Global Research

In a work by the Irish painter George William Joy, set during the Anglo-Egyptian administration in Sudan at the time of the British Empire, General Charles Gordon looks down onto an uprising led by the Mahdi army, each member of the revolt advancing upwards towards him with spears in their hands.

When the painting was created in 1893 General Gordon was considered a national hero; today the painting raises different questions: “Should Britain get involved in the areas outside that are not really beneficial to Great Britain, or should it be supportive of regimes where they had influence. It was quite a divisive point and this painting became really iconic,” says Alison Smith, lead curator at the Tate Britain, British Art to 1900.

“It became overlooked in the twentieth century,” she continues, “it became one of those really embarrassing pictures seen to be quite racist in its assumption of European white superiority. He’s shown to be calm at the moment of death, in contrast to this disorganised mob. But recently people have focused on this in light of ISIL, jihad and political Islam,” using another acronym for Daesh. It’s a timely analysis given that the day we meet British MPs voted to support airstrikes in Syria despite the long shadow cast by the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

It is precisely parallels like these which capture a central theme in Artist and Empire, the exhibition at the Tate Britain where The Death of General Gordon hangs: how has the British Empire shaped art and how has this art shaped our perceptions of the Empire not just in the early colonial period, but right up to the present day?

By 1922 the British Empire had grown from several overseas possessions and trading posts to covering almost a quarter of the world, an expanse of land which went on to inspire the phrase “the Empire on which the sun never sets.” Artist and Empire offers an insight into the Empire’s painful and brutal history: the arbitrary carving up of continents, the slave trade, the wars, the destruction and displacement to name but a few. But at the same time it draws attention to the Empire’s legacy, which is everywhere: in public monuments, social structures, contemporary politics and, of course, British art, which came through imperial networks and took on artistic influences from the countries it conquered.

Some observers may feel a certain sense of guilt admitting or recognising there is beauty and diversity in work that has come out of such destruction, but Smith says the show attempts to look beyond this narrative: “Now with so much interest in the Empire I think we’re moving beyond that binary, good thing, bad thing, and we can accept that this is the world we live in now politically, culturally socially and we can’t just ignore it.”

Image: Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677, the settlement at Whitby 1699. Pen and ink with watercolour on paper – The British Museum, London

The exhibition takes the viewer back to one of Britain’s first colonies overseas, Tangier, which it controlled between 1661 and 1684. When Charles II of England married the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza he acquired Tangier and Bombay as part of the dowry settlement. On display are two watercolours which the Prague-born draftsman and engraver Wenceslaus Hollar produced after an expedition to document fortifications and settlements.

One image shows Tangier from the north, the other looks at a settlement in an area which has been named after the English seaside town Whitby: “It’s quite interesting how the whole thing is domesticated. It could almost be mistaken for an English scene. These rolling hills and the place names” comments Smith as we look at the images. “This colony only lasted a few years because it was vulnerable and isolated and I think it fell apart through internal discord, disagreements as well as pressure from outside.”

On the other side of the room is a map entitled Imperial Federation: Map Showing the Extent of the British Empire in 1886. Britain has been placed right in the middle of the map and in proportion to Africa and America is over-sized. “As a child I was used to maps like this, you thought Britain was the centre of the world, but it’s not,” says Smith. The map has also marked Gambia and Lagos in the wrong place, “which is quite interesting for a map which purports to be the truth,” she adds.

“One of the things we wanted to bring out in this room is how unprovocative maps, charts and surveys are because they’re to do with shifting boundaries and taking existing boundaries and superimposing others and taking away existing place names so you get this layer cake of different names and what is the true identity. It’s problematic.”

Like maps, paintings were taken to be objective. Before photography and television, artists would present history paintings as visual tributes to a notable occasion and yet they were often sympathetic towards the Empire. They would be circulated widely, other artists would create similar depictions on the same subject and then these images would play a central role in conditioning people’s understanding of battles and heroic moments.

Image: Felice A. Beato (1832-1909), Interior View of the North Fort of Taku 1860. Albumen print – Victoria and Albert Museum

In Robert Home’s The Reception of the Mysorean Hostage Princes by Marquis Cornwallissons the sons of Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore, are taken hostage by the British Lieutenant-General Cornwallis, governor-general of India, to ensure Tipu Sultan pays his war reparations. Although kidnapping and hostage taking are now considered horrific and frightening, says Smith, in this painting the act is shown to be quite benign.

“This subject was painted again and again and again and again in a sentimental way, the Empire being rather like a mother or paternalistic and welcoming and kind. So anyone brought up in the nineteenth century will have known this iconography. Today we don’t really learn much about the Mysore wars in history.” The repetition of certain battles meant that countless others were simply written out of history.

Image: Robert Home 1752-1834, The Reception of the Mysorean Hostage Princes by Marquis Cornwallis, 26 February 1792 c.1793. Oil paint on canvas – National Army Museum

With the advent of photography the genre of “polite history painting” died out because it was believed photos could show the real nature of war. But a photograph by Felice A. Beato of the 1860 Second Opium War in the Taku Forts in China reveals a different story. “It seems to be an objective eyewitness account but there seems to be quite a few he did of these dead Chinese soldiers but he had rearranged the corpses to get the maximum vantage point. I think the point of this is it’s just as manipulated in its own way as the paintings,” says Smith.

During the 1960s work from artists of the former Empire grew in profile; many came to work and study in London after the Second World War as the Empire was being decolonised. An iconic work during this period was Guyanese artist Donald Locke’s Trophies of Empire which is based on the plantation system where the slaves worked in Demerara. Ceramic bullets are tied together, a reference to slavery, shackles and colonial violence but also a comment on how objects have been uprooted from their places of origins and put on display in museums, explains Smith.

Many of these works of art came into Britain through discovery voyages, individual agents, officials working overseas; some were commissioned, others given as gifts, she says. Recently much attention has been paid to the acquisition of big works of western art by the Gulf countries, purchases which are helping to secure their place as a major player in the art world.

“It’s a reversal really because a lot of those paintings they’re collecting, like J. F. Lewis, a lot of his works go back to the Gulf states,” she says. “He was an artist who travelled overseas and painted in places like Egypt and continued doing that when he came back to Britain and now it seems right that those works should go back in a way.”

Exploring the Empire through art, says Smith, can be an entry point into history, an insight into relationships and encounters or the human angle to the story; but this is just some of what can be taken away from Artist and Empire. “It’s not an exhibition with a conclusion. Everyone has some kind of relationship with the British Empire or ancestral relationship, people will bring their own experiences and memories or assumptions to bear on this exhibition, maybe they’ll be reinforced or maybe they’ll be challenged in some way.”

Artist and Empire can be seen at the Tate Britain until 10 April 2016.

A book by hardline Israeli rabbis justifying the murder of non-Jews will not have to face charges of inciting violence, the Jerusalem High Court said.

Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday that the court ruled there was “no basis” for the charges, upholding a 2012 decision by Israel’s Attorney General to not pursue a criminal investigation.

The Torat Hamelech (The King’s Torah) was published in 2009 and sparked controversy and a debate on free speech by arguing that Jewish law allowed, in some cases, for Jewish people to kill non-Jews without being to court.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the book states that anyone who opposes “our kingdom” or encourages attacks against them can be killed, as can children “if there is a good chance they will grow up to be like their evil parents.”

The Attorney General’s 2012 decision argued that the book was a religious study and not aimed at encouraging individuals to violence, despite concern within Israeli society that it could lead to violence against Palestinians.

Several Jewish groups objected the groups, as did senior Rabbis, including the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, which petitioned the High Court to question why there have been no investigation for racial incitement.

Israeli blog Reform Judaism, which supported the petition, wrote in 2012 that the book was “a manual on how Jewish law can justify hate and violence.”

“When the Mufti of Jerusalem gave a sermon about killing Jews, the State opened a criminal investigation in less than a week,” the blog wrote. “When rabbis widely distribute their manual for violence to the masses, the State remains silent.”

In an under-reported incident in which Russian Crimea’s power lines were severed from Ukraine, leaving the peninsula and over 2 million residents in darkness for over a week, it has become clear to the world the tenuous grip Kiev and its NATO backers actually have over the “Ukraine” they claim they preside over.

It would be Russia through an underwater cable that would begin restoring power to Crimea. While rhetoric regarding Crimea is still strong on both sides, it is the actions of both Ukraine and its NATO backers versus Russia that appear to finally be answering the “Crimea question” if there even was such a question.

Russia Restores Power, Asserts Sovereignty 

In the first week of December, the International Business Times would report in their article, “Vladimir Putin inaugurates Crimea energy bridge during surprise visit,” that:

President Vladimir Putin has inaugurated the first leg of a power line between the Russian mainland and Crimea in a surprise visit to the peninsula. His visit to the strategically important territory comes after the region plunged into darkness over widespread power outage. 

Crimea, which Moscow claims to have been hit by Ukraine’s energy blockade, will start receiving power supply from Russia once the “electricity bridge” is completed. The undersea cable project was scheduled to have been completed by the end of December but it has been brought forward after Crimean power supply was knocked off.

While Crimea’s dependency on Ukraine for power and other necessities could have been used as a means of proving that the peninsula exists as an integral part of Ukrainian territory, by cutting power and being unable to rein in the terrorists who for over a week blocked repairs from the Ukrainian side, Kiev has all but proved it has no interest or ability to administer the region.

That the terrorists in fact are backed by not only special interests now occupying Kiev, but by NATO and the United States in particular, illustrates the punitive measures Ukrainians and their neighbors face for falling on the wrong side of NATO and its proxies in Kiev. It also illustrates once again the impetus that drove the people of Crimea to wisely choose ascension into the Russian Federation rather than to remain a part of Ukraine in the first place.

US Insists on the “Return” of Crimea

In a pattern that is becoming all too familiar, the United States continues to make statements contrary to reality. US Vice President Joseph Biden was reported to have called on Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine – despite the obvious act of terrorism carried out against the people of Crimea and Kiev’s clear role behind the terrorism.

Bloomberg in its article, “Biden Says ‘Illegal’ Russian Occupation of Crimea Must End,” would report that:

Vice President Joe Biden called Russia’s annexation of Crimea “illegal” in a demonstration of solidarity with Ukraine’s government that signaled the U.S. won’t bargain away its support for the country to win Russian cooperation in the fight against Islamic State in Syria. 

“The United States stands firmly with the people of Ukraine in the face of continued — and I emphasize continued — aggression from Russia and Russian-backed separatists,” Biden said in Kiev on Monday, following a meeting with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Papers like the Moscow Times with deceptive headlines like, “Activists Block Crimea Power Line Relaunch,” would reveal in the bodies of their articles that these “activists” were in fact the heavily armed, Neo-Nazi paramilitary organization Right Sector, notorious for its front line role in NATO’s proxy war on eastern Ukraine.

Image: The heavily armed fanatics of the Neo-Nazi Right Sector, when not intimidating political adversaries in western Ukraine, or killing them in eastern Ukraine, have more recently been implicated in cutting power to some 2 million civilians residing in Russian Crimea.

The Moscow Times would report:

Activists have prevented Ukrainian repair crews from relaunching one of the four power lines supplying Crimea with electricity from the mainland, despite Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stating earlier that Kiev would allow power flows to resume, Russian and Ukrainian media reported Monday.

Members of the far-right paramilitary Right Sector group blocked the first attempt at re-activating the Kakhovskaya-Titan line on Sunday night, the RIA Ukraine news agency and depo.ua news site wrote the following morning.

Either Kiev has no control over what takes place in its own territory or it has ordered Right Sector and other groups to initiate the blockade of Crimea. Either way, Vice President Biden’s calls for Russia to return Crimea to Ukrainian control appear irresponsible at best. With literal Neo-Nazis cutting power to 2 million civilians – a blatant war crime – seems only to further vindicate Russia’s actions regarding Crimea and the decision of the people of Crimea themselves to seek a place within the Russian Federation.

Sovereignty Games  

The illegitimacy of not only the regime in Kiev, but of NATO who created it and to this day perpetuates its existence, has helped erode the very principles both are now trying to appeal to in order to maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Beyond Ukraine, similar scenarios are developing across all of Eastern Europe, where as NATO attempts to expand closer and closer to Russia’s borders, it is finding it increasingly difficult to find allies who are not extremists with ties to fascism and/or Nazism.

By allying itself with these radical elements, those populations subjected to their NATO-backed domination of politics, economics, and security are more likely to turn toward Russia either as Crimea did, or as the break-away republics of Donetsk and Lugansk have.

Beyond Eastern Europe, the continual violation of Syria and Iraq’s sovereignty by NATO is making it exponentially more difficult to appeal to sovereignty and territorial integrity in regards to Ukraine. The West has repeatedly called for the “Balkanization” of Syria into several weaker regions. As the balance of power turns in the region, and even globally, the West may find this contempt it has shown toward national sovereignty and the territorial integrity of existing nations backfire on it when its own allies face the same prospect of being carved up.

Some may argue that Crimea’s ascension into the Russian Federation itself  was only possible because the NATO-driven lawlessness that it occurred in the midst of. As this lawlessness continues, it is all but guaranteed that Crimea will only be driven deeper within the Russian Federation.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

When it comes to existing discourse on efforts to counter radicalization and the subsequent extremism that arises, it appears that Western policymakers and media outlets want to address everything but the actual long-term causes. The elephant in the room being Gulf States (namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar) whose state institutions have acted as an ideological incubator for extremist sentiment to flourish both domestically and abroad.

It is rarely talked about in a sensible way since the Saudis continue to hire a spree of U.S. lobbyists and PR experts, one of which is the PR powerhouse Edelman. The largest privately owned PR agency in the world, Edelman is known for helping clients with favorable media coverage on mainstream outlets. Meanwhile, a Saudi-led coalition is continuing to bomb the poorest country in the Middle East (Yemen), violating international law in the process, which like many of their activities has Western approval due to lucrative arms deals, in turn, affording Gulf states impunity for any of their actions. This explains the notable media blackout and minimal coverage on events in Yemen across Western media outlets.

If you look at the relationship extremist movements have with these countries, you find they will employ various discrete or indirect methods of both financing and arming. A prime example being Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria — Jabhat Al-Nusra. GCC states along with NATO member Turkey have effectively armed them through the guise of arming a so-called moderate coalition ‘Jaysh al-Fatah,’ which itself is already comprised of hardline Sunni Islamist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham.

Qatar in particular, are known to finance such groups by way of paying ransoms; acting as a mediator in hostage situations. The most recent example being in Arsal, Lebanon, where Qatar mediated on a prisoner exchange deal for the release of Lebanese soldiers held captive by the group. Using this method enables them to deflect any charges of culpability for financing what are effectively al-Qaeda insurgents.

In modern times, much of the extremism we witness today can be traced back to the U.S. and Saudi backing in the 1980s when they built up the Afghan Mujahideen to battle the Soviets; who we come to know today as the Taliban. It just goes to show how such policies of arming the ‘moderate Islamist’ has come back around to bite the U.S., having to invest in conflicts just to get rid of a problem they themselves aided and abetted in creating. We see a similar process taking place in Syria today.

As part of this process, the Saudis would go on to utilize their petrodollars in order to finance and build fanatical religious schools. In the Punjab region alone, (which today witnesses extremism on a regular basis) has seen Salafi madrassas (or religious seminaries) increase threefold over the last few decades. This links back to a more recent case with the San Bernadino shooting, as U.S. officials found links between the infamous Lal Masjid in Islamabad and the woman [Tashfeen Malik] who took part in the ISIS-inspired massacre. This mosque is notorious for its links to past extremism and its leader (Maulana Abdul Aziz) who has gained a reputation in Pakistan for his hateful rhetoric. In the past, he has expressed support for ISIS, named a library after Osama Bin Laden and refused to condemn a massacre of schoolchildren in Rawalpindi (much to the dismay even of many of his own followers).

In light of both the San Bernadino shooting and the Paris attacks, it is almost inevitable that despite concerted efforts by intelligence services, terrorist attacks will only become more frequent on Western soil. What remains to be seen, however, is whether Western governments will ever re-evaluate their stance with their allies in the Middle East; if they continue to grant them impunity, this means that any efforts to seriously tackle extremism are all but disingenuous, but it will be civilians who will continue to pay the price for governments which remain in denial as to the ideological roots of extremism.

Hasan Hafidh is working on his Ph.D. at the University of Leeds in comparative politics of the Middle East focusing on civil society networks and sectarianism in Gulf States.

For the first time in more than four decades, “middle-income households” no longer constitute the majority of American society, according to a study published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. Instead, the majority of households are either low or higher-income.

The study concluded, “Once in the clear majority, adults in middle-income households in 2015 were matched in number by those in lower- and upper-income households combined.” Pew called its findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in American society.

The study also found a sharp fall in household incomes and wealth, particularly for low-income households, noting that only “upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth from 1983 to 2013.”

Together with the decline in the relative numbers of middle-income earners, the incomes of households in this group has fallen substantially in recent decades. The median income of middle-income households fell by four percent between 2000 and 2014, while their median wealth fell by 28 percent over approximately the same period.

The study notes that since 1983, the total share of income accruing to high-income households has grown significantly. The study found that “fully 49% of US aggregate income went to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29% in 1970.” Meanwhile the share “accruing to middle-income households was 43% in 2014, down substantially from 62% in 1970.”

These findings reflect the persistent declines in wages for US workers following decades of de-industrialization, which has been accompanied by significant increases in the yields of financial assets, helping to increase the wealth and earnings of the financial elite, along with a section of upper middle-class households.

While the study’s metrics are too broad to capture the enormous concentration of society’s wealth in the hands of the top 1 and 0.1 percent, they reflect the reality that a “middle class” lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for the broad majority of the US population.

The Pew study, an analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s current population survey, defines “middle-income” households as those earning between two-thirds and twice the US median household income, or between $42,000 to $126,000 for a household of three. Those classified as low-income made less than two-thirds the typical income, while those classified as high-income made twice the median income.

The study added that the fastest growing sections of the population were those at the extremes of the income distribution: the very rich and the very poor. “The movement out of the middle has not simply been at the margins—the growth has been at the extreme ends of the income ladder,” with “the fastest-growing numbers… in the very lowest and very highest income tiers.”

The study found that, after dividing US households into fifths based on household income, “In 2015, 20% of American adults were in the lowest income tier, up from 16% in 1971. On the opposite side, 9% are in the highest income tier, more than double the 4% share in 1971.” Meanwhile the share of adults in the lower middle or upper middle income brackets have remained unchanged.

The report added, “The growth at the top is similarly skewed,” as “the share of adults in highest-income households [has] more than doubled, from 4% in 1971 to 9% in 2015. But the increase in the share in upper-middle income households was modest, rising from 10% to 12%.”

The study further noted the impact of the 2008 crisis on the wealth of middle-income households. It stated,

“Before the onset of the Great Recession, the median wealth of middle-income families increased from $95,879 in 1983 to $161,050 in 2007, a gain of 68%. But the economic downturn eliminated that gain almost entirely. By 2010, the median wealth of middle-income families had fallen to about $98,000, where it still stood in 2013.”

The wealth of higher income households has largely been protected from the 2008 financial crash.

“Upper income families more than doubled their wealth from 1983 to 2007 as it climbed from $323,402 to $729,980. Despite losses during the recession, these families recovered somewhat since 2010 and had a median wealth of $650,074 in 2013, about double their wealth in 1983.”

The Pew figures also show the impact of the persistent economic slump on a broad range of households, noting,

“Americans are less well-to-do now than at the start of the 21st century. For all income tiers, median incomes in 2014 were lower than in 2000. These reversals are the result of two recessions—the downturn in 2001 and the Great Recession of 2007-09—and economic recoveries that have been too anemic to fully repair the damage.”

The conclusion that the incomes and wealth of all sections of society have declined since the start of the 2008 crisis is attributable to the fact that the study’s methodology is too broad to encompass the most dramatic change in American society: the enormous concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the financial oligarchy. The handful of multi-millionaires and billionaires in this social group are wealthier than ever.

Figures published last year by professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman showed that the wealthiest 0.5 percent of American society saw their share of the country’s wealth double, from about 17 percent in 1978 to just under 35 percent in 2012. The top 0.1 percent (one one-thousandth of the population) now controls more than 20 percent of all wealth, up from about 8 percent in the late 1970s.

The vast growth of social inequality is not the result of an impartial and merely objective process, but is rather the result of policies pursued by the government for decades aimed at slashing the wages and benefits of American workers while enriching the financial oligarchy that dominates wealth and political power in the US. This process has been dramatically accelerated under the Obama administration.

The persistent growth of social inequality is the most conspicuous and defining characteristic of contemporary American society. It is this process, facilitated by the financialization of the economy and the continuous diversion of resources away from productive investment, that underlies the erosion of democratic forms of government and the endless promotion of war and militarism.

This process expresses, moreover, a deep social crisis to which the financial elite, obsessed with the expansion of its own wealth and social privilege, can offer no solutions.

The US Defense Department (DOD) is preparing to expand its global network of military bases by establishing a new “string” of bases in countries stretching from Africa to East Asia, unnamed Pentagon officials told the New York Times Wednesday.

The enlarged US basing arrangements will include at least four new large-scale bases or “hubs,” including new facilities in East Africa and West Africa and Afghanistan, along with a greater number of smaller camps or “spokes,” sources told the Times .

The new bases, which the Pentagon describes as “enduring” bases, will host forces ranging from dozens of commandos up to 5,000 soldiers at the largest hubs, the unnamed military officials said.

West Africa is a main focus of the expanded basing plans, and will host one of the larger hubs. The West African countries of Niger and Cameroon are the only countries set to host smaller “spoke” bases listed by the Times report.

The Pentagon plans to build a large “hub” near Erbil in northern Iraq, where US special forces have already been conducting combat operations for months. US Special Forces commandos affiliated with the “expeditionary targeting force” announced last week by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter are already setting up operations in the same area, according to reports.

The new bases are only the latest development in the metastatic growth of Washington’s global military apparatus. According to the official list of US overseas bases, US forces are stationed in Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, British Indian Ocean Territory, Bulgaria, Cuba, Djibouti, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Honduras, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Romania, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.

Taking into account non-officially acknowledged bases, “forward operating posts,” and other long-term deployments, the list of US bases expands to include the majority of the countries in the world.

Recent weeks have made clear that the US is launching yet another expansion of its wars in the Middle East. Wednesday announcement, transmitted by the Pentagon through the semi-official mouthpiece of the Times, demonstrates that the escalation of the US-led imperialist wars in Iraq and Syria will be accompanied by a generalized military build-up encompassing far wider areas of the globe.

The new bases will facilitate a further expansion of manhunts, kidnapping, and other counter-insurgency operations which have been orchestrated by US military-intelligence cadres across ever-expanding areas of the planet since 2001 under the banner of the US “Global War on Terrorism.”

Working from the new “hubs,” Special Force troops and intelligence operatives will orchestrate supposed “counterterrorism” missions, according to the description offered by the Times. Operations launched from the new bases will enable close collaborations between “regional American commanders, diplomats and spies,” US officials said. In other words, the bases will provide launching pads for a further expansion of US military and intelligence activities in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, along the entire Indo-Pacific rim, and in every significant corner of Africa.

In statements defending the basing expansion, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter claimed that the all-pervasive nature of the ISIS threat requires permanent global presence that reaches easily into every corner of the world.

“Because we cannot predict the future, these regional nodes—from Morón, Spain, to Jalalabad, Afghanistan—will provide forward presence to respond to a range of crises, terrorist and other kinds,” US Defense Secretary Carter said in reference to the basing expansion.

“The new bases will enable unilateral crisis response, counter-terror operations, or strikes on high-value targets,” he added.

US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford similarly claimed earlier this month that ISIS is based on a “global dynamic” that makes it impossible to combat the group within any limited list of countries.

In reality, rather than “fighting terrorism,” the real purpose of the bases is to shape the world political order in accordance with needs of US imperialism, subjecting ever wider areas of the globe to military violence and repression by US forces.

Recent operations in Eastern Europe have given a taste of what is planned for the new US military “hubs” and “spokes.” Some 400 US troops have been deployed to forward operating bases in western Ukraine, where they are reportedly gathering information about Russian forces stationed near the eastern border with Russia, Military Times reported Thursday. Intelligence gathered from the military spying is already being used to develop new training programs for the main US Army infantry school on the European continent, located in Germany.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Hezbollah are pushing towards the Aleppo-Damascus highway in the Aleppo province’s southern countryside. The main clashes against the militants of Al-Nusra, Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham, and Harakat Nouriddeen Al-Zinki are continuing at the towns of Barqoum and Al-Zorba.

Separately, Al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham launched a counteroffensive and attempted to capture the town of Tal Al-‘Eiss. They failed to break the pro-government forces’ defenses. The inability to successfully counter-attack puts the militants in a hard situation in the Aleppo province. Advancing Al-Zorba, the Syrian forces are threatening to cutoff the militants’ primary supply line from the Idlib province to the provincial capital of the Aleppo city.

The SAA made heavy gains inside the city of Daraa leaving them in striking distance of the old Daraa border-crossing with Jordan which is commonly referred to as the Al-Jamrak Crossing. The loyalists imposed full control over the al-Manshiyah district and captured several buildings inside the Daraa al-Balad quarter.

Terrorists are controlling the both major border-crossings with Jordan: Nassib and Daraa. The recent SAA operations in Daraa are aimed to decrease the flow of weapons and manpower supplied to the militants from Jordan.

On Wednesday, ISIS launched a counter-offensive at the village of Maheen in order to recover several points lost to the pro-government forces over the last three weeks. ISIS started operation with capturing the Quraytayn-Maheen checkpoint and the corresponding hill that overlooks the Christian city of Quraytayn. Then, the ISIS forces would seize two more hilltops along the Maheen-Quraytayn road after clashes with the National Defense Forces and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. As a result of these gains, ISIS was able to reenter Maheen and retake the town.

The ISIS counter-offensive has become possible because the Syrian Arab Army’s 120th Brigade of the 2nd Division and the Assyrian “Gozarto Protection Forces” (GPF) had been moved from the Maheen-Quraytayn front to another area of the battleground.

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We reported in 2011 that the International Atomic Energy Agency knew within weeks that Fukushima had melted down … but failed and refused to tell the public.

The same year, we reported in 2011 that the U.S. knew within days of the Fukushima accident that Fukushima had melted down … but failed to tell the public.

We noted in 2012:

The fuel pools and rods at Fukushima appear to have “boiled”, caught fire and/or exploded soon after the earthquake knocked out power systems. See this, this, this, this and this.

Now, a declassified report written by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 18, 2011 – one week after the tidal wave hit Fukushima – states:

The source term provided to NARAC was: (1) 25% of the total fuel in unit 2 released to the atmosphere, (2) 50% of the total spent fuel from unit 3 was released to the atmosphere, and (3) 100% of the total spent fuel was released to the atmosphere from unit 4.

NARAC is the the U.S. National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center, located at the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. NARAC “provides tools and services that map the probable spread of hazardous material accidentally or intentionally released into the atmosphere“.

The fuel pools at Units 3 and 4 contained enormous amounts of radiation.

For example, there was “more cesium in that [Unit 4] fuel pool than in all 800 nuclear bombs exploded above ground.”

EU officials are hoping to renew its economic sanctions against Russia. This can only mean one thing: More economic pain for Europe.

The current round of EU sanctions is due to expire on January 31, 2016. The trade ban includes cutting Russia off from European funding sources, industrial trade, food, energy and oil, as well as an endless list of other items and caveats.

While this has certainly hurt the Russian economy, it’s also damaged the West’s bottom line too. A recent study commissioned by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) revealed that sanctions EU against Russia – and Moscow’s reciprocal moves against the EU – are costing Europeans approximately 100 billion euros and is jeopardizing up to 2.5 million jobs, including a loss of 465,000 jobs in Germany, 215,000 jobs in Italy, 160,000 in Spain, 145,000 in France, and 110,000 jobs in Britain.

Luckily, there’s someone in Europe who’s still holding out a candle for sanity. It seems that Italy is offering a remedy to some of Europe’s economic pain. It’s a revolutionary concept: daring to put its own economic and national interests ahead of Washington and Brussels half-baked, geopolitical machinations.

Here’s a report on this story which aired today:

The obvious question for the rest of Europe: is there a good reason for doing it?

To answer that question, you need to understand what is the West’s core political justification for keeping up with the sanctions. The official western propaganda line goes as follows:

“We need sanctions against Russia in order to uphold a peace agreement and end the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that has killed 9,100 people since April, 2014.”

This line might play well in the reality vacuum that exists between Washington DC and Westminster, but not as much elsewhere. It’s a political fiction which is becoming harder and harder to sell. The reason is that the primary sales pitch for Russian sanctions was based on the Downing of Flight MH17 which European and American leaders immediately tried to somehow blame on Moscow. The initial propaganda pushed worked well enough to get sanctions off the ground, but the main problem now for Washington and its reluctant EU surrogate is that no one actually believes the old fairy tale.

Hence, anyone with a brain is now starting to ask: with Europe’s economy suffering, and no proof that Russia had anything to do with MH17 – then what’s the point of sanctions in the first place?

Whether or not you believe that MH17 was a genuine accident, or was a prefabricated event designed to trigger a call for sanctions – makes little difference now. The fact remains that there never was, is, or will be, any real evidence to convict Moscow over the MH17 incident. If there was then it’s certain we would have already seen it by now. Conversely, base on motive, intent and means, there is a very compelling case to suggest that Western interests are behind an MH17 false flag event.

THE MH17 NARRATIVE: One lie led to another.

No matter how you cut it, Europe must have total political unity in order to maintain any international sanctions regime against Moscow. The EU’s original plan was to simply wave through” the extension of Russian sanctions as a minor agenda note, hoping that no one would notice or demand any debate on what appears to be a Washington-imposed policy of geopolitical containment aimed at Russia.

Brussels technocrats may have expressed some public shock that Italy would dare to attempt to force a democratic debate on the issue, but in private you can be sure that Washington dissenters are everywhere.

Thompson Reuters reported earlier today:

“Italy unexpectedly demanded that a mooted extension of the European Union’s economic sanctions on Russia go for further discussion within the bloc rather than be rubber-stamped by EU envoys who met on Wednesday. The envoys aimed to approve a six-month extension to the sanctions, imposed on Moscow last year over the Ukraine crisis, without discussion after an agreement by EU leaders – including Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi – in the wings of the Group of 20 summit in Turkey last month.”

Rome breaking ranks on this issue could be risky for Brussels, so expect some push-back or good fashion political blackmail (or another bizarre international incident) waged by sanctions proponents.

If Italy falls, then expect others to follow. Add to this the newly developing situation in Syria and a renewed international imperative fo r cooperation there, and you’d expect even more reason for European leaders to want to work with its neighbor Russia, rather than against it (as Washington would like).

When Europe eventually sees the futility of the Russian sanctions facade, then Washington will be isolated, alone with its dysfunctional basket case of a regime in Kiev as the surviving partner on this flagging initiative. In terms of the United States as a main broker of international peace and prosperity, no real progress can be made in the Middle East, the Ukraine or anywhere else, so long as Washington insists on a policy of diplomatic aggression against Moscow. It will simply block any route to mutually beneficial bilateral negotiations.

High Hopes in Geneva?

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Italian newspaper La Repubblica in an interview this week: “As long as Obama’s deputy Joe Biden goes around Europe recommending continued sanctions against us without taking into account how Kiev is behaving under Western pressure, we will not be able to reach any understanding.”

