The US-led coalition’s reluctance to bomb Islamic State-controlled oil deposits in Syria has raised eyebrows, according to prominent Turkish journalist Alptekin Dursunoglu.

In an interview with Sputnik, eminent Turkish journalist Alptekin Dursunoglu voiced surprise about the US-led coalition’s reluctance to bomb Islamic State-controlled oil deposits in Syria, which he said are one of the key sources of income for the jihadist group.
He referred to the Islamic State’s smuggling of oil to Turkey via an illegal pipeline, the existence of which has yet to be confirmed, according to Dursunoglu.At the same time, he drew attention to the fact that the US-led air campaign never targeted the ISIL-controlled oil fields in Syria.”This fact really makes [me] wonder, given that one of the steps of Obama’s plan to fight ISIL was the destruction of sources of the Islamic State’s income,” Dursunoglu said.

To find the answer, it is necessary to discern who ordered the US and its allies not to bomb ISIL’s oil fields, he said, referring to previous activities by local officials nominated by the US.

Commenting on thousands of oil tanks supplied by ISIL, Dursunoglu wondered why American drones failed to track the convoy of such a big scale.

He also said that the delivery of oil is not the only source of income for the Islamic State, which he recalled was part of al-Qaeda in 2012.

“This unified organization deliberately avoided being named al-Qaeda. This organization got the considerable share of money that was delivered by the Gulf States and Turkey under the pretext of helping the Syrian opposition,” Dursunoglu said.

He quoted local humanitarian workers as saying in 2012 that the money was sent in “bags, suitcases and sacks.”

Dursunoglu added that apart from illegal oil trading and racketeering, the smuggling of antiques and historical artifacts, as well as human trafficking and the organ trade add significantly to the Islamic State’s coffers

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US Warplanes Avoid Bombing ISIS Held Syrian Oil Fields

November 13th, 2015 by Stephen Lendman

They provide a key source of ISIS income, millions of dollars through an illegal pipeline to Turkey where it’s sold, according to Turkish journalist Alptekin Dursunoglu, Sputnik News reported.

America’s bombing campaign avoided striking ISIS-held Syrian oil fields so far. “This fact really makes (me) wonder, given that one of the steps of Obama’s plan to fight ISIL was the destruction of sources of the Islamic State’s income,” Dursunoglu noted.

Drone and satellite spotted tanker trucks carrying ISIS oil are allowed to cross into Turkey freely. Did US tactics change? If so, why?

According to The New York Times, US warplanes are attacking “oil fields that the Islamic State controls in eastern Syria…” Claiming it’s to “disrupt one of the terrorist group’s main sources of revenue,” according to unnamed US officials is rubbish.

If Washington wanted this revenue source cut off, bombing the oil fields would have begun last year, disrupting them enough to halt production.

So why now and why not the essential distribution network, the pipeline used and openly visible tanker trucks?

Russia’s effective air campaign enables Syrian ground forces to make slow and steady gains, liberating areas ISIS formerly held, including breaking a two-year Aleppo province Kweiris airbase siege.

According to a Syrian military source, “(t)he army managed to break through to Kweiris defenders, lifting the siege which had lasted over two years.” It followed “the liberation of Sheikh Ahmad” village, two km from the base.

Syrian ground forces continue their slow and steady advance, including in Latakia province. They took control of Nawleh village near the Marj al-Sultan airbase.

A Syrian military source said “pro-government forces are now in control of 80 percent of the territories south of the strategic airport,” including the al-Mahalej area, south of Marj al-Sultan airbase. Its liberation appears next.

Weeks earlier, US warplanes attacked the Aleppo province 1,000 megawatt power plant and separate transformer complex, knocking out electricity for around 2.5 million residents – killing plant personnel and other civilians, not ISIS fighters, the terror attack ignored by US media scoundrels.

Another power station and distribution transformer east of Aleppo was struck days earlier. Vladmir Putin commented, saying:

 US warplanes “bombed out an electrical power plant and a transformer in Aleppo. Why have they done this? Whom have they punished there? What’s the point? Nobody knows.”

 Infrastructure is targeted and destroyed as part of Washington’s strategy in all wars – systematically turning nations to rubble, harming noncombatant civilians most.

 Attacking ISIS held Syrian oil fields now appears part of a plan to prevent their use by Damascus if its army regains control. They’ve been protected to provide income for America’s proxy terrorist foot soldiers.

 Washington wants Assad deprived of an important revenue source. If his forces recapture ISIS held oil fields and facilities, they’ll likely find them turned to rubble.

 The New York Times didn’t explain – saying nothing about Washington letting ISIS produce and transport Syrian oil freely so far, ignoring why tactics now may have changed, maintaining the fiction about America waging war on terrorism instead of informing readers about reality on the ground.

 Amply documented, Washington created ISIS and similar groups, using them strategically as proxy foot soldiers.

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.

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Federal Reserve Admits It Has No Idea What It’s Doing

November 13th, 2015 by Washington's Blog

AP reports today:

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is stressing the need to review the unconventional monetary policies that central banks around the world deployed in response to the 2008 global financial crisis.

She said Thursday that the post-crisis period offers policymakers an opportunity toassess the effectiveness of the tools and better understand the impact of new regulation.

“Policymakers have to carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of alternative monetary implementation frameworks in the presence of new policy tools,” Yellen said in remarks at a two-day research conference sponsored by the Fed.

Translation: We have no idea what’s going on, or whether or policies are helping or making things worse.

Also today, St. Louis Fed Chairman James Bullard said (via Zero Hedge):

The Fed “may need to alter some fundamental assumptions about how Fed policy works if U.S. stays in persistent state of low nominal rates, low inflation.”

***

But the most important thing Bullard said in his speech titled “Permazero” is that the the US may be entering a permanent period of lower inflation and interest rates. Wait, wasn’t ZIRP and QE supposed to push the US economy, boost inflation and hike rates?Good to know 7 years later that the biggest monetary experiment in history did precisely the opposite of what it was supposed to achieve.

We’ve noted for over 7 years that the Federal Reserve has no idea what it’s doing.

For many years, the world’s most prestigious financial institution, known as the “Central Banks’ Central Bank” – the Bank for International Settlements – has slammed the Fed’s policies of:

  • Letting big banks hide their debt, instead of making them write it off
  • Propping up too big to fail banks
  • Leaving interest rates too low for too long
  • Blowing bubbles
  • Using “gimmicks” and “palliatives” to try to paper over the mess

Indeed, one the Fed’s core tools – quantitative easing – which is aimed at boosting inflation, may actually CAUSE deflation.

Another core tool – creating a “wealth effect” – actually HARMS the broader economy in the long run.

Heck of a job …

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The austerity imposed on the Portuguese people by the One Percent has resulted in the election of a coalition government of socialists, communists, and a “left bloc.”  In the 20th century, socialism and the fear of communism humanized Europe, but beginning with Margaret Thatcher the achievements of decades of social reforms have been rolled back throughout Europe as bought-and-paid for governments have given all preference to the One Percent. Public assets are being privatized, and social pensions and services are being reduced in order to make interest payments to private banks.

When the recent Portuguese vote gave a majority to the anti-austerity bloc, the right-wing Portuguese president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, a creature of Washington and the big banks, announced that the leftwing would not be permitted to form a government, just as the senior British general announced that a Labour Government formed by Jeremy Corbyn would not be permitted to form.

True to her word, Anibal reappointed the austerity prime minister, Passos Coelho. However, the unity of the socialists with the communists and the left bloc swept Coelho from office and the president had to recognize a new government.

The new government means that for the first in a long time there is a government in Portugual that possibly could represent the people rather than Washington and the One Percent. However, if the new government leaves the banks in charge and remains committed to the EU, the current president, previous prime minister, and previous finance minister, Maria Luis Albuquerque, will continue to work to overthrow the people’s will as occurred in Greece.

The new Portuguese government cannot escape austerity without nationalizing the banks and leaving the EU. The failure of the Greek government to bite the bullet resulted in the Greek government’s acceptance of the austerity that it was elected to oppose.

In order to put the One Percent on the defensive, the new Portuguese government should begin investigations of Silva, Coelho, and Albuquerque. It is possible that they received payoffs for turning Portugal over to the One Percent to be looted.   The new Portuguese government should turn to the BRICS for trade and finance.  Otherwise, as in Greece, the Portuguese people will be defeated by the institutional arrangements comprising the Global World Order that the One Percent have put in place.

The Greeks are being publicly looted in full view by the One Percent, and the Greek government has submitted to the total ruination of Greece and the Greek people.

The same will happen to the Portuguese if the new government thinks that it can rule in a framework designed for rule by the One Percent. Without a Revolution, western peoples are doomed to penury and defeat. But there is no sign of a revolution in Portugal.

According to the Financial Times, representatives of the new socialist government have given reassurance that the new government will not abandon the austerity policies. Mario Centeno declared: “It’s not the direction we challenge, but the speed of travel.”

Centeno is a Harvard-trained neoliberal economist. He told the Financial Times that the new government was committed to remaining in the EU and would continue with the austerity program, only at a slower pace in order to reduce the adverse effects on employment. Centeno says that the new government has no intention of seeking debt writedowns. “Nobody with any sense thinks of not paying debts thay have contracted.”

In other words, things had to change in order to remain the same.

In his new book, Killing The Host, economist Michael Hudson makes many things clear, foremost of which is that as long as neoliberal economics reigns, so will the One Percent.

In the Western world democracy has been decapitated. In Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Latvia, and the United States itself, there is no connection between the will of the people and the policies of the government. Only in tiny Iceland did the people prevail over the banks. Everywhere else the people are forced to pay for the gambling losses and leveraged debts of the financial sector.

What we are witnessing is the re-enserfment of Western peoples.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

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Nato, il tabù della sinistra

November 13th, 2015 by Manlio Dinucci

Bombardare – ha dichiarato la ministra della Difesa Roberta Pinotti (Pd) – «non deve essere un tabù». Cade così in Italia ed Europa il tabù della guerra e, con esso, anche quello del nazismo.

A Kiev, riferisce l’Ansa in un documentato reportage (4 novembre), arrivano ogni settimana da mezza Europa (Italia compresa) e dagli Usa decine di «professionisti della guerra» reclutati soprattutto da Pravy Sektor e dal battaglione Azov, di chiara impronta nazista. I battaglioni neonazisti fanno parte della Guardia nazionale, addestrata da istruttori statunitensi e britannici. In tale ambito vengono addestrati e armati anche gli stranieri, inviati quindi a combattere nel Donbass contro i russi di Ucraina. Al rientro in patria, viene fornito loro «il passaporto ucraino, una sorta di lasciapassare che può servire in tutto il mondo».

Il quadro è chiaro. L’Ucraina di Kiev, di fatto già nella Nato sotto comando Usa, è divenuta il «santuario» del risorgente nazismo nel cuore dell’Europa.

Il regime di Kiev ha messo fuori legge non solo il Partito comunista ma il comunismo in quanto tale, la cui professione viene considerata reato. Ha trasformato l’Ucraina in centro di reclutamento di neonazisti provenienti da paesi europei ed extraeuropei, di fatto selezionati, addestrati e armati dalla Nato.

Dopo essere stati messi alla prova in azioni militari reali nel Donbass, vengono fatti rientrare con il «lasciapassare» del passaporto ucraino nei loro paesi, Italia compresa. Qui i più capaci entrano nella nuova Gladio, pronta, se necessario, a provocare altre «piazze Maidan» (o peggio) in Europa. Tutto questo con la connivenza dei governi europei.

A chi considera tale scenario «complottista», consigliamo di visionare l’intervento di Ferdinando Imposimato, Presidente onorario della Suprema Corte di Cassazione, al Convegno internazionale organizzato a Roma il 26 ottobre dal Comitato No Guerra No Nato. Egli afferma che «nelle indagini che ho fatto sulle stragi, da quella di Piazza Fontana a quelle di Capaci e di Via d’Amelio, si è accertato che l’esplosivo utilizzato veniva dalle basi Nato». Qui «si riunivano terroristi neri, ufficiali della Nato, mafiosi, uomini politici italiani e massoni, alla vigilia di attentati. E questo accade dai primi anni Sessanta ininterrottamente».

In tale situazione, continua invece a dominare, nella sinistra italiana ed europea, il tabù della Nato. In Italia, nessun partito dell’opposizione parlamentare ha nel suo programma l’uscita dalla Nato.

In Grecia, Syriza ha di fatto cancellato dal suo programma l’obiettivo di «chiudere tutte le basi straniere in Grecia e uscire dalla Nato», come quello di «abolire gli accordi di cooperazione militare con Israele», che sono stati invece rafforzati da quello sottoscritto lo scorso luglio da Panos Kammenos, fondatore del partito di destra Anel, al quale il governo Tsipras ha affidato il ministero della difesa.

Lo stesso in Spagna, dove Podemos, che aveva nel suo programma un referendum per l’uscita della Spagna dalla Nato, lo ha ridimensionato mettendo nel programma per le elezioni del 20 dicembre l’obiettivo di «una maggiore autonomia strategica di Spagna ed Europa in seno alla Nato».

Sergio Pascual, dirigente e candidato di Podemos a Siviglia, dichiara che, riguardo alle basi Usa in Spagna, «rispetteremo fino all’ultima virgola gli accordi sottoscritti dal nostro paese». Il generale Julio Rodriguez, candidato di Podemos quale futuro ministro della difesa, ribadisce che «la Nato è necessaria». Come lo era nel 2011 quando Rodriguez, già capo di stato maggiore, collaborava, come capo della missione spagnola nella Nato, al bombardamento della Libia.

Manlio Dinucci

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The emergence of ISIL and terrorist fundamentalism throughout Syria and the Middle East can be traced directly to the decision of Bush and Blair to accede to the demands from Sharon and Netanyahu for America and Britain to illegally attack Iraq to effect regime change in order to neutralise one of Israel’s perceived enemies.

The consequences have been, and are, catastrophic for the entire Middle East and now menace the stability of the entire European Union. This has arguably led to the most serious threat to Europe and the world, since 1939. 

Extract from Mark Weber’s article “Iraq: a war for Israel”

“While the unprovoked US invasion of Iraq may have helped Israel, just as those who wanted and planned for the war had hoped, it has been a calamity for America and the world. It has cost many tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Around the world, it has generated unmatched distrust and hostility toward the US. In Arab and Muslim countries, it has fueled intense hatred of the United States, and has brought many new recruits to the ranks of anti­-American terrorists.

Americans have already paid a high price for their nation’s commitment to Israel. We will pay an ever higher price ­ not just in dollars or international prestige, but in the lives of young men squandered for the interests of a foreign state ­ until the ­Zionist hold on US political life is finally broken.”

Notes:
 
Author Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical Review.

 

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Britain’s Daily Mail reported it, saying this unmatched state-of-the-art system NATO calls the SA-21 ‘Growler’ was deployed at Syria’s coastal Latakia airbase.

It’s a formidable defensive system, able to strike targets up to 400 km away at altitudes up to 90,000 feet, including ballistic and cruise missiles.

It can distinguish between airborne and ground-based targets. Its sophisticated radar spots everything within its range, including tiny aircraft and stealth ones at low or high-flying altitudes.

According to an S-400 battery commander, “there is no such thing as ‘stealth’ aircraft. The system (can) see it and shoot it down.”

It’s operative at a moment’s notice, able to simultaneously engage up to 36 targets with up to 72 missiles. Three separate types are used – extremely long range 40N6, long range 48N6 and medium range 9M96 missiles.

Its effectiveness can neutralize US-led NATO air power. The system reportedly was deployed to protect Russian aircraft and personnel at Syria’s Latakia airbase.

According to the Daily Mail, Russia’s Defense Ministry invited around “50 foreign journalists to the airbase where the (system) could be clearly seen.”

It’s able to reach targets in most Syrian areas, as well as “southern Turkey, Cyprus, the eastern Mediterranean and much of Israel.”

Their deployment along with state-of-the-art Russian warplanes, gives Moscow control of Syrian airspace, able to effectively counter adversaries, a clear message to Washington not to interfere with its anti-terrorist campaign.

Previous generation S-300 systems reportedly will be delivered to Iran no later than March 2016, perhaps as early as yearend 2015, according to Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan.

Iranian forces are currently being trained to operate them. They’re able to hit multiple ground or airborne targets with up to 200 km away.

A new S-500 Prometheus air defense system is scheduled to be ready for service sometime next year. It’s currently being produced, intended mainly for Russian areas bordering NATO states.

RT International called its upgraded 40N6 missile “a genuine breakthrough for Russia’s national airspace defense as it significantly alters the operational capability of missile systems already in service.”

Russia currently has in place about “2,000 systems of various modifications of S-300 Favorite and first-rate S-400 Triumph.”

When operational, the S-500 will be able to hit targets up to 600 km away up to “low earth orbit” altitudes, at speeds up to seven km per second – the top ballistic missile speed reached at its highest trajectory in space.

S-class missile defense systems are fully mobile, areas where deployed easily shifted as conditions warrant.

Weeks of anti-terrorist combat operations in Syria clearly demonstrated Russia’s formidable military capability – its S-400 and soon-to-be-available S-500 SAMs another dimension to its offensive and defensive strength.

Separately, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commended Syrian military successes in recent weeks, saying:

“The offensive operations of the Syrian army continue with very positive dynamics. We know that over the past few weeks a number of strategic successes have been achieved by the Syrian military…with (effective) support of Russian aircraft…”

ISIS responded, releasing a five-minute video threatening retaliatory attacks in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. It claimed responsibility for twin Thursday Beirut suicide attacks, killing at least 43, injuring over 200 others.

A third attacker was killed before detonating his explosive belt, according to a Lebanese security official. The Shiite area struck is considered a Hezbollah stronghold.

Lebanon was targeted by explosions earlier this year, killing dozens. These type attacks can happen anywhere – maybe just a matter of time before one or more US and/or European cities are targeted, either by ISIS or a false flag attributed to them to enlist public support for continued imperial wars.

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.

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Lethal Israeli Raid on Hebron Hospital Sparks New Protests

November 13th, 2015 by Bill Van Auken

Thousands of Palestinians protested Thursday following the funeral in Hebron for 28-year-old Abdullah Azzam Shalaldah, shot to death by undercover Israeli gunmen who carried out an assault on the local al-Ahli Hospital to abduct his wounded cousin, Azzam Ezzat Shalaldah.

The hospital raid by Israeli security forces disguised as Palestinians signals a further escalation of the brutal and lawless repression that has claimed at least 83 Palestinian lives since the beginning of October.

The director of the hospital, Jihad Shawar, said that the raiding party consisting of between 30 and 40 men, including one who pretended to be a pregnant woman going into labor, entered the facility at about 3am Thursday.

“They headed straight towards the surgery ward, where Azzam al-Shalaldeh was being treated,” Dr. Shawar told Al Jazeera. When the patient’s cousin Abdullah came out of the bathroom, he was shot multiple times in the head and body, he said.

“They kept the hospital’s medical crew as hostages at gun point. They arrested the patient and took him away, leaving his cousin [to] bleed to death,” Dr. Shawar added.

Their objective was his 20-year-old cousin, Azzam Ezzat Shalaldah, who was shot by a Zionist settler last month in the head and chest as he was harvesting olives.

The young man’s brother, Bilal, told Reuters that when the undercover unit entered the hospital room they tied him to a bed. His cousin, Abdullah, “was inside the bathroom and wanted to wash for prayer. As he was exiting the bathroom, one of the undercover men shouted at him to stop and they opened fire,” he said.

“He remained on the ground bleeding and they hit my brother on the head and took him away,” he added.

A video taken by hospital security cameras shows the Israeli raiding party coming into the hospital, some wearing fake beards and others women’s clothing and then pulling out firearms and rushing the surgical ward. They are seen roughing up one medical staff member before reemerging pushing Shalaldah in a wheelchair. The undercover unit, which is reportedly made up of Israeli soldiers, members of the Shin Bet secret police and border police, was seen recently attempting to blend in with Palestinian demonstrators and then pulling out guns and shooting them at close range.

Israeli security sources claimed that Shalaldah stabbed the Zionist settler who shot him and that he was from a family connected to Hamas, the Islamist party that controls the government in the occupied Gaza strip.

The Shin Bet issued a statement declaring that that the Israeli security forces “will not allow safe refuge for terrorist operatives, whoever they are.”

The attack was immediately condemned by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which had been treating the abducted man in its Mental Health Support Program “for victims of political violence.”

MSF called the raid a serious violation of “the principles of neutrality and respect of the medical mission.”

The charity, which saw at least 30 staff members and patients slaughtered last month in a US airstrike against its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, added, “International Humanitarian Law requires the respect of health facilities and forbids any intrusion of the armed forces in these structures.”

Amnesty International also condemned the raid, charging that the shooting of the patient’s cousin appeared to be an “extrajudicial execution.”

“The fact that Abdullah Shalaldah was shot in the head and upper body suggests that this was an extrajudicial execution, adding to a disturbing pattern of similar recent incidents by Israeli forces in the West Bank which warrant urgent investigation,”

said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Amnesty International.

Amnesty cited a series of extrajudicial executions carried out by Israeli forces. These include the shooting death of 72-year-old Tharwat al-Sharawi, who Israeli security forces claim was trying to ram them with her car when they opened fire and killed her. Video of the incident shows the car moving at a slow rate of speed toward the soldiers, who shot her to death after getting out of the car’s way.

It also recounted the execution of Mahdi al-Muhtasib, 23, who was shot by Israeli soldiers after reportedly lightly wounding one of them in a stabbing attack in Hebron. “Video of the aftermath of the incident shows Mahdi al-Muhtasib writhing in pain on the ground before an Israeli soldier, standing a distance of some meters away, shoots him again,” the Amnesty report stated.

The current unrest was provoked when right-wing Zionist elements, backed by the security forces, began demanding access to the Al-Aqsa mosque complex, clashing with Palestinians, whose access to the mosque has been increasingly restricted.

Underlying the Palestinian resistance, however, is the mounting violence by Zionist settlers and Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank and the steady expansion of Zionist settlements in the territory.

The latest wave of unrest has seen a series of attacks by young lone Palestinians armed with stones, screwdrivers and knives as well as using their cars that have killed 10 Israelis. The deaths of eight Palestinians for every Israeli killed, not to mention the thousands of Palestinians who have been wounded, has done nothing to blunt the media’s portrayal of the unrest as the work of “terrorists” and hardline Islamists.

The Israeli intelligence services apparently have a somewhat more realistic appraisal. The Israeli daily Haaretz Thursday cited a Shin Bet report concluding that the youths engaging in the attacks are not acting on anyone’s orders but are motivated by “feelings of national, economic and personal deprivation.”

The newspaper also said that intelligence officials “are pessimistic about the long-range situation,” concluding that “the mechanism of constraints that Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) imposed, and that kept the West Bank more or less stable for a decade, is unraveling.”

So discredited is the PA that there was reportedly widespread speculation that it had been complicit in Thursday’s hospital raid.

Last March, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council took the decision to “end security coordination in all its forms with the Israeli occupation” because of the systematic violation of previous accords by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Eight months later, no action has been taken on this decision, which would disrupt the operations of the Palestinian Authority and cut across the considerable economic interests of its leading personnel.

Meanwhile, the draconian Israeli security crackdown continues to intensify. At least 416 Palestinians, including 122 minors, have been detained by Israeli security forces in the first 12 days of November. Last month, nearly 1,000 Palestinians, including 147 children, were detained, according to the prisoner’s rights group Addameer.

Also on Thursday, Israel’s High Court of Justice overturned a lower court ruling, lifting a temporary injunction on the demolition of the homes of Palestinian families of youth accused of carrying out attacks on Israelis. The policy of expedited home demolitions was implemented by the government in an attempt to suppress the unrest through a punitive act of collective punishment.

While the home demolitions will go forward, the judge who issued the injunction, Uzi Vogelman, has been assigned a personal bodyguard because of death threats from right-wing elements in Israeli.

The Obama administration in Washington has stood squarely behind the Netanyahu government as it prosecutes its repressive campaign. During a visit by Netanyahu to the White House Monday, the US president endorsed the crackdown, condemning in “the strongest terms Palestinian violence,” while reaffirming his “strong belief that Israel has not just the right, but the obligation to protect itself.”

The two reportedly discussed an Israeli request to increase annual US military aid to Israel to $5 billion for each of the next ten years.

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International media has been actively discussing the recent publication of the British edition of Mirror Online featuring shocking footage of Islamic State (ISIL) militants gunning down a total of 200 children, with their hands tied behind their backs.

It should be noted that it is not the first time that militants executed their captives, but such massive public executions haven’t yet been published on the Internet. Although there’s no way to establish the veracity of the footage, it’s but one case in a series of documented violence and criminal activities of the terrorist “Islamic State.” It is this very group that is not ashamed of its twisted fantasies of abusing and killing civilians, which also tries to establish prominence through these very acts of violence.

ISIL militants have repeatedly uploaded footage of executions of their prisoners on the Internet. In some of those videos, captives are run over by a tank, or dragged behind a speeding car, some victims were burned alive, blown up, beheaded or had their throats cut. It’s clear that we are witnessing a barbaric rendition of the Nazi’s atrocities, even a bold attempt to surpass them.

The same uncontrolled violence has been applied to those ISIL militants that have fled the field of battle, as was the case with the recent execution of deserters in the northeastern Iraqi city of Baiji.

ISIS savages gun down 200 Syrian children in mass execution

Vile: ISIS savages have reportedly gunned down 200 Syrian children in a mass execution (Source Mirror)

There’s little doubt that the so-called Islamic State, a self-proclaimed, unrecognized quasi-state with its Sharia “capital” in the occupied Syrian city of Raqqa, is one of the most significant threats to global security. In just three years these terrorists have managed to capture vast areas in Iraq and Syria. In addition, they’ve been trying to expand their influence into the countries of North Africa, namely in Libya, Central Asia, the Caucasus and other regions. According to various estimates, in June 2015, the Islamic State occupied the territory of some 300,000 square kilometers with a population of around 8 million people, mainly composed of Sunnis. Back in May of this year ISIL controlled 50% of Syria’s territory and 40% of Iraq’s territory.

Neither Al-Qaeda, nor any other known terrorist group has such a complex organizational structure. In fact, the Islamic State has a lot of attributes of a real state, with its own income, social support programs, propaganda machine and rigid control over its occupied lands.

As for the growing need for weapons that the Islamic State faces as it expands, there’s a considerable body of evidence suggesting that it is using US army munitions, stolen from Iraqi stockpiles and taken from Syrian opposition forces supplied by Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the US. After the capture of Palmyra and Idlib, the Islamic State has acquired tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, anti-tank missiles and heavy artillery – they have even gotten their hands on American MANPADS – portable anti-air missile systems.

The close ties that the US and its allies have with the Islamic State have been reported by various media sources from around the world, while providing a large amount of evidence that not only testify to the involvement of the White House in the creation of ISIL, but Washington’s participation in the training of its militants. In particular, this statement can be exemplified by the publication of a report drafted by prominent  US political pundit and essayist Noam Chomsky in the Egyptian Al-Ahram newspaper back in November 2014, where he stated that ISIL is the direct result of US and Saudi Arabian policies.

This fact is confirmed by statements of Iraqi authorities released in March, according to which they have arrested three American military advisers that assisted ISIL in the preparation of military operations in Iraq. There is also evidence regarding the involvement of US intelligence in the arming of ISIL militants. For these purposes, military transport aircraft, flying from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been used.

In November 2014 the Iraqi Intelligence Service released an official report which stated that ISIL was being assisted in the fight against Iraqi security forces by the US, carried out in the form of weapons crates being dropped by US military transport planes to ISIL fighters.

In June 2014 Aaron Klein in an article for «World Net Daily» reported that ISIL militants were trained in Jordan in 2012 under the supervision of American instructors, whose activities were strictly classified.

The conservative organization Judicial Watch published declassified reports of the US State Department and the US Department of Defense, presenting evidence that in 2012 the intelligence services and the US administration deliberately assisted ISIL terrorists, in hopes that this terrorist group would help them topple the legitimate Syrian government and assist in other political adventures of the White House, similar to the well-known plot in which the US provided support to Al-Qaeda in its confrontation with the Soviet military in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

As a result of the lawlessness and terror imposed by the Islamic State on its occupied territories, thousands of civilians have perished, and millions of refugees lost their homes and are now trying to seek refuge in the countries of the Middle East, Turkey and Europe. In their brutality, ISIL militants have already surpassed Nazi Germany’s war criminals, who had subsequently faced trial on October 1, 1946 in Nuremberg to receive justice for their barbaric acts.

So what is preventing the international community from establishing a similar tribunal on the basis of international law, that will pass its judgement on the criminal activities of the Islamic State and those countries and political forces that have been supporting them?

Vladimir Platov, expert specialized on the Middle East region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.

First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/12/isil-and-its-supporters-must-face-international-trial/

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Los investigadores rusos han trasladado hasta Egipto un complejo equipamiento para realizar el análisis de los restos internos y externos del avión siniestrado. Ese equipamiento permite detectar e identificar los rastros de explosivo mediante el uso de un aerosol, cuyo nivel de sensibilidad es de hasta 20 nanogramos. Si en la solución del test aparecen tonos de matices pardo-violeta, hay rastros de TNT; si hay un precipitado naranja, se trata de Tetryl o de otro explosivo del grupo A (TNB, DNT, ácido pícrico, etc.). El sistema ruso consta de un conjunto de tests separados para los explosivos del grupo B. De esa manera, la aparición en la solución de un tono de color rosa indica la presencia de rastros de dinamita, nitroglicerina, RDX, PETN, SEMTEX o de nitrocelulosa. Si las reacciones químicas no identifican la presencia de explosivos del grupo A o B, el test verifica automáticamente si existen rastros de compuestos que contengan nitratos inorgánicos, cloro, bromo o peróxido, sustancias utilizadas en la preparación de explosivos de tipo artesanal (ANFO).

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El diario egipcio Almasry Alyum publicó una declaración del equipo de investigadores que señala que no han encontrado rastros de explosivos ni en los restos del A321 ruso que se estrelló en la península del Sinaí ni en las muestras de tejidos recogidas de los cuerpos de las víctimas. Por consiguiente, la hipótesis divulgada por los funcionarios británicos que afirmaban que la caída del avión fue causada por la explosión de una bomba a bordo del aparato, hipótesis supuestamente derivada de la intercepción de una conversación entre dirigentes del Emirato Islámico, resulta falsa.

También se desmorona así la hipótesis de un ataque realizado con un misil tierra-aire o aire-aire ya que las ojivas de esos misiles contienen TNT, sustancia no hallada en los restos del avión. También hay que descartar la hipótesis de la explosión de un motor ya que los álabe o paletas de las turbinas del avión fueron halladas intactas [Ver imagen].

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Lo mismo sucede con la hipótesis de la explosión de uno de los tanques de carburante ya que estos están situados en las alas del avión y la explosión de uno de ellos habría desprendido del fuselaje el ala afectada. Las dos alas del avión cayeron a tierra enteras, a pocos metros de la parte delantera del fuselaje y se!quemaron posteriormente, lo cual indica que no se desprendieron del fuselaje y que no hubo incendio en los tanques de carburante antes del contacto con el suelo.

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Por lo tanto, el mito fabricado por la televisión estadounidense NBC, según la cual el Pentágono declaró que un satélite militar estadounidense había detectado un flash de calor y de luz en el lugar y momento de la catástrofe resulta ser una mentira. A fin de cuentas, tanto el Emirato Islámico como cualquier otra organización terrorista se encuentran así exentos de responsabilidad en la catástrofe del Airbus A321 en el Sinaí, lo cual parece incomodar mucho a estadounidenses y británicos. ¿Por qué?

