for more backstabbing!

By 2011, Erdogan had been deeply involved in preparing the ground for what would become the bloody Islamist uprising in Syria. Early on, hundreds of armed foreign Islamist terrorists crossed the Turkish border into Syria. Their presence overwhelmed local Syrian dissidents.  Armed Islamists seized villages and towns brutally purging them of Christians, Kurds, Alawites and secular Syrians. They took over the oil fields. From one day to the next, Erdoğan was transformed from loving friend to deadly foe of neighboring Syria demanding ‘regime change’  through terrorist sectarian violence.

Erdoğan embraced the most extreme, sectarian Wahhabi Islamist groups because they were committed to undermining the nationalist aspirations of the Syrian Kurds as well as overthrowing the secular Al-Assad government. Erdoğan’s covert alliance with ISIS and other Islamist terrorist groups was motivated by several strategic considerations, which are outlined below:

1)The alliance serves to prevent the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish enclave on the Syrian-Turkish border in the event of a Damascus defeat, which Erdoğan fears would then link armed Syrian Kurds with the huge disaffected Kurdish population in southeastern Turkey and lead to the formation of an autonomous secular Kurdish state.

2)Erdoğan’s alliance with jihadis in Syria has served Ankara’s ambition to impose a puppet Sunni-Islamist regime in Damascus.

3)The ISIS regime controlling the Syrian and Iraqi oil fields provides Turkey with a source of cheap fuel and lucrative profits for the regime. Recep’s son, Necmettin Bilal Erdoğan owns and operates the BMZ Group which buys the contraband Syrian and Iraqi oil in Turkey and sells it overseas (especially to Israel) earning nearly a billion dollars a year for ‘the family’.

It is not surprise that the Erdoğan family directly financed ISIS, which uses the cash from contraband oil, pillaged antiquities and ‘tribute’ taxes, to purchase heavy and light arms, military and transport vehicles and communications equipment in Turkey and elsewhere to support its terror campaign in Syria and Iraq. Well-informed Turkish observers believe that Erdoğan’s intelligence officials are directly involved in recruiting ISIS terrorists to operate within Turkey and attack Erdoğan’s internal opposition, especially the Kurdish electoral party HDP and the broad-based Turkish left and trade union movements. Observers claim Turkish intelligence operations had a direct role in the ‘ISIS’ bomb attacks in Suruç and Ankara this year, which killed and maimed hundreds of Erdoğan opponents and civil society activists.

Erdoğan and ISIS developed a co-dependent relation, one of mutual manipulation. Each has publically declared their tactical enmity to the other, while busily pursuing joint strategic aims.

Ankara uses the pretext of fighting ISIS in order to bomb the Kurds in Syria who are resisting the jihadis. ISIS uses the pretext of opposing the NATO member Turkey in order to cover its massive oil and weapons trade deals with Erdoğan’s family and crony business enterprises.

The Pasha Stabs the Bear and the Bear Bites Back – One Stab Too Many

Russia’s highly effective aerial bombing campaign against the jihadi and ISIS terrorist networks in Syria was in response to a formal request for military intervention by the legitimate government of President Bashar Al-Assad. Russia has long-standing ties to the Baathist regime in Damascus.  The intervention has threatened to undermine Erdoğan’s regional power ambitions and illicit business operations in Syria. First and foremost, it ended Erdoğan’s plan to annex a large swathe of Northern Syria and call it a ‘no fly zone’. The Turkish-controlled ‘no fly zone’ in Syria would expand Turkish military training bases for ISIS and other jihadi terrorists and secure the transport routes for ISIS oil shipments smuggled out of Iraq and Syria.

Unlike the US, which had rarely bombed the strategic Erdoğan-ISIS oil smuggling operations, the Russians destroyed over a thousand oil trucks and numerous ISIS oil depots and logistical centers in the first month of its air campaign. By reducing the flow of smuggled oil, Russia cut off the main source of massive profit for Bilal Erdoğan’s BMZ Company as well as for Turkish arms dealers.

Like gangsters, Erdoğan, his family and cronies have been immersed in massive corrupt business activities at home and abroad; he can no longer operate within the context of the larger interests of the Turkish capitalist class with its $40 billion dollar annual trade and investment relations with Russia. Erdoğan’s decision to shoot down a Russian jet in Syrian territory, on November 24, 2015, was largely motivated by his fury at Russia’s successful interruption of the ISIS oil convoys. By protecting his own family interests, Erdoğan stabbed more allies in the back: The Russians, as well as large sections of the Turkish capitalist class!

Up until Erdoğan’s act of war against Russia, he had publically embraced Putin as an ally, friend and partner. The two leaders had cordial relations for over a decade. The Turkish military was fully informed about Russian military operations in Syria, including its flight paths. Then suddenly in November 2015 he risked a total rupture in relations and invited retaliation against Turkey from Russia by shooting down a Russian jet.

Russia immediately responded by upgrading its most advanced weapons systems to defend its operations and bases in Northern Syria and intensified its bombing of the ISIS – Turkish oil operations.

Russia retaliated by imposing visa restrictions and economic sanctions on Turkey, adversely affecting the multi-billion dollar tourist business. Strategic energy deals were terminated. Large-scale Turkish construction contracts were ended. Turkish agricultural exports to Russian markets virtually stopped.

The Pasha Bites His own Tail

Erdoğan’s unilateral actions were clearly against the broad interests of Turkey’s large export sector. From Gezi to Gülen, from one purge to another, Erdoğan, the former ‘poster boy’ of neo-liberal Turkish capital, has become a self-centered despot, acting on behalf of a narrowing circle of corrupt family and crony capitalists. Erdoğan set himself up as a modern day pasha more in the image of the self-indulgent Ibrahim I (the Madman) than the far-seeing Suleyman I (theWise).

Once Erdoğan realized the damage that his fit of egomaniac fury against the Russians had provoked abroad and his growing isolation within Turkey, he rushed to NATO on bended knee to beg for support. True to his authoritarian personality, Recep Erdoğan crawls on his knees before his ‘superiors’ (NATO-US) while grabbing the throats of his ‘inferiors’ (the Turkish people)!

Conclusion

Erdogan’s road to absolutist power is strewn with indiscriminant purges, terror and deceit; violence against environmental and liberal protestors in Gezi Park and moderate Gülen Islamists; jail sentences and firing of journalists and publishers, military officials and judges; repression of workers and capitalists; terror bombing against activists and democrats; and war against Kurds and Syrians.

Erdoğan’s paranoid and greed-driven vision of politics precludes any trust and stable relations. He thinks he is very clever with his combination of charm and broken promises, but he fools nobody. He reignites the war against the Kurds in Turkey and Syria but they retaliate!

He attacks Russia and provokes a very costly retaliation so far limited to the Turkish economy.

He increases his personal power, but undermines the interests of the Turkish nation and its people. Erdoğan believes he is the rising regional hegemon, indispensable to the West. He blackmails the EU for billions of Euros to control the flood of refugees fleeing violence in Syria and Iraq with his promises to warehouse desperate refugees in Turkish concentration camps. But Europeans must know that their money can never buy trust and loyalty from the Pasha.

His oil deals with ISIS are in tatters. Russian bombs ensure that Erdoğan will have to find other sources of illicit profit. Worst of all, Erdoğan’s furious actions have lost markets, allies and domestic support. He faces enemies from all sides – liberal professors, students, big business owners and organized workers in Istanbul; small business people in the tourist trade; construction and oil companies in Ankara; farmers in Anatolia, and, above all, the coal miners in Soma Manis.

Who knows under what circumstances Pasha Recep (the ‘Megalomaniac’) will be replaced?

Canada is currently branding itself in terms of humanitarianism, and the concrete gesture of accepting Syrian refugees – of which families, women, children, and gay men and women are prioritized — is laudable, and no doubt a godsend to those seeking refuge from the foreign mercenary terrorists who are invading Syria.

But the photo-ops also serve to obfuscate the correct diagnosis and cure for the disease afflicting Syria.

When Canada sells military equipment to Saudi Arabia, Canada is part of the disease. More importantly, Canada contributes to the cause of the disease metastasizing overseas when it chooses to ally itself with the cancer rather than the cure.

The cancer is NATO and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan.  We are the countries funding the terrorists,  and we are the cancer that purportedly wants to illegally impose regime change in Syria. Canada’s newly-minted Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan — amidst unproven allegations about President al-Assad’s “brutality”— asserted, after all, that “President Assad, he does need to go”.

Decoded, this means that Canada supports the U.S strategy, as outlined by a 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document, to use criminal terrorists — most recently branded as ISIS — to destroy the sovereign country of Syria and topple its legal government, headed by President Bashar al-Assad.

Canada, in association with NATO and its allies, wants to make Syria safe for terrorists, and some form of theocracy, consistent with the on-going NATO strategy of using fanatical terrorists to  destroy Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine.

Iraq is still infested with Western-allied terrorists – where there were none before that illegal invasion.  Libya is now infested with terrorists – the same ones supported by NATO during its  illegal regime-change operation; and Ukraine is infested with neo-Nazi associated terrorists,  elements of which were suppressed prior to NATO meddling.

Unlike Western “interventions” in Syria, Russia’s intervention conforms to the the rule of international law: President Assad solicited Russia’s military assistance into Syria, and the UN Security Council approved it. So, while Russia is making Syria safe for Syrians, the West is doing the opposite.

Russia’s military assistance, if successful, will cure the terror disease in Syria, and therefore solve the refugee problem by making Syria safe for everyone, including families, women, children, and homosexuals.

If the direct causes of terrorism are not identified and addressed, the flood of refugees will continue, and more countries will be impacted by Terror Inc.

On the one hand, NATO countries are enabling and supporting terrorism, while on the other, they are saving face, and hiding their criminality, by accepting refugees. From a public relations point of view, it works.  But if NATO’s intentions were humanitarian, it would stop supporting the terrorists.

It shouldn’t be complicated. There wouldn’t be refugees if the disease was correctly diagnosed and treated.  Band-Aid solutions are easing the pain, but they are not the cure.

Since when have terrorists been in the business of warning people before they attack them?

Over 1000 schools throughout Los Angeles, California have been closed down today after a single anonymous threat was made to a member of the school board via telephone.

LA Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines said the threat was made to students at the schools.

Watch a video of this report here:

Cortines described the message as a “credible threat” that targeted “not one school, two schools, three schools. It was a threat to many schools.”

He also said, “I want every school, every early education center, every adult school searched.”

The decision to close all schools was allegedly to ensure that everyone is “absolutely safe”.

Yet, we might ask a very simple question: When have terrorists ever warned anyone that they are about to try and kill them? As demonstrated here, such an act only foils the plan.

Why then, is this threat considered to be ‘credible’?

Just two years ago, Eldo Kim, a student at Harvard, emailed bomb threats to university officials in order to avoid an upcoming exam. It is far more likely that a similar scenario has just played out in California, because, as mentioned numerous times already, real terrorists do not warn you before attacking.

21WIRE reported on the Harvard story back in 2013, and pointed out the possibility that it may have been aligned with a ’emergency drill’ in the area.

This was certainly the case during the recent San Bernardino Shooting which coincided with multiple ‘active shooter’ and emergency drills in the area of the shooting, and even in the same building as the said terrorist event.

What we are witnessing is the manifestation of a 15 year long fear-based reality, rooted in false flag terror, that has culminated in the fear or terrorism being at the highest point in over ten years.

A society based upon fear allows for elites, those with political, economic, social, cultural, and even religious power, to exert significantly more control and dominion upon those under them all in the name of ensuring that everyone is ‘absolutely safe’.

It allows for a process of securitisation to take place, wherein security concerns always come before anything else; especially before democratic values and principles as we have witnessed in Western societies since 9/11.

Should authorities take preventative action to stop mass destruction from occurring? Absolutely. However, such action should only been taken when absolutely necessary, and not to further a political agenda that seeks to maintain a climate of fear and the implementation of a security state.

Follow me here: http://twitter.com/StuartJHooper

The selloff in junk bonds has rattled the markets and is raising questions about just who it is that is providing liquidity to the junk bond Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) — which have magically redeemed billions of dollars in withdrawals from retail investors while the underlying bonds in their portfolio are under severe stress in the broader marketplace. (Both a junk bond mutual fund and a separate hedge fund were forced to freeze investor withdrawals of their cash last week due to illiquidity in the junk bond market.)

Unknown to most retail investors is that there is an entity called an “Authorized Participant” hiding behind the curtain of ETFs that is making that liquidity possible.

According to an August 8, 2014 written question and answer exchange between the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and BlackRock and State Street – two large sponsors of ETFs — the most active Authorized Participants for corporate bond ETFs include “Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Cantor Fitzgerald.”

Let’s pause for a moment and think about that. JPMorgan Chase is the largest insured depository bank in the United States. Merrill Lynch was teetering toward failure during the crash of 2008 and was taken over by Bank of America, also one of the top four largest insured depository banks in the U.S.  Both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley became bank holding companies during the 2008 crash and now have access to the Fed’s discount window for emergency borrowing.

It seems pretty obvious why these so called “Authorized Participants” are hiding behind that esoteric title. Their liquidity to ETFs is actually being backstopped by their too-big-to-fail status which is actually backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer.

Number of Active Authorized Participants in Exchange Traded Funds
(Source: Investment Company Institute)

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For the first time today (December 15th), the United States has publicly and officially accepted the position that Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon have consistently held on the Syrian situation: that only a free and fair internationally monitored and accepted election of Syria’s President by the people of Syria can legitimately determine whom the President of Syria ought to be, and that no Syrian citizen, not even the current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he decides to be a candidate, can be blocked by any foreign power from being a candidate in that election.

The way America’s AP (Associated Press) put this in their news-report on Tuesday December 15th, was: “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia’s long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad’s future be determined by his own people.”

The way that Ban ki-Moon, or Mr. Ban, had expressed this “demand” is:

“I believe that the future of Syria, or the future of the peace talks, … should not be held up by an issue of the future of one man. I believe that it is up to the Syrian people who have to decide the future of President Assad.”

“The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people.”

As the present reporter had noted, headlining on November 15th, “U.S. Yields to Russia’s Insistence Upon Democracy in Syria”: “the agreement is said to specify that, by 14 December 2015, diplomats will reconvene to discuss any residual issues,” and this meant that, until this “reconvening” would be over, nothing would be final. Now that the second meeting is completed and the agreement is publicly affirmed without changes, the agreement has become official.

Here (as stated in my previous article) are the next steps that are specified in this agreement:

On 1 January 2016, the UN will then convene formal negotiations between the Syrian government and its political opponents who are not involved in terrorist activities. Obviously, defining who those parties are will be highly contentious between the U.S. and its allies, and Russia and its allies.On 14 May 2016, free elections will be held in Syria, administered by the UN.

The agreement specifies that the war against jihadist groups, all of which have been trying to bring down the Syrian government, will continue. This provision of the agreement recognizes the unacceptable role that these groups, such as Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) and ISIS, play in bombings not only in France but throughout Europe and the Middle East. The agreement won’t say whether those groups may participate in the elections, but it will specify that the war against those groups can continue, even while the peace process in Syria is being implemented. The “ceasefire” won’t apply to efforts to wipe out those jihadist groups, which are illegal in Syria.

Above and beyond those details, the atmospherics of the way that the current meeting ended, add further confirmation to the significance of what has transpired here.

In the AP’s accompanying video (below) of the closing announcement (pictured right), Putin enters the room with a smile on his face and greets the U.S. team including Secretary of State John Kerry and his Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, by warmly shaking Kerry’s hand and being warmly greeted by him, and then by (at 0:27 in the video) approaching and shaking hands with what is evidently a stand-offish if not hostile Nuland, as he bends slightly toward her and she bends slightly backward, with a facial expression that’s not entirely clear but doesn’t look at all friendly.

Kerry is looking at Nuland’s face with what appears to be concerned worry, and the two other members of his team are looking down at the two shaking hands; one of those two members, the woman, looks down at the handshake sporting a quizzical expression such as if to say, “Victoria can’t be enjoying this eating-of-crow.”

Nuland is a close friend of Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was brought by Hillary into the Obama State Department after having previously been Vice President Dick Cheney’s Foreign Affairs Advisor. Her Husband, Robert Kagan, like others of his family, Fred Kagan, Donald Kagan, and Kimberly Kagan (the wife of Fred Kagan), all share a visceral hatred of Russia, and all of them also share instant entrée into the offices of almost any Republican member of Congress, and of almost all of the top or Presidential level of the Democratic Party, such as the Clintons and Obama, and their respective advisory friends. So, the Kagan clan pass easily as “neoconservatives” and “neoliberals” but, in any case, as ‘respectable’ haters of Vladimir Putin, and as passionate supporters of anyone in Russia who might be able to aid the U.S. aristocracy to bring him down and to restore post-Soviet Russia to control by the U.S. aristocracy as it had been under Boris Yeltsin.

Kerry had been advised by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to rely upon Nuland to become his chief Assistant Secretary, and even before Kerry became the new Secretary of State, Nuland was already actively working in the State Department to plan and organize a coup to bring down Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in order to enable Ukraine to become admitted ultimately into NATO and serve as a missile base against Moscow, right on Russia’s border. She installed anti-Russian racist fascists, ideological nazis, into the post-coup Ukrainian government. When Kerry finally had had enough of this, he contradicted her in public, and Obama backed Nuland and Kerry was sidelined from the Ukrainian issue for a while. This time, it’s Nuland who must eat crow.

The uprising against Assad had been in the planning stages from the very moment that Obama had entered the White House in 2009, but finally he seems to have decided that he himself will have to eat crow on this one. Kerry in that video seems pleased: he’s not being embarrassed this time, by his President, his boss.

The Russian Television (RT) video from the press conference in the morning presents Kerry sitting next to Nuland and praising both Putin and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while Nuland starts to look down at around 0:50 on the video after Kerry says, “Russia made a significant contribution to the dialogue,” and yet again at 1:00 looks down when he says “Russia has been a significant contributor to the progress that we have been able to make.” Then, he says directly to Lavrov, “You personally have been a co-convenor,” and she yet again looks down, but this time even looks away, at her notes.

These results are a victory for Putin and his team, and for Kerry personally, and for the people of Syria, but not for the U.S. President and his closest advisors. Kerry has been isolated within this Gladio Obama Administration, but nonetheless has achieved positive results, whereas Kerry’s predecessor in his office had been a failure, as her entire record in public life has been, for everyone except her corporate sponsors.

Those sponsors never give up, however. They might have lost a battle on this, but certainly not the war, which will continue.

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

The Western Press doesn’t have much to say about the military operations in Syria, except to affirm, without the slightest proof, that the Coalition is successfully bombing Daesh jihadists while the Russians continue to kill innocent civilians. It is in fact difficult to form a reasonable idea of the current situation, particularly since each side is readying its weapons in preparation for a wider conflict. Thierry Meyssan describes what is going on.

The silence surrounding the military operations in Iraq and Syria does not mean that the war has ground to a halt, but that the different protagonists are preparing for a new round of hostilities.

The Coalition forces

On the imperial side, there reigns a state of total confusion. With regard to the contradictory declarations by US leaders, it is impossible to understand Washington’s objectives, if indeed there are any. At the very best, it would seem that the United States are allowing France to take certain initiatives at the head of one part of the Coalition, but even there, we do not know their real objectives.

Of course, France declares that it wants to destroy Daesh in retaliation for the attacks of the 13th November in Paris, but it was already saying so before these attacks took place. Their earlier declarations were the stuff of public relations, not reality. For example, the Mecid Aslanov, property of Necmettin Bilal Erdoğan’s BMZ Group, left the French port of Fos-sur-Mer on the 9th November 2015, having just delivered, in total impunity, a cargo of oil which it claimed had been extracted in Israël, but which in reality had been stolen by Daesh in Syria. There is nothing to indicate that the situation is any different today, or that we should begin taking the official declarations seriously.

French President François Hollande and his Minister of Defence Jean-Yves Le Drian visited the aircraft-carrier Charles-De-Gaulle, off the coast of Syria, on the 4th December. They announced a change of mission, but gave no explanation. As Army Chief of Staff General Pierre de Villiers had previously stated, the ship was diverted to the Persian Gulf.

The aeronaval Group constituted around the Charles-De-Gaulle is composed of its on-board aerial Group (eighteenRafale Marine, eight modernised Super Etendard, two Hawkeye, two Dauphin and one Alouette III), the aerial defence frigateChevalier Paul, the anti-submarine frigate La Motte-Picquet, the command flagship Marne, the Belgian frigate Léopold Ier and the German frigate Augsburg, and also, although the Minister of Defence denies it, a nuclear attack submarine. Attached to this group, the stealth light frigate Courbet remained in the western Mediterranean.

The European forces have been integrated into Task Force 50 of the USNavCent, in other words the US Central Command fleet. This unit now comprises about sixty ships.

The French authorities have announced that rear-admiral René-Jean Crignola has taken command of this international force, without mentioning that he is placed under the authority of the commander of the 5th Fleet, rear-admiral Kevin Donegan, who is himself under the authority of General Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of CentCom. It is in truth an absolute rule of the Empire that the command of operations always falls to US officers, and that the Allies only occupy auxiliary positions. In fact, apart from the relative promotion of the French rear-admiral, we find ourselves in the same position as last February. We have an international Coalition which is supposed to be fighting Daesh, and which – for an entire year – has certainly multiplied its reconnaissance flights and destroyed Chinese oil installations, but without having the slightest effect on its official objective, Daesh. Here too, there is no indication that anything will change.

The Coalition has announced that it has carried out new bombing missions and destroyed a number of Daesh installations, but these allegations are unverifiable and even more doubtful insofar as the terrorist organisation has not made the slightest protest.

From this disposition, we may conclude that France may elaborate its own strategy, but that the United States can re-assert control at any time.

The terrorist forces

We could deal here with the terrorist organisations, but that would involve pretending, like NATO, that these groups are independent formations which have suddenly materialised from the void, with all their salaries, armement and spare parts. More seriously, the jihadists are in fact mercenaries in the service of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – it seems that the United Arab Emirates have almost completely withdrawn from this group – to which we must add certain multinationals like Academi, KKR and Exxon-Mobil.

Turkey continues its military deployement in Bachiqa (Irak), in support of the Kurdish forces of illegitimate President Massoud Barzani who, although his mandate is terminated, refuses to leave power and organise new elections. When the Iraqi government demanded that Turkey remove its troops and tanks, Ankara responded that it had sent its soldiers to protect the training forces deployed in Iraq according to an earlier international agreement, and that it had no intention of withdrawing them. It then added even more, bringing the number of troops involved to at least 1,000 soldiers and 25 tanks.

Iraq referred its case to the United Nations Security Council and the Arab League, without provoking the slightest reaction anywhere.

Turkey and the ex-governor of Mosul, Atheel al-Nujaifi, would like to be present when the city is taken from Daesh, hoping to be able to prevent it from being occupied by the Popular Mobilisation Forces (al-Hashd al-Shaabi), the great majority of whom are Shia.

It’s clear that everyone is dreaming – illegitimate President Massoud Barzani believes that no-one will question his annexation of the oil fields of Kirkuk and the Sinjar mountains – the leader of the Syrian Kurds, Saleh Muslim, imagines that he will soon be President of an internationally-recognised pseudo-Kurdistan – and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presumes that the Arabs of Mosul long to be liberated and governed by the Turks, as they were under the Ottoman Empire.

Furthermore, in Ukraine, Turkey has deployed the International Islamist Brigade that it officially created last August. These jihadists, who were extracted from the Syrian theatre, were divided into two groups as soon as they arrived in Kherson. Most of them went to fight in Donbass with the Cheikh Manour and Djokhar Doudaïev Brigades, while the best elements were infiltrated into Russia in order to sabotage the Crimean economy, where they managed to cut all electricity to the Republic for 48 hours.

Saudi Arabia united its mercenaries in Riyadh in order to constitute a delegation in readiness for the next round of negotiations organised by the NATO Director of Political Affairs, US neo-Conservative Jeffrey Feltman.

The Saudis did not invite the representatives of Al-Qaïda, nor those of Daesh, but only the Wahhabist groups who are working with them, like Jaysh al-Islam or Ahrar al-Sham. Therefore, in theory, there were no « terrorist groups », as listed by the UNO Security Council, present at the conference. However, in practice, all the participants were fighting with, in the name of, or alongside Al-Qaïda or Daesh without using their label, since most of these groups are directed by personalities who once belonged to Al-Qaïda or Daesh. Thus, Ahrar al-Sham was created just before the beginning of the events in Syria by the Muslim Brotherhood and the principal leaders of Al-Qaïda, drawn from personalities close to Osama bin Laden.

Continuing to act as they had before the Russisan intervention, the participants agreed to a « political solution » which would start with the abdication of the democratically-elected President Bachar el-Assad, and continue with a sharing of power between themselves and the Republican institutions. Thus, although they have lost all hope of a military victory, they persist in counting on the surrender of the Syrian Arab Republic.

Since the representative of the Syrian Kurds was not invited to the conference, we may conclude that Saudi Arabia considers the project for a pseudo-Kurdistan as distinct from the future of the rest of Syria. Let us note in passing that the YPG has just created a Syrian Democratic Council in order to reinforce the illusion of an alliance between Selah Muslim’s Kurds and the Sunni and Christian Arabs, when in reality, they are fighting each other on the ground.

In any case, there is no doubt that Riyadh is supporting Turkey’s efforts to create this pseudo-Kurdistan as a place of banishment for « its » Kurds. Indeed, it is now confirmed that Saudi Arabia supplied the logistical aid necessary for Turkey to guide the air-air missile which shot down the Russian Soukhoï 24.

Finally, Qatar is still pretending that it has not been involved in the war since the abdication of Emir Hamad, two years ago. Nonetheless, proof is accumulating of its secret operations, all of which are directed not against Damascus, but against Moscow – thus, the Qatari Minister of Defence, in Ukraine at the end of September, bought a number of sophisticated Pechora-2D anti-air weapons which the jihadists could use to threaten Russian forces. More recently, he organised a false-flag operation against Russia. Still in Ukraine, at the end of October, he bought 2,000 OFAB 250-270 Russian fragmentation bombs and dispersed them on the 6th December over a camp of the Syrian Arab Army, in order to accuse the Russian Army of blundering. In this case too, despite the proof, there was no reaction from the UNO.

The patriotic forces

The Russian forces have been bombing the jihadists since the 30th September. They plan to continue at least until the 6th January. Their action is aimed principally at destroying the bunkers built by these armed groups and the totality of their logistical networks. During this phase, there will be little evolution on the ground other than a withdrawal of jihadists towards Iraq and Turkey.

The Syrian Arab Army and its allies are preparing a vast operation for the beginning of 2016. The objective is to provoke an uprising of the populations dominated by the jihadists, and to take almost all the cities in the country simultaneously – with the possible exception of Palmyra – so that the foreign mercenaries will fall back to the desert. Unlike Iraq, where 120,00 Sunnis and Ba’athists joined Daesh only to exact revenge for having been excluded from power by the United States in favour of the Chiites, rare are the Syrians who ever acclaimed the « Caliphate ».

On the 21st and 22nd November, in the Mediterranean, the Russian army took part in excercises with its Syrian ally. As a result, the airports of Beirut (Lebanon) and Larnaca (Cyprus) were partially closed. On the 23rd and 24th November, the firing of Russian missiles on Daesh positions within Syria provoked the closing of the airports at Erbil and Sulaymaniyah (Iraq). It seems that in reality, the Russian army may have been testing the possible extension of its weapon that inhibits NATO communications and commands. In any case, on the 8th December, the submarine Rostov-on-Don fired on Daesh installations from the Mediterranean.

Russia, which disposes of the air base at Hmeymim (near Lattakia), also uses the air base of the Syrian Arab Army in Damascus, and is said to be building a new base at al-Shayrat (near Homs). Besides this, some high-ranking Russian officers have been carrying out scouting missions with a view to creating a fourth base in the North-East of Syria, in other words, close to both Turkey and Iraq.

Finally, an Iranian submarine has arrived off the coast of Tartus.

Hezbollah, who demonstrated their capacity to carry out commando operations during their liberation of the Sukhoï pilot held prisoner by militias organised by the Turkish army, are preparing the uprising of Shia populations, while the Syrian Arab Army – which is more than 70% Sunni – is concentrating on the Sunni populations.

The Syrian government has concluded an agreement with the jihadists of Homs, who have finally accepted to either join up or leave. The area has been evacuated under the control of the United Nations, so that today, Damascus, Homs, Hama, Lattakia and Der ez-Zor are completely secure. Aleppo, Idlib and Al-Raqqah still need to be liberated.

Contrary to peremptory affirmations by the western Press, Russia has no intention of leaving the north of the country to France, Israël and the United Kingdom so that they can create their pseudo-Kurdistan. The patriot plan forsees the liberation of all the inhabited areas of the country, including Rakka, which is the current « capital of the Caliphate ».

This is the calm before the storm.

Would you be willing to defend your country against a foreign invasion?

That’s all Putin is doing in Syria. He’s just preempting the tidal wave of jihadis that’ll be coming his way once the current fracas is over.  He figures it’s better to exterminate these US-backed maniacs in Syria now than face them in Chechnya, St Petersburg and Moscow sometime in the future.  Can you blame him? After all, if Washington’s strategy works in Syria, then you can bet they’ll try the same thing in Beirut, Tehran and Moscow.

So what choice does Putin have?

None. He has no choice.  His back is against the wall. He has to fight.  No one in Washington seems to get this. They think Putin can throw in the towel and call it “quits” at the first sign of getting bogged down. But he can’t throw in the towel because Russia’s facing an existential crisis.  If he loses, then Russia’s going to wind up on the same scrap heap as Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. You can bet on it. So the only thing he can do is win. Period. Victory isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.

Do you think that Putin and his advisors have had their heads in the sand for the last 15 years, that they haven’t noticed the US rampaging around the globe bumping off one country after the other leaving behind nothing but anarchy and ruin? Do you think they don’t know that Russia is on the top of Washington’s hit-list? Do you think they haven’t noticed NATO inching closer to Russia’s borders while foam-at-the-mouth politicians in Washington wave their fists and growl about Hitler Putin and evil Russia?

Of course they’ve noticed. Everyone’s noticed. Everyone knows Washington is on the warpath and its leaders have gone stark raving mad. How could they not notice?

But all that’s done is focus the mind on the task at hand, and the task at hand is to whoop the tar out of the terrorists, put an end to Washington’s sick little jihadi game, and go home. That’s Russia’s plan in a nutshell.  No one is trying to cobble together the long-lost Soviet empire. That’s pure bunkum.  Russia just wants to clean up this nest of vipers and call it a day. There’s nothing more to it than that.

But what if the going gets tough and Syria becomes a quagmire?

That doesn’t change anything, because Russia still has to win. If that means sending ground troops to Syria, then that’s what Putin will do. If that means asymmetrical warfare, like arming the Kurds or the Yemenis, or the Taliban or even disparate anti-regime Shiites in Saudi Arabia, then he’ll do that too. Whatever it takes. This isn’t a game, it’s a fight for survival; Russia’s survival as a sovereign country. That’s what the stakes are. That’s not something Putin takes lightly.

Keep in mind, that Russia’s situation is entirely different than that of the US. The US is engaged in a vast “pivot” project to remove secular regimes that are hostile towards Washington, control vital resources from North Africa through the Middle East and across Central Asia, establish military bases wherever necessary, maintain the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and redraw the map of the ME in a way that best suits the commercial and strategic interests of its core constituents; the banks, the multinational corporations and the big weapons manufacturers.

Russia doesn’t have any grandiose plans like that. Putin just wants to sell oil, make money, raise living standards in Russia, and get on with life. He figured that if he played by the rules– Washington’s rules– joined the WTO, then he’d be okay. But that’s not the way it works. The WTO’s rules, like the IMF’s rules are only upheld as long as they suit Washington’s strategic objectives. And when they don’t, well, then they’re dumped like a hot potato just like they were when the US implemented its economic sanctions on Russia or when the IMF allowed Ukraine to stiff Moscow for $3 billion in loans.  The point is, it’s a free market when Washington says it’s a free market, otherwise all bets are off.

The same rule applies to terrorism. For example, On Saturday, a group of terrorists detonated a car bomb near a hospital in the Syrian city of Homs. 22 people were killed and more than 70 were injured. So the Syrian government asked the UN Security Council to condemn the attack. Naturally, the Security Council said “Yes”, right?

Wrong. In fact, the UNSC refused to make any statement at all about the attack because, to do so, would be seen as supportive of the Syrian government that the US wants to topple. The bottom line: Blowing up civilians with car bombs is hunky-dory as long as the US benefits from it.

By the way, the Security Council is currently chaired by the US who made sure the draft was never even put to a vote.

Does that sound like a country that’s seriously committed to fighting terrorism or a country that is run by hypocrites?

The reason I ask this now is because, on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to attend an emergency meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss issues that are too sensitive to reveal to the public. There’s a lot of speculation about what the two men will talk about, but the urgency and the secrecy of the meeting suggests that the topic will be one of great importance. So allow me to make a guess about what the topic will be.

When Kerry arrives in Moscow tomorrow he’ll be rushed to meeting room at the Kremlin where he’ll be joined by Lavrov, Putin, Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu and high-ranking members from military intelligence. Then, following the initial introductions, Kerry will be shown the evidence Russian intelligence has gathered on last Sunday’s attack on a Syrian military base east of Raqqa that killed three Syrian soldiers and wounded thirteen others. The Syrian government immediately condemned the attack and accused US warplanes of conducting the operation. Later in the day,  Putin delivered an uncharacteristically-harsh and threatening statement that left no doubt that he thought the attack was a grave violation of the accepted rules of engagement and, perhaps, a declaration of war. Here’s what he said:

“Any targets threatening the Russian groups of forces or land infrastructure must be immediately destroyed.”  This was followed shortly after by an equally disturbing statement by Putin to the Russian Defense Ministry Board:

Special attention must be paid to strengthening the combat potential of the strategic nuclear forces and implementing defense space programs. It is necessary, as outlined in our plans, to equip all components of the nuclear triad with new arms.

Why would an incident in the village of Ayyash in far-flung Deir Ezzor Province be so important that it would bring the two nuclear-armed adversaries to the brink of war?

I’ll tell you why: It’s because there were other incidents prior to the bombing in Ayyash that laid the groundwork for the current clash. There was the ISIS downing of the Russian airliner that killed 224 Russian civilians. Two weeks after that tragedy, Putin announced at the G-20 meetings that he had gathered intelligence proving that 40 countries –including some in the G-20 itself–were involved in the funding and supporting of ISIS. This story was completely blacked out in the western media and, so far, Russia has not revealed the names of any of the countries involved.