As much as the world would like to see Washington drop its imperialist NATO-driven lunge into the Eurasia heartland, no one is really holding their breathe. Reports of more NATO-backed paramilitary activity in the Crimea (N azis and Jihadis, fighting shoulder to shoulder, for OTAN?) should be a cause for worry. That’s a story which has been completely blacked out in the western media, for obvious reasons.

Lavrov will join Russian President Vladimir Putin next week to meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and others – to discuss the conflicts in both Ukraine and in Syria.

That should be interesting.

 

Following nearly eight years of negotiations, 12 Pacific Rim countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam – have agreed to take part in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a sweeping trade deal that affects some 40 percent of the global economy.

The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) has closely monitored the TPPA throughout the negotiation period and regards several aspects of the draft text as deeply troubling from the perspective of regional stability, economic feasibility, social justice, and national sovereignty. While advocates of the deal have attempted to allay public criticism, there is a need to reaffirm concerns shared by wide segments of society across all the participating nations.

The TPPA aims to enforce a common regulatory framework structured around the norms of American trade policies that govern rules for tariffs and trade disputes, patents and intellectual property, foreign investment, and other areas such as environmental regulations and internet governance.

Despite a level of secrecy that barred even elected public representatives of participating countries from access to the deal’s draft text during the negotiating process, advisors from major multinational corporations played a consistent, key role in forming the deal’s proposed measures.

This is no ordinary trade deal – it is a fundamental aspect of Washington’s pivot-to-Asia policy, involving the large-scale refocusing of American corporate and military muscle within the heart of the ASEAN region.

The TPPA aims at nothing less than formulating new rules for international trade around core US strategic interests, and in the process overshadowing key functions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a comparatively more even platform for discussing issue of global trade.

The agreement does not include China. The exclusion of the region’s largest economy and world’s second-largest (and by some measures largest) economy is no accident. It is a central aspect of the TPPA’s strategic policy function: harnessing the power of the developing nations throughout ASEAN as an economic counterweight to Beijing for the benefit of the United States.

As the TPPA is implemented, it is possible that friction could occur between Washington and Beijing, as the former reaps preferential treatment from the agreement, which in turn could affect relations between China and certain ASEAN states to the detriment of peace and stability in the region.

Only 4 out of 10 ASEAN states are party to the agreement’s founding group; the trade ties that will emerge from the TPPA, which will reflect the inclusion of some ASEAN states and the exclusion of others, could be inimical to intra-ASEAN harmony.

The most egregious aspect of the trade deal is the Investor-State-Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which would allow corporations to seek restitution against states in an international arbitration court for the contraction of their potential future profits as a result of government regulations.

ISDS-enforced agreements effectively put global multinational companies on a level legal playing field with national governments, thereby limiting the scope of domestic policies that governments can undertake without potentially being challenged for impinging on investor rights.

Acquiescing to ISDS provisions systematically undermines the integrity of public institutions in participating countries and their domestic arbitration instruments while significantly lowering the bargaining power of domestic labour and rights advocacy groups.

The agreement encompasses numerous areas of concern that intimately relate to human health and well-being – from unimpeded entry of genetically modified products into domestic markets, the gradual elimination of tariffs on alcoholic beverages and tobacco, the neglect of any measures to combat climate-disrupting emissions spurred on increased shipping and mass consumption, to the drastic extension of patents on pharmaceutical products that will impede access to affordable medicines. Furthermore, proposed regulations of the internet will require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to more actively monitor users to enforce copyright protections at the expense of individual privacy.

In actuality, the TPPA obliges signatory countries to reshape their national laws and economic policies to conform to a neo-liberal agenda set by giant multinational corporations, to the benefit of local elites at the expense of the region’s working classes and poor.

The agreement’s political undercurrents are apparent in view of the unprecedented measures that the US is attempting to push through that codify legislation to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel – essentially designed to discourage governments around the world from participating in BDS activities by leveraging the incentive of free trade with the US.

The economic policies pushed by the US and its allies – backed to the hilt by multinational corporate interests ­– are demonstrably against the public good and show disregard for national sovereignty and political independence.

Facing notable domestic opposition, each country must now assess its own situation and decide whether or not to agree to the deal’s terms. It should not be forgotten that Malaysia withdrew from a Malaysia-US Free Trade Agreement negotiation in 2009 because the deal being negotiated was perceived to be against national interests.

JUST believes that Malaysia would be better off showing similar courage in the face of the TPPA. It isn’t a question of ‘losing out’ or being ‘left behind’. ASEAN itself has initiated its own vision for free trade, the Regional Cooperation for Economic Partnership (RCEP), with negotiations expected to be completed next year.

ASEAN and the region as a whole would be better positioned to throw its weight behind a trade architecture that is inclusive, formulated on a truly level playing field and capable of demonstrating greater respect for national sovereignty and social priorities.

Following nearly eight years of negotiations, 12 Pacific Rim countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam – have agreed to take part in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a sweeping trade deal that affects some 40 percent of the global economy.

The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) has closely monitored the TPPA throughout the negotiation period and regards several aspects of the draft text as deeply troubling from the perspective of regional stability, economic feasibility, social justice, and national sovereignty. While advocates of the deal have attempted to allay public criticism, there is a need to reaffirm concerns shared by wide segments of society across all the participating nations.

The TPPA aims to enforce a common regulatory framework structured around the norms of American trade policies that govern rules for tariffs and trade disputes, patents and intellectual property, foreign investment, and other areas such as environmental regulations and internet governance.

Despite a level of secrecy that barred even elected public representatives of participating countries from access to the deal’s draft text during the negotiating process, advisors from major multinational corporations played a consistent, key role in forming the deal’s proposed measures.

This is no ordinary trade deal – it is a fundamental aspect of Washington’s pivot-to-Asia policy, involving the large-scale refocusing of American corporate and military muscle within the heart of the ASEAN region.

The TPPA aims at nothing less than formulating new rules for international trade around core US strategic interests, and in the process overshadowing key functions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a comparatively more even platform for discussing issue of global trade.

The agreement does not include China. The exclusion of the region’s largest economy and world’s second-largest (and by some measures largest) economy is no accident. It is a central aspect of the TPPA’s strategic policy function: harnessing the power of the developing nations throughout ASEAN as an economic counterweight to Beijing for the benefit of the United States.

As the TPPA is implemented, it is possible that friction could occur between Washington and Beijing, as the former reaps preferential treatment from the agreement, which in turn could affect relations between China and certain ASEAN states to the detriment of peace and stability in the region.

Only 4 out of 10 ASEAN states are party to the agreement’s founding group; the trade ties that will emerge from the TPPA, which will reflect the inclusion of some ASEAN states and the exclusion of others, could be inimical to intra-ASEAN harmony.

The most egregious aspect of the trade deal is the Investor-State-Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which would allow corporations to seek restitution against states in an international arbitration court for the contraction of their potential future profits as a result of government regulations.

ISDS-enforced agreements effectively put global multinational companies on a level legal playing field with national governments, thereby limiting the scope of domestic policies that governments can undertake without potentially being challenged for impinging on investor rights.

Acquiescing to ISDS provisions systematically undermines the integrity of public institutions in participating countries and their domestic arbitration instruments while significantly lowering the bargaining power of domestic labour and rights advocacy groups.

The agreement encompasses numerous areas of concern that intimately relate to human health and well-being – from unimpeded entry of genetically modified products into domestic markets, the gradual elimination of tariffs on alcoholic beverages and tobacco, the neglect of any measures to combat climate-disrupting emissions spurred on increased shipping and mass consumption, to the drastic extension of patents on pharmaceutical products that will impede access to affordable medicines. Furthermore, proposed regulations of the internet will require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to more actively monitor users to enforce copyright protections at the expense of individual privacy.

In actuality, the TPPA obliges signatory countries to reshape their national laws and economic policies to conform to a neo-liberal agenda set by giant multinational corporations, to the benefit of local elites at the expense of the region’s working classes and poor.

The agreement’s political undercurrents are apparent in view of the unprecedented measures that the US is attempting to push through that codify legislation to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel – essentially designed to discourage governments around the world from participating in BDS activities by leveraging the incentive of free trade with the US.

The economic policies pushed by the US and its allies – backed to the hilt by multinational corporate interests ­– are demonstrably against the public good and show disregard for national sovereignty and political independence.

Facing notable domestic opposition, each country must now assess its own situation and decide whether or not to agree to the deal’s terms. It should not be forgotten that Malaysia withdrew from a Malaysia-US Free Trade Agreement negotiation in 2009 because the deal being negotiated was perceived to be against national interests.

JUST believes that Malaysia would be better off showing similar courage in the face of the TPPA. It isn’t a question of ‘losing out’ or being ‘left behind’. ASEAN itself has initiated its own vision for free trade, the Regional Cooperation for Economic Partnership (RCEP), with negotiations expected to be completed next year.

ASEAN and the region as a whole would be better positioned to throw its weight behind a trade architecture that is inclusive, formulated on a truly level playing field and capable of demonstrating greater respect for national sovereignty and social priorities.

We have forgotten that the sanctions preceding the illegal invasion of Iraq intentionally destroyed water treatment centers and directly killed 500,000 children under age five and about 1.2 million others.

The West’s on-going impunity as it continues to perpetrate genocide in Iraq should alert us to the dangers of repeated offenses elsewhere. Preliminary reports, for example, indicate that NATO is targeting water infrastructure as it illegally bombs Syria.

The illegal invasions of Iraq and Libya were sold to us through lies and deceptions. And yet we remain seemingly immune to reasonable, well-documented information that the war on Syria is also being perpetrated by means of lies and deception.

Strategies of deception are being perpetrated by warmongering imperialists in all of these wars, yet despite the on-going holocaust, and the real threat of nuclear war, the same genocidal strategies are being successfully employed again.  And the public remains remarkably oblivious to what is happening.

What are these strategies, and how can we counter them?

A “soft power complex” engineers domestic hatred towards perennially re-branded enemies, and consent for permanent, illegal warfare, beneath false banners of “democracy”, “freedom”, or “humanitarian intervention”.  It also engineers murderous chaos and destabilization in target countries.  Sometimes there are unforeseen consequences, but none of the strategies are mistakes, as apologists would have us believe.

Sources of the globalized deception are “Non-Governmental Agencies” (NGOs) — such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), — as well as oligarch–funded foundations, Public Relations (PR) companies, think tanks, and intelligence agencies.

Mainstream media (MSM) often uses PR-engineered sources for its stories – the “White Helmets” in Syria would be a good example – and it often tells its stories using commentators who have largely undisclosed links to the Military Industrial Complex (MIC).  For example, an October, 2013 analysis by the public accountability initiative, titled, “Conflicts of interest in the Syria debate|An analysis of the defense industry ties of experts and think tanks who commented on military intervention”, discloses widespread conflicts of interest involving 22 media commentators who offered ostensibly “objective” commentaries about a previously planned, illegal (future) invasion:

 Industry ties of commentators profiled:

Source: http://public-accountability.org/2013/10/conflicts-of-interest-in-the-syria-debate/

Not only are MSM stories rife with undisclosed prejudices and conflicts of interest, as listed above, but some transformative stories themselves are likely dramatic presentations masquerading as reality.   And it’s all legal.

According to an amendment to the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the House Bill H.R 5736 (now law), the federal government of the United States can now legally propagandize the domestic public.

Arguably, this makes staged theatrical presentations, featuring crisis-actors, and purporting to be “reality”, legal.

Consequently, not only are we contending with false media source information, corporate media gatekeepers, and commentators with largely undisclosed conflicts of interest, but now we must also contend with fabricated dramas orchestrated to invoke primordial fears and unthinking reactions in mass populations. It’s a closed loop circuit of lies, deceptions, and behaviour modification writ large. Recent evidence demonstrates, moreover, that the matrix of deceptions works brilliantly to engineer consent for the most heinous crimes imaginable.

Democracy demands an informed population, yet governing agencies are working overtime to ensure that their “audience” remains deluded.  The degenerate “controllers” are winning. The dystopian future envisioned by Orwell has arrived.

In recent weeks one nation after another is falling over themselves, literally, to join the turkey shoot known, erroneously, as the war in Syria, ostensibly against the Islamic State or Daesh. The most wanted but most feared question is where will this war frenzy lead, and how can it be stopped short of dragging the entire planet into a world war of destruction?

On September 30, responding to a formal invitation or plea from the duly-elected President of the Syrian Arab Republic, the Russian Federation began what was an initially highly effective bombing campaign in support of the Syrian Government Army.

On 13 November following the terror attacks claimed by ISIS in Paris, the French President proclaimed France was “at war” and immediately sent her one and only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, to Syria to join the battle. Then on December 4, the German Parliament approved sending 1,200 German soldiers and six Tornado jets to “help” France. Reports out of Germany say the Germans will not work with Russia or the Assad regime, but with CentCom command in Florida and coalition headquarters, not in Damascus, but in Kuwait. The same week the UK Parliament approved sending British planes and forces to “fight ISIS” in Syria. Again we can be sure it’s not to help Russia’s cause in cooperation with the Syrian Army of Assad to restore sovereignty to Syria.

Then Turkey’s hot-head President Recep Erdoğan, fresh from his criminal, premeditated downing of the Russian SU-24 in Syria, orders Turkish tanks into the oil-rich Mosul region of Iraq against the vehement protests of the Iraqi government. And added to this chaos, the United States claims that its planes have been surgically bombing ISIS sites for more than a year, yet the result has been only to expand the territories controlled by ISIS and other terror groups.

If we take a minute to step back and reflect, we can readily realize the world is literally going berzerk, with Syria as merely the ignition to a far uglier situation which has the potential to destroy our lovely, peaceful planet.

Something major missing

In recent weeks I have been increasingly unsatisfied by the general explanations about who is actually pulling the strings in the entire Middle East plot or, more precisely, plots, to the point of reexamining my earlier views on the role of Saudi Arabia. Since the June, 2015 surprise meeting in St Petersburg between Russian President Putin and Saudi Defense Minister Prince Salman, the Saudi monarchy gave a carefully cultivated impression of rapprochement with former arch-enemy Russia, even discussing purchase of up to $10 billion in Russian military equipment and nuclear plants, and possible “face time” for Putin with the Saudi King Salman.

The long procession of Arab leaders going to Moscow and Sochi in recent months to meet President Putin gave the impression of a modern version of the walk to Canossa in 1077 of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV to Pope Gregory VII at Canossa Castle, to beg revocation of Henry’s ex-communication. This time it looked like it was the Gulf Arab monarchs in the role of Henry IV, and Vladimir Putin in the role of the Pope. Or so it seemed. I at least believed that at the time. Like many global political events, that, too, was soaked in deception and lies.

What is now emerging, especially clear since the Turkish deliberate ambush of the Russian SU-24 jet inside Syrian airspace, is that Russia is not fighting a war against merely ISIS terrorists, nor against the ISIS backers in Turkey. Russia is taking on, perhaps unknowingly, a vastly more dangerous plot. Behind that plot is the hidden role of Saudi Arabia and its new monarch, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, together with his son, the Defense Minister, Prince Salman.

Saudi ‘impulsive intervention policy’

German media has widely reported a leaked German BND intelligence estimate. The BND is Germany’s version of the CIA. The BND report, among other things, concentrates on the rising role of the King’s son, 30-year-old Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Referring to the child prince’s important role the BND states, “The current cautious diplomatic stance of senior members of the Saudi royal family will be replaced by an impulsive intervention policy.”

Prince Salman is Defense Minister and led the Kingdom, beginning last March, into a mad war, code-named by Salman as “Operation Decisive Storm,” in neighboring Yemen. Saudis headed a coalition of Arab states that includes Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. The Prince is also head of the Saudi Economic Council which he created.

The new King, Salman, is not the benign sweet guy his PR staff try to paint him.

As my soon-to-be-released book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy, documents in detail, ever since CIA Cairo Station Chief Miles Copeland organized the transfer of the Muslim Brotherhood, banned in Egypt for an alleged assassination attempt against Nasser, to Saudi Arabia in the early 1950’s, there has existed a perverse marriage of the Saudi monarchy and radical “Islamic” terrorist organizations. As described by John Loftus, a former US Justice Department official, by the joining of Egypt’s Muslim Brothers and Saudi strict Islam, “they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabism.”

Allen Dulles’ CIA secretly persuaded the Saudi monarchy in 1954 to help rebuild the banned Muslim Brotherhood, thereby creating a fusion of the Brotherhood with Saudi ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam and, of course, backed by the vast Saudi oil riches. The CIA planned to use the Saudi Muslim Brothers to wield a weapon across the entire Muslim world against feared Soviet incursions. A fanatical young terrorist named Osama bin Laden was later to arise out of this marriage in Hell between the Brotherhood and Wahhabite Saudi Islam.

King Salman was in the middle of creating Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda as it was later dubbed in the media. His involvement goes back to the late 1970’s when he, as Governor of Riyadh, was named head of major conservative Saudi charities later discovered financing Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Bosnia. Salman worked intimately as the financial funding conduit for what became Al Qaeda together with bin Laden’s Saudi intelligence “handler,” then-head of Saudi Intelligence, Prince Turki Al-Faisal and the Saudi-financed Muslim World League.

King Salman in those days headed the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia-Herzegovina, a key front for al-Qaeda in the Balkans in the 1990s. According to a United Nations investigation, Salman in the 1990s transferred more than $120 million from commission accounts under his control — as well as his own personal accounts — to the Third World Relief Agency, an al-Qaida front and the main pipeline for illegal weapons shipments to al-Qaida fighters in the Balkans. Osama bin Laden was directly involved in those operations of Salman.

During the US invasion of Iraq in 2003-4, Al Qaeda entered that country, headed by Moroccan-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had pledged allegiance to bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, creating Al Qaeda in Iraq, later calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq, the Saudi-financed forerunner of ISIS. A declassified Pentagon DIA document shows that in August 2012, the DIA knew that the US-backed Syrian insurgency was dominated by Islamist militant groups including “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda in Iraq.” According to author Gerald Posner, Salman’s son, Ahmed bin Salman, who died in 2002, also had ties to al-Qaida.

A Saudi Oil Imperium

If we look at the emergence of Al Qaeda in Iraq and its transformation into the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), it all traces back to the Saudi operations going back to the late 1970’s involving now-King Salman, Saudi Osama bin Laden, together with Saudi intelligence head, Prince Turki Al-Faisal.

Washington and the CIA worked intimately with this Saudi network, bringing bin Laden and other key Saudis into Pakistan to train with the Pakistani ISI intelligence, creating what became the Afghan Mujahideen. The Mujahideen were created by Saudi, Pakistani and US intelligence to defeat the Soviet Red Army in the 1980’s Afghanistan war, the CIA’s “Operation Cyclone.” Cyclone was Zbigniew Brzezinski’s plan to lure Moscow into an Afghan “Bear Trap” and give the Soviet Union what he called their “Vietnam.”

The so-called ISIS today in Iraq and Syria, as well as the Al Qaeda Al-Nusra Front in Syria and various other Jihad terror splinter gangs under attack from Russia and the Damascus government of Assad, all have their origins in Saudi Arabia and the activities of King Salman.

Has the King undergone a Saul-to-Paul conversion to a pacific world view since becoming King, and his son, Prince Salman as well? Despite signals in recent months that the Saudis have ceased financing the anti-Assad terror organizations in Syria, the reality is the opposite.

The Saudis Behind Erdoğan

Much attention of late is given, understandably, to the Turkish dictatorship of the thug, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This is especially so since his Air Force deliberately shot down the Russian SU-24 jet over Syrian territory, an act of war. What few look at are the ties of Erdoğan and his AKP to the Saudi monarchy.

According to a well-informed Turkish political source I spoke with in 2014, who had been involved in attempts to broker a peace between Assad and Erdoğan, Erdoğan’s first Presidential election campaign in August 2014 was “greased” by a gift of $ 10 billion from the Saudis. After his victory in buying the presidential election, Erdoğan and his hand-picked Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu opened the doors wide to establish secret training centers for what was to be called ISIS. Under supervision of Hakan Fidan, Erdoğan’s hand-picked head of the Secret Services (MIT), Turkey organized camps for training ISIS and other terrorists in Turkey and also to provide their supplies in Syria. The financing for the Turkish ISIS operation was arranged apparently by a close personal friend of Erdoğan named Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi banker close to the Saudi Royal House, member of the Muslim Brotherhood, financier of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda since Afghanistan in the 1980’s. x

Erdoğan’s US-sanctioned and Saudi-financed terrorist training camps have brought an estimated 200,000 mercenary terrorists from all over the world, transited by Turkey in order to wage “jihad” in Syria.

But that jihad, it is now clear, is not about Allah but about Moola—money. The Saudi monarchy is determined to control the oil fields of Iraq and of Syria using ISIS to do it. They clearly want to control the entire world oil market, first bankrupting the recent challenge from US shale oil producers, then by controlling through Turkey the oil flows of Iraq and Syria.

Saudi TOW missiles to ISIS

In May 2014, the MIT transferred to ISIS terrorists in Syria, by special train, a quantity of heavy weapons and new Toyota pick-ups offered by Saudi Arabia.

Now a detailed investigation of the Turkish shoot down of the Russian SU-24 jet reveals that the Turkish F-16 jet that shot down the jet was supported by two AWACS reconnaissance planes that enabled the Turkish F-16 exact hit, a very difficult if not impossible feat against a jet as agile as the SU-24. One of the AWACS planes was a Boeing AWACS E-3A of the Saudi Arabian air force which took off from the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia airbase.

Then, as a Russian rescue helicopter rushed to the scene of the SU-24 crash, Saudi TOW anti-aircraft missiles shot the Russian helicopter down. The Saudis had sent 500 of the highly-effective TOW missiles to anti-Assad terror groups in Syria on October 9.

What we have, then, is not an isolated Russian war against ISIS in Syria. What lies behind ISIS is not just Erdoğan’s criminal regime, but far more significant, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and her Wahhabite allies Kuwait, UAE, Qatar.

In the true sense, ISIS is simply a “Saudi army in disguise.”

If we strip away the phony religious cover, what emerges is a Saudi move to grab some of the world’s largest oil reserves, those of the Sunni parts of Iraq, and of Syria, using the criminal Turkish regime in the role of thug to do the rough work, like a bouncer in a brothel. If Moscow is not conscious of this larger dimension, she runs the risk of getting caught in a deadly “bear trap” which will more and more remind them of Afghanistan in the 1980’s.

What stinks in Saudi Arabia ain’t the camel dung. It’s the monarchy of King Salman and his hot-headed son, Prince Salman. For decades they have financed terrorism under a fake religious disguise, to advance their private plutocratic agenda. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with money and oil. A look at the ISIS map from Iraq to Syria shows that they precisely targeted the oil riches of those two sovereign states. Saudi control of that oil wealth via their ISIS agents, along with her clear plan to take out the US shale oil competition, or so Riyadh reckons, would make the Saudi monarchy a vastly richer state, one, perhaps because of that money, finally respected by white western rich men and their society. That is clearly bovine thinking.

Don’t bet on that Salman.

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

Thomas Friedman doesn’t like threats of massive bombing when they’re made by someone else.

Thomas Friedman has some harsh words in his New York Times column (12/9/15) for Donald Trump and his unsophisticated grasp of the complexities of foreign policy:

As for Trump, well, he may be a deal maker, but he’s no poker player ready for the Middle East five-card stud sharks. His xenophobic rhetoric and unrealistic, infantile threats of massive bombing make up the kind of simplistic hand you’d play in “Go Fish” — not in this high-stakes game.

Where could Trump have gotten the idea that his “infantile threats of massive bombing” would be taken seriously as foreign policy proposals? Well, as a resident of New York City, maybe he reads the New York Times:

There is only Option 2 — bombing Iraq (pictured right), over and over and over again, until either Saddam says uncle, and agrees to let the UN back in on US terms, or the Iraqi people eliminate him….  Given the problems with the other options, we may have no choice but to go down this road. Once we do, however, we better have the stomach to stay the course.

–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 1/31/98)

Blow up a different power station in Iraq every week, so no one knows when the lights will go off or who’s in charge.”

–Friedman (New York Times, 1/19/99)

Let’s at least have a real air war. The idea that people are still holding rock concerts in Belgrade, or going out for Sunday merry-go-round rides, while their fellow Serbs are ‘cleansing’ Kosovo, is outrageous. It should be lights out in Belgrade: Every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted…. (pictured left)

Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.

–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 4/23/99) on Serbia

People tend to change their minds and adjust their goals as they see the price they are paying mount. Twelve days of surgical bombing was never going to turn Serbia around. Let’s see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does. Give war a chance.

–Thomasa Friedman (New York Times, 4/6/99)

My motto is very simple: Give war a chance.

–Thomas Friedman (ABC News, 10/29/01) on Afghanistan

Let’s all take a deep breath and repeat after me: Give war a chance. This is Afghanistan we’re talking about. (pictured right)

–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 11/2/01)

I was a critic of [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld before, but there’s one thing…that I do like about Rumsfeld. He’s just a little bit crazy, OK? He’s just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on being able to out-crazy us, and I’m glad we got some guy on our bench that our quarterback — who’s just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you never know what that guy’s going to do, and I say that’s my guy.”

–Thomas Friedman (CNBC, 10/13/01)

There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right.

–Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 2/13/02)

We needed to go over there, basically, and take out a very big stick… and there was only one way to do it…. What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?

You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well: Suck. On. This.” That, Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia; it was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

–Thomas Friedman (Charlie Rose, 5/30/03)

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its air force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians–the families and employers of the militants–to restrain Hezbollah in the future.”

—New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (1/13/09) on why Israel needed to kill civilians in Gaza

Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.

You can send a message to the New York Times at [email protected], or write to public editor Margaret Sullivan: [email protected] (Twitter: @NYTimes or @Sulliview). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

Among the 223 MPs in Westminster who opposed the British government’s dangerous fuelling of the Syrian inferno were 57 of the 59 members returned from Scotland.

All but one were from the Scottish National Party (SNP), the ruling party in the devolved Scottish government in Edinburgh. The final vote came from Ian Murray, the Labour Party’s sole surviving MP north of the border.

The SNP’s position should not be confused with principled opposition to the escalating war in Syria or imperialist militarism in general. Still less should it be considered to be articulating the mass opposition to war among working people across Britain.

Rather, the party’s position combines parliamentary manoeuvring with the real concerns in sections of the Scottish and British establishment that Cameron’s Syrian adventure has no “exit” strategy, and threatens to embroil the British military in an uncharted calamity.

That the SNP felt able to oppose the government at all testifies primarily to the deep divisions within the Labour Party and the free vote given to Labour’s right wing by “left” Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Had Corbyn imposed a whip on Labour’s MPs, threatened the right-wing “rebels” with expulsion, de-selection or any of the many sanctions which, as party leader, he had available—in short launched a serious parliamentary fight to defeat the government—there is every likelihood that the SNP would have supported Prime Minister David Cameron in return for some token concession or other.

Prior to the vote, and before it was clear that the Labour right wing would be given free rein by Corbyn, Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon made clear she was open to persuasion. She was “not yet convinced the case for air strikes has been made,” she said. “That is not to say I will not listen to the case that David Cameron will make.”

Sturgeon added that to respond to the “threat that is posed by ISIL [Islamic State, IS] … there are some tests that require to be passed in order for air strikes to be made.”

Asked about her attitude to the Royal Air Force’s current bombing campaign in Iraq, she made clear she had no problem with it since “there are differences with Iraq in that the government requested airstrikes, that’s not the same situation in Syria.”

Alex Salmond, now the SNP’s foreign affairs spokesman, further clarified the basis of the Scottish nationalists’ opposition to the Syrian war. He told the BBC,

“We’d like to hear far, far more about diplomatic initiatives through the United Nations and also the real practical things like interrupting the financial flows into Daesh …”

For his part, SNP Defence spokesman Angus Robertson complained that the UK had “spent 14 times more bombing Libya than in post-conflict stability and reconstruction.”

This is of course the purest hypocrisy. Since coming to power in Edinburgh in 2007, the party has repeatedly made clear it is willing to support British military actions, particularly if a UN flag is flying over the slaughter of the day—including in Libya.

In 2011, the SNP voted with the Cameron government and the Labour opposition for the British bombing campaign against the Libyan government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Robertson said at the time, “I think Libya needs to get rid of Gaddafi. But in the end we are responsible for trying to enforce this Security Council resolution.”

Robertson used the occasion to deepen links with the British military. He urged the government to “think long and hard about considering the closure of important bases like RAF Lossiemouth and RAF Leuchars in Scotland.”

Both bases were used for launching raids against Libya, under cover of a UN resolution enforcing “no fly zones”. At the time, the main concern of First Minister Alex Salmond, the SNP’s then leader, was that the SNP was not invited into the COBRA emergency meetings with the British government.

In 2013, MPs at Westminster were obliged by massive public opposition and disagreements within the military over a lack of planning to reject Cameron’s first demand for a military intervention in Syria—explicitly targeting the regime of Bashir al-Assad.

The SNP introduced an amendment, with the Labour Party, proposing that a United Nations resolution should be sought as cover for any military role. Salmond explained at the time that this amendment “gave an indication of the sort of role an independent Scotland will be able to play on the international stage.” He called for “constitutional guarantees” against military action without UN backing.

In 2014, the SNP voted against the British government launching a new bombing campaign in Iraq against Islamic State. But Angus Robertson made clear once again that this was on a tactical basis. Speaking in Westminster, he explained that he supported the Iraqi government, supported “our armed forces” and insisted, “It would be far better if there were an express United Nations motion covering all of this.”

For Robertson to now complain that not enough has been spent on Libyan reconstruction is rank hypocrisy. Having destroyed the Gaddafi government, triggered and stoked a raging and ongoing civil war, the only means whereby British imperialism could impose “stability and reconstruction” in Libya is by an invasion by tens, if not hundreds of thousands of troops. The same applies in Syria.

The SNP’s position is one of militarism and war, but under slightly differing terms. This is in line with their perspective for the creation of an independent Scotland—a goal to which the SNP remain committed despite their 2014 referendum defeat. The SNP has repeatedly made clear that they support NATO, the European Union, a struggle against Russia, and increased spending on frigates, fast jets and long-range reconnaissance aircraft.

Commenting on their manoeuvres, right-wing political analyst Stephen Daisley noted approvingly on Scottish Television,

“A breakaway Scotland run by the nationalists could pursue a less assertive foreign policy but independence supporters have to quell the notion we would be a global pushover.”

He continued, “The SNP is beginning to carve a feasible pro-peace, pro-security defence position.” In another column he described the SNP as “conservative revolutionaries, out not to smash the status quo but to maintain it on a smaller scale.”

A further component of the SNP’s political calculation will rest on the hope that, by posturing as opponents of the Syrian war with the help of the pseudo-lefts, next year’s elections to Holyrood will result in a further overwhelming SNP landslide at the expense of the Labour Party. Commenting on what this might mean, Labour candidate Barrie Cunning noted, “I don’t see how it cannot be a trigger for a second independence referendum, which I personally do not want to see.”

Opposition to the war drive of British imperialism cannot be contracted out to any section of the capitalist class, no matter how much their role has been obscured by the pseudo left. Everything depends on the rejection of all forms of nationalism, and the unified political mobilisation of the British working class as part of a global antiwar movement seeking an end to imperialist militarism through the struggle for world socialism.