La despresurización del avión sigue siendo una hipótesis, pero únicamente como consecuencia de las maniobras caóticas del avión y no como una causa en sí misma. Como ya señalé en mi anterior artículo [1], los bruscos descensos y ascensos repetitivos, con sobrecargas positivas y negativas más allá de los límites normales para un avión de pasajeros, son lo que provocó la separación de los paneles de revestimientos, la torsión y dislocación de ciertos elementos de resistencia en la estructura del avión y la ruptura de conductos hidráulicos fijados a los paneles de revestimiento. En ausencia de presión hidráulica, la tripulación del avión no puede controlar la profundidad ni la dirección. El ruido anormal en la cabina, comprobado durante el análisis de la caja negra, indica probablemente la deshermetización, seguida de la dislocación de los pedazos del avión a una altitud de 5 000 o 6 000 metros, como lo confirma el impacto de los grandes fragmentos del avión en un área de más de 2 kilómetros en el sentido del vuelo.

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Volvamos a las 06 horas con 12 minutos y 59 segundos, en el momento del accidente, para tratar de descifrar cada una de las fluctuaciones de los parámetros de vuelo. Es fundamental subrayar el hecho que el avión vuela en ese momento bajo el control del piloto automático. En un primer momento, tenemos un descenso de 3 segundos, con una pérdida de altitud de 150 metros, que provoca una sobrecarga negativa de 2g. Esa maniobra es demasiado brusca, con una sensación de «bolsa de aire», para que haya sido realizada por la tripulación.

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La segunda maniobra es un reascenso del avión, que sube 800 metros en 2 o 3 segundos, provocando sobrecargas positivas de 5 a 6g, que sólo se realizan en los aviones de caza, durante los combates aéreos a corta distancia, y que provocan al piloto una pérdida de la visión, conocida como «velo negro» en la jerga de la aeronáutica. En mi opinion, es imposible que esa maniobra la haya realizado la tripulacion. Sólo pudo generarla un piloto automático defectuoso. Si los pilotos hubiesen estado al mando, después del primer descenso brutal del avión habrían recuperado altura poco a poco, primero horizontalmente, durante 8 o 10 segundos, para iniciar después un ascenso progresivo hasta recuperar la altitud de crucero.

La tercera maniobra fue pasar de un ascenso en ángulo de 40 o 50 grados en relación con el plano horizontal, a un ángulo de picada de 20 a 30 grados con una sobrecarga negativa de 4g y esa maniobra es imposible de ejecutar para la tripulación de un avión de pasajeros ya que todo el mundo se desmayaría con la aparición del «velo rojo». Los únicos momentos en que la tripulacion hubiese podido intervenir son los breves instantes de vuelo horizontal, de 5 segundos y 3 segundos, interrumpidos por otros movimientos descontrolados. En un funcionamiento normal, el centro aerodinámico del piloto automático no permite la realización de maniobras que provoquen sobrecargas cercanas a la ruptura de las estructuras, ni siquiera si el piloto [humano] tratara de hacerlas con los mandos. La causa de esas maniobras caóticas sólo puede ser, por consiguiente, resultado del mal funcionamiento del mecanismo del piloto automático.

Fuera de un mal funcionamiento del ordenador del piloto automático como resultado del desgaste, yo había explicado en un artículo anterior que era posible apoderarse del control del avión desde el exterior del mismo, gracias a una intrusión en el programa informático del piloto automático, ya sea mediante un programa introducido de antemano o a través de una transmisión desde tierra. Por una extraña «coincidencia», desde el primer segundo en que aparecieron las maniobras caóticas, tanto el transpondedor como la radio del avión cesaron de transmitir datos al control terrestre. [De haber seguido funcionando,] el transpondedor habría indicado a los controladores aéreos los parámetros de vuelo del avión y, utilizando la radio del avión, la tripulación habría podido señalar la aparición de una urgencia y habría descrito el comportamiento del avión.

Lo que ocasionó, en ese preciso momento, el mal funcionamiento del piloto automático sólo podrá determinarlo la comisión investigadora.

Valentin Vasilescu
Articulo original em rumano, traduzido por reseauinternational.net
Traduzido del francés por voltairenet.org
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Interesting stuff today.  A major Russian TV channel just aired a report about Putin meeting with his top military commanders.  I don’t have the time to translate what Putin said word for word, but basically he said that the USA had refused every single Russian offer to negotiate about the US anti-missile system in Europe and that while the US had initially promised that the real target of this system was Iran, now that the Iranian nuclear issue had been solved, the US was still deploying the system.  Putin added that the US was clearly attempting to change the world’s military balance.  And then the Russian footage showed this:

Status6According to the Kremlin was mistakenly leaked secret document.  And just to make sure that everybody got it, RT wrote a full article in English about this in an article entitled “‘Assured unacceptable damage’: Russian TV accidentally leaks secret ‘nuclear torpedo’ design“. According to RT

The presentation slide titled “Ocean Multipurpose System: Status-6” showed some drawings of a new nuclear submarine weapons system. It is apparently designed to bypass NATO radars and any existing missile defense systems, while also causing heavy damage to “important economic facilities” along the enemy’s coastal regions. The footnote to the slide stated that Status-6 is intended to cause “assured unacceptable damage” to an adversary force. Its detonation “in the area of the enemy coast” would result in “extensive zones of radioactive contamination” that would ensure that the region would not be used for “military, economic, business or other activity” for a “long time.” According to the blurred information provided in the slide, the system represents a massive torpedo, designated as “self-propelled underwater vehicle,” with a range of up to 10 thousand kilometers and capable of operating at a depth of up to 1,000 meters.

Actually, such ideas are nothing new.  The late Andrei Sakharov had already proposed a similar idea to basically wipe out the entire US East Coast.  The Russians have also look into the possibility to detonate a nuclear device to set off the “Yellowstone Caldera” and basically destroy most of the USA in one shot.  While in the early years following WWII the Soviets did look into all sort of schemes to threaten the USA with destruction, the subsequent development of Soviet nuclear capabilities made the development of this type of “doomsday weapons” useless.  Personally, I don’t believe for one second that the Russians are now serious about developing such system as it would be literally a waste of resources.  So what is going on here?

This so-called “leak” of “secret documents” is, of course, no leak at all.  This is a completely deliberate action.  To imagine that a Russian journalist could, just by mistake, film a secret document (helpfully held up for him by a general) and then just walk away, get it passed his editor and air it is laughable.  Any footage taken in a meeting of the President with his senior generals would be checked many times over.  No, this was a deliberate way to remind the USA that if they really are hell-bent on spending billions of dollars in a futile quest to create some kind of anti-missile system Russia could easily develop a cheap weapon system to still threaten the USA with total annihilation.  Because, make no mistake, the kind of long range torpedo being suggested here would be rather cheap to build using only already existing technologies.  I would even add that rather than setting such a weapon off the US coast the system could also be designed to fire off a secondary missile (ballistic or cruise) which could then fly to any inland target.  Again, such technologies already exist in the Russian military and have even been deployed on a smaller scale. See for yourself:

Coming back to the real world, I don’t believe for one second that any type of anti-missile system could be deployed in Europe to shield NATO the EU or the US from a Russian retaliatory strike should the Empire ever decide to attack Russia.  All the East Europeans are doing is painting a cross-hair on themselves as these will be the very first targets to be destroyed in case of a crisis.  How? By use of special forces first and, if needed, by Iskander missile strikes if all else fails.  But the most likely scenario is that key components of the anti-missile system will suddenly experience “inexplicable failures” which will render the entire system useless.  The Russians know that and so do the Americans.  But just to make sure that everybody got the message the Russians have now shown that even a fully functional and survivable US anti-missile system will not protect anybody from a Russian retaliation.

The sad thing is that US analysts all fully understand that but they have no say in a fantastically corrupt Pentagon.

The real purpose of the US program is not to protect anybody against a non-existing Russian threat, but to dole out billions of dollars to US corporations and their shareholders.  And if in the process the US destabilizes the entire planet and threatens the Russians – then “to hell with ‘em Russikes!  We are the indispensable nation and f**k the rest of the planet!”  Right?

Wrong.

What happened today is a gentle reminder of that.

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Germany Moves to Seal External Borders against Refugees

November 13th, 2015 by Christoph Dreier

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière declared this week that refugees arriving on the German border will be deported back to the first European Union country they entered, in a reversal of policies that have been in place since August.

Germany’s move to strengthen its border regime will have catastrophic humanitarian consequences, intensify tensions in Europe and increase the danger of war. It reflects the fact that a small, right-wing cabal around de Maizière and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is increasingly determining the German government’s refugee policies.

De Maizière said Tuesday that Syrian refugees arriving on the German border were being treated according to the Dublin agreement, and that this had been the case since October 21. The Dublin III protocol provides that refugees must make an asylum application in the country they enter first in the EU. If they make an application in another country, they can be deported to the original country of entry. The only exception currently is Greece, according to the ministry.

In addition, refugees from Syria are not being provided protection in accordance with the Geneva Conventions on refugees. The vast majority of Syrian refugees, who traveled through Turkey or other allegedly “safe countries of origin” during their journey, will only receive subsidiary protection. They will receive the right to reside for just one year rather than three years, and they cannot bring their family members to Germany.

The ministry thereby reversed its decision of August 21 to suspend the Dublin regulations and grant Syrian refugees protection in accordance with the Geneva Convention on refugees. Three months ago, the opening of Germany’s borders was justified on the basis of humanitarianism, because tens of thousands of refugees were gathering on the EU’s external borders and could not be properly cared for.

The decision has not been overturned because the humanitarian situation has improved. On the contrary, conditions facing refugees in Greece and on the Balkan route have deteriorated further. Regardless, the German government has decided to junk its humanitarian gestures and to aggressively deter refugees. This decision has wide-ranging implications.

In essence, Germany is rejecting all responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria. This is because, according to the Dublin regulations, Greece, Italy and Hungary would be responsible for the vast majority migrants. Concretely, this could result in large numbers of people being stranded in the Balkans and on the EU’s external borders. The result would not only lead to a humanitarian catastrophe, but also put into question the continued existence of the EU.

On Monday Jean Asselborn, foreign minister of Luxembourg, warned of precisely such a scenario. “The European Union could break apart. This can take place with incredible speed, if closed borders instead of solidarity is the rule internally as well as externally,” he said. “This false nationalism can lead to a real war.” In particular, decisions by Sweden or Germany to close their borders would lead to uncontrollable developments in the Balkans.

The Joint Analysis and Strategy Centre for Illegal Migration (GASiM), which has close ties to Germany’s security apparatus, claims that such a situation could result in borders being stormed, according to an internal paper reported on by Welt am Sonntag. “A dead end in the Balkans could produce panic among refugees and authorities.” At the same time, it noted that the “prevention of any crossing of the land borders” would only be “realistic with high levels of personnel and technical resources.” Authorities working within GASiM include the German intelligence agencies, several police authorities and the federal office for migration and refugees.

The German government is striving to implement such a closure, even though an interior ministry spokesman stated that there would be “no turning back at the borders,” only regulated deportations. The Swedish government responded Wednesday to the German measure by announcing its own border controls. Like Hungary, Slovenia has begun building a border fence.

Criticisms from the press and the opposition that the interior ministry’s plans are impossible to implement because hardly any refugees arriving in Germany have been registered in another country are worthless.

In fact, the German government is currently working hard to establish so-called “hot spots” on the EU’s external borders, where all arriving refugees will be registered by EU border protection officers. The first “hot spot” on the Italian island of Lampedusa is already in operation. Additional registration centres are planned on the Balkan route.

The interior ministry’s decision to revert to the Dublin regulations is in keeping with the agenda of the right-wing conservative parties, the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union. The news magazine Der Spiegel cited a draft of the main motion to the CSU’s party congress, to be held next week, in which the newly announced regulations are found reproduced practically word for word.

The Dublin agreement had to be “fully brought back into force so that asylum seekers who have travelled through safe third countries can be sent back,” the resolution states. “The bringing of family members must be suspended to the greatest extent possible. Where this is legally not possible, it must be restricted to the fewest possible cases.”

On the question of the refusal to recognise refugees according to the Geneva Conventions, the interior ministry is also following the CSU’s line, which states,

“This includes differentiating between protection according to the Geneva Conventions and subsidiary protection. It is not the same if someone as a relative must fear for their life because they are a member of a persecuted group, or if they have made their way to us from noncombat areas or safe refugee camps.”

The decision to make the CSU’s line the centrepiece of German refugee policy was reached without any consultation with the chief of the Chancellor’s Office, Peter Altmeier (CDU), who is formally responsible for coordinating refugee policy. The co-governing Social Democrats also said they had not been informed about the changes.

Despite this, there were no serious protests against the interior ministry’s wide-ranging measures. SPD Deputy Chairman Ralf Stegner merely accused de Maizière of “a lack of communication.” His actions will have little consequence in any case. CDU/CSU fraction leader Volker Kauder denied there was any disagreement between the interior ministry and the chancellor’s office. “Angela Merkel has had a clear idea for a long time how to respond to the movement of refugees,” he said.

The right wing of the CDU/CSU has stepped up its offensive. Schäuble (CDU) has compared refugees arriving to an “avalanche” which must be stopped quickly. He thereby directly lined up with those conducting right-wing populist agitation against refugees.

The ruling elite is responding to the refugee crisis, which they themselves provoked with their wars in the Middle East, by shifting sharply to the right. The inhuman measures directed at refugees, the most vulnerable members of society, are ultimately aimed at the entire working class of Europe.

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The Kremlin has confirmed “some secret data” was accidentally leaked when Russian TV stations broadcast material apparently showing blueprints from a nuclear torpedo, designed to be used against enemy coastal installations.

During President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with military officials in Sochi, where the development of Russia’s military capabilities were being discussed, a number of TV crews were able to capture footage of a paper that was certainly not meant for public viewing.

The presentation slide titled “Ocean Multipurpose System: Status-6” showed some drawings of a new nuclear submarine weapons system. It is apparently designed to bypass NATO radars and any existing missile defense systems, while also causing heavy damage to “important economic facilities” along the enemy’s coastal regions.

The footnote to the slide stated that Status-6 is intended to cause “assured unacceptable damage” to an adversary force. Its detonation “in the area of the enemy coast” would result in “extensive zones of radioactive contamination” that would ensure that the region would not be used for “military, economic, business or other activity” for a “long time.”

According to the blurred information provided in the slide, the system represents a massive torpedo, designated as “self-propelled underwater vehicle,” with a range of up to 10 thousand kilometers and capable of operating at a depth of up to 1,000 meters.

It remains unclear if such a system is indeed being developed or the slide was presented as just one of the options the Russian military could hypothetically offer. However, according to the leaked paper, the weapons system could be developed by the Rubin design bureau for marine engineering, and may potentially be delivered using nuclear-powered “Project 09852” and “Project 09851” submarines.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that major TV channels had leaked some classified data on Tuesday following the meeting in Sochi.

“It is true some secret data got into the shot, and it was subsequently deleted,” Peskov said on Wednesday. “We hope that this won’t happen again.”

During Tuesday’s meeting Putin stressed that Russia will counter NATO’s US-led missile shield program through new “strike systems capable of penetrating any missile defenses.”

“Over the past three years, companies of the military-industrial complex have created and successfully tested a number of prospective weapons systems that are capable of performing combat missions in a layered missile defense system,” Putin said. “Such systems have already begun to enter the military this year. And now we are talking about development of new types of weapons.”

Image source: http://thesaker.is/did-russia-just-gently-threaten-the-usa/

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Despite the common misconception that Thailand is one of Southeast Asia’s staunchest US allies – the steady erosion of US-Thai relations has been underway for years. Cold War concessions Thailand made to the US during the Vietnam War have ingrained the myth of Bangkok’s unquestioning loyalty to Washington in the minds of many. The past decade and a half of Washington-proxy Thaksin Shinawatra holding power has helped bolster this myth, with Shinawatra assigning Thai troops to the US occupation of Iraq, cooperating with the US in its global CIA rendition program, and the privatization of Thailand’s resources on behalf of Wall Street.

However with a 2006 coup ousting Shinawatra from power, and a subsequent 2014 coup which ousted Shinawatra’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, the shattering of this myth has begun.

No single move by the new Thai government has signified the shift away from Washington more than a recent deal with China to purchase 3 Type 039A diesel electric attack submarines. Currently Thailand lacks submarines in its navy. The purchase would put Thailand on par with other Southeast Asian nations including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam who already possess submarines.

More significantly, the purchasing of Chinese submarines may signal a shift not only in Bangkok’s geopolitical alignment, but the alignment of Asia altogether.

How Important is the Thai-Chinese Submarine Deal?

Submarines would not be the first weapons Thailand has purchased from China. It already has 400 Type-85 armored personal carriers replacing aging US-made M113’s. However, submarines would require extensive training and cooperation between China and Thailand to prepare the Royal Thai Navy to employ and maintain the weapon systems. And submarines themselves carry greater significance within any nation’s defensive capabilities.

 The deal represents geopolitical, geostrateegic, and military shifts for both Bangkok and Asia.

(1.) The deal is geopolitical because it realigns Thailand’s defense posture to one that is Asian-centric. The deal would move Bangkok further from dependence on foreign powers that don’t even reside in Asia – namely the United States.

(2.) The deal is geostrategic because purchasing the submarines from China will by necessity require closer training and cooperation in the near future with the Chinese navy for the Royal Thai Navy to acquire the skills necessary to employ and maintain the submarines. In the future, this may evolve into joint training exercises and even joint security operations. The result would be integrated defense policies that ensured peace and stability in Asia via Asian, not American initiatives.

(3.) The deal would be of military significance because submarines are still currently one of the most effective forms of deterrence against foreign navies. During the Falklands conflict Britain wasn’t afraid of Argentina’s surface fleet – instead they were afraid of their air assets and one single, aging WW2-era submarine.

Thailand’s submarines would add to a regional balance of power that would ensure the cost of conflict exceeded the cost of regional cooperation. Currently, US policy itself seeks to maintain control over Asia by creating dependency on US military force to maintain a balance of power between the nations of Asia collectively, and specifically against the rising power of China.

US Seeks to Trip Up Bangkok’s Pivot 

While the US claims to be Thailand’s “ally,” its behavior has been more like an abusive captor. Defense News in its article, “Thai Chinese Sub Buy Challenges US Pivot,” would claim:

Thailand’s move to purchase Chinese submarines has exacerbated tensions with the US and poses a challenge to Washington’s “pivot” to the Pacific. 

The military junta, which declared a coup in May 2014 and created the National Council for Peace and Order, could turn to China for political and military support and cooperation, analysts said. The junta-led Cabinet approved the purchase of three Type 039A (Yuan) attack submarines in early July.

The International Business Times in their article, “Thailand-China Submarine Deal Suspended Following Concern Over Jeopardizing Ties With Washington,” would report:

The Royal Thai Navy announced Thursday that the government has suspended action on the high-profile one billion dollar submarine deal with China, which was still seeking final approval from the cabinet. The decision to put the deal on hold came after domestic and international experts expressed concern over how the deal with Beijing would affect Bangkok’s relations with the U.S.

Officially, Thailand’s suspension of the deal was to “conduct research on the suitability of the deal and weigh the costs and benefits to the country.” The temporary suspension may be in response to a concerted campaign to derail the deal – spearheaded by the US itself, and carried out by US-funded media organizations, both international and within Thailand itself.

The US State Department through its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds annually over 1 million Thai Baht to the Thai propaganda network “Prachatai.” Prachatai poses as an “independent” check and balance to government corruption despite its immense foreign funding, and regularly works to undermine Thailand’s traditional institutions, while covering up for or promoting those backed by the US – including the regime of Thaksin Shinawatra and his political supporters.

Prachatai has claimed the Chinese submarine deal is simply a means for the military to pad its pockets. It has also attempted to claim that the deal signifies Thailand’s growing ties with China, a trend it clearly portrays as negative. A recent Prachatai “interview” with “anonymous” Thai naval personnel attempts to frame the US State Department’s talking points. Prachatai’s narrative parrots that of the US State Department itself, and is repeated by other media outlets in Thailand sympathetic to US-proxy Thaksin Shinawatra.

Violence and Coercion 

With the Augst bombing in Bangkok, it is feared that Bangkok’s growing ties with Beijing have prompted Washington to escalate its campaign of coercion.

Just days after the bombing, US Embassy Chargé d’affaires Patrick Murphy, a National War College graduate and leader of a US Provincial Reconstruction Team during the US occupation of Iraq, met with senior Thai officials to first offer “condolences” for the bombing, then press for immediate elections. It is a move perceived by many as the issuing of demands under threat of continued violence. The demand for elections is made on behalf of ousted US-proxy Thaksin Shinawatra who Washington is eager to return to power.

The prospect of elections has been all but indefinitely postponed until Shinawatra and his political networks have been permanently removed – prompting increasingly desperate acts of violence both by Shinawatra’s remaining networks in Thailand, and by his foreign sponsors abroad.

Thailand’s Choice 

It is clear, even by America’s own admission, that its grip on Asia is slipping. Policy toward Asia focuses not on partnerships based on mutual benefit, but a myopic obsession over containing China and maintaining American “primacy” over all of Asia – even at the cost of America’s alleged “allies.”

These “allies,” Thailand included, are asked to sacrifice both short-term and long-term peace, stability, and prosperity to  invest in Washington’s losing proposition. It is no surprise then that many across Asia have begun to carefully divest instead.

As Bangkok pivots toward Beijing, attempts by Washington to disrupt Sino-Thai relations will increase. Bangkok capitulating to Washington now will not result in long-term benefits to Thailand as Washington’s grip over Asia will inevitably continue to slip. That Washington has resorted to coercion and engineered conflicts already is a sign of irreversible weakness. However, some may push for capitulation in pursuit of short-term peace and stability. This is also unlikely, as capitulating now to Washington will mean the return of Shinawatra to power – a scenario that is seen as unacceptable by the vast majority across both the Thai public and throughout Thailand’s business and political circles.

As it is clear Thailand will suffer short-term instability regardless of its choice, it must thus decide upon a foreign policy that will offer the best prospects in the intermediate and longer-term future. Its pivot toward Beijing is exactly that.

Asia stands at the edge of an era where North America and Europe no longer dictate the region’s destiny. By creating a geopolitical order driven by Asian states – maintaining a balance of political and military power throughout the region without foreign interests – namely the United States – the resources both human and natural of this region can be enjoyed by the people that actually reside there.

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

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By now there’s not nearly as much disagreement regarding what happened to John and Robert Kennedy as major communications corporations would have you believe. While every researcher and author highlights different details, there isn’t any serious disagreement among, say, Jim Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable, Howard Hunt’s deathbed confession, and David Talbot’s new The Devil’s Chessboard.

Jon Schwarz says The Devil’s Chessboard confirms that “your darkest suspicions about how the world operates are likely an underestimate. Yes, there is an amorphous group of unelected corporate lawyers, bankers, and intelligence and military officials who form an American ‘deep state,’ setting real limits on the rare politicians who ever try to get out of line.”

For those of us who were already convinced of that up to our eyeballs, Talbot’s book is still one of the best I’ve seen on the Dulles brothers and one of the best I’ve seen on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Where it differs from Douglass’ book, I think, is not so much in the evidence it relates or the conclusions it draws, but in providing an additional motivation for the crime.

JFK and the Unspeakable depicts Kennedy as getting in the way of the violence that Allen Dulles and gang wished to engage in abroad. He wouldn’t fight Cuba or the Soviet Union or Vietnam or East Germany or independence movements in Africa. He wanted disarmament and peace. He was talking cooperatively with Khrushchev, as Eisenhower had tried prior to the U2-shootdown sabotage. The CIA was overthrowing governments in Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Vietnam, and around the world. Kennedy was getting in the way.

The Devil’s Chessboard depicts Kennedy, in addition, as himself being the sort of leader the CIA was in the habit of overthrowing in those foreign capitals. Kennedy had made enemies of bankers and industrialists. He was working to shrink oil profits by closing tax loopholes, including the “oil depletion allowance.” He was permitting the political left in Italy to participate in power, outraging the extreme right in Italy, the U.S., and the CIA. He aggressively went after steel corporations and prevented their price hikes. This was the sort of behavior that could get you overthrown if you lived in one of those countries with a U.S. embassy in it.

Yes, Kennedy wanted to eliminate or drastically weaken and rename the CIA. Yes he threw Dulles and some of his gang out the door. Yes he refused to launch World War III over Cuba or Berlin or anything else. Yes he had the generals and warmongers against him, but he also had Wall Street against him.

Of course “politicians who ever try to get out of line” are now, as then, but more effectively now, handled first by the media. If the media can stop them or some other maneuver can stop them (character assassination, blackmail, distraction, removal from power) then violence isn’t required.

The fact that Kennedy resembled a coup target, not just a protector of other targets, would be bad news for someone like Senator Bernie Sanders if he ever got past the media, the “super delegates,” and the sell-out organizations to seriously threaten to take the White House. A candidate who accepts the war machine to a great extent and resembles Kennedy not at all on questions of peace, but who takes on Wall Street with the passion it deserves, could place himself as much in the cross-hairs of the deep state as a Jeremy Corbyn who takes on both capital and killing.

Accounts of the escapades of Allen Dulles, and the dozen or more partners in crime whose names crop up beside his decade after decade, illustrate the power of a permanent plutocracy, but also the power of particular individuals to shape it. What if Allen Dulles and Winston Churchill and others like them hadn’t worked to start the Cold War even before World War II was over? What if Dulles hadn’t collaborated with Nazis and the U.S. military hadn’t recruited and imported so many of them into its ranks? What if Dulles hadn’t worked to hide information about the holocaust while it was underway? What if Dulles hadn’t betrayed Roosevelt and Russia to make a separate U.S. peace with Germany in Italy?  What if Dulles hadn’t begun sabotaging democracy in Europe immediately and empowering former Nazis in Germany? What if Dulles hadn’t turned the CIA into a secret lawless army and death squad? What if Dulles hadn’t worked to end Iran’s democracy, or Guatemala’s? What if Dulles’ CIA hadn’t developed torture, rendition, human experimentation, and murder as routine policies? What if Eisenhower had been permitted to talk with Khrushchev? What if Dulles hadn’t tried to overthrow the President of France? What if Dulles had been “checked” or “balanced” ever so slightly by the media or Congress or the courts along the way?

These are tougher questions than “What if there had been no Lee Harvey Oswald?” The answer to that is, “There would have been another guy very similar to serve the same purpose, just as there had been in the earlier attempt on JFK in Chicago. But “What if there had been no Allen Dulles?” looms large enough to suggest the possible answer that we would all be better off, less militarized, less secretive, less xenophobic. And that suggests that the deep state is not uniform and not unstoppable. Talbot’s powerful history is a contribution to the effort to stop it.

I hope Talbot speaks about his book in Virginia, after which he might stop saying that Williamsburg and the CIA’s “farm” are in “Northern Virginia.” Hasn’t Northern Virginia got enough to be ashamed of without that?

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Two Track Grouch: Helmut Schmidt’s Legacy

November 13th, 2015 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The 96-year-old Helmut Schmidt was one of those creatures of diplomacy some choose to call pragmatic.  He was certainly no fire brand, keen, in truth, to douse the flames of revolution with market managerial dullness and steady containment.  While he did stem from the Social Democrats, it would be a mistake to assume that this tilted him much to the Left.  In the pantheon of German chancellors, he tends to be shaded, undeservedly, by Konrad Adenauer, architect of Westpolitik, Willy Brandt, designer of Ostpolitik, and Helmut Kohl, the chancellor of reunification.

Schmidt detested the vision game, the revolutionary motif, the demagogue’s hook to catch the populace.  “Anyone with a vision should go to the doctor.” Political change, notably of the democratic nature, could only take place in carefully chartered increments.

None of this was surprising, given the calamitous history Schmidt and his contemporaries had witnessed, and participated in.  Growing up in Nazi Germany had various forming, and in some cases deforming effects.  When asked about his role in the Luftwaffe, he was dismissive.  “You’ll never understand.”  That did not prevent him was expressing opinions about the gaining of wisdom.  “Die heutigen wissen alles besser” – that “people today know everything better” – was a stark statement of painful growth through awareness.

What typified Schmidt’s approach as German chancellor between 1974 and 1982 were policies that one either regards as part of his pragmatic world view, or of a more cynical play on geopolitical survival.  He kept Moscow and East Germany in the loop even as he pushed for greater relevance and involvement of NATO and Europe.  This was the straddling of two chairs without necessarily falling between them – no mean feat.

Cooperation was always better than snubbing, a point he made clear to Chancellor Angela Merkel last year when he urged taking a milder line towards Putin. Without Russia, the somnambulists of history would again take the world to war.

There were, however, exceptions.  In the “German Autumn” of 1977, Schmidt had no enthusiasm negotiating with niggling, occasionally violent local adversaries.  Communist angst and critique about the lingering presence of ex-Nazis in the West German political and industrial structure led to a spate of actions on the part of the Red Army Faction.  Hanns Martin Schleyer, former SS Obersturmführer and industrialist, was kidnapped in an act of symbolic violence. Palestinians in solidarity with the RAF hijacked a Lufthansa plane which finally landed in Mogadishu airport.

The hijackers’ demands of $15 million coupled with the release of 10 imprisoned RAF members were coolly dismissed.  The Palestinians were subsequently killed in a German special forces operation, and Schleyer murdered.

He also had his issues with those Imperial dynasts across the pond whose security guarantees he needed.  Schmidt did himself have a particularly authoritarian manner, and had assumed considerable standing among Western powers.  There was even a suggestion that he would be its de facto leader rather than any White House occupant.  That was certainly the case under a mentally feeble Gerald Ford.

The succeeding Carter administration proved problematic for Schmidt, who regarded the Georgian in the White House as defective, be it in knowledge of security policy or economics.  He responded to Washington with his famed tongue, lashing officials, and driving Carter to the point of exasperation.  Carter thought Schmidt’s behaviour at times resembled that “of a paranoid child,” obsessed about lecturing “on economic matters and […] the history of Germany’s great sacrifice to help other nations overcome their economic problems.”

In 1978, Carter would scribble in his diary that, “Schmidt seems to go up and down in his psychological attitude. I guess women are not the only ones to have periods” (Der Spiegel, Oct 12, 2010).  Even the CIA got onto the case of noting his various critical remarks, and supplied a psychologist to decode the inner Schmidt. Could it have been a thyroid condition, surmised Carter?

Schmidt may well have had a point on the White House.  While the euro-zone crisis has done no favours to his legacy, he was a pioneering figure in the European monetary system which was conceived in response to the global economic crisis of the 1970s.  Carter proved slow in catching up.

It would be folly to suggest that within Schmidt’s psyche lay the slumbering pacifist waiting to get out.  His war experiences taught him horror, but they also taught him to prepare for the next one, an instinctive, militarist preoccupation.   It assumed the form of his fateful stab at Cold War fame in 1979.

The Guadeloupe meeting of the West’s Big Four, Britain, France, Germany and the United States, saw all those frivolities one has come to expect from leaders at such summits.  Even prior to the APEC dress code and themed parties, these individuals could be seen talking about weapons of death and snorkelling in turns.  But beyond that, it cemented West Germany’s role in permitting NATO to deploy hundreds of nuclear missiles on German soil.  The dual-track decision of December 1979 was born in the Caribbean.

Working on Schmidt’s role in this affair, scholar Kristina Spohr showed a more forceful and engaged leader keen to engage in a Jekyll-Hyde manoeuvre of modernising nuclear forces in Europe on the one hand while pursuing arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union on the other.  “Schmidt ultimately emerged as the de facto designer of the alliance’s dual-track decision, in spite of his country’s precarious geopolitical position and non-nuclear status” (International History Review, Jan 2015).