So, I ask you, dear reader, do you think the United States is on that list of ISIS supporters?

Then there was the downing of the Russian Su-24, a Russian bomber that was shot down by Turkish F-16s while it was carrying out its mission to exterminate terrorists in Syria. Many analysts do not believe that the   Su-24 could have been destroyed without surveillance and logistical support provided by US AWACs or US satellites. Many others scoff at the idea that Turkey would engage in such a risky plan without the go-ahead from Washington. Either way, the belief that Washington was directly involved in the downing of a Russian warplane is widespread.

So, I ask you, dear reader, do you think Washington gave Turkey the greenlight?

Finally, we have the aerial attack on the Syrian military base in Deir Ezzor, an attack that was either executed by US warplanes or US-coalition warplanes. Not only does the attack constitute a direct assault on the Russian-led coalition (an act of war) but the bombing raid was also carried out in tandem  with a “a full-scale ISIS offensive on the villages of Ayyash and Bgelia.”  The coordination suggests that either the US or US allies were providing  air-cover for ISIS terrorists to carry out their ground operations.  Author Alexander Mercouris– who is certainly no conspiracy nut–expands on this idea in a recent piece at Russia Insider which provides more detail on the incident. The article begins like this:

Did Members of the US-Led Coalition Carry Out an Air Strike to Help ISIS? Russia Implies They Did. Russian statement appears to implicate aircraft from two member states of the US led coalition in the air strike on the Syrian military base in Deir az-Zor….This information – if it is true – begs a host of questions.

Firstly, the Syrian military base that was hit by the air strike was apparently the scene of a bitter battle between the Syrian military and the Islamic State.  It seems that shortly after the air strike – and most probably as a result of it – the Islamic State’s fighters were able to storm it.

Inevitably, that begs the question of whether the aircraft that carried out the air strike were providing air support to the fighters of the Islamic State.

On the face of it, it looks like they were. After all, if what happened was simply a mistake, it might have been expected that the US and its allies would say as much.  If so, it is an extremely serious and worrying development, suggesting that some members of the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition are actually in league with the Islamic State.  (“Did Members of the US-Led Coalition Carry Out an Air Strike to Help ISIS?” Alexander Mercouris, Russia Insider)

So there it is in black and white. The Russians think someone in the US-led coalition is teaming up with ISIS. That should make for some interesting conversation when Kerry sashays into the Kremlin today.

Does Kerry have any clue that Putin and his lieutenants are probably going to produce evidence that coalition warplanes were involved in the bombing of the Syrian military base?  How do you think he’ll respond to that news? Will he apologize or just stand there dumbstruck? And how will he react when Putin tells him that if a similar incident takes place in the future, Russian warplanes and anti-aircraft units are going to shoot the perpetrator down?

If I am not mistaken, Kerry is in for a big surprise on Tuesday. He’s about to learn that Putin takes war very seriously and is not going to let Washington sabotage his plans for success. If Kerry’s smart, he’ll pass along that message to Obama and tell him he needs to dial it down a notch if he wants to avoid a war with Russia.

Thousands of Iraqi protesters have staged demonstrations across the country to denounce Turkey’s deployment of military forces near the embattled northern city of Mosul.

On Friday evening, people converged on Tahrir (Liberation) Square in central Baghdad to condemn in the strongest terms the presence of Turkish troops in Iraq, calling Ankara’s move “a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.”

The demonstrators also called for the immediate withdrawal of Turkish troops from the Iraqi soil, Arabic-language al-Sumaria satellite television network reported.

Elsewhere in the city of Nasiriyah, about 320 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Baghdad, demonstrators gathered near Habboubi Square, calling on Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defense Minister Khaled al-Obaidi to take “a firm stance” against Turkey’s act of “aggression.”

A similar demonstration was held in the city of al-Diwaniyah, where hundreds of people censured Turkey’s military intervention in Iraq, urging the Iraqi government to expel the Turkish Ambassador to Baghdad Faruk Kaymakci and sever all ties with Ankara.

Additionally, protesters burnt the Turkish flag in Iraq’s southern oil-rich city of Basra in protest against Turkey’s military incursion into Iraqi soil.

Earlier in the day, Abadi strongly condemned Turkey’s deployment of troops to northern Iraq, saying Baghdad does not consider it as an anti-terror move but as a flagrant violation of the Arab country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

The Iraqi premier stated that the Turkish troops had entered Iraqi territories without the consent of the Iraqi government, adding that his country has never requested ground troops from any foreign country since it has enough soldiers and police forces to maintain its security and fight against terrorists.

He also ordered the Foreign Ministry to lodge a formal complaint with the United Nations Security Council against Turkey’s military presence in Iraq “to order Turkey to withdraw its troops immediately.”

On the same day, Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also called on the government to show “no tolerance” towards any side that violates the country’s sovereignty.

No country should “send its soldiers to the territory of another state under the pretext of supporting it in fighting terrorism without the conclusion of an agreement… between the governments of the two countries,” said the statement, read by the hugely influential cleric’s spokesman Sheikh Abdul Mehdi Karbala’i.

Tensions have been running high between Baghdad and Ankara since December 4, when Turkey deployed some 150 soldiers, equipped with heavy weapons and backed by 20 to 25 tanks, to the outskirts of Mosul, the capital of Iraq’s Nineveh province.

Ankara claims that its troops have been deployed in northern Iraq to train Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, and that the move was in line with previous agreements with the Baghdad government. Iraq, however, denies any such deal.

The Paris Agreement has mostly been greeted with enthusiasm, though it contains at least one obvious flaw. Few seem to have noticed that the main tool mooted for keeping us within the 2℃ global warming target is a massive expansion of carbon trading, including offsetting, which allows the market exchange of credits between companies and nations to achieve an overall emissions reduction. That’s despite plenty of evidence that markets haven’t worked well enough, or quickly enough, to actually keep the planet safe.

The debate over whether to include carbon markets in the final agreement came right to the wire. Some left-leaning Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia vehemently opposed any mention, while the EU, Brazil, and New Zealand, among other countries, pushed hard for their inclusion – with support from the World Bank, the IMF and many business groups.

Play with Words

What we have ended up with is some murky semantics. Though terms such as “carbon trading,” “carbon pricing,” “carbon offsetting” and “carbon markets” don’t appear anywhere in the text, the agreement is littered with references to a whole range of new and expanded market-based tools.

Article 6 refers to “voluntary cooperation” between countries in the implementation of their emissions targets “to allow for higher ambition in their mitigation and adaptation actions.” If that’s not exactly plain speak, then wait for how carbon trading is referred to as “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes.”

The same Article also provides for an entirely new, UN-controlled international market mechanism. All countries will be able to trade carbon with each other, helping each to achieve their national targets for emissions cuts. While trading between companies, countries or blocs of countries is done on a voluntary basis, the new mechanism, dubbed the Sustainable Development Mechanism (SDM), will be set up to succeed the existing Joint Implementation and Clean Development Mechanism, providing for a massive expansion of carbon trading and offsetting while setting some basic standards.

Carbon market proponents have already celebrated this as “a new era of international carbon trading,” allowing the linking of existing national and regional trading schemes, such as the EU-ETS, as well as the soon to be established Chinese market.

Forest Offsets Included for the First Time

Richer countries can also make deals to reduce deforestation and enhance sustainable forest management to enhance forest carbon sinks in developing nations. This forest-based offsetting has been debated since 2005 but, due to political controversies and complexities of measuring how much carbon is actually stored in a forest, it has been left out of any international agreements so far. It is now included in Article 5.2 of the Paris text.

But will these carbon trading and offsetting tools save the planet?

Carbon Markets Create More Problems Than They Solve

The short answer is no. These tools will not save the planet from overheating. In fact, they might be counter-productive to the goal of limiting warming to 2℃, never mind the unrealistic 1.5℃ ambition.

Carbon markets basically function as a delaying tactic. It’s been that way ever since their first inclusion in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The EU-ETS for instance, the first, biggest and most significant of all trading schemes, simply hasn’t delivered. It took the best part of ten years for it to start after Kyoto, and once in action it was riddled by fraud, corruption, over-allocation of permits and perverse incentives for carbon offsetting – all contributing to the fact that the price for carbon is so low that nobody cares.

Offsetting projects in developing countries have been responsible for the expansion of polluting industries and land grabs among other unintentional yet real negative consequences. We’ll see more of this once forest-based offsets are included. Many bilateral forest and UN-REDD projects have been running for years, while critics say they have led to fraud, support of monocultures, forest enclosures, and forced displacements and evictions of indigenous people from their land in countries such as Kenya, Congo, Papua New Guinea or Brazil.

The Paris Agreement is keen to avoid such pitfalls, explicitly stating that it wants “environmental integrity and transparency” with “robust accounting.” Such promises have been given numerous times before, yet carbon trading and offsetting keep running into problems.

At the start of the Paris climate talks I warned that they would fail. I’m afraid I was right. While the final agreement contains words of urgency, ambition and action, I have serious doubts that the actual tools that are supposed to deliver the much needed emissions cuts will work fast enough, if at all.

By adopting carbon trading and offsetting as main mitigation tools, the Paris Agreement has created the possibility for years, if not decades, of further delays. Time we can ill afford.

Steffen Böhm is Professor in Management and Sustainability, and Director, Essex Sustainability Institute, University of Essex. This article first appeared on TheConversation.com website.

The streets of Caracas were eerily quiet late Sunday evening (December 6) as the city, and indeed the whole of Venezuela, anxiously awaited the results of the critical legislative elections. Everyone knew the vote would be close: the polls had indicated as much in the weeks leading up to the elections, with many experts predicting a victory for the right wing opposition party Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).

Traveling throughout the capital, and especially in the poor and working class neighborhoods, however, the mood was optimistic, with most Chavistas fully expecting to carry the day and maintain their control of the National Assembly. In the 23 January neighborhood, a stronghold of the ruling Socialist Party (PSUV) and a hotbed of radical activism and resistance, local party and community leaders were upbeat as they showed me around, pointing out the gains made in the years of Chavista rule: every house now having a cooking gas connection, improved sewage systems, guaranteed government pensions, low-cost government housing, among many other tangible gains.

In El Valle, another solidly red working class district, I visited two of the many punto rojos (red points) – Socialist Party tents manned by volunteers who helped organize voter turnout for their respective neighborhoods – where the mood was festive, something between a block party and a local community meeting. The punto rojos, interestingly enough, were almost always opposite from MUD tents (a recent phenomenon as the right wing opposition has adopted the PSUV organizing strategy), and all was peaceful and quiet, no confrontations to be seen. Indeed, it seemed everywhere I went that these elections were a model of a peaceful democratic process, precisely what Venezuela’s government has long prided itself on, and precisely what the western media has always denied.

After having met with a number of community leaders, including PSUV candidate Jesús Faría who welcomed me with a handshake and a hug, thanking me for coming to his country to watch democracy in action, I went (along with my delegation from the US) to Tiuna el Fuerte, a cultural center and communal outdoor meeting space financially supported by the Venezuelan government. With intricate graffiti murals adorning the walls of shipping containers transformed into living quarters, computer labs, and other important resources, Tiuna el Fuerte looked like something out of hipster Brooklyn or Oakland, a meeting space where hip hop and reggae music blared from the speakers, and sancocho (a traditional soup dish) was ladled into bowls for anyone who wanted it.

But as I sat voraciously devouring the delicious sancocho, gazing calmly at the trees and public housing buildings across the dusty street, it was immediately clear that there was a tension in the air, an unease somehow palpable in the cautious movements and facial expressions of the twenty- and thirty-somethings in charge of this cultural center. It was obvious that these people were nervous, that they had a sense that all was not well. The television around which everyone gathered flashed images from around the country, showing polling places still open well into the evening as voters waited in lines to cast their ballots. Text and WhatsApp messages went back and forth like electrical signals shot by digital neurotransmitters across the synapses of a collective Chavista brain. These people were worried, and now so was I.

I did not come to Venezuela to be objective – I am a leftist and an anti-imperialist, a strong supporter of Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution – but rather to bear witness to these elections and see Venezuela for myself, this country I have followed and defended vigorously as a bastion of resistance against global imperialism these last 17 years. I came to document the reality, but also to counter the corporate media’s propaganda: President Maduro as dictator, Venezuela as failed state, and other such lies and distortions peddled by the mouthpieces of neoliberal finance capital. I came to be part of this momentous election, and to tell its story.

And then it happened. The bombshell. The National Electoral Council (CNE), the impartial body that conducts the country’s elections, announced an overwhelming victory for the right wing opposition and the MUD. The wealthy and middle class neighborhoods of Caracas erupted in cheers and celebrations, while the poor and working class sections of the city seemingly went silent.

The country had taken a stunning turn to the right, an astonishing thing for the most left wing country in the western hemisphere. How could this have happened? What led to these incredible developments? And what might this mean for the future of the Bolivarian Republic and its revolution?

The Elections through Venezuelan Eyes

It would be rather easy to analyze the election results in purely political terms: inflation and economic war, corruption, the collapse of global oil prices, violent crime, a lack of responsiveness to the needs of the people from the ruling Socialist Party, and about a dozen other factors that played a role in bringing the pro-neoliberal, pro-US right wing to power in the National Assembly. Indeed, there is some value in doing so from a strictly objective and detached perspective. However this election, and the Bolivarian Revolution from its very inception, is (and has always been) about the Venezuelan people. And it is the Venezuelan people themselves who perhaps can provide the best insights into what exactly has happened here.

The morning after the election I rode the Caracas Metrocable system, a cable-propelled metro transit line that connects the working class community of San Agustín high up in the hills with the rest of city via cable cars traveling hundreds of meters above the ground, giving riders a breathtaking view of the city. The project, an initiative fully funded by the Venezuelan Government under Hugo Chávez, was designed to integrate San Agustín into the greater economy and provide the poor access to the city, while spurring development on both ends of the project. As such, the system is a visible and highly advanced testament to the grand-scale projects that Chávez’s government envisioned as part of the Bolivarian Revolutionary development process.

I had a chance to chat in one of the cars with a young woman from San Agustín, her purple, ink-stained pinky finger indicating that she had voted on Sunday. She explained that she had cast her vote for the Socialist Party because she remained loyal to Chávez and the government which gave her easy access to the city, as well as adequate, low-cost housing. But behind her polite smile was a clear current of outrage, anger at the fact that her neighborhood, which had benefitted so directly from government programs, had in fact gone to the opposition in the election. “Those of us who voted for MUD are either ignorant or ungrateful,” she explained, not mincing her words in describing many of her neighbors, friends, and even family. “They will soon realize what they have done.”

At the next station, a Venezuelan colleague, and leader of our US delegation, asked a young couple whether they had voted, indicating his own purple finger. “Of course,” was the reply, with the woman wildly gesticulating, not holding back her anger, “What the hell am I going to do now? How will I get an affordable apartment? How will I afford the basic necessities?” she raged, her frustration gushing from her like so many tears shed the night before.

Stepping off the cable-car, my Venezuelan friend pointed out a tall building next to the station, explaining that it’s a recreation complex recently constructed by the government. He noted that this building included a sports center, classrooms for young adult and adult education, a small market, and many other necessities for the people of the community. Touching his open palm to his forehead as if pained physically by the realization, he simply said “I have absolutely no idea what will happen to this place. The right wing will probably close it down because they couldn’t care less about the people who live here.”

Later that same afternoon, I headed down to the aptly named “Hot Corner,” an area just a few meters from the National Assembly building, where Venezuelans regularly congregate to discuss politics. There was a large crowd there, with Chavistas angrily denouncing the right wing, and expressing their unwavering support for El Comandante and the Revolution. One man cried directly into my camera “Chavez is in my heart, the Revolution is in my blood. They’ll have to spill my blood to take my Revolution.” The tears welling in his eyes, and in the eyes of many others in the crowd, were enough to move even the most detached observer. I myself had to hold back tears as I watched this man, among others, speak directly to me, knowing I was a gringo there for the election, trying desperately to show just what the Revolution meant to him, his family, his people, his country.

While there are countless stories like these from around Caracas, and indeed throughout the country, there undeniably are many who were either pleased with, or indifferent to, the election results.

I took a taxi through the mountains connecting Maracay to the coastal town of Choroní, the point of embarkation for the boats taking people to the isolated Afro-Venezuelan fishing village of Chuao. The driver (named Pedro) was a middle-aged, middle-class man who could barely contain his pleasure at seeing the Chavistas defeated.

“This government is incompetent and corrupt,” he said, adding that “they have messed up everything with their bad economic policies and stupid decisions.” When I pressed him further, asking about whether he thought that the collapse of global oil prices – a drop from a high of $140 per barrel to less than $40, amounting to a decrease of roughly 75% of revenue – had anything to do with the problems in Venezuela, he dismissed the notion with a casual wave of his hand. He equally dismissed the economic war waged against Venezuela which includes hyper-speculation, an informal embargo by foreign corporations and domestic private distributors on certain key consumer goods and staple foods, the illicit trafficking of goods along the Venezuela-Colombia border, and many other forms of deliberate economic destabilization.

“I can tell you’re a Chavista,” he half exclaimed, half chortled as we took another sharp turn around a blind curve roughly one thousand meters up the mountain. “Look,” he said, “I was trained in economics and I used to work for a bank, but since I am not a Chavista I cannot get a job and have had to work as a taxi driver and open a restaurant.” When I asked whether he really believed that things would get better under a neoliberal, pro-US party, Pedro answered unequivocally, “Yes. They will get rid of the price controls and the economy will stabilize.”

But when I probed further, noting that such a policy inevitably meant sharp price increases that would hurt the poor and working class disproportionately, he again waved his hand and said, “We’ll see. I think change will be good. As soon as the MUD is in office, the US will ease up and Venezuela will get back on its feet.” Naturally, my immediate response was, “But right there aren’t you admitting that the US is deliberately exacerbating these problems through a coordinated campaign of economic subversion?” to which Pedro looked at me in the back seat, grinned slyly, and said “Maybe so.”

Pedro’s story is not unique, though his perspective is more rigid than most. I encountered more than one Chavista whose frustration with the government left them utterly indifferent to the election, despite their love for El Comandante Chávez. One such man I met was Glen Martinez, the operator of Colectivo Radio 23, a collective and radio station in the working class 23 January neighborhood which had, until this election, always been strongly Chavista. With his partner holding him by the arm (Glen is blind) he explained that he was disillusioned with the government because of what he described as incompetence and inability to combat the violence and crime plaguing his neighborhood. “We have safe zones where children play…these are supposed to be protected and clear of all violence, but nobody enforces this.”

Glen continued by noting that his frustration with the government had led him to not be involved in this campaign for PSUV as he had been in all previous elections. “We – I speak for the collective – did not participate because we do not feel that the government has listened to the people enough.” I acknowledged the legitimacy of his many grievances, but had to ask him the basic question, “I get all that, but Glen, isn’t the Bolivarian government the reason you have this radio station and collective in the first place? Without the local Chavista government, you would not have had this space rehabilitated from an old chop-shop into a functioning radio station, community center, and brand new theater with a 500 person capacity, all with government funds…And about the fact that Venezuela is one of the countries in the vanguard of resistance to global imperialism? Doesn’t that mean something?” He responded, “That’s true. This is a very complicated matter. There are no easy answers.”

Glen and Pedro both illustrate a distorted and dangerous strain of thought among both non-participating Chavistas and opposition supporters: the belief that an opposition government will be unable to roll back the gains made under the Bolivarian government. Glen firmly believes that Colectivo Radio 23 will remain as is, and that a right wing, neoliberal capitalist government aligned with Washington will not move to shut it down, privatize the space, and destroy the infrastructure of independent power embedded in 23 January since Chávez’s initiatives were launched.

Like Glen, Pedro is committed to the idea that the sanctity of contracts and agreements will be honored by an MUD government. “It’s impossible for the new National Assembly to get rid of our free health care and education. There are agreements in place, promises that must be kept.” I warned him that such an assumption of benignity on the part of neoliberal reactionaries is not only wrong-headed, but frankly dangerous. I said this politely, of course.

Venezuela is full of contradictions, and this is nowhere more obvious than with these elections. However, what has become equally apparent in the two weeks I’ve spent here is the unanimity of opinion on key issues, at least among the poor, working, and middle class; the rich of Venezuela (like Cuban gusanos in Miami) are in another universe and they are beyond reason. Among most segments of the population there is a near consensus that Chávez was a hero and a good leader who is sorely missed. I heard this even from Pedro who had next to nothing positive to say about the government and the party Chávez left behind.

One other common theme that continually cropped up is what will happen if the new right wing government moves to dismantle the gains of the revolution. Every single person I spoke to reiterated quite forcefully that if the MUD-led government moves to dismantle the Bolivarian constitution – arguably the most progressive constitution anywhere in the world – there will be an uprising and the masses will pour into the streets to defend it. Nearly every Venezuelan has said that they think a recall referendum against President Maduro – allowed by the Constitution now that the opposition has a supermajority in the National Assembly – is unlikely, and that if the MUD moves in this direction, many of those who voted for them will vote for Maduro to keep him in power.

Above all else, there is one common theme that I have heard repeated ad nauseam these last few days: the vote was a vote against the PSUV, not for the MUD. In other words many, if not most, of those ballots cast for the opposition were simply a rebuke of the government, rather than an endorsement of the neoliberal capitalism that MUD represents. While this is undeniably frustrating, it is also heartening in a sense, because it demonstrates clearly that the general principles of the vast majority of the country remain unchanged: they want socialism and the Bolivarian Revolution, they simply want it to be improved. I heard this nearly everywhere I went, from the 23 January to El Valle, from San Agustín to the Simón Bolivar commune.

In other words, Chavismo is alive and well in Venezuela, it is the Party itself that has lost the support of many of the people. The numbers in fact bear this out. With 40% support, the PSUV still gained the votes of more than five million Venezuelans, even in the midst of excruciating hardship. Five million Venezuelans remain firmly committed to socialism and the Chávez vision. Five million Venezuelans have risen to say no to US imperialism and capitalism in the face of a crushing economic war, in the face of an unmistakable rightward shift in Latin America as the Empire makes it countermove against all the gains the Left has made in the last two decades. Five million Venezuelans remain steadfast in their commitment to the Bolivarian Revolution.

Having been here in Venezuela these last ten days, I’ve come to realize something I always knew on an intellectual level, but never understood on a human level: that revolutions are historical processes, not historical moments. The Bolivarian process has hit a roadblock, and it’s time for the Socialist Party to self-reflect. Indeed, that seems to be what President Maduro is doing.

In the last 48 hours he has called for the resignations of his ministers, led a demonstration to show that the Party will not miss this opportunity to improve itself, moved to appoint new judges, and promised further reforms in the coming days and weeks in the lead up to the new National Assembly taking their seats on January 5th. Maduro has moved to demonstrate to the people that he’s heard the message loud and clear; that he and PSUV will work to regain the trust of the people; that the revolution will continue.

There are countless Pedros and Glens throughout this beautiful country. There are also millions of people like the purple-fingered girls on the Metrocable cars and platforms, and the teary-eyed man on the Hot Corner. The poor and the working class deserve a bright future in this amazing land, and the Revolution must work to continue building just such a future.

Anacoana, a young woman and leader I met at the Comúna El Panal 2021 in Caracas, stated it about as poetically as one can. On the eve of the election, I asked her, “What will happen to the commune movement and to the Revolution if the election goes against the Chavista government, and the right wing returns to power? Will the commune movement come to an end?” Her answer was stunning, and I will quote it verbatim:

“NO!!! We will not go back (No volverán). ‘We will not go back’ is not just a slogan…No volverán is not a phrase for a t-shirt. It’s a principle. It’s OUR principle.”

Federal authorities seeking to pass off active shooter training exercises as real events may have pushed the stick too far with the San Bernardino shooting.

The family of alleged gunman Syed Rizwan Farook has retained two attorneys who are raising important questions and pointing to evidentiary anomalies that neither the federal agencies conducting the “investigation” nor the corporate media “reporting” the shooting want the public to consider.

They also argue that the event has nothing to do with terrorism.

Farouk family attorneys David S. Chesley and Muhammad Abuershaid speak to reporters on December 4, 2015

In fact, at one point the attorneys even invoked the Sandy Hook massacre as an example of how recent mass shootings simply don’t add up. Media outlets have been quick to dismiss such comparisons as illogical and baseless.

Read the rest of this entry »

The chairman of Russia’s State Duma International Affairs says an Islamic anti-terror coalition is unlikely to function without Iran and Iraq. 

Konstantin Kosachyov’s comments come as Saudi Arabia has said that 34 mainly Muslim nations from Asia, Africa and the Middle East have joined a new military alliance to fight terrorism.

He added that without Iran and Iraq the coalition would be inefficient and unable to act. Kosachyov said Russia is cooperating with the coalition, adding that their actions would be more effective than the US-led coalition. The 34-member group has been formed to unite Islamic countries against extremism and in the fight against Daesh terrorists. 10 more countries are planning to join the coalition after going through required procedures.

Guest: Michel Chossudovsky, Center for Research on Globalization, Montreal

Excerpts

“Well it’s a theater of the absurd. We have Saudi Arabia in effect supporting ISIS and these terrorist organizations. And now what Saudi Arabia has done is to initiate a 34 country coalition  to fight terrorism.

In other words, The State sponsors of terrorism are indulging in counterterrorism.

It’s a bit like asking Al Capone to assist in going after organized crime.

These are the State sponsors of terrorism.

Russia is playing the diplomatic game.by saying that they will be supporting the coalition

But everybody knows that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are behind the terrorists and we also know that the US is behind Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The US is the main architect of this terrorist undertaking of sponsoring terrorists to destabilize sovereign countries. And the partners of this agenda going back to the 1980s are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey.

What is it going to take to actually bring this terrorism to an end?

We need regime change in the West… ”

Court Rules Bush Administration Officials Can Be Sued for “War on Terror” Conduct

By Thom Hartmann, December 15 2015

This article was first published by Truthout For almost a decade and a half, the people behind the Bush administration’s shameful treatment of terrorism suspects have avoided punishment for their crimes, but that may be about to change.

Political Struggle Mounts Over the Economic Future of South Africa

By Abayomi Azikiwe, December 15 2015

Rand falls while ANC Government shuffles finance ministers During the second week of December the Minister of Finance Nhanhla Nene was summarily dismissed by the African National Congress (ANC) government in South Africa under President Jacob Zuma.

Saudi Arabia Creates “Pro-ISIS Block” to “Fight Terrorism”. The State Sponsors of Terrorism Indulge in “Counter-Terrorism”

By Stephen Lendman, December 15 2015

Angela Merkel Under Pressure: EU Countries Resisting Extension of Economic Sanctions against Russia

By Eric Zuesse, December 15 2015

The EU summit this Thursday and Friday is consequently surprised to have to deal with the extension of economic sanctions against Russia.

GMOs and “Unremitting Fraud” by Government Regulators in India concerning GM Mustard

By Colin Todhunter, December 15 2015

A petition has been filed by activist and campaigner Aruna Rodrigues against three persons of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC). The GEAC is India’s apex regulatory body.

Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has reportedly today claimed that “the British government never condoned, nor was complicit, in the torture or ill-treatment of detainees, wherever they were held.”

Mr Straw’s reported claims are directly at odds with a range of evidence, including MI6 correspondence relating to the kidnap and rendition of Gaddafi opponents; judgments from the High Court; and even the admissions of his own colleagues in Government.

Documents found in Libya after the fall of the Gaddafi regime show a senior MI6 officer taking credit for an operation, conducted alongside the CIA, which saw a Libyan dissident and his five-months’ pregnant wife kidnapped, tortured, and forcibly flown to Gaddafi’s prisons in 2004. The operation took place while Mr Straw was Foreign Secretary, with responsibility for MI6, and is the subject of a Metropolitan Police investigation which has passed files to the Crown Prosecution Service for a charging decision.

The documents include a letter from Sir Mark Allen, then director of counter-terrorism at MI6, to Libyan spy chief Moussa Koussa in the wake of the kidnap and rendition of Abdul-hakim Belhadj and his wife Fatima Boudchar, in which he emphasises that while “I did not pay for the air cargo,” “the intelligence…was British.” Sir Mark adds that “This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years. I am so glad.”

Mr Straw’s comments also appear to be at odds with a 2009 High Court ruling in the case of Binyam Mohamed, who was rendered by the CIA to a secret prison in Morocco where he faced extensive torture. The High Court found that “the relationship of the United Kingdom government to the United States authorities in connection with Binyam Mohamed was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.”

Finally, two of Mr Straw’s Cabinet colleagues admitted to the House of Commons in 2008-09 that British personnel and territory had been involved in the US rendition programme, which saw people flown to secret prisons around the world in order to be tortured. 2008 saw then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband admit that CIA rendition flights, carrying prisoners, had used the British territory of Diego Garcia on two occasions in 2002. In 2009, then-Defence Secretary John Hutton admitted that, in 2004, UK personnel had captured people in Iraq and handed them to the US, who then ‘rendered’ them to a secret prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, where they faced torture.

Commenting, Cori Crider, a director at international human rights charity Reprieve – which is representing the Libyan rendition and torture victims – said: “Mr Straw’s claims seem to be an attempt to re-write history. We already know that Britain was complicit in the US torture programme – the only questions remaining are how far this went, who knew about it, and who signed it off. As the minister responsible for MI6 when it helped render a pregnant woman and four young children to Gaddafi’s prisons, maybe Mr Straw could start giving us some answers.”

Notes:

– For further information on any of the cases referred to above, please contact Reprieve: +44 (0) 207 553 8166

– Mr Straw’s comments have been reported in multiple outlets, for example ITV News and the Guardian.

Featured image: Joseph McCarthy

The moral bankruptcy that underpins British political and cultural life today is such that if Jeremy Corbyn had attended a Start the War rather than a Stop the War fundraising dinner recently, many of his critics would today be hailing him as a future prime minister.

The hypocrisy of these people knows no bounds. Even worse is the sheer brass neck involved in the orchestrated media and political witch-hunt of an organisation you would think was behind the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya over the past fourteen years rather than one that opposed it.

The beast of McCarthyism has been unleashed and it has been ugly to behold, with representatives of the Stop the War Coalition dragged into TV news studios and onto the radio to be subjected to interrogation, as if opposing war and conflict is now some heinous crime. Their motives have been impugned as every article to ever appear on the organisation’s website is trawled over and scrutinised for evidence, however slight, of some wicked and treasonous conspiracy underway to subvert democracy and support tyranny.

The only tyranny involved here has been the tyranny of conformity to the received truth of Britain’s role in the world as a champion of democracy and justice within states, when in actual truth it has been a malign force intent on crushing democracy and justice between states.

Indeed the attachment to democracy of these people is such that in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party with a mandate that leaves no doubt of the wide support for his ideas and vision within the country, he’s been treated as the enemy within whose ideas are beyond the pale.

This is the real motivation behind the scrutiny of the Stop the War Coalition recently – the opening up of a new front in the on-going campaign to marginalise and demonise Jeremy Corbyn. The worst offenders are members of his own PLP and shadow cabinet, people who despite Corbyn’s mandate have declared open season on him and his leadership. It is the very antithesis of democracy, demonstrating contempt and disregard for the membership of their own party.

Now we hear that this right wing Blairite faction are calling for the recruitment of 100,000 new ‘moderate’ members of Labour in order to stem the pro-Corbyn tide, as if the tens of thousands who campaigned and voted for Corbyn’s leadership are swivel-eyed loons rather than engaged citizens who’ve had enough of the thin gruel that has defined our politics for far too long.

Indeed the word ‘moderate’ is currently all the rage. When it comes to the conflict in Syria we’ve been told there are 70,000 moderates waiting to march into Damascus and proclaim a democratic paradise. Perhaps they’re the same army of moderates that was meant to transform Iraq and Libya into liberal democracies in 2003 and 2011, before, that is, they were both turned into failed states as a direct consequence of Western military intervention.

The only place you will find moderates fighting in Syria today is in the ranks of the Syrian Arab Army, made up of Druze, Christians, Sunnis, Shia, and Alawites, people fighting for the survival of Syria as a non sectarian state in which the rights of minorities are respected and upheld. The alternative is the country being turned into a mass grave as a modern incarnation of the Khmer Rouge in the shape of ISIS/Daesh, combined with various permutations of al-Qaeda, drag it down into an abyss of carnage that will make the current conflict seem like child’s play by comparison.

The accusation that Stop the War is a pro-Assad front is both ludicrous and completely untrue. I myself have had arguments with its leaders and supporters over the organisation’s lack of support for the Syrian government, which inconveniently for its opponents still enjoys the support of the majority of the Syrian people and whose survival today is indistinguishable from the survival of the country, given the character of the forces arrayed against it.

This is my position it is not Stop the War’s, one I am prepared to debate and argue with anyone, including this chorus of Western ideologues who wield democracy as a club to bludgeon anyone at home or abroad who dares point out that destroying countries and societies in the name of freedom and civilisation renders both meaningless.

In truth that what they describe as democracy is nothing more than organised hypocrisy, dressed up like a mannequin in a store window and equally as fake. Jeremy Corbyn and Stop the War Coalition are not the enemies of democracy and decency depicted, and as such no one can stand by in the face of a concerted attempt to drive them out of political life. On the contrary, they find themselves under assault from those who are the enemies of democracy and decency, the kind of people Arthur Miller had in mind when he wrote The Crucible.

“It is the essence of power that it accrues to those with the ability to determine the nature of the real.”

Snyder, Rhodes and Duggan repudiated for overseeing worsening conditions

A panel discussion on the first anniversary of the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history was met with protests both inside and outside the Community Arts Auditorium at Wayne State University on Dec 9.

On December 10, 2014, the now-retired federal judge Steven Rhodes approved a so-called “plan of adjustment” allowing the City of Detroit to exit the bankruptcy. Nonetheless, it has come to light in recent weeks that the financial data utilized to justify the massive pension and healthcare cuts along with the transferal of public assets to private interests, were over projections by as much as 70 percent.

In an article published on November 14 in the Detroit Free Press,

“According to new documents, the new estimate for Detroit’s two pension funds is $195 million, or more than 70 percent above than what was projected under city’s bankruptcy plan. Post-bankruptcy Detroit is obligated to pay little to nothing into employee pensions over the next nine years. But then, an enormous bill comes due that has caught city and pensions officials off-guard, raising doubt about the data used in bankruptcy to calculate the city’s obligations.”