National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi met with the most senior members of Myanmar’s military last week in the capital Naypyidaw. The purpose of the closed-door talks was to cement a power-sharing arrangement between the two factions of the ruling elite when the NLD forms the new government early next year.

The NLD won an overwhelming majority in national elections last month allowing it to install its nominee as president in late March. Suu Kyi is excluded from holding the top office by a provision of the military’s 2008 Constitution but has declared that she will nevertheless determine the new government’s policies.

Suu Kyi met separately on December 2 with outgoing President Thein Sein, who is an ex-general, and with military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Last Friday she had talks with former military chief and State Peace and Development Council chairman, Than Shwe, who was the junta’s strongman from 1992 to 2011 and still wields considerable influence behind the scenes.

Both sides have remained silent on the substance of the talks, in order to keep the population in the dark over the close collaboration between Suu Kyi and the military. The vast majority of voters repudiated the military-backed party at the polls and supported the NLD in the hope of a better life, democratic rights and justice for the decades of abuses suffered under military rule.

Having raised expectations, the NLD, as well as the military, is concerned over the potential for social unrest. A senior NLD official who was in the meeting with Thein Sein told the media that the emphasis was on maintaining “stability between now and [the] time when the current government’s term is over.”

After the meeting between Suu Kyi and Than Shwe, the former dictator’s grandson released minutes quoting his grandfather as saying “after winning the election, it’s the reality we have to accept—that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be Burma’s future leader.”

The military’s embrace of Suu Kyi and the NLD follows decades of enmity and distrust in the wake of the brutal military crackdown on mass protests and strikes in 1988. In those tumultuous events, Suu Kyi and the NLD played the critical role in blocking a revolutionary settling of accounts with the military. As the junta was tottering, Suu Kyi stepped in to call off the protests and urge people to accept the military’s bogus offer of elections.

Suu Kyi and the NLD were just as terrified of the 1988 mass movement as the military. The junta restabilised its rule and repudiated NLD’s victory in the 1990 election. Even though Suu Kyi did not challenge the junta’s actions, she was kept under house arrest out of fear that she would become the focus of another social upheaval that the NLD could not control.

In the wake of the 1990 election, the junta has confronted a virtual economic blockade by the US and its allies and was compelled to rely heavily on Chinese investment and aid. While posing as the champion of democratic rights, the NLD, which was banned, represented sections of the ruling elite whose interests were marginalised by the military’s domination of economic life.

The junta’s shift in orientation was driven by the country’s deepening economic crisis in the wake of the 2008 global financial breakdown, and the threat posed by the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” directed against China. The junta was acutely aware that its close ties with Beijing and its status as a “rogue state” could become the pretext for US provocations and interventions.

Moreover, the large inflows of Chinese capital, mainly directed to resource extraction and infrastructure projects, had caused major imbalances, compounding the impact of the country’s economic isolation. The currency appreciated, adversely affecting the economy overall. Unable to sell on the international markets, agricultural products were dumped locally, driving down prices and bankrupting farmers.

Having suppressed opposition protests led by monks in 2007, the junta was increasingly fearful of social unrest getting out of control. Suu Kyi shared that fear, warning in September 2011 of an “Arab-style” uprising and offering to work with the military to “manage change… through negotiation.”

As part of its carrot and stick approach to the junta, the Obama administration had already been putting out diplomatic feelers. Its concern was not with the democratic rights of the Burmese people, but to take Burma out of China’s orbit.

When the junta signalled its willingness to shift foreign policy by shutting down a major Chinese dam project in September 2011, the US rapidly moved to normalise relations. Shortly after Obama formally announced the “pivot” in November 2011, Hillary Clinton became the first US Secretary of State to visit Burma in decades.

Overnight, as corporations lined up to take advantage of investment opportunities, Burma ceased being a pariah state, and was hailed in the West as “a developing democracy.” While retaining control of key levers of power, the military and the NLD came together to economically open up the country and re-orient foreign policy to Washington. The junta found Suu Kyi very useful as an unofficial ambassador at large, burnishing the country’s new “democratic” image.

Differences nevertheless remain and were undoubtedly the subject of haggling in last week’s talks between Suu Kyi and top military figures. While the military is prepared to concede a leading role to the NLD, it retains control of the key security ministries and has an effective veto over constitutional changes. The top brass has no intention of allowing a civilian government to meddle in military affairs and will seek to ensure immunity from prosecution for the junta’s many crimes.

The military also wants to protect and expand its vast business empires. From 2009 to 2012, the military prepared for pro-market reforms by privatising assets and allowed the establishment of private banks. But it ensured that the state assets largely ended up in the hands of the military or its associates. For its part, the NLD will want to rein in the army’s economic power and open up business opportunities for entrepreneurs not connected to the army.

Both factions of the Burmese ruling class want to prevent the emergence of popular opposition to the deepening social polarisation that will inevitably be produced by the transformation of Burma into a new cheap labour platform.

In the name of “national reconciliation,” Suu Kyi has already made abundantly clear that she will not challenge the military’s prerogatives. Explaining why she had met with her former jailer Than Shwe, she declared that she wanted “all-inclusive collaboration, including with the Tatadaw [army].”

The Philippines Supreme Court permanently halted the field testing for genetically modified eggplant, Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), upholding the decision of the Court of Appeals (CA) which stopped the field trials for the GM plant.

Not only did the High Court deny the petition to continue cultivation of the GM eggplant, but the appeals court’s May 2013 decision was also amended.

Aside from permanently stopping field testing for Bt talong (eggplant), the Supreme Court also declared null and void the Department of Agriculture’s (DA’s) Administrative Order No. 08, series of 2002.

Additionally, the court ruled that any application for field testing, contained use, propagation, and importation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is temporarily stopped pending the promulgation of a new administrative order.

In its ruling, the High Tribunal also explained its application of the precautionary principle, which maintains that “lack of scientific certainty is no reason for inaction at the risk of potentially serious or irreversible harm to the environment.” This principal has been explained at length in a paper by Nassim Taleb et al. (http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf)

In May 2013, the court stopped the nationwide field testing of the Bt eggplant following a petition filed by Greenpeace and farmers’ group Masipag against respondents UP Los Baños Foundation Inc, UP Mindanao Foundation Inc, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The cautionary principle was also used in this case.

Moreover, the court announced that existing regulations of the DA and the Department of Science and Technology were not enough to ensure the safety of the environment and health of the people.

The High Court agreed with the appellate court, mentioning the lack of consensus among scientists regarding the safety of Bt crops.

It also found the DA’s administrative order lacking in the minimum safety requirements under Executive Order 514, which established the National Biosafety Framework (NBF).

More transparent, meaningful and participatory consultation of scientists and the public was called for.

Three conditions were noted in the case that warranted the application of the principle:

• Settings in which the risks of harm are uncertain

• Settings in which harm might be irreversible and what is lost is irreplaceable

• Settings in which the harm that might result would be serious

The court stated:

When these features – uncertainty, the possibility of irreversible harm, and the possibility of serious harm – coincide, the case for the precautionary principle is strongest. When in doubt, cases must be resolved in favor of the constitutional right to a balanced and healthful ecology.

Notes:

SustainablePulse

 

Many situations around the world now look to be coming to a head. 

Geopolitically the East/West push and pull has heated up in the Middle East.  Iraq now looks to be pivoting toward Mr. Putin and Russia and away from the U.S..  Turkey’s recent shoot down of a Russian plane also turned up the heat.  Economically, the price of oil breaking through $40 has shone a spotlight on a weak global economy and confirms weakness. 

Trade, whether international or internal is collapsing.  Freight rates are at decade lows and even internally, trucking has collapsed.

Financially speaking, FOREX markets are experiencing daily volatility unseen before.  The credit markets have become illiquid as spreads have blown out.  This “illiquidity” has traders terrified because they know they have no exit door.  Even the Treasury market has begun to display the “locked in” feeling of thin markets.  We should not forget about the Fed meeting next week, raise rates or hold rates …traders are in fear of the aftermath. 

Let’s take a look at what just happened yesterday in COMEX gold since we are talking “crunch time”. 

The December contract added 881 net contracts standing for delivery.  This is another 88,100 ounces of gold that someone just stepped up for and is asking delivery.  Some ground work first …we have watched for over two years as COMEX gold contracts outstanding would dwarf deliverable inventory coming into first notice day and decline in a huge way just prior.  Then, many of those standing for delivery would just “evaporate”.  I have said many times that this did not make any sense.  Why would anyone FULLY FUND their account by FND to pay cash for their contracted gold …only to vanish?  It is obvious in my opinion these contracts were cash settled at a premium or bribe to entice these buyers not to take physical delivery because of strained inventory.

I can only remember one month in the past where contracts “standing” actually increased after the first notice day.  As I recall there were two days in a row where the open interest increased (after the OI had already declined as it has this month).  First, anyone who opens a contract after FND truly wants the gold.  Better said, they probably “need” the gold for whatever reason.  These buyers will not be bribed into FRN settlement, only “weight” will do.

COMEX truly has a problem this month.  As it stands, there are roughly 11.5 tons standing for delivery while COMEX holds just over 4 tons for delivery.  In ounces we are looking at 370,000 versus 130,000.  Yesterday’s increase was 88,100 ounces or roughly 2/3rds of deliverable inventory.  For well over two months, COMEX has had almost ZERO gold enter the “registered” category.  In fact, even the eligible (customer) inventory has been bleeding down and hemorrhaged yesterday with over four tons being withdrawn.  The obvious question is “where will the gold come from for delivery”?  Yes I know, “don’t worry because they always deliver” …  

The additional 88,100 ounces yesterday should really OPEN SOME EYES for several reasons!  First, someone obviously NEEDS nearly three tons of gold.  Secondly and most importantly, this should display just how tenuous the inventory really is.  In just one day, someone stepped up and is demanding TWO THIRD’s of deliverable gold.  As I have said all along, with any type of black swan event (not one that is “created” and of the false flag variety) has the ability to clean out what COMEX can supply!  What then?

Please think to yourself “what if?”.  What if we wake up one day and a big bank somewhere in the world defaults?  Or even a sovereign nation?  What if we wake up to find Russian and U.S. forces going at it somewhere?  The list of potential black swans is long (plus the trolls will go wild saying “it can never happen in our lifetime) so I won’t list them.  I would simply ask, what if “something unscripted” happens?

The answer is simple.  When something, whatever it may be that is “unscripted” happens …life as we have known it for so many years is over! 

Everything will change. 

Markets, valuations, beliefs, customs, economics/finance and distribution, etc.  The title of “crunch time” is not meant to be U.S. centric or even about the post war “American age”. 

We are living “crunch time” for a 300 year plus fractional reserve Ponzi banking and monetary scheme. 

We are at the end of a 300 year plus “credit cycle” where The Great Depression was merely a large and painful belch leading up to a final heart attack. 
 
Standing watch,

Bill Holter, Holter-Sinclair collaboration

Comments welcome  [email protected]

Mark Twain once said history doesn’t repeat. It rhymes – more dangerously today than ever. 

US-instigated events ominously resemble things preceding both world wars – with super-weapons on hair triggers able to end life on earth, and bipartisan policymakers in Washington perhaps willing to use them recklessly.

Once in motion, things have a momentum of their own, heading toward what may be unstoppable. Washington’s grand strategy calls for replacing all independent governments with Western-controlled ones – mainly Russia and China, the main obstacles to achieving its hegemonic objectives.

Middle East tinderbox conditions rage, Washington determined to achieve regional control, waging one war of aggression after another, endless ones in multiple theaters , challenging Russia recklessly.

Will World War III follow? Will the unthinkable become reality? Will nuclear war erupt for the first time ever?

Nukes were used against Japan in August 1945 after Nazi Germany surrendered months earlier. and the war in the Pacific was won.

Tokyo’s high command was negotiating surrender when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gratuitously attacked – so Pentagon commanders could test the destructive power of their new weapons in real time, while showing off for Soviet Russia what Stalin already knew, close to developing his own atomic capability.

Ongoing events should scare everyone. Washington bears full responsibility. NATO and other partners share it.

Ukraine remains the epicenter of a possible European war, Syria its Middle East flashpoint counterpart.

A US/Russian showdown may be building in plain sight. Putin is waging an effective war on ISIS and other terrorists in Syria – elements Washington supports, using them to achieve its imperial objectives, a policy heading recklessly toward a frightening showdown.

The possibility of global war with nuclear weapons should focus all world leaders on preventing it at all costs. The threat of ending life on earth should be countered with all-out peace efforts.

Everything comes down to a simple equation. Do we want to live in peace or perish in a mushroom-shaped cloud? There’s no in-between.

The risk of annihilation perhaps was never greater – given Washington’s rage for global dominance and its permanent war agenda. No nation ever threatened humanity’s survival more than now.

Its madness is supported by all duopoly presidential aspirants, some openly advocating use of nuclear weapons, unchallenged by the media.

Truman was the only world leader ever authorizing the use of nuclear weapons in combat. He later sacked Douglas MacArthur for wanting them used during Washington’s aggression on North Korea, along with urging a land war on China.

In 1961, US General Curtis Lemay believed nuclear war with Soviet Russia was inevitable. He wanted thousands of warheads launched preemptively.

He called retaliation against major US cities a small price to pay. At the same time, General Lyman Lemnitzer urged a surprise nuclear attack strategy.

Jack Kennedy stormed out of a National Security Council meeting discussing it. He wanted none of it. “And we call ourselves the human race,” he said.

Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex’s “acquisition of unwarranted influence. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist,” he stressed.

Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once asked former Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell “(w)hat’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we (don’t) use it?”

Mass annihilation may follow this type thinking, virulent today in Washington with bipartisan lunatics in charge.

Obama intends accelerating war in Syria and Iraq on the phony pretext of battling ISIS. He’s recklessly challenging Russia’s effective intervention, Putin committed to combatting a scourge too dangerous to tolerate.

A US-instigated belligerent clash of civilizations may follow – Washington the ally of terrorism, using its elements to advance its imperium.

Russia is its sworn enemy, most concerned about defending its homeland, battling ISIS and other terrorists in Syria, perhaps Iraq to follow if Baghdad requests help, wanting its scourge prevented from spreading – an objective all world nations should support, not Washington, its NATO partners, Israel, and other rogue regional allies.

Things are escalating toward US policymakers initiating military confrontation with Russia. The unthinkable possibility of nuclear war may become reality – the vast majority of Americans mindless about the clear and present danger they face.

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.

Turkey is a NATO member, a close US ally in its regional war OF terror, battling Kurds in northern Syria and Iraq on the phony pretext of combating ISIS. 

Erdogan long coveted annexing Aleppo and other northern Syrian areas, as well as bordering Iraqi territory – the latter objective to seize and control valued Mosul area oil fields.

Hundreds of its troops, tanks and artillery operate from positions near Mosul – on the phony pretext of combating ISIS and training Iraqi forces, never authorized by Baghdad. Ankara intends sending more heavily armed commandos and other combat troops.

ISIS forces controlled Mosul since June 2014, the largest regional city it holds, a key oil producing area. Ankara’s aim is to seize control, perhaps complicit with ISIS, a first step toward annexation, a scheme Baghdad will challenge.

Russia’s effective anti-terrorist intervention foiled Erdogan’s objective in Syria. Its air power and ground-based S-400 missile defense systems control Syrian airspace – able to counter any threat to its operations with devastating effectiveness.

If tested beyond Erdogan’s downing a Russian Su-24 bomber complicit with Washington, more US airstrikes on Syrian ground forces or other provocations, it will respond as conditions warrant, increasing the danger of expanding regional conflicts to a global one – including possible use of nuclear weapons.

Turkish troops operate illegally in northern Iraq. Baghdad gave Ankara 48 hours to withdraw. Prime Minister Abadi stressed they’re “present without the knowledge and consent of” his government.

The deadline for them to leave expired. They remain in place. Erdogan refuses to withdraw them. Russia called their presence illegal.

So far, Baghdad and Ankara are trying to resolve things diplomatically, short of requesting UN Security Council action. Abadi asked NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to “use (his) authority to (demand) Turkey withdraw immediately from Iraqi territory.”

Russia raised the issue during a closed-door Security Council session to no avail. Washington blocked responsible action. Moscow’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin  expressed disappointment, saying:

“We believe that Turkey has acted recklessly and inexplicably, carrying out additional deployments on the territory of Iraq without the consent of the Iraqi government.”

Washington’s so-called security agreement with Baghdad harms what it purports to support. On Wednesday, Iraq’s parliamentary Security and Defense Committee called for reviewing terms agreed on.

Committee member Hamid Mutlaq told RT International their “negative points” harm Iraqi security. “We have demanded to review some of those points, for them to comply with Iraq’s interests and the region as a whole in light of the changed situation,” he said.

“The majority of Iraqi politicians and MPs fear that an international conflict may develop on the territory of Iraq, as a result of which blood of its people will be spilt.” The nation “already (is) suffering” hugely from US-instigated imperial wars.

Mutlaq was blunt telling Sputnik News:

“The (Iraqi) government and parliament need to review (the) security agreement with the US, because (it’s) not serious about its implementation.”

If not changed to Baghdad’s satisfaction, “(w)e will demand its cancellation.” In criticizing Turkish troops in northern Iraq, Abadi said “Iraq does not need foreign ground forces, and the Iraqi government is committed not to allow the presence of any ground force on Iraqi land.”

Apparently he was objecting both to the presence of Turkish and US troops – as well as Defense Secretary Carter saying more are coming.

Baghdad’s Security and Defense Committee intends meeting with Abadi on requesting Russia conduct airstrikes on ISIS targets in Iraq, expanding its Syrian operations cross-border – vital to let ground forces of both countries wage effective war on terrorism, polar opposite Washington’s phony campaign.

Obama upped the stakes in challenging Moscow’s effective anti-terrorism campaign. Likely greater regional intervention is coming than already announced.

Iraq’s security and perhaps survival as a nation-state depends on requesting Russia help against ISIS. Its airpower working cooperatively with Syrian ground forces changed the dynamic dramatically, permitting recapture of lost territory. Iraq’s reliance on Washington is obviously counterproductive – at odds with its interests.

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.

Last weekend, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Tomasz Szatkowski said that Poland is considering asking for access to nuclear weapons through a NATO program allowing non-nuclear states “to borrow” the warheads from the US.

This is a reverberation from the intensified debates within alliances regarding the nuclear support of NATO’s operations.

There are significant issues involving the increased scope and number of military exercises that simulate the use of mock bombs in conventional nuclear warheads, the military’s utilization of computer-based war games that test the use of nuclear weapons on the European continent, and the formulation of specific scenarios about the transformation of hypothetical conflicts using general-purpose forces into conflicts that involve nuclear weapons. NATO scientists and specialists take part in these discussions, as well as the current representatives of the alliance’s military and political leaders.

On June 25, 2015, during a hearing in the House Armed Services Committee, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work called for using nuclear forces to deter the “Russian threat.”

Commenting on the debates that took place during an Oct. 8 meeting in Brussels between the defense ministers of NATO countries, Adam Thomson, the UK Permanent Representative to NATO, publicly bemoaned the fact that the alliance “has done conventional exercising and nuclear exercising” but has not conducted exercises on “the transition from one to the other.” He claimed that such a recommendation is being looked at within the North Atlantic alliance.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also supports strengthening the nuclear component in the military planning of this alliance that has identified Russia as its primary enemy.

In their analyses, military-political and academic insiders in the West typically do not distinguish between the strategic and tactical nuclear weapons belonging to the three Western nuclear powers: the UK, US, and France. As they calculate how best to defend “the entire territory of NATO,” they begin with the assumption that all those nuclear weapons can be commanded en masse. And because those weapons must be used “as a means to deter aggression, along with conventional weapons,” their special status should once again be recognized, as it was during the height of the Cold War during the 1960s-1980s.

In his statement Tomasz Szatkowski emphasized the need for the Polish armed forces to have access to the same American nuclear weapons as those entrusted to five of the member states of the North Atlantic pact: Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and Germany, all of which consented to stationing those weapons within their borders: “We want to see an end to the division of NATO members into two categories,” he said, explaining that he was referring to states that have long hosted American nuclear weapons vs. countries that still do not have them, meaning the allies that have only recently joined this military bloc, especially Poland.

The Polish Defense Ministry hastened to disavow their own colleague’s words, arguing that “within the defense ministry there is presently no work underway concerning the accession of our country to the NATO Nuclear Sharing program.”

But the further clarification that followed this message suggests otherwise, since the Polish defense ministry literally stated the following: “We have to consider various options, including some form of Poland’s participation in this program.” And as we all know, that program allows US nuclear weapons to be deployed within the borders of other states and to be used in military exercises that include the dropping of mock “nuclear bombs” from aircraft.

We must also look closely at how the first part of that answer is expressed: “there is presently no work underway …” Today. And perhaps that is true. But in the future?

Where are the guarantees that this will not happen? Especially when you consider that the NATO summit of May 2012 fused its nuclear, missile-defense, and conventional weapons into a single attack force. And when you consider that by mid-October Poland had already ratified a technical agreement to build a US missile-defense base in Redzikowo, the construction of which will begin next spring, with completion in 2018. Or, if we take into account another factor: NATO’s use of “dual-capable” aircraft that can potentially carry either nuclear or conventional bombs, and which have been used for 11 years by the alliance’s three nuclear powers that conduct the Baltic Air Policing operation in the skies over Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

The appearance of American nuclear weapons inside Poland – regardless of the rationale or explanation for that decision – will signal a radical and dramatic exacerbation of the military and political status quo in Europe, lowering the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons in this densely populated region of the world and, ultimately, precipitating a real return to the years of the Cold War, to years of military confrontation between NATO member states and countries that were not part of this militaristic bloc.

Vladimir Kozin is Head of Advisers’ Group at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Russian Federation.

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For upload, the system can use infrared or something else.

They are just waiting for an investor, and all of the world may be using this technology for sending Internet data in the future.

I have long maintained that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank defies the moral principle behind the creation of the state. Contrary to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion, the occupation erodes rather than buttresses Israel’s national security and cannot be justified on either security or moral grounds. Unless Israel embraces a new moral path, no one can prevent it from unravelling from within only to become a pariah state that has lost its soul, wantonly abandoning the cherished dreams of its founding fathers.

There are four ethical theories—Kantian, utilitarian, virtue-based, and religious—that demonstrate the lack of moral foundation in the continuing occupation, which imposes upon Israelis the responsibility to bring it to a decisive end.

The first moral theory is deontological ethics, whose greatest representative is Immanuel Kant. According to this theory, consequences are irrelevant to the moral rightness or wrongness of an action; what matters is whether the action is done for the sake of duty or out of respect for the moral law.

Kant provided several formulations of the moral law, which he refers to as the categorical imperative; for our purposes, what is most important are his first two formulations. The first is the principle that morality requires us to act only on those maxims we can universalize. As he puts it, “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” In short, never do anything that you couldn’t will everybody else do at the same time.

The question is whether the Israeli occupation is a policy that can be universalized and pass this test of moral reasoning. The answer is clearly no; the policy of occupation is rationally inconsistent, as it requires Israel to exempt itself from moral and political norms that the rest of the international community recognizes (and which serve to protect Israel itself). Israel is making an exception of itself – which is the capital sin, according to Kant, as in effect Israel is saying: ‘We don’t have to live by the same rules as everyone else.’ This is evident from the fact that Israel denies the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and justifies that in the name of national security, even though the achievement of absolute security would invariably render the Palestinians absolutely vulnerable.

Whereas Israel has agreed to a two-state solution, it continues to usurp Palestinian land, thereby violating international agreements which Israel is signatory to (UN Resolution 242, the Oslo Accords). In doing so, Israel is clearly defying the first formulation of the categorical imperative, which as Kant showed, requires us to honor our agreements and contracts. That is, Israel is acting on a maxim or policy of breaking its agreements to serve its self-interest, which cannot be universalized without contradiction because then the institution of reaching international agreements cannot be sustained.

Although many countries break international contracts, that does not affect Kant’s argument as he knew full well that people lie, cheat, and steal. His concern is with the principle of morality and what it requires regardless of whether these requirements are in fact met. By maintaining the occupation, Israel is flouting the moral law while expecting the Palestinians to uphold the same norms.

The second formulation is to never treat another person merely as a means, but always also as an end in themselves. In other words, what Kant is saying is that as free rational beings who can act in accordance with morality, each of us possesses intrinsic worth which implies that we must respect the inherent dignity of each individual.

In the case of the Palestinians who are under occupation, Israel is treating them as objects rather than persons who can rationally consent to the way they are being treated. Israel is coercing the Palestinians physically and psychologically by denying them human rights, through, for example, administrative detention, night raids, and expulsion, thereby robbing them of their dignity and denying them their autonomy.

The second moral theory is Utilitarianism, which in its modern form originated in England with the works of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In contrast to Kantianism, this theory places all emphasis on the consequences of our actions. It states that an action is morally right if it produces the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.

The moral evaluation of any policy depends on whether it maximizes utility. Utilitarianism agrees with Kant on one fundamental point, which is that morality prohibits making an exception of oneself.  For obvious reasons, governments give greater priority to their own people. But does the occupation maximize the security and well-being of all Israelis?

In spite of the fact that Israel takes extraordinary measures to enhance its security, the occupation is in fact undermining the security of the state, as is evident from the repeated bloody clashes. Moreover, if Israel were to extend its moral considerations beyond its own people to include the Palestinians, then the policy of occupation still fails on utilitarian grounds even more acutely.

To be sure, while Israel resorts to utilitarian arguments to justify its treatment of the Palestinians, in the process Israel reveals the classic pitfall of utilitarian thinking, which is that it ultimately does not provide sufficient protection and respect for human rights. This contempt for human rights in fact directly erodes Israel’s moral standing within the community of nations.

The third moral theory is virtue ethics, whose greatest advocate is still Aristotle. In virtue ethics, an act is moral if it is performed as a result of having a virtuous character. Virtue ethics is not primarily about codifying and applying moral principles, but developing the character from which moral actions arise. In this context, the Israeli occupation, while having a major adverse effect on the Palestinians, also has a morally corrupting influence on Israelis themselves.

Virtue ethics recognizes the importance of acquiring the habit to act ethically which involves moral upbringing; as Aristotle is to have said, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” The occupation is not educating Israeli youth towards moral virtues, but hardening their hearts as they can live with regular prejudices, discrimination, and dehumanization against the Palestinians. As such, the occupation fails to meet the principles of virtue ethics because it creates an environment which degrades the moral substance of the Israelis themselves. As a result, they continue to commit transgressions against the Palestinians without any sense of moral culpability.

One might argue from a certain Israeli perspective (i.e. the settlement movement) that the occupation engenders virtues such as national solidarity, social cohesiveness, loyalty, courage, and perseverance. While this may appear to be true on the surface, the occupation is in fact tearing the Israelis’ social and political fabric apart and undermining the conditions under which moral virtues such as caring, compassion, and magnanimity can grow and thrive.

Moreover, the longer the occupation persists, the greater the damage is to Israel’s moral character, and Israel will become increasingly disposed to compromising its fundamental values and ideals as a democracy committed to human rights.

Finally, we need to consider the moral theory which says morality is acting in accordance with what divinity commands from us. There are two basic theories, both of which can be traced back to Plato’s Euthyphro where Socrates raises the question: “…whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.”

The first is the divine command theory, which states that what makes an action moral or right is the fact that God commands it and nothing else. The second theory, defended by Socrates, is that God commands us to do what is right because it is the right thing to do. In other words, morality precedes God’s will and is irreducible to divine command.

In the context of this ancient debate, the usurpation and annexation of Palestinian land may appear to be defensible on the basis of the divine command theory because if God requires us to perform any set of actions, then by definition it would be the moral thing to do.

Many orthodox Jews hold to the divine command theory, as they interpret the concept of “mitzvah” (good deed) first and foremost as “command,” the goodness of which cannot even be contemplated apart from the fact that this is what God has commanded us to do.

As such, those who take the Bible as the revelation of God’s commands use it to justify the concept of Greater Israel. As a result, they view the Palestinian presence as an impediment God placed before them to test their resolve. Therefore, their harsh treatment of the Palestinians becomes morally permissible because it is consistent with divine decree.

By adopting the command theory, they are ascribing to a position which has and continues to be used to justify acts which are blatantly immoral. The defender of this theory may counter that because God is good, he does not command anything which is immoral.

However, this argument is hollow because if morality is simply what God approves of, to say that God is good is merely to assert that he approves of himself and his own will. In this case, there is still no safeguard against the extremists who use the command theory to justify even the most heinous crimes. Furthermore, if the command in question satisfies a deep seated psychological need—say, for a God-given Jewish homeland—then what humans ascribe to God eventually becomes ‘the will of God.’

Another problem with the divine command theory is that, as the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz observed, it turns God into a kind of Tyrant unworthy of our love and devotion: “For why praise him for what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy for doing just the opposite?”

Turning to the theory that God commands us to do the good because it is good, what becomes clear is that any action must derive its moral worth independently of God’s will. In that case, the Israeli policy toward the occupation will have to be morally justifiable without reference to some divine mandate. We have already examined, however briefly, Israel’s policy in light of deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics, and found that it comes up short and fails to meet the basic requirement of these theories. Therefore, it lacks independent moral justification on which God’s commands could possibly be based on.

Israel’s occupation cannot be defended on moral grounds or in terms of national security. Israel can defend itself and prevail over any of its enemies now and in the foreseeable future, but it is drowning in moral corruption that the continued occupation only deepens. It is that—the enemy from within—that poses the greatest danger Israel faces.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. [email protected]

Web: www.alonben-meir.com

There have been conflicting reports on the current state of ship traffic through the Bosphorus, with a number of sources claiming that Turkey has implemented a blockade in order to cut off Russia’s “Syria Express” which is the logistical lifeline providing Russian and Syrian forces with equipment, munitions, and other necessities of modern warfare.

Other sources, including the Russian Navy, have stated that the Russian naval vessels have not had problems transiting the straits, though there were also some reports of Turkish submarines making an appearance in close vicinity of the Russian ships.

Yet other reports indicate that what the Turks are doing is simply harassment in the form of greatly delaying the processing of ships through the straits that does not rise to the level of violating the Montreaux Convention which prohibits the Turkish government from unilaterally closing the Bosphorus to shipping, unless the country is in a state of war or an emergency. Neither Russia nor Turkey have issued any statements concerning this matter. Turkey has not officially announced any measures against Russian or other ships, and likewise Russia has not protested that its ships are being mishandled.

After the first wave of reports, there have not been additional dispatches from the Bosphorus suggesting the blockade is in effect and, even more crucially, no Russian “Syrian Express” ships has been reported as having been forced to return to Novorossiysk or Latakia due to its inability to cross the straits.

Thus, Erdogan is rattling the saber but has not decided to draw it just yet and actually close the straits. Indeed, considering that he has had that option ever since the Russian operation in Syria began and that the closing of the straits would actually hinder the Russian operation to a far greater extent than the attack on the Su-24 that killed one of its crew members and led to the loss of a search-and-rescue helicopter and the death of a Russian naval infantryman, it is odd that he had not made this move yet and opted instead to take the far riskier route of a military escalation. The fact that he had not done so suggests the act of closing the straits is not as easy or consequence-free for Turkey as it might appear.