Schmidt had a large, looming eye on the Soviets who had busied themselves with altering, actual or otherwise, the nuclear balance (if there can ever be such a thing) in Europe with the deployment of intermediate SS-20 missiles. Such weapons did not figure in the arms limitation status quo, and Western leaders were wondering whether to push the issue with Moscow.

In any case, a conflict between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces was going to lay waste to Germany – both West and East.  Nuclear missiles became dark and dangerous bargaining chips on the European chess board, a point noted by the 300,000 protestors who took to the streets of Bonn in October 1981.

Such positions riled younger progressives in the Social Democrats who took issue with the chancellor’s scorn for environmentalists and his cosy endorsement of nuclear power.  Such divisions cost him dearly.  In another fundamental sense, Schmidt helped shape, no doubt unintentionally, another part of Germany, one environmentally attuned and stubbornly progressive.

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

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Malaria in the Asia-Pacific Region

November 13th, 2015 by J. Kevin Baird

Despite its relative invisibility to most people living in the urban Asia-Pacific, endemic malaria occurs across the region. The unique character of Asian-Pacific malaria includes a serious problem of drug resistance, dominance of a particularly difficult species to control and treat, and another that normally dwells in monkeys but often infects humans. Most nations in the region with endemic malaria have called for its elimination by the year 2030. Meeting that ambitious goal will require mobilizing technical and financial resources, and social and political will. Malaria is a formidable foe fully capable of defeating half-hearted efforts to eliminate it.

Introduction

Many well-educated people think of malaria as a single disease that is largely, if not entirely, isolated to the African continent. This includes many living in the enormous urban centers of the Asia-Pacific. They go about their daily lives in gleaming modern cities with convenient access to professional clinical care. Some may worry about dengue fever, and an unlucky few will actually contract it. Others will be more anxious about threats like MERS-CoV or particular strains of influenza that are much less common than dengue, but with much higher fatality rates. There are no vaccines or cures for these viral infections. Malaria, by comparison, is not only thought of as a distant threat, but is also widely believed to be completely preventable and curable with inexpensive simple therapies. This is an illusion borne of a well-to-do urban worldview. In truth, the Asia-Pacific region is rife with endemic malaria and it faces challenges in mitigating and eliminating this serious problem.

The challenges are steep. There is no vaccine against malaria. Emerging strains of drug-resistant malaria threaten incurable infections. Some infections cannot be treated safely and patients suffer repeated clinical attacks over many months. Other infections derive from forest-dwelling monkeys. About two billion throughout the Asia Pacific live at risk of the infection and tens of millions contract it each year.1 Unknown numbers, perhaps as many as two hundred thousand each year, do not survive the malaria attack.2 This article explores the Asia-Pacific malaria problem and the misplaced broad public complacency regarding it.

The highest risk in urban centers is not malaria itself, but ignorance of or indifference to the malaria occurring in rural areas. The educated, empowered and endowed sectors of Asia-Pacific metropolises can act against malaria in the region if they see and understand the formidable problem and the challenges faced in eliminating it from the region. This article aims at such awareness.

What is Malaria?

Malaria is a term that encompasses a wide variety of diseases caused by single-celled parasites in the genus Plasmodium. There are over 170 species in this genus that infect particular species of mammals, birds and reptiles. Only 5 species are known to routinely infect humans: Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivaxPlasmodium malariae, Plasmodium ovale, and Plasmodium knowlesi. Among these, P. falciparum and P. vivax cause the vast majority of infections. All of these parasites follow a complicated life cycle that depends upon particular species of mosquitoes in the genus Anopheles. The ability to transmit malaria by these species varies among them like the ability to play chess among humans – from those who don’t know how to grand masters. While it is true that mosquitoes carry malaria from one person to another, in a strictly biological sense the parasites use humans to carry malaria from one mosquito to another – the plasmodia have sex in the mosquito, which makes it, and not us, the definitive host for these parasites. Figure 1 illustrates the life cycle of P. vivax, which is only slightly different from the other species, but in an important way to be explained later in this article.

Figure 1. The extraordinary complexity in the
life cycle of malaria parasites, with the human
liver at lower left, the human blood stream at
lower center, and the gut and salivary glands
of anopheline mosquitoes at upper right.
From the WHO as adapted from Mueller et al.3

About a week or so after being bitten and infected, people begin to show symptoms as parasites emerge from the liver and begin infecting red blood cells. The invasion, rupture and reinvasion of red blood cells account for the cyclical nature of the intense fever and chills of a malaria attack. If the infection is not properly diagnosed, or the patient waits too long before seeking treatment, the infection can progress to death in people who lack a partial immunity by prior chronic exposure to malaria. This is true of all of the species of malaria, but especially P. falciparumP. knowlesi, and P. vivax. Even with prompt diagnosis and appropriate treatment, these infections (excepting P. malariae) lead to intense illness with complete debilitation for at least several days. It is a devastating illness and fatal if not properly managed. The causes of death by malaria are many, including coma, severe anemia, respiratory distress, liver or kidney failure, and shock.

One of the primary reasons malaria tends to be almost invisible is its affinity for impoverished and isolated rural areas, and its aversion to urban environments. Access to quality healthcare in cities bodes poorly for parasite survival. Further, the anopheline mosquito vectors do not survive in urban environments and are not found there. The single known exception to this rule is a particular species, Anopheles stephensi, which thrives in the massive cities of India and causes a great deal of malaria in them. That species adapted to breeding in sunlit pools of clean rooftop water created by air conditioning units. Most mosquito vector species, however, have no tolerance of urban grime. Malaria victimizes the poorest of the poor in rural settings, those having limited access to rudimentary health care that governments struggle to deliver to the many remote peripheries of modern civilization. These people are among the most invisible to us, and they suffer tremendously in vast numbers from malaria and other diseases endemic to the Asia-Pacific.

Malarious Asia-Pacific

A glance at a world map of the levels of malaria prevalence reveals what most residents of the Asia-Pacific do not realize – that malaria is not solely an African problem, it is all around us right here in the region, and quite a lot of it. The two maps of Figure 2 show the distribution of the two dominant species of parasites that cause malaria, P. falciparum and P. vivax. Wherever there is color, even if blue, indicates stable transmission of malaria, meaning it is almost always present. The dark grey areas indicate unstable transmission, where malaria is only sometimes present. Figure 3 zooms in on the Asia-Pacific and reveals the extraordinary patchwork of transmission, both broad swaths of persistent stable transmission along with a scattering of both very high risk and risk-free pockets.

Figure 2. Maps showing the distribution of malaria risk globally for Plasmodium falciparum (top) and Plasmodium vivax (bottom). See color keys in Figure 3. Courtesy of the Malaria Atlas Project, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

Notice that the distribution of P. vivax reaches much farther north than P. falciparum. There are a couple of important reasons for this. First, this species develops quicker at lower ambient temperatures in its cold-blooded mosquito host, allowing it to thrive in temperatures P. falciparum cannot tolerate. Secondly, P. vivax is able to place dormant forms in the human liver (called hypnozoites, see Fig.1), providing it a safe haven during the harsh winters on the Korean Peninsula, for example, when there can be no mosquitoes to transmit them.

Figure 3. Maps showing the distribution of malaria risk in the Asia Pacific for Plasmodium falciparum (top) and Plasmodium vivax(bottom). “PR” indicates prevalence rate, or the percentage of residents found infected by malaria parasites in population surveys of blood by microscopic examination. The scales between P. falciparum and P. vivax differ for biological and epidemiological reasons. Courtesy of the Malaria Atlas Project, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

The World Health Organization monitors malaria reporting globally, and in 2013 it estimated a total of 11.2 million cases of P. vivax in the Asia-Pacific, along with 25 million cases of P. falciparum.4 That’s 36.1 million attacks of malaria in the region. Some scientists believe these WHO estimates are underestimated by a large degree.5 Remarkably, in the instance of P. vivax, over 80% of all attacks globally occur in the Asia-Pacific, making this principally a regional problem.

Malaria Problems of the Asia Pacific

Malaria as a public health problem varies tremendously around the globe with respect to difficulties faced in striving to solve it. Malariologists in Africa wrestle with very different technical issues from those managed by malariologists in the Asia-Pacific. It is important to understand that technical progress and health dividends in Africa will not necessarily translate to the same in the Asia-Pacific. A brief exploration of three malaria problems unique to the region will serve to emphasize that important point: artemisinin-resistant P. falciparum, primaquine therapy against P. vivax, and monkey malaria. The challenge in Africa is a very heavy burden of infection by a single species of parasite P. falciparum, which until today remains sensitive to the frontline drugs against it. The species P. vivax is virtually absent from most of Africa, as are the malarias transmitted from monkeys or apes to humans.

Artemisinin-resistant P. falciparum

Forty years ago the drug chloroquine served as the primary treatment for all malarias worldwide. The extraordinary history of the development of this workhorse drug includes Nazi agents in Algiers and Allied capture of an experimental formulation of the drug in 1943.6 Licensed in the USA in 1946, its useful life began to unravel at the border between Thailand and Cambodia in the 1960s. The parasite P. falciparum evolved a means of surviving chloroquine, and with continued use the resistant strains overwhelmed and dominated the sensitive strains. Over the ensuing 20 years, those resistant strains spread around the globe. Millions are thought to have lost their lives to infections by resistant strains treated with what had become a useless drug.7 Eventually, after a great deal of research and advocacy for change, chloroquine was replaced with a new class of drugs called the artemisinins – discovered by a medical science unit of the Chinese Army working in support of the North Vietnamese during the war with the Americans (by the 2015 Nobel laureate Dr. Y. Tu).8 That warfare drives critical advances in malaria therapy that cease in peacetime is a sad testament to its low priority when it is only attacking and killing civilians. This is changing, however. In 1999, the Medicines for Malaria Venture at Geneva was created for taking up the important business of discovering, evaluating and licensing medications affordable to the poor who are most affected by malaria. They have made great strides with generous support from sponsors and donors.9

The artemisinin combined therapies (ACTs, artemisinin plus a partner drug) today comprise the frontline against sickness and death caused by malaria. Thanks to their broad implementation, along with many preventive measures like mosquito nets and practical diagnostics for malaria, global mortality due to malaria has fallen by half since 2000.10 Unfortunately, the drug resistance drama that played out in western Cambodia with chloroquine fifty years ago, is today repeating itself – resistance to ACTs was detected in the same area in 2008 and has since spread much wider (Figure 4). No one understands exactly why, but western Cambodia seems to be a cradle of drug resistant malaria. It seems likely that the decades-long unregulated use of artemisinin alone during the strife and warfare in Cambodia, without the partner drug of ACTs (which is there in order to delay onset of resistance) selected for those resistant mutants. The threat of this menace causing a surge in malaria mortality is not mere hyperbole – it is real because we have no practical therapeutic options in our global malaria medical kit. The specter of untreatable falciparum malaria looms over the globe, and it is an Asian-Pacific responsibility to manage the problem.

Figure 4. Map illustrates penetration of
artemisinin-resistant P. falciparumin
the Mekong of Southeast Asia as of
January 2014. Tiers refer to confirmed
resistance (1, red), likely 

(2, yellow), absent (3, white).
From the World Health Organization.

Primaquine Therapy of P. vivax Malaria

As explained, P. vivax places dormant forms in the human liver that can cause repeated clinical attacks up to about 2 or 3 years after a single infectious bite by a mosquito.

The only drug that kills these dormant forms is called primaquine – another product of World War II, the Asia-Pacific War in particular.11 The Dutch on Java in 1941 produced over 95% of the world’s supply of quinine, and when the Allies lost access to that supply they turned to synthetic drugs. One of those caused the only therapy against dormant liver stages to become especially toxic.

The US Army then launched a search for a new drug in 1943, and in 1952 primaquine was licensed for this use.

In many respects, primaquine is woefully inadequate as a drug. Its many problems are rooted in its toxicity to people with an inherited blood disorder called glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency. People having that disorder lead healthy lives of normal longevity, but become seriously ill when exposed to specific drugs that destroy their red blood cells.

Primaquine is one of those drugs, and the doses needed for treating P. vivax can cause death in the most severe types of G6PD deficiency.

Unhappily, G6PD deficiency is a highly prevalent human genetic disorder (typically about 8% of people in malaria-endemic nations), impacting 400 million people globally, most of them living in the Asia-Pacific (Figure 5).

Even worse, the most severe types of G6PD deficiency dominate those found in the Asia-Pacific.12

The diagnosis of G6PD deficiency is relatively simple in a laboratory setting. If accomplished, the G6PD normal majority enjoys the enormous clinical benefit of primaquine therapy without risk of harm. However, in the impoverished rural tropics where the vast majority of malaria patients live, such services are almost universally absent. Recent work vigorously strives to address this serious problem that denies most patients with P. vivax access to safe primaquine therapy.13

Another unfortunate fact is the strains of P. vivax occurring in the Asia- Pacific are among the most aggressive with respect to how frequently and often they will cause repeated attacks from the dormant liver stages. Scientists and doctors long thought P. vivax infection to be inherently benign and not threatening, but over the past decade studies at hospitals in rural areas revealed it as very often associated with severe illness and death.14 It is perhaps likely that most of those poor outcomes derive from the repeated multiple attacks from the untreated liver forms of the parasite. In the absence of G6PD diagnostics, care providers must choose between risk of serious harm caused by primaquine, or harm caused by the infection by withholding the treatment.

Monkey Malaria

Another problem of malaria unique to the Asia-Pacific is infection by P. knowlesi. This species is very different from the other four species infecting humans because we are not its natural host. Humans acquire P. knowlesi in forests inhabited by macaques, the animal that P. knowlesi naturally infects. The first known report of human infection by this species appeared in 1965 – in an American CIA agent working at night in the forests of peninsular Malaysia.15 He returned to Washington where he was correctly diagnosed only in a most extraordinary series of coincidences worthy of CIA intrigue. This lone infection for decades was considered a one-off event and it was widely believed that P. knowlesi did not routinely infect humans.

In 2004, Malaysian scientist Balbir Singh and his colleagues at the University of Malaya at Sarawak unveiled a serious threat from this species.16 Not only was P. knowlesi infecting humans, but it was doing so often and ending in death for many.17 The infection had been diagnosed as P. malariae (which it closely resembles under the microscope). However, true P. malariae malaria is usually relatively benign (although chronic infections can cause irreversible and ultimately fatal kidney failure). Patients were coming in with what seemed to be that species but with very aggressive infections and acute disease states. Professor Singh and his team solved the mystery. Today we know that most of the malaria that occurs on Malaysian Borneo is in fact P. knowlesi. A map of the areas of known risk of P. knowlesi infection reveals it to be uniquely Asian-Pacific (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Map illustrates relative likelihood of
human exposure to infection P. knowlesi
naturally occurring in forest-dwelling macaques.
Courtesy of the Malaria Atlas Project,
University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

Eliminate Malaria!

Beginning about a decade ago, momentum began building to mobilize resources to eliminate malaria transmission, leading ultimately to its eradication as a human health problem.18. Taking the personal encouragement and example of Bill & Melinda Gates expressing malaria elimination as a vision, WHO Director General Margaret Chan announced in 2008 that WHO would embark on a global malaria control strategy that aimed to eliminate malaria. This represented a fundamental paradigm shift of strategy and tactics in malaria control as a public health endeavor. Deliberately and aggressively attacking malaria where it was not highly prevalent, or striving to interrupt transmission where it was highly prevalent, had long been viewed as impractical and even dangerous.19The danger lies in failure. During the 1950s and 1960s the WHO (largely spurred by the US State Department and US funding) undertook the Global Malaria Eradication Program (GMEP).20 Huge strides were made in reducing malaria, especially in the Asia-Pacific. However, in 1969 the WHO abandoned the campaign, leaving behind malaria control programs that were no longer functional. Further, research on malaria effectively ceased after the program commenced due to optimism regarding successful global eradication. Between 1970 and 2000 global burdens of malaria morbidity and mortality surged powerfully due to technical, material, and personnel deficiencies spurred by the GMEP. Elimination strategy invites risk of rebounds of malaria in the wake of failure.

The year 2030 is the declared goal for the elimination of malaria transmission across the Asia-Pacific. In 2008 malaria technical experts formed the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network that draws them together with the national malaria control programs of 18 nations with declared malaria elimination goals. They aimed to support those programs in shifting from control to elimination strategy and tactics where deemed feasible. Mobilizing political and fiscal support and momentum, the Asia Pacific Leader’s Malaria Alliance was created in 2013 by the heads of national governments in the region. The risks of powerful rebounds of malaria with failure to achieve real elimination are soberly acknowledged and impel the urgency of full commitment to the task.

The problems with malaria in the Asia-Pacific summarized here will challenge elimination goals. Each of those three major challenges requires solutions unique to the malaria of this region. Acknowledging these as problems of the Asia-Pacific appropriately focuses regional attention, enthusiasm, and resources for attacking them vigorously. The temptation to passively wait for others in distant regions to deal with their own unique malaria problems to pass along the technical fruit of their labors must be resisted. They cannot deliver the goods the Asia-Pacific requires. These are our problems to solve.

Recommended citation: J. Kevin Baird, “Malaria in the Asia-Pacific Region”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 44, No.1, November 9, 2015.

J. Kevin Baird served for 22 years on active duty in the US Navy Medical Service Corps as a malaria specialist, principally in the Asia-Pacific, retiring in 2006 with the rank of Captain. He is currently Professor of Malariology at the Centre for Tropical Medicine, Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford University and directs the Eijkman-Oxford Clinical Research Unit on behalf of that university and the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology in Jakarta, Indonesia. Prof. Baird has resided in Indonesia for over 20 years and is co-author of the book War Crimes in Japan-Occupied Indonesia: A Case of Murder by Medicine, Potomac Books 2015, with Sangkot Marzuki, former director of the Eijkman Institute and current President of the Indonesian Academy of Science.

 

Vivian Blaxell, Yellow Blood: Hepatitis C and the Modernist Settlement in Japan

 

References

1 World Health Organization. World Malaria Report 2014. Geneva.

2 Hay SI, Gething PW, Snow RW. India’s invisible malaria burden. Lancet 2010; 376: 1716-17.

3 Mueller I, et al. Key gaps in the knowledge of Plasmodium vivax, a neglected human malaria parasite. Lancet Infectious Diseases 2009; 9: 555-66.

4 Ibid, WHO

5 Ibid, Hay SI, Gething PW, Snow RW

6 Coatney GR. Pitfalls in a discovery: the chronicle of chloroquine. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 1963; 12: 121-8.

7 Attaran A, et al. WHO, the Global Fund, and medical malpractice in malaria treatment. Lancet 2004; 363: 237-40.

8 Tu Y. The discovery of artemisinin (qinghaosu) and gifts from Chinese medicine. Nature Medicine 2011; 17: 1217-20.

9 See here.

10 Murray CJ, et al. Global, regional and national incidence of mortality for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria during 1990-2013. Lancet 2014; 384: 1005-70.

11 Baird JK. Resistance to therapies for infection by Plasmodium vivaxClinical Microbiology Reviews 2009; 22: 508-34.

12 Howes RE, et al. G6PD deficiency prevalence and estimates of affected populations in malaria endemic nations: a geostatistical model-based map. Public Library of Science Medicine 2012; 9: e1001339.

13 World Health Organization. Control and elimination of Plasmodium vivax malaria: a technical brief. Geneva. 2015.

14 Baird JK. Evidence and implications of mortality with acute Plasmodium vivax malaria. Clinical Microbiology Reviews 2013; 26: 36-57.

15 Baird JK. Malaria zoonoses. Travel Medicine Infectious Diseases 2009; 8: e2780.

16 Singh B, et al. A large focus of naturally acquired Plasmodium knowlesi infections in human beings. Lancet 2004; 363: 1017-24.

17 Cox-Singh J, et al. Plasmodium knowlesi in humans is widely distributed and potentially life threatening. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2008; 46: 165-71.

18 Malaria: control vs elimination vs eradication. Lancet 2011; 378: 1117.

19 See here.

20 Baird JK. Resurgent malaria at the millennium: control strategies in crisis. Drugs 2000; 59: 719-43.

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Malaria in the Asia-Pacific Region

November 13th, 2015 by J. Kevin Baird

Despite its relative invisibility to most people living in the urban Asia-Pacific, endemic malaria occurs across the region. The unique character of Asian-Pacific malaria includes a serious problem of drug resistance, dominance of a particularly difficult species to control and treat, and another that normally dwells in monkeys but often infects humans. Most nations in the region with endemic malaria have called for its elimination by the year 2030. Meeting that ambitious goal will require mobilizing technical and financial resources, and social and political will. Malaria is a formidable foe fully capable of defeating half-hearted efforts to eliminate it.

Introduction

Many well-educated people think of malaria as a single disease that is largely, if not entirely, isolated to the African continent. This includes many living in the enormous urban centers of the Asia-Pacific. They go about their daily lives in gleaming modern cities with convenient access to professional clinical care. Some may worry about dengue fever, and an unlucky few will actually contract it. Others will be more anxious about threats like MERS-CoV or particular strains of influenza that are much less common than dengue, but with much higher fatality rates. There are no vaccines or cures for these viral infections. Malaria, by comparison, is not only thought of as a distant threat, but is also widely believed to be completely preventable and curable with inexpensive simple therapies. This is an illusion borne of a well-to-do urban worldview. In truth, the Asia-Pacific region is rife with endemic malaria and it faces challenges in mitigating and eliminating this serious problem.

The challenges are steep. There is no vaccine against malaria. Emerging strains of drug-resistant malaria threaten incurable infections. Some infections cannot be treated safely and patients suffer repeated clinical attacks over many months. Other infections derive from forest-dwelling monkeys. About two billion throughout the Asia Pacific live at risk of the infection and tens of millions contract it each year.1 Unknown numbers, perhaps as many as two hundred thousand each year, do not survive the malaria attack.2 This article explores the Asia-Pacific malaria problem and the misplaced broad public complacency regarding it.

The highest risk in urban centers is not malaria itself, but ignorance of or indifference to the malaria occurring in rural areas. The educated, empowered and endowed sectors of Asia-Pacific metropolises can act against malaria in the region if they see and understand the formidable problem and the challenges faced in eliminating it from the region. This article aims at such awareness.

What is Malaria?

Malaria is a term that encompasses a wide variety of diseases caused by single-celled parasites in the genus Plasmodium. There are over 170 species in this genus that infect particular species of mammals, birds and reptiles. Only 5 species are known to routinely infect humans: Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivaxPlasmodium malariae, Plasmodium ovale, and Plasmodium knowlesi. Among these, P. falciparum and P. vivax cause the vast majority of infections. All of these parasites follow a complicated life cycle that depends upon particular species of mosquitoes in the genus Anopheles. The ability to transmit malaria by these species varies among them like the ability to play chess among humans – from those who don’t know how to grand masters. While it is true that mosquitoes carry malaria from one person to another, in a strictly biological sense the parasites use humans to carry malaria from one mosquito to another – the plasmodia have sex in the mosquito, which makes it, and not us, the definitive host for these parasites. Figure 1 illustrates the life cycle of P. vivax, which is only slightly different from the other species, but in an important way to be explained later in this article.

Figure 1. The extraordinary complexity in the
life cycle of malaria parasites, with the human
liver at lower left, the human blood stream at
lower center, and the gut and salivary glands
of anopheline mosquitoes at upper right.
From the WHO as adapted from Mueller et al.3

About a week or so after being bitten and infected, people begin to show symptoms as parasites emerge from the liver and begin infecting red blood cells. The invasion, rupture and reinvasion of red blood cells account for the cyclical nature of the intense fever and chills of a malaria attack. If the infection is not properly diagnosed, or the patient waits too long before seeking treatment, the infection can progress to death in people who lack a partial immunity by prior chronic exposure to malaria. This is true of all of the species of malaria, but especially P. falciparumP. knowlesi, and P. vivax. Even with prompt diagnosis and appropriate treatment, these infections (excepting P. malariae) lead to intense illness with complete debilitation for at least several days. It is a devastating illness and fatal if not properly managed. The causes of death by malaria are many, including coma, severe anemia, respiratory distress, liver or kidney failure, and shock.

One of the primary reasons malaria tends to be almost invisible is its affinity for impoverished and isolated rural areas, and its aversion to urban environments. Access to quality healthcare in cities bodes poorly for parasite survival. Further, the anopheline mosquito vectors do not survive in urban environments and are not found there. The single known exception to this rule is a particular species, Anopheles stephensi, which thrives in the massive cities of India and causes a great deal of malaria in them. That species adapted to breeding in sunlit pools of clean rooftop water created by air conditioning units. Most mosquito vector species, however, have no tolerance of urban grime. Malaria victimizes the poorest of the poor in rural settings, those having limited access to rudimentary health care that governments struggle to deliver to the many remote peripheries of modern civilization. These people are among the most invisible to us, and they suffer tremendously in vast numbers from malaria and other diseases endemic to the Asia-Pacific.

Malarious Asia-Pacific

A glance at a world map of the levels of malaria prevalence reveals what most residents of the Asia-Pacific do not realize – that malaria is not solely an African problem, it is all around us right here in the region, and quite a lot of it. The two maps of Figure 2 show the distribution of the two dominant species of parasites that cause malaria, P. falciparum and P. vivax. Wherever there is color, even if blue, indicates stable transmission of malaria, meaning it is almost always present. The dark grey areas indicate unstable transmission, where malaria is only sometimes present. Figure 3 zooms in on the Asia-Pacific and reveals the extraordinary patchwork of transmission, both broad swaths of persistent stable transmission along with a scattering of both very high risk and risk-free pockets.

Figure 2. Maps showing the distribution of malaria risk globally for Plasmodium falciparum (top) and Plasmodium vivax (bottom). See color keys in Figure 3. Courtesy of the Malaria Atlas Project, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

Notice that the distribution of P. vivax reaches much farther north than P. falciparum. There are a couple of important reasons for this. First, this species develops quicker at lower ambient temperatures in its cold-blooded mosquito host, allowing it to thrive in temperatures P. falciparum cannot tolerate. Secondly, P. vivax is able to place dormant forms in the human liver (called hypnozoites, see Fig.1), providing it a safe haven during the harsh winters on the Korean Peninsula, for example, when there can be no mosquitoes to transmit them.

Figure 3. Maps showing the distribution of malaria risk in the Asia Pacific for Plasmodium falciparum (top) and Plasmodium vivax(bottom). “PR” indicates prevalence rate, or the percentage of residents found infected by malaria parasites in population surveys of blood by microscopic examination. The scales between P. falciparum and P. vivax differ for biological and epidemiological reasons. Courtesy of the Malaria Atlas Project, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

The World Health Organization monitors malaria reporting globally, and in 2013 it estimated a total of 11.2 million cases of P. vivax in the Asia-Pacific, along with 25 million cases of P. falciparum.4 That’s 36.1 million attacks of malaria in the region. Some scientists believe these WHO estimates are underestimated by a large degree.5 Remarkably, in the instance of P. vivax, over 80% of all attacks globally occur in the Asia-Pacific, making this principally a regional problem.

Malaria Problems of the Asia Pacific

Malaria as a public health problem varies tremendously around the globe with respect to difficulties faced in striving to solve it. Malariologists in Africa wrestle with very different technical issues from those managed by malariologists in the Asia-Pacific. It is important to understand that technical progress and health dividends in Africa will not necessarily translate to the same in the Asia-Pacific. A brief exploration of three malaria problems unique to the region will serve to emphasize that important point: artemisinin-resistant P. falciparum, primaquine therapy against P. vivax, and monkey malaria. The challenge in Africa is a very heavy burden of infection by a single species of parasite P. falciparum, which until today remains sensitive to the frontline drugs against it. The species P. vivax is virtually absent from most of Africa, as are the malarias transmitted from monkeys or apes to humans.

Artemisinin-resistant P. falciparum

Forty years ago the drug chloroquine served as the primary treatment for all malarias worldwide. The extraordinary history of the development of this workhorse drug includes Nazi agents in Algiers and Allied capture of an experimental formulation of the drug in 1943.6 Licensed in the USA in 1946, its useful life began to unravel at the border between Thailand and Cambodia in the 1960s. The parasite P. falciparum evolved a means of surviving chloroquine, and with continued use the resistant strains overwhelmed and dominated the sensitive strains. Over the ensuing 20 years, those resistant strains spread around the globe. Millions are thought to have lost their lives to infections by resistant strains treated with what had become a useless drug.7 Eventually, after a great deal of research and advocacy for change, chloroquine was replaced with a new class of drugs called the artemisinins – discovered by a medical science unit of the Chinese Army working in support of the North Vietnamese during the war with the Americans (by the 2015 Nobel laureate Dr. Y. Tu).8 That warfare drives critical advances in malaria therapy that cease in peacetime is a sad testament to its low priority when it is only attacking and killing civilians. This is changing, however. In 1999, the Medicines for Malaria Venture at Geneva was created for taking up the important business of discovering, evaluating and licensing medications affordable to the poor who are most affected by malaria. They have made great strides with generous support from sponsors and donors.9

The artemisinin combined therapies (ACTs, artemisinin plus a partner drug) today comprise the frontline against sickness and death caused by malaria. Thanks to their broad implementation, along with many preventive measures like mosquito nets and practical diagnostics for malaria, global mortality due to malaria has fallen by half since 2000.10 Unfortunately, the drug resistance drama that played out in western Cambodia with chloroquine fifty years ago, is today repeating itself – resistance to ACTs was detected in the same area in 2008 and has since spread much wider (Figure 4). No one understands exactly why, but western Cambodia seems to be a cradle of drug resistant malaria. It seems likely that the decades-long unregulated use of artemisinin alone during the strife and warfare in Cambodia, without the partner drug of ACTs (which is there in order to delay onset of resistance) selected for those resistant mutants. The threat of this menace causing a surge in malaria mortality is not mere hyperbole – it is real because we have no practical therapeutic options in our global malaria medical kit. The specter of untreatable falciparum malaria looms over the globe, and it is an Asian-Pacific responsibility to manage the problem.

Figure 4. Map illustrates penetration of
artemisinin-resistant P. falciparumin
the Mekong of Southeast Asia as of
January 2014. Tiers refer to confirmed
resistance (1, red), likely 

(2, yellow), absent (3, white).
From the World Health Organization.

Primaquine Therapy of P. vivax Malaria

As explained, P. vivax places dormant forms in the human liver that can cause repeated clinical attacks up to about 2 or 3 years after a single infectious bite by a mosquito.

The only drug that kills these dormant forms is called primaquine – another product of World War II, the Asia-Pacific War in particular.11 The Dutch on Java in 1941 produced over 95% of the world’s supply of quinine, and when the Allies lost access to that supply they turned to synthetic drugs. One of those caused the only therapy against dormant liver stages to become especially toxic.

The US Army then launched a search for a new drug in 1943, and in 1952 primaquine was licensed for this use.

In many respects, primaquine is woefully inadequate as a drug. Its many problems are rooted in its toxicity to people with an inherited blood disorder called glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency. People having that disorder lead healthy lives of normal longevity, but become seriously ill when exposed to specific drugs that destroy their red blood cells.

Primaquine is one of those drugs, and the doses needed for treating P. vivax can cause death in the most severe types of G6PD deficiency.

Unhappily, G6PD deficiency is a highly prevalent human genetic disorder (typically about 8% of people in malaria-endemic nations), impacting 400 million people globally, most of them living in the Asia-Pacific (Figure 5).