Retirees had their healthcare benefits terminated in March of 2014 as well as steep cuts in their monthly checks in the aftermath of the adoption of the “plan of adjustment.” The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) was turned over to a “trust” for its management and a scheme to construct a new hockey arena by Red Wings owner Mike Illitch was approved by a compliant City Council even before the bankruptcy had been finalized.

Since the imposition of emergency management and municipal bankruptcy during 2013, the corporate media has championed these undemocratic measures which had widespread opposition among broad segments of the residents of the city and statewide. A referendum on Public Act 4 was defeated by a substantial margin during the elections in November 2012.

However, during the lame duck session of 2012, a new emergency manager bill was drafted and passed by the majority right-wing Republican legislature and governor which was referendum proof, Public Act 436. Other reactionary legislation was adopted during this period including right to work and the abolition of business property taxes.

Ruling Class Continues Campaign to Justify Expropriation

The WSU event was the continuation of attempts to paint a false picture of the impact of the bank-imposed re-structuring of the City of Detroit which expropriated at least $7 billion in pension funds, healthcare benefits and other public assets. There is much at stake for Wall Street in the re-structuring of this municipality.

Financial institutions were given preference over retirees, municipal employees and residents during the bankruptcy process. City services have worsened since 2014 despite the claims of the Duggan administration and its supporters in the business-friendly media.

Public Safety police officers from the University came out and told members of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and others that they had to relocate further down the street from the entrance of the campus area. These activists refused to move from the public sidewalk and continued their demonstration through denunciations of the role of the banks, multi-national corporations and their agents in governments for the ongoing oppression in existence throughout the city.

Jerry Goldberg, who represented City water department retiree David Sole during the bankruptcy proceeding, told the protesters prior to the convening of the panel that an article on the front page of the Detroit News on December 9 exposed the fact that Detroit has the highest rate of asthma among children. Some theories on the prevalence of asthma suggest that it can be aggravated by stress. The article featured families that were living without homes and under other horrendous conditions.

Quoting from this article, Goldberg said

“Detroit has the highest rate of asthma in young children among America’s 18 largest cities, a problem that experts link to urban ills that could affect their health and learning for the rest of their lives. In a study done for The Detroit News and PBS NewsHour, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found about two of every three Motor City children face ‘adverse childhood experiences.’ Those include household substance abuse, exposure to violence and extreme economic hardship that can trigger asthma.” (Dec. 8)

Inside the Community Arts Auditorium Gov. Snyder and retired Federal Judge Rhodes were subjected to loud screaming and hissing that drowned their voices. One community activist stood and told Snyder he was a liar and that many people in the city can’t sleep at night due to lack of healthcare, utilities and water.

Another youth organizer stood up and began to chant “Black Lives Matter” leading to the rapid exit from the stage by Rhodes. One clergyman rose and said “why doesn’t the Rhodes, Snyders and Duggans suffer cuts and that it is always the community people who suffer.”

Consequently, Duggan refused to come on to the stage prompting the cancellation of the event hosted by Detroit Public Television, which is no longer based in the city but way outside in the western suburb of Wixom. Press coverage of the shutdown was carried by the local television stations and corporate newspaper outlets around the country.

Even the Wall Street Journal carried the story about the protests against the post-bankruptcy forum. The WSJ said of the action that

“Detroit protesters shut down a public forum meant to celebrate the city’s progress since it emerged from bankruptcy protection exactly one year ago, showing that many residents are still raw over the deep cuts made to their to health-care benefits and monthly pension checks.” (Dec. 9)

This same report went on to say “Organizers behind ‘Detroit Bankruptcy: One Year Later,’ held Wednesday evening at Wayne State University, ended the program in the middle of a segment with former bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes, who presided over the city’s historic case. Mayor Mike Duggan, who had been scheduled to speak, didn’t get to take the stage.”

This represented the third demonstration within two months against the bank-led engineers of the forced emergency management and bankruptcy of the Detroit reflecting the mounting anger against the dis-empowerment and forced removal of the majority African American population of the city. Poverty, homelessness and disease are on the incline while the ruling class champions the purported “recovery” of the state largest municipality.

Corporate Media Plants Article Attempting to Refute Mass Sentiment

Not to be outdone, the Detroit Sunday Free Press ran a front page article on December 13 saying that a survey revealed that 56 percent of the people asked believed things were improving in Detroit.

However, these “findings” become questionable because in the same survey it was reported that 68 percent of the people asked in Detroit had a negative opinion of Snyder; and 66 percent held an adverse view of the City Council which is not opposing the ongoing State Financial Review Board mismanagement of the municipality; and 75 percent believed that the public school system is not providing quality education, which has been under state control for most of the last sixteen years.

The following day another front page article in the Detroit News said that at least 4,000 households were living without water services including 66-year-old Fayette Coleman who has been shutoff since 2013. Out of the 200,000 customers, 108,000 were in arrears with 9,200 facing imminent terminations. (Dec. 14)

Conditions in Detroit illustrate the crisis of capitalism in the U.S. and until there is a fundamental transformation of the social and economic system these problems will worsen.

 We write from a workplace 350 metres up a Samos mountainside overlooking the north coast.

We have an uninterrupted view of the coast of Turkey (10 -15k away) and the Aegean Sea which separates us from the mainland.

This is where we were in May 2014 looking with dismay at a capsized yacht in which over 23 refugees were trapped and drowned whilst locked in the cabin.

This is where we have seen over the past eight years pathetic rubber inflatables make for the Samos beaches overloaded with refugees. This is where today we look down and see the orange dots of the life vests which mark the latest arrivals overnight.

One of our most pressing questions is why are refugees still being compelled to enter Europe in this way? After all these years?

When so many have died and will continue to die until safe passage is provided.

Refugees in Kos

It now seems that many people throughout Europe – if not their governments – are wanting to help the refugees. Surely this sentiment must embrace putting an end to these murderous journeys across the sea in rubber boats as well as all the barriers which have been put in place which makes their escape so difficult? Nevertheless, these important humanitarian sentiments have yet to result in a powerful and overwhelming campaign for safe passage into Europe. Amongst all the shames of Europe its refusal to open its borders to these refugees stands out in its callousness and cruelty.

We recently viewed a very moving interview with a Syrian man. He, his wife and six children were packed in the inflatable bound for the Greek frontier island of Chios. No life jackets as they were told the sea conditions were good and it would only be a 15 minute trip. The boat capsized and Hassan lost all his family. He was destroyed. Why he and his family were having to travel this way when there is a daily ferry connection between Chios and Turkey was never mentioned. We see the same failure in a great number of the photographs and clips of refugees landing on the beaches from their pitiful boats. Why? Why are they being made to chose this way to find themselves a new and safer life? Why is this question so often ignored in otherwise sympathetic accounts?

What it is happening is totally unacceptable and criminal. It must be changed. The border between Turkey and Greece is closed to the refugees. But closed borders have not stopped the refugees. Neither here, nor through the Balkans. Instead closed borders only make their journeys more dangerous and expensive.

We have seen and talked with many refugees who have made it ‘safely’ trying the best we can to meet some of their pressing needs. Many arise from their crossing: losing shoes, backpacks, money, and developing sores from hours sitting or crouching in the waterlogged inflatable. None of this would be necessary if there was safe passage.

We remember talking to a young Palestinian who with his wife and 1 year old baby had just landed safely on Samos. They were fleeing from a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus. “When we got in that boat to cross we were terrified but we had no choice. That’s why we are here.”

You don’t need to spend very much time talking with refugees to discover some basic truths common to the majority of refugees wherever their origin. First off they don’t want to be refugees. They want to live in their own homes and in their own country. They are desperate for the wars and plunder, chaos and insecurity to end so they can resume their lives in safety. Many leave because they see no prospect of this happening. Their lives have often been disrupted for years before they decide they can take no more, whether it is in a refugee camp in Jordan or Turkey, the streets of Istanbul, or in the villages and towns of Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Congo and so on. They thirst for normality, to restart their lives and to live without fear.

Many refugees believe that this is what Europe offers: an opportunity to live again, to rebuild a life with a future and above all to be safe.

But it is not the attractiveness, real or imaginary, of Europe that pulls a young Palestinian family into an overloaded and unsafe inflatable to make the risky sea crossing to Samos. Rather it is the impossibility of staying home and of counting for nothing and unable to see any chance of improving their situation which pushes them: Always a victim and often in danger.

Borders and Selection

There are many reasons why we should be focusing on safe passage. The first and most pressing is the suffering caused by making their escape so dangerous, expensive and difficult. Others include the need to challenge the whole issue of borders and to support the refugees who have moved across Europe trampling borders in the process.

By sheer weight of numbers the refugees have overwhelmed Europe’s borders. For six months or more, as we have seen in Samos the authorities have been in confused chaos. There can be no excuse for their lack of preparedness which has resulted in quite unnecessary hardship to the thousands of refugees who have made it to Europe. The authorities were well warned that the summer of 2015 was going to be exceptional in terms of the refugee exodus. It is only now that these authorities are regrouping and committing resources which are almost exclusively directed towards ensuring tighter security, boosting patrols with new special units as well as manipulating borders to keep the refugees out, at least until they can be screened and selected – in or out. Even for those who are selected for entry and who will be then entitled to safe passage to their destination, they will be expected to wait often in intolerable and unsafe conditions outside of the EU. So even the select can be expected to suffer more. We have absolutely no expectation that the EU bribes currently being offered to Turkey to raise the living standards of their 2.3 million Syrian refugees (and there are many more from other places) so that they will stay (longer) will amount to anything positive for the refugees. And this will be the case generally given that the ‘refugee problem’ has been defined by the European authorities as a threat – whether it is terrorism, health, or a dilution of European ‘civilisation’. We see the impact of this relentless drum beat of threat; it breeds fear. Adnan, a 19 year old from Fez in Morocco was reflecting on his experience in Samos and asked us why so many people here seemed afraid of him and his friends. He knew the answer. “They think we are daesh no matter what we say.”

But what awaits the non selected? The Greek government is frightened that it will be abandoned to carry the main burden of managing the thousands who are refused permission to stay. They know only too well that many refugees will not stay in holding camps in Turkey whilst they are processed. So the voyages of death will continue and be even more perilous as push backs to Turkey become legitimised with the hardening (for refugees) of the borders. Ironically, and sickening in its hypocrisy alongside the cash bribes the EU is lifting many of the restrictions which prevent Turkish citizens from traveling into the Union.

Climate Change and Refugees

We write this as the world celebrates a climate change agreement in Paris. Whether it leads to any significant improvement only time will tell but the point which stood out in all the razzmatazz was that climate change was seen as a challenge to all of humanity and for all countries. There were no deep shadows which envisaged a world where whole groups of people were to be fenced in, prevented from saving their lives and places and kept out of regions which had more than sufficient resources for themselves and many others. Yet this is what is happening in practice today in Europe with respect to refugees and with the ever growing emphasis on securing Europe’s borders (from the refugees) an awful precedent is being set.

‘Leaders’ from across the globe (at last) confronted the ticking bomb of climate change as a challenge to the whole of humanity. The issue of refugees is no different. It is a challenge to everyone. Refugees and catastrophic climate change have the same heritage. The causes in both cases have the same roots in capitalism; a system that plunders the world and its peoples for the profit of the few; a system which as one of its founding political economists, Adam Smith warned was ultimately driven (and distorted) by the “vile maxim of the masters”: all for us and nothing for the rest. As its tentacles now envelop the world and where the vile maxim is both endorsed and vigorously protected resulting in today’s’ obscene inequalities (wealth, income, health, life expectancy and so on) we are seeing in both the huge numbers of refugees worldwide (55 million and climbing) and catastrophic climate change and environmental destructions some of its most stark consequences.

But in much of the West the response to climate change has been different to the response to the current refugee exodus into Europe. With the first, despite all the fractious debates and foot dragging, climate change is now widely seen as a global issue confronting the whole of humanity. It has a theme of saving and protecting. In contrast, the current refugee exodus into Europe is set in a very different framework of exclusion and control. The predominant themes are security and threat. It is repeated throughout the West, especially in the USA and Australia. So here we have the most powerful nations in the world now putting into place a vast network of fences and walls, militarised (and often mined) borders, surveillance systems and holding camps which are going to sift and select those who will be given a chance of being admitted and decide on those who will be excluded. In the process giving rise to an explicit system of grading human beings according to who counts and who does not count. And it takes no leap of imagination to see how once implemented for the refugees it could be extended to meet the inevitable impact of climate change on the movements of people.

No borders and safe passage are not alone going to change the world! But if achieved it would be a powerful gain for humanity and a powerful blow to the West’s plans to create a world consisting of what could amount to sealed off pens determining who can move and who cannot. These are impositions unknown to any other living animal species where the right to roam is an intrinsic part of living. Sadly, this is not an abstract discussion. The framework and materials are being laid and implemented now. The refugee hotspots on islands such as Lesvos, Samos and Chios are just a few recent examples of this strategy, and more, much more of this is being planned and funded. There is a dreadful urgency to gaining safe passage and no borders. We cannot allow the borders of Europe to be further militarised, industrialised and transformed into a human filtering system. People are dying and to do nothing means more will continue to die.

“How our ally is using British arms runs counter to our self-proclaimed role in the world, and our aid efforts.” – Major General Tim Cross, Dec 14, 2015.

The Saudi Arabian effort in Yemen has been essentially written off by its Western allies as one of those things.  In terms of strategy, there are bigger fish to fry in Syria, and areas where the next feted bogeyman, Islamic State, is doing its work.  And yes, while Saudi Arabia allows decapitation, amputation, established laws of misogyny and a range of restrictions against Islamic faiths not quite in line with the House of Saud, it is an ally. And allies are good to stand by – aren’t there?

The case of Yemen suggests that amnesia is settling in over the entire landscape. The House of Saud is playing its cards well, conducting its relations with the West in a manner that combines disdain and grovelling in equal measure.  There are enemies in Yemen it would like to vanquish, and so far, it has gotten some of what it wants. Not that its enemies are going into the night quietly.

Since the intervention began in March, Shiite Houthi rebels, who are assisted by military forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, continue to maintain their stronghold in the capital Sana’a. The Hadi government in exile functions in Aden, Saudi Arabia’s preferred choice.  From the air, the Saudi forces pummel targets and have made a good go of pummelling the capital.  On the ground, there are dangers of Islamic State suicide attacks. (In September, two suicide bombers detonated themselves in the Houthi-run Balili mosque in the capital, killing 29.)

The population are feeling, as they tend to in such situations, the greatest effects of the actions, with 60 percent, according to the World Food Programme, close to starvation. To date, the United Nations claims 5,800 people have perished in the conflict.

While the Saudi presence in attacks on Syria is minimal, it leads the mission against Yemen, supplemented by forces from the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain.  It was recently reported by Amnesty International that the Saudi-led forces between August and October 2015 conducted five airstrikes that involved the deliberate targeting of schools. This led to the deaths of five civilians, injuries to 14 others and disruption to some 6,500 children.[1]

A range of other facilities connected with aid have also been hit by coalition forces with devastating effect: a relief warehouse run by Oxfam; two bases of the Save the Children Fund; and clinics operated by Médicins San Frontières.

The double bind of the Saudi relationship with other states, a good deal lathered in hypocrisy that it is, crops up whenever there are public discussion between Riyadh and other Western governments.  This takes place on two levels – an internal one, given the Kingdom’s approach to human rights; and an external one, with its financial and military role behind global Sunni militancy.

A neat, if supreme example of ghastliness has been David Cameron’s stance on the subject of condemning anti-war opponents at home as terrorist sympathisers while cuddling up to Riyadh, a long-time recipient of British military hardware.

In October, the veteran journalist John Snow put Cameron through the wringer to see why he had been so keen to get a seat for Saudi Arabia on the UN Human Rights Council. Such a gesture was tantamount to placing an overly enthusiastic fox in the chick coop.

Having made it clear that the PM and his government opposed “the death penalty anywhere and everywhere and we make that clear in all our international contacts,” Cameron faced an incredulous observation from Snow.  The stance was “curious” given the “squalid” deal to lobby the Saudis in joining the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.[2]

On facing one of Snow’s barrages as to why it was done, with persistent deflections from Cameron, the nub was finally reached.  The relationship with Riyadh was important because “we receive from them important intelligence and security information that keeps us safe.” Bomb plots had been stopped in their tracks as a result.  What does it matter what that government does to its citizens?

The external nature of Riyadh’s policy has also placed Britain’s Middle East policy under scrutiny, one that has intensified ahead of UN-sponsored peace talks.  Even members from Cameron’s own party were wondering if the PM had muddied the slate with military support for the Kingdom just as humanitarian aid was being supplied to Yemen.  This, despite assertions by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond that a “legitimate war” is being conducted.

Andrew Mitchell, former Tory cabinet minister, has taken exception to Britain’s entangled role regarding Saudi Arabia and Yemen.  “Britain’s humanitarian and foreign policy are pursuing different ends.”[3]  As Yemen was being pulverised, “we try to get aid in through ports which are being blockaded and while British ordnance is being dropped there.”  Since the conflict began, some 37 export licenses for military goods have been granted.

Retired Major General Tim Cross, while conceding that selling arms to the Kingdom was “well within” the rights of Britain, saw a patent inconsistency.  There was “a clear risk that the government is complicit in indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas – breaches of international and UK law.”

This conflicted policy has been costly – £400 million in taxpayer aid to Yemen, paired with arms sales to Riyadh.  But such costs are nothing compared to the slaughter on the ground, the product of a certain breed of terrorist sympathising UK foreign policy has been showing for a time.  Different ends, indeed.

Notes:

[1] http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/press-releases/bombing-of-schools-by-saudi-arabia-led-coalition-a-flagrant-attack-on-future-of-yemen-s-children

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jon-snow-challenges-david-cameron-over-deal-with-saudi-arabia-read-the-transcript-of-the-interview-a6684161.html

[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/yemen/12048207/British-aid-and-military-policy-pursuing-different-ends-in-Yemen.html

A petition has been filed by activist and campaigner Aruna Rodrigues against three persons of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC). The GEAC is India’s apex regulatory body.

Rodrigues is seeking the initiation of contempt proceedings for wilfully and deliberately disobeying the explicit orders of the Supreme Court (SC) 8th May 2007, 15th February 2007, 8th April 2008 and 12th August 2008 and proceeding with numerous GMO field trials of GM mustard with the aim of commercially introducing to India for the first time herbicide tolerant (HT) food crops.

The case of GM mustard (DMH 11) is critical since on the back of large-scale trials (LSTs), the application for commercialisation was reportedly sent by the crop developer Dr Deepak Pental of the Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants to the GEAC in Sept 2015. It is being considered for surreptitious approval for commercialisation, according to newspaper reports.

As LSTs are the final stage of trials before commercialisation and carry a serious risk of contamination, the SC-appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) requires that crop biosafety tests are first completed prior to LSTs. The crop must then be signalled as utterly safe before proceeding further. Biosafety studies and risk assessment protocols must be addressed and completed during Biosafety Level I (BRL I) trials. Then the process may move towards the next stage (BRL II). The petition claims that these protocols were not adhered to.

Rodrigues argues that the official regulators have hidden all data about GM mustard from the public and the independent scientific community, against the constitutional provisions and the orders of the SC, and have failed to respond positively to requests for access to such data.

She claims that mandatory rigorous biosafety protocols and independent and open scientific scrutiny have not been carried out and the data pertaining to ‘mustard DMH 11’ therefore needs to be concealed. Moreover, there is clearly no data online available from official sources in defiance of an SC order for the public disclosure of all data.

The members of the GEAC are thus claimed to be in contempt of court because:

1. They have failed to provide public access to information, including full biosafety dossiers, meeting minutes and safety dossiers, thus side-lining court orders.
2. They have failed to implement biosafety measures during open field trials to ensure no contamination, which for GM mustard is a serious issue, as the petition makes clear. Enabling orders to prevent contamination during trials were thus side-lined. Among other issues, no active testing for contamination with validated protocols was done to demonstrate regulatory commitment to contain risk under the supervision of named scientists.

Regarding the second point, the petition states:

“A conscionable regulator would never have entertained these trials. It is emphasised that these crops constitute the opening up of a second front in GMO technology, i.e. HT crops, and with stealth, which make[s] the contempt of orders with respect to these LSTs even more unconscionable.”

The petition goes on to state:

“There is a great chasm between what is required for proper GMO risk assessment & oversight, which prioritises bio-safety and upholds the national interest, and what is taking place in India. The regulatory vacuum constitutes deliberate malfeasance and fraud, putting us at infinite and irremediable and irreversible risk.”

And driving home the point, the petition adds:

“… what we are now confronted with, in the specific matter of Mustard DMH 11 and also LSTs of corn and flex cotton, all of them HT crops, is more corrupt and even sinister because we have brazen and repeated contempt including ‘underground’ approvals to keep the biosafety fraud of these approvals secret and promote a clear agenda to promote GMOs into Indian Agriculture. The Regulators and our Institutions of GMO governance are ‘serial offenders’ without compunction.”

The conclusion is that there seems to be no room for science or transparency in this process. Approval of LSTs of GM mustard point to the unrelenting determination of the regulator to facilitate the market expansion of GM food crops despite the incontrovertible evidence of serious hazards.

Contamination from field trials and subsequent commercialisation means the impacts on biodiversity will be irreversible. Rodrigues says that it is a matter of great perplexity that the public interest can be allowed to be drowned by corporate power in this way.

The GEAC’s reckless rush into GM foods, unless checked, will have massive impacts on India’s farmers, their crop choices, consumers’ food and health and on wild places and the countryside. This secrecy and regulatory delinquency outlined here is integral to accelerating the wider agenda of restructuring Indian agriculture for the benefit of a Western agribusiness cartel (see this and  this).

And this point could not be made any clearer by Rodrigues in the petition:

“The core problem is the proven and pernicious conflict of interest which has pervaded the entire system. In so far as Mustard DMH 11 is concerned, the Regulators, Promoters, and Developers have stitched up every angle to facilitate the commercialisation of this crop.”

Rodrigues proceeds to set out evidence for this capture of government bodies and agencies by the pro-GMO lobby to make her point (as indeed she has previously – see this).

Her concluding comments in the petition make the situation clear in terms of India possessing an “utterly delinquent regulatory system” and “unremitting fraud” where regulating GMOs are concerned:

“The only recourse is to eliminate the peril of an utterly delinquent regulatory system, through a full moratorium on GMOs… We are well beyond the point when the Precautionary Principle must be applied, because the build-up of evidence of environmental and health hazards points to unremitting fraud in the regulation of GMOs… This technology is a classic case of ‘unforeseeable systemic ruin’, which means that we will know we are ruined after it happens. As they say, the dead cannot make a comeback.”

See this previous piece on GM mustard in India for background information and some wider implications

Access the petition filed for contempt of court proceedings by Aruna Rodrigues against members of the GEAC here: Contempt Of Court GEAC GM Mustard

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer – his website is here

According to a new report from Amnesty International, many of ISIS’ arms have come from units defecting from the Free Syrian Army, as well as other rebel groups previously aligned with the United States and its plan to oust Bashar al-Assad.

ISIS, the world’s most infamous terror group, has shocked the interwebz again after posting a new propaganda video that showcases its massive arsenal of tanks and heavy artillery. The video shows tank after tank, artillery piece after artillery piece, and Toyota truck after Toyota truck rolling triumphantly by, all in an effort to recruit radical Islamic youth to the caliphate’s cause. If some of those arms look oddly familiar, it’s because many — if not most of them — are American-made weapons.

This leaves us with many questions regarding where ISIS obtained all of these Western-supplied weapons of war. The most obvious answer lies in ISIS’ early military victories in Northern Iraq, namely Mosul, where caliphate forces easily trounced the Iraqi army and captured enormous amounts of military assets. In the battle of Mosul alone, ISIS captured 2,300 American-made Humvees worth over $1 billion.

However, prior to the capture of Mosul, the groups, which eventually became ISIS, were receiving weapons from U.S. allies in the region — including Saudi Arabia and Turkey — in an attempt to use Islamist fighters to overthrow the Russian-backed Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. The weapons these Sunni states were supplying to ISIS, then in its infancy, were being sold by the West to the Gulf countries. The largest seller was the Unites States, followed by the United Kingdom — two countries that are now bombing ISIS. Sound confusing? That’s because it is.

And we can’t forget about the “moderate” Syrian opposition that the U.S. and its allies have been training and arming since 2013. According to a new report from Amnesty International, many of ISIS’ arms have come from units defecting from the Free Syrian Army, as well as other rebel groups previously aligned with the United States and its plan to oust Bashar al-Assad. “ISIS has also gained access to weapons from other sources through the capture or sale of Syrian military stocks supplied to armed opposition groups in Syria by countries including Turkey, the Gulf States and the U.S.,” concluded CNN.

According to the Amnesty International report, the calamity of Western arms ending up in the hands of ISIS can also be partially blamed on “decades of irresponsible arms transfers to Iraq and multiple failures by the U.S.-led occupation administration to manage arms deliveries and stocks securely, as well as endemic corruption in Iraq itself.”

Despite these troubling findings, the Obama administration recently committed to providing even more weapons to the Syrian opposition — and even loosened its vetting procedures for who can receive American arms.

In the end, the West’s fight against ISIS is against insurgents using the West’s own weapons — and against fighters that were, in fact, created by the West’s own policies. As we’ve covered extensively at Anti-Media, prior to ISIS’ reemergence into Iraq from Syria, the group was considered a useful tool to accomplish U.S. foreign policy goals in Syria in the form of destabilizing — and ultimately overthrowing — the Russian-backed Syrian government. To understand why the West wants Assad gone (and why Russia doesn’t), continue reading here.

On Monday, General Robert Abrams, the head of US Army Forces Command, ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, 29, face court-martial for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for his actions leading up to his capture by the Taliban in 2009. The charge of desertion would carry a maximum sentence of five years, while conviction on misbehavior could result in life imprisonment.

Although desertion can carry the death penalty, the Army has stated that will not be requested in this case.

The severity of the charges has all the hallmarks of a political decision to make an example of Bergdahl. Since Bergdahl was first released in a prisoner exchange with the Taliban in 2014, right-wing politicians and the sections of the news media have called for his conviction and even his execution as a traitor.

During a New Hampshire campaign stop last August, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump called Bergdahl a “dirty, rotten, traitor” and demanded his execution. In October Senator John McCain (R), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that Bergdahl was “clearly a deserter,” and that he would call for hearings if Bergdahl was not punished. Significantly, every promotion in the army above second lieutenant, including those of the officers presiding over the court-martial, needs to be confirmed by McCain’s committee.

Bergdahl has been the target of outrageous accusations, including defecting to the Taliban or indirectly causing the deaths of soldiers searching for him, since emails to his parents sent before his capture, in which he expressed opposition to the occupation of Afghanistan, first became public.

Abrams’ decision overruled the recommendation of the army’s own preliminary hearing in October, which determined that Bergdahl should not receive jail time or be punitively discharged. Instead, the hearing officer, Lt. Col. Mark Visger, had recommended a special court-martial, where the maximum sentence would have been confinement for a year and would have precluded a dishonorable discharge.

The decision to charge Bergdahl with these serious offenses may have been immediately prompted by material from interviews between Bergdahl and movie director Mark Boal, which was published in the podcast “Serial.” In it, Bergdahl describes more of his thoughts and motivations when he first left his post on June 30, 2009 before being captured by the Taliban just a few hours later.

According to Bergdahl, he intended to hike 18 miles from Observation Post Mest-Malak, where he was stationed, to the larger Forward Operating Base Sharana, in order to get the attention of senior officers and relay concerns he had about leadership problems that he felt were endangering his platoon.

A turning point for Bergdahl appears to have taken place a few days earlier, on June 25, when a young officer whom he knew and liked was killed by a roadside bomb.

Shortly after leaving his post, Bergdahl said he recognized the depth of trouble he was going to be in and decided to scout a Taliban position on his way to Sharana. Within a few hours he got lost and was captured by Taliban soldiers on motorcycles.

They then transferred him across the border in Pakistan. For the next five years he was held and tortured in deplorable conditions.

Bergdahl had been deployed in the Spring of 2009 as part of Obama’s “surge” that would triple the number of troops in Afghanistan to 100,000 by the end of 2009.

In emails to his parents before his capture, Bergdahl talked about his growing disgust with the occupation as a whole:

“These people [Afghans] need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live… We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks… I am sorry for everything.”

The picture that emerges is that of a young man, disgusted by the daily brutality of the occupation, taking drastic measures to try to find some officer who could improve the situation.

Shortly after being captured, the Taliban began using Bergdahl in propaganda videos, which prompted the attacks on him from right-wing politicians and media commentators. These attacks redoubled when Bergdahl’s anti-war sentiments became widely known after a 2012 article inRolling Stone .

According to the Army’s own investigation, led by Lt. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, no soldiers died while searching for Bergdahl, and there is no evidence that he had intended to defect or aid the Taliban.

The vitriol coming from Army officials and politicians towards Bergdahl expresses their deep fears about the potential impact of future imperialist adventures on the discipline of the armed forces. Bergdahl had joined the army in 2008, but within a few months of deployment was willing to break discipline over the outrages he had seen.

As US imperialism prepares for an escalation in Syria, potential conflict with Russia and heightened tensions with China, officials wish to send a clear message to any soldiers growing disillusioned with the government’s efforts to reshape the world by force.

With the US political establishment roiled by an increasingly acrimonious debate over how to escalate the US military intervention in Iraq and Syria, and with one Western European power after another joining in the assault, the overwhelming sentiment of broad masses of people both in Europe and America remains decidedly hostile to war.

Despite the frantic efforts of the political establishments in the US, Britain, France, Germany and elsewhere, along with the campaign of the media to whip up fear and hatred in response to recent terrorist attacks, millions of working people are conscious that, once again, they are being lied to about a military intervention in the Middle East.

Amid the dizzying array of pretexts put forward for this war, from combating terrorism by bombing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), to supporting “human rights” by financing and arming similar Salafist jihadi militias in a war for regime-change, there remains the well-founded popular suspicion that the real aims have to do with the drive by US imperialism and its allies to secure hegemony over the Middle East and its vast oil reserves.

It is under these conditions that a collection of pseudo-left organizations from Europe, the US and beyond have joined in issuing a statement that serves as propaganda for a dramatic widening of the imperialist campaign.

The signatories of the statement include the French New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), the British Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Alternative of Australia, the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) of Sri Lanka, and the International Socialist Organization (ISO) of the US. All of them have long and shameful records of providing “left” justifications for imperialist interventions and dressing up US-orchestrated wars for regime-change as “revolutions.”

The French NPA was at the forefront of those supposedly “left” organizations that cheered on the imperialist war for regime-change in Libya. Its leading spokesman on the Middle East and North Africa, Gilbert Achcar, hailed the US-NATO intervention that toppled and murdered Muammar Gaddafi, while killing at least 30,000 Libyans and leaving the country in a state of permanent civil war.

At the outset of the war, Achcar penned the infamous lines: “Every general rule admits of exceptions. This includes the general rule that UN-authorized military interventions by imperialist powers are purely reactionary ones, and can never achieve a humanitarian or positive purpose.”

He and the NPA went on to lend support to the US-orchestrated war to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, going so far as to meet with the collection of Western intelligence assets who formed the Syrian National Council to advise them on how best to bring about direct imperialist intervention.

Similarly, Australia’s Socialist Alternative denounced any warnings about Western intervention in Syria, declaring that the “left” had to reject “knee-jerk anti-imperialism.”

For its part, the International Socialist Organization defended the “right” of “Syrian revolutionaries” to receive arms and aid from the CIA as well as to seek direct US military intervention.

The transformation of these organizations, all of which came out of the predominantly middle class protest movements against war in the 1960s and early 1970s, into open supporters of imperialist war is part of a protracted process. Its material roots are to be found in the increasing affluence of sections of the middle class that have become a new constituency for imperialism.

After enthusiastically supporting the “Syrian revolution” in 2012 and 2013, most of these organizations fell largely silent as it became increasingly obvious that the so-called “revolutionaries” consisted of sectarian Sunni Islamist militias funded and armed by the reactionary Arab regimes in Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states, along with the Islamist government in Turkey—all of them working with the CIA.

They have now re-launched their campaign in tandem with the imperialist drive for escalation begun under the pretext of responding to the apparently ISIS-inspired attacks in Paris and California.

The thrust of their intervention is made clear in the second paragraph of the statement:

“In Syria, the first form taken by the counterrevolution is support for the Assad regime. Russia’s deadly raids and the intervention of Iran, Hezbollah and sectarian Iraqi militias champion this profoundly reactionary, anti-democratic project. Assad is fuelled, too, by the mistrust Western powers routinely demonstrate toward democratic and revolutionary forces in Syria…”

There is not a word in the statement about the decades of US imperialist war that have shattered the entire region, leading to over a million deaths and the destruction of entire societies. The problem, from the standpoint of these organizations, is Russian aggression, Iranian intervention and “sectarian Iraqi militias”—that and the failure of the US and its allies to provide sufficient “trust” and support to the so-called “democratic and revolutionary forces in Syria.”

This last phrase is employed in much the same way as Western governments use the term “moderate rebels.” In both cases, the democrats, revolutionaries and moderates go unnamed. That is because the real forces fighting the Assad regime consist of Al Qaeda-linked Sunni sectarian militias, including ISIS, the Al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham.

The position of these organizations is made even more explicit by the International Socialist Organization of the US in an article posted on its web site December 9 denouncing Russia—much in the same manner as the US State Department—for bombing not ISIS, but “non-ISIS opposition groups,” which again, for obvious reasons, are left unnamed.

The article states:

“Even though official US policy calls for the removal of Assad, Russia’s intervention bolstered the regime’s position, creating a new set of calculations about Syria’s future that was almost immediately embraced by a significant current of the US foreign policy establishment.

It continues:

“In practical terms, the US military has already made its peace with Assad. Its opposition to Russian air strikes on ground forces backed by the US has been rhetorical at most…”

The thrust of the ISO’s argument is directed at the ongoing debate within the US political establishment and the military and intelligence complex over policy toward Syria. This supposedly left organization is weighing in to support the most bellicose factions within the ruling elite and the Pentagon, demanding that Washington continue to prosecute the war for regime-change by confronting Russia.

Turning the world inside out, all of these organizations present Russia as an imperialist power and the principal aggressor in the Middle East, while portraying US imperialism as a hapless and increasingly spent force.