Indeed, there would be significant political and economic costs for Turkey to do so. The country does collect a fair amount of revenue from the ships transiting the straits. If the straits are closed even once, it is highly that from now on these cargoes would no longer go by ship but by rail, after being offloaded in Greek ports. It would also damage Turkey’s reputation as a reliable economic partner if an element of political risk of this magnitude creeps into Turkey’s business partners’ calculations. Moreover, closing the straits now is actually more difficult to do politically than before the Su-24 incident. Not only had Erdogan not received the political support from NATO he evidently hoped for, Putin had gone on the offensive in the form of releasing a flood of Russian intelligence information implicating Turkey in collusion with ISIS and buying stolen Syrian and Iraqi petroleum from the Islamic State. Even the US is now calling on Turkey to finally secure its borders and stop allowing militants and oil to cross border to and from Syria.

The fact that the Su-24 incident backfired on Erdogan, as the Russian aircraft have made targeting border areas with Turkey a priority, and NATO failed to act in accordance with Erdogan’s expectations by coming to Turkey’s “defense” and pressuring Russia to ratchet down its Syria campaign means that he is rather constrained in his future responses. It is significant that whereas Western mainstream media wholly ignored the Russian MOD briefing on the MH17 shoot-down, they did report on its briefing detailing Turkey-ISIS oil trade. Likewise the perception that Russia is fighting ISIS while Turkey is supporting the terrorist organization has become more widespread in the West, so much so that additional moves against Russia by Turkey would only reinforce that perception and leave Turkey more isolated in the internal arena. Рaving said that, Erdogan has painted himself into a corner and, like a cornered rat, he is liable to lash out. However, that lashing out is only likely to make the situation worse for him and for Turkey.

The Russian leadership is no doubt taking that threat seriously and it does have a variety of measures to potentially counteract it, though none of them are highly efficient solutions. Military action against Turkey is out of the question, as NATO (i.e., US) would almost certainly come to Turkey’s aid. Shipping goods via the Caspian Sea or using an overland route to Syria does not appear plausible considering the current configuration of borders and the extent of territory controlled by the Islamic State.

A more promising solution would be to start supplying Syria using Baltic ports which would certainly make individual trips longer and therefore costlier, but also free from the interference of any NATO member as neither the Danish Straits nor Gibraltar can be closed in the way the Bosphorus can. Finally, Russia could attempt to negotiate an agreement with Iraq to establish an air base there, which could then be more easily supplied via the Caspian Sea and Iran and whose existence would allow the number of sorties generated by Hmeimim to be reduced. All of these are options open to the Russian leadership, Erdogan is clearly aware that even the Bosphorus blockade would likely not yield the desired result of crippling the Russian air campaign, which is probably the reason why so far he has not launched an all-out, official blockade of the Bosphorus.

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In a scathing attack on President Barack Obama’s drone war, four former operators of the remote-controlled killing machines declared that this kind of  warfare is actually fueling terrorism.

Meanwhile,  the soldiers who pull the triggers are cast aside when they break down under the incessant stress of long-distance killing.

“This administration and its predecessors have built a drone program that is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world,” the quartet of former Air Force service members wrote in a letter to Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and CIA Director John Brennan.

“We came to the realization that the innocent civilians we were killing only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo Bay.”

Staff Sergeant Brandon Bryant, Senior Airman Cian Westmoreland, Senior Airman Stephen Lewis and Senior Airman Michael Haas said they felt compelled to speak out because staying silent “would violate the very oaths we took to support and defend the Constitution.”

“We came to the realization that the innocent civilians we were killing only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo Bay,” they wrote.

Nothing Surgical about Drone Strikes

An in-depth report by The Intercept, which relied on a “cache of secret slides,” found that the drone program fails miserably in its stated goal of of eliminating only the carefully selected targets.

The US military’s own records reveal that innocents die during the strikes — routinely. During one particular five-month stretch, 90% of the victims of drone attacks were not the intended target.

The public, however, has been led to believe that the drone program works with a high degree of precision.

President Obama certainly gave that impression in April, when he implied that two American hostages killed in a drone strike represented a sadly unavoidable if rare accident: “It is a cruel and bitter truth that in the fog of war generally and our fight against terrorists specifically, mistakes — sometimes deadly mistakes — can occur,”

The four former drone operators painted a very different picture. “We witnessed gross waste, mismanagement, abuses of power, and our country’s leaders lying publicly about the effectiveness of the drone program,” they wrote. (For a devastating picture of the drone war in just one country, Pakistan, see here.)

The veterans explained why they chose to become whistleblowers: “We cannot sit silently by and witness tragedies like the attacks in Paris, knowing the devastating effects the drone program has overseas and at home.”

Killing the Innocent Leads to PTSD

Obama’s reputation as a reluctant warrior has remained largely intact despite the intensive drone campaign that has become an integral part of his anti-terrorism strategy. But the men and women pulling the trigger from thousands of miles away are paying a high price.

“When the guilt of our roles in facilitating this systematic loss of innocent life became too much, all of us succumbed to PTSD,” the drone operators wrote.

“We were cut loose by the same government we gave so much to — sent out in the world without adequate medical care, reliable public health services, or necessary benefits. Some of us are now homeless. Others of us barely make it.”

WhoWhatWhy contacted the Air Force to get a statement on the letter but did not hear back by the time this article was published. If the Air Force does reply, this report will be updated accordingly.

The quartet of former Air Force service members said they hoped that Obama, Carter and Brennan would pay attention to what they had to say.  But the veterans added that their insiders’ plea to reconsider drone warfare may be “in vain given the unprecedented prosecution of truth-tellers who came before us like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden.”

We will be watching carefully to see what happens with this plea, and to those who made it — and we will keep you informed.

The United States and its allies seem determined to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of World War I by starting World War III. Some of the same players are involved and their motives are as ignoble in the 21^st century as they were in the 20^th.

Nations like Iraq and Syria didn’t exist at all until after the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in 1918. Britain and France carved up the region and established the boundaries which are still in use for these countries. The Europeans have returned to their imperialist past and want to resume their interventions but now as clients of the United States.

The United States is the world’s only true super power and it has used that position to wreak the most havoc. Every crisis in the region from the flight of desperate refugees to the creation of the Islamic State can be laid at America’s doorstep.

America had willing puppets as it destroyed Iraq and Libya and then assumed it could easily do the same to Syria. They plotted and spread propaganda that the Assad government would fall but instead it hung on for four years despite the aggressions waged against it. Russia finally stepped up as an ally and made good on its promise to support the government which asked for its assistance. Of all the players now pledging to bomb the Islamic State in Syria, only Russia does so while respecting international law and Syria’s sovereignty.

Of course these alliances create great risk and Turkey contributed to the danger on November 24, 2015 when it shot down a Russian fighter jet. Despite a claim of a 17-second incursion into Turkish airspace, the plane and its pilots who ejected all descended onto Syrian territory.

As the guilty party always does, the Turks screamed like scalded dogs. They asked NATO to defend them when it was they who did the attacking. They faced the wrath of Vladimir Putin and lost out on a gas pipeline and now face sanctions, but they decided it was worth while to toady for the United States and NATO. The Turks have been proven right as the European Union makes plans for a 3 billion euro payment in exchange for a promise to stem the refugee tide making its way through that country. Turkey has made good on its desire to be part of the European empire. Its troops now occupy the northern regions of Iraq and refuse to leave despite angry demands from the Iraqi government.

The world is now descending into a vicious cycle of war and terrorism. The United States and the U.K. invade and occupy Iraq, which leads to the creation of the Islamic State, which attacks Beirut, Ankara, Paris and a Russian passenger plane. Regime change in Libya makes that country a route for refugees who flood Europe. The attempt to do the same in Syria also sends people fleeing and makes Europeans fearful of a brown skinned, Muslim horde. Racist fears lead to rationales for more war and on it goes.

Syria is the epicenter of crisis but it isn’t the only country which may create the long dreaded global conflagration. That is because the imperialists have chosen other places to gain the control they so desperately crave. In 2014 Ukraine was the site of a successful U.S. backed regime change scheme. The ultimate goal was to destroy Russia as an energy exporting nation and make the world safe for U.S. hegemony. There may not be war planes over Ukraine, but it remains the tail that wags the dog and provocations are the order of the day. On November 21, 2015 saboteurs exploded transmission towers which plunged Crimea into a blackout. Members of the Ukrainian Right Sector neo-fascist group and Crimean Tartar “activists” then attacked repair crews and kept the peninsula in darkness for two more weeks.

While the world watches Syria and Turkey, the Ukrainians continue to fulfill their role as the west’s most important puppets. Vice President Joe Biden made an in person promise to continue American support for Ukraine’s government. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has already pledged to keep bailing out the nation which can’t repay its loans. This continued forgiveness is in direct violation of IMF rules. Obviously Ukraine is still very much an American trump card.

The only unknown is which provocation will act as the tipping point. It could be in Syria or Crimea or somewhere else. As long as president Obama shouts, “Assad must go,” the world is in great danger. Imperialism is persistent and it hasn’t changed very much in the past 100 years.

Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR (http://www.blackagendareport.com), and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.

The Israeli occupation bulldozers launched on Wednesday morning a limited incursion into Palestinian lands in eastern al-Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza Strip.

Local sources said four Israeli army bulldozers of the D9 brand moved into the border fence in eastern al-Bureij refugee camp.

The bulldozers raked through the area and leveled Palestinian lands amid intermittent discharge of gunfire.

Two Israeli military jeeps were, meanwhile, deployed in an adjacent area, near the border fence.

Earlier, on Tuesday evening, a similar incursion was carried out into northern Gaza Strip.

Army bulldozers moved some 100 meters into the Beit Hanun (Erez) border-crossing and leveled Palestinian lands in the western border fence.

The incursions are the latest in a series of Israeli violations of the Cairo-brokered ceasefire accord signed in the wake of the 2014 offensive on the besieged coastal enclave.

 And ISIS arrives in Afghanistan

Earlier this month, Anthony Loyd wrote from Kabul in Afghanistan about Pashtuns living in refugee camps or in remote villages of Helmand districts.

These Afghans, from the most heavily contested areas of Helmand, know at first hand the consequences of “precision targeting” and “smart bombs”.

A local farmer, Mir Alam Ghamgen said:

“The British said they never targeted civilians deliberately but they killed them anyway. Whether they meant to or not, all it takes is one mistake with a bomb, civilians die, and the whole loyalty of a tribe can change.”

He lost his two-year-old daughter and nine other family members, including two women and seven children, in an airstrike in the village of Turoba, just outside Sangin district centre, during heavy fighting between the British and Taliban in the summer of 2006.

“Until that bomb landed on my village, we had been pro-government and resented the Taliban. But then as we saw we were being killed by foreigners’ bombs for nothing, our support changed, and we thought we might as well die in the name of the Taliban.”

When asked about precision bombing: “We hated the Russians when they bombed us with artillery and missiles,” said Tufan, a farmer from another Helmand district that saw repeated airstrikes during the British fight against the Taliban:

“The Russians never claimed to kill people intelligently, so when the British came, with improved weapons, boasting of drones and jets and good intelligence, we hoped it might be different. They didn’t kill as many civilians as the Russians, but they killed civilians nevertheless, and we hated them for it.”

No sympathisers of Isis, these men were measured in their understanding of the need to confront the terrorist group.

“It is not easy when you have an armed group that will not listen to negotiation imposing itself upon the people and attacking everyone,” Mr Ghamgen said. “But the British must remember that when foreigners kill civilians, it affects the local people in the opposite way to what they wish.”

There is little positive legacy:

• Sangin and other districts, defended by the British with ground troops and airpower including drones, jets and helicopters, are again in danger of falling to the Taliban.
• Gunfire is now heard every night from the provincial governor’s offices in Helmand’s capital, Lashkar Gar.
• The Taliban fight with beleaguered Afghan troops in Babaji, which was cleared by British troops with heavy losses during Panther’s Claw, the notoriously bloody British offensive of 2009.

The latest Times report is that Islamic State fighters have captured swathes of eastern Afghanistan. How will they be received by such local people?

Mr Ghamgen said:

“It’s OK to kill Daesh, but if the foreigners do in Syria as they did here, it will work against them. All those bombs from drones and jets, all those lives, theirs and ours, for what? They made local people hate them. Helmand is still on fire now the British have gone, and we have no way of returning home.”

Muslim-Americans are living in a totalitarian police state with worsening harassment, profiling, and surveillance. The United States’ government may claim liberty and justice for all; however, in practice, towards Muslims, it exhibits all four major characteristics of a totalitarian state: a war on terror that targets Muslims abroad, a totalitarian police state at home, public executions by drones and gulags outside the rule of law, and a strong reliance on propaganda and political demagoguery.

The hallmark of fascism was state oppression of certain targeted non-privileged groups. Today, Muslims are bearing the brunt of America’s totalitarian police state.

Despite FBI records showing that since 9/11, Muslims have committed far less domestic terror attacks than white supremacists, it is the American-Muslim community that is under unprecedented levels of surveillance and government intrusion. Muslims in America are unquestionably experiencing a fascist system of surveillance, operating at the same level that East Germans faced under the Stasi spy agency. Researcher, Arun Kundnani, has shown how the FBI has one counterterrorism spy for every 94 Muslims in the U.S., which approaches Stasi’s ratio of one spy for every 66 citizens.

Clearly racism, as much as oil, fuels the War on Terror. White Christians rarely have to worry that an undercover agent or informant has infiltrated their churches, student organizations or neighborhoods. The simple fact that U.S. law enforcement has not infiltrated and spied on conservative Christian communities to disrupt violent rightwing extremism, which is the biggest terrorism threat in America, confirms what Muslims in American know in their bones: to worship Allah is to be suspect.

Federal judges recently ruled that suspicion-less surveillance of Muslims is permissible under the U.S. Constitution. The NYPD has admitted that Mosques, student groups, restaurants, even grade schools, have all been under surveillance. By rapidly increasing both government policies of secrecy and surveillance, Mr. Obama’s government is increasing its power to watch its citizens, while diminishing its citizens’ power to watch their government.

The threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism has been largely manufactured, so that the so-called War on Terror can promote multi-billion dollar, corporate-sponsored militarism abroad and the erosion of two hundred-year-old civil liberties at home.

Muslim-Americans are not only facing increasing oppression from the state, but they are also facing growing prejudice from their fellow countrymen, as hate crimes and civil liberty violations against Muslims continue to precipitously rise.

A recent Pew Forum Poll established that Muslims are by far the most disliked minority in America. According to FBI statistics, anti-Muslim hate crimes soared by an astounding 50 percent last year. Muslims constitute 1 percent of the U.S. population, but they are 13 percent of the victims of religious-based hate crimes. Islamophobia and xenophobia now seem as American as apple pie. Intolerance of Muslims is often inverted, depicting Muslim customs as an insult to Western customs.

One major aspect of American totalitarianism, shared by fascist regimes, is the nation’s enormous military budget. In 1933, Nazi Germany’s military spending was 2 percent of their national income; by 1940, it was 44 percent.

Today, America spends more on her military than the rest of the world combined. America has expanded its military into having 662 foreign military bases, according to the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report.  The War on Terror has cost $6 trillion, the equivalent of $75,000 for every American household, calculates Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Another hallmark of totalitarianism is the creation of a prison system outside the rule of law that is largely designed to imprison and torture one minority group. The Guantanamo Bay gulag is unquestionably a crime against humanity. There is unlimited cruelty in a system that seems to be unable to free the innocent and unable to punish the guilty.

In April 24, 1934, a People’s Court, just like Guantanamo was established, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely in isolation and were tortured and subjected to show trials. The People’s Court was signed into law by Adolf Hitler.

In 2007, a politician who was vehemently against the human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay, explained what he would do about the torture camp if he ever became President:

“When I am President, I will close Guantanamo. It is a moral outrage, a blight upon America’s conscience. It is the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. From inception, Guantanamo was a laboratory for unlawful military interrogation, detention, and trials.”

The politician who uttered these words was Senator Barack Obama. Ironically, under President Obama’s tenure, conditions for Guantanamo detainees, from both a physical and legal standpoint, have become markedly worse.

Public executions are perhaps one of the most overt and odious symbols of totalitarianism. In totalitarian Spain, under General Franco, mass public executions were the norm, and were often carried out in bullrings or with band music and onlookers dancing in the victims’ blood. With Hitler and Mussolini supplying arms to Franco, some 200,000 men and women were publically executed during the war and bombed from overhead.

Nowadays, drones are the ultimate totalitarian technology. Washington both uses drones for what amount to public extra-judicial executions of Muslims abroad, and for spying on American Muslims at home.

Most Americans believe that drones are targeted and therefore humane. Nothing could be further from the truth. By all accounts, drones have killed more children than terrorists. According to a new report from The Intercept, nearly 90 percent of people killed in drone strikes in Afghanistan are civilians.

By 2018, some privacy experts believe law enforcement will likely control over 35,000 drones that the government will use to monitor Americans from the skies.

Integral to the rise of the America Muslim Totalitarian State is propaganda. Sheldon Wolin has poignantly pointed out that, whereas the production of propaganda was crudely centralized in Nazi Germany, in the United States, it is left to highly concentrated media corporations, thus maintaining the illusion of a “free press”.

The American propaganda machine is highly sophisticated. It does not rely upon the radio addresses, speeches, and leaflets disseminated by the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, nor does it rely on the crude censorship or harassment of free press ordered by a Politburo. The propaganda of America’s “one percent” is subtle yet pervasive; it relies not only on government diktats but also on the mass media, art, pop culture and Hollywood.

American cinema and music have always been a remarkably effective means of whipping up xenophobic wartime sentiment. For example, the highest grossing war film in history, American Sniper, and President Obama’s favorite television show, Homeland, both engage in an overly broad generalization of Islam, and depict Muslims and terrorists in a way that is indicative of widespread Islamophobia in American culture.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee reported a spike in Islamophobia and hate crimes after the release of American Sniper, which culminated in the recent slaying of three young Muslims in North Carolina, who were shot in the head sniper execution style. American Islamophobia operates in the service of American militarism and American militarism abroad, and in turn, ratchets up Islamophobia against minorities at home.

The media determines our language, our language shapes our thoughts, and our thoughts determine our actions. Language is the fulcrum of a society’s perception. Whosoever controls the public’s language, controls the public’s perception.

The corporate elites who sit on media editorial boards control said language. In 1983, fifty companies owned ninety percent of U.S. media. Today, only six media giants control a staggering ninety percent of what the American public listens to, reads, and watches. “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play,” once remarked Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda.

For Muslim-Americans the media’s Orwellian totalitarian language is clear: Drones are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Torture is Enhanced Interrogation. Occupation is Liberation.

Donald Trump’s recent call to ban Muslims from entry into the U.S. is not without precedent. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 effectively banned all Chinese immigration to the US. This racist law remained in place for five decades and required all Chinese to carry identification certificates or face deportation. When Trump endorsed identification cards to be worn at all times by American Muslims, his popularity jumped almost 3 percentage points. If Donald Trump’s policies are viewed by Americans as odious and un-American, then why has he consistently gained popularity after every anti-Muslim outburst?

America’s history is stock full of totalitarianism and popularized, irrational fear of “the other”. It began when the settler pioneers feared Native Americans and united against them by slaughtering millions in order to quell that fear. As settlers began to unite around a common identity they feared the British Monarchy and rebelled against it. Americans then fought against Mexico, France and various other countries for vast land control. Five hundred documented revolts on slave ships and the fact that plantation owners were greatly outnumbered by slaves, cemented the role of fear that perpetuated slavery for centuries. With greater fear comes greater violence, and with greater violence comes a greater need to justify that violence by ratcheting up the fear.

After the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were forced into interment camps on American soil. Vietnamese Americans were then targets of xenophobia in America during the Vietnam War, and then there was the “Red Scare”, which targeted Russian-Americans throughout the Cold War.

From the ashes of the Soviet Union arose the terrorists from the oil-rich Middle East, who became America’s new number one enemy and so the legacy of American xenophobia continues. Today, as the deliberately unending war on terror rumbles on abroad, Muslim, Arab, and Sikh Americans fear that they are living in a totalitarian state.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on [email protected]

Since the 1990s, Australia has underscored itself as an alternative to the climate change junta, as its officials often seem to suggest it is, focusing instead on the life of immediate gain. It is a code of living with undeniable, selfish benefits, a sort of fossil-fuel Objectivism, as Ayn Rand would have termed it. Be infuriatingly, dangerously selfish; you know you want to.  Forget the others; you have to.

This was in evidence with the Kyoto Protocol, which Canberra stubbornly refused to go along with any vaguely communitarian notion about environment and matters of climate disruption.  Despite being signed in April 1998, the protocol was only ratified on Dec 12 2007.   Even then, it was noted that the document “does not specify the mechanism by which Parties to the Protocol must meet their emission target, thus providing an Annex I country such as Australia reasonable amount of discretion as to the policies and measures it implements domestically to meet its target.”[1]

The Umbrella Group of industrialised states, as it came to be known, has been stalking the climate change scene for some time, stalling and restricting various measures in pursuit of a decarbonized economy. The group, not always harmoniously, comprises Japan, US, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Canada, Australia, Norway and New Zealand.  Given that exports in oil, gas and coal amounts stemming from the group are only growing, some forces of attraction were bound to be felt.

It is one that has proven fractious within its own limits, a front that has been fraying since 2009 when the White House decided to adopt a greener side in a post-Bush world.  Ditto a post-Harper Canada.  Disagreements have arisen over the issue of compliance, as they always tend to.

The spoiling agents in the group have varied in terms of force and effect.  Japan, while not possessing the fossil fuel deposits in the group, has importing ties to three which do. It has been one of the strongest voices to push back G7 commitments on climate change targets.

Australia, however, as it has done in previous rounds, has shown itself to be the problematic child in the climate change classroom, despite dutifully scribbling in its note book a target well below 2°C in terms of temperature rises.  In many instances, its delegates give the impression of not wanting to be there. Failing students, of course, rarely do.

In an assessment by Germanwatch and the Climate Action Network Europe, released at the Paris climate summit, Australia joined Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan at the bottom of a list of 58 nations in its ranking on the Climate Change Performance Index.

The report conducts a range of measures, focusing on actual per capital emissions, emission trends, the use of renewable energy, energy intensity in the economy, and an overall assessment of climate policies.  Australia was bound to get a good serving on this, given its abolition of the carbon emissions scheme, scaling down of the renewable energy target (RET) in June 2015 and such ineffective measures as the Emission Reduction Fund.

It provides a parallel universe to that created by the Turnbull government, which has attempted to sneak in, and out, without much consequence.  “This report,” explained Kelly O’Shannassy of the Australian Conservation Foundation, “cuts through the government’s spin to show we are a climate change laggard.”[2]

Admittedly, many of the policies constitute a burdensome inheritance for Turnbull, one fashioned by that most ardent of climate sceptics, Tony Abbott.   And Foreign Minister Julie Bishop did surprise some by signing up to a New Zealand-led declaration supporting international carbon markets.[3]

Overall, Canberra’s anti-environment resume won the country the award of fossil of the day, an anti-gong not alien to its diplomats.  Bishop, before a forum hosted by Indonesia titled “Pathways to a Sustainable Low Carbon and Climate Resilient Economy” embraced the long held plunderer’s line that fossil fuels remained good.  “Traditional energy sources, fossil fuels like coal, will remain a significant part of the global energy mix for the foreseeable future.”[4]

Such language retains its euphemistic flavour, but becomes exceedingly crude as an apologia for white knight antics. Yes, mining, exporting and burning fossil fuels will be good for the poor, even as the process lines the deep pockets of mining companies.  “Barring some technological breakthrough fossil fuels will remain critical to promoting prosperity, growing economies and alleviating hunger for years to come.”

This standing flies well in the face of such documents as the Declaration to Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground, one arrived at by a group of 163 non-governmental organisations led by environment groups and indigenous leaders from 28 countries.[5]

Australia’s lead negotiator at Paris, Peter Woolcott, fears “the weakening of several provisions.”  Motivating countries to combat targets was one thing; making them binding quite another. Keep such goals, and the means to achieve them, flexible.

Australia is by no means the only state to be the laggard at the show.  Some members of the G77 – Malaysia, Cuba and Venezuela – have made less than subtle efforts to stifle the procedural elements of the summit.  On Monday, the delegates wished for the text to be worked on through a big screen. Endorsing such a measure would have kept the negotiators at work for years.

Other threats have also manifested, not least of all Saudi Arabia, who persists in cultivating a Janus-sensibility to environmental reform.  Therein lies a formidably aggressive opponent, one who, in advance of COP21 intentionally manipulated the oil price to produce a surge in demand.[6]

On Friday, the OPEC Minister meeting in Vienna, egged on by Riyadh, concluded that there would be no reduction in current levels of oil production.[7]  In the words of Saudi Oil Minister, Ali Al-Naimi, uttered in May, ending the use of fossil fuels was something that had to be put “in the back of our heads for a while.”

There are reasons to assume that much of COP21 will be the customary dross one has come to expect from climate change fests.  Some momentum, centred around the so-called “high energy coalition” comprising the EU, the US and almost 80 African and island states, has gathered.  But the state parties seem less relevant to this show than the giant, technology coalitions and energy deals that are being done on the side.[8]  Clean energy initiatives have been, and will take place irrespective of whether states wish to take up a seat on the train of reform.

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

Notes:

GR Editor’s Note:

This article was originally posted in December 2012. It is of utmost relevance in assessing the present situation. It documents the fact that the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels (including the ISIS) operating in Syria are directly supported by Washington.

The Lies of London’s  Sunday Times regarding Obama’s counter-terrorism campaign against the ISIS is refuted by an earlier Sunday Times report. The Sunday Times report quoted below confirms that Obama has been arming the terrorists for the last three years, since 2012. 

M. Ch, GR Editor, December 10, 2015

*      *     *

The Obama administration has decided to launch a covert operation to send heavy weapons to Syrian rebels [December 2012], Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times of London reports.

Diplomatic sources told the Sunday Times that the U.S. “bought weapons from the stockpiles of Libya’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.”

The heavy arms include mortars, rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and the controversial anti-aircraft heat-seeking SA-7 missiles, which are integral to countering Bashar Al-Assad’s bombing campaign.

Many have suspected that the US was already involved in sending heavy arms.

The administration has said that the previously hidden CIA operation in Benghazi involved finding, repurchasing and destroying heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, but in October we reported evidence indicating that U.S. agents — particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens — were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.

There have been several possible SA-7 spottings in Syria dating as far back as early summer 2012, and there are indications that at least some of Gaddafi’s 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles were shipped before now.

On Sept. 6 a Libyan ship carrying 400 tons of weapons for Syrian rebels docked in southern Turkey. The ship’s captain was “a Libyan from Benghazi” who worked for the new Libyan government. The man who organized that shipment, Tripoli Military Council head Abdelhakim Belhadj, worked directly with Stevens during the Libyan revolution.

Stevens’ last meeting on Sept. 11 was with Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and a source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi “to negotiate a weapons transfer in an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists.”

Last month The Wall Street Journal reported that the State Department presence in Benghazi “provided diplomatic cover” for the now-exposed CIA annex. It follows that the “weapons transfer” that Stevens negotiated may have involved sending heavy weapons recovered by the CIA to the revolutionaries in Syria.

The newest report comes days before the U.S. is expected to recognize the newest Syrian coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people. The State Department has also indicated it will soon name the opposition’s highly effective al-Nusra Front a “terrorist organization” for its ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Both of these stipulations — recognition of a unified opposition and creation of distance from extremists — are pivotal in order for the Obama administration to openly acknowledge supporting Syrian rebels with heavy weapons.

On the day of the Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony at Oslo City Hall, Alfred Nobel decided to give one fifth of his fortune for a prize to promote disarmament and resolution of all conflicts through negotiations and legal means, never through violence.

It should go to “champions of peace” – to reducing or abolishing standing armies, promoting peace congresses and creating fraternity between nations…

Here is the full text of Nobel’s will of 1895 here.

The Nobel Committee in Oslo has, over the years, awarded this prize to several people whose activities are in clear violation of those goals, even with a broader, updated interpretation.

Can such a prize, with a so clearly stated goal, be changed to serve the opposite idea and be given again and again to recipients who promote arms races and believe in militarism and war?

This question will soon be answered, after Mairead Maguire, Jan Oberg, David Swanson, and Lay Down Your Arms took the case to the Stockholm District Court on Friday 4th of December 2015.

The specific case to be tested is the 2012 award to the European Union.

Here is the full text of the summons.

All other relevant information is available at the Nobel Peace Prize Watch.

Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl and Jan Oberg took the initiative in 2007 to reclaim the Prize to its original purposes.

Since then Fredrik Heffermehl has done research on its history and decision-making processes. One of the main results is his internationally acclaimed 2010 book The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted, 239 pages.

More information here.

Syria is an energy war. With the heart of the matter featuring a vicious geopolitical competition between two proposed gas pipelines, it is the ultimate Pipelinestan  war, the term I coined long ago for the 21st century imperial energy battlefields.

It all started in 2009, when Qatar proposed to Damascus the construction of a pipeline from its own North Field – contiguous with the South Pars field, which belongs to Iran – traversing Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria all the way to Turkey, to supply the EU.

Damascus, instead, chose in 2010 to privilege a competing project, the $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria, also know as «Islamic pipeline». The deal was formally announced in July 2011, when the Syrian tragedy was already in motion. In 2012, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with Iran.

Until then, Syria was dismissed, geo-strategically, as not having as much oil and gas compared to the GCC petrodollar club. But insiders already knew about its importance as a regional energy corridor. Later on, this was enhanced with the discovery of serious offshore oil and gas potential.

Iran for its part is an established oil and gas powerhouse. Persistent rumblings in Brussels – still unable to come up with a unified European energy policy after over 10 years – did account for barely contained excitement over the Islamic pipeline; that would be the ideal strategy to diversify from Gazprom. But Iran was under US and EU nuclear-related sanctions.

That ended up turning into a key strategic reason, at least for the Europeans, for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear dossier; a «rehabilitated» (to the West) Iran is able to become a key source of energy to the EU.

Yet, from the point of view of Washington, a geostrategic problem lingered: how to break the Tehran-Damascus alliance. And ultimately, how to break the Tehran-Moscow alliance.

The «Assad must go» obsession in Washington is a multi-headed hydra. It includes breaking a Russia-Iran-Iraq-Syria alliance (now very much in effect as the «4+1» alliance, including Hezbollah, actively fighting all strands of Salafi Jihadism in Syria). But it also includes isolating energy coordination among them, to the benefit of the Gulf petrodollar clients/vassals linked to US energy giants.

Thus Washington’s strategy so far of injecting the proverbial Empire of Chaos logic into Syria; feeding the flames of internal chaos, a pre-planed op by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the endgame being regime change in Damascus.

An Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline is unacceptable in the Beltway not only because US vassals lose, but most of all because in currency war terms it would bypass the petrodollar. Iranian gas from South Pars would be traded in an alternative basket of currencies.

Compound it with the warped notion, widely held in the Beltway, that this pipeline would mean Russia further controlling the gas flow from Iran, the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. Nonsense. Gazprom already said it would be interested in some aspects of the deal, but this is essentially an Iranian project. In fact, this pipeline would represent an alternative to Gazprom.

Still, the Obama administration’s position was always to «support» the Qatar pipeline «as a way to balance Iran» and at the same time «diversify Europe’s gas supplies away from Russia.» So both Iran and Russia were configured as «the enemy».