Even worse, the most severe types of G6PD deficiency dominate those found in the Asia-Pacific.12

The diagnosis of G6PD deficiency is relatively simple in a laboratory setting. If accomplished, the G6PD normal majority enjoys the enormous clinical benefit of primaquine therapy without risk of harm. However, in the impoverished rural tropics where the vast majority of malaria patients live, such services are almost universally absent. Recent work vigorously strives to address this serious problem that denies most patients with P. vivax access to safe primaquine therapy.13

Another unfortunate fact is the strains of P. vivax occurring in the Asia- Pacific are among the most aggressive with respect to how frequently and often they will cause repeated attacks from the dormant liver stages. Scientists and doctors long thought P. vivax infection to be inherently benign and not threatening, but over the past decade studies at hospitals in rural areas revealed it as very often associated with severe illness and death.14 It is perhaps likely that most of those poor outcomes derive from the repeated multiple attacks from the untreated liver forms of the parasite. In the absence of G6PD diagnostics, care providers must choose between risk of serious harm caused by primaquine, or harm caused by the infection by withholding the treatment.

Monkey Malaria

Another problem of malaria unique to the Asia-Pacific is infection by P. knowlesi. This species is very different from the other four species infecting humans because we are not its natural host. Humans acquire P. knowlesi in forests inhabited by macaques, the animal that P. knowlesi naturally infects. The first known report of human infection by this species appeared in 1965 – in an American CIA agent working at night in the forests of peninsular Malaysia.15 He returned to Washington where he was correctly diagnosed only in a most extraordinary series of coincidences worthy of CIA intrigue. This lone infection for decades was considered a one-off event and it was widely believed that P. knowlesi did not routinely infect humans.

In 2004, Malaysian scientist Balbir Singh and his colleagues at the University of Malaya at Sarawak unveiled a serious threat from this species.16 Not only was P. knowlesi infecting humans, but it was doing so often and ending in death for many.17 The infection had been diagnosed as P. malariae (which it closely resembles under the microscope). However, true P. malariae malaria is usually relatively benign (although chronic infections can cause irreversible and ultimately fatal kidney failure). Patients were coming in with what seemed to be that species but with very aggressive infections and acute disease states. Professor Singh and his team solved the mystery. Today we know that most of the malaria that occurs on Malaysian Borneo is in fact P. knowlesi. A map of the areas of known risk of P. knowlesi infection reveals it to be uniquely Asian-Pacific (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Map illustrates relative likelihood of
human exposure to infection P. knowlesi
naturally occurring in forest-dwelling macaques.
Courtesy of the Malaria Atlas Project,
University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

Eliminate Malaria!

Beginning about a decade ago, momentum began building to mobilize resources to eliminate malaria transmission, leading ultimately to its eradication as a human health problem.18. Taking the personal encouragement and example of Bill & Melinda Gates expressing malaria elimination as a vision, WHO Director General Margaret Chan announced in 2008 that WHO would embark on a global malaria control strategy that aimed to eliminate malaria. This represented a fundamental paradigm shift of strategy and tactics in malaria control as a public health endeavor. Deliberately and aggressively attacking malaria where it was not highly prevalent, or striving to interrupt transmission where it was highly prevalent, had long been viewed as impractical and even dangerous.19The danger lies in failure. During the 1950s and 1960s the WHO (largely spurred by the US State Department and US funding) undertook the Global Malaria Eradication Program (GMEP).20 Huge strides were made in reducing malaria, especially in the Asia-Pacific. However, in 1969 the WHO abandoned the campaign, leaving behind malaria control programs that were no longer functional. Further, research on malaria effectively ceased after the program commenced due to optimism regarding successful global eradication. Between 1970 and 2000 global burdens of malaria morbidity and mortality surged powerfully due to technical, material, and personnel deficiencies spurred by the GMEP. Elimination strategy invites risk of rebounds of malaria in the wake of failure.

The year 2030 is the declared goal for the elimination of malaria transmission across the Asia-Pacific. In 2008 malaria technical experts formed the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network that draws them together with the national malaria control programs of 18 nations with declared malaria elimination goals. They aimed to support those programs in shifting from control to elimination strategy and tactics where deemed feasible. Mobilizing political and fiscal support and momentum, the Asia Pacific Leader’s Malaria Alliance was created in 2013 by the heads of national governments in the region. The risks of powerful rebounds of malaria with failure to achieve real elimination are soberly acknowledged and impel the urgency of full commitment to the task.

The problems with malaria in the Asia-Pacific summarized here will challenge elimination goals. Each of those three major challenges requires solutions unique to the malaria of this region. Acknowledging these as problems of the Asia-Pacific appropriately focuses regional attention, enthusiasm, and resources for attacking them vigorously. The temptation to passively wait for others in distant regions to deal with their own unique malaria problems to pass along the technical fruit of their labors must be resisted. They cannot deliver the goods the Asia-Pacific requires. These are our problems to solve.

Recommended citation: J. Kevin Baird, “Malaria in the Asia-Pacific Region”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 44, No.1, November 9, 2015.

J. Kevin Baird served for 22 years on active duty in the US Navy Medical Service Corps as a malaria specialist, principally in the Asia-Pacific, retiring in 2006 with the rank of Captain. He is currently Professor of Malariology at the Centre for Tropical Medicine, Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford University and directs the Eijkman-Oxford Clinical Research Unit on behalf of that university and the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology in Jakarta, Indonesia. Prof. Baird has resided in Indonesia for over 20 years and is co-author of the book War Crimes in Japan-Occupied Indonesia: A Case of Murder by Medicine, Potomac Books 2015, with Sangkot Marzuki, former director of the Eijkman Institute and current President of the Indonesian Academy of Science.

 

Vivian Blaxell, Yellow Blood: Hepatitis C and the Modernist Settlement in Japan

 

References

1 World Health Organization. World Malaria Report 2014. Geneva.

2 Hay SI, Gething PW, Snow RW. India’s invisible malaria burden. Lancet 2010; 376: 1716-17.

3 Mueller I, et al. Key gaps in the knowledge of Plasmodium vivax, a neglected human malaria parasite. Lancet Infectious Diseases 2009; 9: 555-66.

4 Ibid, WHO

5 Ibid, Hay SI, Gething PW, Snow RW

6 Coatney GR. Pitfalls in a discovery: the chronicle of chloroquine. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 1963; 12: 121-8.

7 Attaran A, et al. WHO, the Global Fund, and medical malpractice in malaria treatment. Lancet 2004; 363: 237-40.

8 Tu Y. The discovery of artemisinin (qinghaosu) and gifts from Chinese medicine. Nature Medicine 2011; 17: 1217-20.

9 See here.

10 Murray CJ, et al. Global, regional and national incidence of mortality for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria during 1990-2013. Lancet 2014; 384: 1005-70.

11 Baird JK. Resistance to therapies for infection by Plasmodium vivaxClinical Microbiology Reviews 2009; 22: 508-34.

12 Howes RE, et al. G6PD deficiency prevalence and estimates of affected populations in malaria endemic nations: a geostatistical model-based map. Public Library of Science Medicine 2012; 9: e1001339.

13 World Health Organization. Control and elimination of Plasmodium vivax malaria: a technical brief. Geneva. 2015.

14 Baird JK. Evidence and implications of mortality with acute Plasmodium vivax malaria. Clinical Microbiology Reviews 2013; 26: 36-57.

15 Baird JK. Malaria zoonoses. Travel Medicine Infectious Diseases 2009; 8: e2780.

16 Singh B, et al. A large focus of naturally acquired Plasmodium knowlesi infections in human beings. Lancet 2004; 363: 1017-24.

17 Cox-Singh J, et al. Plasmodium knowlesi in humans is widely distributed and potentially life threatening. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2008; 46: 165-71.

18 Malaria: control vs elimination vs eradication. Lancet 2011; 378: 1117.

19 See here.

20 Baird JK. Resurgent malaria at the millennium: control strategies in crisis. Drugs 2000; 59: 719-43.

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The Devastating Impacts of the TPP Trade Deal on Vietnam

November 13th, 2015 by Chuck Searcy

Now that the United States, Vietnam, and ten other nations have signed the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) – and the text, finally, has been released to the public – the U.S. Congress and the other countries’ legislative bodies must decide whether to ratify the agreement.

Negotiations were secret, until the document was signed. Before the release of the text a few days ago, even members of Congress were not allowed to see the agreement, except for certain members who were shown only a few pages of certain sections, alone, in a locked room.

Now that the text has been released, the early reviews are in. It seems quite certain that ordinary Americans will not benefit from the TPP. Most will lose.

That also appears to be the case for the people of Vietnam.

Why should citizens of both countries be concerned?

This year is the 20th anniversary of the diplomatic normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnamese governments. The anniversary is being touted by both sides as a sort of milestone, and for good reason. Forty years since the end of the war that devastated Vietnam, a legacy of unexploded ordnance and Agent Orange remains, along with poverty and other reminders of the costs and consequences of the war. People of good will on both sides of course are looking for opportunities to cooperate and ways to work together that will benefit the people of both our countries.

But the TPP will not bring cooperation or benefits to American or Vietnamese citizens. It is a carefully contrived and very complicated expansion of corporate power over both governments. In the case of Vietnam, this corporate influence may actually threaten the country’s sovereign rights as an independent nation with its own laws and regulations.

During this ratification period – which may take up to two years in the case of Vietnam, according to Mr. Tran Quoc Khanh, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade – representatives of the National Assembly will certainly seek to understand the costs and benefits to Vietnam. Members of the U.S. Congress will do the same, although Congress will only be allowed a yes or no vote. The U.S. Congress will not be allowed to alter or improve any of the text of the agreement.

Nonetheless, this will be a critical time. Now that the full text of the agreement has becomes public, Americans and Vietnamese should engage in dialogue and carefully scrutinize the entire TTP Agreement. Key, substantive questions have already been identified in recent months by the experts who assembled the pieces of the TPP puzzle that were leaked. That process is now going forward apace, as new details have emerged with release of the text. Some concerns include:

– Vietnam will begin to lose important elements of national sovereignty, most within a five-year deadline, if the TPP goes into effect.

– Public-interest policies and any laws that threaten a U.S. corporation’s profits. U.S. corporations will be above the government of Vietnam and above Vietnamese law.

– Disagreements would not be settled in Vietnamese courts or international courts, but by a panel of lawyers picked by corporations.

The agreement includes ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) provisions, by which a panel of lawyers picked by the corporations – not judges in Vietnamese or international courts – will rule on the lawsuits. Section 28.9(2)(a) of the Agreement says that one panel member each is chosen by each party, and under (2)(d), the chair (and third panel member) is chosen together by the parties, or, if necessary, chosen randomly from a list of qualified people on a roster. It seems likely that the drafters of the agreement sought a legal procedure that would fit all signatory nations, but now there are unintended consequences. Only a small number of lawyers are deemed qualified to serve on these panels. That group is potentially incestuous, since the corporations will have a strong say in suggesting names for the roster.

Recently published texts suggest the TPP agreement will expand1 and investors and allow the corporations to sue countries in international tribunals for damages the legal rights of corporations caused by such as financial regulations and protections for workers and the environment)

These secretive2 tribunals – three lawyers – would likely have a vested interest in the corporations that suggested or picked them. They are apt to impose huge, punitive fines against Vietnam. ISDS will constrain the scope of legitimate regulation, making it harder for Vietnam and other nations to achieve improved labor and environmental standards. In short, ISDS will constrain Vietnam’s policy space to manage its own economic development. The government of Vietnam will no longer be beholden to its citizens but, instead, will be beholden to foreign corporations.

This is not speculation. Similar cases have already been filed.

Even the possibility of paying a tribunal’s huge fines plus legal costs can push governments to surrender their rights of sovereignty; dilute labor, environmental, or other regulations; and avoid passing such regulations altogether. The U.S. non-profit, Public Citizen, cited examples3 in Canada, where just the threat of ISDS action may have led policymakers “to think twice about enacting protections that could expose the government to a costly investor-state dispute.”

Philip Morris, a U.S. cigarette company, has filed suits against Australia4 and Uruguay,5 arguing those nations’ laws mandating health warnings on tobacco products are an expropriation of the company’s property and have cut into profits for Philip Morris. A Swedish energy firm has sued the government of Germany for restrictions on coal-fired6 and nuclear7 power plants. Veolia, a French waste-management company, is suing Egypt to overturn that nation’s minimum-wage law. Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company is fighting8 Canada’s efforts to reduce the price of medicine through limited drug patents in order to protect its citizens. Eli Lilly is accusing Canada of not letting the company make the profit the corporation wants.

The number of companies that could sue Vietnam is growing.

As of the end of May 2015, U.S. companies in Vietnam had 742 projects worth over $11 billion. Major American firms – including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, IBM, Cargill, Microsoft, Citigroup, Chevron, Ford, General Electric, AES (formerly, Applied Energy Services), and UPS – have moved into the Vietnamese market. Some Americans who established these companies in Vietnam did so out of empathy and the wish to address post-war poverty; they may not realize that, under the TPP, the company they introduced could impinge on Vietnam’s sovereignty.

Sectors important to Vietnam’s economic security would fall under the TPP.

Some in the government of Vietnam may already be worried about such legal suits, which could dismantle its laws and regulations protecting the environment, citizens’ health, children’s education, and national sovereignty. Vietnam’s 2005 Investment Law lists four sectors:

  1. prohibited sectors
  2. encouraged sectors
  3. conditional sectors applicable to both foreign and domestic investors
  4. conditional sectors applicable only to foreign investors.

If a U.S. company claims Vietnam is prohibiting the company from investing in Sector 1 (activities seen as “detrimental to national defense, security and public interest, health, or historical and cultural values”), under the TPP, can that foreign company sue Vietnam? The leaked texts of the TPP make it very doubtful that Vietnam’s negotiators secured any written guarantees that Vietnam’s sovereignty will be respected. If sued under the TPP, Vietnam’s national sovereignty would not be protected.

The same question applies to Sector 3, (activities “having an impact on national defense, security, social order and safety; culture, information, press and publishing; finance and banking; public health; entertainment services; real estate; survey, prospecting, exploration and exploitation of natural resources; ecology and the environment; and education and training.”) Under the TPP, can foreign companies sue Vietnam for restricting their involvement in that sector? Can foreign-owned banks licensed to operate in Vietnam demand the same high-profit incentives they enjoy in the United States or in other countries? Must Vietnam stop its anti- smoking campaign?

In June 2015, the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council said the TPP will make Vietnam increasingly attractive to U.S. investors. Why? Because the TPP will allow companies to operate with impunity, overriding Vietnam’s national sovereignty.

The U.S. Business Coalition for TPP spent $118 million in the fourth quarter of 2014, $126 million in the first quarter of 2015, and $135 million in the second quarter of 2015, for a total of $379 million in three quarters.

The TPP could skew regulations worldwide in favor of the banks, manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies that aggressively lobbied9 for the TPP. Further, with the Citizens United Supreme Court decision allowing U.S. corporations to engage in unlimited campaign expenditures to support or oppose candidates, we can be sure U.S. corporations will engage in heavy, financial lobbying to pressure for TPP passage during the upcoming election.

The TPP includes patents on new pharmaceutical products. These patents prevent development of the cheaper generic drugs that have made medicines affordable for Vietnamese. The people of Vietnam should be asking, “Will our families be forced to replace cheaper generic medicines with multi-national brand names protected by the TPP?” Americans should be asking, “Do we want to force the people of Vietnam to pay the same high prices that we pay for drugs?”

Vietnam is the world’s second largest rice exporter, yet the TPP will lead to a decrease in agricultural sales in domestic and export markets. Unfortunately, Vietnam is one of the top five nations most threatened by rising seas due to climate change. The nation’s two large deltas – the “Red River and Mekong Rice Baskets” – are already in danger, yet the TPP will allow U.S. corporations to sue Vietnam because of the environmental policies and regulations designed to protect those fragile deltas, the citizens, and Vietnam’s food sovereignty. In particular, U.S. pesticide companies are apt to sue Vietnam for implementing so successfully the FAO-initiated IPM (Integrated Pest Management) program, which protects the environment and improves yields by teaching pest-control techniques other than pesticides and uses chemical pesticides only when absolutely needed.

Decisions about controversial introduction of GMO seeds and crops will be made outside of Vietnam. The Vietnamese government will no longer have sovereignty in such matters.

Vietnamese farmers and agricultural producers should be asking, “How will TPP affect our ability to compete in world markets, against huge corporations?”

A major effort has gone into lobbying in Vietnam for the TTP, with highly paid American consultants, an orchestrated international and domestic press, and the U.S. Embassy’s year-long, 20-year-anniversary celebration pushing the TTP while the contents of the agreement were cloaked in secrecy. As noted above, corporations have undertaken an even bigger lobbying effort in the United States.

Some of the very rich in Vietnam will probably benefit. A small percent of wealthy Americans and major corporate shareholders will make more money. Ordinary people and the poor will lose. That is always the case when agreements are written in secret.

The ratification period is critical. The “people’s representatives” – legislative bodies in the United States, Vietnam and other signatory nations – will be debating the full text of the TPP recently disclosed. During this time of legislative approval or disapproval of such a sweeping agreement, ordinary citizens in Vietnam, the United States, and other nations must raise their voices.

Chuck Searcy is a Vietnam veteran; Lady Borton worked with all sides during the war. Both have worked in Vietnam since before normalization of US-Vietnam diplomatic relations 20 years ago.

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The Devastating Impacts of the TPP Trade Deal on Vietnam

November 13th, 2015 by Chuck Searcy

Now that the United States, Vietnam, and ten other nations have signed the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) – and the text, finally, has been released to the public – the U.S. Congress and the other countries’ legislative bodies must decide whether to ratify the agreement.

Negotiations were secret, until the document was signed. Before the release of the text a few days ago, even members of Congress were not allowed to see the agreement, except for certain members who were shown only a few pages of certain sections, alone, in a locked room.

Now that the text has been released, the early reviews are in. It seems quite certain that ordinary Americans will not benefit from the TPP. Most will lose.

That also appears to be the case for the people of Vietnam.

Why should citizens of both countries be concerned?

This year is the 20th anniversary of the diplomatic normalization of relations between the U.S. and Vietnamese governments. The anniversary is being touted by both sides as a sort of milestone, and for good reason. Forty years since the end of the war that devastated Vietnam, a legacy of unexploded ordnance and Agent Orange remains, along with poverty and other reminders of the costs and consequences of the war. People of good will on both sides of course are looking for opportunities to cooperate and ways to work together that will benefit the people of both our countries.

But the TPP will not bring cooperation or benefits to American or Vietnamese citizens. It is a carefully contrived and very complicated expansion of corporate power over both governments. In the case of Vietnam, this corporate influence may actually threaten the country’s sovereign rights as an independent nation with its own laws and regulations.

During this ratification period – which may take up to two years in the case of Vietnam, according to Mr. Tran Quoc Khanh, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade – representatives of the National Assembly will certainly seek to understand the costs and benefits to Vietnam. Members of the U.S. Congress will do the same, although Congress will only be allowed a yes or no vote. The U.S. Congress will not be allowed to alter or improve any of the text of the agreement.

Nonetheless, this will be a critical time. Now that the full text of the agreement has becomes public, Americans and Vietnamese should engage in dialogue and carefully scrutinize the entire TTP Agreement. Key, substantive questions have already been identified in recent months by the experts who assembled the pieces of the TPP puzzle that were leaked. That process is now going forward apace, as new details have emerged with release of the text. Some concerns include:

– Vietnam will begin to lose important elements of national sovereignty, most within a five-year deadline, if the TPP goes into effect.

– Public-interest policies and any laws that threaten a U.S. corporation’s profits. U.S. corporations will be above the government of Vietnam and above Vietnamese law.

– Disagreements would not be settled in Vietnamese courts or international courts, but by a panel of lawyers picked by corporations.

The agreement includes ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) provisions, by which a panel of lawyers picked by the corporations – not judges in Vietnamese or international courts – will rule on the lawsuits. Section 28.9(2)(a) of the Agreement says that one panel member each is chosen by each party, and under (2)(d), the chair (and third panel member) is chosen together by the parties, or, if necessary, chosen randomly from a list of qualified people on a roster. It seems likely that the drafters of the agreement sought a legal procedure that would fit all signatory nations, but now there are unintended consequences. Only a small number of lawyers are deemed qualified to serve on these panels. That group is potentially incestuous, since the corporations will have a strong say in suggesting names for the roster.

Recently published texts suggest the TPP agreement will expand1 and investors and allow the corporations to sue countries in international tribunals for damages the legal rights of corporations caused by such as financial regulations and protections for workers and the environment)

These secretive2 tribunals – three lawyers – would likely have a vested interest in the corporations that suggested or picked them. They are apt to impose huge, punitive fines against Vietnam. ISDS will constrain the scope of legitimate regulation, making it harder for Vietnam and other nations to achieve improved labor and environmental standards. In short, ISDS will constrain Vietnam’s policy space to manage its own economic development. The government of Vietnam will no longer be beholden to its citizens but, instead, will be beholden to foreign corporations.

This is not speculation. Similar cases have already been filed.

Even the possibility of paying a tribunal’s huge fines plus legal costs can push governments to surrender their rights of sovereignty; dilute labor, environmental, or other regulations; and avoid passing such regulations altogether. The U.S. non-profit, Public Citizen, cited examples3 in Canada, where just the threat of ISDS action may have led policymakers “to think twice about enacting protections that could expose the government to a costly investor-state dispute.”

Philip Morris, a U.S. cigarette company, has filed suits against Australia4 and Uruguay,5 arguing those nations’ laws mandating health warnings on tobacco products are an expropriation of the company’s property and have cut into profits for Philip Morris. A Swedish energy firm has sued the government of Germany for restrictions on coal-fired6 and nuclear7 power plants. Veolia, a French waste-management company, is suing Egypt to overturn that nation’s minimum-wage law. Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company is fighting8 Canada’s efforts to reduce the price of medicine through limited drug patents in order to protect its citizens. Eli Lilly is accusing Canada of not letting the company make the profit the corporation wants.

The number of companies that could sue Vietnam is growing.

As of the end of May 2015, U.S. companies in Vietnam had 742 projects worth over $11 billion. Major American firms – including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, IBM, Cargill, Microsoft, Citigroup, Chevron, Ford, General Electric, AES (formerly, Applied Energy Services), and UPS – have moved into the Vietnamese market. Some Americans who established these companies in Vietnam did so out of empathy and the wish to address post-war poverty; they may not realize that, under the TPP, the company they introduced could impinge on Vietnam’s sovereignty.

Sectors important to Vietnam’s economic security would fall under the TPP.

Some in the government of Vietnam may already be worried about such legal suits, which could dismantle its laws and regulations protecting the environment, citizens’ health, children’s education, and national sovereignty. Vietnam’s 2005 Investment Law lists four sectors:

  1. prohibited sectors
  2. encouraged sectors
  3. conditional sectors applicable to both foreign and domestic investors
  4. conditional sectors applicable only to foreign investors.

If a U.S. company claims Vietnam is prohibiting the company from investing in Sector 1 (activities seen as “detrimental to national defense, security and public interest, health, or historical and cultural values”), under the TPP, can that foreign company sue Vietnam? The leaked texts of the TPP make it very doubtful that Vietnam’s negotiators secured any written guarantees that Vietnam’s sovereignty will be respected. If sued under the TPP, Vietnam’s national sovereignty would not be protected.

The same question applies to Sector 3, (activities “having an impact on national defense, security, social order and safety; culture, information, press and publishing; finance and banking; public health; entertainment services; real estate; survey, prospecting, exploration and exploitation of natural resources; ecology and the environment; and education and training.”) Under the TPP, can foreign companies sue Vietnam for restricting their involvement in that sector? Can foreign-owned banks licensed to operate in Vietnam demand the same high-profit incentives they enjoy in the United States or in other countries? Must Vietnam stop its anti- smoking campaign?

In June 2015, the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council said the TPP will make Vietnam increasingly attractive to U.S. investors. Why? Because the TPP will allow companies to operate with impunity, overriding Vietnam’s national sovereignty.

The U.S. Business Coalition for TPP spent $118 million in the fourth quarter of 2014, $126 million in the first quarter of 2015, and $135 million in the second quarter of 2015, for a total of $379 million in three quarters.

The TPP could skew regulations worldwide in favor of the banks, manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies that aggressively lobbied9 for the TPP. Further, with the Citizens United Supreme Court decision allowing U.S. corporations to engage in unlimited campaign expenditures to support or oppose candidates, we can be sure U.S. corporations will engage in heavy, financial lobbying to pressure for TPP passage during the upcoming election.

The TPP includes patents on new pharmaceutical products. These patents prevent development of the cheaper generic drugs that have made medicines affordable for Vietnamese. The people of Vietnam should be asking, “Will our families be forced to replace cheaper generic medicines with multi-national brand names protected by the TPP?” Americans should be asking, “Do we want to force the people of Vietnam to pay the same high prices that we pay for drugs?”

Vietnam is the world’s second largest rice exporter, yet the TPP will lead to a decrease in agricultural sales in domestic and export markets. Unfortunately, Vietnam is one of the top five nations most threatened by rising seas due to climate change. The nation’s two large deltas – the “Red River and Mekong Rice Baskets” – are already in danger, yet the TPP will allow U.S. corporations to sue Vietnam because of the environmental policies and regulations designed to protect those fragile deltas, the citizens, and Vietnam’s food sovereignty. In particular, U.S. pesticide companies are apt to sue Vietnam for implementing so successfully the FAO-initiated IPM (Integrated Pest Management) program, which protects the environment and improves yields by teaching pest-control techniques other than pesticides and uses chemical pesticides only when absolutely needed.

Decisions about controversial introduction of GMO seeds and crops will be made outside of Vietnam. The Vietnamese government will no longer have sovereignty in such matters.

Vietnamese farmers and agricultural producers should be asking, “How will TPP affect our ability to compete in world markets, against huge corporations?”

A major effort has gone into lobbying in Vietnam for the TTP, with highly paid American consultants, an orchestrated international and domestic press, and the U.S. Embassy’s year-long, 20-year-anniversary celebration pushing the TTP while the contents of the agreement were cloaked in secrecy. As noted above, corporations have undertaken an even bigger lobbying effort in the United States.

Some of the very rich in Vietnam will probably benefit. A small percent of wealthy Americans and major corporate shareholders will make more money. Ordinary people and the poor will lose. That is always the case when agreements are written in secret.

The ratification period is critical. The “people’s representatives” – legislative bodies in the United States, Vietnam and other signatory nations – will be debating the full text of the TPP recently disclosed. During this time of legislative approval or disapproval of such a sweeping agreement, ordinary citizens in Vietnam, the United States, and other nations must raise their voices.

Chuck Searcy is a Vietnam veteran; Lady Borton worked with all sides during the war. Both have worked in Vietnam since before normalization of US-Vietnam diplomatic relations 20 years ago.

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Fifty years ago this next month (December 1965), with the urging of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the rubber stamp approval of President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the United States Air Force started secretly spraying the forests of Laos with a deadly herbicide that was known as Agent Orange.

Operation Ranch Hand, whose motto was “Only We Can Prevent Forests” (a shameful takeoff of Smokey the Bear’s admonition), was a desperate, costly and ultimately futile effort to make it a little harder for the National Liberation Front soldiers from North Vietnam to join and supply their comrades-in-arms in the south. Both the guerilla fighters in the south and the NLF army had been fighting to liberate Vietnam from the exploitive colonial domination from foreign nations such as imperial France (that began colonizing Vietnam in 1874), then Japan (during WWII), then the United States (since France’s expulsion after their huge military defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954) and then against its own nation’s US-backed fascist/military regime in South Vietnam that was headed by the brutal and corrupt President Diem.

Four specially-equipped US Air Force cargo planes spraying a Vietnamese triple canopy forest with dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange during what the Vietnamese called the “American War” (those aren’t benign “contrails”, they’re toxic “chemtrails”)

(Incidentally, the nepotism in the US-backed, Roman Catholic Diem’s iron-fisted rule was almost laughable, with one brother being the Catholic Archbishop of Vietnam, a second brother being in charge of the Hue district, and a third brother being the co-founder of the only legal political party in South Vietnam [as well as Diem’s principal adviser]. It needs to be pointed out that true democracies do not criminalize political parties.)

The aim of the National Liberation Front was to unite the north and the south portions of the country and free it from the influence and occupation of foreign invaders. The leader of the liberation movement since its beginning was Ho Chi Minh, who had made sincere appeals to both President Woodrow Wilson (after WWI had weakened France’s colonial system) and President Harry Truman (after the Japanese had taken over Vietnam during WWII and then surrendered to the US in 1945).

Each appeal asked for America’s help to liberate Vietnam from their French colonial oppressors, and each one fell on deaf ears, even though Ho Chi Minh had frequently incorporated the wording and spirit of America’s Declaration of Independence in his continuous efforts to achieve justice for his suffering people.

Agent Orange’s Ecological Devastation of Southeast Asia

A once thriving forest that was dosed with Agent Orange

Operation Ranch Hand had actually been in operation since 1961, mainly spraying its poisons on Vietnam’s forests and crop land. The purpose of the operation was to defoliate trees and shrubs and kill food crops that were providing cover and food for the “enemy”.

Operation Ranch Hand consisted of spraying a variety of highly toxic polychlorinated herbicide solutions that contained a variety of chemicals that are known to be (in addition to killing plant life) human and animal mitochondrial toxins, immunotoxins, hormone disrupters, genotoxins, mutagens, teratogens, diabetogens and carcinogens that were manufactured by such amoral multinational corporate chemical giants like Monsanto, Dow Chemical, DuPont and Diamond Shamrock (now Valero Energy). All were eager war profiteers whose CEOs and share-holders somehow have always benefitted financially from America’s wars.

Such non-human entities as Monsanto and the weapons manufacturers don’t care if the wars that they can profit from are illegal or not, war crimes or not; if they can make money they will be there at the trough.

They are however, expert at duping the Pentagon into paying exorbitantly high prices for inferior, unnecessary or dangerous war materiels. One only needs to recall Vice President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton Corporation and that company’s no-bid multibillion dollar contracts that underserved our soldiers during the past three wars, but enriched any number of One Percenters.

Agent Orange was the most commonly used of a handful of color-coded herbicidal poisons that the USAF sprayed (and frequently re-sprayed) over rural Vietnam (and ultimately – and secretly – Laos and Cambodia). It was also used heavily over the perimeters of many of its military bases, the toxic carcinogenic and disease-inducing chemicals often splashing directly upon American soldiers. (But “stuff happens” as Donald Rumsfeld would say).

The soil in and around some of the US and ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) military bases continue to have extremely high levels of dioxin. The US military bases where the barrels of Agent Orange were off-loaded, stored and then pumped into the spray planes or “brown water” swift boats are especially contaminated, as were those guinea pig “atomic soldiers” who handled the chemicals. The Da Nang airbase today has dioxin contamination levels over 300 times higher than that which international agencies would recommend remediation. (Guess which guilty nation is doing nothing about Agent Orange contamination of the sovereign nation of Vietnam?)

It is fair to speculate that any American G-I that spent any time at bases such as Da Nang, Phu Cat and Bien Hoa in the 1960s and 1970s may have been exposed. US Navy swift boat crews that sprayed Agent Orange on the shores of the bushy rivers that they patrolled were often soaked by the oily chemicals that were sprayed from the hoses. Secretary of State Kerry, are you listening?

The poisonous spraying continued for a decade until it was stopped in 1971. The South Vietnamese air force, that had started spraying Agent Orange before the US did, continued the program beyond 1971.

Agent Orange – the Chemical That Never Stops Giving/Poisoning

A photo of some of the barrels of leftover Agent Orange. This storage dumpsite was only one of many, and it contained over a million gallons. Many of the barrels can be seen leaking into the sand of Johnston Island (near Hawaii). The island is not only heavily contaminated by Agent Orange, but also by highly radioactive plutonium from three nuclear disasters from plutonium bomb tipped THOR missiles, one of which exploded on the launch pad in the early 60s,permanently and lethally contaminating the island. The Agent Orange from these barrels were eventually incinerated at sea by a contract commercial vessel. The incineration process at times heavily contaminated its civilian crew as well as large portions of the Pacific Ocean. (Most of the radioactive hardware was either buried in the sand or dumped in the ocean.)