The peculiar fixation of the pseudo-left on the fiction of “Russian imperialism” has ominous significance. Having promoted and defended imperialist interventions in Libya and Syria under the false flag of “human rights,” they are now lending their efforts to promoting far bloodier conflicts, including a potential war between the US and Russia, the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

The forging of a genuine mass antiwar movement can take place only through an unrelenting struggle to unmask these pseudo-left organizations and root out their political influence, as part of the fight to mobilize the international working class in the struggle to put an end to militarism and its source, the capitalist system.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey are key US allies, fostering endless Middle East wars,

They’re involved in recruiting and directly aiding ISIS and other takfiri terrorists throughout the region – mainly in Syria and Iraq, now beginning to establish a foothold in war-torn, chaotic Libya, with elements in Yemen and elsewhere.

Riyadh wants more regional power along with control over oil reserves outside its borders. Together with Washington and other partners, it’s using ISIS and other terrorist groups to advance its objectives, not oppose a universal scourge.

It’s so-called new 34-nation “Islamic military alliance” against terrorism is a laughable on its face, a deceptive PR hoax. It named the following nations as partners:

Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Pakistan, Palestine, Nigeria, Qatar, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkey, Tunisia, UAE and Yemen along with its own regime.

A Saudi-controlled news agency said “(t)he countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations centre based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations.”

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Libya and Yemeni territory controlled by US-installed puppet Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi are part of the problem, not the solution. Other countries listed aren’t involved in US-led regional war OF terrorism, at least not enough to matter.

Riyadh claiming the so-called coalition has “a duty to protect the Islamic nation from the evils of all terrorist groups and organizations whatever their sect and name which wreak death and corruption on earth and aim to terrorize the innocent” is pure propaganda, ignoring its central role in creating, financing and fostering regional terrorism.

The only nations combating it are Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Russia. Washington, its imperial NATO partners, Israel, and other regional rogue states support what they claim to oppose.

America’s so-called 65-nation anti-terrorism coalition is pure fiction. US air and ground forces along with Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Israel and Australia are attacking Syrian and Iraqi sites, not ISIS or other terrorists.

Turkey is striking Syrian and Iraqi Kurds on the pretext of combating ISIS, perhaps government targets in both countries along with Washington and other rogue coalition partners.

Last week, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova minced no words, saying “(w)e can state the (US-led) coalition is simulating the fight against ISIS and real terrorism and acts on its own politicized approach to the situation, which runs counter to international law, at least in Syria.”

“Now we can see that (this continues) not only (against the Assad’s government). As is known, the inactivity of the actions of (Washington’s phantom) coalition was distinctly confirmed by the growing ISIS problem.”

During over a year of illegal US bombing of Syria, terrorist groups made substantial territorial gains. Their oil smuggling and other illicit operations flourished – protected, not attacked by America.

In early December, Russia’s General Staff Lt. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy cited clear evidence, showing US-led bombing in Syria isn’t striking ISIS targets, notably permitting its oil smuggling cross-border to Turkey to operate freely.

In contrast, Russia is waging real war on terrorism in Syria, making a strategic difference on the ground. Key is cutting off these groups’ sources of funding, especially from illicit oil sales, complicit with Turkey, permitted by Washington to continue despite claims otherwise.

Moscow so far unsuccessfully urged the formation of a global coalition against terrorism, mainly with America and other Western countries, – involved for a common purpose, defeating the scourge of terrorism, not possible with US-led Western and rogue regional support.

Riyadh’s announced phony Islamic military alliance against terrorism followed its failed December 8 – 10 anti-Assad conference – attended by regional rogue states and notorious terrorist groups, including ISIS.

Along with Washington and rogue partners, Saudi rulers want Assad ousted, Hezbollah neutralized and Iran isolated. Russia’s all-out efforts for regional peace have no chance to succeed as long as US-led Assad enemies want escalated aggression to oust him illegally.

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.

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This article was first published by Truthout

For almost a decade and a half, the people behind the Bush administration’s shameful treatment of terrorism suspects have avoided punishment for their crimes, but that may be about to change.

The courts have had their say and have ruled that former Bush administration officials can, in fact, be sued for how they conducted the “war on terror.”

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals made that pretty much official on Friday when it refused to hear a challenge to its earlier ruling in the case of Turkmen v. Ashcroft. That case involves hundreds of Arab, Muslim or South Asian men who were detained and then abused by our government in the weeks following 9/11.

Some of them were beaten by security guards and kept in solitary confinement, which the United Nations considers a form of torture. After they were released, these men sued the people they say authorized their detentions – people like former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former FBI director Robert Mueller.

A district court initially blocked their claims, but in June, the Second Circuit Court allowed them, saying that Ashcroft, Mueller and company could be sued. The government then made one more last ditch push to protect the Bush administration, but that effort failed last Friday when the Second Circuit rejected it.

Everyone else who authorized and participated in the illegal roundup of hundreds of innocent men after 9/11, from high-up government officials on down, is now fair game for a lawsuit.

This is great news.

Although President Obama has done some things for some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration, we’ve never had a true national reckoning with what actually went on from 2001 to 2009.

Bush, Cheney and company took us into some very, very dark places after 9/11, and the detention of hundreds of innocent people solely on the basis of their race or religion is just the tip of the iceberg of what the Bush administration did.

They lied us into illegal wars that killed thousands of Americans and millions of Iraqis and Afghan civilians. They also tortured terrorism suspects, many of whom turned out to be innocent, in violation of international and US law.

Oh yeah, and they also created the Guantánamo Bay detention center, which, to this day, remains one of the best recruitment tools in the world for groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The list goes on.

Obviously, the Obama administration doesn’t exactly have a stellar record when it comes to the “war on terror” either, the drone wars being just one example. But even so, the Bush administration still bears the ultimate responsibility for taking our country down the path we’re still on a full decade-and-half after 9/11. And that’s why we need to prosecute everyone in Bush administration who participated in these crimes – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft – I mean everyone, right now.

Like any self-proclaimed democracy, the United States can and should be a moral force for good in the world. But it can’t be one when it lets the biggest war criminals in its history get off scot-free. The decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowing lawsuits against people like former Attorney General John Ashcroft is a step in the right direction. It opens up a new path for our country, a path that offers us the chance for a national redemption of sorts.

 Donald Trump may be known for many things, but mincing words certainly isn’t one of them. While most of his inflammatory remarks — including an outright entry ban for all Muslims attempting to immigrate — have most of the U.S., if not the world, up in arms, his latest accusation that Hillary Clinton “has killed hundreds of thousands of people” might be closer to the truth than many people realize.

Hillary is a war hawk of the highest order, and as Trump pointed pointed out, her record as Secretary of State under Obama evidenced the transformation of that hawkish attitude into prolific opportunity.

In 2011, the U.S. invaded Libya using its favorite, tired ‘humanitarian’ excuse — and Hillary helped make it happen, becoming a “strong advocate” for intervention, as the Washington Post reported. But military intervention had little to do with compassion for an oppressed populace, and far more to do with the economic threat posed by Qaddafi’s move away from the petrodollar toward the gold-backed Dinar. As reported by the New York Times, NATO forces dropped some 7,700 bombs and missiles during their seven-month air campaign, and the number of civilian casualties — though reported by NATO to be a low-ball 70 — could be far closer to 1,500, including a number of journalists, with scores injured and many others reported missing. Of Qaddafi, she ultimately told CBS, “We came, we saw, he died” — as did many innocent civilians.

Hillary Clinton’s bellicose policies could further be summed up by her push to send more troops to Afghanistan and spend yet more billions intervening the war-torn nation — a battlefield the National Interest characterized as “one of the most consequential foreign-policy decisions of President Obama’s first term in office.” That interventionist policy, called his “biggest foreign policy blunder to date” by Foreign Policy in 2012, had Clinton cheerleading the effort — despite a brutal attack by a rogue U.S. soldier that left 16 Afghan civilians dead. As Stephen M. Walt put it, “the United States can’t fix that country, it is not a vital U.S. interest that we try, and we should have been gone a long time ago.”

Fast forward to 2015, and Hillary’s at it again, supporting Obama’s recent decision to keep 5,500 troops in Afghanistan — past the end of his term. “We have invested a lot of blood and a lot of treasure in trying to help that country,” Clinton stated, “and we can’t afford for it to become an outpost of the Taliban and [Islamic State] one more time, threatening us, threatening the larger world.” Or, perhaps, threatening the West’s opium supply? Of course total civilian casualties in that country in the fourteen years since the U.S. invasion of 2001 may never be known, but with an estimated 1,592 dead in just the first half of 2015 alone — which is considered a low estimate by many — one has to call to question the human cost of continued U.S. presence, however eager Hillary may be for perpetual involvement.

And then there’s Syria. With the U.S. embroiled in a complex web of military action in the Middle East — which, incidentally, led to the rise of the Islamic State Qaddafi warned about and the U.S. wanted, that it now also claims to be fighting — the number of civilian casualties has reached unknown, and no less epic, proportions. It’s estimated that the rate of death to displacement is typically around 1 to 5, and with 8 million or so refugees fleeing war-ravaged Syria, that figure alone could trump Trump’s accusation. Hillary Clinton, of course, has been a strong backer of military action in Syria, despite questions surrounding the U.S.’ true motives in that country — including securing the vast oil supply.

Also pertinent in the conversation of Hillary’s hawkishness is her support of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine — and its continued policy of human rights atrocities. And we can’t forget Iraq, of course, and her advocacy for troop retention there, ostensibly to prevent a resurgence of al-Qaeda — the same fighters the U.S. and Israel now back in their supposed fight against the Islamic State — despite as many as two million civilian non-combatants who have already perished as a result of intervention there. Iran can’t be ignored as a possible site for military intervention, either. As Hillary asserted, she “will not hesitate to take military action if Iran attempts to obtain a nuclear weapon.”

Confused? You aren’t alone. But one thing is clear: a Hillary Clinton presidency will only bring more of the same meddling, belligerence, and innocent death, causing growing resentment of the U.S. around the world — which inarguably places the U.S. at greater risk of terror attacks than any slam-the-door-shut-on-Muslims immigration policy Trump and his supporters vocally and contentiously advocate.

America’s culture is deeply-rooted in racist Anglo-Saxon (English)-Protestant ideology. Historically, every dominant culture has appointed itself as the supreme one and the rest had to follow or be obliterated. If you develop the ability for mass killing, then you can easily appoint yourself and your group as masters of the universe. It is the law of the jungle that continues to exist regardless how sophisticated the presentation might be. In contrast to what the bible says, the meek shall not inherit the earth, but shall perish like an insignificant cockroach.

Racism breeds racism, and hatred is only counteracted with hatred. That is our western tradition. Per example, every immigrant group that came to the United States was rejected, ridiculed, stereotyped, dehumanized, and belittled until they became fully molded and transformed into racists, in a culture of racism that perpetuates itself through racist ideology, propaganda, and unscrupulous politics. ¹ Ironically, anthropologist Dr. Loring Brace of the University of Michigan states that the word race has no coherent biological meaning, and that there are no races, but there are only clines. Brace adds that America has a leading role in generating and perpetuating the concept of race.⁴                                                            

Professor Gries (2014), argues in his book

“the politics of American Foreign Policy” that while partisanship and ideology tend to go together, ideology is the more fundamental driver of political attitudes and behavior. The Politics of American Foreign Policy explores the nuances of American ideology, including its complex of values, beliefs, and motivations. While partisanship can be fluid, ideology appears more stable, frequently passed from generation to generation. For instance, the once solidly Democratic South is now the solidly Republican South. The partisan alignment has flipped, but the underlying ideologies have changed only marginally.²

The issue that Gries insinuated but never directly addressed is that American ideology is immersed and based in deep racist roots. Moreover, the culture of racism emerges from a culture of narcissism that is fostered by a delusional belief of superiority.

Interestingly social learning theory researchers on the formation of narcissists found that narcissism has been on the rise among Western youth in many decades. Professor Bushman of Ohio State University (a researcher) put his concerns nicely when he was interviewed by Rachel Feltman from the Washington Post for another study: Bushman stated

“I’ve been studying aggression for about 30 years,” he said, “and I’ve seen that the most harmful belief that a person can have is that they’re superior to others. ‘Men are better than women, my race is better than your race; my religion is superior to your religion.’ When people believe they’re better than other people, they act accordingly.” He and another researcher Brummelman wrote in this paper: “Narcissistic individuals feel superior to others, fantasize about personal successes, and believe they deserve special treatment. When they feel humiliated, they often lash out aggressively or even violently.”³

Racism and narcissism behind the success of the Donald Trump Phenomenon

Donald Trump businessman, performer, and alleged Republican candidate and front runner have successfully played the racist card to capture the public’s attention and imagination.

Trump appeals to the masses’ primitive instincts, and caters to the disgruntled public with the corrupt political system. As a result, Mr. Trump has rejuvenated raw emotions of racism that tend to impel and motivate people to love him and follow him, as he bluntly proclaims their fantasies, and acts out their rage.

This rage is a direct result of the public’s ineptness to understand the deceitful plutocratic political system disguised as a democracy and not knowing what to do with it. Meanwhile, the plutocracy overindulges with superfluity while the majority of the American public struggles to make ends meet.

When Trump spews hatred that the public craves, they listen and worship him as a savior who liberates their primitive desires by proclaiming the truth they want to hear but they could never speak. Through him they vicariously rekindle the courage they lack to exert their most primitive and aggressive needs.

In my CRG article on June 29, 2014 titled: Who will be President in 2016? Theater of the Absurd: Hillary Rodham Clinton vs. John Ellis (JEB) Bush? I predicted that Jeb Bush will undoubtedly become the next president of the United States.

However, Donald Trump has so far hijacked the political stage from every other Republican candidate, and has given the media the highest ratings they’ve had in years. Yes, Mr. Trump proved that he can make money for the networks, and the media is thrilled with this phenomenon that breathed a new life into their dead cable networks.

Hence, Mr. Trump was rewarded with a constant spotlight by the media that awaits every word he utters regardless how offensive or idiotic it might be. This strategy has so far helped fizzle-away many of the Republican candidates, and brought down the mighty and corrupt House of Bush family. Jeb Bush dropped to 3% according to a recent CNN poll on December 4, 2015 ⁶ despite his contrived biblical name that the evangelists adore. Consequently, the Republican primaries have become a nice dog and pony show. Except that this show is about nothing, because political decisions have been predetermined, and the show must go on to keep the mindless masses interested in a pseudo-democracy that gives the proles a false illusion that their votes will count.

Ironically, this week Donald Trump made Time magazine’s man of the year list with Abu Bakr Al- Baghdadi (the alleged ISIS leader and Western Intelligence mercenary) and six others like Caitlyn Jenner, Black lives matter, Hassan Rouhani, Valdimir Putin, Angela Merkel, and Tavis Kalanick.⁵

If you are a Time Magazine fan, then you must admit that this controversial list will impress the American public and will burn these names into their frontal lobes, thus solidifying Donald Trump as a legitimate presidential candidate, and congealing ISIS as a recognized and legitimate entity especially after the recent attacks in Paris and the Inland Empire.

Analysis

If you are a flummoxed voter, then you must ask yourself the following questions.

Should you keep voting and encouraging the status quo?

What is the purpose of Mr. Trump’s campaign? Is he a serious candidate, or is he serving some other unknown agenda?

Besides Mr. Trump, who will benefit from his current candidacy?

Has Mr. Trump being used to bump off other republicans and pave the way for Jeb Bush?

Or is he a plant that generates temporary excitement in the minds of the bored masses?

Is it possible that by having Trump win the Republican nomination, he will ensure that Hillary Clinton will finally have her chance to be the first woman president of the United States?

Have the money masters and the new corporate aristocracy altered their minds about Hillary, and decided to give her a chance after shafting her in the 2008 election? Is it possible to have another democrat win in the 2016 election?

Will Donald Trump’s destiny end-up like Ross Perot’s who was covertly dismantled by the House of Bush?

Does Trump have enough star power to place him in the White House?

Has Donald been vetted and approved by the military industrial complex/Trumanite network, knowing that no president can ever be elected without their approval?

Is our civilian government a viable entity or a window dressing?

Is Mr. Trump going to abandon his investments in Muslim countries to prove his loyalty to America?

Is Trump a curve ball that the elites have thrown at the public to keep them befuddled and excited?

Are the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino enough to help the Republican Party win the 2016 election, or should we wait for more October surprises?

Wow the questions are so many and so overwhelming!

Conclusion

The American public might be gullible and uninformed or misinformed, but not stupid to believe that Trump’s election will make a difference in American domestic and international policies?

The last person who attempted to challenge the establishment to induce a true change was John Fitzgerald Kennedy (God Bless his soul). Kennedy remains a reminder for every politician to know his or her place on the American political stage.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trump appears to be nothing more than an amusing performer and a popular circus buffoon who will eventually fade away as the real show approaches. If not, then the Republican Party should be concerned that a winning Trump will be the only way that a desperate Hillary Clinton will ever set foot in the White House.

Notes:

1. Skaff, R. (2007). The Human Manifesto. PA, Baltimore, Maryland.

2. Gries, P. (2014). The Politics of American Foreign Policy, Stanford University Press. Stanford, California.

3. Bernstein, L. (2015) “How parents create narcissistic children,” Washington Post, March 9, 2015

4. www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/does-race-exist.html

5. www.wxyz.com/news/times-shortlist-for-2015-person-of-the

6. www.cnn.com/2015/12/04/politics/donald-trump-poll-cnn-orc

Note: The long-cherished neocon dream of “regime change” in Syria is blocking a possible route out of the crisis – a ceasefire followed by elections in which President Assad could compete. The problem is there’s no guarantee that Assad would lose and thus the dream might go unfulfilled, writes Robert Parry.

The solution to the crisis in Syria could be democracy – letting the people of Syria decide who they want as their leaders – but it is the Obama administration and its regional Sunni “allies,” including U.S.-armed militants and jihadists, that don’t want to risk a democratic solution because it might not achieve the long-held goal of “regime change.”

Some Syrian opposition forces, which were brought together under the auspices of the Saudi monarchy in Riyadh this past week, didn’t even want the word “democracy” included in their joint statement. The New York Times reported on Friday, “Islamist delegates objected to using the word ‘democracy’ in the final statement, so the term ‘democratic mechanism’ was used instead, according to a member of one such group who attended the meeting.”

Secretary of State John Kerry at a press conference on Dec. 4, 2015. (State Department photo)

Even that was too much for Ahrar al-Sham, one of the principal jihadist groups fighting side-by-side with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, the two key elements inside the Saudi-created Army of Conquest, which uses sophisticated U.S.-supplied TOW missiles to kill Syrian government troops.

Ahrar al-Sham announced its withdrawal from the Riyadh conference because the meeting didn’t “confirm the Muslim identity of our people.” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sought to maintain a secular government that protects the rights of Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other religious minorities, but Sunni militants have been fighting to overthrow him since 2011.

Despite Ahrar al-Sham’s rejection of the Saudi-organized conference, all the opposition participants, including one from Ahrar al-Sham who apparently wasn’t aware of his group’s announcement, signed the agreement, the Times reported.

“All parties signed a final statement that called for maintaining the unity of Syria and building a civil, representative government that would take charge after a transitional period, at the start of which Mr. Assad and his associates would step down,” wrote Times’ correspondent Ben Hubbard.

But the prospects of Assad and his government just agreeing to cede power to the opposition remains highly unlikely. An obvious alternative – favored by Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin – is to achieve a ceasefire and then have internationally supervised elections in which the Syrian people could choose their own leaders.

Although President Barack Obama insists Assad is hated by most Syrians – and if that’s true, he would presumably lose any fair election – the U.S. position is to bar Assad from the ballot, thus ensuring “regime change” in Syria, a long-held goal of Official Washington’s neoconservatives.

In other words, to fulfill the neocons’ dream of Syrian “regime change,” the Obama administration is continuing the bloody Syrian conflict which has killed a quarter million people, has created an opening for Islamic State and Al Qaeda terrorists, and has driven millions of refugees into and through nearby countries, now destabilizing Europe and feeding xenophobia in the United States.

For his part, Assad called participants in the Saudi conference “terrorists” and rejected the idea of negotiating with them. “They want the Syrian government to negotiate with the terrorists, something I don’t think anyone would accept in any country,” Assad told Spanish journalists, as he repeated his position that many of the terrorists were backed by foreign governments and that he would only “deal with the real, patriotic national opposition.”

Kinks in the Process

Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Friday that he was in contact with senior Saudi officials and noted, “there are some questions and obviously a couple of – in our judgment – kinks to be worked out” though expressing confidence that the problems could be resolved.

A key problem appears to be that the Obama administration has so demonized Assad and so bought into the neocon goal of “regime change” that Obama doesn’t feel that he can back down on his “Assad must go!” mantra. Yet, to force Assad out and bar him from running in an election means escalating the war by either further arming the Sunni jihadists or mounting a larger-scale invasion of Syria with the U.S. military confronting Syrian and now Russian forces to establish what is euphemistically called “a safe zone” inside Syria. A related “no-fly zone” would require destroying Syrian air defenses, now supplied by the Russians.

Obama has largely followed the first course of action, allowing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other Sunni “allies” to funnel U.S. weapons to jihadists, including Ahrar al-Sham which fights alongside Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front as the two seek to transform Syria into a Islamic fundamentalist state, a goal shared by Al Qaeda’s spinoff (and now rival), the Islamic State.

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has termed Obama’s choice of aiding the jihadists a “willful decision,” even in the face of DIA warnings about the likely rise of the Islamic State and other extremists.

In August 2012, DIA described the danger in a classified report, which noted that “The salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, later ISI or ISIS and then the Islamic State] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The report also said that “If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared salafist principality in eastern Syria” and that “ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”

Despite these risks, Obama continued to insist that “Assad must go!” and let his administration whip up a propaganda campaign around claims that Assad’s forces launched a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Though many of the U.S. claims about that attack have since been discredited – and later evidence implicated radical jihadists (possibly collaborating with Turkish intelligence) trying to trick the U.S. military into intervening on their side – the Obama administration did not retract or clarify its initial claims.

By demonizing Assad – much like the demonization of Russian President Putin – Obama may feel that he is deploying “soft power” propaganda to put foreign adversaries on the defensive while also solidifying his political support inside hawkish U.S. opinion circles, but false narratives can take on a life of their own and make rational settlements difficult if not impossible.

Now, even though the Syrian crisis has become a tsunami threatening to engulf Europe with a refugee crisis and the United States with anti-Muslim hysteria, Obama can’t accept the most obvious solution: compel all reasonable sides to accept a ceasefire and hold an internationally supervised election in which anyone who wants to lead the country can stand before the voters.

If Obama is right about the widespread hatred of Assad, then there should be nothing to worry about. The Syrian people will dictate “regime change” through the ballot box.

Democracy – supposedly one of the U.S. government’s goals for Middle East countries – can be the answer to the problem. However, since democracy can be an unpredictable process, it might not guarantee “regime change” which apparently makes democracy an unsuitable solution for Syria.

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).

Israel claims that it’s in a mortal struggle with Islamic terrorists …

But as we reported last year, the Israeli military has admitted to supporting Syrian Islamic jihadis. And see this.

Last week, Daily Mail journalists embedded with Israeli troops reported:

Almost every night, Israeli troops run secret missions to save the lives of Syrian fighters, all of whom are sworn enemies of the Jewish state.

***

Analysts suggest the Jewish state has in fact struck a deadly ‘deal with the devil’ – offering support to the Sunni militants who fight the Syrian ruler Assad in the hope of containing its arch enemies Hezbollah and Iran.

***

Many of the casualties rescued by Israel belong to Salafist groups …. Some may be members of Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian group affiliated to Al Qaeda that has kidnapped scores of UN peacekeeping troops in this area, and has massacred Christians deeper in Syria.

***

In the three years that Israel has been running these operations, it has saved the lives of more than 2,000 Syrians – at least 80 per cent of whom are male and of fighting age – at a cost of 50 million shekels (£8.7 million).

***

‘Above all, Israel wants to prevent Hezbollah from gaining control on the other side of the border,’ said Michael Stephens, Research Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

 

‘The Sunni militants are fighting Hezbollah, so for now they share the same objectives as Israel. That’s why we’re seeing this odd cooperation between people who would be enemies under any other circumstances.

***

Significantly, an Israeli spokesman confirmed that no medical support has been provided to any militants from the Shia alliance.

‘From an Israeli viewpoint, it’s a case of my enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ said Kamal Alam, research analyst at RUSI and an expert in Syrian affairs.

‘There is no one they can trust in the Syrian quagmire, but if you get rid of Hezbollah, that’s the end of Iran in the region. Israel’s main aim has to be to eliminate Hezbollah – and whoever takes on Hezbollah is an uneasy but necessary ally.

‘In giving medical support to these fighters, Israel has done a deal with the devil.’

Indeed, Israel has made no secret of the fact that it prefers ISIS and Al Qaeda to the Iranian backed terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah:

In September 2013, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post in an interview: “The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc. … We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

In June 2014, Oren expanded on this thinking at an Aspen Institute conference, extending Israel’s preference to include even the hyper-brutal Islamic State. “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.

But it’s not just Iran or Shias … Israel decided long ago to break up Syria and Iraq into numerous mini-states.  And Israel wants a compliant government in Syria to allow its pipelines to win out over competing pipelines.

No wonder the Israeli air force has bombed near the Syrian capital of Damascus, and attacked agricultural facilities and warehouses (the Syrian government is the main opponent of ISIS in Syria).

We noted last year:

The Times of Israel reported Wednesday:

A Free Syrian Army commander, arrested last month by the Islamist militiaAl-Nusra Front, told his captors he collaborated with Israel in return for medical and military support, in a video released this week.Read more: Syrian rebel commander says he collaborated with Israel.

In a video uploaded to YouTube Monday … Sharif As-Safouri, the commander of the Free Syrian Army’s Al-Haramein Battalion, admitted to having entered Israel five times to meet with Israeli officers who later provided him with Soviet anti-tank weapons and light arms. Safouri was abducted by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front in the Quneitra area, near the Israeli border, on July 22.

“The [opposition] factions would receive support and send the injured in [to Israel] on condition that the Israeli fence area is secured. No person was allowed to come near the fence without prior coordination with Israel authorities,” Safouri said in the video.

***

In the edited confession video, in which Safouri seems physically unharmed, he says that at first he met with an Israeli officer named Ashraf at the border and was given an Israeli cellular phone. He later met with another officer named Younis and with the two men’s commander, Abu Daoud. In total, Safouri said he entered Israel five times for meetings that took place in Tiberias.

Following the meetings, Israel began providing Safouri and his men with “basic medical support and clothes” as well as weapons, which included 30 Russian [rifles], 10 RPG launchers with 47 rockets, and 48,000 5.56 millimeter bullets.

Also on Wednesday, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency – a 97-year old Jewish wire service –reported:

A senior employee of the Dutch Justice Ministry said the jihadist group ISIS was created by Zionists seeking to give Islam a bad reputation.

Yasmina Haifi, a project leader at the ministry’s National Cyber Security Center, made the assertion Wednesday on Twitter, the De Telegraaf dailyreported.

“ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It’s part of a plan by Zionists who are deliberately trying to blacken Islam’s name,” wrote Haifi ….

In March, Haaretz reported:

The Syrian opposition is willing to give up claims to the Golan Heights in return for cash and Israeli military aid against President Bashar Assad, a top opposition official told Al Arab newspaper, according to a report in Al Alam.

***

The Western-backed militant groups want Israel to enforce a no-fly zone over parts of southern Syria to protect rebel bases from air strikes by Assad’s forces, according to the report.

Perhaps that’s why ISIS, Al Nusra and the other Islamic terrorists in Syria haven’t tried to lay a glove on Israel?

This isn’t an isolated dynamic …

• Israel has also been arming Islamic terrorists in Iran
• Israel has admitted that it has a long history of carrying out false flag attacks … where its soldiers dress up as Arab terrorists
• If you think that the real dynamic is Muslims versus Jews and Christians, you’re being played

Friday marks the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in America and contrary to popular belief, slavery is not a product of Western capitalism; Western capitalism is a product of slavery.

The expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American Independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.

Historian Edward Baptist illustrates how in the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy.

Through torture and punishment slave owners extracted greater efficiencies from slaves which allowed the United States to seize control of the world market for cotton, the key raw material of the Industrial Revolution, and become a prosperous and powerful nation.

Cotton was to the early 19th century, what oil was to the 20th century: the commodity that determined the wealth of nations. Cotton accounted for a staggering 50 percent of US exports and ignited the economic boom that America experienced.  America owes its very existence as a first world nation to slavery.

In the abstract, capitalism and slavery are fundamentally counterposed systems. One is based on free labor, and the other, on forced labor. However, in practice, Capitalism itself would have been impossible without slavery.

In the United States, scholars have demonstrated that profit wasn’t made just from Southerners selling the cotton that slaves picked or the cane they cut. Slavery was central to the establishment of the industries that today dominate the U.S. economy: real estate, insurance and finance.

Wall Street was founded on slavery. African slaves built the physical wall that gives Wall Street its name, forming the northern boundary of the Dutch colony designed to ward off resisting natives who wanted their land back. To formalize the colossal trade in human beings, in 1711, New York officials established a slave market on Wall Street.

Many prominent American banks including JP Morgan and Wachovia Corp made fortunes from slavery and accepted slaves as “collateral”. JP Morgan recently admitted that it “accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved individuals as collateral on loans and took possession of approximately 1,250 enslaved individuals”.

The story that American schoolbooks tell of slavery is regional, rather than national, it portrays slavery as a brutal aberration to the American rule of democracy and freedom. Slavery is recounted as an unfortunate detour from the nation’s march to modernity, and certainly not the engine that drove American economic prosperity. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In order to fully appreciate the importance of slavery to American capitalism, one need only look at the torrid history of an antebellum Alabama dry-goods outfit called Lehman Brothers. Warren Buffet is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the richest billionaire in America. Berkshire Hathaway’s antecedent firm was a Rhode Island textile manufacturer and slavery profiteer.

In the north, New England was the home of America’s cotton textile industry and the hotbed of American abolitionism, which grew rich on the backs of the enslaved people forced to pick cotton in the south. The architects of New England’s industrial revolution constantly monitored the price of cotton, for their textile mills would have been silent without the labor of slaves on distant plantations.

The book Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery by Anne Farrow illustrates how the Northern bourgeoisie were connected to the slave system by a million threads: they bought molasses, which was made with slave labor, and sold rum as part of the Triangle Trade; they lent money to Southern planters; and most of the cotton that was sold to Britain was shipped through New England ports.

Despite being turned into a civil rights hero, Abraham Lincoln did not think blacks were the equals of whites. Lincoln’s plan was to send the blacks in America back to Africa, and if he had not been assassinated, returning blacks to Africa would likely have been his post-war policy. Lincoln even admitted that the emancipation proclamation, in his own words, was merely “a practical war measure” to convince Britain, that the North was driven by “something more than ambition.”

For Blacks, the end of slavery, one hundred and fifty years ago, was just the beginning of the as yet unachieved quest for democratic and economic racial equality.

In the era before WWII, the American elite consensus viewed capitalist civilization as a racial and colonial project. To this day, capitalism in America can only be described as “Racial Capitalism”: the legacy of slavery marked by the simultaneous, and intertwined emergence of white supremacy and capitalism in modern America.

Black people in America live in a Racial Capitalist system. Racial Capitalism exercises its authority over the Black minority through an oppressive array of modern day lynchings by the police, increasing for-profit mass incarceration and institutionally driven racial economic inequality. Racial Capitalism is unquestionably a modern day crime against humanity.

Seeing an African American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery would be exciting if only black equality indicators were not tumbling. In fact, during Obama’s tenure the black-white median household wealth gap is down to seven black cents on the white dollar. The spread between black unemployment and white unemployment has also widened by four points since President Obama took office.

The nation’s police historically enforced Racial Capitalism. The first modern police forces in America were Slave Patrols and Night Watches, which were both designed to control the behaviors of African Americans.

Historical literature is clear that prior to the Civil War a legally sanctioned police force existed for the sole purpose of oppressing the slave population and protecting the property and interests of white slave owners. The glaring similarities between the eighteenth century Slave Patrols and modern American police brutality in the Black community are too salient to dismiss or ignore.

Ever since the first police forces were established in America, lynchings have been the linchpin of racial capitalist law and order. Days after the abolition of slavery, the worst terrorist organization in American history was formed with the US government’s blessing: The Klu Klux Klan.

The majority of Americans believe that lynchings are an outdated form of racial terrorism, which blighted American society up until the end of the era of Jim Crow laws; however, America’s proclivity towards the unbridled slaughter of African Americans has only worsened over time. The Guardian newspaper recently noted that historians believe that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century on average two African-Americans were lynched every week.

Compare this with incomplete data compiled by the FBI that shows that a Black person is killed by a white police officer more than twice a week, and it’s clear that police brutality in Black communities is getting worse, not better.

Lynching does not necessarily mean hanging. It often included humiliation, torture, burning, dismemberment and castration. A lynching was a quintessential American public ritual that often took place in front of large crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands and children played during the festivities.

Shortly after the abolition of slavery in 1899 the Springfield Weekly newspaper described a lynching by the KKK chronicling how, “the Negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body. He pleaded pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on…before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones crushed into small bits…the Negro’s heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver…small pieces of bones went for 25 cents…”.

Central to the perpetuation of Racial Capitalism is racial terrorism, which is why to this day, the US government refuses to designate the KKK as a domestic terrorist organization.

Racially terrorizing Black communities goes hand in hand with the systematic containment and imprisonment of Blacks. Thanks in large part to the racially motivated War on Drugs, the United States right now incarcerates more African-Americans as a percentage than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid.

Private prisons were designed by the rich and for the rich. The for-profit prison system depends on imprisoning Blacks for its survival. Much in the same way the United States was designed. After all, more Black men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850 before the Civil War began.

America’s “take-off” in the 19th century wasn’t in spite of slavery; it was largely thanks to it. Capitalism was created by slavery and slavery in turn created the enduring legacy of Racial Capitalism that persists in America today.

There has historically been a sharp contrast between America’s lofty ideals, on the one hand, and the seemingly permanent second-class status of African Americas, on the other. The late 19th century irony of a statue named Liberty overseeing the arrival in New York’s harbor of millions of foreigners, even as black Southern peasants, not alien, just profoundly alienated, were kept enslaved at the social margins. The hypocrisy of a racist ideology that openly questioned the Negro’s human worth surviving America’s defeat of the Nazis. To this day, far from being a “post-racial” nation, American racial equality indicators and race relations are at a new low.

The race problem is America’s great national dilemma that continues to pose the greatest threat to America’s democratic experiment. Simmering discontent in Black communities will continue to rise towards a dangerous boiling point unless and until slavery’s greatest legacy of ongoing Racial Capitalism is exposed and completely dismantled.