Turkey at crossroads

Qatar’s project, led by Qatar Petroleum, predictably managed to seduce assorted Europeans, taking account of vast US pressure and Qatar’s powerful lobbies in major European capitals. The pipeline would ply some of the route of a notorious Pipelineistan opera, the now defunct Nabucco, a project formerly headquartered in Vienna.

So implicitly, from the beginning, the EU was actually supporting the push towards regime change in Damascus – which so far may have cost Saudi Arabia and Qatar at least $4 billion (and counting). It was a scheme very similar to the 1980s Afghan jihad; Arabs financing/weaponizing a multinational bunch of jihadis/mercenaries, helped by a strategic go-between (Pakistan in the case of Afghanistan, Turkey in the case of Syria), but now directly fighting a secular Arab republic.

It got much rougher, of course, with the US, UK, France and Israel progressively turbo-charging all manner of covert ops privileging «moderate» rebels and otherwise, always targeting regime change.

The game now has expanded even more, with the recently discovered offshore gas wealth across the Eastern Mediterranean –  in offshore Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. This whole area may hold as much as 1.7 billion barrels of oil and up to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And that could be a mere third of the total undiscovered fossil fuel wealth in the Levant.

From Washington’s point of view, the game is clear: to try to isolate Russia, Iran and a «regime-unchanged» Syria as much as possible from the new Eastern Mediterranean energy bonanza.

And that brings us to Turkey – now in the line of fire from Moscow after the downing of the Su-24.

Ankara’s ambition, actually obsession, is to position Turkey as the major energy crossroads for the whole of the EU. 1) As a transit hub for gas from Iran, Central Asia and, up to now, Russia (the Turkish  Stream gas pipeline is suspended, not cancelled). 2) As a hub for major gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean. 3) And as a hub for gas imported from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq.

Turkey plays the role of key energy crossroads in the Qatar pipeline project. But it’s always important to remember that Qatar’s pipeline does not need to go through Syria and Turkey. It could easily cross Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea, Egypt and reach the Eastern Mediterranean.

So, in the Big Picture, from Washington’s point of view, what matters most of all, once again, is «isolating» Iran from Europe. Washington’s game is to privilege Qatar as a source, not Iran, and Turkey as the hub, for the EU to diversify from Gazprom.

This is the same logic behind the construction of the costly Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, facilitated in Azerbaijan by Zbigniew «Grand Chessboard» Brzezinski in person.

As it stands, prospects for both pipelines are less than dismal. The Vienna peace process concerning Syria will go nowhere as long as Riyadh insists on keeping its weaponized outfits in the «non-terrorist» list, and Ankara keeps allowing free border flow of jihadis while engaging in dodgy business with stolen Syrian oil.

What’s certain is that, geo-economically, Syria goes way beyond a civil war; it’s a vicious Pipelineistan power play in a dizzying complex chessboard where the Big Prize will represent a major win in the 21st century energy wars.

Pepe ESCOBAR is an independent geopolitical analyst

Iraqi sources confirm to Elijah J. Magnier that Turkey is indeed blackmailing Baghdad to get a Qatar-Turkey pipeline. The blackmail also has a water resource component. I wrote on that here back in August. I recommend to read the above linked Magnier piece together with my speculations below.

The Turkish move to annex Mosul is further developing into a serious conflict. Iraq has demanded that Turkey removes its soldiers and heavy weapons from the “training base” near Mosul within 48 hours. It asserts that these were put there without asking or informing the sovereign Iraqi government.

Turkey first denied that any new troops arrived in Iraq. It then said that the troops were only a replacement of the existing training force. Then it claimed that the new troops were there to protect the training force:

Turkish sources say the reinforcement plans were discussed in detail with Brett McGurk, U.S. President Barack Obama’s counter-ISIL fight coordinator, during his latest visit to Ankara on Nov. 5-6. “The Americans are telling the truth,” one high-rank source said. “This is not a U.S.-led coalition operation, but we are informing them about every single detail. This is not a secret operation.”

The U.S. was informed but Iraq was not? That makes it look as if the U.S. is behind this. Brett McGurk has also said that this is not a “U.S.-led coalition” operation but is otherwise playing “neutral” on the issue.

But Reuters now stenographed some other Turkish source which suddenly claims that the tanks and artillery are part of the coalition:

Turkey said on Monday it would not withdraw hundreds of soldiers who arrived last week at a base in northern Iraq, despite being ordered by Baghdad to pull them out within 48 hours.The sudden arrival of such a large and heavily armed Turkish contingent in a camp near the frontline in northern Iraq has added yet another controversial deployment to a war against Islamic State fighters that has drawn in most of the world’s major powers.

Ankara says the troops are there as part of an international mission to train and equip Iraqi forces to fight against Islamic State. The Iraqi government says it never invited such a force, and will take its case to the United Nations if they are not pulled out.

The force to be trained is under control of a former Iraqi state governor who is, like the Kurdish ex-president Barzani, a Turkish tool:

The camp occupied by the Turkish troops is being used by a force called Hashid Watani, or national mobilization, made up of mainly Sunni Arab former Iraqi police and volunteers from Mosul.It is seen as a counterweight to Shi’ite militias that have grown in clout elsewhere in Iraq with Iranian backing, and was formed by former Nineveh governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, who has close relations with Turkey. A small number of Turkish trainers were already there before the latest deployment.

The former policemen who ran away when the Islamic State took over Mosul are not and will not be a serious fighting force against their Islamic State brethren in Mosul. They are just a fig leave for the Turkish occupation.

There are rumors, not confirmed yet, that Turkey now uses the presence of its force to blackmail the Iraqi government. Turkey, it is said, wants agreement from Baghdad for a gas pipeline from Qatar through Iraq to Turkey.

Map via Fer G

The original plan was to have such a pipeline run through Syrian desert flatland to Turkey and on to Europe. The gas from Qatar would be sold there in competition with gas from Russia. President Assad had rejected that pipeline and preferred one from Iran through Iraq to the Syrian coast. Qatar and Iran collectively own a huge gas field in the Persian Gulf. Whoever gets his pipeline going first will have a big advantage in extracting from the field and selling its gas. The rejection of the original pipeline project was one reason why Qatar engaged heavily in the regime change project in Syria. The Plan B would have the pipeline go through the rather rough east Anatolia – more expensive than the Syria route but feasible. The U.S. supports the Qatar project. Anything that would make Europeans dependent on gas from a U.S. controlled regime is preferable to Europeans who do independent business with Russia.

Erdogan visited Qatar on December 1 for two days and the two countries signed a number of “strategic agreements”. The Turkish troops moved to Mosul on December 4 and 5. This makes the pipeline extortion that Turkey is said to try with Iraq at least plausible.

But Iraq and its Prime Minister Abadi can not agree to the pipeline project. Its allies in Iran, Russia and Syria are all against the Qatar-Turkey-(U.S.) project and would see that as treason. Shia militia in Iraq, especially the Badr brigade, have threatened to destroy the Turkish force near Mosul. They would remove Abadi from his office if he would fold under the Turkish-Qatari-(U.S.) extortion scheme.

Possibly related to the Turkish escalation is today’s attack on a Syrian government position near Deir Ezzour:

Syria’s government said the U.S.-led military coalition has carried out a deadly airstrike on a Syrian army camp, but officials from the alliance said the report was false.Syria said four coalition jets killed three soldiers and wounded 13 in the eastern Deir al-Zor province on Sunday evening, calling it an act of aggression, the first time it has made such an accusation.
…
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported earlier that jets likely to be from the coalition hit part of the Saeqa military camp near the town of Ayyash in Deir al-Zor province, killing four Syrian army personnel.

But a U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States is certain that Russia was responsible for the deadly strike on the Syrian army camp .

The official flatly dismissed claims that U.S.-led coalition jets were responsible.

Brett McGurk, U.S. President Barack Obama’s envoy to the coalition, also denied claims of coalition responsibility, saying on his Twitter account: “Reports of coalition involvement are false.”

Damascus insists that four jets entered Syria from Al-Bukamal, Iraq and fired 9 missiles against al-Saeqa military base in Ayyash near Deir Ezzour.

The U.S. accuses Russia to have committed the strike. I very much doubt that. There have been accidental “friendly fire” strikes by the Russian air force against Syrian troops and against Hizbullah. But those accidents were always immediately admitted and investigated within the 4+1 alliance. The Russians say they did not do this strike and Damascus agrees.

But notice the weasel word in the U.S. statements: “U.S.-led coalition”. The Turks in Mosul are not part of the “U.S.-led coalition” even if they first claimed to be. If the air strike in Syria today were not done by the “U.S.-led coalition” it could mean that some country committed these air strikes on its own without the strike being officially within the “U.S.-led coalition” framework. Could that country’s name start with a Q?

The U.S. will know who really launched this strike. In both, the Turkish aggression on Iraq and the airstrike in Syria today and even with the earlier mountain ambush on the Russian jet, the U.S. is likely “leading from behind” the curtain. All these events are, like the now forming new alliance with Jihadis, part of Obama’s bigger plans and designs for Syria and the Middle East.

After politicians tabled a  weak draft climate deal in Paris today, hundreds of protestors including Friends of the Earth International activists staged a loud protest inside the climate summit to expose the fact that politicians are failing to provide a fair and just climate deal in Paris.

Free images of the protest are available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/foei/

“Our governments  must not settle for the draft text as it stands. People on the frontline of climate change, who are already suffering as a result of climate change, demand that rich countries to do their fair share of emissions reductions and provide necessary finance for an energy transformation in Southern countries. The draft deal fails these frontline communities,” said Friends of the Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator Sara Shaw.

Friends of the Earth International alongside civil society organisations, trade unions, and grassroots movements use a set of demands called ‘the People’s Test on Climate’ as a yardstick to assess the Paris climate deal.

The demands in the People’s Test on Climate cover the key pillars of what would constitute a just deal: a commitment to keeping us well below 1.5 and dividing the carbon budget using the fairshares principle; finance and support in line with rich nations’ climate debt; a just, systemic transformation; and justice for impacted communities, including compensation for irreparable climate damage.

Today’s text shows no progress on crucial issues, including ambition, differentiation, equity, finance, loss and damage. Many of the most important issues remain in brackets.

A short negotiations update is available below.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Friends of the Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator Sara Shaw: + 33 6 71 71 38 31 (until 12 Dec) or + 44 79 74 00 82 70 or email [email protected]

Friends of the Earth International media line: +31 6 51 00 56 30 or +33 6 07 10 45 09  (until 12 Dec) or email [email protected]


NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE

As of December 9 at 7pm, much of the climate agreement text remains in brackets or options, despite assurances by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is working as chair, that as much as 75% had been removed.

To prevent runaway climate change we need urgent action based on historic responsibility and capacity to act, based on a fair shares approach, according to Friends of the Earth International.

But instead of agreeing ways to implement the existing UN climate convention, we are witnessing attempts to dismantle it by developed countries who are looking for ways to escape their responsibilities by pushing strategies such as “self- differentiating”.

Key demands like reparations for those who suffer irreparable losses and damages because of climate change are still highly contested in this draft. There is no agreement on finance. Developed countries are still planning to use a disproportionally large carbon budget, shirking their responsibilities and pushing the burden onto developing countries.

This draft means that the Paris deal could just pay lip service to the  goal of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees, endangering even more millions of vulnerable people already affected by the climate crisis.

To mention 1.5 degrees maximum average global warming as a possible goal in the draft Paris agreement is just empty words if it not coupled with ambitious pre-2020 action and adequate finance for both adaptation and mitigation in the global South, according to Friends of the Earth International.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Back in June 2015 an unprecedented statement by social movements of climate- impacted communities from the global South as well as faith, labour, environmental, and anti-poverty groups representing tens of millions of people from around the world was delivered to ministers from around the world gathered at the UN General Assembly to discuss climate change.

The People’s Test on Climate 2015, is available in English, French and Spanish at http://peoplestestonclimate.org

If the Paris agreement fails this test, politicians will have failed to follow the people’s lead, warned Friends of the Earth International.

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Niccolo' Sarno
Friends of the Earth International Media Coordinator
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @FoEint_press
Website: http://www.foei.org/press/
Tel: +31 6 51 00 56 30 or + 33 6 07 10 45 09 (29/11-12/12)
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Friends of the Earth International is the world's largest
grassroots environmental federation with 75 national member groups
in 73 countries and more than 2 million members and supporters
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Why is a hate campaign being waged against Muslims? 

Why are Muslims increasingly categorized as terrorists? 

Why is this hate campaign  part of the US  presidential election campaign? 

Why is Donald Trump calling for police state measures directed against American Muslims?  

Why are Muslims the object of ethnic profiling and job discrimination? 

Why has France’s president Francois Hollande suspended civil rights coupled with a hate campaign directed against France’s Muslims, which represent 7.5 percent of the country’s population?

Why is the West waging a war against Muslim countries?  

Why is Islam regarded as evil?

The answer to all these questions is both simple and complex.   

It just so happens that more than 60% of the World’s reserves of crude oil lie in Muslim lands. 

Muslims are the inhabitants of the countries which possess the oil.  And America’s imperial agenda consists in acquiring ownership and control over the World’s oil reserves.

If these lands had been inhabited by Buddhists, Western politicians –with the support of the mainstream media– would be demonizing the Buddhists.

Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, possess more than 60 percent of the World’s crude oil reserves.

With regard to conventional crude oil (excluding tar sands in Venezuela and Canada), the percentage of global (conventional crude) oil reserves in Muslim countries is much larger.

Countries which possess large reserves of crude oil are slated for destabilization.

More than 50 percent of the World’s crude oil reserves lies between the tip of the Arabian peninsula and the Caspian Sea basin: Yemen, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Azerbaijan.

Map: copyright Eric Waddell, Global Research 2003

The above region is America’s war theater. That is where the battle for oil under the banner of the “war on terrorism” is being fought. Those are the Muslim lands which have been slated for conquest or regime change. Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf monarchies and emirates are US proxy states, firmly under US control.

The collective demonization of Muslims, including the vilification of the tenets of Islam, applied Worldwide, constitutes at an ideological level, an instrument of conquest of the World’s energy resources. It is part of the broader economic, political mechanisms underlying the New World Order.

This vilification is carried out by actually creating terrorist organizations integrated by Muslims, as part of a longstanding intelligence operation going back to the Soviet-Afghan war.

Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations are creations of the CIA. They are not the product of Muslim society. Terrorist attacks are undertaken by jihadist entities which are CIA intelligence assets.

The Islamic State (ISIS) is an intelligence construct which is used essentially for two related purposes.

1. They are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance, the instruments of destabilization, recruited, trained, financed by the Western military alliance. The various al Qaeda entities are the instruments of destabilization in US-NATO sponsored proxy wars (AQIM in Mali, Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIS in Syria and Iraq). At the same time, they constitute a pretext and a justification to intervene under the banner of a “counter-terrorism” bombing campaign.

2. On the home front, the various Al Qaeda/ ISIS terrorist cells –supported covertly by Western intelligence–  are the  instruments of a diabolical and criminal propaganda operation which consists in killing innocent civilians with a view to providing legitimacy to the instatement of  police state measures allegedly in support of democracy. These false flag attacks allegedly perpetrated by terrorist organization are then used to harness Western public against Muslims.

The underlying objective is to wage a an illegal war of conquest in the Middle East and beyond under the banner of the “global war on terrorism”. According to Western politicians, “we are defending ourselves against the terrorists”. According to our governments, the bombing raids allegedly directed against the terrorists in Syria are “not an act of war”, they are presented to Western public opinion as an “act of self-defense”. “The West is under attack by the ISIS terrorists”, the ISIS is based in Raqqa, Northern Syria, “we must defend ourselves” by bombing ISIS.

We are told that this is not an act of war, it is an act of retribution and self-defense. The only problem with this propaganda op is that “The Terrorists R US”,  our governments and intelligence services have been supporting ISIS from the very outset.  

In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a “just cause” for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds. Muslims within Western countries are being vilified as part of an imperial agenda, as a means to justify the destabilization of Muslim countries on humanitarian grounds (e.g. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Yemen).

America is waging a holy crusade against Muslims and Muslim countries.  The “war on terrorism” purports to defend the American Homeland and protect the “civilized world”. It is upheld as a “war of religion”, a “clash of civilizations”, when in fact the main objective of this war is to secure control and corporate ownership over the region’s extensive oil wealth.

Throughout history, vilification of the enemy has been applied time and again. The Crusades of the Middle Age consisted in demonizing the Turks as infidels and heretics, with a view to justifying military action.

Demonization serves geopolitical and economic objectives. Likewise, the campaign against “Islamic terrorism” (which is supported covertly by US intelligence) supports the conquest of oil wealth.

Muslims are equated with terrorists: Islamophobia serves to wage nationwide campaigns against Muslims in Europe and North America.

It is an instrument of war propaganda used to degrade the history, institutions, values and social fabric of Muslim countries, while upholding the tenets of “Western democracy” and the “free market” as the only alternative for these countries.

 

 

France’s Former Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, had stated in a televised program on LCP that UK government officials had told him about preparations for war in Syria two years prior to the start of the 2011 protests and conflict.

The reason given for this war is the Syrian government’s anti-Israel stance that made Syria a target for Western-backed regime change.

Note: the video below was originally published on youtube in 2013.

Eccentricity in the British sense is often a behavioural code for apologetics. If the man is totally off scale, somewhat dotty, he can be forgiven for being, well, eccentric. Never mind that he ignores the science, or regards the earth as flat. There is room for all of us on this peculiar earth, masked by that oft abused term reason.

Which brings us to that curious cat by the name of Lord Christopher Monckton, or the 3^rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. He reached prominence with his creation of a board game known as the eternity puzzle. Deeming it so demanding, he offered 1 million euros to the first person to solve it. It was done so within 16 months.[1] His other hat, however, has been worn as a science policy advisor to the UK Independence Party.

For years, Monckton has been going about claiming that he is a Peer with gravitas, a worthy critic of what he calls “consensus” science. Fine aristocratically puffy stuff, until you realise that he is rather guilty of the very things he himself claims. Make-believe, for one, is everywhere.

For one, he is not the Lord he claims to be. In July 2011, the House of Lords took the unusual step of publishing a so-called “cease and desist” letter on its website demanding that Monckton stop claiming to be a member of that body. David Beamish, as Clerk of the Parliaments, decided to go public with the letter to the Viscount, stating unequivocally that “you are not and have never been a Member of the House of Lords. Your assertion that you are a Member, but without the right to sit or vote, is a contradiction in terms.”[2] A Peer, yes, but not a member of the House with requisite voting rights.

In a sense, his relevance is minimal. He is the self-appointed voice in the wilderness, a climate sceptic Cassandra. This is not, in itself, a problem. Science is prone to its own ideologies and abuses. Militant convictions prevail on all sides, and there is a reluctance to often question what are taken to be obvious truths. But Monckton, having shown a sceptical side, proceeds ever so often to move into a delusionary one.

The delusion is often laced with a good deal of political paranoia. On Greenpeace, he was convinced that, “Goofy teenagers are giving it money and going about collecting money, not realising that what they are actually collecting money for is not an environmental organisation any more. It is a communist front.”[3]

This is his leitmotif: environmentalists are out to establish a global tyranny that is bound to shove the green is good notion down everybody’s throats. “Let’s not forget,” he has suggested, “it was Hitler who first founded the green movement and first used the environmental movement, not for the basis of genuine concern about the environment, but as a basis for getting control over every detail over people’s lives so they couldn’t argue back.”

The flipside of this is also important. When he speaks, those in the fossil fuel lobby, not to mention a good number of GOP members, listen. They might regard him as a charming toff of a fool – but he is a supremely useful one. In his attempts to regard the green movement as little storm troopers with Hitlerite foliage, mining magnates can happily go about renting the earth and defecating in its cavities for all its worth.

Monckton’s presence was one of several at the Hotel California, near the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Various groups of climate change sceptics had gathered to compare ever diminishing notes. Their situation was one of noisy adversity, much of it the outcome of protest groups distributing “wanted” posters and slogans. “Arrayed against them [the sceptics],” noted Richard Valdmanis of Reuters, “are thousands of environmentalists, scientists and even big business leaders”.[4] Only a handful of the 70 seats were filled.

According to communications director of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, Jim Lakey, “This is the only group essentially that has had to make their own space and their own time to get heard.” Heartland spokesman James Taylor was determined to make this a human rights issue. “The environmental movement doesn’t want to have a debate; they just want to put forward a single message that everyone must adhere to.”

Monckton’s latest theory, one bamboozling in its nature, is the ultimate reverse conspiracy, a nod of respect for a political casualty of like mind. Those dirty sods in the United Nations, he suggests, were out to get Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott from the start. Abbott, as readers will be aware, was as great a patron of coal as Henry the Navigator was of enterprising sailors. His adolescent love of blood, his pugilistic mania, were the sort to get any public school boy’s heart pumping.

Abbott was so indifferent to the woes of climate catastrophe he won fans among such figures as the former Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper. Being a commodity bumpkin, Abbott was perfect for an industry that, by its very nature, is finite. It lives for the moment, assumes that the future is for others. Trash the room, and someone is bound to clean it up for you.

Monckton’s suggestion was that such entities as the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the main scientific research body, the CSIRO, were behind a fraudulent scheme to manipulate climate data. Abbott, unheralded genius that he is, was aware of it, and rightly ignored them. As for Abbott’s knifing successor, Malcolm Turnbull, Monckton suggested that it was “naïve to assume that he has not been in contact with the UN.”

Such fears are the sort to come out of the pen of Dan Brown, and do Monkton no favours. Abbott, the Viscount suggested, had been urged to run for the leadership of his party by another climate change sceptic Ian Plimer, a current emeritus professor of geology at the University of Melbourne.

The other main contender at that point? Malcolm Turnbull, of course. “I am quite sure that without Turnbull and his own faction, the UN would have found it harder [to topple Abbott].”[5] Conspiracies are rather curious creatures.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.desmogblog.com/christopher-monckton

[2] http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2011/july/letter-to-viscount-monckton/

[3] http://usawatchdog.com/climate-change-is-global-communist-tyranny-lord-christopher-monckton/

[4] http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKBN0TQ2F320151208

[5] http://www.smh.com.au/environment/un-climate-conference/paris-un-climate-conference-2015-tony-abbott-was-brought-down-by-the-un-christopher-monckton-says-20151207-glhtco.html

 

Beijing and African Union states to enhance ‘win-win’ partnerships

A recently-held gathering on December 5-6 of African Union (AU) member-states and the People’s Republic of China under the banner of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) has placed strong emphasis on greater collaboration between the two regions based on mutual benefit. This meeting was held in Johannesburg, South Africa under the theme “China-Africa Progressing Together: Win-Win Cooperation for Common Development.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized during his speech before the FOCAC Summit that Beijing has become Africa’s principal cooperation partner in several significant areas. By the conclusion of 2014, the volume of Chinese investment in Africa reached $101 billion U.S. dollars, represented by more than 3,100 Africa-based enterprises. During 2014, bilateral trade reached $221.9 billion. (Xinhua, Dec. 5)

It was announced by Xi that China was offering $60 billion in funding, including $5 billion of grant assistance and interest-free loans, $35 billion in preferential loans and export credits on more favorable terms, $5 billion in additional capital for the China-Africa Development Fund and the Special Loan for the Development of African SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) each, and a China-Africa production capacity cooperation fund with an initial capital fund of $10 billion.

AU Commission Chairperson Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, said of the address delivered by the Chinese leader at the FOCAC Summit that “President Xi Jinping’s speech was great in the sense that it identified areas where Africa is interested in and which are in our agenda 2063. Those are areas we are going to cooperate on and take this relationship to new heights.” (Xinhua, Dec. 7)

Dlamini-Zuma was referring to the fifty year plan (2063) of development and unification outlined at the 2013 AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which commemorated the five decades anniversary of the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor to the AU. The state-of-the-art AU headquarters in Addis Ababa was actually constructed by the Chinese in recent years.

The AU chair also said “We are going to cooperate with China whether in modernizing agriculture, infrastructure, energy, training of the young people and culture. The cooperation with China will enable us to implement the three network projects which include highways, railways and aviation.”

Over the course of the Africa tour of Chinese President Xi Jinping to both Zimbabwe and neighboring South Africa earlier in the week, some twenty-six agreements were signed. The thrust of these projects center around the construction and strengthening of infrastructural development that will result in what Xi called “win-win cooperation.”

Held in Johannesburg, South Africa and hosted by the African National Congress (ANC) ruling party President Jacob Zuma, the gathering represented a continuation of a decades-long relationship dating back to the early years of the Chinese Revolution which paralleled the emergence of the national independence movements on the continent. During the course of various political and military struggles against colonialism, China under the leadership of the Communist Party has provided material and political support.

In the current period, China through its role as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council has blocked the imposition of even more draconian western sanctions against the states of Sudan and Zimbabwe. Beijing also deploys its troops as participants in peacekeeping operations in the Darfur region of Sudan and in the Horn of Africa state of Djibouti.

FOCAC Continues Strong Over Fifteen Years

The South African gathering is the latest in a series of such meetings since 2000. There have been five other ministerial conferences with the first being held in Beijing.

Subsequent ministerial conferences were held in 2003 in Beijing, 2006 also in Beijing which was the third ministerial conference and the first FOCAC Summit, 2009 in Egypt, and 2012 in Beijing.

This meeting was officially described as the second FOCAC Summit and was treated as a major event in both geo-political regions. Deliberations over the two days and its preliminary meetings leading up to the gathering, placed the Summit within the context of the world economic crisis which has impacted both China and the African continent.

Xi Jinping visited Zimbabwe, led by the AU rotating Chair President Robert Mugabe, prior to the FOCAC Summit where he signed additional agreements with the leadership of that country still undergoing sanctions by the U.S. and other imperialist countries. Zimbabwe’s state media gave lead coverage to the visit of President Xi and his large delegation which spent two days inside the country prior to crossing over into South Africa.

The Zimbabwe Herald reported on the “Landmark deals worth $4 billion signed between Zimbabwe and China on Tuesday (Dec. 1) which will convert provisions of the Government’s economic blueprint, Zim-Asset, into programs of action. The two nations signed 12 investment agreements covering different sectors of the economy. The deals include financing for the expansion of the Hwange Power Station, construction of a new parliament building and a pharmaceutical warehouse, expansion of a national fiber optic broadband project and provisions of wildlife monitoring equipment.” (Dec. 2)

These agreements are being signed between Beijing and Harare while Zimbabwe is still overwhelmed with debts to the global capitalist financial institutions. An attempt to re-schedule the obligations to the western banks and their subservient lending agencies will prove to be formidable in light of the declining commodity prices which the Southern African state depends upon to earn foreign exchange revenue known as hard currency.

This same above-mentioned article in the Herald says “Zimbabwe has, for over 15 years, been unable to secure long-term loans to fund infrastructure because it is in arrears with global lenders — the IMF and the World Bank. However, the multi-lateral institutions might resume financial support to Zimbabwe after a deal was struck with international creditors on how the country intends to repay its arrears. Zimbabwe intends to clear its arrears to the three multinational institutions, the IMF, ($110 million), the World Bank ($1.15 billion) and the AfDB ($601 million) by the end of April 2016.”

In South Africa, Xi signed agreements worth $6.5 billion with the ANC-led government. These agreements are mainly designed to build infrastructure in the continent’s most industrialized nation.

Also during this visit, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma championed the relations between South Africa and China as being at there “best ever” after the two leaders held discussions concentrating on the boosting of investments.

“China and South Africa relations are at a new historical level. We want to build it into a model for relationships between China and other emerging economies,” Xi told media representatives after the initial talks. (TVC, Dec. 3)

In response to the criticism leveled by the western imperialist states including the U.S. over allegations that Africa-China relations represent a new form of “colonialism”, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta rejected this categorization saying that both regions are benefiting from the burgeoning partnerships. “China is ready to help us develop and meet our socio-economic objectives without imposing its agenda on us. This is the outstanding aspect of our cooperation with China,” Kenyatta said at the FOCAC Summit.

Xinhua news agency noted in Kenyatta remarks that “China is doing what the colonialists failed to do in the past: help Africa out of poverty, the president said. This marked a strong contrast with what colonialists were doing before, he stressed. Relations between African countries and China are entering a critical phase as both sides focus attention on areas that generate real benefits to citizens,” Kenyatta said. (Dec. 5)

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man (or nation) who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle. –– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

So it seems that all the Republicans running for president (and their supporters) are ignorant about the root causes of “radicalization” and ‘terrorism”. These xenophobic (“the fear of foreigners”) politicians are, perhaps unwittingly, following the politics and punitive theologies of many other extremist right-wing notables from history, including Adolf Hitler.

Donald Trump is the GOP candidate that is currently the most popular with Republican voters, but he is in a close tie with every other front-runner when it comes to ignorance about what motivates “terrorism”. Trump says: “…the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from [and why] we will have to [wait to] determine…until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Trump isn’t the only one guilty of willful ignorance. The two major political parties, along with the mainstream media are equally guilty. One of the problems is that nobody is asking the “terrorists” what motivates them and why they feel as they do. Doing so and then listening to their answers would be too hard to handle for uber-patriotic Americans who have been indoctrinated into the cult of American Exceptionalism.

Understanding “radicalization” isn’t rocket science, but in order to understand it, one needs more information than what is spoon-fed to us consumers of inadequate, censored, canned and often fake (“faux”) news. It seems that any information that might cause cognitive dissonance in us “sheeple” is carefully kept away from our fragile souls for political, economic or national security reasons.

And thus we are deprived of the true facts of any case that is usually exaggerated by the propagandists in charge of “public enlightenment”. Therefore we consumers are forced to either adopt the approved story line or are left to develop our own theories based on inadequate information, and cunning campaign speech-writers or their ignorant presidential candidates do the same and are tempted to inflame their voters with conspiratorial versions of what will soon become the “conventional wisdom”. So, being too busy to do the time-consuming searches for the real truth, most of us accept the propagandist’s version that is then spread about on Fox News, CNN, or even NPR, MPR, PBS or at the local watering hole.

Indeed, the issues can be complex and hard to understand, but the mainstream media has, for far too long, gotten its viewers to depend on 20 second sound bites for their news, so that they have made reporting on complex stories undoable. When even the controlled demolition of World Trade Center # 7 (at 5:20 pm on the afternoon of September 11, 2001) went totally unreported by the vast majority of news outlets and then was also totally unmentioned in the 911 Commission report, one knows that there is something rotten going on. (Of course, most patriotic Americans don’t want to hear about what really happened on 9/11 because they don’t want to know that the White House lied to them and lied all of us into endless wars. The media has either been instructed to lie or it doesn’t know how to tell complicated stories to brain-washed consumers who have rapidly shortening attention spans.) (For more go to: http://www.truthmove.org/content/demolition-wtc-7/.)

There Must be 50 Ways to Create a Terrorist

At any rate, there has been a lot of irrelevant drivel published about the supposedly “elusive” and “incomprehensible” motivations of the many so-called “radicalized”, homicidal, religious extremists. Although the politicians want American voters to focus on Muslim terrorists, the problem of mass shootings isn’t limited to that religious group. Here is a short list of some of the many religion-based “terrorist” groups that need to be understood:

1) Fundamentalist Islamists [committing violence in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Paris or San Bernadino],

2) Fundamentalist Christians [killing “unbelievers” or “heretics” at Planned Parenthood clinics, black churches, Unitarian churches, Sikh churches and Jewish synagogues or burning of Black churches in the Bible Belt],

3) Aryan Nation/KKK-type racist Christians [terrorizing and lynching blacks all over the fascist South for the last 300 years],

4) Zionist Israelis [homicidally displacing Palestinians from their ancestral homes in 1948 and their over-the-top mass bombings and killings of innocent Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in reprisals for the ineffectual missile attacks and the irritating stone-throwing at Israeli tanks], or

5) Radical right-wing Hindus and Muslims [destroying each other and each other’s shrines in India since 1948]).