A photo of some of the barrels of leftover Agent Orange. This storage dumpsite was only one of many, and it contained over a million gallons. Many of the barrels can be seen leaking into the sand of Johnston Island (near Hawaii). The island is not only heavily contaminated by Agent Orange, but also by highly radioactive plutonium from three nuclear disasters from plutonium bomb tipped THOR missiles, one of which exploded on the launch pad in the early 60s,permanently and lethally contaminating the island. The Agent Orange from these barrels were eventually incinerated at sea by a contract commercial vessel. The incineration process at times heavily contaminated its civilian crew as well as large portions of the Pacific Ocean. (Most of the radioactive hardware was either buried in the sand or dumped in the ocean.)

Agent Orange was a 50/50 mixture of two herbicides: 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and 2,4,5-T (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid). Other herbicide agents were mixtures of other equally toxic polychlorinated compounds, but every barrel was contaminated by substantial amounts of dioxin, one of the most toxic industry-made chemicals known to man.

The toxicity of the herbicidal chemicals known as “dioxins” or “dioxin-like compounds” is due to the chlorine atoms and the benzene molecules (or phenyl groups) in the compound to which they are attached. Dioxins have very long half-lives and are thus very poisonous to the liver’s detoxifying enzymes that humans and animals rely on to degrade synthetic chemicals that get into the blood stream. The fatty tissues of exposed Vietnam vets, even decades after exposure, continue to have measureable levels of dioxins.

Just as there is no safe level of mercury or aluminum (both of which are in many injected vaccines) there is no safe level of dioxin or Agent Orange. Parts per trillion are considered toxic! For those victims of chemical-induced disorders, such as those who are exposed to other toxic substances in the medicine cabinet or the environment, herbicide exposure may represent the tipping point that leads to ill health – and the other way around.

Dioxin’s chemical name is TCDD (2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzo-para-dioxin). It has no commercial value but is an unintended and undesirable by-product of the industrial-strength manufacture of polychlorinated pesticides, PVC plastics, the burning of municipal waste and the wood pulp/paper industry (in the process of bleaching of pulp wood products by chlorine – as has been the case with the generations-long contamination of the St Louis River with various toxic chlorocarbon by-products from various paper mills). Included in the class of “dioxin-like” compounds are PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) which were once widely used as coolant fluids in electrical transformers, cutting fluids for machining operations, carbonless copy paper and in heat transfer fluids and are now commonly found in fish and other animals.

Should it be a War Crime to Use Disease-inducing Herbicides as an Instrument of War?

According to Wikipedia,

“War crimes have been broadly defined by the Nuremberg Principles as “violations of the laws or customs of war”, which includes massacres, bombings of civilian targets, terrorism, mutilation, torture and the murder of detainees and prisoners of war [realities that abounded at places like My Lai and other massacre sites]. Additional common crimes include theft, arson, and the destruction of property not warranted by military necessity.”

According to that definition, anybody with a smidgen of awareness of what really happens in any combat zone would have to conclude that every war that the US military has ordered its young soldiers to go off and fight and kill in, especially the many corporate-endorsed, Wall Street wars, was laden with war crimes.

Four million innocent Vietnamese civilians were exposed to Agent Orange, and as many as 3 million have suffered diagnosable illnesses because of it, including the progeny of people who were exposedto it, approximating the number of innocent Vietnamese civilians that were killed in the war. The Red Cross of Vietnam says that up to 1 million people are disabled with Agent Orange-induced illnesses. There has been an epidemic of birth defects, chronic illnesses, fetal anomalies and neurological and mental illnesses since the “American War”.

Most thinking humans would agree that destroying the health and livelihoods of innocent farmers, women, children, babies and old people (who had no interest in the war) by poisoning their forests, farms, food and water supplies qualifies as a war crime.

Disrespecting Sickened Veterans Again and Again

According to Wikipedia, the chemical companies involved in an Agent Orange Vietnam veterans’ class action lawsuit in 1984 (against seven chemical companies that got Agent Orange contracts from the Pentagon) denied that there was a link between their poisons and the veterans’ health problems. On May 7, 1984, as is usual for Big Corporations that know when they are losing, the seven chemical companies settled out of court for $180 million just hours before jury selection was to begin. The companies agreed to pay the $180 million as compensation if the veterans dropped all claims against them.

45% of the sum was ordered to be paid by Monsanto. Many veterans were outraged, feeling that they had been betrayed by the lawyers. Fairness Hearings were held in five major American cities, where veterans and their families discussed their reactions to the settlement, and condemned the actions of the lawyers and courts, demanding the case be heard before a jury of their peers. The federal judge refused the appeals, claiming the settlement was “fair and just”. By 1989, the veterans’ fears were confirmed when it was decided how the money from the settlement would be paid out. A totally disabled Vietnam veteran would receive a corporate-friendly maximum of $12,000 spread out over the course of 10 years. By accepting the settlement payments, disabled veterans would become ineligible for many state benefits such as food stamps, public assistance, and government pensions. A widow of a veteran who died because of Agent Orange would only receive $3,700.

According to Wikipedia, “In 2004, Monsanto spokesman Jill Montgomery said Monsanto should not be liable at all for injuries or deaths caused by Agent Orange, saying: ‘We are sympathetic with people who believe they have been injured and understand their concern to find the cause, but reliable scientific evidence indicates that Agent Orange is not the cause of serious long-term health effects.’”

Talk about your governmental and corporate disrespect for military veterans who have been sickened by military toxins or physically or psychologically wounded in battle! Such shabby treatment of returning veterans has been the norm after every war, including the reality of the “bonus army” revolt of the 1930s when thousands of poor, disabled and/or unemployed World War I vets marched on Washington, DC, demanding the bonus that had been promised them in the 1920s. Rather than receiving justice, Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower dishonorably ordered their troops to burn the bonus army’s temporary villages and disperse the vets empty-handed.

What about the veterans that were poisoned and permanently sickened because of their exposure to the Pentagon’s “depleted uranium” weaponry during both Gulf wars? What about those who were exposed to sarin gas or the toxic fumes from the burning oil fields in Gulf War I? What about the aspartame-poisoned soldiers who drank a lot of toxic NutraSweet-laced diet soda (that heated up beyond 87 degrees in hot warehouses in the desert and released methanol, formaldehyde and aspartic acid into their blood streams) and then came down with some of the many neurotoxic forms of “aspartame disease”?

What about the number of now chronically ill veterans who were over-vaccinated with experimental vaccines like the unapproved-by-the-FDA anthrax shots? And what about the approved-by-the-FDA mercury and aluminum-containing vaccines (that were given in batches and without informed consent) that we now know are capable of causing autoimmunity and chronic illnesses? And what about all the psychiatrically drugged-up veterans who were given unapproved-for-safety psych drug cocktails (also without adequate informed consent) that are known to contribute to suicides, aggression and homicides?

US Veterans’ Diseases Caused by Agent Orange

A Vietmnamese victim of Agent Orange, dramatically demonstrating one of the dermatological expressions of the disease.

A Vietmnamese victim of Agent Orange, dramatically demonstrating one of the dermatological expressions of the disease.

I conclude this essay by listing the currently-accepted list of diseases that the VA acknowledges can be caused by exposure to Agent Orange. This applies to American veterans, but one can be certain that the consequences are a hundred times worse for the Vietnamese people who were sprayed and who are still being exposed to it in the soil for the last 50 years.

The VA says that certain cancers and other health problems can be caused by exposure to Agent Orange and the other herbicides during their military service. Veterans and their survivors may be eligible for benefits if they have one of these diagnoses.

Amyloidosis, Chronic B-cell Leukemias, Chloracne, Type II Diabetes Mellitus, Hodgkins Disease, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Ischemic Heart Disease, Multiple Myeloma, Parkinson’s Disease, Peripheral Neuropathy, Porphyria Cutanea Tarda, Prostate Cancer, Respiratory Cancers (including lung cancer), Hairy Cell Leukemia, Soft Tissue Sarcomas and spina bifida in infants of Agent Orange exposed Vietnam veterans.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his family practice career. He now writes a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. Many of Dr Kohls’ columns are archived at http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn

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Russia’s Military Presence in the Arctic

November 12th, 2015 by South Front

Russia has been re-establishing its military presence in the Arctic. The recent satellite imagery released by US experts clearly show Russia’s ongoing construction and development of the Alexandra Island base and the Kotelny Island base. 

The Alexandra and Kotelny island positions are military posts, but they don’t look as typical army bases. They are limited facilities that were not necessarily built with the goal of housing significant combat forces — at least, not for now. A major buildup of armored vehicles or air defenses aren’t expected there. The bases consist of a central structure that is painted in the colors of the Russian flag.

The US experts believe Moscow is only looking to establish a monitoring outpost and stake a symbolic territorial claim.

Nonetheless, the presence of runways on both islands does enable Russia to deploy its air force to the bases at any given time. Also, Russian monitoring stations, border control complexes and search-and-rescue centers enable Russia to monitor movement and successfully project power in the region.

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“Support the Troops” as Propaganda Weapon?

November 12th, 2015 by Michael Welch

“I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” Major General Smedley D. Butler (1935) [1]

“Following the Korean War, the U.S. government changed Armistice Day, still known as Remembrance Day in some countries, into Veterans Day, and it morphed from a day to encourage the end of war into a day to glorify war participation.” -David Swanson [2]

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The idea of questioning the heroism of the soldier may seem heretical. Even sacrilegious. Especially on the occasion of Remembrance Day, or Veterans’ Day as it is known in the United States.

All too often, we are told that the soldier “fought for our freedoms.” As has been argued in numerous articles on the Global Research website, the major wars of the last two decades, and for that matter much of the last century, were not about fighting for “democracy” and “freedom” so much as fighting for elite interests, such as those mentioned in the Smedley Butler quote above.

Still, cannot the sentiments of Remembrance/Veterans’ Day be preserved without promoting the agendas of these elite rulers who give them their marching orders? Can you not ‘support the troops’ without promoting militarism?

In a 2011 essay, written on the occasion of his 60th birthday, Retired Special Forces Master Sergeant turned anti-war activist Stan Goff exposes a problematic aspect of this notion. He speaks of this generic soldier-hero in the following terms…

“He is to be honored because he makes himself available to fight, whether he knows why he is fighting or not, and whether he agrees with the reasons or not. And the overarching reason — the deity to which we can make some final reference to justify this soldier — is the nation-state.

Without belief in the civil religion – American nationalism – this soldier is merely a hired killer.

So let’s get this straight. Veterans Day is not a celebration of actual veterans — who are too diverse to characterize; Veterans Day is a High Holy Day of our nationalist religion. It is a proliferation of flags, a mass genuflection before the altar of the late modern Rome.”

If the original thrust of Armistice Day was the need to put an end to war, then the rash of military mobilizations over the last decade and a half would seem to be a slap in the face, or at least a disappointment to those who thought in a by-gone era that they fought the war to end all wars.

This episode of the Global Research News Hour takes a dissenting look at the Remembrance and Veterans’ Day ceremonies,and similar memorializing and valourization of the soldier. It postulates that placing the soldier on a societal pedestal effectively subverts anti-war sentiments and organizing. In conjunction with an economic system which makes war preparation and war-making profitable, as in Dwight Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex,” the Western-world would seem to be placed in a permanent war-footing.

In the first half hour, we speak with outspoken anti-war activist, writer and blogger, David Swanson.

David Swanson is the author of several books including ‘War is a Lie‘ and ‘When the World Outlawed War‘. He is also director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator of RootsAction.org. In this conversation we discuss the role of Veterans’/Remembrance Day in military boosterism, as well as some of the economic and other obstacles to be overcome if a world without war is to be achieved.

Afterward, we hear a repeat broadcast of an interview from November 2014 featuring Stan Goff and Joshua Key. It originally aired as part of a show examining the toll the “pro-War” cult takes on soldiers and the wider society, the roots of this pro-War mentality, and possible remedies to this affliction.

Stan Goff began his military service in January, 1970 as an infantryman with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam. His service took him to seven more conflict areas after Vietnam, including Guatemala, Grenada, El Salvador, Peru, Colombia, Somalia, and Haiti. He retired as a Master Sergeant from the US Army in 1996. He has taught military science at the US Military Academy at West Point. Over the last decade he has published a number of articles and three books, including Sex and War, and Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century. He currently authors the blog Chasin’ Jesus. His latest book is Borderline – Reflections on War, Sex, and Church from Wipf and Stock (Cascade Books).

Joshua Key who hails out of Guthrie, Oklahoma was trained as a US combat engineer was dispatched to Iraq in April of 2003. He claims to have witnessed numerous instances of abuse of the Iraqi civilian population by US forces, which went unaddressed by commanding officers. He fled the war for reasons of conscience at the end of 2003, and with his then wife and children in tow, made his way across the border to Canada in early 2005. He has sought and been denied refugee status in that country. Remarried to a Canadian, he along with other Iraq War Resisters and deserters are ‘living in limbo’ waiting for deportation orders back to the US where they face the prospect of dishonorable discharge and lengthy prison sentences for the crime of desertion. Joshua Key is the author, along with Lawrence (Book of Negroes) Hill of The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier who Walked Away from the War in Iraq.

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

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border. 

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Notes:

1) Butler, Smedley D. (November 1935). “America’s Armed Forces. 2. “In Time of Peace”: The Army“. Common Sense 4 (11): 8-12.

2) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-glorification-of-war-veterans-day-is-not-for-veterans/5488096

 

In an online interview with an alternative US-based website published on January 7, 2015, I was asked about my take on the seeming rapprochement between the United States and Cuba. With regard to the December 17, 2014 announcement, I responded:

“On that December 17, the situation caused me to think of the public statement Fidel Castro made to his followers on January 8, 1959, just eight days after the triumph of the Revolution:

‘This is a decisive moment in our history: The tyranny has been overthrown, there is immense joy. However, there is still much to be done. Let us not fool ourselves into believing that the future will be easy; perhaps everything will be more difficult in the future’”(my translation).

I realize that one cannot at all compare the January 1, 1959 victory with the one on December 17, 2014; in the same manner, the tenuous situation existing in 1959 and the early 1960s characterized by open U.S.-sponsored terrorist attacks and the Playa Girón [Bay of Pigs] invasion cannot be correlated to the post-December 17 situation as it is evolving so far.

However, I continue to follow events and reactions from all over the world and the full political spectrum from left to right. And I am thus forced to remember the statement by Fidel that initially and spontaneously sprung to mind on December 17, 2014. That day ushered in an ‘immense joy’ in Cuba and among many people in the world, and rightly so, as David was finally rewarded after more than five decades of persistent and heroic struggle against Goliath. It is this ‘immense joy’ that at times can camouflage the adversities that in principle are supposed to have been alleviated but that in fact contain the seeds of even more difficult challenges. I believe that the situation points to the notion that ‘everything will be more difficult in the future.’”

Only days after the interview was published, I began to have some regrets about the assertions quoted above. Even though I was careful to indicate the obvious – that one cannot compare the contexts of 1959 with the 17D (as the Cubans refer to it, for December 17), the last thing I would want to do is quote Fidel Castro out of context.

My main point was to have readers appreciate the perspicacity of Fidel Castro’s Thinking, as applied to today’s entirely different context. In his customary astuteness, he was able to peer into the future – way into the future – and come back to the reality of January 8, 1959 in order to provide a sober long-term context for the new Cuban Revolution.

In this article, the only aspect of Fidel Castro’s widespread and profound thinking consists in examining an historic step in the Cuban Revolution. The remarkable insight he exhibited on January 8, 1959 allowed him to analyze dialectically how immense problems on the horizon can be camouflaged by the equally immense joy exhibited right after the Triumph of the Revolution. Despite providing the caveat that conditions in both periods are completely dissimilar, did I state my message clearly enough regarding applying his 1959 pronouncement as a guide to the current situation? While I was still convinced of the correctness of the assertion, there were lingering doubts in my mind. This uncertainty began to dissipate as I read with my usual keen interest what Cuban academics, researchers and journalists were writing. Some, but not many, wrote essentially something similar as I had. For example, Elier Ramírez Cañedo, the young researcher and co-author along with Esteban Morales of a 2015 watershed book on Cuba–US relations, wrote a two-part article on his area of expertise. The second part, to which I allude below, was published on his own blog on January 28, 2015, reproduced the very same day in Iroel Sánchez’s blog La pupila insomne, followed by a reproduction on February 7, 2015 in Cubadebate and the Communist Youth League daily Juventud Rebelde. Elier Ramírez Cañedo wrote how Fidel declared on January 8, 1959 that “it is possible that in the future everything would be more difficult. I believe that now as well, it is possible that the future will be more difficult, especially in the realm of the ideological and cultural confrontation with imperialism.”

The well-known journalist Rosa Miriam Elizalde penned an article on July 21, 2015 in Cubadebate with the telling title “Cuba–US: The Difficulty Is Coming Now” (“Cuba-EEUU: Lo difícil viene ahora”). Of interest is a reader’s online comment made on that article about the significance of the January 8 declaration by Fidel Castro that states “no one here should think that in the future everything will be easy, maybe everything in the future will be more difficult.” In October 2015, journalist Rafael Cruz Ramos expresses in a post on his blog, which was reproduced in CubaSí, his concern, among other things, about the current situation. He writes, “Fidel was right when he said that the current battles are more complex than those in the Sierra Maestra.” Others have written similar articles.

In hindsight, it seems that my initial assertion regarding Fidel Castro’s Thinking on this particular issue of steps in the Revolution was not out of place, given the correlations from some of the Cuban press, as mentioned above, and in light of the events that transpired since then (i.e., from the 17D to fall 2015), which I have followed closely. On the contrary, it was very appropriate. This conclusion constituted a mixed blessing, since it is not comforting to acknowledge that an ongoing Revolution since 1959 can still confront a situation that “may be” more difficult now than the period leading up to it. One can also counter my position by indicating there are not that many journalists or public figures who share this opinion. This is true. However, this apparent lack of widespread attention is another reason for ratifying the view on Fidel Castro’s Thinking. The current manifest scarcity of caution among some may in fact reflect a certain amount of “immense joy” pushing the stark reality of US imperialism’s intentions to the background.

Elier Ramírez Cañedo makes an extremely important qualification that the more difficult time now is to be found “especially in the realm of the ideological and cultural confrontation with imperialism.” While it is a broad topic, one example stands out. When visiting Havana not long after the 17D, I could not help but notice the American flag being widely exhibited as clothing apparel on virtually all body parts, on taxis and cars, and in shops. As a Canadian, this struck me as a not too subtle warning. Canada is the closest ally of the US in the West, and Canadians are frequent visitors to their neighbour to the south. However, we do not see such a virtual carnival-like display of the US flag in Canada. In fact, many Canadians would abhor such fanfare as the nationalist anti-US imperialist sentiment in Canada, while not the highest in the world, is enough to draw the line. This negative pre-sentiment regarding the mushrooming of the US flag in Havana was confirmed and even further highlighted by journalist Luis Toledo Sande’s series on the flag issue in three articles complete with photos, published in Cubadebate and blogs. In my view, these trends and many others corroborate Elier Ramírez Cañedo’s concern about the complicated “ideological and cultural confrontation with imperialism” as a fallout with the 17D.

The US blockade against Cuba is now more than ever a subject of debate in Cuba and elsewhere, especially in the US. On October 27, 2015, in the United Nations General Assembly, the US was decidedly defeated in a record vote of 191 in favour of the Cuban resolution to lift the blockade and only two – the US and its closet political and military ally, Israel – in favour of maintaining it, and no abstentions.

Much has been written in Cuba and the US on the blockade both by the two governments and by experts on both sides. These debates concern primarily those measures that have been – and can still be – carried out by President Obama while the blockade is applied in full force both by his executive wing and the legislative body, the Congress, of the US government. The main conditions of the blockade are the prerogative of the Congress. Some commentators indicate that there are contradictions or inconsistencies in the Obama Administration’s policy with regards to the blockade. The narrative is that the US President is not doing what is expected of him based on his apparent opposition to the blockade and the use of his executive prerogatives to restrict to the maximum the effects of the blockade. I may be wrong, but it is perhaps not the case that there are in effect contradictions or inconsistencies.

However, if one carefully examines the official documents, the White House and Department of State seem to protect themselves by leaving the door open to the continuation of the blockade and restricting Washington’s action to a strict minimum. The US statements seem to speak for themselves. Whether or not the Administration is really even in words in favour of lifting the blockade is at best not clear, as we can now see. It may be preferable to be on the safe side and not harbour illusions, but also pressure the Administration on that basis. In Obama’s December 17, 2014 declaration, he listed a series of issues that he wants to address regarding Cuba, such as democracy and human rights, people-to-people travel and remittances from Americans to the “emerging Cuban private sector,” that is, 500,000 self-employed workers. He then concludes that “as these changes unfold, I look forward to engaging Congress in an honest and serious debate about lifting the embargo.” In other words, it seems that a condition for confronting the majority Republican in Congress is the evolution of change in Cuba according to US standards. His stand does not appear to be a principled unconditional demand that Congress lift the blockade. Secretary of State John Kerry expounded on this angle by saying:

“Look, I can’t tell you when the embargo will be lifted, because it really depends, to a large degree, on the decisions and choices made by Cubans. They have to make it possible to lift the embargo. And the Congress of the United States appropriately is very concerned about human rights, about democracy, about the ability of people to speak their mind, and to meet, and to do things. And we’d like to see – we’re not asking for everything to change overnight, but we want to see Cuba moving in the right direction, and our hope is that it will.” (emphasis added)

The impression was given in some media around the world that Obama called for the lifting of the blockade in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 28, 2015. In fact, what he said, in talking about human rights in Cuba and Cuba–US people-to-people contacts, was, “as these contacts yield progress, I’m confident that our Congress will inevitably lift an embargo that should not be in place anymore” (emphasis added).

Words and semantics are used very deceivingly by US imperialism. The US employs words that seemingly take a just position but in fact camouflage the real nature of US tactics and strategy. Take as an example the 2009 US-orchestrated military coup d’état in Honduras and the expulsion of the constitutionally elected president Mel Zelaya. At first, both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not use the word coup. Facing the outrage of all of Latin America, they finally used the word coup, but not military coup d’état. To employ this latter term would provide the legal basis for the restriction of military aid to the putschists, which Washington did not in any manner wish to do. In a similar fashion, facing international pressure, Obama and Clinton said they favoured the return of Zelaya to Honduras. However, on both occasions in which he attempted to enter the country, the US opposed it, claiming that this return had to be carried out with the full involvement of the US and its allies. Thus, the words of favouring the “return of Zelaya” in fact carried no meaning as did the so-called opposition to the coup.

Similarly, the semantics of supporting the lifting of the blockade carry little weight, given that they seem to be conditional to Cuba “doing more,” “opening up” and so on. The older pre-17D crude diplomacy has changed in the 17D to “soft power” attempts to influence from within. This is carried out to a certain extent as “democracy promotion” programs still funded by the US. Obama said with regard to Cuba that the US is no longer in the business of regime change but the regime change programs are continuing. Thus, words from the mouth of the Imperial power cannot be taken at face value and must be scrutinized.

It is now well-known – and made explicit by the Obama Administration – that the US stance toward Cuba in the 17D is only a change in tactics, such as the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the reopening of embassies in both countries. However, the US main strategy remains the overthrowing of the Revolution or changing it from within so that it has no resemblance to its pre-17D years. It is necessary to expand on the concept of strategy. It can be recalled that Obama came to his new position on Cuba because among other points, as he and others have admitted on several occasions, the American Cuba policy was isolating the US from Latin America and the Caribbean. The Summits of the Americas, led by the US and held every few years, in principle includes all the countries of South and Central America, the Caribbean, and North America. However, Cuba has been systematically excluded. At the VI Summit of the Americas held in Cartagena, Colombia in April 2012, when Cuba was still not included, the conflict between the south and the north had arrived at the breaking point. The entire South demanded the inclusion of Cuba, threatening a de facto collapse of the next Summit if it did not incorporate the island. The next VII Summit of the Americas in Panama was to be held in April 2015. Thus, if Obama had not changed tactics immediately, the US – and not Cuba – would have been blamed for breakdown of the Panama Summit.

A corollary to the Obama strategy for Cuba is the US strategy for Latin America to defeat the new progressive and left-wing movements and governments such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and even the more moderate ones such as Argentina and Brazil. In fact, the US Cuba strategy is part and parcel of the strategy for Latin America. It is thus no accident that, while the impression is given that the US has softened up on Cuba and finally came to its senses, there have been US-assisted and supported destabilizing efforts in all of the above-mentioned countries. If they succeed in this in part or whole, it would be a major setback for the entire region, including Cuba. It would also be a defeat for the world, as Latin America and the Caribbean is the most promising region for socio-economic and political progress. The region is now a concrete foundation for developing a multipolar world that would leave behind the US hegemony-based unipolar globe.

Thus, the astuteness of Fidel Castro’s statement on January 8, 1959 takes on relevance today, that is, that the situation may be more difficult in the future. This may be challenged by some, and understandably so, by pointing out that in 1959 Cuba was alone, while now Cuba is part of this new regional bloc whose members in general support each other. However, this new Latin America has been established with many sacrifices and struggles, such as in the case of Venezuela since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez as president. Any significant defeat in Latin America may have, as the US desires, a domino effect in the region. The situation today is more difficult than in 1959, seeing as the peoples have so much more to lose. However, I think that the US will lose again. For example, in Venezuela, even if there is a temporary defeat or stalemate in elections, the Bolivarian Revolution has become, and is growing as, a material force in Venezuelan society. Once people are consciously and actively participating in their own ongoing empowerment and defence of their national sovereignty, this material force can in the long run defeat even the most formidable enemy.

From the US and its American blogger advisors to some Cuban bloggers, the image of the dissidents is changing from one that has been discredited as mercenaries of the US to another, younger sort. The new crop gives the impression that they are not interested in regime change funds. They are not easy to detect. Dissidence is being renovated in the context of the 17D, and is, in my view, a cancer that strives to eat away at Cuban society from within, targeting especially youth, artists, intellectuals and journalists.

The acumen of Fidel Castro’s Thinking as applied to the 17D that “perhaps everything will be more difficult in the future” is ratified, in my view, in light of both the foregoing discussion and the fact that Cuban society has accumulated problems over the last decades.

However, like Venezuela and the rest of Latin America, there is no doubt in my mind that Cuba will overcome this more difficult and complicated situation. The Congress of the Communist Youth League was held in July 2015. Contrary to the disinformation disseminated by the mainstream US media about censorship and the press in Cuba, one could view on Cuban television virtually all the proceedings and debates in this Congress of 600 delegates. Never have I been so impressed by so many spontaneous and unwritten interventions, profound in content, by Cubans at these types of events. It strikes me that any of them could be future leaders of Cuba. Even though the conditions now are very different and may be more difficult and especially complicated than the period leading up to the Revolution, new generations prepare to continue the legacy, in the context of defying the current situation. The new generation of dissidents whose “dissidence” is being been recycled to match the 17D conditions is no match for the young Cuban revolutionaries.

Furthermore, those in the US who are banking on self-employed workers to drain Cuba from the inside completely underestimate the political/ideological consciousness and patriotism of the vast majority of Cubans. Cubans are steeped in this tradition. President Raúl Castro made it very clear in his remarks on December 17, 2014. He opened by stating right from the beginning:

“Since my election as President of the State Council and Council of Ministers I have reiterated in many occasions our willingness to hold a respectful dialogue with the United States on the basis of sovereign equality, in order to deal reciprocally with a wide variety of topics without detriment to the national Independence and self-determination of our people.

This stance was conveyed to the US Government both publicly and privately by Comrade Fidel on several occasions during our long standing struggle, stating the willingness to discuss and solve our differences without renouncing any of our principles.”

Cuba has gone through many years of revolutionary and patriotic struggles. In my view, one period consisted of 1868 to 1898, during the patriotic wars against Spanish colonialism and in favour of independence and a more just society. A second historic period was the negative one of US domination from 1898 to 1959. A third era was initiated in January 1, 1959, steeped in the 1953 Moncada action and the ensuing program as the basis of the Revolution. From 1959 to the present, Cuba has been going through this era.

The 17D is not historic in that sense but, rather, is another chapter in the current period with its promises as well as perhaps even more difficulties and challenges, in entirely different circumstances than the period leading up to the January 1, 1959 victory.

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

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 The Pakistani military strategists rely on their nuclear arsenal as a main counter-measure against a possible Indian aggression.

On October 19, Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Aizaz Chaudhry officially confirmed that Islamabad has plans to use low-yield nuclear weapons to impede advancing Indian troops in case of a military conflict. The Pkiastan’s attitude is a response to a new Indian military doctrine, named “Cold Start”. New Delhi denies the existence of Cold Start as a concept, attributing the terminology to off-the-cuff remarks by Indian officers. Nonetheless, India has been implementing a strategy that has greatly alarmed Pakistan, driving Islamabad to invest in tactical nuclear weapons and alter its own nuclear posture.

Indeed, it’s nothing new in a new Indian military doctrine. New Delhi started to develop it after the conflict between countries in 2011. After the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian parliament building in New Delhi by suspected Kashmiri militants, India launched Operation Parakram which failed. It took India’s strike corps nearly three weeks to reach the Pakistani border, by which time Pakistan had effectively mobilized its own defenses. The very same time, international pressure on India became acute and India was pushed to abandon the plans of intervention.

Subsequently, the Indian military has adopted a far more proactive strategy relying on immediate offensive operations against Pakistan. The offensive will be spearheaded by eight cohesive operational maneuver groups with significant artillery and immediately air support. They are deployed close to the Pakistani border at a higher level of readiness and able to launch operations within 96 hours. The strategy aims to achieve shallow territorial penetrations in Pakistan — not exceeding 80 kilometers. If this occurs, Islamabad will be in a complicated situation to use nuclear weapons at own territory amid the knowledge that Indian battle groups would not aim to advance deeper into Pakistan.

Islamabad is aware of the widening gap in conventional military capabilities between itself and India and has taken an asymmetric approach to the new threat, building up and relying on an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, lower yield nuclear weapons designed for direct use on the battlefield against enemy forces. Pakistan is calculating that tactical nuclear weapons would essentially counter India’s conventional military superiority. Although it is a nuclear power, India does not operate or plan to develop tactical nuclear weapons. So, Pakistan will have an advance. In turn, this situation is conducting additional risks of a wider escalation into a strategic nuclear exchange that might include non-military targets such as cities.

Thus, India has adopted a quick-launch posture which will be hardly de-escalated by international diplomacy’s measures. It won’t be enough time for this. In turn, the Pakistani defense and deterrence capabilities are grounded on a usage of the tactical nuclear weapons.

This is raising the possibility of a full-scale nuclear war in South Asia in case of a potential conflict between Pakistan and India. Furthermore, India’s rapid response doctrine can be triggered by a terrorist attack as, for instance, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Considering the fact that India and Pakistan actively use militant groups against each other, any terror attack could conduct a full-scale conflict. Separately, Saudi Arabia is financing a major part of the Pakistani nuclear program. The Saudi authorities likely consider the Pakistani asymmetric strategy as a useful approach for themselves. Considering a low combat potential of the Saudi military forces, tactical nuclear weapons could become the only security guarantee for the current regime in Riyadh. At a later stage, the nuclear cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will probably lead to the Riyadh’s attempt to become a nuclear state without any additional exploration in the sphere.

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 The Pakistani military strategists rely on their nuclear arsenal as a main counter-measure against a possible Indian aggression.