“General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley, a former commander-in-chief of NATO forces in northern Europe said…that a covert intelligence service was set up in Italy with the help of British agents and the CIA – which also partly funded it. The Italian branch of the network was known as Operation Gladio.” – Richard Norton Taylor, Guardian, 15/11/90

“Gladio was … set up with British help in the 1950’s, operated by the secret services and partly financed by the United States CIA.” – Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 16/11/90

To understand today’s geopolitical chaos, we must first understand the methods of instability used by the state, both at home and abroad…

The website Aangirfan describes a asymmetric counter intelligence operation – originally designed as a “stay behind operation” for defending a country, but later turned back in on itself and unleashed to terrorize the ‘Homeland’ (Europe, North America) as a means of manipulating political, social and military outcomes, defense spending – at home. This is not a conspiracy theory – it’s historical fact.

Is this operation still active today? Looking at events at home and away, it certainly looks like it. Once perfected, this covert paramilitary operation can be deployed abroad as a way of destroying a city, country or region, from within:

“The idea of the ‘pseudo gang’ is to murder innocent civilians and then blame the murders on the people that the military wants to discredit.”

“The pseudo gang works for the military but pretends to be a bunch of terrorists.”

In addition to the French, Belgium and Italian branches of Operation GLADIO, there is also the rarely mentioned British contingent – GLADIO’s key component, which seems to be international in scope – bringing GLADIO into a global context. Aangirfan adds here:

“UK Police are being given more powerful guns and extra training to prepare for a possible Mumbai-style terror attack in Britain.

Security chiefs are staging a series of terrorism exercises with police sharpshooters training alongside units of the notorious Special Air Services (SAS). Apparently, the development follows the discovery, in September 2010, of a credible ‘CIA-NATO Gladio-style’ false flag plot.

The SAS have been accused of training ‘terrorists’. Britain’s SAS (Special Air Services) trained the Khmer Rouge. The British Special Air Services (SAS) firm Keenie Meenie Services reportedly trained the Tamil Tigers. (Southern India, Sri Lanka terrorist groups). The SAS trained bin Laden’s Mujahedin fighters in Scotland.”

How is this related to ISIS and al Qaeda in Syria? This depends on whether or not you are willing to join these dots. How much training have the SAS been giving to Jihadist terrorists in Jordan and Turkey?

Listen to this conversation between British radio host Tony Gosling and 21WIRE’s Patrick Henningsen, as they discuss the Paris Attacks, Syria, GLADIO and the recent false flag in San Bernardino, CA. Listen:

We look at this as a successful, tried and true method of divide and conquer – with fingerprints left all over the world during the 20th and 21st centuries in places like Northern Ireland, Vietnam, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Belgium, the Philippines, Kenya, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, London, Madrid, Los Angeles, New York and later in Iraq, Libya, the Ukraine and now in Syria, and many other places still.

Episode #113 of the SUNDAY WIRE heard host Patrick Henningsen in an incredible in-depth discussion with Irish writer and political affairs analyst Gearóid Ó Colmáin, as they delved into this hidden world of secret wars, gangs and counter-gangs, as outlined in the seminal book on this subject, written by British General Frank Kitson, entitled “Gangs and Counter Gangs“. It’s a near playbook and instruction manual for inducing instability.

In terms of today’s devastating terrorist conclave presently based in Syria and Turkey, readers should note that GLADIO’s ‘stay behind operation’ also laid stakes down in Turkey. When considering the sheer number of rival jihadist and ‘rebel’ gangs, and counter gangs operating in this region right now, it’s not difficult to recognize a common design to this all too familiar mayhem, as well as its real architects. Aangirfan adds:

On 30 January 2010, we learn that NATO generals devised Operation Cage (Cage probe deepens with Poyrazköy indictment) which included the idea of detonating explosives during school field trips to military museums in Turkey. The intention was to kill lots of kids.

The UK’s General Frank Kitson reportedly developed the idea of the ‘pseudo gang’ (General Frank Kitson: Trail Blazing Fake Terrorism).

It happened in Belgium.

In 1984, a squad of US Marines was parachuted into Belgium, and met by a member of the Belgian military intelligence (NATO, Gladio and the strategy of tension. N.A.T.O stay behind). They hid for a fortnight before attacking the police station in Vielsalm. Weapons and ammunition were stolen. A Belgian police officer was murdered.

In 1991, a Belgian Senate investigation proved that this attack was the work of the American and Belgian military.

Further attacks took place in Belgium. More arms and ammunition were stolen in these attacks. This stolen weaponry was handed over to fascist groups. Around this time in Belgium, extremists were carrying out the so-called Brabant Massacres. These were a group of attacks over a period of two years.”

Groups of armed men would burst into restaurants and supermarkets and start shooting.

Here is a clip from an older documentary on Operation GLADIO, detailing the Brabant Massacres. The testimony is truly terrifying, and yet, this was planned and executed by western intelligence services in concert with criminals for hire, organized crime syndicates – against western citizens. Watch:

Listen to this brilliant interview with author Daniele Ganser, who documented the terrorist activities of the security services through GLADIO in his book, “NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe.” What Ganser is describing seems to be exactly what’s been deployed on the ground not only in Paris, but in Syria too, taking the form of al Qaeda ‘Rebels”, ISIS and the like. Listen:

Caught in the crosshairs of an ongoing New York Attorney General investigation exploring its role in studying the damage climate change could cause since the 1970’s and then proceeding to fund climate science denial campaigns, ExxonMobil has announced an interesting job opening.

No, not the new lawyer who will soon send the “private empire” billable hours for his defense work in the New York AGprobe, though that’s a story for another day. Exxon is hiring for a climate change researcher to work in its Annandale, New Jersey research park facility.

“We are seeking a candidate to advance research and assessment providing fundamental understanding on global climate change issues,” reads the job description.

It continues:

“The candidate would lead research in areas such as Earth systems science and the role of technologies and systems in managing the risks posed by global climate change. The successful candidate will develop collaborative research efforts, contribute significant publications, contribute to assessments (e.g., the IPCC) and demonstrate strong scientific leadership within both the corporation and external scientific community…Significant demonstrated experience in researching Earth systems science, integrated assessment and energy modeling is preferred. ”

It sounds a lot like a job description of a person who worked at the unit Exxon had at its disposal until the company cut 83 percent of its climate research budget and started funding denial to the tune of $31 million since 1998.

Exxon would proceed to fund think-tanks — such as Heartland Institute, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute and awhole network of individual deniers — that ridiculed the same climate change models its researchers created — and that its new researcher will also create. Former CEO Lee Raymond also is on record berating the same models, as is the company via its ads.

And former Exxon lobbyist William O’Keefe, most recently CEO of the George C. Marshall Institute (recently rebranded as theCO2 Coalition), was recently exposed in a Greenpeace investigation detailing the willingness of certain academics togenerate industry-friendly testimony and op-eds on a for-hire basis. Exxon has served as a major funder of the George C. Marshall Institute.

Deep Cuts

In a story running two days after Exxon announced it would be hiring, InsideClimate news reported on the deep cuts in the 1980’s to Exxon’s climate research program.

“Facing a budget crunch and sensing that any government efforts to clamp down on carbon pollution were a long way off, Exxon terminated two especially innovative experiments,” detailed InsideClimate. “The cuts reversed the course that the company followed in the late 1970s, when top company scientists warned Exxon’s management for the first time of the risks of climate change, and launched internal research programs unparalleled among its oil industry peers.”

InsideClimate published the memorandum in which ExxonMobil decided to make the cuts, and two other memos explaining which climate research programs would receive cuts.

Why cut climate research, though? The company calculated correctly — in large part due to its own lobbying and denial echo chamber efforts — that no strong regulations to curtail greenhouse gas emissions loomed on either the domestic or global level.

COP Writing on Wall or PR?

So why hire a climate researcher now? Perhaps Exxon sees the writing on the wall, as it did the first time around the block in the 1970’s, that climate change is a global priority that demands attention.

In a recent blog post, Exxon claimed to support the cutting of a deal — a revenue-neutral carbon tax to be precise — at the United Nations climate summit in Paris.

“When it comes to COP21, we are hopeful that an agreement will be reached for meaningful action to address the risks surrounding climate change,” the company wrote. “We encourage those gathered in Paris to embrace a principled approach to climate change risk. Such an approach holds great promise for ensuring that effective action will be taken to meet this global challenge.”

The company has also spoken out about the climate change costs of not coming to a substantive deal in Paris.

Of course, Exxon continues to bankroll the campaigns of climate change denier politicians such as U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), U.S. Sen. Fred Upton (R-MI), U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and many others.

In fact, the company has already handed out $349,250 in traceable money to Republican congressional candidates so far in the 2016 electoral cycle. At this point in its history — though not always the case — the GOP has steeped itself in science denial and has railed against the Paris Agreement since nearly 200 countries agreed to it on Saturday.

Inhofe, recipient thus far of $7,500 in Exxon campaign cash during this cycle, delivered a recorded video keynote address at a Heartland Institute climate denial gathering held in conjunction with the Paris UN climate talks.

Exxon also has spent millions lobbying to lift the U.S. oil export ban, according to lobbying disclosure forms reviewed by DeSmog, a de facto form of climate denial given the greenhouse gas emissions implications of lifting the ban.

Considering these facts, the Exxon climate research hire appears much more likely to fit under the umbrella of Exxon’s ongoing crisis communications PR plan, as the company continues to spend big lobbying for status quo (industry friendly) climate and energy policies.

Rand falls while ANC Government shuffles finance ministers

During the second week of December the Minister of Finance Nhanhla Nene was summarily dismissed by the African National Congress (ANC) government in South Africa under President Jacob Zuma.

Nene was replaced immediately by David van Rooyen prompting an even deeper drop in the confidence in the Zuma government to address the decline in the key economic indicators.

After less than a week, Rooyen was relieved and replaced by Pravin Gordhan, who had served in this position before from 2009-2014.

This decision comes amid a worsening economic crisis inside the country, Africa’s most industrialized, which has seen a sharp rise in unemployment, the decline of the rand, energy generation and water shortages.

Apparently in response to the political fallout in the aftermath of the removal of Nene and his replacement by Rooyen, the rand dropped even further from 14-to-1 against the United States dollar to nearly 16. Leading bond-rating agencies lowered the value of South Africa’s credit worthiness to a level just above junk status.

An article published by the Associated Press said “South Africa’s economy was already troubled. Just a week before, ratings agency Fitch downgraded the country to BBB-. Standard & Poor’s maintained South Africa’s BBB- foreign currency credit rating, but revised the outlook to negative. The country had narrowly missed entering a recession with less than 1 percent growth, said Statistics South Africa.” (December 14)

Leading financial publications such as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) are asserting that the appointment of Gordhan is responsible for the slight increase in the value of the rand by December 14. However, there was almost no recognition of the need for a reorientation from a neo-liberal economic policy to one that is focused on the needs of the working people, farmers, youth and the jobless.

According to the WSJ, “Markets on Monday welcomed South African President Jacob Zuma’s decision to bring back a trusted finance minister in place of a widely denounced appointee, a rare political reversal that exposed his political vulnerability ahead of local elections and the contest in his party to succeed him. South Africa’s currency, the rand, rose around 5 percent to 15.10 against the dollar on Monday after Mr. Zuma said Pravin Gordhan would return as finance minister.” (Dec. 14)

Gordhan was quoted in the international media making statements designed to rebuild confidence by the global centers of finance capital in the ability of South Africa to halt the decline in the economy. He said during a press conference on December 14 that “I’m relatively familiar with the terrain we have to work with and its challenges.”

He went on to stress how “Our government is acutely aware of the financial impact this has had on those who are invested in our economy. Our humble appeal is [for you] to work with us as we continue to build a resilient economy and a better life for all South Africans.”

Political Response Inside and Out of the Ruling Alliance

Elements within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which is commemorating its 30th anniversary, criticized the decision to terminate finance minister Nene. COSATU, a key ally of the ANC, held its 12^th National Congress recently calling for reforms in the national economy.

In a statement issued from its offices in Braamfontein on December 10 the trade union federation said “Currently, the economy is on its knees and it is hemorrhaging jobs across all sectors. The unemployment rate is going through the roof and the blight of capital flight is back in full swing. To maneuver this economic minefield and smooth transition, we needed the stability, continuity and the experience that Cde Nhlanhla Nene provided. COSATU also feels that what is wrong with treasury is that the mandarins and technocrats have too much power and they are neoliberal hardliners.”

South Africa’s ruling ANC party in their statement on December 14 about the situation in the finance ministry said “The ANC further appreciates the explanation provided by President Zuma on the reasons behind the initial reshuffle of Comrade Nhlanhla Nene who is the country’s nominee to serve as head of the African Regional Center of the New Development Bank/BRICS Bank. The decision underscores the importance of BRICS as a game changer in the world economy and the need for new trade patterns favoring developing economies. The ANC commends the public for vocal engagement of government on the appointment of the Minister of Finance. As an organization, the ANC values public activism on matters of public interest.”

The third key ally in the Tripartite ruling alliance, the South African Communist Party (SACP), spoke favorably about the government’s response to the widespread criticism over the changes within the ministry. A statement issued by the SACP on December 14 noted “This is very important, and the SACP welcomes it. Such important appointments, as with other strategic decisions taken to guide our shared national democratic revolution always require a wide ranging meaningful consultation particularly within the liberation alliance.”

Opposition parties, including the largest, the Democratic Alliance, utilized the reshuffling and the decline in the currency value and bond ratings as a political wedge against the Zuma government. Nonetheless, no real alternative economic policies are being advanced by these organizations who occupy the parliament in Cape Town along with the ruling ANC.

The appointment of successive finance ministers has been met with trepidation by the corporate interests while Anglo American mining conglomerate announced it would eliminate 85,000 jobs in a major restructuring plan. These developments represent an ongoing process of job losses in the extractive industry, a major source of employment and foreign exchange earnings within the South African and regional economies.

Anglo American’s announcement in preparation for shedding some of its assets and downsizing its workforce indicates that similar actions could follow within other coal and gold companies during 2016. The multi-national mining firm has plans to divide its coal divisions that export to other countries and those that provide resources to Eskom, the state-owned energy agency that has faced monumental challenges in recent months involving power outages and shortages of water.

In addition some publications are reporting that Anglo American could be considering the unloading of its Kumba Iron Ore Sishen mine, although confirmation of this may not be revealed until next year. (Eyewitness News, Dec. 8)

These decisions will intensify the already escalating class struggle inside the country. For the last four years, there have been numerous strikes within the mining industry impacting the financial crisis emanating from the unresolved necessity for the redistribution of wealth during the post-apartheid period.

Mamokgheti Molopyane, a labor relations and mining analyst, predicts that the long-term effects of Anglo American’s restructuring plans in the platinum, coal and gold sectors will become clearer during 2016.

“Anglo is not the only company that announced possible job cuts. The gold and coal sectors [will all be impacted], so you can rest assured that next year it’s going to be a battle between the employers and the workers,” he said. (Eyewitness News, Dec. 8)

The South African economic crisis is a reflection of the downturn among numerous emerging states which have experienced substantial growth over the last decade. A decline in commodity prices, including oil and other natural resources, has illustrated the continuing dependency on the existing capitalist dominance of the world system.

The following text is a translation by Eric Zuesse of an article in deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de

The EU is in the surprising situation of needing to deal, at its upcoming summit meeting at the end of this week, with the question of whether to extend sanctions against Russia. It had been expected to be an automatic continuation on account of Angela Merkel’s routinely doing whatever Washington says. But some European nations are clenching their fists and resisting her leadership on this particular matter.

The EU summit this Thursday and Friday is consequently surprised to have to deal with the extension of economic sanctions against Russia. The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, on Monday the 14th, at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, stunned people by placing this question onto the agenda. She tried to downplay the matter by saying that doing this is routine in cases where any Member State might dissent from a consensus. Last week, Italy, in particular, said that it was opposed to extending sanctions, and therefore any extension would require high-level talks.

The sanctions are hated by many states: sanctions have increased European unemployment. However, economic reasons may not be formally stated as a reason for pressuring national politicians; but, suddenly, the EU now resists paying the economic price for its bondage to the U.S., and for doing the bidding of America’s key European agent Angela Merkel. Most EU member states had, in fact, already rejected these sanctions at the outset. US Vice President Joe Biden publicly admitted that the United States needed to force the EU to cooperate.

In fact, some European capitals clench fists in their pockets, because the penalties the individual economies suffer from the sanctions impose a significant competitive disadvantage: In Italy, the former EU President Romano Prodi warned early on, that they’d produce an economic disaster. The Greeks were always against the sanctions, and could bide time stalling for an extra deal on the bailouts. Justification now: The bankrupt state must now spend additional billions for refugee measures. Hungary is fighting against the EU because of the energy policy [especially gas]. Austria has taken serious damage, which even incited the prudent President of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce to a tantrum. The French have taken a two-pronged approach: They carry the sanctions officially, but deal unofficially with the Russians. Recently there was a French agreement with an aircraft carrier, and in Syria there is an unofficial Russian-French partnership. Even the German economy dares discreetly to be rambunctious against Angela Merkel: the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations stands strictly against the sanctions. However, its chairman Ekkehard Cordes has resigned.Whether the resignation in connection with his criticism of Merkel stands is unclear.

The EU had imposed economic sanctions against Russia in 2014 after the downing of the passenger plane MH17 above Ukraine in July of last year. The sanctions depend on measures against Russian state-owned banks, the import and export of arms, as well as major Russian oil and gas firms.

According to the current situation, sanctions expire at the end of January 2016. The cited reason for the sanctions has been that Russia had shot down the MH17 plane. However, everything indicates that it was instead likely to have been an erroneous firing by the rebels in Ukraine’s east. That’s the basis for having imposed the sanctions. The EU-funded government in Kiev is at least partly to blame, however: They were obligated to close the airspace over the Donbass for civilian flights because of the fighting, but they didn’t do that. And yet the sanctions are only against Russia.

Then, the EU required that a full implementation of the Minsk Agreement would be needed before sanctions would end. This was supposed to occur by 31 December 2015. But recently, among other things the agreed ceasefire had become brittle and the preparations of regional elections that are also required under the Minsk agreement are several months in arrears. Ukraine has launched several provocations, such as the interruption of power supply in the Crimea by neo-Nazi attacks, but this has been ignored by the EU. Also not considered is that Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the rebels vigorously in the early summer, to cease hostilities [despite continuation of attacks by the other side, which the EU also ignores].

Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentilioni is determined that despite the obvious resistance in individual EU member states, the Russian sanctions must be “on the table” at the summit on Thursday and Friday. He expects “no big discussion,” he said, according to AFP. Nobody was against the “punitive measures,” he said. But the summit was to assess where the issue of Minsk stands. If certain countries have additional needs for discussion, it was not a problem. These are rather “technical” issues.

Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) will inform his colleagues, according to diplomats on Monday, on the progress in the implementation of Minsk. After there had been in recent weeks, “significant setbacks” in securing the ceasefire, it was again quiet, he said in Brussels. “We are now focused on the preparation of the legal basis for elections, which will take place next spring.” That is clear, however, “very, very tedious work is ahead”. The sanctions issue was ignored by Steinmeier.

Basically, any EU country could block the sanctions with a veto. But this will probably not happen: In all EU member states either massive economic pressure is exerted, because they are net recipients; or else the states have very weak governments, such as Austria, whose Chancellor Faymann has his back up against the wall because of Austria’s embarrassing crisis management in the refugee issue. All other States will keep themselves covered so as not to fall into Angela Merkel’s firing-line. She is responsible for the renewal of sanctions.

The EU plays in this process an awkward role: it does what the US demands. This week, a traveling extraordinary commissioner is being sent through Europe to “help” persuade recalcitrant members of the EU.

EU President Jean-Claude Juncker lives up to his reputation yet again: using falsehoods as a legitimate weapon: A few weeks ago Juncker had said that the EU should aim for a normalization of relations with Russia. Probably he wanted, by this trick, to win time and lull his critics into a false sense of security.

The timing was chosen deliberately: A few days before Christmas, there are no revolutions in European politics. On several occasions important decisions have been made so that no more time for consultations would be available. Next Monday, the politicians in the EU and in the Member States say goodbye, closed for business during the Christmas holidays.

Concluding Remarks by Eric Zuesse

The December 31st deadline is thus pushed forward toDecember 18th. And, if there still remains a holdout, a veto, by Italy or any other nation, then something will be worked out, some price will be paid, someone will be bought off. The American aristocracy’s war against Russia will not tolerate resistance within the alliance. The members of the gang always stick together. No matter how much the real blame might happen to be on the U.S. and its Ukrainian stooges, and no matter how much Russia might actually be simply responding to their infractions, the gang will hold together. Because, if one member steps out, he’ll be shot. So, the European people are being impoverished, and even attacked by terrorists and flooded with refugees from America’s serial invasions, but Europe’s ‘leaders’ want above all to be ‘leaders’; so, they comply. And that’s the way the world works: it works top-down, nowadays.

The translator, 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.

Translated from: http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2015/12/14/merkel-unter-druck-eu-staaten-leisten-widerstand-gegen-russland-sanktionen/

After 14 people were killed and 22 more injured in the San Bernardino massacre by a couple whom authorities claim were “radicalized” by Islamist ideology, Islamophobia among the American public has seemingly reached a fever pitch. But while many people are fighting back against hateful discrimination against Muslims, many are doing so with a liberal narrative of American values that rationalizes and perpetuates American state violence, while failing to recognize this violence as its own form of extremism. 

Since San Bernardino, hate crimes against Muslims have been widely reported across the country. In one week alone, a hijab-wearing woman was shot at and several mosques firebombed. Additionally, there have been attacks against storeowners, community centers, and civic organizations. Muslims have been intimidated outside their places of worship by armed, right-wing vigilantes.

Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner for the Presidential nomination, whose racist demagoguery has prompted debate over whether he is a fascist, reacted with the most extreme policy proposal of any politician. Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States because of the “dangerous threat” they pose.

One popular way people have been denouncing bigotry against Muslims is through seemingly-progressive stories of American and British soldiers who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan vocally embracing Muslims, despite their experiences on the battlefield and the loss of their friends and fellow servicemen.

In a post on Medium, former US Army soldier David Swan writes an open letter to Muslims in which he states, “I don’t hate you. I don’t fear you. I don’t want you to leave this country.” Swan goes on to say he would like to have Muslims over for a barbecue, to talk about fantasy football, and for their children to play together.

Swan differentiates Muslims that are willing to accept this type of assimilation from”the radical Islamist.” The moderates, he claims, share the American value of being “peace loving.” On the other hand, the Islamists who have been radicalized are “wolves” – irrational, barbaric and inherently violent – who “will not stop killing sheep until they are put down… Please do not blame us for using our staff to protect the flock.”

Radicalism is seen as a virus that can turn normal people into the equivalent of bloodthirsty zombies. The notion that someone’s beliefs – if taken too literally or too seriously – can turn them from a normal person deserving rights into a subhuman is problematic, to say the least. Though it is unsaid, this virus is implicitly understood as unique to Muslims. There is no such popular imagery of radical Christian, Jewish or Mormon death cults.

The United States and its imagined values are seen as impartial and neutral. Swan sees his own actions as purely reactive. The Army was forced to invade and occupy Iraq because the radical Islamists gave them no choice. “We take no joy in killing you, but we will do it because you have forced our hand,” he writes.

Rather than being an innocent bystander simply seeking a peaceful coexistence among nations, the United States has a long, sordid history of bloody interventions and human rights violations across Muslim countries in the Middle East and beyond.

For the last 70 years, the US government has been an active participant in dispossessing Palestinians from their lands, erasing their culture and endangering their very survival as a people. They have enabled the illegal occupation by giving Israel more than $100 billion in military aid, and vetoed 42 UN Security Council resolutions and countless more General Assembly resolutions seeking to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law.

Starting in the early 1950s, the US government meddled in Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi and Iranian politics to prevent moderate nationalist forces who sought to utilize their countries’ natural resources (primarily oil) for the social and economic benefit of their populations.

The US government recruited, armed and trained foreigners and sent them on a mission in the 1980s to go to Afghanistan and fight a Holy War against the “infidels.” Under the Carter Doctrine, the US government declared that the Persian Gulf region was of “vital interest” to the United States, thereby justifying a proliferation of bases in Saudi Arabia and across the Middle East to protect access to petroleum reserves.

The US government invaded Iraq twice, killing hundreds of thousands of people and reducing what was a modern nation with advanced highways, infrastructure, hospitals and cultural sites to crumbling ruins. In the 12 years between illegal invasions of sovereign Iraqi territory, the US enforced horrifyingly deadly sanctions that caused the deaths of 576,000 children. Two UN officials overseeing the sanctions regime resigned when their protests against the inhumanity of the program were ignored. Confronted with the shocking toll of lives lost, a Clinton administration official said “it was worth it.”

Groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS did not form in a vacuum but as a reaction to this historical context . They are not a manifestation of Islamic theology found in texts like the Quran, but of specific social, political and cultural conditions – conditions the United States played no small role in creating. Some people who feel powerless and desperate will inevitably resort to violence against those they see as responsible. While indiscriminate violence is not morally justifiable, it is also not irrational.

Swan’s metaphor of radical Islamists as wolves mercilessly attacking a flock of sheep, detached from any social or political objectives, evokes Edward Said’s description of Islam symbolizing among Westerners “terror, devastation, the demonic, hordes of hated barbarians.”

The argument, when reduced to its simplest form, was clear, it was precise, it was easy to grasp,” Said writes in Orientalism. “There are Westerners, and there are Orientals. The former dominate; the latter must be dominated, which usually means having their land occupied, their internal affairs rigidly controlled, their blood and treasure put at the disposal of one or another Western power.”

While America is imagined as being free of the toxic ideology infecting radical Islamists, the narratives driving the US’s many violent interventions across the Middle East can be seen as a manifestation of Said’s description of Orientalism. The assumption that Muslims acting without reason must be brought under control by more civilized nations is itself a highly ideological position.

As Arun Kundnani explains in The Muslims Are Coming!, the dominant discourse about Muslims has changed since the days after 9/11 when blanket fear of all Muslims was prevalent:

But now, liberals say, we have moved beyond that, and we understand that Muslims in America are just like the rest of us. However, just as in The Russians Are Coming!, the liberal caveat is that Muslims are acceptable when depoliticized: they should be silent about politics, particularly US foreign policy and the domestic national security system, and not embrace an alien ideology that removes them from the liberal norm.

In other words, Muslims should feel free to barbecue and talk about fantasy football. But speaking out against American imperial wars in Muslim countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, questioning whether they are really a battle of good versus evil, would indicate extremist ideology – which, in turn, would suggest a disposition for terrorism.

A former British soldier who lost his leg in the Iraq war writes that despite people expecting him to hate Muslims because of what happened to him he refuses to hold an entire religion responsible for groups and individuals who sought him harm.

This is an admirable sentiment. But it presupposes that the violence against the soldier was more reprehensible than the violence he was himself responsible for. The soldier was a combatant taking part in an illegal war of aggression. The people who took up arms in resistance against him have a legal and moral right to do so, just as he would have a right to defend his own country from a foreign invasion. If people selectively condemn individual Muslims for violence, it should be no surprise that many people will use this to fuel racist stereotypes.

Murderous assaults on hospitals, sadistic torture, “shock and awe” aerial bombardment, and assassinations against unknown targets are terrorism just as much as indiscriminate shooting sprees, suicide bombings or summary executions of hostages. Those seeking to defend Muslims would be well served to question whether their own their own nationalist doctrines help rationalize the plague of state terrorism that the War on Terror has normalized, and which is falsely portrayed as moderate and noble. 

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

El 6 de diciembre de 2015 las elecciones dieron lugar a una clara victoria de la oposición sobre la alianza bolivariana liderada por el Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). La oposición ganó 112 escaños con 58% de los cerca de 74% del electorado que votó. La coalición Bolivariana ganó 55 escaños y obtuvo 42% de los votos. Esto proporciona a la oposición un escaño más que el mínimo necesario para ser declarado como una mayoría de dos tercios: 111. El bloque de 112 asientos tiene 20 escaños más que una mayoría simple. Este saldo propicia que la Asamblea Nacional esté controlada por la oposición.

Al conseguir los dos tercios de la Asamblea Nacional (AN), la oposición podrá aprobar leyes orgánicas, proponer reformas y enmiendas constitucionales, reemplazar a miembros del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (TSJ), el propio Consejo Nacional Electoral y demás poderes públicos; pero únicamente con la aprobación de otros órganos legales. La AN, al instalarse en enero 2016, deberá atenerse a sus facultades y a lo refrendado en la Constitución. El sistema de Venezuela no es parlamentario, sino mixto, pues existe un contrapeso entre los cinco poderes del Estado. La Asamblea no puede remover a otros poderes si no existe un pronunciamiento previo del TSJ, el Poder Ciudadano o la instancia establecida para cada caso. Tampoco debe legislar en contra del principio conocido como progresividad de los derechos humanos, el cual establece que los derechos se mejoran o dejan igual, pero nunca se quitan o limitan.

Esta es la segunda vez desde la elección de Hugo Chávez en 1998 que las fuerzas chavistas pierden una elección. El 6 de diciembre fue el número 20 de las elecciones desde 1998. Hubo votación pacífica en las urnas el 6 de diciembre. Esto fue seguido por los resultados y la aceptación inmediata de ellos por Nicolás Maduro. El respeto por los resultados nunca estuvo en duda. ¿Qué indica esto? Indica una vez más que el sistema electoral venezolano, como tal, es justo y uno de los mejores del mundo. Es una prueba para que el mundo vea que el sistema electoral es sólido y transparente. En este sentido es una supuesta “victoria.”

Sin embargo, es una victoria pírrica. Esto es así porque parece que no se puede declarar que ha sido una victoria para la democracia. El sistema electoral como tal es un proceso legal. Eso es una cosa, mientras que el concepto de democracia es algo más. La democracia no se puede evaluar en abstracto. La democracia en el contexto venezolano significa el poder político del pueblo en una Venezuela soberana e independiente frente a los intentos imperialistas de Estados Unidos por controlar el país de Bolívar, una vez más.

¿Quién y qué fuerzas representan el poder político de este pueblo? Es la alianza política encabezada por el PSUV. Lo más importante, el poder popular surge del concepto de que el poder político reside en las manos del pueblo. De este emanan todos los demás poderes consagrados en la Constitución de Venezuela: “La soberanía reside intransferiblemente en el pueblo, quien la ejerce directamente en la forma prevista en esta Constitución y en la ley, e indirectamente, mediante el sufragio, por los órganos que ejercen el Poder Público. Los órganos del Estado emanan de la soberanía popular y a ella están sometidos” (Artículo 5). Por tanto, la situación es muy complicada para la oposición y para la revolución.

La democracia hoy día se basa en aproximadamente 42% del electorado. Se votó, en general, a favor de continuar la Revolución Bolivariana. Por otra parte, la jornada electoral es, por esta fuerza Bolivariana, un solo día en su continua y diaria lucha por los derechos sociales, económicos, culturales y políticos de los humildes y otros. El día de la votación es solo una parte de la democracia participativa que los líderes de Venezuela, Chávez y Maduro, se han esforzado por desarrollar. De hecho, es un éxito en la medida en que los nuevos experimentos en la democracia participativa en Venezuela constituyen una base para su desarrollo, incluso desde el 6 de diciembre. Esto es así a pesar de sus deficiencias, que la nueva situación tiene que enfrentar. Todavía ofrece lecciones para otros países también.

Sin embargo, esta fuerza en favor del poder popular o la democracia tiene en su contra a los que tratan de dar marcha atrás en la historia reciente de Venezuela desde diciembre de 1998. Por tanto, fue una gran derrota para la democracia. La oposición lo es ferozmente contra la Revolución Bolivariana y en favor de la oligarquía venezolana, y de mayor penetración y de control por parte de Estados Unidos. Esto es una violación flagrante de la democracia. No obstante, la oposición ganó fácilmente.

Sin embargo, la fuerza democrática de millones de revolucionarios venezolanos se ha convertido, incluso hoy día, en una fuerza material. En ciertas condiciones, la conciencia se puede convertir en una fuerza material. No son solo las ideas. La Revolución Bolivariana se ha convertido en una fuerza material detectable. A pesar de que sus números han caído drásticamente sigue siendo una fuerza sólida a pesar de ser la minoría. Muchos de los que están dentro y fuera de Venezuela que apoyan a la Revolución Bolivariana, no piensan muy bien de aquellos que entre los sectores más humildes de la sociedad votaron por la oposición. Este sentimiento es normal y justificado.

No obstante, existe la otra cara de la moneda. Mientras secciones importantes en la base fueron engañadas por la guerra mediática contra los chavistas, eso también pone de relieve otra cosa. Los que no fueron engañados, se pusieron de pie muy fuerte y resistieron al terrorismo mediático. Significa que esos millones de venezolanos, ahora en minoría, deben considerarse más sólidos que nunca. Tienen que ser apreciados más ahora que antes del 6 de diciembre. Su opción de ese día representa una resistencia heroica a todas las fuerzas venezolanas e internacionales que tienen como blanco la Revolución Bolivariana en un intento de enterrarla. El 6 de diciembre no es ni siquiera un clavo en el ataúd de la revolución. La revolución no está muerta.

La Revolución Bolivariana como portador de la democracia en Venezuela es una democracia en movimiento. Tiene sus altibajos. El 6 de diciembre la recesión grave desafió las fuerzas revolucionarias para innovar y mejorar aún más la idea de que la soberanía reside intransferiblemente en el pueblo. Su primera tarea es resistir todos los intentos de hacer retroceder las conquistas de su revolución, como Maduro ha señalado. En cuanto a los que votaron por la oposición, pero no debían haberlo hecho, también pueden aprender con el ejemplo positivo de la democracia en el movimiento en las calles, barrios, centros de trabajo y educativos. Esto está destinado a contrastar con su experiencia frente a las fuerzas de la oposición, que ahora controlan la Asamblea Nacional.

En comparación con esta fuerza material compacta, basada en una ideología clara templada en la batalla desde el año 1998, ¿qué representa hoy día la oposición? Es una mezcla de diferentes perspectivas y clases. Coalición inestable, se basa ante todo en los decididos esfuerzos de la oligarquía y de su ideología basada en el capitalismo y la dependencia de los EE.UU. Ese frentre es relativamente sólido y no va a cambiar de manera significativa hasta que finalmente sea derrocado por un mayor desarrollo de la Revolución Bolivariana.