(Note that I did not mention 9/11 and the 3,000 innocent lives lost on that date as an example of terrorism by radical Muslims. The reason for that is because whatever caused the momentary kerosene fires in WTC # 1 and# 2 only caused a few hundred lives to be lost, whereas the controlled demolitions that followed were responsible for the vast majority of the 3,000. Most importantly, no Muslim group in the world was capable of planting the perfectly timed controlled demolitions of the three steel-reinforced skyscrapers on that fateful day. Any sane person with normal intelligence that has done their due diligence on 9/11 knows that the explosives that demolished the three World Trade Center towers in mere seconds had to have been planted by a group of demolition experts that had months of approved access to the towers – and that could not have been done by Osama bin Laden or any group of incompetents like the fingered 19 Arabian “hi-jackers”. (See www.ae911truth.org for the whole story.)

Is Religion Killing Us?

“Is Religion Killing Us: Violence in the Bible and the Quran” is the title of a book written by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer (2003). In the introduction to the book, Pallmeyer says:

Religion is used to justify killing precisely because issues of ultimate consequence and meaning are understood to be at stake. People frequently use God and religion to justify killing when conflicts escalate between individuals, groups, or nations. In the midst of problems rooted in land, oppression, discrimination, or any number of other historical grievances, religion is often called on the justify human violence with…reference to “sacred” tests, divine mission, or moral purpose.

Listen to the Sociologists for a Change

Sociologists, psychologists and social workers have long understood what radicalizes normally non-violent people into committing acts of terror. However, experts in those fields are never asked by mainstream interviewers so that the rest of us might come to understand the people and issues involved. Instead, the media can’t seem to resist spending valuable air time doing human interest stories rather than using the latest violent act as a teachable moment to get at the real truth – and thus possibly prevent the next shooting.

Too often, the media goes all simplistic by broadcasting the opinions of 1) people on the street, 2) poorly-informed law-makers, 3) thought-leaders who have undisclosed conflicts of interest, or 4) punitive law enforcement or military types.

Often the talking heads even resort to interviewing fellow journalists who had just been assigned to cover mass shootings and therefore may have done some internet searches to prepare their stories. Sometimes spokespersons for for-profit companies that have an anti-terrorism product to sell are interviewed (disaster capitalism). Retired generals who spent their careers in the military, and are now living on comfortable pensions, are commonly interviewed after shootings. And of course, Neoconservative and Neoliberal politicians who have conservative or industry constituents in their contributor and voter base to mollify, find themselves throwing fuel on the fire of fear and hate, thus justifying their support for short-sighted reactionary policies that fail to address the real issues.

Why Some Terrorists Justify Their Use of Retaliatory Violence

Racial fear and hatred, of course, must be taught from an early age. Both are alive and well in the United States of America that has committed some of the world’s worst crimes against humanity. One only has to consider the mass killings, starvation and genocide of the Native Americans over the last 500 years, starting with Columbus in 1492 and getting a boost at Plymouth Rock in 1620, and one can understand why there were so many indigenous resistance movements against the White European land-stealers, treaty-breakers and oppressors, why there was an AIM movement (the American Indian Movement), why there was a Sioux Uprising and why Custer and his blood-thirsty killing soldiers probably deserved what they got at Little Big Horn.

One only has to consider the forced enslavement, deaths, torture, lynchings, police brutality and discrimination against millions of innocent Africans and African-Americans over the past 300 years, and one can understand why Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, the Council of Racial Equality, and the Black Power movements did what they did and why the Black Lives Matter movement is doing what they do.

One only has to consider the illegal invasions and occupations of Vietnam, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Iraq (among many other militarily weak nations) and the CIA’s part in overthrowing the democratically-elected leaders of Iran, Chile and Guatemala in the 1950s (among dozens of other examples of CIA plotting and American military invasions and occupations), the widespread US government support of many pro-corporate, fascist dictatorships around the world, the indiscriminate drone killings with many innocent lives lost, cluster bombings, use of radioactive (depleted) uranium weapons (and the hideous epidemic of fetal anomalies and still-births in Iraqi babies that resulted), the “Turkey Shoot” in Kuwait, the wanton destruction (twice) of Fallujah and its innocent inhabitants, the torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the CIA “black sites”, the atrocious “Collateral Murder” tape (google it) and the fact that America refuses to comply with the International Criminal Court (and thus its war criminals will suffer no punishment for their acts of criminality) and one can easily understand why some Asians, South and Central Americans, Africans, Iranians and assorted Muslims might want some payback.

”You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”

Where do “terrorists” come from? Rogers and Hammerstein provided one answer in their powerful song “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” from the hit musical “South Pacific”. The producers, knowing that it might anger white racist audiences, tried to censor-out the song. Fortunately, the song-writers refused to change the lyrics.

Rogers and Hamerstein wrote:

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear; you’ve got to be taught from year to year.
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear. You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And of people whose skin is a different shade. You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate. You’ve got to be carefully taught!

Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence

In 1980, Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller wrote “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence”. In that seminal book and the other fine books that followed, she wrote about the roots of mental ill health and criminality, and, in retrospect, terrorism.

Despite writing long before the start of America’s unique epidemics of 1) mass drugging with brain-altering drugs, 2) easy access to highly lethal weapons that are made mainly for mass murder, 3) mass brain-altering vaccinations of children (with toxic ingredients), 4) mass entertainment addictions, 5) mass militarization, 6) mass indifference to human suffering, 7) mass historical illiteracy, and 8) mass malnutrition, Dr Miller could have been writing about perhaps the most significant factor contributing to America’s epidemic of mass murder.

She wrote

People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected and treated with honesty by their parents, will be – both in their youth and adulthood – intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly sensitive. (Ed note: and they therefore would be well-nourished, un-poisoned, un-drugged and not prone to violence or terrorism.)

They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves but not to attack others. They will respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their own children.

If mistreated children are not to become criminals or mentally ill, it is essential that at least once in their life they come in contact with a person who knows without any doubt that the environment, not the helpless, battered child, is at fault. In this regard, knowledge or ignorance on the part of society can be instrumental in either saving or destroying a life. Here lies the great opportunity for relatives, social workers, therapists, teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, officials and nurses to support the child and to believe her or him.

In my study of the roots of violence and mental ill health, I have found no exceptions to Miller’s precepts. Most of the patients in my holistic mental health practice had previously been given mental illness labels by psychiatrists and well-meaning physicians and then immediately drugged up. According to my patients none of those practitioners had taken the time to do a thorough prenatal, personal or family history into family abuse or neglect, societal abuse or neglect or brain malnutrition. In the extended workups that I did on my patients, I found that virtually 100% had been subjected to any or all of the victimizations listed above, including psychological, spiritual, physical, and/or sexual violence.

Most of my patients had not realized that they were actually not, in fact, mentally ill, but rather they had been victims of some aspect of posttraumatic stress disorder, which is actually a mixture of neurological/psychological trauma and brain malnutrition that is, unfortunately, usually followed by illicit or prescription drug-induced neurological impairment that further complicates the symptomatology and is one of the main root causes of the multiple diagnoses and the cocktails of drugs that are often given to such patients. There have been many examples in the history of psychiatry of victimized patients (or their family members) trying to get revenge (sometimes with the use of terroristic acts) on the prescribing physician who may have sickened them with powerful drugs.

It has been shown repeatedly that at least 90% of the known American school shooters have been taking or withdrawing from brain-altering drugs which are well-known to provoke homicidal or suicidal violence, and it is likely that many of the supposedly “irrational” suicides (like the celebrity suicide of Robin Williams) or the accidental prescription drug overdoses also fit the definition of iatrogenic (doctor or drug-induced) injury.

Spree shooters, serial killers and politically-motivated mass murderers are likely to be sociopaths, psychopaths or antisocial personality-afflicted people (the three terms are essentially synonymous).

Sociopaths are not technically mentally ill. They are very rational and are not insane. They are not depressed or anxious and do not hallucinate. Because of their neglectful early life experiences and serious lack of parental warmth, nurturing, love and caring during their childhoods (sometimes sociopaths are pathologically indulged [spoiled]), they are indifferent to the suffering of others and grow up to become verbally, physically or sexually aggressive, serial liars, clever thieves and even cunning murderers who are incapable of feeling emotions such as compassion. Prolonged incarceration or engaging in intense or prolonged combat war can lead to sociopathic behaviors and punitive political or radical theological beliefs.

Sociopaths are extremely good at deceiving others, including doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, clergypersons and even love-sick members of the opposite sex, and they rather enjoy having such power over their dupes. They enjoy being aggressive and then experience no real guilt or remorse for their actions. To no one’s surprise, they are over-represented in the killing professions, including among terrorist organizations.

Terrorists are Often Graduates of Schools for Barbarians

In 1938, Erika Mann, daughter of Thomas Mann wrote “School for Barbarians”. The book’s rather long, but very illuminating subtitle was “How German Fascism Overthrew Germany’s Liberal Democratic System, its Public Schools, its Progressive Christian Churches, its Families, its Arts, its Civility, and its Intellectual Class by Indoctrinating its Youth to Mindlessly Participate in Racial Hatred, Believe in German Exceptionalism and Thoughtlessly March off to War”.

Mann quoted a German marching song for young Nazi boys who were being groomed to become good killing soldiers, good executioners, good racists, good sociopaths and “Good Germans” for the 1000 Year Third Reich. The song is a good example of the spirit of all shoot-em-up militaries (letting someone else clean up the rubble, human carnage and the mass poisonings from the military toxins) – whether German, Italian or Japanese fascist militaries, whether Russian, Chinese or North Korean Stalinistic communist militaries or whether American, British, French, Australian or Canadian democratic ones. The song promotes the sociopathic behaviors that are all-too-common in the killing professions when they take to the killing fields – wherever they are

Though the whole world lie ruined around us after the day of war,

What the devil do we care – we don’t give a hoot anymore.

Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels, who hated the liberalism of the Mann family and drove them from Germany in the 1930s, understood before Rogers and Hammerstein did that future killing soldiers “have got to be taught before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight to hate all the people your relatives hate. You’ve got to be carefully taught.”

In summary, there are many paths that can lead to what is often called “senseless” violence.

When supposedly “irrational” behaviors such as American mass shootings occur (on a daily basis now) and are reported on by journalists that have only a fraction of the most important details, we will continue to be confused and totally unable to get at the truth, and thus we will be deterred from solving and preventing mass shootings in the future. That will be fine with the National Rifle Association, the gun lobby, the weapons manufacturers, the Pentagon and Big Pharma, all of whom will be beneficiaries of the half-truths with which we will be force-fed.

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

Ukraine, the UN Anti-Nazi Resolution and the Ravensbruck “Lapins”

On November 19, 2015, the United Nations Third Committee Human Rights Plenary adopted Resolution A/C.3/70/L.59/Rev.1 “Combating Glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and Other Practices That Contribute to Fuelling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” 126 United Nations member states supported the resolution, including China, Russia, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Argentina, India, Kenya, Mexico, Philippines, Serbia, South Aftica, Zimbabawe, and a majority of other United Nations member states. The transcendent unification of Syria and Israel in support of this resolution is striking and extraordinary evidence of the remembrance of the horror at the nazi atrocities, the historic scourge which led President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to found the United Nations. Four states opposed this Resolution, including the United States, Ukraine, Canada and Palau.

This year marks the 70th Anniversary of the establishment of the Nuremberg Tribunal and adoption of its Charter, a founding document of the United Nations which condemns Nazism. It is therefore a violation of the very essence of the principles upon which the United Nations was founded to oppose this resolution. This is not a question of freedom of speech and expression, which the United States repeatedly alleges as its motive for opposing this resolution, year after year, for almost a decade.

Ukraine’s opposition to this resolution raises troubling questions about the capacity of its government to distinguish between its subjective need to demonize Russia, on behalf of Ukraine’s current sponsors, and its apparent inability to take principled action, which would have required Ukraine to support the anti-Nazi resolution. In its explanation of vote, Ukraine stated: “In this regard, we reiterate our consistent position that the above mentioned resolution has nothing in common with fight against Nazism, neo-nazism and other forms of intolerance. On the contrary we are witnessing how the penholder, Russia, manipulate with the history and twist the essence of the Nuremberg Tribunal in pursuance of one’s aggressive political interests.”

It appears that Ukraine has not read the Resolution which explicitly states:

stresses. In this regard, that it is important that States take measures, in accordance with international human rights law, to counteract any celebration of the Nazi SS organization and all its integral parts, including the Waffen SS.

On November 2, 2015, Mutuma Ruteere of Kenya, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, under Item 71 of the General Assembly Third Committee stated: “I would now like to turn to my report on the implementation of resolution 69/160 on Combating Glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and other Practices that Contribute to fueling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination Xenophobia and Related Intolerance….Any commemorative celebration of the Nazi regime and the crimes against humanity whether official or non-official should be denounced and prohibited by States. Such events do an injustice to the memory of the countless victims of the Holocaust and thecrimes against humanity committed by the Nazis in the Second World War.”

In view of the Special Rapporteur’s unequivocal denunciation of any and all commemorative celebrations of the nazism, whether official or unofficial, it is questionable whether Ukraine opposes the anti-Nazi resolution for the reason it cites (questioning the motive of the Resolution’s sponsor, The Russian Federation), or whether Ukraine opposes the resolution because its current government is, in fact, actively pro-Nazi. There is troubling evidence of the latter possibility – or probability, as Ukranian President Poroshenko recently cancelled the February 23rd Commemoration Day of the Victory of the Soviet Army over the Nazi invaders, and has replaced that sacred commemoration by proclaiming October 14 as the Ukranian National Day of Celebration, commemorating that very day in 1943 when Stepan Bandera’s Nazi army was established.

Certainly the United States should be alarmed by Ukraine’s recent glorification of Nazism, since it was Stepan Bandera’s OUN which during World War II planned assassination attempts against the fiercely anti-nazi United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The Ukranian government has chosen to betray and to trash some of the noblest aspects of Ukraine’s history: the symbol of Ukraine’s past and currently betrayed heroism is in the famous World War II “Match of Death.” On August 9, 1942, Ukraine’s world-famous soccer team was held prisoner by the Nazis. They were promised that if they defeated the Nazi team in a soccer match, they would be given their freedom. The Ukrainian team, the “FC Start” local soccer team then played in a contest with the Nazi team, “FLAKELF” the Nazi air defense artillery team. The Ukranian soccer team won the match, defeating the Nazis 5 to 3. The Germans then hanged every member of the victorious Ukranian soccer team, as punishment for humiliating Germany in so great a defeat. Those Ukranian soccer players were not naïve. They knew that their Nazi opponents would not honor the promise to spare their lives. They fought to victory to prove that the Nazis were not invincible, even in soccer, the most popular sport in Europe. The Nazi humiliation was a symbol of the ultimate Nazi defeat by the Soviet army.

The consistent United States opposition to the anti-Nazi resolution is especially troubling in view of the US awareness of the most grotesque and systematic war crimes and atrocities committed by the Nazis. Not many years ago, Norman Cousins, the famous editor of the “Saturday Review of Literature” brought to the United States for medical treatment the few surviving victims of hideous Nazi “medical” experiments, the Ravensbruck “Lapins.”

These very young and originally healthy women prisoners were forced to undergo unthinkable torture by the Nazis, as their leg bones were broken with hammers, pieces of these bones were extracted, and muscles and nerves torn apart. The sadistic “doctors” then deliberately infected these mangled legs by forcing into the gaping wounds virulent strains of bacteria, sawdust, rusty nails and slivers of glass. Gangrenous infectious cultures were forced into the wounds of the shattered legs of the “Lapins,” and the wounds were then sewn up, causing excruciating pain; agonizing mutiliation was suffered by the “survivors.”

In cases of disabled prisoners, entire lower limbs were amputated, then upper limbs were amputated, and the victims were then murdered. In May, 1943 the German Orthopedic Society at Congress of Reich Physicians gave awards to the perpetrators of the horrific Ravensbruck mutiliating experiments.

The Ravensbruck horrors were only an infinitesimal part of the Nazi scourge which ravaged Europe. It is therefore particularly alarming that the European Union, voting as a block, abstained on this anti-Nazi resolution.

It is also revealing that many countries currently being demonized by US/NATO for human rights abuses, including DPRK and Zimbabwe, supported this anti-Nazi resolution. This is one more significant piece of evidence of the Orwellian distortion of truth that is deeply entrenched in the narrative of certain States at the United Nations. Indeed, this anti-Nazi Resolution has become a barometer of which countries actually respect human rights, and which countries hypocritically proclaim human rights which they, in fact, conspicuously and shamelessly hold in contempt.

This is almost guaranteed to be the next big geopolitical point of contention.

Russia is set to provide Egypt with a $25 billion line of credit to construct the nation’s first nuclear power plant.

The plant is set to built in Dabaa and the loan will cover 85% of the costs. It will be repaid over 22 years, with the first repayment scheduled for 2029, at an annual interest rate of three percent.

Russia is going to contribute engineers, scientists and general staff to help establish and run the plant.

The plant will be ultra-modern and comply with all post-Fukushima safety standards.

This deal is sure to prove unsettling to some in the West and perhaps some in Israel; Egypt’s neighbour.

Earlier this year, after years of contention over the issue, a world historic deal was reached with Iran that will see the country peacefully developing nuclear power plants.

Many Israeli and Western neocons were particularly unhappy with the deal, and Netanyahu even wanted to launch an aggressive attack on Iran at least three times to stop the country from going nuclear.

Iran suggested that if Israel wants a nuclear free Middle East that it should turn over its own nuclear weapons first.

Watch a video of this report here:

Nuclear power is a necessity for the development of a modern state and Egypt should be praised for following such a path, moreover Russian support will undoubtedly ensure the project’s success.

Yet, with the geopolitical complications that presented themselves in the Iranian case and the volatility of Russian involvement in Syria, it could be possible that we will witness many worrying geopolitical developments in this Egyptian case as we go forward.

How do you think the reactionaries in Israel and Washington D.C. will respond to this new, nuclear development in the Middle East?

The Saud family, Saudi Arabia’s royals, have called together a meeting on December 15th in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, of their fellow fundamentalist Sunnis who are fighting against the secular Assad government to take over Syria, and the Sauds will announce after the conference which groups will have the West’s blessings.

The only armed group that has thus far been announced to have been invited is Jaysh al-Islam, which is a Salafist-Wahhabist fundamentalist organization, and like all Salafists and Wahhabists, is rabidly anti-Shiite. By contrast, Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, is a Shiite, and, furthermore, he has always insisted upon a strict separation of church-and-state; so, he’s considered like the devil, by the Sauds and other Wahhabists and Salafists (including the leaders of America’s other Arabic allies: Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain).

This hatred against Shiites, and, really, all non-Sunnis, originated long ago:

In 1744, the two founders of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Ibn Saud and Muhammad Ibn Wahhab, swore their mutual oath that the Sauds would exterminate Shiites, and that Wahhabist clergy would recognize the Sauds as the rulers appointed by God. From that time to this, little has changed in Saudi Arabia, except the discovery in 1938 of the world’s largest reserves of oil, which, moreover, is the cheapest-to-produce type of oil. The United States allied with the Saud family in 1945 so as to guarantee to America lots of cheap oil, and to guarantee to the Sauds lots of American military support for keeping the Saud family in power there.

The American expectation had been that the jihadist clergy wouldn’t be so influential to the Sauds if the Sauds had all the weapons they need in order to terrorize the non-royals there; but, in recent decades, that hasn’t turned out to remain true. Chopping off the heads of lots of nonbelievers no longer suffices for the Sauds. In recent times, it turns out that when clergy question the Sauds’ anointment by God, the Sauds need to pay attention, after all, notwithstanding the American alliance. Arab Spring made this clear. It’s a new world now. The Sauds are pressured, more than ever, to kill Shiites and other non-believers (people who aren’t Wahhabist or — as Wahhabism is known outside Saudi Arabis — Salafists). The only trick is for the Sauds to hide this intention until they’re fully in a position to act upon it. 9/11 was just kids’ stuff.

Wikipedia says: “Jaysh al-Islam leader Zahran Alloush gave a speech on the merits of Hajj in 2013 and praised Usama bin Laden, addressing him by the honorific ‘Sheikh’ and the honorific ‘rahimahu Allah’. … Alloush addressed the Al-Qaeda organization Jabhat al-Nusra as ‘our brothers’.” However, Al Qaeda itself has not been invited to the Riyadh conference, because doing that would be too much for the U.S. public to take. The Sauds need to fool Western publics, and therefore need to mind their manners as they proceed along. Cutting off heads of Saudis who challenge the regime or the Quran is one thing, but allowing Al Nusra or any other branch of Al Qaeda at their conference would significantly disturb Westerners.

Wikipedia adds: “Alloush said that Alawites are ‘more infidel than Jews and Christians’.” Assad isn’t just a Shiite, he’s an Alawhite, which is the least sectarian type of Shiite — like an atheist, in a fundamentalist’s eyes (and, even in the West, atheists are feared and despised — bigotry is strong in every religion; it’s how aristocrats become able to manipulate masses).

By contrast, the type of jihadists the West is considering for inclusion as ‘moderates’ is the type that can fool Westerners. All of that type are people who live outside Syria and who aren’t risking their own lives in jihad, but who are nonetheless aiming to ‘represent’ the people who are risking their lives there. In other words, these are slicksters, who seek acceptance both from suckers in the West, and from terrorists inside Syria.

Thus, some of the attendees will look like any businessman one would see on 5th Avenue in NYC, or like any candidate for President of the United States; and one such person who will be attending the conference is Dr. Khaled Khoja, President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. He gave an address recently, on October 31st, at Britain’s prestigious neoconservative International Institute for Strategic Studies, where he spoke with gentlemanly hatred of both Russia, and the leading Shiite nation, Iran; and he said (40:00- on the video there) that only civilians were being killed in Syria by Russia’s bombings in Syria, and that Russia especially targets hospitals. So, he looks and sounds like just the right type of person for U.S. President Barack Obama to present in the West as being an acceptable person to rule the Syrian people. Obviously, someone such as Khoja would be loathed by both Syrians and ISIS etc., even at the outset, if he were to become appointed to lead Syria, but this is a show put on only for Westerners anyway. That’s where the first suckers must be targeted and manipulated. And the case for this is unmistakable:

All polling that Western firms have done in Syria shows clearly that in any free and fair election in that country, only Assad would have any chance to win. He is supported by a majority of Syrians in all polls, while all polls also show that Syrians feel fear and disgust at the United States and blame it for ISIS, which is almost universally despised among the Syrian population.

So: although the Sauds will ultimately select the candidates to replace Assad, or else will make the first-round selection of the West’s stooge to rule in Syria, it’s not going to help anybody but the West’s aristocrats, who are championing ‘democracy in Syria’ by insisting that that very thing be prohibited. Nor will this conference help to reduce the refugee crisis that the EU is experiencing from America’s latest round of international invasions: Libya, Ukraine, Syria, and so forth. It’s merely a PR operation that’s being carried out by the West’s aristocracies, to put on a show for the West’s suckers, while carving up the world.

The people who should be removed from power are clearly the leaders in the West, where democracy has died, and where deceit of the masses by the aristocracy has taken its place.

Only if the charade is forced to end, can peace become established again. But maybe things have already gone beyond even the possibility of that happening. Who will even allow the masses now to know the truth?

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.

Mass killings are everywhere.

When they hit westerners in small-scale, like the US, Egypt (downed Russian airliner), Lebanon, France, and Mali, murdering 14, 224, 50, 130 and 27 – mostly white people – they are blown out of proportion by media hype and by immediately associating them with links to Jihadist terrorists.

Nobody asks who may be behind these terrorists.

While mass killings large-scale, like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Libya – and many more nations, carried out by western NATO powers, remain largely unreported and are just part of the new normal, the eternal profit-making war on terror.

In retrospect all of the small-scale killers, disturbers of our western comfort, curiously, have allegedly police records and were known to the police. And even more curiously, the police was impotent in preventing the massacres.

This incapacity of the police in stopping the terror, justifies more police crackdown on civil liberties, gradually making the US – and for that matter the entire western world – to a police state – let’s call it the police Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire – that has adopted the right to kill with impunity. Killing to prevent killing. That’s the name of the game. Totally absurd, but the brainwashed to the core western populace doesn’t see it, instead it thirsts for ever more blood revenge.

The western media-duped people, heirs of western feudalists, truly believe they are at the mercy of a bunch of jihadist fighters whose only purpose is to disturb their ‘well-being’ and go to heaven as glorious kamikaze-heroes. They cannot fathom that vital western interests, their very ‘democratically elected’ leaders (sic) are behind these killings, that jihadists like other humans are corruptible; that these western interests are easiest materialized by a frightened people that literally asks for more police restraint.

In this game the people at large in the US as well as in Europe are willingly engaged – for their ‘safety’. They plead with the state for more protection; they give away their personal freedom for more cameras, more surveillance, more police squadrons patrolling the pavements of LA, Paris, Brussels, London, New York, Chicago, Berlin, Rome — the western world will become an amalgam of police and military-clad armed-to-the-teeth cities.

Who would have thought that 70 years after a devastating WWII, the same fascist powers that produced Hitler and his SS murderers would again be able to brainwash people into willing submission – this time on an even larger scale. Killing is not the issue. Fear is. And fear is the ‘soft’ weapon these elitist powers use to subjugate the people into their willing servants.

Never mind the western Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire instigated mass-killings, the so called ‘wars on terror’ that have killed more than 12 million people over the last 15 years, not counting the ten million African non-people of central African mineral-rich countries. I call them non-people, because their millions of lost lives are not even worth reporting by the corrupt western media. They were and still are being slaughtered in never ending, western armed civil wars for the sake of exploiting their rich lands for rare minerals such as Coltan, being used for electronics such as cell phones, but foremost by the high precision war industry; precisely these murder weapons that allow the west to dominate and kill for greed and power. They kill for the raw materials they need to kill. A never ending cycle of murderous profit making. The epitome of neoliberal doctrine.

Of the world’s total 590 tons of Coltan production in 2013, 400 tons were mined in Rwanda, Congo, Central Africa and neighbouring countries under the most inhumane conditions – child labor, prostitution, drug trafficking, controlled by mafia-type terror clans. These millions of Africans that live and die in misery remain anonymous and widely unreported by the western media – which is, hence, serving western capital interests, by leaving western consumers unperturbed.
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The latest (at the time of this writing) of the series of mass killings in our civilized world is the recent shooting in San Bernardino, California, a working class neighbourhood of Los Angeles, killing of 14 and wounding 21. Obama is warning Americans that we are moving into a new era of terror, requiring new measures of protection, herewith paving the way for more police and military repression.

Similar words are heard from of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Not only are these terror acts linked immediately to people with Muslim background and with relations to ‘terrorist organizations’ in the Middle-East, mostly Syria, but they are always extremely well organized, professional killers, well trained (probably by CIA, MOSSAD, MI6 and the like) – and the suspects are immediately murdered by police – silenced. Dead people don’t talk – and cannot be questioned. Hence, potential evidence for false flags is drastically reduced, though never eliminated. Just look to the contradictory information on events like the Paris massacre of 13 November or the other Paris carnage at Charlie Hebdo on 7 January – or the absolutely incoherent accounts of the Boston Marathon killers – not to mention 9/11.

The San Bernardino case is now firmly in the hands of the FBI which is already assuming that the horrific massacre was a terrorist attack – which it surely was. But by terrorist Washington always, but always means an Islamist attack. Hate against Islam must be nurtured on a daily basis.

As usual, the two suspects, Syed Farook, a 28-year-old county health inspector, and his 27-year-old wife, Tashfeen Malik, were slain by the police. They were silenced. They had been “radicalized,” says the police. CNN reports that there were no signs of radicalization. Too bad, nobody can ask them anymore. – The couple had a six-month old child whom they left with grandma during their shooting. Why would they do an illogical thing like that? Leaving behind a new-born baby – for the sake of what? – Nobody can ask them anymore. Conveniently, police has killed the suspects and the witnesses in one. – Was it necessary?

Similar in the Paris massacre three weeks ago, the Charlie Hebdo carnage, and with the alleged Boston Marathon killers – one was shot death by the police and his brother was badly hurt, is in custody and not allowed to speak to anyone, other than his appointed lawyer. Any testimony he may have signed was probably coerced by police.

These supposed Jihadists / Islamic State organized killing sprees, immediately prompted western responses, starting with police crack-downs, a three-month temporary state of emergency in France that will most likely be extended; and even in Belgium – preventively. Paris and Brussels are under an ‘État de Siège’.

Brussels hosts the European Commission and Parliament, no less. Would that be a reason for extra fear – after what their neoliberal troika (ECB, EC, IMF) puppets have done to Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and are preparing for other European ‘heavily indebted countries’, not even mentioning their secret negotiation of the nefarious TTIP – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – with the United States that would leave Europe for the corporate vultures to be sucked dry and picked apart. – Would that be any reason for fear from a terrorist attack?

Spreading and publicizing fear through the media, hyped up police surveillance and patrolling in cities throughout Europe, has become the norm for indoctrination. Fear is the enemy number One.

As to immediate revenge abroad, Hollande declared, even before the alleged ISIS claim of the crime was known, that the Islamic State was the perpetrator, that evidence exists, that he knows who the culprits were that they came from Syria (later ‘proven’ by a coincidentally lost passport of one of the kamikaze bombers who couldn’t speak anymore). Hence, Mr. Hollande was dispatching the nuclear powered aircraft carrier ‘Charles de Gaulle’, Europe’s largest, to Syria, were three days later French Rafale and Mirage 2000 fighter jets carried out bombing raids on Syria, presumably alongside Russia, but most likely spineless Hollande would not dare to differ from Washington.

Doesn’t it wring wrong in the head of any lucid citizen that an aircraft carrier plus accompanying fleet can be readied for war within three days? That the assault on Syria must have been prepared way ahead and the Paris massacre was a convenient trigger? Or was the convenient trigger planned by ‘insiders’? – Especially since France is a logical target for Islamic payback. The French have been meddling in the MENA region for years. France led the NATO attack on Libya, assailed sovereign Mali in 2012 for an alleged Touareg rebellion (Mali has uranium that France vies for), and then sent troops to Central Africa where a fierce western-alimented civil war wages for rare minerals. The French were also involved in destabilizing Syria from the beginning, in 2011 alongside CIA and Saudi Arabia.

Now Germany will join the group. Which group? – The US, UK, and the French, of course. Not the Russians, as Merkel may have insinuated a few days earlier. That would be unacceptable for Washington; and the Germans like the French do not want to test the goodwill of their Master.

On Friday, 4 December, the German Bundestag voted overwhelmingly – 445 to 146 (7 abstentions) to send 6 Tornado Reconnaissance jets and deploy a frigate to ‘protect’ the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle (protect from whom or from what?). Berlin may also send up to 1,200 “support” troops, boots on the ground, euphemistically called ‘military personnel’.