On October 19, Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Aizaz Chaudhry officially confirmed that Islamabad has plans to use low-yield nuclear weapons to impede advancing Indian troops in case of a military conflict. The Pkiastan’s attitude is a response to a new Indian military doctrine, named “Cold Start”. New Delhi denies the existence of Cold Start as a concept, attributing the terminology to off-the-cuff remarks by Indian officers. Nonetheless, India has been implementing a strategy that has greatly alarmed Pakistan, driving Islamabad to invest in tactical nuclear weapons and alter its own nuclear posture.

Indeed, it’s nothing new in a new Indian military doctrine. New Delhi started to develop it after the conflict between countries in 2011. After the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian parliament building in New Delhi by suspected Kashmiri militants, India launched Operation Parakram which failed. It took India’s strike corps nearly three weeks to reach the Pakistani border, by which time Pakistan had effectively mobilized its own defenses. The very same time, international pressure on India became acute and India was pushed to abandon the plans of intervention.

Subsequently, the Indian military has adopted a far more proactive strategy relying on immediate offensive operations against Pakistan. The offensive will be spearheaded by eight cohesive operational maneuver groups with significant artillery and immediately air support. They are deployed close to the Pakistani border at a higher level of readiness and able to launch operations within 96 hours. The strategy aims to achieve shallow territorial penetrations in Pakistan — not exceeding 80 kilometers. If this occurs, Islamabad will be in a complicated situation to use nuclear weapons at own territory amid the knowledge that Indian battle groups would not aim to advance deeper into Pakistan.

Islamabad is aware of the widening gap in conventional military capabilities between itself and India and has taken an asymmetric approach to the new threat, building up and relying on an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, lower yield nuclear weapons designed for direct use on the battlefield against enemy forces. Pakistan is calculating that tactical nuclear weapons would essentially counter India’s conventional military superiority. Although it is a nuclear power, India does not operate or plan to develop tactical nuclear weapons. So, Pakistan will have an advance. In turn, this situation is conducting additional risks of a wider escalation into a strategic nuclear exchange that might include non-military targets such as cities.

Thus, India has adopted a quick-launch posture which will be hardly de-escalated by international diplomacy’s measures. It won’t be enough time for this. In turn, the Pakistani defense and deterrence capabilities are grounded on a usage of the tactical nuclear weapons.

This is raising the possibility of a full-scale nuclear war in South Asia in case of a potential conflict between Pakistan and India. Furthermore, India’s rapid response doctrine can be triggered by a terrorist attack as, for instance, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Considering the fact that India and Pakistan actively use militant groups against each other, any terror attack could conduct a full-scale conflict. Separately, Saudi Arabia is financing a major part of the Pakistani nuclear program. The Saudi authorities likely consider the Pakistani asymmetric strategy as a useful approach for themselves. Considering a low combat potential of the Saudi military forces, tactical nuclear weapons could become the only security guarantee for the current regime in Riyadh. At a later stage, the nuclear cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will probably lead to the Riyadh’s attempt to become a nuclear state without any additional exploration in the sphere.

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A Stunning Anti-War Polemic: “Johnny Got his Gun”

November 12th, 2015 by Stephen Lendman

Years ago, I read author, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s 1939 classic novel “Johnny Got His Gun” – one of the most stunning ever fictional indictments of war, impossible to read his chilling account of its barbarity in human terms without being deeply affected.

Joe Bonham is the protagonist, a US WW I soldier, a war during which my father served in France, thankfully coming home in one piece, mind and body intact, no signs of what he may have seen or endured with one exception. He shunned discussing the war. I and my brother never pressed him.

Bonham awakens in a hospital after an artillery blast shattered his body beyond repair,  physically and emotionally numb to what happened.

Gradually he realizes he lost both arms and legs, his face, including both eyes, ears, teeth and tongue. His mind alone functions normally. The horrors of war destroyed him – Trumbo’s polemic a heart-wrenching testimonial indictment of all wars, the highest of high crimes.

So-called good ones don’t exist, not now, not ever, WW II worst of all, a nuclear one if waged will be the ultimate war crime, risking humanity’s destruction.

Bohnam initially can’t bear living in a shattered torso, nothing else remaining of his former self. He reconsiders, wants to be placed in a glass enclosed container and taken on tour nationwide – to show as many people as possible the true horrors of war.

Without any normal way to communicate, he does it by tapping Morse code statements on his pillow, using his shattered head.

He realizes his wish won’t be granted. His only option is enduring whatever time he has left in his shattered condition, unless able to end it by suffocation or other means.

He can’t walk, talk or do anything normally. He’s a living corpse, drifting between reality and fantasy, remembering pre-war times past, his normal life with family and girl friend.

Trumbo’s title is taken from the George M. Cohan song “Over There,” written during America’s involvement in WW I (1917 – 1918). The lyrics begin “Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun. Take if on the run, on the run, on the run.”

The memorable chorus continues, saying “Over there, over there, send the word, send the word over there that the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the drums rum-tumming everywhere…”

“Send the word, send the word to beware. We’ll be over, we’re coming over, and we won’t be back till it’s over, over there.”

Al Jolson and Enrico Caruso-sung versions were recorded. Nothing glorious about “over there” exists, not in WW I or any wars.

Trumbo deplored them. Pacifists in America are generally shunned publicly. His novel was well received, winning a 1940 American Booksellers Award, published days before WW II began, over two years before America’s direct involvement.

A 1940 NBC radio adaptation starred James Cagney as Bohnam. In 1971, Trumbo directed the film version of his novel, Timothy Bottoms in the lead role. A 1982 stage play followed, first off-Broadway, then worldwide.

Revived film and stage versions are vitally needed now – pulling no punches, revealing the horrors of war the way Trumbo explained them in his lead character.

It bears repeating. No wars are good ones. All are fought for wealth, power, conquest and dominance. No one endures their horrors without being scarred for life in some ways, lucky ones returning with their bodies and minds intact, managing to get on with their lives as normally as possible.

Too many others are physically and/or emotionally affected forever, traumatized or disfigured, their lives never the same.

To the victors go the spoils. For soldiers at all levels in battles, few are spared the horrors of war in some ways.

No one forgets the nightmarish experience – why humanity desperately needs a way to end wars or they’ll end us. With today’s super weapons, there’s no in between.

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.

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Senior Syrian military commanders announced that the army’s recent groundbreaking victory at Kuweires military airbase paved the way for further advances in other parts of Aleppo.

“The operations will not stop at the airport, but the airport will be a springboard for the battles to the East of Aleppo,” Syrian Army Commander Colonel Suheil Hassan said on Wednesday.

Other Syrian army commanders expressed views similar to Colonel Hassan, reiterating that their success in lifting the several-long siege of Kuweires serves as the key to further advances in the Aleppo province.

Military experts also said that breaking the two and a half-year-long siege of Kuweires military airbase in Eastern Aleppo paved the way for taking control of another strategic city in the Northern Syrian province as 100 kilometers more of militant-held territories was seized back.

Commanders: Winning Back Kuweires Military Airport Prelude to Greater Advances

Commanders: Winning Back Kuweires Military Airport Prelude to Greater Advances

On Tuesday evening, the Syrian army, popular and Hezbollah forces, backed by the Syrian and Russian air forces lifted the siege of Kuweires military airbase after killing hundreds of ISIL terrorists.

“The situation in Aleppo will surely be different after lifting the Kuweires siege; the ISIL and Al-Nusra Front militants in Aleppo province, specially in its Northern countryside, should be waiting for massive military operations by the army and the popular forces from now on,” political and military analyst Seyed Mostafa Khoshcheshm said Wednesday.

The Arabic-language Al-Akhbar newspaper likened breaking the siege of Kuweires military airport to breaking the siege of Aleppo’s central prison in May 2014 not because of the severity of the clashes, but because of their key impacts on the continuation of Army’s operations in Aleppo countryside.

As winning back Aleppo’s Central Prison was key to a new phase of military operations in Aleppo province, the same is true about Kuweires Military Airport, it said.

The lifting of Kuweires Military Airport siege will also pave the way for seizing back the strategic town of Al-Bab.

The Syrian troops and Hezbollah forces rolled into the Kuweires airport at the end of their daylong last phase of massive operations on Tuesday.

Heavy clashes were underway around the Kuweires airport since early Tuesday morning and the Syrian army was defusing ISIL’s minefield before they could reach their friends in the base.

The Syrian army, the National Defense Forces (NDF) and Hezbollah combatants, backed up by Russian warplanes, launched the last round of their over one-month-long joint operations against the ISIL terrorists’ positions in Eastern Aleppo near the Kuweires airbase on Tuesday, and won full control over the strategic Aleppo-Raqqa Highway.

The attack started from multiple directions and ended up in cleaning up several villages from ISIL. Hundreds of the ISIL militants were killed or wounded in Tuesday operations.

In the next stage, Syrian and Russian Air Forces massively targeted the last strongholds of the ISIL militants around the Kuweires airbase.

In addition to the Syrian and Russian airstrikes, the artillery and mortar units of the army also shelled the ISIL strongholds to weaken their defense lines as much as possible to lay the ground for the combatants of Hezbollah, the army soldiers and the National Defense Forces to launch the final phase of their joint operations to lift the nearly 2.5-year-long siege on Kuweires airbase.

Intelligence sources said hundreds of ISIL militants were fleeing the Kuweires region to safer areas to save their lives after suffering heavy casualties in the joint massive attack of the Syrian Army and Hezbollah with the Russian air backup.

After cleaning the region, the pro-government troops had to defuse a minefield planted by the ISIL before they could reach the gates of airbase.

The ISIL Takfiri terrorists had besieged the Kuweires airbase for over 2.5 years, but the base itself was under the Syrian army’s control.

Hundreds of Syrian forces were under a tight siege at the airbase as a result of the occupation of vast areas surrounding the airport by the terrorists.

The Syrian army’s helicopters supplied foodstuff and other needs to the Syrian troops when the base was under siege.

Meantime, some 69 wanted militants turned themselves in to the Syrian authorities in Aleppo province as the army defeated the ISIL terrorists.

The wanted militants turned themselves in to the competent authorities, informed sources said.

Some 119 wanted terrorists from Homs province surrendered to the government as the terrorist groups are retreating from several areas across the country.

60 others from the provinces of Damascus, Quneitra and Homs also laid down arms and turned themselves in to the Syrian authorities on Saturday.

On Oct 28, 49 wanted persons from Damascus, Damascus Countryside, Quneitra, and Hama also surrendered.

On Nov 1, at least 184 terrorists have laid down arms and surrendered to the Syrian authorities in Damascus, Aleppo and Deir Ezzur provinces, local sources said.

Some 184 wanted persons from Damascus, Aleppo and Deir Ezzur turned themselves in to the authorities to be pardoned, provincial officials said.

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Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King writes on his Facebook page [3] that 2015 saw “the deadliest hate crime against Black folk in the past 75 years” in Charleston, and notes that “more unarmed Black folks have been killed by police this year than were lynched in any years since 1923.” He continues:“Never, in the history of modern America, have we seen Black students in elementary, middle, and high school handcuffed and assaulted by police in school like we have seen this year. Black students, who pay tuition are leaving the University of Missouri campus right now because of active death threats against their lives. If you ever wondered who you would be or what you would do if you lived during the Civil Rights Movement, stop. You are living in that time, right now.”Evidence abounds that police and white supremacist violence is reaching a post-World War Two crescendo. Los Angeles is showcased as a model of so-called “community policing,” but the city’s cops are gunning down civilians at twice the rate [4] of last year. It seems the first response of LA’s “first-responders’” is shoot-to-kill. “Right now, police have a down-to-the-bone belief that they have to watch suspects’ hands, and if the hands move, they can shoot,” said civil rights lawyer Connie Rice.

In Ohio, prosecutor Timothy McGinty appeared to be channeling the ghost of Birmingham’s “Bull” Connor when he accused the family of Tamir Rice of having “economic motivations” for seeking justice in the police killing of the 12-year-old.  A local judge ruled there was probable cause to arrest the two Cleveland cops on aggravated murder charges [5], but McGinty is setting the stage for a grand jury whitewash.

According to Shaun King, who was hired last month as senior justice writer [6] for the New York Daily News and whose Twitter account has 187,000 followers, today’s struggle is much like the “civil rights” period, in terms of violence directed against Blacks. He makes the historical comparison to motivate a new generation to rise to the occasion. However, it is critically important to understand that Black folks are not currently engaged in a repeat of the civil rights movement, which achieved almost complete success by 1965. The remainder of the Sixties was about “Black Power,” and how to get it. The U.S. government’s response was to declare war against the more radical elements of the Movement – which they succeeded in annihilating – and to begin creating the infrastructure of a new national policy to control and contain the entire African American population: mass Black incarceration.

Two generations later, the young people that Shaun King seeks to advise confront an entrenched Mass Black Incarceration regime that is far more formidable and ruthless than the local and state security structures – or the freelance white terrorists – of the civil rights era. The modern mass incarceration regime, which Michelle Alexander calls “The New Jim Crow,” is more pervasive than southern segregation ever was, reaching into every aspect of Black life and warping each social relationship it touches. Its cumulative effects have been so catastrophic that one out of every eight prison inmates on the planet is an African American. The Mass Black Incarceration State killed Michael Brown and Tamir Rice and all the other martyrs of the current, incipient movement.

This regime is a profoundly post-civil rights phenomenon – a national project to re-impose state control over Black people after the victory of civil rights and the failed attempt to achieve some degree of Black self-determination. It is true that Blacks have been subjected to mass incarceration ever since Emancipation. Indeed, mass Black incarceration was the White South’s response to Emancipation, a primary tool, along with lynch law, in enforcing the Old Jim Crow. However, the suppression of the awakened Black masses in the late 1960s would require a national project that would coordinate, fund and vastly enlarge the various local and state police and prison agencies, under central direction. That process was begun with creation of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration [7], signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, the first federal program to fund and equip local and state police forces. President Nixon gave the white backlash against the Black Movement a race-neutral national mobilizing project with his War on Drugs. For the first time in history, the U.S. had a truly national security infrastructure – a police state and gulag created specifically to keep the Blacks in check [8], by methodically criminalizing the entire African American population.

This ain’t your grandfather’s civil rights era. Rather than a potential protector of Black people, the federal government is the funder, equipper and coordinator of an integrated national structure of repression whose primary mission, for almost half a century, has been to contain and control Black people.

The Movement has no choice, therefore, but to seek the overthrow of the Mass Black Incarceration State, whose structures and ideology are embedded in the national government of the United States.

It’s been a long time coming, but this is the big throwdown. Not “Mississippi Burning,” but the whole damn country.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected] [9].

Notes:
[1] http://www.blackagendareport.com/not_your_grandfather%27s_movement
[2] http://www.blackagendareport.com/category/african-america/black-liberation-movement
[3] https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=shaun%20king
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/us/los-angeles-police-urged-to-review-use-of-force-after-alarming-rise-in-shootings.html?ref=us
[5] http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/06/judge_finds_probable_cause_for.html
[6] http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/black-lives-matter-activist-shaun-king-will-join-the-new-york-daily-news-as-a-justice-correspondent/
[7] http://www.blackagendareport.com/police_trained_to_oppress_blacks
[8] http://www.blackagendareport.com/obama-bogus-reform-on-militarized-police
[9] mailto:[email protected]

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Citing the report of the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict, Gilbert said the IDF purposefully targeted the civilian population including entire families, that the IDF purposefully targeted  hospitals, ambulances and four UN shelter facilities.

The report stated that “Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in their own homes, especially women and children. At least 142 families lost three or more members in an attack on a residential building during the summer of 2014, resulting in 742 deaths. The fact that Israel did not revise its practice of air-strikes, even after their dire effects on civilians became apparent, raises the question of whether this was part of a broader policy which was at least tacitly approved at the highest level of government.”

Additionally, “the commission is concerned about Israel’s extensive use of weapons with a wide kill and injury radius; though not illegal, their use in densely populated areas is highly likely to kill combatants and civilians indiscriminately. There appears also to be a pattern whereby the IDF issued warnings to people to leave a neighbourhood and then automatically considered anyone remaining to be a fighter. This practice makes attacks on civilians highly likely. During the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza that began in mid-July 2014, hundreds of people were killed and thousands of homes destroyed or damaged.

The commission report stated: “Palestinian armed groups fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars towards Israel in July and August 2014, killing 6 civilians, including one child and injuring at least 1,600.”  66 Israeli soldiers were killed in military operations inside Gaza.

The commission also reported:

“In the West Bank including East Jerusalem, 27 Palestinians were killed and 3,020 injured between June and August 2014. The number killed in these three months was equivalent to the total for the whole of 2013. The commission is concerned about what appears to be the increasing use of live ammunition for crowd control by the Israeli Security Forces, which raises the likelihood of death or serious injury.”

The  commissioners wrote, “Impunity prevails across the board for violations allegedly committed by Israeli forces, both in Gaza and the West Bank. “Israel must break with its lamentable track record in holding wrong doers accountable, and accountability on the Palestinian side is also woefully inadequate.”

Signaling further attacks on Gaza, during a November 10 talk at the Center for American Progress in Washington, Netanyahu said that Gaza has “become this poison thumb, this poison dagger that sends rockets” into Israel and that Israel must be prepared for a long period of tension.

This blind backing for whatever Israel does and providing the weapons to do it is dangerous for the United States and for Israel.  As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy recently wrote concerning Hillary Clinton’s unwavering support for Israel, but can be expanded to the similar support given by both Republican and Democratic led U.S. administrations:

“… support (for) the continued occupation is like a person who continues to buy drugs for an addicted relative. This is neither concern nor friendship; it is destruction… “false” friends of Israel – have been one of the curses on this country for years. Because of them, Israel can continue to act as wildly as it likes, thumbing its nose at the world and paying no price. Because of them, it can destroy itself unhindered.

Israeli attacks on people in Gaza and the West Bank will end when we the citizens of the U.S. force our government to stop its military and diplomatic backing of the State of Israel.

 Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.  She also was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and resigned in 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq.  She has been in Gaza six times and was on the 2010 Gaza Flotilla that was attacked by the IDF and who executed nine passengers and wounded 50.

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TransCanada, the owner of the recently-nixed northern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, has won a bid from Mexico’s government to build a 155-mile pipeline carrying gas from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the United States to Mexico’s electricity grid. 

The company has benefited from Mexico’s energy sector privatization promoted by the U.S. State Department, the same agency that denied a permit to the U.S.-Canada border-crossing Keystone XL. TransCanada said in a press release that construction on the $500 million line will begin in 2016 and it will be called the Tuxpan-Tula Pipeline.

This is not the first pipeline system TransCanada will oversee in Mexico. The company already owns four other systems, with two operational and two under construction. But it is the first pipeline the company will own during Mexico’s energy sector privatization era, a policy in place due to constitutional amendments passed in 2013.

“By 2018, with the Tuxpan-Tula Pipeline, TransCanada will have five major pipeline systems, with approximately US$3 billion invested in Mexico,” TransCanada stated in a press release. “We will continue to pursue additional opportunities for new energy infrastructure projects in Mexico going forward.”

Tuxpan-Tula connects to a series of pipelines originating in Nueces, Texas and eventually crossing the U.S.-Mexico border via the Sur de Texas–Tuxpan gas pipeline, a $3.1 billion project slated to cross underwater through the Gulf of Mexico. The set of pipelines will move gas obtained from fracking in Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale to Mexico’s electricity grid.

The lines are part of a broader package of 12 gas pipelines and infrastructure projects worth $10 billion planned by the Mexican government, which, if all built, will total more than 3,100 miles of pipelines.

Though the Mexican government publicly denied the U.S. had any involvement in helping to usher in privatization of Mexico’s energy sector, as first revealed by DeSmog, it appears the State Department has tracked gas pipeline developments in Mexico closely.

In the June 2015 edition of the State Department’s Overseas Business Insights newsletter, an article titled “Mexico: Pipeline and Electricity Tenders” read:

The natural gas pipeline project tenders will enable Mexico to import more natural gas from the United States via onshore and offshore pipelines. Mexico’s current natural gas production is 6.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d), while imports from the United States in 2015 average approximately 1.2 bcf/d.

The State Department also published an article about the status of Mexico’s energy grid privatization efforts in the July 2015 edition of Overseas Business Insights.

Global Shale Gas Initiative

As Bloomberg explained in a November 10 article, Mexico’s consumption of U.S. fracked gas will keep the U.S. shale gas industry and fracking afloat during a time of depressed prices on the market.

“That’s the sleeper story,” Richard Ennis, head of natural resources at ING Capital LLC, told Bloomberg. “In Mexico, if you look at how much natural gas they use, it’s tiny. All these new pipelines are going to triple their daily use. It’s pretty dramatic.”

The State Department’s push to privatize Mexico’s energy and electricity sector and the flooding of Mexico with U.S. shale gas fits under the broader umbrella of its Unconventional Gas Technical Engagement Program, formerly known as the Global Shale Gas Initiative.

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By Anthony Bellchambers, November 12 2015

European Union refuses to recognize Israeli sovereignty over Occupied Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem or the Syrian Golan.

warplanesIsrael Warplanes Strike near Syria Airport: Report

By Press TV, November 12 2015

Israeli warplanes have struck targets near the international airport in the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syrian media says. The reports said the attack happened Wednesday morning. There were no immediate comments from the Syrian government on the issue.

Fighter-jets-USHas Israel’s Air Force Joined Obama’s Air Campaign against Syria? Israeli Jets Strike Damascus Targets, Report

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 12 2015

Updated, November 12, 2015, 17.00 UT According to a report by Algemeiner (November 11, 2015), Israel’s Air Force was involved in bombing inside Syria, hitting targets close to Damascus airport.

israel-palestineReport Says Palestinians Being Executed in Cold Blood

By Stephen Lendman, November 12 2015

The Jerusalem Center for Israeli-Palestinian Studies exposed the Big Lie about knife-wielding Palestinian terrorists – saying 78% of the Palestinian victims of security force victims were executed in cold blood.

Palestine drapeauNon-Violent Resistance: A Palestinian Call for “Unarmed Warfare”

By Jonathan Cook, November 12 2015

… some Palestinian intellectuals are advocating non-violent resistance as they warn against an armed uprising. Palestinians have a right in international law to resist the occupation, even violently, but this group emphasizes the futility of violence faced with Israel’s military superiority. Theirs is a pragmatic argument.

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A más de 40 años del golpe de Estado que derrotó a la vía chilena al socialismo y a 30 años de la fundación del mayor movimiento social del continente, el Movimiento de trabajadores rurales sin tierra (mst) de Brasil; a 20 años del grito zapatista ¡Ya basta! en Chiapas en contra del neoliberalismo y del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (tlcan) y a más de 15 años de la victoria electoral de Hugo Chávez en Venezuela (y transcurridos más de dos años desde su muerte), los pueblos indo-afro-nuestroamericanos y sus tentativas de construcción de gramáticas emancipadoras parecen encontrarse en un nuevo punto de inflexión. Un ciclo de mediana duración, social, político y económico parece agotarse paulatinamente, aunque de manera no uniforme, ni para nada lineal. Con sus avances reales (pero relativos), sus dificultades e importantes limitaciones, las experiencias de los diferentes y muy variados gobiernos “progresistas” de la región, sean procesos meramente de centro-izquierda, social-liberales, o -al contrario- nacional-populares más radicales, que se reclamen anti-imperialistas o se descalifiquen en los medios conservadores como “populistas”, sean revoluciones bolivarianas, ando-amazónicas o “ciudadanas” o simples recambios institucionales hacia el progresismo, estos procesos políticos parecen topar ante grandes problemáticas endógenas, fuertes poderes fácticos conservadores (nacionales como también globales) y no pocas indefiniciones o dilemas estratégicos no resueltos.

Sin lugar a duda, en los países donde se han consolidado varias y aplastantes victorias electorales de fuerzas de izquierda o antineoliberales, en particular en las naciones donde esas victorias son producto de años de luchas sociales y populares (como en Bolivia) o de una rápida politización-movilización de los de abajo (como en Venezuela), el Estado y sus regulaciones, el crecimiento económico interno, el combate a la pobreza extrema a través de programas específicos de redistribución y la institucionalización de nuevos servicios públicos han ido ganando terreno: una diferencia notable y ningún caso menospreciable con el ciclo infernal de las privatizaciones, fragmentación y la violencia de la desregulación capitalista neoliberal de los años 90. Allí, apareció de nuevo la fuerza pública como ente regulador del mercado nacional, redistribuidor parcial de las rentas extractivas y de las riquezas del subsuelo hacia los y las más empobrecid@s, con efectos directos e inmediatos para millones de ciudadanos y ciudadanas, un proceso que explica en parte la solidez de la base social y electoral de estas experiencias hasta el día de hoy (y en algunos casos después de más de más de 10 años de gobierno). Por primera vez –desde hace décadas– varios gobiernos “posneoliberales”, comenzando por Bolivia, Ecuador y Venezuela, demostraron que sí es posible comenzar a retomar el control de los recursos naturales y, al mismo tiempo, hacer retroceder pobreza extrema y desigualdades sociales con reformas de inclusión política de amplios sectores populares, hasta el momento marginados del derecho de decidir, opinar y sobre todo participar. También volvió a surgir en los imaginarios geopolíticos continentales el sueño de Bolívar y las iniciativas de integración regional alternativa y cooperación entre los pueblos (como el ALBA-TCP), intentando recobrar espacio de soberanía nacional frente a las grandes potencias del Norte, al imperialismo militar y a las nuevas carabelas que son las firmas transnacionales o las órdenes unilaterales de las instituciones financieras mundiales.

En un momento en que el viejo mundo y los pueblos de la Unión Europea están sometidos a la dictadura financiera de la Troika (fmi, Comisión Europea y Banco Central Europeo) y en una profunda crisis económica, política e incluso moral, es importante subrayar la capacidad que han tenido varios movimientos populares y líderes de Nuestra América de resistir y comenzar a reconstruir multilateralismo, democratizar la democracia e incluso reinventar la política, con proyectos que se pensaron como alternativas para el siglo XXI. Cuando un país como Grecia intenta asomar la cabeza frente a los embates de la deuda y de las clases dominantes europeas, cuando muchos trabajadores, jóvenes y colectivos de esta parte del mundo buscan derroteros emancipadores, mucho se podría aprender de América Latina, de su traumática experiencia con el fundamentalismo capitalista neoliberal y de sus ensayos heroicas de contrarrestarlo desde el sur del sistema-mundo.

No obstante, como lo declaraba a principios del 2015 el teólogo y sociólogo François Houtart, secretario ejecutivo del Foro Mundial de Alternativas, el desafío fundamental –en particular para países que más despertaron expectativas de cambio– sigue siendo la definición de caminos de transición profunda hacia un nuevo paradigma civilizatorio poscapitalista. Es decir se trata de no sólo quedar atrapado en un objetivo de modernización posneoliberal y menos aún dentro de un neodesarrollismo asistencialista o un intento de reacomodo entre crecimiento nacional, burguesías regionales y capitales extranjeros: significa apuntar a una transformación de las relaciones sociales de producción y de las formas de propiedad. Sin duda, la tarea es gigantesca y ardua. En esta perspectiva y en este momento histórico, a pesar de los avances democráticos conquistados[1] con sangre y sudor, afloran las múltiples tensiones y límites de los diversos progresismos latinoamericanos o, más bien, del periodo abierto a principios de los años 2000 en la lucha contra la hegemonía neoliberal. Un intelectual -hoy estadista- como Álvaro García Linera presenta estas tensiones (en particular entre movimientos y gobiernos) como potencialmente “creativas” y “revolucionarias”, como experiencias necesarias para avanzar gradualmente en dirección de un “socialismo comunitario”[2], tomando en cuenta la relación de fuerzas geopolíticas, políticas y sociales realmente existentes (y, de paso, despreciando sin mucho argumentos como “infantiles” a todas críticas que provengan de su izquierda…). Dentro de esta orientación, la conquista electoral del gobierno por fuerzas nacional-populares es pensada como una respuesta democrática – y “concreta”- a la emergencia plebeya de los años 90-2000, y el Estado es considerado como instrumento esencial de “administración de lo común” frente al reino de la ley del valor y la disolución anómica neoliberal. En esta defensa de lo conquistado desde los diferentes progresismos gubernamentales, muy a menudo analizados como un todo homogéneo, encontramos también la pluma de intelectuales de renombre como Emir Sader o de la educadora popular y socióloga chilena Marta Harnecker.[3]

No obstante, no pocos militantes de terreno, algunos movimientos y analistas críticos de horizontes políticos plurales (como Alberto Acosta y Natalia Sierra en Ecuador, Hugo Blanco en Perú, Edgardo Lander en Venezuela, Maristella Svampa en Argentina o Massimo Modenesi en México, entre otros) insisten en la dimensión cada vez más “conservadora” de las políticas estatales del progresismo o nacionalismo posneoliberal (desde Uruguay hasta Nicaragua pasando por Argentina[4]) e incluso en su carácter de “revolución pasiva” (en el sentido de Gramsci): o sea una transformación “en las alturas” que modificaría efectivamente los espacios políticos, las políticas públicas y la relación Estado-sociedad, pero que va integrando -e in fine neutralizando- la irrupción de las y los de abajo en las redes de la institucionalidad, organizando un brusco reacomodo en el seno de las clases dominantes y del sistema de dominación, frenando la capacidad de autoorganización y control desde debajo de los pueblos movilizados.[5] Visto así la “captura” del Estado por fuerza progresistas puede significar la captura de la izquierda… por las fuerzas del Estado profundo, su burocracia y los intereses capitalistas que representa; visto así la estrategia de la toma del poder para cambiar el mundo puede terminar en una izquierda tomada por el poder, cambiándolo todo para conservar lo principal del mundo actual como tal. Para el escritor uruguayo Raúl Zibechi:

En la medida que el ciclo progresista latinoamericano se está terminando, parece el momento adecuado para comenzar a trazar balances de largo aliento, que no se detengan en las coyunturas o en datos secundarios, para irnos acercando a diseñar un panorama de conjunto. De más está decir que este fin de ciclo está siendo desastroso para los sectores populares y las personas de izquierda, nos llena de incertidumbres y zozobras por el futuro inmediato, por el corte derechista y represivo que deberemos afrontar.[6]

En las últimas semanas una avalancha de artículos de opinión –varios de los cuales ya hemos publicados en Rebelion.org- debaten de la existencia o no de un “fin de ciclo” progresista, incluso de la existencia de tal “ciclo”, este debate llegando a tal nivel de polarización que unos autores acusan a los otros de hacerle el juego al imperio por ser “diagnosticadores de la capitulación” e “izquierdistas de cafetín” (dixit Garcia Linera), cuando los segundos tildan los primeros de haberse convertidos en intelectuales por encargo y acríticos al servicio de los Estados de la región y de gobiernos ya no progresivos si no que regresivos… Este diálogo de sordos poco aporta para desentrañar el momento político actual. Seguramente, las ideas en torno a posible “reflujo del cambio de época”[7] o, desde una óptica contraria, la idea de un paulatino “fin de la hegemonía progresista”[8] son seguramente más exactas y complejizadas para comenzar a dar esta discusión de manera constructiva aunque conflictiva. Todo eso reconociendo que este fenómeno se da en condiciones territoriales-nacionales altamente diferenciadas:

Este deslizamiento es más perceptible en algunos países (por ejemplo Argentina, Brasil y Ecuador) que en otros (Venezuela, Bolivia y Uruguay) ya que en estos últimos se mantienen relativamente compactos los bloques de poder progresistas y no se abrieron fuertes clivajes hacia la izquierda. En particular, Venezuela fue el único país en donde se impulsó la participación generalizada de las clases subalternas con la conformación de las Comunas a partir de 2009[9]