Por otro lado, las fuerzas de la base que se adhirieron de forma tan masiva por primera vez a la oligarquía el 6 de diciembre, lo hicieron por varias razones, que provienen principalmente de la guerra económica y la guerra mediática, lideradas por los EE.UU. y sus aliados. Estas fuerzas probablemente no votaron todas a “castigar” al gobierno de Maduro. Muchos fueron bastante animados por una insatisfacción general resultante de la guerra económica, lo cual se materializó en una esperanza vaga, buscando alivio, por ejemplo, contra las siete y más horas de cola para satisfacer necesidades básicas y pagar precios cada vez más altos.

La oportunista alianza electoral no es rival a largo plazo para las fuerzas de la Revolución Bolivariana, que tiene una gran responsabilidad en este momento. Está, por supuesto, la situación interna. Sin embargo, el 6 de diciembre es también un desafío directo a mantener, o desarrollar aún más, la integración regional de América Latina y el Caribe, uno de los grandes legados de Hugo Chávez. También es una amenaza para la cooperación internacional, como PetroCaribe, que se basa en el uso de la industria petrolera para el pueblo de Venezuela y los países vecinos. Ante esto, es también un desafío para el nuevo desarrollo del mundo multipolar en la resistencia al mundo unipolar liderado por los EE.UU.

¿Puede la Revolución Bolivariana enfrentar con éxito estos grandes retos nacionales e internacionales? A largo plazo sí. Diecisiete años es un período relativamente corto en una revolución que se está desarrollando de forma continua. No se puede subestimar la base venezolana. Después de todo, aunque en condiciones complemente diferentes, esta incipiente democracia en movimiento fue en gran parte responsable de la derrota del golpe de Estado inspirado por Estados Unidos en 2002 contra Hugo Chávez. El Comandante fue llevado de vuelta al poder y la democracia reinstalada en su mayor parte por las masas en la calle.

Arnold August

En días recientes se anunció (ver nota  de prensa) que la Corte Internacional de Justicia (CIJ) dará a conocer su veredicto el próximo 16 de diciembre entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua (ver comunicado oficial  de la CIJ en inglés). Tratándose de un momento anhelado desde varios años por ambos ribereños del río San Juan, en particular por sus respectivos aparatos diplomáticos, nos ha parecido oportuno precisar brevemente el alcance así como las expectativas que genera este anuncio, no sin antes proceder a situar brevemente el origen de esta controversia entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua desde la perspectiva del derecho internacional. Recordemos que con la demanda interpuesta en febrero del 2014 por Costa Rica contra Nicaragua por la delimitación en ambos océanos, son tres las demandas ante la CIJ  acumuladas en tres años y medio (noviembre 2010- febrero 2014), lo cual constituye en sí un hito nunca alcanzado con anterioridad por dos Estados ante los estrados de la justicia internacional.

Mapa de la “trocha fronteriza” y rutas de acceso al río San Juan habilitados por Costa Rica. Documento oficial presentado en Casa Presidencial (Costa Rica). A la derecha, Isla Portillos (circulo en rojo realizado por el autor ya que no se distingue mayormente en razón de la escala usada)

Dos demandas en un fallo

El fallo de la CIJ a dictaminarse este próximo 16 de diciembre responde a dos demandas distintas: la demanda interpuesta por Costa Rica contra Nicaragua (en noviembre del 2010) y la de Nicaragua contra Costa Rica (presentada en diciembre del 2011).

La primera demanda encuentra su origen en un inédito error de posicionamiento de Nicaragua en Isla Portillos, el cual nunca fue asumido como tal por parte de Nicaragua, pese a la inmediata rectificación de Google Earth al percatarse del trazado equivocado del último segmento de la frontera en sus mapas digitales (ver  nota  de La Nación del 6/11/2010). La referencia a Google Earth reviste importancia en la medida en que fue la razón dada inicialmente por los encargados del dragado realizado por Nicaragua en el último segmento de este río fronterizo  para justificar su ubicación en Isla Portillos. Se leyó en medios de prensa (ver  nota de La Nación del 4/11/2010): “Vea la foto satelital de Google y ahí se ve la frontera. En los últimos 3.000 metros las dos márgenes son de Nicaragua”.

Cabe también señalar la negligencia de las autoridades costarricenses de la época con relación a advertencias hechas por diputados de oposición (ver por ejemplo intervención del diputado Claudio Monge citando varias cartas enviadas en agosto y en octubre del 2010 al Poder Ejecutivo sobre incursiones de Nicaragua en zonas aledañas a Finca Aragón, en acta de la Asamblea Legislativa del 24/09/2013, pp.27-31 disponible  aquí ). En noviembre del 2010, Costa Rica presentó oficialmente su demanda contra Nicaragua ante la CIJ (ver  texto  de la demanda).

Es la primera vez que un error cartográfico de Google Earth desata una crisis diplomática entre dos Estados. Y es la primera vez en la historia de la justicia internacional que un incidente fronterizo de esta naturaleza termina en manos de la CIJ, siendo examinado por esta última como una clásica controversia territorial entre dos Estados vecinos.

La segunda demanda, interpuesta por Nicaragua, se relaciona con la “Ruta 1856” denominada popularmente (y no tan popularmente según se puede apreciar escuchando a las autoridades de ambos Estados) como “trocha fronteriza”: se trata de una ruta de más de 154 kilómetros construida por Costa Rica a partir de mediados del 2011 sin estudios de ningún tipo, entre Puesto Delta y Los Chiles, y que bordea el río San Juan a escasos metros durante su recorrido. Como se recordará, a mediados del 2011, la prensa de Costa Rica se hizo eco de un proyecto de construcción de una ruta paralela al río San Juan y a parte de la frontera terrestre, en condiciones irregulares (Nota 1). Oficialmente, esta ruta se justificó como respuesta a la “invasión” y a la “agresión” sufrida por Costa Rica en octubre del 2010 (las comillas usadas por el autor obedecen al hecho que, desde la perspectiva del derecho internacional, lo ocurrido en Isla Portillos no califica sino como una incursión y una ocupación ilegal del territorio costarricense). La ausencia de estudios en materia ambiental se justificó por parte de las autoridades en razón de la “emergencia” decretada como tal en marzo del 2011 mediante Decreto Ejecutivo 36440 MP: este último fue objeto de un recurso de inconstitucionalidad ante la Sala Constitucional de Costa Rica en el 2012, por su carácter desproporcional e irracional, y fue rechazado “ad portas” de forma inusualmente expedita por un juez constitucional al parecer un tanto tembloroso (Nota 2).

En diciembre del 2011, Nicaragua presentó a la CIJ una demanda formal contra Costa Rica por la construcción de esta ruta paralela al Río San Juan y a parte de la frontera terrestre (ver texto de la demanda). Como tuvimos la oportunidad de precisarlo: “Esta demanda, presentada por Nicaragua el 21 de diciembre “viene a “acompañar” de una manera muy sutil la demanda inicial de Costa Rica contra Nicaragua, ante la CIJ, por el dragado del 2010, con una clara intención: la de desacreditar todos los argumentos esgrimidos por Costa Rica (en el caso del dragado) basados en consideraciones de tipo ambiental”.

En una entrevista realizada por el Semanario Universidad a reconocidos ecologistas  costarricenses, en enero del 2012, uno de ellos (ver  artículo ) advirtió: “Es claro que se le han dado armas a Nicaragua para que contraataque”, mientras que otro apunto que “nadie en el Gobierno está brindando información confiable sobre la construcción de la obra”.  Sobre este último punto, la nebulosa se ha mantenido  (y se sigue manteniendo, salvo error de nuestra parte) sobre los verdaderos responsables de sugerir la construcción de la denominada “trocha”, llamada a convertirse (según todo pareciera indicar) en una verdadera criatura sin padre (Nota 3). El Semanario Universidad “apuntó” según una nota de mayo del 2012 hacia el edificio de Casa Presidencial, pero sin lograr identificar a los funcionarios responsables de proponer esta peculiar iniciativa. En el 2013, los tribunales desestimaron una acción por presunta difamación interpuesta contra una periodista por dos altos funcionarios de la administración de Laura Chinchilla, quiénes se sintieron ofendidos al ver su nombre aparecer en un reportaje sobre la trocha (ver nota de prensa). En una obra colectiva publicada por la Universidad Nacional (UNA) en el año 2014 sobre cooperación transfronteriza (ver texto integral de esta  publicación ), nos permitimos escribir (p.121) que: “Estamos, por tanto, en presencia de un vasto proyecto denominado incluso como “prioritario” por la actual administración de la presidenta Laura Chinchilla, pero sin que, a la fecha, se tenga claridad sobre quién(es) ordenó(aron) su construcción, lo cual, en nuestra modesta opinión, no deja de sorprender profundamente”.

Como es sabido, a petición de Nicaragua, y pese a las objeciones de Costa Rica, la CIJ decidió en forma unánime unir ambos procedimientos contenciosos en uno solo en una ordenanza del mes de abril del 2013. Dicha ordenanza tampoco cuenta con precedente alguno en la jurisprudencia de la CIJ, ya que en casos anteriores, la unión de procedimientos se hizo siempre a petición de ambos contrincantes, y no de uno (Nota 4).

Un fallo precedido por una inédita batalla procesal

Con relación a aspectos propiamente procesales relacionados con estas dos demandas, Costa Rica y Nicaragua han recurrido a diversos incidentes procesales, librando una batalla que tampoco cuenta con precedentes en la historia de la justicia internacional. Para mejor apreciar la intensidad de esta justa procesal, la comparación con otro caso (igualmente devastador para las relaciones bilaterales) entre Argentina y Uruguay se impone: el caso de las plantas de celulosas en el Río Uruguay (2006-2010). En ese caso, la CIJ dictaminó un total de cuatro providencias, a saber: dos ordenanzas sobre plazos para presentación de escritos, una ordenanza con relación a medidas provisionales solicitadas por Argentina con fecha del 13 de julio del 2006 (ver  texto ) y una ordenanza con relación a medidas provisionales solicitadas por Uruguay del 23 de enero del 2007 (ver  texto ).

En cambio, Costa Rica y Nicaragua han protagonizado un ejercicio inédito entre el 2011 y el 2014, que ya tuvimos la oportunidad de detallar en una  nota  anterior publicada en abril del 2015 en el sitio de Derechoaldia, y que de manera muy sucinta quisiéramos recordar en cuanto al número de ordenanzas dictaminadas por la CIJ:

El 8 de marzo del 2011: la CIJ ordena medidas provisionales, en la que declara “zona en conflicto” el sector de Isla Portillos, solicitando a ambos Estados retirarse de ella y no agravar con su conducta la situación. Para mitigar daños ambientales, la CIJ autoriza a Costa Rica a ingresar en la zona informando a Nicaragua y bajo supervisión de la Secretaría Ramsar. La CIJ no ordena la suspensión de la operación del dragado a Nicaragua, tal como lo solicitaba Costa Rica (ver texto de la  ordenanza  del 8/3/2011).

El 5 de abril del 2011, la CIJ  fija el plazo de presentación de los escritos de cada una de las partes: Costa Rica sugiere que este plazo sea de 6 meses, Nicaragua de 12 meses, y la CIJ decide fijarlo a 9 meses, debiendo presentar su memoria Costa Rica el 5 de diciembre del 2011, y Nicaragua su contra memoria el 6 de agosto del 2012 (ver  texto  de ordenanza del 5/04/2011 de la CIJ).

En enero del 2012, y con la anuencia de ambos Estados, la CIJ  fija el plazo de presentación de los escritos para la segunda demanda, debiendo presentar su memoria Nicaragua el 19 de diciembre del 2012, y Costa Rica su contra memoria el 19 de diciembre del 2013 (ver  texto  de ordenanza del 23/1/2012 de la CIJ).

En abril del 2013, la CIJ adopta una ordenanza mediante la cual rechaza dos de las cuatro demandas reconvencionales presentadas por Nicaragua y acepta unir ambos procedimientos en uno solo (ver  texto  de ordenanza del 1/4/2013 de la CIJ sobre medidas reconvencionales solicitadas por Nicaragua y  texto  de ordenanza del 17/03/2013 de la CIJ sobre unión de ambos casos). 

En julio del 2013, la CIJ adopta una ordenanza en la que rechaza una solicitud hecha por Costa Rica y por Nicaragua de modificar, cada uno por razones distintas, el texto de la ordenanza del 8 de marzo del 2011 (ver   texto  de la ordenanza de la CIJ del 17/07/2013).

El 22 de noviembre del 2013, la CIJ  ordena a Nicaragua medidas provisionales con relación a  dos nuevos “caños” detectados en Isla Portillos  en setiembre del 2013 a partir de tomas satelitales brindadas por Colombia a Costa Rica (ver  texto  de ordenanza del 22/11/2013).

El 13 de diciembre del 2013, en virtud de las garantías dadas por Costa Rica de no reiniciar las obras de la “trocha fronteriza” hasta “finales del 2014 o en el transcurso del 2015” (Nota 5), la CIJ considera innecesario ordenar a Costa Rica medidas provisionales que solicitaba Nicaragua para suspender los trabajos en la denominada “trocha fronteriza” (ver  texto  de ordenanza del 13/12/2013).

El 3 de febrero del 2014, la CIJ  fija el plazo de una segunda ronda de escritos a cada una de las partes en el caso de la demanda de Nicaragua contra Costa Rica: mientras Nicaragua solicita 10 meses para elaborar su segundo escrito, Costa Rica considera innecesario una segunda ronda escrita. La CIJ decide establecer una segunda vuelta de alegatos escritos, otorgando 6 meses de plazo a cada una de las partes, debiendo presentar su réplica Nicaragua el 4 de agosto del 2014 y su dúplica Costa Rica el 2 de febrero del 2015 (ver  texto  de ordenanza del 3/02/2014 de la CIJ fijando estos plazos).

A esta larga lista habría que añadir las distintas audiencias orales celebradas en La Haya que precedieron varias de estas ordenanzas. Esta resumida lista puede explicar el cansancio observado en la mirada somnolienta de algunos jueces de la CIJ, al asistir de manera reiterada en un mismo año a audiencias entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua, al tener que elaborar (de forma igualmente reiterada) ordenanzas para intentar calmar los ánimos de ambos, sin observar mayor progreso en sus relaciones bilaterales. En algún momento de esta inusual contienda, la CIJ dejó ver su indisposición y hasta externó – a su manera- su enojo ante la conducta de ambos Estados (ver nuestra modesta  nota  publicada al respecto). Se trata de una apreciación del juez internacional que bien podría dejarse nuevamente entrever en el fallo sobre el fondo a leerse este próximo 16 de diciembre.

El plazo del “délibéré” de la CIJ

Tuvimos la oportunidad de analizar el momento procesal en el que se realizaron las últimas audiencias orales celebradas en el 2015 en el sitio jurídico de Derechoaldia (ver  nota ). Como es sabido, concluidas las audiencias orales, la CIJ se retira e inicia sus deliberaciones. No existen criterios claros para explicar la duración del plazo del délibéré, correspondiente al tiempo transcurrido entre el final de las audiencias orales y la lectura del fallo de la CIJ. Podemos inferir que depende en alguna medida del grado de dificultad del fallo a elaborar, del nivel de acuerdo (o de desacuerdo) imperante entre los tres miembros del Comité de Redacción de la decisión, y de la capacidad de este Comité de Redacción de recoger las opiniones de los quince jueces de la CIJ (cuyo número aumenta en caso de ser designados dos jueces ad hoc por cada una de las partes, como es el caso de las demandas pendientes de resolución entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua). La discordia interna del órgano colegial se deja usualmente entrever en las declaraciones y opiniones disidentes de los jueces, que vienen adjuntos al fallo de la CIJ. En algunas pocas ocasiones, un Presidente de la CIJ persuasivo pudo lograr que un fallo de la CIJ solo diera lugar al voto disidente o separado de los dos jueces ad hoc nombrados por cada Estado. No obstante,  la tendencia observada en años recientes es a externar de manera cada vez más ruidosa la disonancia interna del órgano colegial: así por ejemplo, el fallo del 27 de enero del 2014 entre Chile y Perú (ver  texto  de la sentencia de 73 páginas) viene acompañado, según se lee, de las siguientes opiniones y declaraciones, en la que participan, de manera individual o colectiva, nueve de los quince integrantes titulares de la CIJ, sin hablar de ambos jueces ad hoc (con un ejercicio bastante original realizado por parte del juez ad hoc chileno Francisco Orrego Vicuña): “MM. les juges TOMKA, président, et SEPÚLVEDA-AMOR, vice-président, joignent des déclarations à l’arrêt ; M. le juge OWADA joint à l’arrêt l’exposé de son opinion individuelle ; M. le juge SKOTNIKOV joint une déclaration à l’arrêt ; Mme la juge XUE, MM. les juges GAJA et BHANDARI ainsi que M. le juge ad hoc ORREGO VICUÑA joignent à l’arrêt l’exposé de leur opinion dissidente commune ; Mme la juge DONOGHUE et M. le juge GAJA joignent des déclarations à l’arrêt ; Mme la juge SEBUTINDE joint à l’arrêt l’exposé de son opinion dissidente ; M. le juge ad hoc GUILLAUME joint une déclaration à l’arrêt ; M. le juge ad hoc ORREGO VICUÑA joint à l’arrêt l’exposé de son opinion individuelle en partie concordante et en partie dissidente“.

La práctica del “délibéré” de la CIJ

Una breve lista de casos relativos a la región latinoamericana permite arrojar algunas luces sobre la delicada labor que significa redactar un texto en un órgano colegial tan complejo como la CIJ. Por ejemplo, la regla de los seis meses para elaborar, discutir y acordar una versión definitiva del fallo se dio para el fallo del 19 de noviembre del 2012 entre Nicaragua y Colombia (último día de audiencias el 4 de mayo del 2012), el fallo del 20 de abril del 2010 entre Argentina y Uruguay (último día de audiencias el 1 de octubre del 2009), el fallo entre Nicaragua y Honduras del 8 de octubre del 2007 (último día de audiencias el 23 de marzo del 2007). Al contrario, y por razones poco claras, la Corte recortó el plazo a cuatro meses para dar a conocer su decisión en el caso del fallo del 13 de julio del 2009 entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua (últimas audiencias celebradas el 12 de marzo del 2009): es el “délibéré” más corto en la historia de la CIJ, que ha dado a lugar, según especialistas, a una de las peores sentencias jamás redactadas por el juez internacional (Nota 6). En algunos casos, la disonancia interna puede explicar que, por ejemplo, peruanos y chilenos esperaran trece meses para leer las 74 páginas del antes mencionado fallo del 27 de enero del 2014.  En otros casos, con un nivel de complejidad mucho mayor, este plazo se extendió a quince meses, como en el caso del fallo de la CIJ entre Honduras y El Salvador del 11 de septiembre de 1992 (últimas audiencias celebradas el 14 de junio de 1991): cabe recordar que se trató de un fallo dictaminado por una Sala Ad Hoc de la CIJ compuesta por tan solo tres jueces titulares y dos jueces ad hoc. También podemos referir al plazo inusual de nueve meses para redactar el fallo del 27 de junio de 1986 entre Nicaragua y Estados Unidos (último día de audiencias celebrado el 20 de septiembre de 1985). En aquella oportunidad, la CIJ debió elaborar su fallo con base en lo escuchado y leído por una sola parte, ya que Estados Unidos optó por no comparecer después de que la CIJ se declarara competente en 1984: la redacción de este tipo de sentencias puede a veces resultar mucho más ardua para los jueces de la CIJ, en la medida en que deben intentar prever qué hubiera podido alegar el Estado que optó por no comparecer.

Las audiencias orales que constituyen la última etapa procesal entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua se celebraron entre el 14 de abril y el 1ero de mayo del 2015, por lo que el plazo del délibéré esta vez por la CIJ es un plazo de más de siete meses. Considerando el ejercicio intensivo al que ambos Estados sometieron al juez internacional en los últimos años, se puede considerar que se trata de un plazo que no tiene nada de inusual.

Las solicitudes hechas por cada Estado:

Al presentar la demanda inicial, el Estado  precisa cuáles son las peticiones que hace al juez internacional. En la contra memoria escrita, se aprecian los descargos sobre cada uno de ellas por parte del demandado, que concluye su escrito con sus propias peticiones. Concluida la fase escrita, en la que los Estados optan usualmente por mantener sus argumentos iniciales y ampliarlos, añadiendo algunos nuevos, se procede a la segunda etapa de  las audiencias orales. Esta etapa reviste mayor interés para los juristas y para los estrategas legales, ya que en ella se van distinguiendo con mucha mayor claridad los argumentos principales de los accesorios en forma definitiva (variando a veces la estrategia inicial en función de los contraargumentos oídos por el contrincante en esta etapa del procedimiento). A mayor variación, mayor es el riesgo asumido, ya que la inconsistencia es inmediatamente capitalizada por el adversario. En efecto,  como lo indicábamos en las conclusiones en una  modesta nota  editada con un juego de mapas en el sitio de  la Maestría de Derecho Ambiental de la Facultad de Derecho de la UCR, “…, la mecánica propia de la CIJ obliga a los Estados a un esfuerzo mucho mayor, que incluye no solamente el reunir argumentos legales sólidos, sino el constituir un equipo de asesores internacionales de renombre capaces de transmitir y de convencer a los jueces de la CIJ. Parte de la labor de estos asesores consiste también en detectar inconsistencias del contrincante: puede tratarse de inconsistencias entre las distintas posiciones defendidas durante el mismo procedimiento; o bien entre los argumentos jurídicos defendidos antes los jueces por los asesores legales y las declaraciones oficiales de las autoridades del Estado; o bien de contradicciones por parte de los peritos presentados a los jueces por el adversario; o bien de simples descuidos del contrincante que suelen ser aprovechados. A mayor inconsistencia detectada, mayor es la posibilidad de generar una duda y convencer a los jueces de la debilidad del argumento esgrimido por la otra parte“.

Con relación a la primera demanda, las pretensiones finales de Costa Rica se encuentran en las páginas 64 y subsiguientes del  acta  de las audiencias celebradas el 28/04/2015, mientras que las pretensiones finales de Nicaragua se encuentran en las páginas 59 y subsiguientes de la  última acta  de audiencias celebradas el 29/04/2015. Con relación a la segunda demanda, las pretensiones finales Nicaragua figuran en las páginas 64 y siguientes del  acta  del 30/04/2015 y las de Costa Rica figuran en páginas 47 y subsiguientes del  acta  de la audiencia celebrada el 1/05/2015. En el texto de la sentencia de la CIJ a ser leído este próximo 16 de diciembre, cada una de las distintas pretensiones invocadas por ambos Estados en sus conclusiones finales debería encontrar alguna respuesta por parte de la CIJ;  a menos que esta última no las considere pertinentes por alguna razón, y en ese caso, explique porqué las rechazó. Parte del trabajo de los equipos de cada Estado a cargo de comunicar los resultados del fallo a su opinión pública consiste en tabular el fallo de la CIJ en función de los argumentos presentados por la otra parte que fueron rechazados por el juez internacional, de manera a poner el acento en los logros obtenidos. Presentar ante la opinión las peticiones concedidas por la CIJ y no mencionar las que no lo fueron es otra técnica a la que se puede recurrir. Así por ejemplo, al recibir el fallo de la CIJ en el año 2009 por el asunto de los derechos de navegación en río Río San Juan, el comunicado oficial de Costa Rica (ver texto completo) indicaba: “Costa Rica recibe con suma complacencia el fallo histórico que favorece los derechos de navegación en el Río San Juan consagrados en instrumentos internacionales, según ratificó hoy la Corte Internacional de Justicia (CIJ). Costa Rica recibe con beneplácito la sentencia de la Corte que representa la plena recuperación de derechos que tendrán una clara y positiva incidencia en el quehacer diario de los habitantes de la zona. De los nueve puntos que en su demanda contra Nicaragua Costa Rica elevó a conocimiento, el Alto Tribunal concedió prácticamente la mayoría de ellos: siete”.

El balance del juez internacional

Con relación al contenido mismo del fallo a dictaminarse este próximo 16 de diciembre en La Haya, la CIJ usualmente busca siempre la manera de suavizar los efectos de su decisión, rechazando las pretensiones que considera abusivas, y estableciendo un sutil equilibrio entre todas las demás. Ello explica que ambos contendores ante sus respectivas opiniones públicas se declaren casi siempre “victoriosos” en las primeras horas y días. Se trata de una particularidad del juez internacional de La Haya, que se explica por el hecho que, además de interpretar y de aplicar una norma, busca la mejor manera de pacificar las relaciones entre los Estados.  No se trata solamente de evitar que el resultado final agrave la situación entre ambos Estados, sino también el de ofrecer a ambos un espacio de tiempo propicio para que se envíen señales en aras de normalizar sus relaciones. Este aspecto cobra mayor relevancia cuando se trata de asuntos territoriales entre Estados vecinos, y es usual que los mandatarios de ambos Estados se reúnan oficialmente semanas después de la lectura de un fallo de la CIJ. Así lo hicieron, por ejemplo, los Presidentes de Argentina y Uruguay en abril del 2010 (ver nota de prensa) o de Perú y Chile en febrero del 2014 (ver nota de prensa), entre muchos otros.

Declaraciones previas recientes

Mientras que en los últimos meses, no se ha escuchado mayor comentario por parte de las máximas autoridades de Nicaragua (siendo las últimas declaraciones registradas, salvo error de nuestra parte, las de su Canciller en abril del 2015, con ocasión de las audiencias orales – ver nota ), en Costa Rica, el tema sí ha sido objeto de declaraciones oficiales. Por ejemplo, 15 días después de concluidas las audiencias orales, se publicó una entrevista  en Costa Rica al jefe de su diplomacia con valoraciones sobre los argumentos presentados por Nicaragua. En declaraciones más recientes dadas a la prensa sobre la lectura del fallo, el Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Costa Rica indicó el pasado 10 de Noviembre del 2015 (ver nota) que: “Aquí vamos a tener una situación que si nosotros ganamos, frente a ellos perdemos, porque van a estar ‘majados’, pero si perdemos evidentemente va a ser negativo. Lo importante será como reaccionemos nosotros: tampoco tenemos una disposición de agarrar la sentencia y restregársela en la cara, tenemos que ser cautos pero también muy firmes“. Unos pocos días después de ser publicadas estas declaraciones, Nicaragua decidió cerrar el paso a migrantes cubanos en tránsito por Costa Rica en el puesto fronterizo de Peñas Blancas (ver  nota  de prensa), situación que, a la fecha, se mantiene como tal.

Expectativas diversas

Este 16 de diciembre constituye sin lugar a dudas una fecha esperada desde mucho tiempo por parte de Costa Rica y de Nicaragua. Extrañamente, y sin que hayan trascendido mayores detalles sobre la escogencia de la fecha, será precedido por un encuentro entre las selecciones de fútbol de ambos Estados (según se lee en esta  nota  de prensa), a realizarse en Costa Rica.

Para los académicos y los juristas, se trata de una esperada fecha en la que podrán apreciar si la estrategia seguida por cada Estado se ajusta o no a la interpretación que hará el juez internacional. Al tratarse además de un caso en el que los argumentos en materia ambiental fueron una y otra vez invocados por ambos contendores, la controversia entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua reviste especial interés, para todos los juristas especializados en esta área precisa del derecho internacional: la sentencia de la CIJ permitirá saber si el juez internacional supo aprovechar esta ocasión para reafirmar y consolidar como reglas consuetudinarias algunos de los principios evocados ante él y precisar sus alcances; también permitirá saber si la CIJ encontró la manera de saldar la deuda con las reglas en materia de protección del ambiente aplicables a dos Estados ribereños, adquirida con ocasión de su fallido fallo entre Argentina y Uruguay en el año 2010 (Nota 7).

Para los decisores políticos, se trata de una fecha que reviste una importancia mucho mayor: en ocasiones recientes, el nerviosismo se ha hecho evidente de cara a una decisión de la CIJ o incluso de audiencias orales. Recordemos por ejemplo que en las vísperas del inicio de las audiencias orales entre Bolivia y Chile en La Haya en el mes de mayo del 2015, las autoridades de ambos Estados intercambiaron duros mensajes con relación al calificativo de “agentes de inteligencia” a periodistas chilenos en La Paz por parte del Jefe de Estado boliviano (ver  nota de Telam). Este episodio trae a la memoria la innecesaria tensión entre Perú y Chile que provocaron insinuaciones (igualmente innecesarias) sobre la filtración del texto de la sentencia de la CIJ, días antes de darse lectura al fallo de la CIJ a inicios del año 2014: remitimos al lector a nuestra modesta  nota  editada en Tribuglobal al respecto publicada en enero del 2014.

Ante el nerviosismo que impera en los días que preceden la lectura de un fallo de la CIJ, la mesura y la cordura siempre se deberían considerar como las mejores consejeras, en aras de apreciar mejor el delicado balance y equilibrio que el juez internacional buscará posiblemente establecer en su fallo. Se trata de un espacio de tiempo que los Estados deben saber aprovechar en aras de recuperar paulatinamente sus relaciones bilaterales, profundamente deterioradas después de años de procedimientos en La Haya y de discursos enardecidos por parte de sus autoridades.

Conclusión

Desde la perspectiva del derecho internacional, el espectáculo protagonizado por ambos ribereños del río San Juan no cuenta con precedente Ninguna “dupla conflictiva”, por más conflictiva sea, ha hecho un uso tan recurrente a la justicia internacional como Costa Rica y Nicaragua: en tres años y medio, tres demandas planteadas. Si añadimos la demanda presentada por Costa Rica en el septiembre del 2005 contra Nicaragua sobre derechos de navegación y derechos conexos, cuyos resultados no fueron tan favorables para los cuerpos de policía de Costa Rica (Nota 8), sumamos 4 demandas en ocho años y medio, con un promedio de prácticamente una demanda cada dos años.  Si bien ambos Estados han externado (de manera aproximativa) que sus gastos no superan los 5 a 7 millones de US$  para cada demanda, un dato reciente del gasto ocasionado a las finanzas públicas en Chile por la única demanda peruana (ver  nota  de prensa) reviste un dato de más de 20 millones de US$ que tal vez incite a algunos a exigir mayores detalles sobre lo gastado en Costa Rica y en Nicaragua en estos últimos años. En Costa Rica, recientemente, se hizo saber que: “A lo largo del primer juicio, estos especialistas en materia limítrofe cobraron al país $1 por sus servicios profesionales” (ver  nota  de CRHoy) un dato verdaderamente curioso que nos ha parecido oportuno mencionar.

Más allá de los promedios alcanzados ante la CIJ y de las cifras sobre el costo real de cada demanda para cada Estado (Nota 9), esta recurrencia a remitir cualquier divergencia a la CIJ evidencia una total incapacidad para resolver mediante los canales diplomáticos y la negociación, asuntos de interés mutuo entre Estados vecinos. Desde este punto de vista, la lectura de un fallo de la CIJ también puede verse como una ocasión que ofrece el juez internacional para ambos aparatos diplomáticos. Tuvimos la oportunidad de sugerir (ver nuestra breve nota  publicada en La Nación) que la ordenanza dictaminada el 8 de marzo del 2011 por la CIJ ofrecía un espacio propicio para reanudar canales diplomáticos: “de cada lado del río San Juan se oyeron insistentes cantos de sirena mañaneros, consecuencia casi “natural” de las decisiones salomónicas de la CIJ. Sin embargo, una vez pasados unos días, ambos Estados deberán de buscar los mecanismos para reiniciar poco a poco una relación más armoniosa en sus deterioradas relaciones. Las declaraciones oficiales que busquen recuperar esta armonía serán, sin lugar a dudas, de gran ayuda en las próximas horas, en la que la mesura y la prudencia deberían prevalecer entre las autoridades de ambos Estados”. En aquella ocasión del 2011, ambos Estados desaprovecharon la oportunidad brindada por el juez internacional: a pocas horas de dictaminada la ordenanza de la CIJ del 8 de marzo del 2011, el Ministro de Seguridad  de Costa Rica refirió a “informes de inteligencia” (a la fecha no divulgados) sobre un posible minado en Isla Portillos por parte de Nicaragua (ver  nota  de prensa). Los analistas y observadores descubrirían días después que el 7 de marzo del 2011 (es decir, 24 horas antes de leerse la ordenanza por parte de la CIJ) se había publicado en el Alcance de la Gaceta Oficial de Costa Rica el “Decreto de Emergencia”, base legal para lo que se denominaría con posterioridad la “trocha fronteriza”.

Nota 1: Véase sobre les peculiaridades de esta denominada “obra” (las comillas usadas por el autor se deben al hecho que una obra presupone un diseño previo), nuestro modesto artículo, BOEGLIN N., “La denominada “Trocha Fronteriza” en Costa Rica desde una perspectiva internacional: breve análisis”, Revista Estudios, UCR 2012. Texto disponible aquí.

Nota 2: El decreto fue objeto de un recurso de inconstitucionalidad ante la Sala Constitucional en junio del 2012 (ver  nota  de CRHoy), en el que el recurrente, el profesor Alvaro Sagot, reconocido especialista en materia ambiental indicaba que: “el Decreto se fundamenta en el hecho de que existe una invasión militar de parte del gobierno de Nicaragua, lo cual cuestiona porque no hay una declaratoria de guerra, no se han roto las relaciones comerciales ni se ha cerrado la frontera. Refiere que el Decreto declara la emergencia en los seis cantones de la zona: La Cruz, Upala, Los Chiles, Sarapiquí, San Carlos y Pococí; cuando el conflicto fronterizo se reduce a un área de 3 kilómetros cuadrados, en el Caribe noroeste, cantón de Pococí, Isla Portillo-Isla Calero, por lo que estima que no hay justificación para crear un régimen de excepción en los 6 cantones. El Decreto señala que varios poblados se han quedado aislados y sin servicios básicos de salud, alimentación y educación, entre otros. Sin embargo, no explica la relación entre el aislamiento de los pueblos, la invasión en el sector Caribe noroeste y los problemas de alimentación o educación. Se indica que existen riesgos en la zona por inundaciones y fenómenos naturales, pero no se aprecia la relación entre riesgos de inundaciones y fenómenos naturales y el conflicto por la invasión al territorio. Como segundo aspecto, aduce que con la construcción de la trocha o carretera fronteriza, se han producido afectaciones al medio ambiente, a los principios de proporcionalidad y razonabilidad, irreductibilidad del bosque y precautorio” (ver Sala Constitucional de la Corte Suprema de Justicia, exp.: 12-007663-0007-CO, Res. N.º 2012008420 del 22 de junio del 2012).  La Sala Constitucional rechazó “ad portas”  este recurso, de manera inusualmente rápida el 22 de junio en su resolución 8420-2012 (ver  texto de dicho voto), con el voto en contra de la Magistrada Ana Virginia Calzada y del Magistrado Fernando Cruz.