This is an action in direct violation of the German Constitution (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, signed after WWII in 1949) which prohibits any aggression on another nation emanating from Germany, as long as Germany is not being attacked. – It looks like to please the Master in Washington, abrogating one’s Constitution and sovereignty is of the order – and that even against the will of the vast majority of the German people.

As soon as a ‘terrorist attack’ hits one of our western cities, our leaders are ready to retaliate, retaliate against a pre-conceived enemy – and this enemy is unwaveringly in the Middle East, wherever the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon’s interests are. Right now the masters in Washington have decided it is in Syria, earlier in this century they were in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran, Yemen – but now, the next step is dividing and subjugating Syria, to cut her up in small parcels of different rivalling Islamic sects, to create chaos – chaos à la Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Iraq. Divide and conquer.

The current phase of the Big Plan of the Big Dictator, the western Empire with seat in Washington, is to dominate the oilfields of the entire Middle-East, to move ever one step closer to the last vestiges of resistance – Russia and China. The objective of the next phase of the Big Plan (the PNAC) is most likely going to be Full Spectrum Dominance – with or without war. Let’s not forget, according to such prestigious main stream media like the Washington Post: War is good for the economy.
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Back to the US crime scene. Did you know that the average American is 9 times more likely to be killed by police than by a terrorist? Thousands of Americans have been executed over the last 15 years by US police, no conviction, no trial, just sheer murder. In 2014 alone at least 1,104 Americans were assassinated by US law enforcement. That makes about 3 a day, every day of the year. Nobody talks about this state terrorism. We are not allowed to know, lest we might think twice before yielding to the state, the police, the military the power to ‘protect us’ from terrorism.
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It doesn’t occur to the average American or European for that matter that hate breads more hate and murder more murder – and war more war. The Old Testament dictum of an eye for an eye is well alive and ticking. Christianity – the New Testament – which we pretend to practice today, the theory of turning the other cheek, is nothing but hypocrisy.

That omen of peace, taken over from the 12,000 year old theory of Tao (Tao Te Ching), pertaining also to the Christian doctrine, is far from our hearts and minds.Whenever the theory of Tao has been applied throughout civilizations, evil has been defeated. And we, who pretend to be Christians, are the most violent, murderous and greedy civilization that has walked our planet in the last 5,000 years.

It’s time to sit back and reflect – and then rescind the terror which we initiated in the west, by what we already know – peace by non-aggression, non-retaliation.

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

Pundits and commentators on the Left and Right are pronouncing ‘the end of the progressive cycle in Latin America’. They cite the recent presidential elections:

1. Argentina, where hard-right Mauricio Macri was elected;
2. Brazil, where President Dilma Rousseff has appointed a neo-liberal ‘Chicago Boy’ economist, Joaquin Levy, as Finance Minister and launched an IMF-style regressive structural adjustment policy designed to reduce social expenditures and attract financial speculators; and
3. Venezuela, where Washington channeled millions of dollars to far-right parties, as well as violent extra-parliamentary and paramilitary groups, to destabilize the center-left Maduro government; right-wing Democratic Unity Coalition (MUD) won the legislative elections in December 2015 with more than 2:1 margin over the Chavista Venezuelan United Socialist Party (PSUV).

No doubt progressive social legislation has come to a virtual halt, even before the recent political advances of the US-backed right-wing parties with their neo-liberal economic agenda.

But paralysis, and even retreat and electoral defeats of the center-left regimes, do not mean the return to the neo-liberal 1990’s, a period of privatizations, pillage and plunder, which had plunged millions into poverty, unemployment and marginality.

Whatever the current voting results, the collective memory of mass hardship, resulting from ‘free market’ policies, is seared in the memory of the vast majority of the working population.

Any attempt by the newly elected officials to ‘unmake and reverse’ the social advances of the past decade will be met with (1) militant resistance, if not open class warfare; (2) institutional and political constraints; (3) and low commodity prices drastically limiting export revenues.

A careful analysis of the policies proposed by the neo-liberal right, their implementation and impact will demonstrate their likely failure and the rapid demise of any new right-wing offensive. This will abort the neoliberal cycle.

Argentina: President Macri and Wall Street 

In the upper income neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, there was singing and dancing in the streets as the Presidential election results rolled in and Mauricio Macri was pronounced the victor. Wall Street, the City of London and their financial mouthpieces, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, announced the coming of a new era and the end of ‘anti-investor, populism and nationalism, wasteful social spending’referring to increases in pensions, family allowances and wages, approved by the previous center-left government

Mauricio Macri does not merely represent the plutocracy; he is one of the richest plutocrats in Argentina. He not only boasts of a ‘carnal relationship’ with Washington in his acceptance speech, he pleasured US President Obama by announcing he would work to expel Venezuela from MERCOSUR, Latin America’s foremost regional economic integration organization.

Macri announced a cabinet made up of hard-core neo-liberal economists, former supporters of the military dictatorship and even a rabid rightwing rabbi. He then spelled out his policy agenda, which had been cleverly hidden during his electoral campaign when his raucous rhetoric for ‘change’, spoke to everybody and nobody.

Macri promises to

(1) end capital controls, export taxes and retentions on agro-business exports,

(2) devaluate the peso,

(3) pay over $1.2 billion dollars of Argentine public money to the Wall Street vulture-speculator, Paul Singer, who had bought $49 million dollars of old Argentine debt (a profit of astronomical proportions for buying paper),

(4) privatize and de-nationalize the state-owned airline, oil company and pension funds

(5)sign-off on EU and US-centered free trade agreements, thus undermining Latin America integration projects like MERCOSUR;

(6) tear up the jointmemo of understanding with Iran regarding an investigation into a terror bombing as requested by Israel; and

(7) expel Venezuela from MERCOSUR.

In a word, the multi-millionaire playboy President plans harsh austerity for the Argentine working class and bountiful handouts for the economic elite.

The day after the elections, local and overseas speculators boosted Argentine stocks 40% anticipating the free market bonanza. George Soros and hedge fund mogul, Daniel Loeb, ‘piled into Argentine assets’. Investment fund managers urged Macri to act swiftly in imposing his ‘sweeping reforms’ before Argentina’s famous capacity for mass popular resistance could be organized to resist his policies.

Macri’s Wall Street and Washington patrons are well aware that their clients’ boisterous big business bombast faces serious political obstacles because his policies will provoke severe economic hardships.

President Macri does not even have a majority in Congress to approve his radical proposals. The congress is controlled by a coalition of rightwing and center-left Peronist parties, which will need to be coaxed, bought or coerced.

The Argentine Congress will balk at supporting his entire neoliberal agenda. When he resorts to ‘executive decrees’ to bypass Congress, he will be contested in the courts, streets and legislature. It is doubtful he will be able to neutralize all his critics and implement his radical neoliberal agenda.

The head of the Central Bank, Alejandro Vanoli, who was appointed by the previous center-left Fernandez government, is not likely to go along with Macri’s tight money policy, radical devaluation and fiscal austerity. Macri will likely look for a pretext to purge the incumbent and nominate a free market crony. However, the institutional damage will increase the general sense of a lawless regime willing to trample the constitutional order to impose his free market dogma.

Macri’s promise to end the ‘tax’ retention on agro-exports will decrease government revenues, exacerbating the fiscal deficit and necessitating deeper reductions in social expenditures. The contrast between higher earnings for the agro-business elite and lower living standards for labor is an invitation to greater class hostility and strife. Even more decisive Macri’s “export strategy” will be undermined by the low world demand and prices of Argentine commodity exports.

Macri’s promise to end capital and price controls on his first day in office will provoke a major devaluation of the peso which may exceed 60%. This will automatically result in severe increases in the price of consumer goods and increased profits for the export elites, provoking mass unrest across the occupational spectrum.

Macri promises to meet with the 7% of speculator hold-outs of old Argentine debt (from the pillage years of the 1990’s) demanding full payment with interest, especially the ‘vulture funds’ led by Wall Street’s Paul Singer of Elliott Capital Management. Pay-offs of over $1.3 billion on an original $49 million purchase of Argentine debt to Wall Street speculators will provoke fury among Argentine workers and nationalists who will shoulder the added burden on top of austerity and cuts in social welfare. Moreover, the 93% of debt holders, who had agreed to the ‘financial haircut’ and discounted the debt at 70% will now demand full payment multiplying tenfold the demands on the Treasury with disastrous consequences.

The devaluation and decline of purchasing power will not attract the ‘tidal wave of foreign investment’ to lift the economy and provide jobs and general prosperity as Macri had promised during his campaign. Foreign capital will not create new enterprises; they will concentrate on buying existing privatized public enterprises at fire-sale prices. Incoming capital will not increase the productive forces; it will only shift the direction of the flow of profits from public coffers to private pockets, from the domestic economy to overseas investors.

Neoliberalism: Then and Now

The general foreign and domestic political climate is vastly different today from the 1990’s when the previous neo-liberal experiment was launched with such disastrous consequences. In the late 1980’s, Argentina was suffering from acute inflation, stagnation and declining income. The working class organizations were still recovering from the murderous decade of military rule. Moreover, in the 1990’s the US was at thepinnacle of imperial power in Latin America. China was only beginning its dynamic growth cycle. The USSR had disintegrated and Russia was a struggling vassal state. Latin America was ruled by a motley collection of neo-liberal clones under the thumb of the IMF.

Today Macri faces an organized working class. The trade unions and militant popular movements are intact and have experienced a decade of substantial gains under a center-left government. The IMF experience remains a poisonous memory for hundreds of thousands of Argentines. Hundreds of military officials responsible for crimes against humanity have been arrested, tried and prosecuted under the out-going regime. The threat of a military coup, ever-present in the 1980’s and 90’s, is non-existent. China has become the key market for Argentine agro exports (soya). Macri, despite his declared passion to serve Washington, is obligated to accommodate to the Chinese market.

Any moves out of MERCOSUR and into the arms of the Transpacific Trade Agreement will prejudice Argentina’s strategic trade links with Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay. Today Macri will find a hostile climate in Latin America for his proposed embrace of the US. His promise to ‘expel Venezuela from MERCOSUR’ has already been rejected by its members.

In summary, Macri will find it impossible to replicate the neoliberal policies of the 1990’s for all the above reasons. There is one additional factor to consider: The earlier version of the ‘free-market experiment’ led to the most severe economic depression in Argentine history with double-digit negative growth, unemployment exceeding 50% in working class districts (and 25% nationally) and poverty and extreme misery in some Argentine provinces exceeding Sub-Sahara Africa.

If Macri believes he can rush through the “harsh medicine” – and avoid the inevitable mass protest– while attracting a massive inflow of capital with which to rapidly grow the economy, he is gravely mistaken. After the initial giveaways and uptake of the stock market, the Soros and Loeb speculators will grab their profits and run. Weakened domestic consumption and the depressed global commodity market do not attract long term, large-scale capital.

The real question is not (as the financial pundits claim) whether Macri will ‘seize the opportunity’ but how soon after he tries to impose his free market model his regime will crash amid the ruins of a depressed economy, raging inflation and general strikes.

Brazil: Right Turn or a Left Opportunity

Commentators left and right cite the vertical decline of support for President Dilma Rousseff from over 50% to less than 10% as a sign of the ‘decline of the left’. Judicial investigations have led to the arrest and prosecution of dozens of Congressional leaders of the so-called ‘Workers Party”’(PT) for wholesale bribery, money laundering and illicit transfers of millions of dollars!

Prosecutors have jailed scores of PT officials, legislators and senior executives of the giant public petroleum company, Petrobras, the directors of the biggest construction companies and investment banks who were partners in crime with former PT President Lula Da Silva. The one-time trade union leader, President Lula, turned into a poster boy for Wall Street and more recently a notorious influence peddler for Brazilian big businesses.

Prosecutors have arrested 117 officials from Petrobras, the giant state oil corporation, and Brazil’s biggest company. They have arrested two of Brazil’s most powerful capitalists: Marcelo Odebrecht, president of Constructora Norberto Odebrecht, and Octavio Marquez de Azevedo of the Andrade Gutierrez Corporation. Both contributed to the Workers Party electoral campaign of ex-President Lula Da Silva and current President Dilma Rousseff.

Big business contributors, currently under investigation or jailed, had received forty-times the value of their political donations in terms of lucrative PT government contracts (a 4000% return on investment!).

Criminal cases and arrests for ‘bribes for contracts’ schemes have affected the financial sector, including the billionaire financier Andre Esteves, founder-President of BTG Pactual , a close friend and associate of Lula Da Silva.

The entire elite of Brazil’s capitalist and financial class has been indicted, jailed or is under investigation. The Treasurer of the PT, Senate and Congressional leaders and Presidential advisers of the ‘Workers’ Party have been arrested and jailed for bribes, money laundering and fraud, in connection with the Petrobras and other corporate corruption scandals.

The judicial investigation demonstrates that the PT had become a party of the corporate elite. PT leaders and officials work closely with business elites in channeling billions to corporate treasuries. In contrast, the PT’s so-called “poverty program” donated $60 a month to poor families, just above subsistence level. This poverty program was part of a vast patronage machine designed to secure votes to elect corrupt officials embedded with big capital and financiers!

While the prosecutors are not explicitly anti-capitalist, the investigations have exposed the corrupt basis of capitalist rule. In the course of one year Brazilian prosecutors have conducted deeper and more thorough research on the power elite and determined how it rules, exploits and pillages the wealth of the country than any analysis by the vast majority of ‘leftist’ academics and journalists over the fifteen years of PT mis-governance.

The prosecutors have acted against the entire class of capitalist executives and their political partners in the PT with greater force and integrity than the major ‘left’ trade union (the CUT) and social movement (Landless Rural Workers (MST) leaders. The CUT and MST leaders secured minor regime concessions, in exchange for ignoring the large-scale, long-term criminal links between bankers, agro- businesspeople, industrialists and the PT.

While leaders of the MST, the CUT and the National Union of Students gave ‘critical’ support to Presidents Lula and Dilma and their entourage of corrupt Congresspeople, the prosecutors exposed years of endemic fraud, swindles and bribes which had enabled the PT leaders to buy luxury BMWs, Rolex watches and million-dollar villas and luxury condos in exclusive neighborhoods.

Deltan Dallagnol, one of the prosecutors leading the investigation, has demonstrated that the PT works for the rich and powerful, foreign and domestic capitalists and deceives the poor. His investigations demonstrate that the PT is not a ‘center-left’ party – it is a party of kleptocrats working for capitalists.

One thing is sure: the PT is not a party embracing diverse popular classes; it is not an arena for popular struggle. It is a party that serves diverse capitalist sectors, including finance, construction, petroleum and agro business.

Because of corruption, the cost of government projects doubled and tripled. As a result vital social services were starved of funds and deteriorated and public transport construction was delayed for years.

In summary, the decline and discredit of the PT is not a defeat for the Left because the PT regime never was on the left. On the contrary, the discredit of the PT is a positive victory for anti-capitalist forces struggling against the ruling class and political elite.

Conclusion

The victory of hard right neo-liberal Mauricio Macri in Argentina and the disintegration of the PT do not augur a new rightwing cycle in Latin America. Macri’s economic team will quickly confront mass opposition and, outside the upper class neighborhoods, they lack any political mass support. Their policies will polarize the country and undermine the stability, which investors require. Brutal devaluations and the end of capital controls are formulas, not for economic development, but for inciting general strikes. Conflict, stagnation and hyperinflation will put an end to the enthusiasm of local and foreign investors.

Moreover, Macri cannot embrace Washington’s entire agenda because Argentina’s natural trading partner is China.

Macri’s regime is the beginning and the end of a reversion to the neo-liberal disaster, similar to what took place at the end of the 1990’s.

The fall of the PT, more a product of conscientious prosecutors than the action of trade unions and social movements, opens political space for new working class struggles, free from the constraints of corrupt leaders and bureaucrats.

Even if the Right returns to power in Brazil– it is tainted with the same stench of corruption; its capitalist partners are in jail or facing prosecution. In other words, the fall of the PT is only part of the decline and decay of all the capitalist parties.

Over time, soon after the collapse of the ‘New Right’, a new authentic left may emerge, free of corruption and links to big business. Hopefully, an authentic working class party will form, which can pursue socio-economic policies to end exploitation of labor, the pillage of the public treasury and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. This should be a left, which sustains the environment, respects nature and upholds the rights of Afro-Brazilians, indigenous people and women.

On Dec.9, Russia for the first time hit ISIS targets in Syria with cruise missiles launched from a submarine in the Mediterranean Sea. The 3M-54 Kalibr missiles were launched from the Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine “Rostov-on-Don”. According to the Russian Defense Minister, the missiles targeted the terrorists’ ammunition warehouses, mine production plant and the oil infrastructure in the territory of Raqqa.

In the past three days, the Russian Air Forces have carried out over 300 sorties hitting 600 terrorist targets. All sorties were performed with the backing of Su-30 fighter jets.

The pro-government sources argue that tens of terrorists were killed in clashes between the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the militant groups along the Damascus-Homs highway on Tuesday. Thus, the Syrian forces expanded its control on the Eastern side of the Damascus-Homs highway in Harasta.

On Tuesday, the SAA, Hezbollah, the National Defense Forces (NDF) and Harakat Al-Nujaba launched an offensive on the towns of Al-Zorba and Barqoum clashing against Al-Nusra, Harakat Nouriddeen Al-Zinki, Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham and Jaysh Al-Islam. The clashes are continuing in the both towns. If the Syrian forces capture Al-Zorba, they will be able to cutoff the militants’ supply route from Idlib to Aleppo. This operation is a part of the largest offensive of the Syrian forces which is aimed to secure the whole Aleppo-Damascus highway.

Since the start of the Russian military operations in Syria, the pro-government forces have been incrementally advancing in directions of the main strategic areas which allow to control crucial parts of the Syrian logistical infrastructure. It allows the Syrian forces to take advantage over the terrorists in the manoeuvre capability while the loyalists already have advantage in the fire power, intelligence and coordination.

Final results for Venezuela’s 167-seat National Assembly weren’t known until two days after the polls closed.

On Tuesday, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) reported opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) candidates won 107 seats to the ruling socialist coalition Great Patriotic Pole’s (GPP) 55 – a 64.07% to 32.93% majority. 

Indigenous seats comprise another 1.80% of the 167 legislative body. Two seats remained undecided. CNE announced MUD candidates won them, giving them 109 seats, three short of a crucial super-majority.

When new deputies are sworn in on January 5, three independent indigenous members will be swing votes. What they’ll support or oppose is crucial going forward.

Venezuela Analysis reported they endorsed MUD’s platform while campaigning. Whether it means they’ll risk compromising constitutionally guaranteed Bolivarian social justice rights remains to be seen.

They’re too precious to lose. One of Chavez’s first acts as new Venezuelan president in 1999 was to hold a popularly supported national referendum on whether to convene a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution, embodying his social justice agenda.

It passed overwhelmingly – followed three months later by elections to the National Assembly. Chavistas won 95% of the seats.

They drafted a historic document – a revolutionary Constitucion de la Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela. It was put to a nationwide referendum vote in December to let Venezuelans decide up or down whether to accept or reject it.

Its overwhelming approval changed everything, giving people no say on how they’re governed.

Venezuelans have a model participatory social democracy, – including a National Electoral Council (CNE), assuring electoral procedures are scrupulously open, free and fair.

Article 56 of the Bolivarian Constitution states: “All persons have the right to be registered free of charge with the Civil Registry Office after birth, and to obtain public documents constituting evidence of the biological identity, in accordance with law.”

All Venezuelans are enfranchised to vote under one national standard. Full participation is encouraged. No one is denied their constitutional right, vastly different from how America operates, disenfranchising millions of its citizens for dubious reasons, rigging things so business as usual always wins.

The spirit of the Venezuelan Bolivarian Constitution is stated straightaway in its Preamble: “to establish a democratic, participatory and self-reliant, multiethnic and multicultural society in a just, federal and decentralized State that embodies the values of freedom, independence, peace, solidarity, the common good, the nation’s territorial integrity, comity and the rule of law for this and future generations;”

It further

“guarantees the right to life, work, learning, education, social justice and equality, without discrimination or subordination of any kind; promotes peaceful cooperation among nations and further strengthens Latin American integration in accordance with the principle of nonintervention and national self-determination of the people, the universal and indivisible guarantee of human rights, the democratization of imitational society, nuclear disarmament, ecological balance and environmental resources as the common and inalienable heritage of humanity…”

It mandates benefits too important to lose, including free healthcare and education to the highest levels, subsidized food, housing benefits and other social justice provisions.

Articles 83 – 85 require state policy “improve the quality of life and common welfare,” – low oil prices taking a heavy toll on its ability to fulfill its obligation to the full extent of its mandate.

Indigenous peoples’ rights are recognized and respected, Article 119 stating:

“The State will recognize the existence of indigenous peoples and communities, their social, political and economic organization, their cultures, traditions and customs, languages and religions, as well as their environment and original rights over the lands they ancestrally and traditionally inhabit, and which are necessary to develop and guarantee their ways of life. It shall be the responsibility of the National Executive, with the participation of indigenous peoples, to demarcate and guarantee the collective property of their lands, which shall be inalienable, not subject to limitations or distraint, and non-transferable in accordance with this Constitution and the law.”

Here’s what’s at stake for indigenous people and all Venezuelans if MUD has super-majority control.

It’ll be able to dismiss Supreme Court justices, appoint their own neoliberal ones. Most important, they’ll be able to enact constitutional changes, ending or gravely compromising Bolivarian social justice provisions – including fundamental indigenous peoples’ rights.

Will their representatives risk this outcome by supporting MUD, harming their interests in the process?

They hold the balance of power going forward.

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.

Latin American mercenaries are leaving the ranks of the national armies of their countries to fight in the deserts of Yemen, wearing the uniform of the United Arab Emirates. They have been contracted by private US companies and in some cases directly by the government of the Arab country, which, thanks to vast oil reserves, has the second largest economy of the region.

An article in the New York Times revealed that 450 Latin American soldiers, among them Colombians, Panamanians, Salvadorans and Chileans, have been deployed to Yemen. The mercenaries receive training in the United Arab Emirates before deployment, in part from U.S. trainers.

The presence of Latin American mercenaries in the Middle East is not new. Colombian news media have interviewed mercenaries returning from the Middle East for years. They tell of being recruited by transnational companies with promises of salaries far beyond what they’d receive at home. However, the conflict in Yemen seems to be the first time that Latin American mercenaries have been sent into combat.

Colombia contributes the largest number. According to the New York Times, the UAE military recruits Colombians because of their experience fighting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the jungles and mountains of their country. But there is another reason.

Since the beginning of Plan Colombia, between 2000 and 2015 the U.S. spent almost $7 billion to train, advise and equip Colombia’s security forces. In the last few years, the U.S. government has carried out a strategy to prepare the Colombians for an emerging industry: the “export of security.”

And apparently, one way to export security is to become a U.S.-trained mercenary for Washington’s wars in other parts of the world.

Colombian troops, drilled in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency techniques, instead of exporting security are exporting the United States’ geopolitical agenda of permanent war. They end up doing the dirty work of their ally to the north, who, as a consequence, avoids exposing its forces to harm or facing accusations of interventionism.

According to analyst William Hartung, the United States government has trained a total of 30,000 soldiers from the four countries that make up the Latin American mercenary force in Yemen. A recent investigative report from El Salvador cites a Ministry of Defense source affirming that there are about 100 Salvadorans operating in Yemen. While the Colombians claim to have contracts directly with the Emirati military, in El Salvador the source states that contracting goes through a national company subcontracted by Northrup Grumman.

Northrup Grumman has a history in the Middle East mercenary business. Forbes reports that it absorbed an obscure company called Vinnelli that holds a $819 million-dollar contract to provide personnel for the Saudi National Guard, dating back to 1975.

The same Salvadoran source affirms that there are also Mexicans in Yemen. Mexico was not included in the New York Times report, but has a close relationship with the United States security complex through the war on drugs.

It cannot be known for sure if the hundreds of Latin American mercenaries were trained in the United States or by the U.S. military in their own countries. The U.S. government does not reveal the names of the soldiers or police that it has trained. Nor is there a public registry of mercenaries. Although the practice is legal in certain contexts, it forms part of the underground world of war, in which shadow powers dictate the conditions in which we live–and often die.

What is certain is that contracting Latin American mercenaries follows the logic of the new style of war designed by the Pentagon. This strategy reduces risks to U.S. troops, increases civilian deaths and feeds war profits. Drones–unmanned airplanes–kill thousands of civilians without risking a single life on the part of the aggressors. They’re shielded from the blood of their victims and the horror of their screams.

While technology makes long-distance war possible, another aspect of proxy war is to get others to fight your battles. A sad reflection of patriarchal violence and economic inequality, the recruitment of foreign mercenaries is central to modern-day warfare.

In the case of Yemen, the populations of the countries that are involved in the conflict or feel threatened by it, such as the United Arab Emirates, have no desire to go to war. In recent months the UAE has suffered increasing casualities on the ground while the U.S. and Saudi members of the coalition keep to the skies.

And the United States has strong interests in the region, but does not want to pay the political price of seeing its soldiers return home in body bags. The solution? Hire mercenaries from impoverished Latin American countries.

Recruiting young men from Latin American countries feeds the U.S. war industry. American companies like Blackwater, which has changed its name but remains Erik Prince’s empire of death, and Northrup Grumman, headquartered in Virginia, squeeze more out of their juicy government contracts by reducing soldiers’ pay. According to Colombian reports, their mercenaries receive less than half what European or U.S. soldiers get. Despite the gouging, they still make on average five times more than what they would earn in their home countries.

The third and often ignored element of the new remote-control war is weapons sales. U.S. arms sales are booming, bringing millions of dollars to the U.S. defense industry–a powerful lobby in Congress. US strategists recognize that arms sales effectively advance the geopolitical agenda by changing the balance of power in strategic conflicts.

The Obama administration has promoted bombings by the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and developed a very close relationship with the UAE, which shares its zeal for eliminating the Islamic State. The administration has now decided to sell another $1.3 billion dollars worth of weapons to these countries to replenish supplies. While military aid to allies (and in not a small number of cases, to both sides of armed conflicts) has always been a tool of hegemony, arms sales are now explicitly a central strategy.


The Pentagon and its promoters in Congress openly talk about the advantages of killing from a distance. Critics cite the many lethal attacks on civilians, including large numbers of women and children that are characteristic of this type of war. The UN calculates that the war in Yemen has already led to the deaths of 2,500 civilians, among them women and children; almost 500 were killed by U.S. drone strikes.

Now how many will die at the hands of Latin American mercenaries?

And how many young men–Colombians, Mexicans, Salvadorans–will take their last breath in a desert half a world away, fighting a war that isn’t theirs?

“Russian aircraft were not on a mission in that area. All our flights in Syrian airspace are coordinated with air traffic control and the General Staff of the Syrian government’s armed forces,” Major General Igor Konashenkov, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said, adding that Russia always informs the US about the time, altitudes and routes of its aircraft in Syrian airspace.

“Pentagon officials said that on December 6, American aircraft were operating in that area, but striking a target some 55 kilometers away from the [affected Syrian] installation is true to an extent. But it’s not the complete truth,” Konashenkov stressed.

“Two pairs of warplanes from two other countries, members of the US-led international anti-ISIS coalition, were operating in the Deir ez-Zor area on the day of the attack,” Major-General Konashenkov said.

“If they were not involved in that airstrike, then why are the Pentagon’s representatives, as leaders of the anti-ISIS coalition, hushing up the presence of their allies aircraft in the Deir ez-Zor region on December 6? Isn’t it because the [anti-ISIS] coalition air force gets all the information on Islamic State targets in Syria from the Pentagon?” General Konashenkov asked.

“I’m sure, very soon we’ll learn who really inflicted the airstrike on the Syrian troops, as soon as the Syrian authorities make public the results of the investigation of that incident and the type of munitions used in the airstrike,” the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman said.

Damascus says the airstrike against Syrian troop positions was carried out by the US-led coalition.

Konashenkov reported that according to the Syrian General Staff, the airstrike on the Syrian Army camp was inflicted on December 6, between 19:40 and 19:55 local time (+2 hours GMT).

An airstrike on a field camp on 168th Brigade of 7th Division of the Syrian Army left four serviceman dead and 12 injured. It also destroyed three APCs and four vehicles bearing 12.7mm heavy machine-guns.

Syria slams US-led coalition deadly strike against troops as ‘act of aggression’ https://t.co/knCS1yUmEz pic.twitter.com/p6E6zRX3bx

— RT (@RT_com) December 8, 2015

The incident is the first of its kind since the coalition started to bomb Syria more than a year ago, though the US-led alliance continues to deny it carried out the airstrike.

An anonymous US military source told Reuters on Monday that Washington is certain the airstrike was carried out by the Russians.

It seems that David Cameron has finally gone for the ultimate power grab in pushing through his own laws – in effect bypassing the House of Lords altogether.

Continuing the career work of dismantling the House of Lords started by his predecessor Tony Blair, Tory PM Cameron seeks to further weaken the House of Lords, thereby gutting the legislative House as the last remaining check to Cameron’s apparent preference towards an undemocratic authoritarian party whip system.

What this latest move does is formalise a single party state, but getting to this point has been clearly a two-party effort. Blair’s main strategy was to literally sell-off Lords membership peerages to party donors and as political favours. This was a clever Machiavellian strategy on two fronts: by selling off positions, it discredited the Lords chamber, reducing its image to that of a malleable political tool. The second objective was to fundamentally weaken the constitutional integrity of the chamber, forever. This was Blair’s leg of the mission.

Cameron’s leg of the job is somewhat more blunt, by attempting to almost physically (in political terms) subdue the decision-making and democratic functions of the Lords. Lord Strathclyde, a Tory grandee appointed by David Cameron, has been instructed by the Prime Minister to look at curbing the powers of the second chamber, is proposing that ‘hostile peers’ should be banned from overturning legislation – which, ironically, is one of the primary roles the Lords play in Britain’s constitutional checks and balances system. In other words, Cameron wants to stop the House of Lords from opposing any legislation he proposes – which by definition is a dictatorship.

On December 8, the IMF’s Chief Spokesman Gerry Rice sent a note saying: “The IMF’s Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors. We will provide details on the scope and rationale for this policy change in the next day or so.”

Since 1947 when it really started operations, the World Bank has acted as a branch of the U.S. Defense Department, from its first major chairman John J. McCloy through Robert McNamara to Robert Zoellick and neocon Paul Wolfowitz. From the outset, it has promoted U.S. exports – especially farm exports – by steering Third World countries to produce plantation crops rather than feeding their own populations. (They are to import U.S. grain.) But it has felt obliged to wrap its U.S. export promotion and support for the dollar area in an ostensibly internationalist rhetoric, as if what’s good for the United States is good for the world.

The IMF has now been drawn into the U.S. Cold War orbit. On Tuesday it made a radical decision to dismantle the condition that had integrated the global financial system for the past half century. In the past, it has been able to take the lead in organizing bailout packages for governments by getting other creditor nations – headed by the United States, Germany and Japan – to participate. The creditor leverage that the IMF has used is that if a nation is in financial arrears to any government, it cannot qualify for an IMF loan – and hence, for packages involving other governments.

This has been the system by which the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. The beneficiaries have been creditors in US dollars.