Más allá de la polémica acerca de la dimensión del agotamiento, inflexión o reflujo del periodo en curso, y subrayando la variedad de los procesos analizados, surge que en muchos planos los progresismos gubernamentales parecen haber optado definitivamente, bajo la presión de actores globales como endógenos, por un “realismo modernizador” y la política de la “medida de lo posible”, lo que es a menudo el mejor derrotero para justificar la renuncia a cambios estructurales en una dirección anticapitalista: una dinámica que podría ser simbolizada por el encuentro (julio 2015) “fraternal” entre la presidenta brasilera Dilma Roussef –militante del Partido de los Trabajadores–y el criminal de lesa humanidad Henri Kissinger (ex secretario de Estado de eeuu), en un momento en que Dilma buscaba un respaldo político imperial frente a una oposición en alza en el seno de la sociedad civil y a una derecha revitalizada por la amplitud de los casos de corrupción en filas oficialistas. Por cierto, el objetivo del ejecutivo de la principal potencia latinoamericana con este tipo de gestos diplomáticos es, ante todo, dar un respaldo a “sus” sectores dominantes y otorgar más “seguridad” para los negocios en Brasil. Desde otra trinchera y otra latitud, el tratado de libre comercio encubierto firmado en 2014 por Ecuador con la Unión Europea recuerda los límites de los anuncios sobre el “fin de la noche neoliberal”, incluso por parte de uno de los gobiernos paragones de esta perspectiva en un plano discursivo. Hoy, el gobierno Correa enfrentado con la derecha y denunciando los peligros de un “golpe blando” se muestra también enfrentado con movimientos sociales e indígenas (y con una aun débil izquierda), hasta tal punto que se podría hablar de una situación de “impasse político”, en el sentido desarrollado por el marxista Agustín Cueva, donde la figura cesarista del presidente juega un papel de estabilizador funcional al capital:

 Ha habido momentos recurrentes en la historia de Ecuador donde la intensidad de los conflictos horizontales, intercapitalistas, en combinación con las luchas verticales entre las clases dominantes y populares, resultaban demasiado como para ser soportadas por las formas existentes de dominación. Entre medias, mientras los políticos buscaban nuevas formas más estables de dominación, reinaba la inestabilidad hasta alcanzar un impasse.[10]

De manera más general, es necesario mencionar, aunque no sea el único problema, la permanencia en todos los países progresistas de un modelo productivo y de acumulación donde se entrelazan, siguiendo varios grados e intensidades, capitalismo de Estado, neodesarrollismo y extractivismo de recursos primarios o energéticos, con sus efectos depredadores sobre comunidades indígenas, trabajadores y ecosistemas… Esa tensión endógena se articula, de manera desigual y combinada, con un contexto financiero globalizado feroz y el hecho central de la actual coyuntura: la crisis económica que ya golpea fuertemente a la región, provocando una brusca caída del precio de las materias primas y en particular del barril de petróleo (que pasó de casi 150 dólares a menos de 50), terminando así con el periodo anterior de bonanzas y desnudando de nuevo la matriz productiva dependiente y neo-colonial de América latina, herencia maldita de siglos de sometimiento imperialista. Este contexto corresponde a la vez a con una clara ofensiva del capital transnacional, de Estados del Norte y de algunos gigantes del Sur (comenzando por China) para acaparar más tierras agrícolas, energía, minerales, agua, biodiversidad, mano de obra, en una vorágine que pareciera sin fin… hasta las últimas gotas de vida. En países como Bolivia o Ecuador donde hay más conciencia política de estos peligros, se defiende desde el gobierno y sus apoyos políticos la táctica –bastante sensata- de pasar por un necesario momento industrializador-extractivista para construir la transición con algo de fuerza económica: eso es algo como un “extractivismo transitorio posneoliberal” que permitiría desarrollar pequeños países con pocos recursos, crear riquezas de acumulación originaria para responder a la inmensa urgencia social que conocen esas naciones empobrecidas y a la vez debutar un lento proceso cambio del modelo de acumulación. No obstante, según Eduardo Gudynas, secretario ejecutivo del Centro Latino Americano de Ecología Social (CLAES):

No hay ninguna evidencia de que eso esté ocurriendo por varias razones: la primera es que la forma en que se usa la riqueza generada por el extractivismo en buena parte se destina a programas que profundizan más el extractivismo, por ejemplo, aumentar las reservas de hidrocarburos o alentar la exploración minera. Segundo, los extractivismos tienen derrames económicos que inhiben procesos de autonomía en otros sectores productivos, tanto en la agricultura como en la industria. El Gobierno tendría que tomar medidas de precaución para evitar esa deformación y eso no está ocurriendo, de hecho hay una deriva agrícola a promover cultivos de exportación mientras se aumenta la importación de alimentos. Tercero, como los proyectos extractivos generan tanta resistencia social (ejemplos recientes son el de los Guaranís de Yategrenda, Santa Cruz, o la reserva Yasuni en Ecuador), los gobiernos tienen que defenderlos de forma tan intensa que refuerzan la cultura extractivista en amplios sectores de la sociedad y por tanto inhiben la búsqueda de alternativas.[11]

De hecho, no es una casualidad que el ciclo de luchas populares y movilizaciones que está emergiendo en el corazón de América, anunciando –tal vez– un nuevo periodo histórico de luchas de clases, esté directamente ligado a estas depredaciones, represiones y sus consiguientes resistencias socio-territoriales:

La resistencia está centrada en la minería y los monocultivos, en particular la soja, así como en la especulación urbana, o sea en los diversos modos que asume el extractivismo. Según el Observatorio de Conflictos Mineros en la región hay 197 conflictos activos por la minería que afectan a 296 comunidades. Perú y Chile, con 34 conflictos cada uno, seguidos de Brasil, México y Argentina, son los países más afectados.[12]

Esta tendencia se manifiesta en el contexto ya descrito de fuertes sombras en relación al crecimiento económico de los últimos años, la profunda crisis del capitalismo mundial que sigue su curso y la permanencia de inmensas desigualdades sociales y asimetrías regionales en todo el continente. Por otra parte, es menester subrayar la importante ofensiva de las diversas derechas empresariales y mediáticas como también de las oligarquías de la región que aprovechan el fin de la hegemonía progresista para retomar el terreno perdido desde hace 15 años frente a los diferentes líderes carismáticos y dirigentes progresistas. Esas derechas conservadoras y neoliberales siguen controlando –en el plano político– ciudades, regiones y países claves (como México y Colombia), amenazando de manera constante los derechos arrancados en la última década y el proceso de nueva integración regional más autónoma de Washington. Sabemos que estas fuerzas regresivas se mostraron, y se muestran, listas para organizar múltiples formas de desestabilización, e incluso golpes de Estado (como lo fue en la última década en Paraguay, Honduras, Venezuela), con el apoyo explícito o indirecto de la agenda imperial de eeuu.[13]

Sim embargo, desde abajo, protestas populares multisectoriales, pueblos originarios, estudiantes y trabajadores ponen también en el tapete su propias agendas y reivindicaciones, realzando los límites de las transformaciones de fondo realizadas en países donde gobiernan fuerzas “posneoliberales” y su absoluta ausencia donde todavía dominan las derechas neoliberales, denunciando las diversas formas de represión, intimidación o cooptación en ambos casos: oposición colectiva a la soja transgénica o huelgas obreras en Argentina; grandes movilizaciones callejeras de la juventud en las principales ciudades brasileñas demandando el derecho a la ciudad y contra la corrupción; crisis profunda del proyecto bolivariano, violencia de la oposición y reorganización del movimiento popular en Venezuela; en Perú, luchas campesinas e indígenas en contra de megaproyectos mineros (como el proyecto Conga); en Chile, Mapuche, asalariados y estudiantes denunciando con fuerza la herencia maldita de la dictadura de Pinochet; en Bolivia, críticas de la Central Obrera Boliviana y de sectores del movimiento indígena hacia la política de “modernización” de Evo Morales; en Ecuador, abandono por parte del presidente Correa del proyecto Yasuní que debía dejar el petróleo bajo tierra y enfrentamiento entre el ejecutivo, la Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (conaie) y franjas significativas de la sociedad civil organizada; en Colombia, una largaa búsqueda de una paz verdadera, es decir una paz con transformación social, económica y reforma agraria, etc.

El escenario es tenso y movedizo. Pero, a pesar de todo el “viejo topo de la historia” (en el sentido que lo entendía Marx) sigue cavando y junto con él se despliegan una gran variedad de experiencias de luchas sociales, conflictos de clases y debates políticos acompañados de múltiples ejercicios de poder popular, alternativas radicales y utopías en construcción.[14] Si algunos intelectuales críticos pudieron creer –y hacer creer–, durante un tiempo, que América Latina –o mejor dicho Abya Yala– alcanzaría el nuevo El Dorado del “socialismo del siglo xxi” gracias a un “giro a la izquierda” gubernamental y victorias electorales democráticas, sabemos que los caminos de la emancipación son más complejos, profundamente sinuosos y que los aparatos de poder (militares, mediáticos, económicos) de las oligarquías latinoamericanas e imperiales son sólidos, resilientes, enquistados, e incluso feroces cuando es necesario. Transformar las relaciones sociales de producción y desbaratar las dominaciones de “raza” y de género en las sociedades de Nuestra América es una dialéctica que tendrá que partir, sin duda y de nuevo, desde abajo y a la izquierda, desde la autonomía y la independencia de clase, pero siempre en clave política, y no desde un ilusorio cambio sin tomar el poder. Eso es sin negar que estos intentos colectivos de poder popular deban continuar apoyándose en avances electorales parciales o puedan considerar la importancia de conquistar espacios institucionales y partidarios dentro del Estado, si -y solo si- el desarrollo de tales nuevas políticas públicas se ponen al servicio de los “comunes” y de los subalternos. ¿Se puede utilizar el Estado para terminar con el Estado… capitalista, usándolo un tiempo como barrera de contención de colosales fuerzas hostiles ajenas? ¿o, como lo constató Marx, el Estado por ser fundamentalmente criatura de los dominantes no puede ser herramienta nuestra sin arriesgar colonizarnos, mente, alma y practicas? Es evidente que el control del ejecutivo representa “sólo” la conquista de un poder parcial, y aún más limitado si no se posee mayoría parlamentaria y una base social movilizada[15]: recordemos las lecciones de Chile y de cómo se derrotó en 1973 a Salvador Allende y la vía institucional al socialismo de la Unidad Popular… Por eso un gobierno de izquierda y de los pueblos, muestra su verdadero carácter alternativo cuando sirve de palanca y estímulo para las luchas auto-organizadas de los trabajadores y de los movimientos populares o indígenas, favoreciendo dinámicas de empoderamiento real, transformación de la relaciones sociales de producción, construcción de autogestión y caminos emancipatorios desde y para el “bien vivir”. En el caso contrario, las fuerzas políticas de izquierda están condenadas a gestionar el orden existente, e incluso en momento de inestabilidad a elevarse por encima de la clases sociales de manera bonapartista para perpetuar el leviatán estatal, administrando la dominación de manera más o menos “progresista”, con más o menos roces con las elites locales.

Sin duda, la inflexión y dudas actuales representan peligros y oportunidades; es también el momento de volver a discutir lo nuevo sin olvidar lo “viejo” y debatir sobre las estrategias anticapitalistas y sus herramientas políticas para construir lo que proponemos llamar un ecosocialimo nuestroamericano del siglo xxi: un proyecto que no sea calco ni copia, que rechace dejar agobiarse por las tácticas electorales cortoplacistas, por las luchas de caudillos y de aparatos burocráticos, pero sin tampoco aceptar el arrastre y la ilusión de la construcción de una pluralidad de autonomías sociales sin proyecto político común, un mínimo centralizado. Con este propósito, es fundamental abrir los ojos, el olfato, los sentidos y los corazones a los experimentaciones colectivas en curso, a menudo existentes por debajo y por encima de los radares mediáticos consensuales, sin duda todavía dispersas o pocos conectadas, pero que conforman una inmenso rio de luchas en permanente transformación, desde lo real y lo concreto, desde sus errores y aciertos. Experiencias que permiten entender dinámicas emancipadoras, tentativas originales colectivas y los peligros que deben enfrentar o sortear. Por cierto, no nos permiten mostrar una forma ideal de tentativas de sublevación exitosas, sino más bien un mosaico de praxis-saberes-accionares: algunas centradas desde el campo-agrario y lo territorial, otras más desde lo productivo y las fábricas recuperadas, otras desde lo barrial y comunitario urbano, otras también iniciadas desde políticas estatales o institucionales pero controladas por sus usuarios: luchas de las mujeres en contra de la violencia patriarcal, de los sin techo, de los indígenas, de la clase obrera en varios países, ejemplo de la agroecología alternativa en Colombia, de los reclamos de “buen vivir” en Ecuador, de los consejos comunales en Venezuela, de la fábricas sin patrones en Argentina, de los medios comunitarios en Brasil y Chile, de las rondas comunitarias en Perú y México, etc.

Iniciativas organizativas locales de toma y ejercicio de poder popular, virulentas protestas callejeras de rechazo a decisiones or­questadas desde el poder nacional y transnacional; pero también, asambleas constituyentes de refundación utópica, recuperación de las riendas de la po­lítica por parte de los Estados: los caminos de la emancipación están lejos de ser unívocos. En tanto experimentaciones, suponen ensayos, titubeos y re­pliegues. Pero también, conquistas. Complejas, a veces contradictorias, pero profunda y sinceramente es­peranzadoras, experiencias (que) constituyen un alimento pa­ra quienes participan en la tarea de reinventar las sociedades y la manera de hacer política, sean estos ciudadanos de los países de la región o muje­res y hombres que han emprendido el esforzado camino de la resistencia y la emancipación, desde otras geografías.[16]

Esa pluralidad de voces y de ejemplos posibilita retomar el hilo de una discusión que ya recorre las venas abiertas del continente; permite pensar más allá y más acá de proyectos progresistas gubernamentales, asumiendo que es, al mismo tiempo, indispensable crear frentes socio-políticos para enfrentar las amenazas del regreso masivo de las derechas y del imperialismo en Suramérica. Sobre todo, nos obliga a pensar a contracorriente, en contra de una “izquierda contemplativa, institucional, administrativa, una izquierda de aspirantes a funcionarios y funcionarias, una izquierda sin rebeldía, sin mística, una izquierda sin izquierda”.[17] Y también saber pensar en contra de nuestros propios mitos desarrollistas y teleológicos, asumiendo la urgencia global de un planeta maltratado al borde del colapso ecológico y climático. Por cierto, es esencial reconocer que estas diversas experiencias y vivencias que mencionamos aquí brevemente sobre cómo cambiar el mundo son contradictorias, incluso divergentes: algunas aisladas, muy localizadas y otras, al contrario, institucionalizadas o dependientes del Estado. De allí el interés de retomar los grandes debates estratégicos del siglo XX, pero desde los tiempos actuales y con en memoria los balances de las dolorosas derrotas pasadas: ¿Cómo emprender una transición poscapitalista y ecosocialista en el siglo XXI? ¿Cuáles serán el papel de las herramientas político-partidarias y de los movimientos en este tránsito? ¿Qué papel de las fuerzas armadas, del sistema parlamentario, de los sindicatos? Destruirlos, utilizarlos, transformarlos, evitarlos, fisurarlos… muy bien, pero en cualquier caso: ¿cómo? ¿Y de qué manera reconstruir sentidos comunes, hegemonía cultural y una izquierda anticapitalista desde y para el pueblo? ¿Cómo evitar forjar ilusiones en torno a pequeños grupos de afinidades cerrados sobre ellos mismos y, al mismo tiempo, no repetir el horror burocrático y estadocentrico del siglo XX?

La gran Rosa Luxemburgo advertía, en 1915, “avance al socialismo o regresión a la barbarie”. En 2015, sus palabras cobran un sentido aún más catastrófico y premonitorio: “ecosocialismo o ecocidio global”. Sin dudas, es desde la “osadía de lo nuevo” que podremos volver a soñar en derribar los muros del capital, del trabajo asalariado, del neocolonialismo y del patriarcado:

Cambiar el mundo suena muy ambicioso. Es más, parece bastante arriesgado si se toma en cuenta todos los grupos de poder que jamás permitirían que se desmonte la civilización capitalista. Pero en las actuales circunstancias, no hay otra alternativa. Las condiciones de vida de amplios segmentos de la población y de la Tierra misma, se deterioran aceleradamente. Nos acercamos a un punto sin retorno. Y la opción de cambiar de planeta no existe. (…) Debemos aceptar el desafío. Debemos ser rebeldes ante el poder (y quizá hasta desear su destrucción). Debemos aceptar nuestras limitaciones como seres humanos dentro de la Naturaleza. Debemos odiar toda forma de explotación. Debemos ser quienes nos levantemos contra las injusticias y contra quienes las cometan. No debemos resignarnos. Tenemos que seguir exigiendo y construyendo lo imposible.[18]

La tarea ya comenzó, es pan de hoy día y seguirá mañana.

Franck Gaudichaud

Santiago de Chile, invierno austral 2015.


 

[1] Tales como la construcción de Estados plurinacionales, la instalación de derechos sociales más o menos institucionalizados, la creación de asambleas constituyentes y de espacios de participación comunitaria o el impulso integracionista regional.

[2] García Linera, Álvaro, Las tensiones creativas de la Revolución. La quinta fase del Proceso de Cambio, La Paz, Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, 2011. En: www.rebelion.org/docs/134332.pdf.

[3] Emir Sader, “¿El final de un ciclo (que no existió)?”, Pagina 12, Buenos Aires, 17 de septiembre de 2015 y Marta Harnecker, “Los movimientos sociales y sus nuevos roles frente a los gobiernos progresistas”, Rebelión, 07-09-2015, http://rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=202910.

[4] Es necesario anotar aquí que, para nosotros, el actual gobierno chileno de Michelle Bachelet se sitúa claramente fuera de esta categoría “progresista posneoliberal suramericana” por ser fundamentalmente una continuidad “reformista” del neoliberalismo de los gobiernos de la Concertación que dirigieron el país entre 1990 y 2010. Cf. F. Gaudichaud, Las fisuras del neoliberalismo. Trabajo, “Democracia protegida” y conflictos de clases, Buenos Aires, CLACSO, abril 2015. En: http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/becas/20150306041124/EnsayoVF.pdf.

[5] Modenesi, Massimo, “Revoluciones pasivas en América Latina. Una aproximación gramsciana a la caracterización de los gobiernos progresistas de inicio de siglo”. En: Modenesi, Massimo (coord.), Horizontes gramscianos. Estudios en torno al pensamiento de Antonio Gramsci, México, fcpys-unam, 2013.

[6] Zibechi, Raúl, “Hacer balance del progresismo”, Resumen latinoamericano, 4 de agosto del 2015. En: www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2015/08/04/hacer-balance-del-progresismo.

[7] Katu Akornada, “¿Fin del ciclo progresista o reflujo del cambio de época en América Latina? 7 tesis para el debate”, Rebelión, 8 de septiembre del 2015, http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=203029.

[8] Massimo Modenesi, “¿Fin del ciclo o fin de la hegemonía progresista en América Latina?”, La Jornada, 27 de septiembre del 2015.

[9] Massimo Modenesi, “¿Fin del ciclo o fin de la hegemonía progresista en América Latina?”, op. cit.

[10] Jeffery R. Webber, “Ecuador en el impasse político”, Viento Sur, 20 de septiembre de 2015, http://vientosur.info/spip.php?article10496.

[11] Ricardo Aguilar Agramont, “Entrevista a Eduardo Gudynas: La derecha y la izquierda no entienden a la naturaleza”, La Razón, 23 de agosto de 2015.

[12] Zibechi, Raúl, “Hacia un nuevo ciclo de luchas en América Latina”, Gara, 3 de noviembre del 2013, http://gara.naiz.info/paperezkoa/20131103/430771/es/Hacia-nuevo-ciclo-luchas-America-Latina.

[13] Franck Gaudichaud, “El peso de la historia. América Latina y la mano negra de Washington”, Le Monde Diplomatique, edición chilena, julio de 2015.

[14] Pablo Seguel, “América Latina actual. Geopolítica imperial, progresismos gubernamentales y estrategias de poder popular constituyente. Conversación con Franck Gaudichaud”. En: gesp (coord), Movimientos sociales y poder popular en Chile, Tiempo robado editoras, Santiago, 2015, pp. 237-278.

[15] Cf. Marta Harnecker, “Los movimientos sociales y sus nuevos roles…”, op. cit.

[16] Tamia Vercoutère, prólogo a la edición ecuatoriana del libro América Latina. Emancipaciones en construcción (Quitogo, IEAN, 2013).

[17] Pablo Rojas Robledo, “Hay que sembrarse en las experiencias del pueblo”. Fin de ciclo, progresismo e izquierda. Entrevista con Miguel Mazzeo”, Contrahegemonía, septiembre 2015, http://contrahegemoniaweb.com.ar/hay-que-sembrarse-en-las-experiencias-del-pueblo-fin-de-ciclo-progresismo-e-izquierda-entrevista-con-miguel-mazzeo.

[18] Miriam Lang, Belén Cevallos y Claudia López (comp.), La osadía de lo nuevo. Alternativas de política económica, Quito, Fundación Rosa Luxemburg/Abya-Yala, 2015, pp. 191-192.

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Israel Warplanes Strike near Syria Airport: Report

November 12th, 2015 by Press TV

Israeli warplanes have struck targets near the international airport in the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syrian media says.

The reports said the attack happened Wednesday morning.

There were no immediate comments from the Syrian government on the issue.

In October, the Israeli military launched a number of artillery attacks against Syrian army posts in the Golan Heights.

Syria says Israel and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri militant groups operating inside the Arab country.

The Syrian army has repeatedly seized huge quantities of Israeli-made weapons and advanced military equipment from the foreign-backed militants inside Syria.

The Tel Aviv regime has a long history of supporting militant groups against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the past few years of turmoil in the Arab country.

Reports say Israel has set up field hospitals in the occupied Syrian territory of the Golan Heights for the treatment of injured militants.

Back in June, locals in the Golan intercepted an Israeli vehicle transporting two members of the al-Nusra Front terrorist group on the road between al-Sheikh Mountain and the village of Majdal Shams.

The foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has thus far claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and left over one million injured, according to the United Nations.

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Updated, November 12, 2015, 17.00 UT

According to a report by Algemeiner (November 11, 2015), Israel’s Air Force was involved in bombing inside Syria, hitting targets close to Damascus airport. 

According to reports in Syrian media outlets affiliated with President Bashar Assad, Israel Air Force jets hit targets near the Damascus airport, Israel’s Channel 2 reported Wednesday evening.

The report, a breaking story that interrupted the nightly news, was neither confirmed nor denied by Israeli authorities.

Channel 2 military correspondent Roni Daniel said that Israel has made it clear it would not allow the transfer of weapons from Iran, via Damascus, to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This is not the first time that air strikes in Syria have been attributed to Israel without confirmation from officials in the Jewish state. But this comes on the heels of meetings between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly held to coordinate operations in Syria — and ensure that there are no unwitting collisions between planes from their respective air forces.

During a visit to the US this week, Netanyahu gave insight into Israel’s Syria policy. He told an audience at a gala for the American Enterprise Institute that he laid out Israel’s red lines in Syria to Putin in September.

“We will not allow Iran to set up a second front in the Golan, and we will act forcefully — and have acted forcefully — to prevent that. We will not allow the use of Syrian territory from which we’d be attacked by the Syrian army or anyone else and we have acted forcefully against that. And third, we will not allow the use of Syrian territory for the transfer of game-changing weapons into Lebanon into Hezbollah’s hands, and we have acted forcefully on that. I made it clear that we will continue to act like that,” he said. (Ruth Blum, Algemeiner, November 12, 2015)

This report begs the question as to the ultimate objective of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington.

The Israeli delegation to Washington was also integrated by military and intelligence officials who no doubt had meetings with their counterparts at the Pentagon and Langley, not to mention the US Congress.

A week prior to the Obama-Nentayahu “summit”,  Netanyahu dispatched his defense chief, Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, to Washington, “to help smooth the way for his own visit”. Was there an understanding that Israel would henceforth play a more active role in the war against Syria? In an earlier statement, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter intimated:

“It is a reasonable expectation that the defense relationship [with Israel] will be one of stability and endurance, …” (quoted by Defense One, November 3, 2015)

Ya’alon was hosted in Washington  by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter who is credited for having stabilized the US-Israel relationship.  Were these talks between Carter and Ya’alon behind closed doors indicative of a shift in US-Israel military relations,  specifically with regard to Syria.

Quoting Syrian opposition sources, the Israeli media dismissed the reports that the IDF was behind the air strikes:

Syrian opposition activist Ahmed Yabrudi said: “Israeli warplanes entered from south Lebanon, arrived at Qalamoun and flew above the international airport in Damascus where they struck nearby military outposts.”

He added that “the Israeli planes remained in Syria’s skies for a half hour, and there is no information about the outposts that were hit – except that they belonged to Hezbollah.”

Official Syrian media failed to report on the air strikes attributed to Israel. [According to Algemeiner, it was announced on Syrian TV]

Israeli defense officials also declined to comment on the foreign media reports.

However, Israel did previously announce a strict-policy of intolerance towards threats to the state, such as weapons transfers to Hezbollah in Lebanon. (Jerusalem Post, November 12, 2015)

Michel Chossudovsky, November 12, 2015 

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The call for a United Nations resolution drafted by Saudi Arabia and supported by the United States, Britain, France and other Western powers reveals just how desperate they are now that Syria with the help of Russia is turning around the “Syrian Civil War” instigated by the United States government and its partners.

From Reuters today:

Saudi Arabia is pushing the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee to condemn Iranian and Russian intervention in Syria, a move that prompted complaints on Tuesday from the delegations of Iran and Syria.

The non-binding draft resolution, prepared by Saudi Arabia and co-sponsored by Qatar and other Arab nations, the United States, Britain, France and other Western powers, was presented during a meeting of the assembly’s Third Committee, which focuses on human rights.

In addition, without mentioning Russia specifically, the draft “strongly condemns all attacks against the Syrian moderate opposition and calls for their immediate cessation, given that such attacks benefit so-called ISIL (Daesh) and other terrorist groups, such as al Nusra Front.”

As repeatedly documented by Infowars.com and others, virtually none of the mercenaries in Syria are “moderate” and are in fact radical jihadists intent on imposing sharia law and establishing a Wahhabi principality in the country. Declassified US Defense Intelligence Agency documents from 2012 reveal this is the game plan.

Reuters continues:

The language is aimed at Russia, which has been bombing [Saudi and U.S.-backed jihadist] opposition forces in Syria for over a month. Moscow says it is attacking Islamic State but Western officials say over 80 percent of its strikes hit other [Saudi and U.S.-backed jihadist] rebel forces, include Western-backed ones.

The resolution would also condemn the presence in Syria of “all foreign terrorist fighters … and foreign forces fighting on behalf of the Syrian regime, particularly the al Quds Brigades, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (of Iran) and militia groups, such as Hezbollah.”

There is no mention of foreign mercenaries from Arab world, Western Europe, Kazakhstan and Indonesia fighting with the jihadists trying to over throw the government of Bashar al-Assad. The United Nations has yet to condemn this violation of Syrian sovereignty.

Foreign fighters are streaming into Syria and Iraq in unprecedented numbers to join the Islamic State or other extremist groups, including at least 3,400 from Western nations among 20,000 from around the world, U.S. intelligence officials say in an updated estimate of a top terrorism concern.

Also well documented is the fact Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Turkey have supported ISIS.

Iraq intelligence has repeatedly shown how the United States supplies the Islamic State, but this is rarely if ever mentioned by the establishment media.

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In a new report published by Fairewinds Energy Education (FEE), “Cancer on the Rise in Post-Fukushima Japan,” we learn that that the ongoing multi-core nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has produced approximately 230 times higher-than-normal thyroid cancers in Fukushima Prefecture, and could result in as many as one million more cancers due to the incident that happened in March of 2011.

Five years later and we are still getting a grip on how catastrophic Fukushima truly was to this planet and its people.

Highly esteemed Japanese medical professionals and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) confirm a direct link to the elevated number of cancers in Japan to the Daiichi plant’s meltdown. The report details how heavy radioactive discharges from the site will be the cause of ongoing cancer cases throughout the surrounding area.

TEPCO recently confirmed in a press release that workers exposed to the radiation from the attempted clean up over the past 4 years have developed leukemia, and medical professionals confirm that the incidence of thyroid cancer in the Fukushima Prefecture have grown to 230 the normal rate. (TEPCO was required to measure workers for radiation they received while working on the site.)

In the above video, you can watch Arnie Gunderson, Chief Engineer, discuss the true fallout expected from Fukushima.

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Report Says Palestinians Being Executed in Cold Blood

November 12th, 2015 by Stephen Lendman

The Jerusalem Center for Israeli-Palestinian Studies exposed the Big Lie about knife-wielding Palestinian terrorists – saying 78% of the Palestinian victims of security force victims were executed in cold blood.

They threatened no one. Israeli soldiers and police commit murder with impunity. So do extremist settlers. Victims include Palestinian youths, children, a pregnant woman, an elderly one and others for wanting to live free or just being in harm’s way at the wrong time.

Daily assassinations continue. Pre-dawn Thursday, undercover Israeli soldiers invaded Hebron’s al-Ahli hospital. They murdered the cousin of a seriously wounded Palestinian.

Eyewitnesses said over 20 undercover soldiers, Shin Bet operatives and border police entered the hospital covertly at around 2:45AM.

They stormed Azzam Ezzat Shalalda’s room, handcuffed an unidentified person with him (likely a nurse or other medical provider), then when his cousin, Abdullah Azzam Shalalda, came out of the bathroom, assassinated him without warning or pretext.

Extremist settlers shot Azzam weeks earlier while picking olives with his family members. He was seriously wounded, suffering from multiple head and chest injuries. The IDF lied, claiming he stabbed a settler – the official Big Lie justifying all unjustifiable incidents.

A duplicitous Shin Bet statement said Shalaldeh was shot after attacking soldiers trying to arrest his cousin. Eyewitnesses explained otherwise.

Israel Radio said undercover commandos entered the hospital, pretending to escort a pregnant woman to avoid arousing suspicion.

Azzam was abducted from his bed and taken to an unknown location. He’ll be brutally treated and denied vital care he needs to recover.

Separately, legislation banning BDS supporters from entering Israel passed its first Knesset reading. Three are needed to enact new laws.

Extremist MK Yinon Magal introduced the measure, stating “anyone who is not an Israeli citizen or a permanent resident will not be granted any kind of visa or permit if they, or any company, organization or foundation they represent, calls for a boycott of Israel.”

Documentation accompanying the bill said ”in recent years, calls for boycotting Israel have intensified. It seems that this is a new front of war against Israel, which the country has yet to sufficiently prepare for.”

“This bill will prevent individuals or representatives of companies, foundations or organizations that call for boycotting Israel from advancing their ideology on Israeli soil.”

MK Dov Khenin called the measure “stupid,” saying its supporters “view this country as a closed and solitary fortress into which no one enters.”

“The real title for this proposal is ‘the law to encourage the boycott on the State of Israel.’ According to (the) law, anyone who participates in the labeling of goods cannot enter the country – (affecting practically) all of Europe. To protect the settlements (the measure would) pay the price of deepening delegitimization and hurting tourism.”

Fifty-five of 120 MKs supported the first reading, 31 opposed. It now goes to Israel’s Internal Affairs Committee before further action.

Palestinians are being lethally shot, injured and imprisoned daily, brutalized by a ruthless occupier, their fundamental rights denied with no relief in sight.

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.