Nota 3: En el mes de agosto del 2012, un  artículo  en el Semanario Universidad se tituló “Se mantiene interrogante de quién ordenó construir trocha fronteriza”; en enero del 2013, en un artículo de opinión, el entonces Ministro de Seguridad (ver  texto ) rechazó haber sugerido la construcción de la “trocha” y en abril del 2013, un  artículo  publicado en el Semanario Universidad se tituló: “Todos alabaron la trocha, pero nadie asumió la paternidad”.

Nota 4: Sobre esta decisión, véase AZARI H., “La jonction d´instances devant la Cour International de Justice – A propos de l´ordonnance du 17 avril 2013 dans l´affaire relative à la Construction d´une route au Costa Rica le long du fleuve San Juan, Nicaragua c Costa Rica », 59 AFDI (2014), pp. 85-99. El autor concluye su análisis con la siguiente frase: “En va-t-il de même en ce qui est la bonne administration de la justice? Le doute est permis”.  Remitimos de igual manera a nuestra breve  nota  también en francés sobre esta extraña decisión de la CIJ publicada en el Boletín Sentinelle de la Société Française pour le Droit International (SFDI), Numéro 347 (Mai 2013).

Nota 5: Leemos en el párrafo 33 de la  ordenanza  del 13/12/2013 que la CIJ refiere a un compromiso oficial de Costa Rica ante los jueces de no retomar los trabajos de construcción antes de finales del 2014 o inicios del 2015 en los siguientes términos: “33. During the second round of the oral proceedings, Costa Rica pointed out that the schedule publicly announced on 14 March 2013 by its Minister for Public Works and Transportation regarding the resumption of construction activities had been superseded. It explained that, under the updated version of the schedule, the resumption of construction works on the section of the road along the south bank of the San Juan River would not begin “before late 2014 or early 2015”, thereby further underscoring, in its view, the lack of any basis to Nicaragua’s arguments concerning urgency. The Court regrets that Costa Rica did not make this information available at an earlier stage“. Al revisar con detenimiento el compromiso de Costa Rica hecho durante las audiencias orales, leemos que la asesora de Costa Rica Kate Parlett (en lo que posiblemente constituye su primera participación ante los jueces de la CIJ) indicó ( audiencias  del 8/11/2013, p. 15) que “Construction in the other four sections which cover the only part of the road that Dr. Kondolf finds troubling will not be before late 2014 or early 2015. These works will not begin in days or weeks, or even months. This is a matter to which Mr. Ugalde will return, but it bears mentioning here that, if Nicaragua had genuinely been concerned about the schedule it discovered in January this year, it could have written to Costa Rica, in the ordinary way, and asked about this schedule”.

Nota 6: El Profesor Philippe Weckel (Francia), a cargo durante muchos años de la sección “Jurisprudence Internationale” en la prestigiosa Revue Générale de Droit International Public (RGDIP) calificó esta decisión del 13 de julio de la CIJ como una verdadera “tarea de vacaciones mal hecha »  (traducción de« devoir de vacances bâclé »). Sin mayor complacencia por esta tarea encomendada por Costa Rica al juez de La Haya en el 2005, escribió:  « on n’a jamais vu décision aussi mal rédigée ! Le constat est totalement inattendu et, à vrai dire, proprement incroyable. A la lecture des motifs on découvre que certaines conclusions ne sont même pas étayées ou alors qu’elles le sont d’une manière si sommaire ou elliptique qu’elles apparaissent fausses ». El profesor Weckel continua con una pregunta a la que el mismo contesta: « Que penser, que dire de ce devoir de vacances bâclé ? L’arrêt du 13 juillet 2009 ne mérite pas un commentaire » (Véase WECKEL Ph., Note, Sentinelle, SFDI, Bulletin Numéro 196 (Juillet 2009). Disponible  aquí . En un comentario crítico sobre esta decisión publicado también en Francia, la autora precisaba en el 2010 que, debido a la falta de motivación en varias partes del texto,  era poco probable que esta decisión de la CIJ resolviera definitivamente el tema de la navegación en el río San Juan: véase CASSELLA S., « Rééquilibrer les effets inéquitables d’une délimitation territoriale : l’arrêt de la Cour internationale de Justice du 13 juillet 2009 dans l’affaire du Différend relatif à des droits de navigation et des droits connexes (Costa Rica c. Nicaragua) », Volume 55 AFDI (2009), pp. 253-277, p. 254 y conclusiones en p. 277.  Artículo disponible aquí.

Nota 7: Véase por ejemplo TRIGEAUD L., « La (non)spécificité du droit international de l’environnement : à propos de l’affaire relative à des Usines de pâte à papier sur le fleuve Uruguay (CIJ, Argentine c. Uruguay, arrêt du 20 avril 2010) », Vol. 56, AFDI (2010), pp.249-275. Remitimos al lector al artículo de la Profesora Zlata Drnas De Clément (Argentina) del año 2003, titulado “Los recursos naturales compartidos entre Estados y el derecho internacional”,  disponible en la red,  a comparar con su análisis posterior al fallo de abril del 2010: DRNAS DE CLEMENT Z., “El fallo de la CIJ sobre las pasteras del Río Uruguay: lejos de la concepción de recurso natural compartido (sentencia de 20/04/2010)”, 2010, disponible en la red. La autora concluye que: “Bien ha indicado Vick que los principios básicos en los que se apoya el aprovechamiento de los recursos naturales compartidos son: notificación previa de los usos planificados, prevención y uso equitativo y razonable, todos ellos vinculados en su esencia a la soberanía e integridad de los Estados. Es de observar que los tres principios tienen idéntica entidad para sustentar o enervar los aprovechamientos lícitos de este tipo de recursos de conformidad al Derecho internacional general y al propio Estatuto del Río Uruguay de 1975, a pesar de haber sido calificados por la Corte “obligaciones de mero procedimiento” ”.

Nota 8: Cabe recordar que en 1998 Costa Rica y Nicaragua intentaron resolver mediante negociaciones diplomáticas el delicado tema de la portación de armas de policías de Costa Rica en tareas de operaciones de vigilancia y de abastecimiento de puestos fronterizos en las aguas del río San Juan. Costa Rica basaba este uso en las disposiciones del tratado de 1858 que refieren a competencias en materia de “guarda” del San Juan (artículo IV), mientras que Nicaragua objetaba el uso de armas de cierto calibre para estas tareas y cuestionaba que los policías de Costa Rica pudieran navegar con estas sin pedir autorización alguna. El acuerdo alcanzado conocido como el acuerdo Cuadra-Lizano suscrito en julio de 1998, en tan solo cuatro artículos (ver texto del acuerdo), logró plasmar una solución técnica a un problema técnico, en lo que pareciera ser el último ejercicio de negociación bilateral exitoso entre ambos Estados. Lamentablemente, Nicaragua desconocería días después este acuerdo debido a cuestionamientos en Nicaragua (ver nota de La Nación de agosto de 1998). Leemos en esta misma nota un detalle de cierto interés: “ /…/ el director de la Policía de Fronteras, coronel Max Cayetano Vega, circuló una nota entre los guardias civiles donde les notifica que podrán transitar el río siempre y cuando informen a los soldados nicaragüenses. La nota advirtió a los policías que “deberán observar una conducta adecuada, sin hacer alardes de prepotencia o exhibicionismo” /…/”. La denuncia posterior del acuerdo Cuadra-Lizano por parte de Nicaragua iniciaría una fase de incertidumbre y de turbulencia entre ambos Estados. Posteriormente, las buenas relaciones personales entre los mandatarios de ambos Estados llevarían a negociar un acuerdo para que Costa Rica no presentara demanda alguna durante 3 años (acuerdo Tovar-Caldera suscrito el 26 de septiembre del 2002). Vencido el plazo establecido, Costa Rica anunció que acudiría a la Corte Internacional de Justicia (CIJ) en el 2005 (ver nota de La Nación) para defender este y otros derechos de navegación. Pese a que se presentó como favorable para Costa Rica dado que la CIJ ordenó a Nicaragua no exigir visados para embarcaciones turísticas de Costa Rica,  obtuvo un fallo adverso sobre el uso de las aguas del San Juan por parte de sus policías (ver texto de la sentencia del 13 de julio del 2009 de la CIJ, y en particular el párrafo 156 inciso h, adoptado por unanimidad por los jueces de la CIJ): se trata de un interesante ejercicio ante la CIJ en el que un derecho de un Estado estipulado en un tratado de 1858 (cuyo ejercicio es aceptado de manera reticente por el otro Estado más no ignorado) finaliza ante los jueces de La Haya (a solicitud de su titular) con su negación. Un poco más de un año después de la decisión de a CIJ, la crisis de Isla Portillos en el 2010 desnudaría la total ausencia de mecanismos de vigilancia policiales de Costa Rica en el extremo noreste de su territorio y en parte de su frontera fluvial con Nicaragua.

Nota 9: Es de notar que en noviembre del 2010, se anunció que se presupuestarían  2 millones de US$ por parte del entonces canciller de Costa Rica por cada año para el caso de la ocupación ilegal de Isla Portillos (ver nota de prensa de La Nación titulada “País presupuesta 2 millones de US$ por año para juicio en La Haya“). De manera a ampliar el panorama, leemos en un artículo reciente sobre gastos en La Haya de Estados de América Latina que: “Tras el fallo el gobierno uruguayo transparentó las cifras manifestando que en tres años Uruguay gastó US$ 5.449.224 millones en honorarios de abogados y U$S 1.968.662 en viáticos, lo que daba un total de US$ 7.417.886. En tanto, la cancillería argentina precisó que en el mismo proceso los recursos totales afectados completaron los US$ 2.549.137“. Ex cancilleres de Nicaragua estimaron el costo para su país de la demanda de Costa Rica por la ocupación ilegal de Isla Portillos planteada en noviembre del 2010 a un monto situado entre 5 a 7 millones de US$ (ver  nota ). Colombia por su parte está innovando en este (y muchos otros ámbitos), puesto que sin bien no se sabe cuánto se gastó exactamente en el juicio que duró 11 años contra Nicaragua ante la CIJ (en parte gracias a incidentes procesales de la misma Colombia, como la presentación de excepciones preliminares), sí se sabe que ya lleva más de 2 millones de US$ en honorarios a firmas de abogados internacionales y nacionales que la asesoran “post” fallo de la CIJ de noviembre del 2012 (ver  artículo de prensa ).

Nicolás Boeglin : Profesor de Derecho Internacional Público, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR).

First published in December 2013

Opportunity in America: It’s shrinking

Except for the few
[% wealth held by percentile][4]
0-50th: 1.1
50-90th: 24.3
90-99th:40
99-100th:34.5

Lowest 60% of earners are making < the wealthiest 400 Americans:
$1.22 trillion vs. $1.27 trillion [6]

To put that in context: The average wealth of one of the 400 richest Americans is equal to the average wealth of 510,000 people in the bottom 60%
With the 1%’s wealth much more tied to the real estate, stock market

Note: The SNAP (food stamp) budget of $78 billion is less than the investing budget of 20 wealthy Americans[8]

CEO vs. Worker inequality 
The Average CEO makes 354 times what the average worker makes[3]
[year: ratio between worker/CEO earnings]
1982: 42:1
1992: 201:1
2002: 281:1
2012: 354:1

Differences in expendable income are staggering

The average nationwide 1 adult living wage is $19546.17. Here’s how that breaks down per quintile:

Per month:

20%– -$3188
40%– +$12641
60%– +$37655
80%– +$77751
90%– +$134,584
99%– +$487,006

Or:

20%– -$61.3
40%– +$243.09
60%– +$724.13
80%– +$1495.21
90%– +$2588.15
99%– +$9365.5

Per week.

With Strong Racial Correlates
The Average White household in 2007 had a net worth of $143,600
14 TIMES the average net worth of Hispanic or black households[7]

Myth: rich Americans don’t pay their taxes
But at least the super rich pay their taxes.
With the top 400 earners paying $16 billion in taxes.[5]

But that doesn’t help the 21.4% of children who grow up in poverty. [7]

Without greater income equality democratic ideals are a sham.

Turkey is allegedly complicit in the smuggled use of various types of banned chemical weapons for which the Assad government was wrongfully blamed.

Turkish Republican People’s Party (CHP) opposition member Eren Erdem accused Ankara of covering up a major war crime, likely direct high-level involvement in smuggling materials used to make deadly sarin gas to ISIS and other terrorists – US proxy foot soldiers waging war on Syria.

Various attacks occurred. The most notorious targeted the Damascus Ghouta suburb in August 2013, killing and injuring scores of civilians.

At the time, then Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexandr Lubkashevich said

“(w)e’re getting more new evidence that this criminal act was of a provocative nature.”

“(T)here are reports circulating on the Internet, in particular that the materials of the incident and accusations against government troops had been posted for several hours before the so-called attack. Thus, it was a pre-planned action.”

Syria’s government had nothing to do with it despite US-led false accusations otherwise.

Under a UN-brokered deal, Syria eliminated its entire chemical weapons stockpile. No evidence indicates it used any toxic agents throughout nearly five years of conflict. Plenty reveals terrorists’ use on numerous occasions, sarin and other banned substances.

On December 10, Erdem addressed Turkish parliamentarians, discussing criminal case number 2013/120, opened by Ankara’s General Prosecutor’s Office in Adana.

Evidence shows various Turkish nationals were involved in direct dealings with ISIS and other terrorist groups, supplying them with sarin gas.

Recorded wiretapped conversations exposed dealings with Al Qaeda terrorist Hayyam Kasap. RT International interviewed Erdem.

He explained

“(t)here is data in this indictment. Chemical weapon materials are being brought to Turkey and being put together in Syria in camps of ISIS which was known as Iraqi Al Qaeda during that time.”

“These are all detected. There are phone recordings of this shipment like ‘don’t worry about the border. We’ll take care of it,’ and we also see the bureaucracy is being used.”

According to Erden, once word got out, 13 arrests were made. Days later, suspects were released, charges dropped – after a new Adana public prosecutor replaced the original one. Individuals accused then moved cross-border unobstructed to Syria.

“The phone recordings in the indictment showed all the details from how the shipment was going to be made to how it was prepared, from the content of the labs to the source of the materials,”

Erden explained.

“Which trucks were going to be used, all dates etc. From A to Z, everything was discussed and recorded. Despite all of this evidence, the suspects were released,” the case closed, showing high-level coverup, perhaps ordered by Erdogan.

Materials to make sarin gas and perhaps other toxic chemicals moved freely cross-border from Turkey to Syria. Erden indicated a high-level regime coverup, evidence revealing Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag’s involvement.

Toxic chemicals were purchased from Europe,” he said. US-led Western countries “should question themselves about these relations. Western sources know very well who carried out the sarin gas attack in Syria.”

“They know these people. They know who (they) are working with. They know that these people are working for Al-Qaeda…Western (countries) are hypocrites about the situation.”

It bears repeating. No evidence showed Syrian use of chemical or other toxic substances throughout years of conflict.

Plenty shows CIA and US special forces train takfiri terrorists in chemical weapons use, perhaps directly supplying them with toxic agents.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia was caught red-handed providing them with chemical agents in containers marked “made in KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).”

In early November, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) experts confirmed terrorists’ use of mustard gas and chlorine in Syria with “utmost confidence” – calling perpetrators “non-state actor(s).”

Blaming Assad for incidents of chemical weapons’ use is part of the US-led propaganda campaign to wrongfully vilify him.

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 latest media driven shooting attack said to have taken place in San Bernardino, California over a week ago now – and still there’s a growing list of details that don’t add up.

After a week of whitewashed reports, a media scripted ransacking of the alleged ‘shooters’ home (tampering with a potential crime scene) and eyewitness accounts that contradict the official narrative, we also learn that the very room where 14 people were reportedly killed (along with 21 injured) during a deadly shooting attack at the Inland Regional Center, there was an “active-shooter” training drill involving some of the victims almost a year before the attack.

Here’s what doesn’t add up…

The new information emerged casually in the mainstream media, prompting critics of such as sensationalized events to have even more reason to question the validity of the official story surrounding this latest ‘mass shooting’ incident.

In our previous articles on this subject, we pointed out multiple markers which clearly indicate ‘active shooter’ armed rehersal drills held at and around the Inland Regional Center location. Here’s another – another unbelievable development discussed recently by the LA Times:

“About a year ago, employees of San Bernardino County’s Environmental Health Services division underwent an “active-shooter training.”

“It was held at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino — in the very same room that would one day be a site of bloodshed and horror.”

“It was not clear if gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, an environmental health specialist for the county, attended the earlier training, but some of the victims of Wednesday’s mass shooting were likely to have participated, said a county spokeswoman.”

One must consider that statistically speaking, the chances of a real shooting event taking place in the exact same room where a multi-agency ‘active shooter’ drill took place approximately one year ago – has to be close to zero. Furthermore, this strange and unlikely coincidence should highlight the suspicious nature of the shooting event itself.

More than any other entity, the mainstream media are playing the central role in managing the official version of events in San Bernardino…

Image: ‘DESTROYING EVIDENCE’ –  Why would authorities allow members of the press and victims families to trample into a potential crime scene? (Photo leoaffairs)

Official Story Under Fire

As 21WIRE  previously reported when this story first broke:

“THREE shooters are said to have opened fire with ‘long guns’ [AR15 model rifle] inside a conference venue, in the Inland Regional Center, a government-run disabled services office complex, located in San Bernardino. Police gave chase to suspects and claim that 3 assailants were masked (therefore could not be ID’d at the scene), heavily armed and possibly wearing body armor.”

In fact, authorities did apprehend a third suspect but that aspect of the case, has seemingly  gone down the memory hole, as has the very detailed eye-witness testimony from Sally Abdelmageed, (an Inland Regional Center employee) in a CBS interview with Scott Pelley, which clearly states that there were three white men in tactical gear dressed in black involved in the shooting event.

Abdelmageed’s account, echoed that of Juan Hernandez, who was interviewed shortly after the shooting incident by a local NBC affiliate, where it was described that “three white men in military fatigues,” had fled the scene in black Chevy Impala or SUV.

Despite all of this, CNN, ABC, FOX and all other media outlets on the scene – all pivoted, in unison, to validate authorities’ (the FBI) revised official ‘Jihadi Bonnie & Clyde’ story of “only 2 shooters – a husband and wife”.

We were then told, that the suspected shooters died in a dramatic shootout with police. However, immediately following the televised chase/shootout, the public was offered up only a few blurry ‘still’ photographs of the two dead suspects, in addition to inconclusive wide-angle camera shots from a distance. The entire shootout unfolded like a multi-agency drill, as police methodically approached the suspect’s SUV with several armored MRAPs.

Prior to law enforcement slowly closing in, 23 officers fired a combined total of approximately 380rounds according to a police spokesman. The vehicle’s damage was beyond anything that would be considered a normal engagement. The scene was also captured on a cell phone video by a local eyewitness who appeared to start filming right as shots began ringing out during the dramatic car chase.

Image: ‘SAN BERNARDINO KILLERS?’ – An apparent image of Tashfeen Malik, along with her husband, Syed Farook at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Notice that Farook and his wife appear to look different than other photographs released by the press. ( Photo cbc.ca)

In addition to the questionable information outlined above, it was reported that the alleged gunman in the San Bernardino shooting, Syed Farook, received $28,500 in his bank account some two weeks prior to the events of December 2nd.

A recent FOX News release disclosed the origin of the deposit:

“The deposit came via Utah-based WebBank.com, which describes itself as “a leading provider of national consumer and commercial private-label and bank card financing programs” on a nationwide basis.”

Those in mainstream media appeared to be in a frenzy over the bank deposit transaction, citing the new detail as further “proof” that somehow Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, had premeditated an attack – never stopping to consider how Farook obtained such a large loan or who might really be behind the transfer of money in the first place. An anonymous loan? This supports many narratives; that of a patsy, a man in debt, as well as potential ‘terrorist’.

Only 24 hours later, Farook was said to have acquired the loan through the crowd sourced online lender named ‘Prosper’.

Unfortunately, we’re told that the suspects are dead, and therefore no longer available for cross examination.

‘Divide & Rule’ Politics

Another troubling aspect to this case, is that the public has been force-fed a massive amount of propaganda in the aftermath of the apparent shooting in San Bernardino, most recently from GOP front-runner Donald Trump, with his polarizing and xenophobic calls for a unilateral immigration ban on all Muslims entering the United States this last week.

Rather than discuss his recent plan unveiled in the fall for nationwide gun concealed carry program, or the restrictive gun legislation currently upheld in California and in particular San Bernardino, we see that the reality TV star and real estate mogul has instead chosen to feed into blind hysteria following an apparent terror incident by proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the US, while also recently taking a shot at free speech on the internet due to ISIS postings on social media. On all fronts, Trump appears to be cherry-picking various positions in order to gather poll percentage points.

San Bernardino, along with staged-managed events like the sensational Garland Shooting in April 2015, and the highly engineered Paris Attacks (January & November of 2015) and many othershootings this year and year’s past – have conveniently opened the door for sweeping ‘national security’ changes, while at the same time reigniting the old War on Terror meme, rebranded as the‘War on Radical Islam’, for new audiences to be politically seduced by western media and politicians alike.

Image: ‘BOTCHED GETAWAY’ – Although authorities obtained a paper trail for the rented SUV above – but there are still many questions surrounding those said to be driving the vehicle. Why isn’t there footage of the alleged ‘terror couple’ leaving the SUV? ( Photo Twitter)

Security Linked to Terror

Unbeknownst to the average media consumer, the international background information released regarding wife Tafsheen Malik, and her husband Farook, appears to shine a light on clandestine activities that might exist within Pakistan.

Readers should note Malik’s murky connection to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a place which has long been implicated as one of the largest financiers of terror globally – as acknowledged in this passage from Huffington Post, in an article about the Paris attacks last January:

“Exact numbers are not known, but it is thought that more than $100 billion have been spent on exporting fanatical Wahhabism to various much poorer Muslim nations worldwide over the past three decades.”

Relatives of Malik, claim that she spent most of her life in Saudi Arabia before studying as a pharmacy student at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, Pakistan between 2007 and 2012, but Saudi officials are insisting that Malik had only visited twice for a few months in total. This is in stark contrast to a faculty member in Pakistan, who referred to her as the “Saudi girl.”

Interestingly, both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are in damage control mode, politically speaking, as neither country wants to be associated with what is now being dubbed “the deadliest terror attack on US soil since 9/11.”

The San Bernardino shooting joins the Chattanooga shooting in July, an event that failed to provide a solid motive or believable timeline, with an All-American appellation added to the Muslim-American, thus dispensing wide-spread subliminal fear and Islamophobia.

In a recent Daily Mail release, we’re also told that supposedly Pakistani-born Mali, had ties to The Red Mosque in Pakistan, a well-known Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) linked mosque:

“Sources have told Daily Mail Online that US officials handed over information to their Pakistani counterparts about links between Tashfeen Malik and the Red Mosque in Islamabad. The mosque is infamous for its links to violence and authorities in Pakistan are now considering taking action against its preacher, Maulana Abdul Aziz, after the disclosures by US officials.”

If Malik was inspired by ISIS, as claimed by authorities (via social media) then why does her background suggest a Pakistani/ISI/CIA/Al-Qaeda connection, if she was in fact radicalized’ as US plot writers insist? Her affiliations should suggest that she may be involved with one of the intelligence agencies active in the exact location she resided in Pakistan.

The UK’s Telegraph states that the part of Pakistan where Malik was staying is “known as a recruiting ground for Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist groups, including Lashkar al-Taiba, responsible for a bloody attack in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, in 2008.”

If true, this new twist in the media hyped San Bernardino shooting, could display a startling link between the Al Qaeda/ISI affiliated Red Mosque and other Western-backed black ops in Pakistan.

In May of 2011, The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) outlined the ISI’s material support for various militant groups, including the formation of Al-Qaeda – giving historical context to recent events:

“The ISI’s first major involvement in Afghanistan came after the Soviet invasion in 1979, when itpartnered with the CIA to provide weapons, money, intelligence, and training to the mujahadeen fighting the Red Army.”

The CFR further stated, “Pakistan’s government has repeatedly denied allegations of supporting terrorism, citing as evidence its cooperation in the U.S.-led battle against extremists.”

The CIA and ISI, have had a long, sometimes contentious relationship on the surface but the reality is that their collective footprint is all over many tribal areas in Pakistan and places like Afghanistan – where extremism continues to grow to this day.

How could this be, considering both agencies have such heavy surveillance in Pakistan?

Perhaps we should consider a historical perspective…

In the years following 9/11, a covert training facility run by the CIA, called Penny Lane, was setup and in use until 2006, as a location to train terrorists to become double agents. These agents were to be trained and released back out in the field to work with other officials within the agency.

However, the CIA ‘lost touch’ with many of its newly trained agents, even though the public had been told that this operation had been successful in its scope. The money to pay the informants and double agents was provided for by the CIA under the codename ‘Pledge.’

The shadowy dealings of the CIA, immediately recall the many hatched plots by the FBI, in addition to the FBI’s involvement in the suspicious events surrounding an international Moldova bust recently, following Russia’s airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria.

Time and time again, we see terror linked back to security in one shape or another.

As Western foreign policy engineers in Washington have been desperate for a deeper conflict in Syria and Iraq, we’ve seen a series of terror related incidents unveiled around the globe, as the security and oil business has also been in the forefront since NATO member Turkey, downed a Russian Su-24 Fighter Bomber near the Syria-Turkish border less than a month ago – sparking claims that ISIS and Turkey perhaps has an oil partnership, along with the Kurdish Regional Government’s (KRG) advantageous oil dealings.

Additionally, the US has continued to back the so-called FSA rebels whose members have knownties to ISIS and other Sunni extremists, including members of Al-Qaeda and al-Nusra Front – causing major concern for those observing the escalation of violence in Iraq and Syria over the last several years.

Co-conspirator or Patsy?

As the San Bernardino shooting story continues to unfold, the FBI has been drip feeding the public with bits and pieces of new information, telling the public they’ve known that the ‘terror couple’ was radicalized for sometime, while also disappearing Farook and Malik’s neighbor Enrique Marquez for further questioning after he was said to have legally purchased two AR-15s allegedly used in the shooting.

Now authorities say that Marquez could be brought up on additional charges and are now suggesting that Farook and himself may have considered plotting to target other places in 2012 – but this appears to be based on several photographs of various schools seen allegedly seen on Farook’s cell phone.

Interestingly, Marquez was said to have checked himself into a mental health facility shortly after the shooting attack but authorities have been murky on most of the details.

Marquez has not been seen in public since being questioned after the San Bernardino event. This has prompted some to wonder if the National Defense Authorization Act has been invoked (NDAA), a bill passed back in 2012 that authorizes the executive branch the ability to indefinitely detain any American citizen on suspicion alone, without the burden of proof and without a trial.

Mainstream media is now referring to Marquez as the ‘third suspect’ arrested whitewashing the early reports of a person apprehended near the scene of the incident.

But if media continues to present Marquez as the third suspect they will have totally contradicted eyewitness testimony at the crime scene, as multiple witnesses claim seeing “three tall white,” (as listed at the top of the article) males fleeing the area after the apparent attack.

Image: ACCOMPLICE? – An easy-going Enrique Marquez seen on KTLA back in April of 2015. (PhotoTwitter)

A recent CNN report, added to the mystery surrounding Marquez:

“Investigators are still trying to corroborate information provided by Marquez and haven’t verified details of the alleged plot. Officials caution that Marquez’s claim of a 2012 attack could turn out to be false and an attempt to deflect his role in helping buy weapons that Farook later used in the San Bernardino shootings last week.”

“Marquez, 24, has not been charged with any crime and has told investigators he didn’t know about the plans for the San Bernardino attack. Since the shootings, he has waived his Miranda rights, cooperated with investigators and provided information, according to the officials.”

“Marquez could not be reached for comment. No attorney has come forward.”

Witnesses have come forward stating that there was “nothing” alarming about Marquez or he authorities would have been notified according to the Islamic Center of Riverside.

Spy Games, Drills & Red Herrings?

While the FBI has apparently been on the hunt for Farook’s missing hard drive in a lake near the San Bernardino shooting – it was also revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deployed a sophisticated spy plane above San Bernardino for several days after the apparent attack.

The Daily Mail, recently discussed the details of the hi-tech equipment in use:

“Sofrep, which first reported the plane’s use, said the use of the spy plane showed that law enforcement was ‘actively searching for other members of a terrorist cell.”

The article continued by adding that,

“Spy planes have been deployed by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI before, such as over the protests in Baltimore in August in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray.”

“A story by the Wall Street Journal described in detail how the two foot wide ‘Dirtbox’ allows an astonishing level of surveillance once it is up and running.”

“The device works by pretending to be a cell phone tower – mobiles automatically connect to the nearest one so latch onto the box – and can sweep up data on tens of thousands of phones in one go.”

There appears to have been quite a roll out of law enforcement equipment so quickly after the apparent shooting in San Bernardino, prompting critics to suggest the entire event may have been a multi-agency ‘fusion’ drill. And in fact, there was evidence of an active shooter drill on the very same day as the Inland Regional Center shootings, according to the LA Times:

“The day of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, my son’s high school was placed on a short lockdown.”

“I listened attentively as he explained the difference in lockdown levels: A Level One is when an active shooter is in the town or city; a Level Two is when the shooter is in the neighborhood; and a Level Three is when the shooter is actually on campus.”

The FBI’s special agent David Bowdich, has been in charge of the San Bernardino investigation and he was also in charge of the investigation into the LAX shootings in November of 2013, a highly theatrical event that displayed many inconclusive anomalies, along with what appeared to be an emergency related drill. The shooting followed an airport active shooter drill in outlining an identical scenario almost exactly a month prior.

As we examine the spy games and drills on display following San Bernardino, it would be remiss to not at least mention that there were several strange media reports and some hoaxing following the attack, including GOP candidate Carly Fiorina‘s comments regarding the gun purchase details in the San Bernardino case. Fiorina stated the following, as she appeared on the Morning Joe Show recently:

“the ATF believes that someone purchased this gun on behalf of the police department and somehow that gun ended up in the hands of this guy.”

Image: ‘WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?’ –  Social media propaganda went global following the Paris attacks this past January, centering the public’s focus on ‘freedom of speech’ while alarming details of the case were glossed over. ( Photo link rediff.com)

Staged Crisis: From Paris to San Bernardino 

The reality designers that exist within media and other curious creatures of the intelligence community would have the public believe that the Paris attacks this year were the work of a smaller terror cell infiltrating Paris surreptitiously. But based on the reportage in days after the carefully staged and synchronized attacks, it was revealed that French authorities had prior knowledge of terror linked individuals inside of its borders.

Indeed, as critical pieces of this latest global puzzle have come together – evidence suggests ahighly organized and coordinated event involving many players. Those players have shaped the three dimensions of this event – carrying out the event are as follows: members of the police and security services, and most crucially, members of the global media. The last and most important group provides the fourth dimension of this reality, and that is you the public.

How you perceive any questionable event – is the ultimate prize for the architects of any impressive psy-op.

The fifth dimension of Paris is based on the fourth, which is how the architects and social engineers observe your reactions to the event. From this, data is collected, social media is monitored, then metered, opinions are analysed, and public reactions are measured. The conclusions will be used to form the baseline and design of future ‘shock and awe’ operations.

US authorities claimed that, a US database for terrorists called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, had been tracking the apparent shooters said to be involved in the Charlie Hebdo “magazine murders,” and had been placed on a no-fly-list for to the United States.

It’s worth noting that the TIDE database sounds identical to how many experts and whistleblowers have described ‘al Qaeda’, itself translated as “the base”. In fact one whistleblower who did not live long after admitting to the public what he knew, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who said that al Qaeda was “a database” used to track and manage Islamic fighters used by western intelligence agencies to carry out covert operations and false flag attacks world-wide.

Sky News outlined the discovery by investigators at the time:

“On Thursday (January 8th, 2015) night, helicopters buzzed overhead in the region as the hunt continued.”

“Witness Benoit Verdun told Sky News he believes the suspects are in a large forest near Longpont, which he said is “bigger than Paris” – measuring some 13,000 hectares, or 50 square miles.”

“It comes as a US official confirmed the brothers were both flagged as terrorists in a US database, and were also on the no-fly list, meaning they were barred from travelling to the United States.”

The apparent failure in the intelligence was blamed on the system being “overburdened” and a “lack of coordination”, or fusion, with US authorities. This phenomenon is something the public sees over and over in media without ever questioning that the various figureheads on TV and so-called ‘security experts’ have deep ties to the intelligence community themselves.

The media provides adequate cover for security agencies the world over – whether it’s Paris, San Bernardino or any other seemingly manufactured event.

Here’s a YouTube clip depicting CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewing a family affected by the San Barnardino tragedy. Critics of this video believe that these people may be crisis actors – decide for yourself…

There’s so much to question regarding the San Bernardino shooting story, as it echoes many stage-manged shooting events in recent history.

According to the International News Safety Institute (INSI), over 100 journalists were killed in 2015, many of them by assassins. However shocking this number might be, it merely gives a glimpse into the savagery that has been unleashed against members of the press throughout the world. For one, journalists who work for small community radio stations rather than national news organizations tend to be omitted from such international counts. For another, journalists in countries with poor human rights records suffer numerous abuses, death being only the final blow.

In Haiti, where freedom of the press has been grudgingly tolerated for the last two decades or so, the latest assault on journalism began with verbal insults, like so many other abusive relationships.

The signs had been there, like the orders to shut up and veiled threats of retribution for posing the wrong questions, but on October 3, 2011 the overt public insult against a Haitian could not be ignored. Journalist Etienne Germain, of Port-au-Prince’s Scoop FM radio, a 24/7 news station, asked Michel Martelly, Haiti’s president of five months who had been handpicked by Hillary Clinton, to report his progress on forming a higher judiciary council (CSJP). First Martelly ignored the question while he answered a foreign reporter in English. Later, when Mr. Germain repeated himself and pointed out that the president had favored a foreigner over a compatriot, Martelly thundered: “Look, if you persist, I’ll insult you and your mama!” Far from regretting his behavior, a few days later, when offered a chance to explain himself, Martelly told the press: “I didn’t like the way I was approached. That’s my answer. That’s all.”

By early 2012, Martelly’s vulgar outbursts had become so commonplace that many journalists joined the other marchers in Haiti’s streets to demand, among other things, respect for the press. The insults did not stop. Martelly sank to yet new lows when confronted with questions from ordinary Haitian citizens, whom he apparently considers to be even farther beneath him.