But on Tuesday, the IMF joined the New Cold War. It has been lending money to Ukraine despite the Fund’s rules blocking it from lending to countries with no visible chance of paying (the “No More Argentinas” rule from 2001). With IMF head Christine Lagarde made the last IMF loan to Ukraine in the spring, she expressed the hope that there would be peace. But President Porochenko immediately announced that he would use the proceeds to step up his nation’s civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the East – the Donbass.

That is the region where most IMF exports have been made – mainly to Russia. This market is now lost for the foreseeable future. It may be a long break, because the country is run by the U.S.-backed junta put in place after the right-wing coup of winter 2014. Ukraine has refused to pay not only private-sector bondholders, but the Russian Government as well.

This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving further IMF aid. Refusal to pay for Ukrainian military belligerence in its New Cold War against Russia would have been a major step forcing peace, and also forcing a clean-up of the country’s endemic corruption.

Instead, the IMF is backing Ukrainian policy, its kleptocracy and its Right Sector leading the attacks that recently cut off Crimea’s electricity. The only condition on which the IMF insists is continued austerity. Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, has fallen by a third this years, pensions have been slashed (largely as a result of being inflated away), while corruption continues unabated.

Despite this the IMF announced its intention to extend new loans to finance Ukraine’s dependency and payoffs to the oligarchs who are in control of its parliament and justice departments to block any real cleanup of corruption.

For over half a year there was a semi-public discussion with U.S. Treasury advisors and Cold Warriors about how to stiff Russia on the $3 billion owed by Ukraine to Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. There was some talk of declaring this an “odious debt,” but it was decided that this ploy might backfire against U.S. supported dictatorships.

In the end, the IMF simply lent Ukraine the money.

By doing so, it announced its new policy: “We only enforce debts owed in US dollars to US allies.” This means that what was simmering as a Cold War against Russia has now turned into a full-blown division of the world into the Dollar Bloc (with its satellite Euro and other pro-U.S. currencies) and the BRICS or other countries not in the U.S. financial and military orbit.

What should Russia do? For that matter, what should China and other BRICS countries do? The IMF and U.S. neocons have sent the world a message: you don’t have to honor debts to countries outside of the dollar area and its satellites.

Why then should these non-dollarized countries remain in the IMF – or the World Bank, for that matter. The IMF move effectively splits the global system in half,between the BRICS and the US-European neoliberalized financial system.

Should Russia withdraw from the IMF? Should other countries?

The mirror-image response would be for the new Asian Development Bank to announce that countries that joined the ruble-yuan area did not have to pay US dollar or euro-denominated debts. That is implicitly where the IMF’s break is leading.

Most Iraqis, be they civilians, military personnel, or government officials, do not trust Americans. 

At a base level, that makes all kinds of sense. After all, the US did launch what amounted to a unilateral invasion of the country just a little over a decade ago, and when it was all said and done, a dictator was deposed but it’s not entirely clear that Iraqis are better off for it.

ISIS controls key cities including the Mosul, the country’s second largest, and security is a daily concern for the populace. The Americans are still seen – rightly – as occupiers, and Washington’s unwillingness inability to effectively counter ISIS has created a culture of suspicion in which most Iraqis believe the US is in cahoots with the militants for what WaPo described as “a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting U.S. control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.”

Some of the distrust, the US contends, is fostered by Iran. Tehran wields considerable influence both within the Iraqi military and in political circles in Baghdad. When Ash Carter announced that the US was set to send an “expeditionary targeting force” to the country to assist in raids on Islamic State targets, PM Haider al-Abadi flatly rejected the proposal, saying that “Iraq does not need foreign ground combat forces on Iraqi land.” Abadi rejected a similar Pentagon trial balloon involving Apaches helicopters last month.

(Abadi, pictured left)

Meanwhile, Tehran’s Shiite militias threatened to attack any US soldiers operating on Iraqi soil. “We will chase and fight any American force deployed in Iraq. Any such American force will become a primary target for our group. We fought them before and we are ready to resume fighting,” a spokesman for Kata’ib Hezbollah said. Similarly, influential Shiite lawmakers like the infamous Hakim al-Zamili have called on Abadi to seek direct military intervention from Moscow to expel foreign forces from the country.

Now, in the latest example of just how tenuous Washington’s grip on the region has become, the Iraqi parliament’s Security and Defense Committee is calling for the review and cancellation of Baghdad’s security agreement with the US.

“The government and parliament need to review the agreement signed with the United States on security because the United States does not seriously care about its fulfillment,” committee member Hamid al-Mutlaq, a senior Sunni lawmaker told Sputnik on Wednesday. “We demand that it be annulled,” he added.

Who will fill the void you ask? You guessed it:

“Soon, a meeting [of the committee] with Prime Minister Haider Abadi will be held, at which we will propose cooperating with Russia in carrying out airstrikes against IS and in the fight against terrorism in Iraq,” another committee member said earlier this week.

Recall that this is precisely what we said would happen once we learned in September that Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria had set up a joint intelligence sharing cell in Baghdad.

It was clear from the beginning that Tehran saw an opportunity to consolidate its power in Iraq and preserve its influence in Syria by convincing Vladimir Putin that Russia could replace the US as Mid-East superpower puppet master by helping Tehran to defeat the insurgency in Syria and boot the US from Iraq once and for all. Moscow will of course get a warm reception from Iraqi lawmakers thanks to the fact that many MPs are loyal to Iran.

This makes sense logistically as well. Once the Russians and Iranians have retaken Aleppo (which admittedly is taking a while), they can push east towards Raqqa and from there, move straight across the border, effectively pinching ISIS between an advance from the west and Iran’s Shiite militias already operating in Iraq. Of course that will entail some measure of cooperation with the US, France, Britain, and, once in Iraq, the Peshmerga. It is at that point that Washington’s resolve when it comes to preserving whatever charade is being perpetrated in Raqqa will be put to the ultimate test.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how the US responds to a move by Baghdad to nullify the security agreement.

Washington knows it can land troops in Iraq by simply going through Erbil which is precisely what Turkey did last Friday. The KRG/ Barzani end-around serves to give the troop deployments a kind of quasi-legitimacy. That is, the Kurds control the territory and are self governing, so when Erdogan (and, soon Obama) drop troops in northern Iraq against Baghdad’s wishes, they can claim it’s not a violation of sovereignty. As we saw over the weekend, Iraqi officials aren’t going to stand for it going forward although now that it’s become clear that NATO and the Security Council aren’t going to be any help (just as we said), Iraq’s ambassador to the UN is striking a concilliatory tone, saying Baghdad will try to settle the dispute with Turkey “bilaterally.”

It now appears that the stage is set for Baghdad to claim that the US, like Turkey, is illegitimately occupying the country (again). If Iraq nullifies the security agreement and moves to invite the Russians into the country, the US will be forced to either pack up and leave, cooperate with Moscow, or fight for the right to preserve American influence.

Decisions, decisions.

*  *  *

Read more about the official relationship between Washington and Baghdad below.

us-iraq-sfa-en

Twenty years ago, developing countries signed onto the World Trade Organisation (WTO) with the promise of raising standards of living, ensuring full employment, food security, technological advancement and achieving sustainable development. In 2015, it is evident that WTO’s trade and investment rules have taken the developing world in the opposite direction. The WTO has served as a powerful tool in the hands of the North to undermine sovereign development trajectories in the South.

The Tenth Ministerial Conference to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 15-18 December 2015 is again heading towards strengthening of the hands of the North at the WTO.  There is a concerted push by developed countries such as USA and EU to further this fundamentally flawed, pro-corporate capital and anti democratic process of “free” trade and investment “liberalisation”. Issues that were earlier rejected in the Singapore Ministerial (1996) such as Investment, Government Procurement and Competition Policy are being brought back. Further, the so called ‘21^st century issues’ such as E-Commerce, Environmental Goods and Global Value Chains are now on the table with the sole purpose of eliminating autonomous policy space of the South. Several of these issues are already present in the US led Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) which has recently been concluded. These need to be rejected firmly by India.

In this context we are concerned that India is open to discussing new issues, as has been reflected in the Commerce Ministers recent statement. On the contrary India should unify developing countries in order to regain lost national policy space and highlight long standing issues of concern such as food security, special and differential treatment, reduction of agribusiness subsidies in developed countries and review of TRIPS, many of which find mention in the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) of WTO. Rather than being trapped in the agenda of the developed countries to aggressively pry open developing country markets, India should push for reinforcing the development mandate in any trade discussion. In the eventuality of India being unable to extract concrete concessions from the developed countries on these issues and the latter’s insertion of new agendas at Nairobi; we call upon the Government of India to walk out of the Ministerial Conference.

Provision of food, education, health and guarantee of decent jobs are essential elements for the realisation of the fundamental rights granted by the Indian Constitution. These are the issues under threat at the WTO. In the name of “market distortions”, minimum support price (MSP) for public stockholding of food grains, state support for health and education are sought to be withdrawn.At a time when neo-liberal economic policies have not only deepened the agrarian crisis in rural India, but also led to a breakdown of public services, resulted in complete de-industrialisation in some sectors and technological dependence in others forcing India on to the low value added path in the global supply chain resulting in loss of millions of jobs in manufacturing, especially in small medium and village enterprises, any further concessions at the WTO will lead to further impoverishment for the working classes, peasants, indigenous peoples, artisans, women, dalits and other marginalised sections of the Indian population.

We, the undersigned note with grave concern that so far the Government of India has not discussed in the Indian Parliament these disturbing developments at the WTO. We underline that no commitments should be made before due debate and ratification by the Indian Parliament and public consultation. Further, as trade issues have intruded on policy spaces under the purview of state governments, approvals from state legislatures and relevant local bodies should also be made mandatory. Given the deep democratic deficit in WTO processes, we call for a moratorium on any new commitments. In this context, we also demand that conditional GATS offers that were made by India in critical sectors such as higher education, health, finance and insurance be immediately withdrawn.

We call on the Indian Parliament to debate and vote, based on robust evidence of the employment, livelihood, social and environmental impacts of 20 years of the WTO Agreements, various free trade agreements (FTAs) and autonomous liberalisation. This process must be preceded by decisions of state legislative assemblies and should also be informed by inputs from academia, public intellectuals, trade unions, social movements and non-governmental organisations.

Based on this evidence, the Government of India should roll back harmful commitments that were made under the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs), Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and other WTO agreements.

Twenty years on, we demand that the Government of India thoroughly reorient its stand in international trade and investment negotiations and align it truly with the pro-people agenda of self-reliant and sustainable development. We also call upon the Government of India to work towards such a progressive and alternate agenda in solidarity and cooperation with likeminded countries of the South.

With this end in view, the signatories to this declaration commit to taking this message across the country through campaigns, rallies and conventions. We call upon mass organisations from across the country to join this process of defending democracy, reclaiming self-reliance and sovereignty.

Endorsed by:

1. Adivasi Dalit Morcha, Madhya Pradesh
2. All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA)
3. All India Drug Action Network (AIDAN)
4. All India Forum for Right To Education (AIFRTE)
5. All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS)
6. All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN)
7. All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF)
8. All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA)
9. All India Students Association (AISA)

10. All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP)

11. Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA)

12. Andhra Pradesh Vyvasaya Vruthidarula Union (APVVU)

13. Asha Parivar

14. Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS)

15. Beyond Copenhagen

16. Bharatiya Krishak Samaj (BKS)

17. Center for Environment Education (CEE), Madhya Pradesh

18. Centre for Equity Studies

19. CECOEDECON

20. Citizen News Service (CNS)

21. Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)

22. Democratic Teachers Front

23. Delhi Right to Water Campaign

24. Delhi Science Forum

25. Diverse Women for Diversity

26. Federation of Central Universities’ Teachers’ Associations (FEDCUTA)

27. Focus on the Global South

28. Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN)

29. Food Sovereignty Alliance

30. Forum Against FTAs

31. Forum for Indigenous Perspectives and Action (FIPA)

32. Forum for Urban Commons and Governance

33. Gene Campaign

34. India FDI Watch

35. Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF)

36. Institute for Social Action and Research

37. Jan Pahal

38. Jan Pahel, Madhya Pradesh

39. Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA)

40. Joshi Adhikari Institute of Social Studies (JAISS)

41. Kalpavriksh

42. Madhyam

43. Manthan Adhyayan Kendra

44. Mines Minerals and People (MMP)

45. Nadi Ghati Morcha

46. Nagara Vanchitara Vedike

47. Nagpur Municipal Corporation Employees Union (NMCEU)

48. National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)

49. National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR)

50. National Centre for Labour (NCL)

51. National Confederation of Officers Associations of Central PSUs (NCOA)

52. National Platform against Water Privatisation

53. National Working Group on Patent Laws and WTO

54. Navdanya

55. New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI)

56. North East People’s Alliance

57. Pani Haaq Samiti, Mumbai

58. People’s Campaign for the Right to Water, Karnataka

59. People’s Research Society

60. Popular Education and Action Centre (PEACE)

61. POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS)

62. Public Advocacy Initiatives for Rights and Values in India (PAIRVI)

63. Public Services International (PSI), South Asia

64. Research Foundation for Science Technology & Ecology

65. Right to Education (RTE) Forum

66. Right to Food Campaign

67. River Basin Friends(North East )

68. Samajvadi Samagam

69. Sanchar Nigam Executives Association (SNEA)

70. Save our Rice Campaign

71. Shambhvi, New Delhi

72. Socialist Party (India)

73. South Solidarity Initiative –ActionAid India

74. Students Federation of India (SFI)

75. Swadeshi Andolan

76. Thanal

77. The Child Trust

78. The Hawkers Federation

79. Third World Network, India

80. Toxics Watch Alliance

81. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

For more information or to endorse please write to G Manicandan: [email protected] (Tel. 9868319261) and Dinesh Abrol: [email protected]  (Tel. 9650365397)

What is the connection between the US bombing of a Syrian military base in Ayyash, Syria, and the Turkish invasion of northern Iraq?

Both of these seemingly isolated events are part of a larger plan to Balkanize the Middle East, to strengthen Washington’s grip on dwindling resources, to draw Russia into a costly and protracted war, and to ensure that ME oil remains denominated in US dollars. Author Joseph Kishore summed it up like this in a recent post at the World Socialist Web Site. He said:

“The basic force behind the war in Syria is the same as that which has motivated the imperialist carve-up of the Middle East as a whole: the interests of international finance capital. The major imperialist powers know that if they are to have a say in the division of the booty, they must have also done their share of the killing.” (“The new imperialist carve-up of the Middle East“, World Socialist Web Site)

Bingo. Ultimately, the war on terror is a public relations fig leaf designed to conceal Washington’s attempt to rule the world. It’s impossible to make sense of goings-on around the globe without some grasp of how seemingly random acts of violence and terror fit within the broader and more comprehensive geopolitical strategy to create a new unipolar world order, to crush all emerging rivals, and to extend US full-spectrum-dominance across the planet.

Let’s look at the particulars:  On Sunday, US warplanes bombed a Syrian military base east of Raqqa killing three Syrian soldiers and wounding thirteen others. The incident took place in the village of Ayyash in Deir Ezzor Province. Coalition spokesman US Colonel Steve Warren denied US involvement in the deadly raid despite the fact that the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed ‘that the air strike hit the military camp’.  According to the observatory,  ‘This is the first time that a strike from the US-led coalition killed Syrian government troops.’   Warren’s denial, which is the reflexive Pentagon response to any claim of culpability,  suggests that the attack was a deliberate provocation intended to trigger retaliatory strikes from Russia that would, in turn, justify a larger commitment of US troops and weaponry to the 4 and a half year-long Syrian war. Whether the airstrikes got the greenlight from the White House or from rogue elements acting independently at the Pentagon is unclear.  What is clear, however, is that the attack on Syrian troops, a full 30 miles from their designated target, was no mistake. It’s also worth noting, that according to South Front military analysis, the US bombing raid coincided with a “a full-scale ISIS offensive on the villages of Ayyash and Bgelia.” In other words, the US attack provided sufficient air-cover for ISIS terrorists to carry out their ground operations.

Was that part of the plan or was it merely a coincidence?

Less than 24 hours after the attack, US warplanes bombed the village of Al-Khan in north-eastern Syria killing 26 Syrian civilians including at least four women and seven children and four women. The message the US military is sending with these lethal attacks is that it wants to control the air-space over east Syria where it plans to remove ISIS and establish a de facto Sunni state consistent with its scheme to break Syria and Iraq into smaller cantons governed by local warlords, Islamic fanatics, and US puppets.  A great deal has been written about this topic already, so we won’t spend too much time on it here. A recent op-ed in the New York Times by neocon John Bolton sums up the basic concept which appears to be supported by virtually the entire US political establishment. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Today’s reality is that Iraq and Syria as we have known them are gone. ….. Rather than striving to recreate the post-World War I map, Washington should recognize the new geopolitics. The best alternative to the Islamic State in northeastern Syria and western Iraq is a new, independent Sunni state….

This Sunni state proposal differs sharply from the vision of the Russian-Iranian axis and its proxies (Hezbollah, Mr. Assad and Tehran-backed Baghdad). Their aim of restoring Iraqi and Syrian governments to their former borders is a goal fundamentally contrary to American, Israeli and friendly Arab state interests….

The new “Sunni-stan” may not be Switzerland. This is not a democracy initiative, but cold power politics. It is consistent with the strategic objective of obliterating the Islamic State that we share with our allies, and it is achievable.”  (“John Bolton: To Defeat ISIS, Create a Sunni State“, New York Times)

Like we said, the Bolton piece is just one of many articles and policy papers that support the partitioning of Iraq and Syria and the redrawing of the map of the Middle East. ISIS, which is largely an invention of western Intel agencies and their Gulf counterparts, is a critical component in this overall plan. By situating a terrorist organization at the epicenter of world oil supplies, one creates the rationale for intervening in the affairs of other sovereign nations whenever one chooses.  This helps explain this week’s bombings in Ayyash and Al-Khan in north-eastern Syria. The US justifies the attacks by waving the bloody shirt of “ISIS, when in fact, the US is merely pursuing its own narrow strategic interests. And while the US has not formally established a no-fly zone in the area, it’s clear  now that there are greater risks associated with operating in east Syria then there were just week ago,  which is precisely the message the Pentagon wanted to send.

This same rule can be applied Turkey’s invasion of northern Iraq with an estimated 900 troops and 20 tanks. First of all, there is no way that Turkey launched the incursion without first getting the thumbs-up from Washington. We all know how violently the Obama administration reacted when Moscow defended Crimea following the CIA-backed coup in Kiev. Compare that to the subdued response of special presidential envoy, Brett McGurk,   who has this to say on Twitter:  “The US does not support military deployments inside Iraq in the absence of the consent of the Iraqi government.” (Today’s Zaman)

That’s it?  5,000 US soldiers died fighting in Iraq and all McGurk can say is ‘You really shouldn’t do that, Turkey’?

Keep in mind, Washington hasn’t levied sanctions onTurkey, attacked its currency or financial markets, or threatened it with it with war as it did with Russia. In fact, Obama hasn’t even scolded Turkey. He’s simply looked the other way and ignored the matter altogether. Naturally, that’s incensed US ally in Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has threatened to take action if Turkish troops don’t leave in the next 24 hours.

Once again, the Turkish move fits perfectly with the overall imperial strategy of “deconstructing” Syria and Iraq and breaking them into smaller, innocuous statelets that will remain in “a permanent state of colonial dependency” for the foreseeable future.

As for Turkey’s Islamist zealots in Ankara; they feel entirely justified in reclaiming territory they think was stolen from them following WW1. Turkish columnist for A Haber, Cemil Barlas, summed it up like this to RT’s Harry Fear:

“In the past, these lands belonged to us; we have the right to take part in their fate. Moreover, our relatives live in those regions. We are concerned as to what is happening to them….According to Barlas, Turkey has a right over Syrian and Iraqi’s natural resources and he thinks that people living there are not profiting from selling oil as it all goes to the ‘dictator.’”  (Sputnik News)

Turkey’s invasion of Iraq signals the beginning of a long-term occupation that will likely expand to Mosul. This will establish a critical beachhead for controlling resources and pipeline corridors that will keep the oil flowing through Turkey and on to the southern port of Ceyhan.  Here’s more on what’s going on from Turkish columnist Yavuz Baydar:

“Taking back Mosul in full is on the top of the agenda. For this there is an apparent convergence of interests between Turkey, the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and the Western allies….The key figure in the big picture is Khaled Hodja, leader of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), in close cooperation with KRG leader Masoud Barzani. It was he who declared that there would be a joint combat force built in the canton of Rojava.

A colonel, speaking anonymously to Tunca Öğreten with the Diken news site in İstanbul, confirmed the plans, adding that it was a formation initiated by the US and Turkey and that it would consist of around 5,000 men.

“…. These forces are supported by the US and Turkey, both against the [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad regime and to cut out the Kurds in northern Syria.”

Idris Nassan, the deputy foreign minister of Kobani, claims that this new force would consist mainly of members of the groups Ahrar al-Sham and al-Nusra, and Turkmens.

Nassan connects the latest moves to an imminent meeting in Riyadh, where Saudis are organizing new alliance-building for the Syrian opposition forces.“Behind the term ‘moderate forces’ are Saudi Arabia and Turkey,’ Nassan told the Diken website.” (“What lies beneath Turkey’s ’Mosul move’?“, Today’s Zaman)

So it looks like an agreement has been struck between Turkey, the KRG and the United States to seize parts of northern Iraq and eastern Syria to create a de facto Sunni state that will be jointly-controlled by Ankara and Washington.  It also looks like Obama has agreed to use dodgy jihadi-proxies (aka–Terrorists) to work alongside US Special Forces to carry out future military operations.  So while the effort to remove Assad has been temporarily put on the backburner, the determination to destroy Syria is as strong as ever.

The Daily Mail in an detailed investigative report confirms that Israel is supporting Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists operating inside Syria. But it’s all for a good cause. The Jewish State is not in the business of supporting terrorism.

The Daily Mail describes the contours of a strictly humanitarian undertaking which consists in rescuing wounded rebel jihadist fighters:

Officially, Israel says that this operation is part of its programme of humanitarianism, which has provided aid to a long list of countries from Haiti to Nepal. Palestinian civilians are also regular patients at Israeli hospitals such as the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa. (Mail online, December 9, 2015)

“Israel insists that these treacherous nightly rescues are purely humanitarian… But analysts suggest the Jewish state has in fact struck a deadly ‘deal with the devil’ – offering support to the Sunni militants [ISIS and Al Nusrah] who fight the Syrian ruler Assad…” (Ibid)

Israel officially acknowledges that this program of “saving Syrians” (aka terrorists) has been ongoing since 2012:

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

The endeavor  operates under the auspices of the IDF out of the occupied Golan Heights. Israeli military personnel are providing direct support (weapons, supplies, logistics) to the terrorists inside Syria, in liaison and consultation with its allies including Turkey which provides hospital services to wounded fighters in Turkey’s hospitals as part of a broader program of support of the ISIS.

Reports confirm that upon their release from the hospital in the Golan heights, the wounded terrorists are not the object of arrest. They are send back to the battlefield inside Syria.

The Daily Mail report is confirmed by an earlier Foreign Policy article (quoting a UN mission report) which outlines Israel’s policy of treating wounded terrorists in Israeli hospitals.

Israel is  …  providing medical care and other unidentified supplies to the insurgents ….

In the past three months, battle-hardened Syrian rebels have transported scores of wounded Syrians across a cease-fire line that has separated Israel from Syria since 1974, according to a 15-page report by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the work of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). Once in Israel, they receive medical treatment in a field clinic before being sent back to Syria, where, presumably, some will return to carry on the fight.

U.N. blue helmets responsible for monitoring the decades-old cease-fire report observing armed opposition groups “transferring 89 wounded persons” from Syrian territory into Israel, where they were received by members of the Israel Defense Forces, according to the report. The IDF returned 21 Syrians to armed opposition members back in Syria, including the bodies of two who died.

“Throughout the reporting period, UNDOF frequently observed armed members of the opposition interacting with the IDF across the cease-fire line,” according to the report. “On one occasion UNDOF observed the IDF on the Alpha side [inside Israel] handing over two boxes to armed opposition on the Bravo side [inside Syria].”

***

The Israeli government has been providing medical assistance to Syria’s wounded for more than a year. In February [2014], Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to a military field hospital in the Golan Heights [see photo op below]. (FP, June 11, 2014)

 

 

As Republican presidential candidates lined up to one-up each other about how they would fight Islamic terrorism, many mainstream pundits questioned the hysteria and took particular aim at billionaire Donald Trump for seeking a moratorium on admitting Muslims to the United States, but Trump’s proposal was far from the most outrageous.

Getting much less attention was a statement by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is considered by many a more likely GOP nominee than Trump. Cruz suggested that the United States should nuke the territory in Iraq and Syria controlled by Islamic State militants.

“I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out,” Cruz told a Tea Party rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In reference to Cruz’s comment, a New York Times editorial added, “whatever that means.” But the phrase “glow in the dark” popularly refers to the aftermath of a nuclear bomb detonation.

In other words, Cruz was making it clear to his audience that he would be prepared to drop a nuclear bomb on Islamic State targets. While the bombastic senator from Texas was probably engaging in hyperbole – as he also vowed to “carpet bomb them into oblivion” – the notion of a major candidate for President cavalierly suggesting a nuclear strike would normally be viewed as disqualifying, except perhaps in this election cycle.

Image: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for U.S. President.

While Cruz drew little attention for his “glow in the dark” remark, Trump came under intense criticism for his proposal to block the admission of Muslims into the United States until the nation’s leaders can “figure out what is going on” in the aftermath of the Dec. 2 terror attack by a Muslim husband-and-wife team in San Bernardino, California.

Across mainstream politics and media, Trump’s idea was decried as both “unprecedented” from a top candidate for President and a likely violation of the U.S. Constitution which respects freedom of religion and requires equal protection under the law.

Other Republican candidates, even the more “moderate” ones, also talked tough about Muslims in what shaped up as a heated competition to outdo one another in appealing to the angry and frightened right-wing “base” of the GOP.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush argued that the threat from Muslims was unique: “The idea that somehow there are radical elements in every religion is ridiculous. There are no radical Christians that are organizing to destroy Western civilization. There are no radical Buddhists that are doing this. This is radical Islamic terrorism.”

Bush’s comment failed to recognize that the institution of Christianity has been at the center of “Western civilization” since the latter days of the Roman Empire and that “Christian” nations have routinely plundered other civilizations all over the planet, including across the Islamic world both in Asia and Africa. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Why Many Muslims Hate the West” and “Muslim Memories of West’s Imperialism.”]

Though inspired by a pacifist, Christianity has established a record as the most bloodthirsty religion in history, with its adherents conducting massacres and genocides in North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia – every continent except Antarctica, which is largely uninhabited by humans. In many cases, European Christians justified the repression and extermination of non-Christians as the will of God, deeming indigenous people to be “heathens.”

The violence by Western nations against Muslims also is not something confined to history books and the distant past. In 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair led an unprovoked invasion of Iraq which killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed much of Iraq’s national infrastructure.

In other words, in the view of many Middle Easterners, the West continues to wage war against their civilization. However, none of that reality is reflected in the current U.S. political and media debate, even when a major Republican candidate raises the prospect of dropping the Bomb.

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). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

On Monday, Donald Trump, the billionaire candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” following the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. This is only the latest in a series of increasingly fascistic and violent demands from the Republican frontrunner.

Although he went farther than other members of the US political establishment, Trump’s call was in line with remarks by other politicians, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who called for a ban on Muslim, but not Christian, refugees from Syria last month, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who said he had ordered state police to place mosques under surveillance.

David Bowers, the Democratic Party mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, last month approvingly invoked America’s history of interning Japanese Americans in concentration camps during the Second World War. “It appears that the threat of harm to America from ISIS now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then,” Bowers declared.

The resurgence of such reactionary political demands in the United States is mirrored in the other imperialist countries. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has branded opponents of the authorization of war in Syria as “terrorist sympathizers.” In France, Marine Le Pen’s neo-fascist National Front (FN) received the largest share of the vote in this week’s regional elections, amidst the effective abrogation of democratic rights by the government of President François Hollande and the promotion of a climate of fear and hysteria in the wake of the November 13 attacks in Paris.

Throughout Europe, there has been a deliberate whipping up of anti-Muslim chauvinism in response to the refugee crisis, as all the major powers seek to justify their plans for the expansion of war in Syria.

In the US, the statements by Trump have been met with self-righteous indignation by politicians and media figures, who claim they are shocked by his statements. Who are they kidding? The blathering of this fascistic imbecile expresses only in more concentrated form the perpetual hysteria one hears every day in the media. The difference between Trump and someone like CNN’s Wolf Blitzer is just a matter of degree. He is the product of a diseased political environment.

As for Obama, in his national address on Sunday, the president postured as a critic of Republican calls for targeting Muslims. Yet the Obama administration is responsible for the continuation of an imperialist policy in the Middle East that has devastated entire countries, with at least a million people, mainly Muslim, killed in the process.

The unleashing of the forces of extreme reaction is, in fact, an organic expression of the nature of imperialism itself. As Lenin stressed , imperialism is “reaction all down the line.” Writing in the midst of World War I, he wrote, “The difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated precisely because they are both rotting alive.” The putrefaction of contemporary capitalist society—based on parasitism, financial swindling, war and looting—is once again spewing up political filth in the form of racist demagogy.

The whole experience of the 20th century has demonstrated the fact that imperialist war is always accompanied by attacks on democratic rights and the whipping up of xenophobia. American involvement in World War I, nominally undertaken by Woodrow Wilson to make the world safe for democracy, brought with it the lynching of workers and the imprisonment of socialist leaders including Eugene V. Debs, followed by the anti-socialist Palmer Raids.

The period leading up to and during World War II brought with it unspeakable horrors, including the rise of fascism and the Nazi Party’s “final solution,” which led to the murder of 11 million people and the extermination of a large section of European Jewry. In the United States, the administration of Franklin Roosevelt oversaw the internment of Japanese Americans and the imprisonment of leading members of the Trotskyist movement under the Smith Act.

The period of the Korean War was the heyday of McCarthyite witch-hunts of socialists in the trade unions and entertainment industry. The French colonial war in Algeria brought the country to the brink of civil war, including the massacre of peaceful demonstrators and the invocation of a state of emergency. During the Vietnam War, the FBI in the US massively infiltrated political organizations and oversaw assassinations of oppositional figures, including leading members of the Black Panthers.

During every imperialist war, the ruling class seeks to cultivate the most backward and racist sentiments. The “war on terror,” which has led to the deaths of at least a million Muslims, is no different, creating an environment in which racist hysteria is relentlessly promoted in the media.

The deep social roots of the drive to war and the attack on democratic rights are demonstrated by the fact that the end of the Bush administration did not lead to a significant change in course. In fact, the abrogation of democratic rights continued under Obama, whose particular contribution was the institutionalization of state-sponsored murder as a central plank of American foreign policy.

The political impotence of what counts for contemporary liberalism, as well as the various pseudo-left organizations, is a result of the fact that they are deeply implicated in promoting and justifying war and militarism.

There is not widespread or deep-rooted popular support for the conceptions advocated by Trump and the political establishment as a whole, despite the constant barrage of media propaganda. But the organized expression of anti-imperialist and democratic sentiments depends on the independent political mobilization of the working class on the basis of a program directed at the source of war and political reaction: the capitalist system.