During an election campaign rally for his political party in the city of Miragoane on July 28, 2015, when a young woman reminded him that he had not kept his previous campaign promises to the town, he rebuked her: “I came to talk to you; you must listen,” and then he added: “W$%re! If you want to have s*x, find yourself a man to !@ck you behind the wall! I’m ready to !@ck you on the podium!” as he gestured suggestively, to laughter and applause. This particular stunt caused one political party to withdraw from the barely functioning regime, which lacks a parliament. The symbolism of a Haitian president who serves a foreign occupation while he devalues Haitians, on the 100th anniversary of the first United States occupation of Haiti, was not lost on anyone.

The public insults against the press have morphed into overt calls to corruption and expressions of disdain at the poverty of journalists, as if they are mistresses to be publicly humiliated and discarded from a sadomasochistic fling.

In an open letter, the national station Radio Télé Kiskeya exposed its discovery that, at a Christmas reception on December 23, 2014, Martelly offered “small informal” gifts to a select group of journalists and then referred them to his spokesman and the head of his communication’s office to be organized in single file and get handed envelopes full of cash ($1,100 for some and $870 for others) as they were being photographed. At Radio Kiskeya, three journalists who had accepted these gifts of cash were publicly sanctioned.

On November 4, 2015, the Communications Minister, Mario Dupuy, announced that the government would serve as a banker to guarantee that any journalist could buy a new car on credit and make monthly payments of only about $130. Mr. Dupuy, a career journalist who has apparently gone over to the dark side, as evidenced by his multi-thousand-dollar suit in a country where the minimum wage is about 45 cents per hour, further proposed that his office would soon recruit and train media workers to work for the government’s communication services.

Inducements to corruption and vulgar sexual insults are understandably disconcerting and an affront to polite society, but that is the least of it. The vituperations of people in power are not mere words.

They usually represent to others a license to abuse and kill the members of a disadvantaged group: in this case, dark and poor Haitians who have the temerity to presume they can address the ruling class as their equals. Indeed, Haitian journalists have become the prey of the rich and their affiliates, such as bodyguards, and the members of the foreign-trained Haitian National Police (PNH). Furthermore, a pervasive corruption and weakened judiciary combine to guarantee that the perpetrators of crimes against journalists are almost never punished. In at least one case, the president’s security detail appeared to be under orders to assault certain members of the press.

Specifically, a member of Martelly’s security corps rushed Rodrigue Lalanne, a Radio Kiskeya journalist, as he tried to ask the president a question on October 1, 2013, on the then recent Dominican constitutional court’s decision to denationalize its citizens of Haitian ancestry. Months after a clearly identified irate policeman hit Radio TV Signal cameraman Samus David François’ motorcycle with a police car in July 2015 and then beat the journalist with his tripod, the case remains bogged down in legal technicalities. After a savage beating of Radio Télé Express journalist Gerdy Jeremie by two police commandoes as she covered a moto-taxi drivers protest in November 2014, one hearing about the case was postponed because the defendants failed to appear in court, and another because the dean of a court had ordered the premises shut. After much public protest, a hearing was held, and the court ordered the policemen to pay damages, but the award hardly covered Jeremie’s bills.

In one of the most egregious cases, journalist Wendy Phèle of Radio Télé Zenith (RTZ), a station in Haiti’s Cul-de-Sac plain, had to go into hiding two months after getting shot multiple times and being left for dead on March 17, 2012 by a bodyguard of one of Martelly’s interim mayors. According to Phèle, who lost a kidney in the attack, his assailant continues to circulate freely and to intimidate residents of the town, although charges have been brought against him. Another member of RTZ, George Fortuné, was violently assaulted by a policeman in front of a higher official and then photographed as a threat, while the journalist covered a protest on November 29, 2014.

Unsurprisingly, many journalists are losing their lives in this atmosphere of impunity. Starting with the March 7, 2012 assassination of Jean Liphète Nelson, the director of the community station Radio Boukman, in the large Cité Soleil slum, from a volley of gunfire to his car, the murder rate of Haiti’s journalists during the Martelly regime has accelerated to rival those of the country’s worst military dictatorships.

At least five other journalists have since succumbed from the bullets of assassins who were probably paid to kill them. Georges Henry Honorat, the director of the weekly newspaper Haiti Progrès was killed near his home on March 23, 2013, by two shots to his head, by masked individuals on a motorcycle; about two years later, on May 26, 2015, Eddy Alcindor, a journalist, photographer and publisher also for Haiti Progrès was likewise killed in his own neighborhood by unidentified gunmen. In both cases, the assassins took none of the victim’s possessions and had clearly come only to kill them. On February 8, 2014, the human rights advocates, the couple Daniel Dorsainvil and Girldy Lareche were assassinated near their home, also by unidentified gunmen, shortly after publishing a report that described a systematic violations of human rights by the regime. On April 2, 2015, unknown armed individuals pushed their way into a minibus and assassinated journalist Marc Elie Pierre, who had worked for Melodie FM and several other radio stations. Pierre-Richard Alexandre, a correspondent for Radio Kiskeya in the city of Saint Marc, was killed a few feet from his home too, on May 20, 2013; however this case was somewhat different from the others because witnesses clearly identified the assailant, who received a five-year sentence in 2014 but appealed this sentence. None of the other cases ever made it to a court.

Attacks on journalists in Central America: yellow/arrests, green/attacks, blue/killings.

A major loss to Haitian radio in general was the sudden death on March 1, 2015 of Sony Estéus despite being only 50 years old and in perfect health. Mr. Estéus was a linguist devoted to Haitian Creole, the director of the Society of Animation in Social Communication (SAKS), a local organization of more than 40 community radio stations, and the Caribbean representative of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC). He was also active in a popular summer university that hosted students from over 150 regions. During the January 2010 earthquake, Mr. Estéus helped Port-au-Prince’s radio stations, nearly all of which had been destroyed, to restart broadcasting. His death, just before the charade of Haitian elections, was a devastating blow to the country’s journalists. He was an especially big loss for Radio Kiskeya, with which he had collaborated for about 10 years, and where he hosted a regular show addressed especially to Haiti’s peasantry and called “nou tout anndan.” The title of the show, which means “all of us inside” was a direct commentary on the usual reference to Haiti’s rural areas as being “an deyò,” meaning outside.

It is important to understand that even a low count of journalist murders does not happen in a vacuum but a poisonous atmosphere of humiliation, harassment, threats, and routine disregard for human rights. To prevent Haitians in Haiti, the US, France, and Canada from getting real news, independent radio stations as well as their journalists are routinely subjected to legal harassments that typically escalate into threats and finally destruction. Even before Martelly’s inauguration, Tèt Ansanm Karis, a community radio station that served a Haitian city of about 10,000 residents, was destroyed by arson, possibly for having aired the results of a controversial 2011 legislative election.

Prior to its destruction on April 21, 2011, the station had received threats and therefore been able to identify its enemies. Despite warrants being issued against several individuals, they continued to circulate freely and even to socialize with the local police. Radio Monopole of the southern city of Cayes was similarly torched in an act of arson on June 27, 2012.

This happened about one month after it successfully fought an attempted shutdown by the National Telecommunications Council (CONATEL) and was forced to change its broadcast frequency. According to the station’s owner, Martelly partisans had openly criticized him for what they perceived as being hostility to the regime. In Montreal, Radio CPAM 1610 AM was burned on July 2, 2012 in a barely disguised act of arson that involved lighting fires in two parts of the station’s premises. Again, the station’s owner reported that he had received threats after criticizing Martelly. All of these cases had in common that the fires had followed threats but caused no casualties because they typically happened at night, while the buildings were unoccupied.

More recently, the intimidators of journalists have taken to attacking their work premises with automatic gunfire. Radio Zenith and Radio Kiskeya appear to be taking the brunt of these attacks. On November 24, 2015, the owner of RTZ foiled an attack by a group of identified armed individuals, and he fingered members of the police as conniving with the criminals. It hardly seems surprising that the attack followed a failed attempt by CONATEL in April 2014 to shut down the station by recalling a decree of 1977. On December 1, 2015, it was the turn of Radio Télé Kiskeya, in Port-au-Prince, to report a gunfire attack against its premises. The station’s director noted that this was the first such attack in its 21 years. In any case, the CEOs of both stations also reported that they and their staff had received death threats.

Haiti’s local press is well respected, although the US and French embassies, as well as US State Department organs, like USAID and the Voice of America, have in recent years made declarations that Haiti’s journalists are in dire need of training. A cottage industry has developed in the US and Canada, to replace genuine Haitian voices with voices that belong to the foreign press and law NGOs, in presenting the news. Many of the latter benefit directly and indirectly from grants from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. The Open Society operates in numerous countries. It was recently banned by the Russian Prosecutor’s Office for being an “undesirable group” and a “threat to the constitutional order and national security.” In Haiti, this foundation goes by the name of Fondasyon Konesans Ak Libète (Knowledge and Freedom Foundation, FOKAL). I have already discussed elsewhere the colonialism-of-the-mind involved in having one’s journalism done by the supposedly well-meaning members of occupying powers. Though such individuals are granted greater access to some data, as evidenced by Martelly’s affection for foreign journalists, an invariable aspect of their news reports is an acceptance of the status quo. For example, in its numerous articles about Haiti’s cholera epidemic and the failures of the post-earthquake reconstruction, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which lists the Open Society Foundation as one of its major sponsors, has not once proposed, in a major English-language article, the removal of the UN, USAID, and other US influences from Haiti as being possible solutions to its problems. FOKAL also finances the activities of countless pseudo-journalistic social-media personalities. As the southern US proverb says, “You’ve got to dance with the one who brung ya.” One does not take Open Society money to advocate for the nationalistic removal of a US occupation.

Like the media in many countries, Haiti’s press is under vicious attack, not only because it is the last rampart of democracy but also because it safeguards the population. One of the clearest recent examples of the latter function was the continued broadcasting of Radio Signal FM during the 2010 earthquake, which saved countless lives. In the subsequent days, the station’s 12 staff journalists worked extended shifts under nearly impossible circumstances, although at least one of them had lost his child and others had close family members who had died or been grievously injured. By contrast, the police and so-called United Nations peacekeepers searched for their friends, protected property, and they left the local population to fend for itself. As for the foreign NGO journalists: they were safely ensconced in their villas, hotels, and secure work buildings. However well meaning they might be, they like their salaries tax-free and landscapes seismically quiescent. They cannot be counted on to stick around for the shakeups.

Turkey’s Erdogan is a  loose cannon, a valued US imperial ally, part of NATO’s war agenda,  increasingly risking direct confrontation with Russia.

Washington likely orchestrated Turkey’s downing of Russia’s SU-24 bomber last month in Syrian airspace, a reckless act of war.

On December 11, Putin told participants at a Moscow Defense Ministry collegium:

“I order to act very tough. Any targets that threaten Russian forces or our infrastructure on the ground should be immediately destroyed.”

He warned “those who will again try to organize any provocations against our servicemen. We have already taken additional measures to ensure security of Russian servicemen and air base.”

“It was strengthened by new aviation groups and missile defense systems. Strike aircraft will now carry out operations under cover of fighter jets” armed with deadly accurate air-to-air missiles.

On Saturday, RT International reported Turkish opposition member Mahir Akkar urging Putin and Deputy Defense Minister Anotoly Antonov be criminally investigated for “insulting” and “defam(ing)” Erdogan.

RT quoted a Daily Sabah report, quoting him saying “we cannot turn a blind eye to defamation against our president or (other) officials.”

Putin, Antonov and other Russian officials support their accusations with well-documented hard facts.

On Friday, Ivanov provided clear evidence of

“(a) whole team of bandits and Turkish leadership (under Erdogan and his family involved) in illegal oil trade with ISIS.”

He presented “irrefutable facts to prove it.” Erdogan and top Turkish officials around him are international criminals, involved in “industrial-scale” theft of Syrian and Iraqi oil, complicit with ISIS – along with partnering with Obama to replace Assad with a pro-Western puppet.

On Sunday, Erdogan’s latest provocation involved a Turkish fishing vessel (or perhaps military ship disguised to look like one) sailing on a collision course with a Russian destroyer in the Aegean Sea.

Moscow’s Defense Ministry said its ship fired small arms warning shots in front of Turkey’s vessel after it didn’t respond to calls to change course – finally doing so when it came within about 540 meters of the destroyer.

It never made contact, clearly a state-sponsored provocation with likely more to come. Putin gave fair warning. He always means what he says. Russia’s military has orders to destroy any threats to its air, ground or sea forces.

Tensions between both countries remain high. They maintain military contact to avoid these type incidents. Antonov summoned Turkey’s Moscow-based military attache to explain what happened.

Erdogan would never provoke Russia militarily without Washington’s permission or complicity. Both nations are playing with fire.

Putin is a consummate peacemaker. At the same time, he’ll do whatever it takes to protect Russia’s homeland, its population and military forces.

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.

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This week shapes up as one which could go down in the history books! Markets last week were tumultuous from weak equities, illiquid credit markets, FOREX markets in disarray and commodities hitting the skids …yet the Federal Reserve is intent on hiking rates? Have they taken this position because the markets are strong? Or because the economy …anywhere on the planet is overheating?

Before looking at “this week”, I have seen it said by many, “the Fed must raise rates to have any credibility left”. This is true to an extent but there is one core reason and one of their own making. You see, the fake data and outright lies have been coming out of Washington in such regularity and magnitude the Fed has been painted into a corner. They either raise rates “because things are so good” or they don’t …as a sign things aren’t so good. It has been for this reason I have had an eye out looking for some manufactured (false flag) event that takes the Fed off the hook. Time is getting short prior to Wednesday’s meeting and announcement …but there still is time.

It is quite interesting how China has devalued their yuan this past week prior to the Fed meeting.

They also announced they will monitor the Yuan’s value versus global currencies rather than just versus the dollar, in essence “de pegging” against the dollar. The weak yuan has been blamed for much of the past weeks volatility and weaknesses in financial markets. A rate hike by the Fed will only double down on the weakness. Also of interest in China are the numerous “disappearances”. For weeks there have been important individuals in the financial industry who have just disappeared. The latest fear was China’s equivalent of Warren Buffett had been disappeared.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fosun-listed-units-halted-amid-questions-about-founders-whereabouts-1449798047

It turns out he is being held and assisting “investigations”. In the words of Warren Buffett himself, we only find out who was swimming naked when the tide goes out!

On the geopolitical front, the burner turned up this past week and has become much more complicated. First, the IMF basically said Ukraine does not need to pay Russia for the $3 billion equivalent they borrowed two years ago. The IMF will only enforce “dollar debt” …so no more rule of law if not using dollars? Russia then announced they will begin their own oil market for trade and will be an alternative to West Texas and North Sea Brent …NOT in dollars. Please understand this type of action has in the past resulted in the deposing and ultimate death of both Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi.

In Syria, it has now become a literal rainbow of colors in their sky with the latest planes being British. There is risk of a mishap with so many different nations in the sky at one time. Russia and NATO member Turkey also continue Russian Missile Destroyer “Fires Warning Shots” To Avoid Collision With Turkish Vessel to posture while Mr. Putin ordered their forces to “destroy any targets that threaten Russian military in Syria”

http://tass.ru/en/defense/843243 . Needless to say, the stakes are being raised and often.

We also have seen much higher stress in the credit markets as liquidity is evaporating. Junk bonds have been decimated as Zero Hedge reports The Coincidences Are Just Too Eerie: This Is The Last Time CCC Yields Were Here And Rising was the Fridaybefore Lehman blew up in 2008. Traders are now in fear of ANY liquidations as there is simply no depth on the bid side of the credit market. A perfect sign in fact was a second hedge fund announcing a halt to redemptions. Telling someone “they can’t get out” will only prod others who still can …to get out while they can! As a side note, Glencore CDS now puts the odds of a default over 5 years at better than a coin flip! Lastly, we are now half way through December and COMEX is still shy about two and a half tons of gold standing for delivery.

I apologize for the “dryness” and the amount of links in the above as I really do not like to write this way. It was necessary to point out many of the “possibilities” leading up to the Fed’s meeting on Wednesday. I was corrected by a reader for the use of “black swan” in a previous article because this term should be used for “unseen” or surprise events. No matter where you look there are reasons to be very “bearish on the world”. Whether it be equities, credit, derivatives, or nearly anywhere geographically, the risk versus reward is highly skewed toward digging a hole and covering yourself with a rock! …And these are the known risks!

I am not sure what the Fed will do on Wednesday. I am however sure if they do raise rates the volatility will increase and financial markets will probably not like it one bit. One must wonder what they will do should the equity markets drop a quick five or ten percent? Do they immediately reverse and lower rates? How credible is that? Liquidity is such that no matter what the Fed does, the highly levered nature of our financial system is teetering on “reverse” where it will eat itself up. This while a vast multiple of known detonators stand ready to unleash the financial dogs of hell.

We have created the most leveraged financial system in all of history. Liquidity is drying up and the question of “if” has been replaced with “when”. The odds of markets “closing” have risen dramatically. Stress, both geopolitically and financially can no longer be hidden in plain sight. Should the Fed raise rates, I believe markets far and wide will convulse into an unscheduled “holiday”. Yet we listen to the cheers for a rate hike? Even George Orwell would be shocked!  

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has refused to disclose whether he was aware of torture techniques used against British prisoner Shaker Aamer in Guantanamo Bay or wider UK complicity in the United States torture regime.

Pressure on Blair to come clean over Labour position on torture followed the damning revelations of Shaker Aamer, who disclosed his torment of 14 years abuse without charge in the US base.

Aamer explained that his abuse by guards included beatings and sleep deprivation, as part of a system that the US Government has conceded amounted to torture.

Torture – including water boarding and sexual punishments – occurred at Guantanamo in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and a series of ‘black sites’ in what was formally termed the US ‘extraordinary rendition and detention program’.

Created as part of the attack on civil liberties and international law following 9/11, the torture programme led to questions in the UK over whether the government cooperated with US authorities in torture cases.

Former first minister Alex Salmond has demanded that Blair and former home secretary Jack Straw explain their awareness of the treatment of Aamer, in an interview to the BBC.

Salmond said:

As in so many things, Messrs Blair and Straw have a great deal to answer for, and they have to be asked the straight question how could they possibly not have known about the fate that had befallen a British citizen.

Governments are not meant to collaborate on the illegal abduction and then the torture of one of our own citizens. The then prime minister and home secretary have to face up and tell us exactly what they knew, and when they knew it.

In 2014 former British ambassador Craig Murray, who challenged the UK Government over complicity in torture, stated: “So I know 100 per cent for certain that Jack Straw knew we were getting intelligence from the CIA from torture. And he also, of course, ordered me to be sacked because I was trying to stop it.”

The Blair government previously faced allegations of complicity in Libya’s torture regime.

Scottish police are also investigating whether US torture flights passed through Scottish airports.

However, Blair has refused to be drawn into explaining his knowledge of the Aamer case or claims his government was involved in torture cases.

Instead a spokesperson speaking on Blair’s behalf repeated the claim that Blair is personally opposed to torture.

Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture by Ian Cobain documents centuries of British torture regimes.

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On December 2, Montenegro received an official invitation from NATO to join the alliance. While the government praised the initiative many in the country have strongly opposed it. A surge of anti-NATO protests has been held across the country since then.

“The invitation from NATO to Montenegro was a big mistake,” Andrija Mandic, leader of the New Serb Democracy party, said in an interview with News Front.

“The alliance knows that over 60 percent of the people in Montenegro are against the country joining the military bloc. Unfortunately, we have a government of puppets controlled by the West,” he added.

According to the politician, the current situation is dangerous for Montenegro because the decision to join NATO will be passed by the parliament, without taking into account the will of the people.

“Our party stands for a referendum in following all the necessary legal procedures. This is the only way to resolve the crisis,” Mandic pointed out.

There are some people in Montenegro who support joining NATO and they are outnumbered, Mandic said. At the same time, there are those who want the country to form a military alliance with Russia, the politician said.

“However, the majority support Montenegro being neutral. But we are an Orthodox people, and Russia protected us from the Ottoman Empire for 300 years. So, first of all, we want our neutrality to be guaranteed and supported by Russia,”

he explained.

The politician stressed that Montenegro should try to build friendly relations with Russia. The Montenegrin economy relies heavily on Russian tourists and investments from Russia. The government should keep this in mind and look to strengthen ties with Moscow, Mandic said.

“Currently, the policy of our government is controlled by the West. Our authorities have repeatedly committed mistakes and made anti-Russian and anti-Serbian statements. But Russia has always been friendly in response,”

the politician said. “I believe that after the first legal snap elections the situation would change and Montenegro will not go with Albania and Turkey against Russia and Serbia.”

“Where people are a danger to society after they have served their time for conviction, as we do with sex and as we do with violent offenders… then they should be put into preventive detention.” -Dan Tehan, Intelligence and Security Committee, Australian Parliament, Dec 12, 2015

The change in Australian leadership, initiated by the prime minister’s own party, was meant to be an altering movement. Tony Abbott had been too extreme; too zealous. He wanted to commit Australian troops haphazardly. He pondered moves against death cults.  He cut against the grain of the environmental lobby, lobbing climate change scepticism into each forum he could find.  And there was the delight taken in steam rolling civil liberties.

Malcolm Turnbull is showing how is he is not much better. There is everything to say that he could be worse, a sort of Obama-screen placed over a Bush legacy. Terrible things are justified by language that is picked for the moment.

Given that Australia is already doing its best to attack various liberties, one example being stripping away citizenship of convicted terrorists, albeit those with dual-nationality, Turnbull’s proposal did not seem irregular.

On Friday at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting, Turnbull got what he wanted. There was no arm-twisting needed.  Governments of conservative and labour persuasions across the country agreed to a regime detaining convicted terrorists past their sentence date.[1]  Their model of inspiration?  The highly problematic, permanent regime designed to penalise exceptional sex and violent offenders.

Such a policy is a poor move on justice, suggesting that convictions, in terms of their philosophy, are irrelevant. It assumes, for instance, that a penal figure cannot reform, and that exceptional categories of offender exist.  Rehabilitation is thereby eschewed, and the protection of society not assured.[2]

It assumes, furthermore, that a state has infinite, unreviewable powers to select groups of individuals for punishment.  This precedent has proven catastrophic for the health of political systems which are, notionally at least, accountable and reviewable.  They also suggest that the burgeoning powers of a police state beckon, one that acts under the pretence of law whilst suspending it.

Within the courts, some resistance has been mounted, though far from enough. There have been cases suggesting that such moves are unconstitutional, an overstepping of some vague mark that is impossible to identify accurately in the common law. But the Australian Constitution is a generally weak document given to procedural outlines and commercial protections.

The drafters remained, with some exceptions, silent on the rights of the citizen, largely thinking that the sagacity of the common law would do the rest.  Judges have had to, inventively, discover hidden protections. The response from Australian governments at all levels has been to take away that inventiveness and effectively empower courts to take away liberties.

Take, for example, the Queensland Supreme Court. In 2003, a state insistent on seeing paedophiles as being the equivalent of genocidal masterminds decided that courts could make preventive or supervision orders where there was a high degree of probability that the offender poses a “serious danger to the community”. That danger is assessed, cryptically, where there “is an unacceptable risk that the prisoner will commit a serious sexual offence”.[3]

Such regimes ensure that the offender is never treated as anything other than a convict. Electronic tagging is permitted and prohibitions from living in certain areas enforced under what are called supervision orders. The continuing detention order goes further: it keeps a person in custody after the release date.  Much to the consternation of civil liberty advocates, the High Court of Australia validated the provisions.[4]

The Queensland precedent saw jurisdictions across Australia smitten.  In 2013, New South Wales decided to extend the post-detention scheme to high-risk violent offenders.  Two years later, South Australia followed.[5]  At the federal level, the Foreign Fighters Act was amended to expand the use of control orders over those convicted of a terrorism-related offence.[6] Officials, it seemed, could not get enough of the idea that prisoners, having served their time, could still be detained in some form at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Australia is not unique in this regard.  Indefinite detention has insinuated itself into various democracies, often on the pretext to target supposedly exceptional criminals. (The threat could happen here, so act now!)  In the United Kingdom, a post-supervision regime exists for those convicted of terrorist-related offences, though these tend to take the form of less intrusive notification requirements.

In the United States, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 has been used to indefinitely detain US subjects suspected of being affiliated with al-Qaeda or associate organisations.

In a vain effort to repeal the indefinite provision last year, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington) suggested that having such a provision on the statute books was dangerous.  “That is an enormous amount of power to give the executive, to take someone and lock them up without due process.”  Doing so “places liberty and freedom at risk in this country.”[7]

This highly troubling state of affairs betrays the flimsiness of certain protections, even in the United States.  Australia has one less protective barrier.  Unbacked by a spine of constitutionally protected rights, individuals tend to be at the mercy of supposedly wise judgments made by the prime minister and his colleagues. When that wisdom goes on an extended holiday, lawyers are usually left with minimal resources.

Such a program can also have another lasting effect.  Far from protecting Australian society, which is ostensibly its aim, very much the opposite can take place.  “Detaining persons convicted of terrorist offences for lengthy periods after they have served their time,” argue Tamara Tulich and Jessie Blackbourn, “could risk radicalising a section of the community who see the measure as unjust.”[8]  Prevention duly becomes cause and catalyst.

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

Notes:

Amid a continuing weakening of the Chinese currency, the People’s Bank of China (PoBC) has signalled new moves that could accelerate the slide in the renminbi’s value and trigger a currency war among export-dependent countries in Asia and internationally.

Last Friday, as the renminbi hit its weakest level against the US dollar in more than four years, the PoBC announced that it intended to change the way in which the renminbi’s value is fixed. In the future, the renminbi will be measured against a basket of currencies, rather than the dollar, opening the door for further devaluation.

China is under pressure from a rising US dollar, compelling the PoBC to intervene to maintain the value of renminbi within its fixed band. This has led to a depletion of foreign currency reserves, which stood at $3.43 trillion in November, down 14 percent from the peak in June 2014. The renminbi is likely to come under greater pressure if the US Federal Reserve announces an expected rise in US interest rates later this week.

The downward slide in the renminbi’s value, which makes Chinese exports cheaper, threatens other Asian exporters, already being hit by the global economic slump, and heightens the danger of competitive devaluations. Societe Generale analyst Jason Daw warned on Thursday that “further renminbi depreciation risks a currency war, either directly by policymaker actions or indirectly by investors shorting Asian currencies.”

Commenting last week on the upcoming US Fed decision, UK Daily Telegraphbusiness editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard cautioned:

“The greater risk for the world over coming months is that China stops trying to hold the line against devaluation and sends a wave of corrosive deflation through the world economy. Fear that China may join the world’s currency wars is what haunts the elite and funds in London.”

Evans-Pritchard warned that a large devaluation in the Chinese currency “would set off currency wars in Asia and beyond, replicating the 1998 crisis on a more dangerous level.” In the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis, China was generally praised for maintaining the renminbi’s value against the dollar and assisting in stabilising financial markets. Now China threatens to become a major source of instability.

Underlying the weakening currency is the slowdown of the Chinese economy, which was highlighted by figures released last week. Trade statistics showed further falls in US dollar terms, with an 8.7 percent drop in imports in November compared to a year earlier. Exports declined 6.8 percent year-on-year, steeper than the 5 percent fall in October.

China’s annual growth rate slowed to 6.9 percent in the September quarter, the weakest result since 2009 in the midst of the global financial crisis and below the 7 percent target set by the government. The Chinese leadership claims to be effecting a transition from an export-driven economy to one based on domestic consumption and services, as if this were a natural progression for all countries.

However, China’s rapid economic growth has been completely bound up with its integration into the world economy as the premier cheap labour platform. The regime responded to the 2008 global financial crisis, which led to a contraction in exports and the rapid loss of 20 million jobs, with a huge stimulus package that combined a flood of cheap credit with a massive infrastructure expansion.

The stimulus measures were based on the assumption that the world economy, and thus Chinese exports, would recover. Six years on, that premise has proven false. Moreover, the cheap credit only fuelled speculative bubbles in property and shares that have heightened economic uncertainty. Property prices are stagnant and shares on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets plunged earlier this year.

The slowdown in the property market, combined with the slump in manufacturing exports, is compounding productive overcapacities in basic industries such as steel. China is the world’s largest producer of steel, accounting for about a half the total production of 1.6 billion tonnes. UBS analysts cited in the Economist estimate that China this year will produce 441 million tonnes more than it can consume.

In an effort to stave off a wave of bankruptcies, the Chinese government is encouraging steel producers to export and last week cut export tariffs on pig iron and steel billet. For the year to November, China exported over 100 million tonnes—more than the total production of any other country in the world except Japan. However, Chinese steel exports not only fail to soak up overcapacity, but also threaten to provoke demands for protectionist measures from hard-pressed steel industries in other countries.

The Chinese government is fearful that a wave of bankruptcies in manufacturing will send unemployment soaring and result in widespread social unrest. Strike figures reported by the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, based largely on media reports, hit 301 in November, the highest level for the year. Most of the workers’ protests were in manufacturing and construction over unpaid wages and factory closures and mergers.

The government’s plans to “transition” to a service economy involve a further round of market restructuring and opening up of service sectors to foreign companies by breaking the current dominance of state-owned enterprises. Given the lucrative opportunities that could open up for foreign investors, it is not surprising that major global institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, along with financial commentators, champion the proposals.

However, the Financial Times noted last week that not everyone is convinced that services in China will seamlessly takeover from a stagnant manufacturing industry. John-Paul Smith, from the investment advisory firm Ecstrat, argued that the services sector was heavily interconnected to manufacturing. If manufacturing “hit the wall, the idea that consumer spending won’t take a big hit is absolutely fanciful in the extreme,” he said, warning that China had a good chance of experience “a sudden stop”—i.e., zero growth—in the next couple of years.

Image: An Israeli F-15 E fighter jet takes off during an air show as part of the graduation ceremony of Israeli pilots at the Hatzerim air force base in the southern Negev desert on June 25, 2015. (AFP)

Israeli war jets have carried out a number of airstrikes against the Gaza Strip in yet another act of aggression against the besieged coastal territory.

The airborne assaults, which were launched in the early hours of Monday morning, reportedly hit several targets including military posts in the northern and central parts of the Palestinian blockaded enclave.

According to local Palestinian media, Israeli Apache helicopters were also involved and launched at least two missiles at the northwestern part of the strip, targeting the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, a military wing of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement.

Israeli sources claimed that the air raids were conducted in response to a rocket attack that had struck the southern part of the Israeli-occupied territories a few hours earlier, blaming the attack on the Palestinian resistance movement.

Red alert sirens urged the residents of the area to hide in bunkers. Tel Aviv later said that the rocket attack caused no casualties or damage as it had landed in an unpopulated area.

The Israeli army frequently launches airstrikes against various areas in Gaza.

Over 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed in a 50-day Israeli military aggression against Gaza, which started in early July and ended on August 26 last year. Over 11,100 others, including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people, were also injured in the offensive.

Image: Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles speaks to journalists during a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela, Dec. 7, 2015. (Reuters)

The right-wing coalition of parties, known as the MUD, that won a supermajority in Venezuela’s National Assembly elections Dec. 6, has laid out its plan for a radical departure from the policies and laws laid down over the past 17 years by the socialist government.

Amid news of political infighting, on Thursday evening the MUD published on its website a list of laws its lawmakers plan to overturn once they come into office Jan. 5, including revoking price controls that have kept basic goods affordable; privatizing key enterprises and services; giving foreign companies concessions for infrastructure works; strengthening local police forces; and making public media “independent,” or private.

These sorts of changes would dramatically transform Venezuela’s political and social landscape.

The first proposal would revoke the fair prices and food security laws, which aim to provide Venezuelans with cheap access to basic necessities. The opposition says this would overcome the problem of shortages, which the government claims are due to smuggling and opposition-backed economic warfare.

Two other laws would open the way to privatization. One would reverse the nationalization of strategic enterprises and “nullify the declaration of public utility that threatens the property assets of private entrepreneurs.”

“The idea is to favor the revival of enterprises in key areas such as food, medicine, household cleaning products and personal hygiene,” the document explains.

Another law would “decentralize” public services, handing them over to local authorities and giving these the right to subcontract private service providers. The plan, according to the MUD, is to “suppress monopolies and reservations the state has made in the provision of public services to their detriment, … with strategic partnerships with private or mixed companies by granting concessions.”

A third law in this area would open up concessions for large infrastructure projects to foreign investors and multilateral financing institutions. The socialist government worked hard to end these types of deals with outsiders to enhance sovereignty and what it sees as foreign intervention into domestic affairs, especially from the United States, which has a history of meddling in the region’s politics to protect its usually capital-based interests in the country.

The MUD specifically mentions services such as roads, water supply, garbage collection, ports and airports, for which it plans to “allow and encourage multilateral funding, which would be repaid by exploiting concessions, private companies associated with the state, to develop large-scale projects and the high investment necessary for the (services’) best performance.”

Venezuela’s very real crime problem, which the MUD’s document calls “one of the most serious problems facing everyday citizens in Venezuela,” would be tackled, according to the MUD plan, by giving more power to municipal and state police forces, which are often controlled by opposition local governments. In 2002, it was municipal police in Caracas that played a key role in the failed U.S.-backed coup attempt against then President Hugo Chavez, who had begun a socialist revolution three years earlier.

In terms of the media, the opposition majority in the National Assembly proposes a law to “end hegemony” in the public media and ensure the “independence” of those in charge of those media outlets.

The MUD claims these changes, which were originally approved by in the constitution by the public, will lead to “a better quality of life.”

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This article examines the extent to which state officials are subject to prosecution in foreign domestic courts for international crimes. We consider the different types of immunity that international law accords to state officials , the reasons for the conferment of this immunity and whether they apply in cases in which it is alleged that the official has committed an international crime.

We argue that personal immunity (immunity ratione personae) continues to apply even where prosecution is sought for international crimes. Also we consider that instead of a single category of personal immunity there are in fact two types of such immunity and that one type extends beyond senior officials such as the Head of State and Head of Government. [eg. Tony Blair, David Cameron, GR Ed.]

Most of the article deals with functional immunity (immunity ratione materiae). We take the view that this type of immunity does not apply in the case of domestic prosecution of foreign officials for most international crimes. However, we reject the traditional arguments which have been put forward by scholars and courts in support of this view. Instead we consider the key to understanding when functional immunity is available lies in examining how jurisdiction is conferred on domestic courts.