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Poppies, Propaganda, and Remembrance

November 12th, 2015 by David Slater

This Remembrance Day there will be no poppy to sit on my lapel. There will be no emotional petition for lasting violence and barbarism, no symbolic acceptance and consent. The bloody conflicts that are instigated through political determination of nations, which use the emotional appeal of “democracy” and “freedom”, are part of the overarching and intelligent propaganda PR campaign, endorsed by the private interests that ultimately profit from the death and malevolence of war. In “remembrance” we hid our shame and participation of the brutality and utter destruction and barbarism that is erected through warfare, wars that are never just. If we truly intend to “remember”, then why do we continue to war?

Canada supports these illegal invasions and occupations. We deal arms to oppressive regimes; Saudi Arabia is a recipient of Canadian armored carriers, in a deal worth $15 billion. Here, no media pundit or newspaper takes action to expose Saudi Arabian state human rights abuses, which includes beheadings, violently dispersing protesters, state religious extremism, Gestapo style police, and now is currently engaged in bombing Yemen, killing thousands. What few headlines or stories are reported on, are regulated to the back pages and inner bowels of our corporate medias webpages – minimized. During the federal election it was quickly dropped as an issue, Canadians were made to believe that somehow believe Saudi Arabia are moderates in the region. Our allies are just as brutal and venomous as our alleged enemies in Syria, Iraq, or Russia.

The poppy has now been coopted. Its image and meaning defiled and distorted into a placid and thoughtless appeal to authority, unquestioning and unwavering subservience to an authority that is unchallenged and righteous, with an ability to justify and continue violent policies and military actions in the mostly third world regions. The media and academic institutions that are responsible to hold our government in check are silent. During the federal election, much could have been made about our allies such as Saudi Arabia and their stomping of human rights, but they are allies and we would be right to stay silent.

When “we remember” & “lest we forget” the lives lost in our brutal wars we now largely honor only our veterans, the focus is intentionally narrowed. While predominantly honoring our vets we are distracted from criticizing the political actions that affected them so disastrously, distracting from the most important questions, slogans are used that no one understands, because they mean nothing. You will not hear “We remember – the illegal invasion and occupation that killed thousands” or “Lest We Forget – the thousands of murdered and brutalized from horrid bombing campaigns”. Lost are the names and faces of dead mothers and children of far away lands, the corporate media glossing over them or omitting them completely, unworthy of description and identity. Only worthy victims are to be known, our veterans and the pain their families endure, for they are the only humans affected so grievously by conflict; and victims of our enemies, for surely we demand continued reasons to war. Our victims however, will be ghosts and their faces will be obfuscated. Their stories and families will not be known and written about, our leaders will not condemn the murderers and we will not levy justice on the war crimes committed by our side – our intentions are noble.

The international laws we defile are not mentioned, the standards we protest others shall follow are not to be held against us. Our clients are brutal dictators and their crimes that are committed in our name and in the image of our country will be hidden from public discussion. How just are we, when we invade and occupy nation states, and murder their citizens? Or when we deliver cluster bombs and other heavy munitions to lands already despotic and war torn?

We are distracted by emotional appeals from our masters and thusly complicate in support for illegal invasions and occupations, additionally the media leading up to the invasion of Iraq, for example, was absent in any critical analysis of the governments “facts and evidence” for military action, an invasion that was predicated on a lie. Come Remembrance Day, there will reside still no critique or reference of the illegality of these invasions and military actions, the very actions that leave many more civilians injured or dead. Why is justice only for our enemies?

American veterans returning home are facing increased challenges of access to care and reports suggest an epidemic is occurring amongst US veterans, suicide rates have risen that affect both old and young veterans, the high number of suicide deaths should be alarming, this should be our call to arms to end this insanity. Instead national issues will be the “war on Christmas” or “what color a dress is” which dominate talking arenas and pulpits. Canada faces a parallel crisis, with many vets confronting PTSD symptoms, combat injuries, and a health care, National Defense Department, and Veterans Affair system that is unprepared or unable to provide accurate and reliable data concerning veterans statistics, there are now more suicide deaths compared to combat deaths. Where is the outrage, and where is the discussion? Are we really “supporting our troops”?

The red poppies ironically enough are in abundance in Afghanistan, the heroin trade skyrocketing since the US led invasion in 2001. Under Taliban rule, opium production was outlawed. Post 9/11 saw the US and its allies invade and occupy Afghanistan, the pretext and intention was to annihilate those connected to Al Qaeda in a swift and brutal show of force and revenge, the cowboy rounding up his posse to unleash hell upon the “evil doers”. Now producing 90 percent of the world’s opium, Afghanistan has evolved into a narco state. Even though the Taliban have been largely defeated, displaced, and removed in most parts of the country, the drug lords are now able to reap billions in profit, war still reins supreme in Afghanistan and all under the seemingly auspicious observation of US led NATO security forces. The US backed Afghan government alleged to have many connections with opium producers and drug money paves the way for bribes and police protection. Pablo Escobar and other infamous South American drug lords would be in awe. With marginal security provided to Afghan civilians by US led forces, so to is security given to the Narco Lords.

The poppy now thusly symbolizes our inaction. Our inaction to hold our elected representatives accountable for the war crimes perpetrated while in office, which in effect, is a representation and reflection of us and our insane society. It symbolizes our inaction to stop wars and military conflicts. Our inaction to cease doing business with criminal and corrupt regimes, which enables them to carry out cruel military operations on civilians, the bludgeoning of human rights, and an inaction that spirals into a legacy of death. One of barbarous acts, maimed bodies, burnt and burned women and children, and economic and social strife that contributes to disease, death, and degraded health in many parts of the world for many people as a result of our overt and covert military actions.

We have given consent. Our patronage and nationalist ideals used to justify military incursions that have yet to reveal us a safer world, the continuous threat of terrorism and the symbiotic relationship of conflict, war, despotism, and the dispossessed has not lessened. We are less safe today than we were on 9/11, our nation made fragile and delicate by invoking the terrible tones of totalitarian echoes and their ghosts, seen through the institution of “security” and “anti-terror” bill that erode our civil rights. Fear resides where reason and truth should stand, and our alleged liberal media and academic institutions have failed to counteract the imperial war machine. Institutions that should condemn and shine a spotlight on the reckless and criminal narrative of war and terror are now instead thrust behind the veil of “security” “terrorism” “threats to Canada”, these are bland and broad terms designed to appeal to our emotions and ensure our participation. Instead we are to “support the troops” and thoughtlessly shield our eyes from the horror of what we’ve become, the horrors that civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other third world battlefields experience everyday.

This intelligent propaganda uses symbolic poppies and “support the troops” rhetoric and other narratives motivates our support for the state, its crimes and assurances of perpetual war, war that that drives immense profits and fuel for its soulless machine. Our returning veterans, home from various combat deployments have echoed numerous calls for peace, calls that remain unheard. From US Marine Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic to Canadian Forces Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, our vets expose the horrors of war and we should listen to them, we should stop everything and really – listen.

“Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder”. ~ The Last Fighting Tommy – Harry Patch

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As the world’s media hails Burma’s first elections since 1990 and the country’s ‘democratic transition’ from military rule, Guy Horton warns against the delusional thinking that underlies these optimistic narratives. The reality is one of murder, genocide and systematic discrimination – in which Aung San Suu Kyi herself is complicit through her silence.

I was listening to the BBC World Service. Over the airwaves I could hear the Secretary General of the United Nations warmly welcoming the ceasefire. A few minutes later I heard a prolonged bombardment of mortar shells.

As Burma is gripped in election frenzy, one could be forgiven for believing a genuine democratic transition is taking place. This, sadly, is very far from the truth, however.

Our understanding is distorted by what George Orwell in1984 called“doublethink”“The act of . . . simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct.”

Rohingya Genocide. Artwork by AK Rockefeller via Flickr (CC BY-SA).

Rohingya Genocide. Artwork by AK Rockefeller via Flickr (CC BY-SA).

Elsewhere he described the process of ‘doublethink’ in more detail:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic … to forget what is necessary to forget … consciously to induce unconsciousness and then too become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. (George Orwell, Necker and Warburg Ltd. p.184, part 1, ch.3. p.32)

In short, perpetrator and victims of doublethink can believe their own delusions. This appears to have happened in Burma since 2010: people generally believe a genuine political transition is taking place. This is untenable and illogical in face of the facts, but that is the point of doublethink: to render meaning meaningless.

Burma doublethink and consequent delusion are both wrong. Ongoing repression and destruction inflicted within the context of the totalitarian 2008 Constitution is the truth. Basic facts speaks for themselves.

Systematic persecution on a monstrous scale

Since the ‘democratic transition’ and the ‘ceasefire’ talks began, well over 300,000 ethnic peoples, including, amongst others, Kachin, Kokang, Shan and Rohingya, have been terrorised out of their homes and, if one includes the de facto forced concentration of the Rohingya in north Rakhine State, close to one and a half million people have been systematically persecuted.

This is not peace. This is not a democratic transition. It is systematic violence and re-consolidation of Bamar military power. Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD has largely maintained a complicit silence on this and the vacuum has been filled with rabid Buddhist racism.

Let’s begin with a specific example of dealing with the contradictions of doublethink from my own experience.

The events took pace in January 2013 in Ma Ja Yang, Kachin State in northern Burma about 7.30 on a misty, bird song filled morning. I was listening to the BBC World Service. Over the airwaves I could hear the Secretary General of the United Nations warmly welcoming the ceasefire.

A few minutes later I heard a prolonged bombardment of mortar shells. Throughout Kachin State thousands of Burmese troops massed in frontal attacks drawn from all over Burma. Helicopter gunships and fighter bombers had flown over the town a few days earlier resulting in the deaths of children.

Everybody knew this was happening. Film footage had been shown on world media of attack helicopters, fighter bombers and intense trench warfare. The BBC knew because they were in nearby Lai Za. Over the State as a whole a 120,000 Kachin civilians have been terrorised out of their homes.

A man wept next to me after describing his daughter bayoneted to death in front of him. An eight year old boy looked at me with stone eyes after watching his mother shot in front of him.

But the narrative of ‘peace’ must not be interrupted

These realities could not, however, be allowed to disturb the Secretary General’s Ceasefire narrative. Thus the Secretary General of the United Nations duly welcomed the ceasefire even as the 120 mm mortar bombs came crashing down.

Nothing, including the reports from his own UN appointed Special Rapporteurs for Human Rights implicitly alleging Crimes against humanity for years, could, or can be, allowed to disturb the dominant narrative of ‘peace’ and ‘democratic transition’. Nothing, not even an extra one and a half million persecuted people in Burma as a whole, can be allowed to disturb the delusion of doublethink.

What can have enabled sustained misrepresentation of the truth for so long? The usual suspects: passive complicity, (knowing the truth but failing to do anything about it even when you are in a position to do so), complacency, ignorance, self interest, language deficits, knowing which slice of bread funders are likely to butter, the myopia of the Yangon bubble, cannot, however, adequately explain a delusion of this magnitude being perpetuated for so long, so persuasively endorsed by ‘experts’, and so passively recycled by the media.

Something deeper than hypocrisy is at work. It is likely the perpetrators believe ‘the great delusion’.

Let us take another obvious example of doublethink, this time from the the media. Timemagazine carried a front page article praising Burma’s democratic transition titled ‘Burma unbound‘, involving, amongst other things, the usual downplaying and disregarding of the hundreds of thousands of victims of State sponsored violence; the intimidation and coercion inflicted during the 2010 election and the bogus nature of the 2008 Constitution Referendum reslult.

Later in the same year it carried, again on its front cover, a ‘contradictory’ article on Ashin Wirathu: The face of Buddhist terror. In terms of bifocal doublethink both are equally ‘correct’ but how can they be?

Let’s think about the significance of Wirathu before analysing this article. He is not just a hate filled individual ‘monk’. He speaks for much of the Bamar community and his ideas on race, religion and marriage are now the ‘law’ of the land. He has become, in the moral vacuum left by Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD, the unacknowledged legislator of Myanmar. In condemning Wirathu, Time was condemning much of the racist and religious prejudices close to the heart of the military controlled regime.

The secret is to remain unaware of the contradiction

So what is Time‘s ‘Burma’? The unrealistic optimism of “Burma unbound”, or the grim“Face of Buddhist terror?” How and why did the West’s leading news magazine depict two ‘contradictory realities’ within months of each other and present both as equally valid Truths?

Why, in the earlier Kachin State example, did the Secretary General of the United Nations endorse the ‘peace process’ when he knew his own UN appointed Special Rapporteurs for Human Rights have implicitly alleged continual ‘crimes against humanity’ for years? How is any ‘peace process’ compatible with systematic, military assaults on ethnic villagers and land grabs?

Orwell’s ‘1984’ concept of doublethink helps explain the conundrum: “Accepting two contradictory beliefs as correct … differs from hypocrisy and neutrality because the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction.”

Let’s take another example: the persecution of the Rohingya and the level of intentionality underlying it. The New York Times limited responsibility to government “complacency”, a level below even criminal negligence; the recent Yale report identified “sound evidence of genocide”, i.e. an intention to destroy a people in whole or in part.

These are both serious respected institutions of American public life. How can the destruction of the Rohingya be both the result of trivial ‘complacency’ and the intent to commit genocide? Doublethink would have us believe both contradictory realities are true.

Doublethink is additionally alarming because it functions at the highest levels. The EU Commissioner for External Affairs reportedly described the Government’s early response to the violence instigated against the Rohingya as “appropriate”; the former Prime Minister of Norway, called their systematic persecution “an internal Myanmar matter”.

Likewise Aung San Suu Kyi, through her spokesperson, dismissed the slow motion genocide of the Rohingya in similar words, then apparently he was later dismissed for pointing out Buddhism was a compassionate, inclusive religion, before getting on with the serious business of politics. As Orwell also observed, “The more a society drifts from the Truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”

The inconvenient truths the world has chosen to forget

It is not, however, just the reality of doublethink which is so alarming: it is its longevity. This is clear from reading the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights reports and General Assembly Resolutions since 1992. In addition, Orwell pointed out, above all, that doublethink requires its perpetrators to forget.

So let’s see what’s been forgotten during Burma’s ‘democratic transition’:

  • the 2008 Constitution is illegitimate;
  • the drafting process of the Constitution was illegitimate. It was drawn up in total secrecy.
  • the implementation process was illegitimate. It was inflicted through fear and intimidation.
  • the content of the Constitution:
    • consolidates the military dictatorship, reconfigures it and prohibits a democratic transition;
    • enshrines the ‘right to violate the rule of law’ by empowering the army to overthrow the civilian government;
    • enables the state to own all land and water and everything above and below all land and water;
    • retains 25% of all parliamentary seats for the military rendering constitutional change impossible;
    • keeps key cabinet posts like internal affairs, defence and border areas in military hands;
    • effectively prevents federalism.
  • the Constitution cannot realistically be amended.
  • the 2010 election was fraudulent and characterised by fear and intimidation.
  • the ‘laws’ passed by the resulting illegitimate parliament consequently have no legitimacy.
  • the election of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2010 was not ‘a Mandela moment’, but consolidated the delusion of democratic transition in the wilfully gullible international community.
  • this 2015 current election is neither free nor fair because, amongst other things, 25% of the seats are reserved for the military.
  • the speaker of the lower house was recently removed in a nocturnal ‘palace coup’.
  • the ‘peace process’ has masked sustained military assaults against the Kachin, Shan, Kokang and others and systematic persecution of the Rohingya and Moslems in general.
  • the ‘peace process’ cannot deliver genuine federalism nor, therefore, a just and lasting peace.
  • in many ceasefire areas, land grabs and gangster capitalism replace ethnic cleansing, a process misrepresented as ‘development’.
  • the Burma military recently twice ‘succeeded’ in bombing the world’s emerging super power, China, killing Chinese nationals.
  • the census result came in about 9 million people fewer than predicted over a period when UN Special Rapporteurs alleged “crimes against humanity” and “elements of genocide” may have been inflicted.
  • there has reportedly been a long term nuclear programme in Russia conducted for ‘medical purposes’ by a regime which spends one of the lowest proportions of its GDP on health in the world
  • about 20% of the electorate have reportedly been excluded from this election.


No matter what the outcome, this is no time for celebration

In conclusion, we should remain very sceptical about this election and not repeat the absurd euphoria that accompanied Aung San Suu Kyi’s release and subsequent by election victory.

If, as seems probable, her party becomes the largest in the Parliament, it is likely to be the prisoner of the 2008 Constitution and have to kow tow to Buddhist nationalism and fundamentalism. The deputy leader of the NLD reportedly prostrated himself before Wirathu recently.

Moreover, her personal actions since her release raise questions as to what she really believes. She sided with the military on the Lepadaung mine confrontation, shared the podium with the generals just after their massive attack on the Kachin, and has disregarded allegations of crimes against humanity and genocide inflicted on ethnic peoples in a manner which appears to go beyond the compromises required of realpolitik.

If her party triumphs it is not so much whether she could bring the army under the rule of law, but if she has the political will to do so.

When President Obama came to Office he understandably, but naively, offered the Burma military an outstretched hand. The response has been a colossal sleight of hand.

On that morning in January 2013 I had to make a ‘hard choice’ between ‘two mutually contradictory beliefs’: the Secretary General’s Neverland which I wanted to believe, or the reality of falling mortar bombs and the anguish of victims next me which I had to believe.

I chose the latter. I chose the truth. I chose not to collude with doublethink and promote delusion. I chose to shoot both those elephants in the room stone dead. And I chose never to forget.

Guy Horton has worked on Burma and its border areas since 1998. His 2005 report, ‘Dying Alive‘ and supporting video footage, received worldwide coverage and contributed to the submission of Burma to the UN Security Council in January 2007. As a result of the report, the UN Committee on the Prevention of Genocide carried out an investigation and placed Burma / Myanmar on the Genocide Watch list.

Since 2005 Guy Horton has focussed on establishing a coalition of governments, funders, institutions and leading international lawyers with the aim of getting the violations investigated and analysed so that impunity can be addressed. He is currently a researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

He was short-listed for the post of UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar 2014.

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As the world’s media hails Burma’s first elections since 1990 and the country’s ‘democratic transition’ from military rule, Guy Horton warns against the delusional thinking that underlies these optimistic narratives. The reality is one of murder, genocide and systematic discrimination – in which Aung San Suu Kyi herself is complicit through her silence.

I was listening to the BBC World Service. Over the airwaves I could hear the Secretary General of the United Nations warmly welcoming the ceasefire. A few minutes later I heard a prolonged bombardment of mortar shells.

As Burma is gripped in election frenzy, one could be forgiven for believing a genuine democratic transition is taking place. This, sadly, is very far from the truth, however.

Our understanding is distorted by what George Orwell in1984 called“doublethink”“The act of . . . simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct.”

Rohingya Genocide. Artwork by AK Rockefeller via Flickr (CC BY-SA).

Rohingya Genocide. Artwork by AK Rockefeller via Flickr (CC BY-SA).

Elsewhere he described the process of ‘doublethink’ in more detail:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic … to forget what is necessary to forget … consciously to induce unconsciousness and then too become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. (George Orwell, Necker and Warburg Ltd. p.184, part 1, ch.3. p.32)

In short, perpetrator and victims of doublethink can believe their own delusions. This appears to have happened in Burma since 2010: people generally believe a genuine political transition is taking place. This is untenable and illogical in face of the facts, but that is the point of doublethink: to render meaning meaningless.

Burma doublethink and consequent delusion are both wrong. Ongoing repression and destruction inflicted within the context of the totalitarian 2008 Constitution is the truth. Basic facts speaks for themselves.

Systematic persecution on a monstrous scale

Since the ‘democratic transition’ and the ‘ceasefire’ talks began, well over 300,000 ethnic peoples, including, amongst others, Kachin, Kokang, Shan and Rohingya, have been terrorised out of their homes and, if one includes the de facto forced concentration of the Rohingya in north Rakhine State, close to one and a half million people have been systematically persecuted.

This is not peace. This is not a democratic transition. It is systematic violence and re-consolidation of Bamar military power. Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD has largely maintained a complicit silence on this and the vacuum has been filled with rabid Buddhist racism.

Let’s begin with a specific example of dealing with the contradictions of doublethink from my own experience.

The events took pace in January 2013 in Ma Ja Yang, Kachin State in northern Burma about 7.30 on a misty, bird song filled morning. I was listening to the BBC World Service. Over the airwaves I could hear the Secretary General of the United Nations warmly welcoming the ceasefire.

A few minutes later I heard a prolonged bombardment of mortar shells. Throughout Kachin State thousands of Burmese troops massed in frontal attacks drawn from all over Burma. Helicopter gunships and fighter bombers had flown over the town a few days earlier resulting in the deaths of children.

Everybody knew this was happening. Film footage had been shown on world media of attack helicopters, fighter bombers and intense trench warfare. The BBC knew because they were in nearby Lai Za. Over the State as a whole a 120,000 Kachin civilians have been terrorised out of their homes.

A man wept next to me after describing his daughter bayoneted to death in front of him. An eight year old boy looked at me with stone eyes after watching his mother shot in front of him.

But the narrative of ‘peace’ must not be interrupted

These realities could not, however, be allowed to disturb the Secretary General’s Ceasefire narrative. Thus the Secretary General of the United Nations duly welcomed the ceasefire even as the 120 mm mortar bombs came crashing down.

Nothing, including the reports from his own UN appointed Special Rapporteurs for Human Rights implicitly alleging Crimes against humanity for years, could, or can be, allowed to disturb the dominant narrative of ‘peace’ and ‘democratic transition’. Nothing, not even an extra one and a half million persecuted people in Burma as a whole, can be allowed to disturb the delusion of doublethink.

What can have enabled sustained misrepresentation of the truth for so long? The usual suspects: passive complicity, (knowing the truth but failing to do anything about it even when you are in a position to do so), complacency, ignorance, self interest, language deficits, knowing which slice of bread funders are likely to butter, the myopia of the Yangon bubble, cannot, however, adequately explain a delusion of this magnitude being perpetuated for so long, so persuasively endorsed by ‘experts’, and so passively recycled by the media.

Something deeper than hypocrisy is at work. It is likely the perpetrators believe ‘the great delusion’.

Let us take another obvious example of doublethink, this time from the the media. Timemagazine carried a front page article praising Burma’s democratic transition titled ‘Burma unbound‘, involving, amongst other things, the usual downplaying and disregarding of the hundreds of thousands of victims of State sponsored violence; the intimidation and coercion inflicted during the 2010 election and the bogus nature of the 2008 Constitution Referendum reslult.

Later in the same year it carried, again on its front cover, a ‘contradictory’ article on Ashin Wirathu: The face of Buddhist terror. In terms of bifocal doublethink both are equally ‘correct’ but how can they be?

Let’s think about the significance of Wirathu before analysing this article. He is not just a hate filled individual ‘monk’. He speaks for much of the Bamar community and his ideas on race, religion and marriage are now the ‘law’ of the land. He has become, in the moral vacuum left by Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD, the unacknowledged legislator of Myanmar. In condemning Wirathu, Time was condemning much of the racist and religious prejudices close to the heart of the military controlled regime.

The secret is to remain unaware of the contradiction

So what is Time‘s ‘Burma’? The unrealistic optimism of “Burma unbound”, or the grim“Face of Buddhist terror?” How and why did the West’s leading news magazine depict two ‘contradictory realities’ within months of each other and present both as equally valid Truths?

Why, in the earlier Kachin State example, did the Secretary General of the United Nations endorse the ‘peace process’ when he knew his own UN appointed Special Rapporteurs for Human Rights have implicitly alleged continual ‘crimes against humanity’ for years? How is any ‘peace process’ compatible with systematic, military assaults on ethnic villagers and land grabs?

Orwell’s ‘1984’ concept of doublethink helps explain the conundrum: “Accepting two contradictory beliefs as correct … differs from hypocrisy and neutrality because the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction.”

Let’s take another example: the persecution of the Rohingya and the level of intentionality underlying it. The New York Times limited responsibility to government “complacency”, a level below even criminal negligence; the recent Yale report identified “sound evidence of genocide”, i.e. an intention to destroy a people in whole or in part.

These are both serious respected institutions of American public life. How can the destruction of the Rohingya be both the result of trivial ‘complacency’ and the intent to commit genocide? Doublethink would have us believe both contradictory realities are true.

Doublethink is additionally alarming because it functions at the highest levels. The EU Commissioner for External Affairs reportedly described the Government’s early response to the violence instigated against the Rohingya as “appropriate”; the former Prime Minister of Norway, called their systematic persecution “an internal Myanmar matter”.

Likewise Aung San Suu Kyi, through her spokesperson, dismissed the slow motion genocide of the Rohingya in similar words, then apparently he was later dismissed for pointing out Buddhism was a compassionate, inclusive religion, before getting on with the serious business of politics. As Orwell also observed, “The more a society drifts from the Truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”

The inconvenient truths the world has chosen to forget

It is not, however, just the reality of doublethink which is so alarming: it is its longevity. This is clear from reading the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights reports and General Assembly Resolutions since 1992. In addition, Orwell pointed out, above all, that doublethink requires its perpetrators to forget.

So let’s see what’s been forgotten during Burma’s ‘democratic transition’:

  • the 2008 Constitution is illegitimate;
  • the drafting process of the Constitution was illegitimate. It was drawn up in total secrecy.
  • the implementation process was illegitimate. It was inflicted through fear and intimidation.
  • the content of the Constitution:
    • consolidates the military dictatorship, reconfigures it and prohibits a democratic transition;
    • enshrines the ‘right to violate the rule of law’ by empowering the army to overthrow the civilian government;
    • enables the state to own all land and water and everything above and below all land and water;
    • retains 25% of all parliamentary seats for the military rendering constitutional change impossible;
    • keeps key cabinet posts like internal affairs, defence and border areas in military hands;
    • effectively prevents federalism.
  • the Constitution cannot realistically be amended.
  • the 2010 election was fraudulent and characterised by fear and intimidation.
  • the ‘laws’ passed by the resulting illegitimate parliament consequently have no legitimacy.
  • the election of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2010 was not ‘a Mandela moment’, but consolidated the delusion of democratic transition in the wilfully gullible international community.
  • this 2015 current election is neither free nor fair because, amongst other things, 25% of the seats are reserved for the military.
  • the speaker of the lower house was recently removed in a nocturnal ‘palace coup’.
  • the ‘peace process’ has masked sustained military assaults against the Kachin, Shan, Kokang and others and systematic persecution of the Rohingya and Moslems in general.
  • the ‘peace process’ cannot deliver genuine federalism nor, therefore, a just and lasting peace.
  • in many ceasefire areas, land grabs and gangster capitalism replace ethnic cleansing, a process misrepresented as ‘development’.
  • the Burma military recently twice ‘succeeded’ in bombing the world’s emerging super power, China, killing Chinese nationals.
  • the census result came in about 9 million people fewer than predicted over a period when UN Special Rapporteurs alleged “crimes against humanity” and “elements of genocide” may have been inflicted.
  • there has reportedly been a long term nuclear programme in Russia conducted for ‘medical purposes’ by a regime which spends one of the lowest proportions of its GDP on health in the world
  • about 20% of the electorate have reportedly been excluded from this election.


No matter what the outcome, this is no time for celebration

In conclusion, we should remain very sceptical about this election and not repeat the absurd euphoria that accompanied Aung San Suu Kyi’s release and subsequent by election victory.

If, as seems probable, her party becomes the largest in the Parliament, it is likely to be the prisoner of the 2008 Constitution and have to kow tow to Buddhist nationalism and fundamentalism. The deputy leader of the NLD reportedly prostrated himself before Wirathu recently.

Moreover, her personal actions since her release raise questions as to what she really believes. She sided with the military on the Lepadaung mine confrontation, shared the podium with the generals just after their massive attack on the Kachin, and has disregarded allegations of crimes against humanity and genocide inflicted on ethnic peoples in a manner which appears to go beyond the compromises required of realpolitik.

If her party triumphs it is not so much whether she could bring the army under the rule of law, but if she has the political will to do so.

When President Obama came to Office he understandably, but naively, offered the Burma military an outstretched hand. The response has been a colossal sleight of hand.

On that morning in January 2013 I had to make a ‘hard choice’ between ‘two mutually contradictory beliefs’: the Secretary General’s Neverland which I wanted to believe, or the reality of falling mortar bombs and the anguish of victims next me which I had to believe.

I chose the latter. I chose the truth. I chose not to collude with doublethink and promote delusion. I chose to shoot both those elephants in the room stone dead. And I chose never to forget.

Guy Horton has worked on Burma and its border areas since 1998. His 2005 report, ‘Dying Alive‘ and supporting video footage, received worldwide coverage and contributed to the submission of Burma to the UN Security Council in January 2007. As a result of the report, the UN Committee on the Prevention of Genocide carried out an investigation and placed Burma / Myanmar on the Genocide Watch list.

Since 2005 Guy Horton has focussed on establishing a coalition of governments, funders, institutions and leading international lawyers with the aim of getting the violations investigated and analysed so that impunity can be addressed. He is currently a researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

He was short-listed for the post of UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar 2014.

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The highly effective Russian operation in Syria has clearly exposed the real position of the West, along with the ties it has with international terrorist groups.

As is already known, the so-called Western coalition, created by Washington more than a year ago has been “effectively fighting” terrorism in Syria and Iraq. What are the results? Desert areas with no terrorists to be found anywhere have been heavily bombed, at the same time, terrorists are regularly acquiring weapon due to “mistakenly” air-dropped crates. In any case, the terrorists are fighting with modern American weapons and they are wearing US army BDUs (battle-dress uniforms). And it seems that this outcome fully satisfies the sitting US administration, since Washington was leading the charge against international terrorism, or at least it claimed it did. However, the year of bombing nonexistent terrorist positions produced at least some results – the Islamic State has significantly increased the territory it controlled in Syria. It seems that the US could have been supporting extremists, while pretending that it fights them, until the Russian military campaign in Syria began.

Since the first days of Russian airstrikes in Syria, when militants got a taste of real bombs falling on their heads, and while fortifications, equipment, and command bunkers were being obliterated, Washington suddenly became quite vocal in claiming that the wrong terrorists were under fire. A whole new media campaign has been started with the money provided by the regimes of the Persian Gulf and the West, in a desperate attempt to convince the world that Russian air strikes are having no military success, and that they are killing civilians in droves. The major advancement launched by the Syrian Arab Army is now portrayed as a sort of a deal between the Islamic State and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, so, we are being told, terrorists are not running for their lives, and instead are just handing over their positions to the Syrian army. Such publications are usually published with unclear “open source” pictures and videos, so that nobody can confirm or deny this evidence.

Under these circumstances, it’s only natural for any honest analyst to conclude that Washington and some of its Arab allies are closely linked to terrorist groups and it doesn’t take long to locate those militants. There’s not a lot of people left today who would try deny the fact that Al-Qaeda was created, financed and armed by Washington and its allied reactionary regimes of the Persian Gulf. Al-Qaeda then gave birth to the Islamic State, which has now seized vast territories in Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State or “ISIL” is a Wahhabi organization and it was created by Washington during the days of the Iraq occupation, for them to fight against Iraq’s Shia’a instead of against their Western and Persian Gulf sponsors.

When Russia started the fight against terrorism, radical Islamists vowed to wage war against it, but not against the West that has allegedly been fighting them for over a year. In early October, Jabhat al-Nusra along with Jaish al-Islam announced that they’re at war with Russia, while the so-called Free Syrian Army, which is claimed to be a part of the “moderate opposition” in the West, contacted the countries of the region with a proposal to create a military alliance against Russia.

However, despite the ongoing anti-Russian rhetoric, Russian airstrikes have led to the intensification of the struggle between terrorists in Syria which has been confirmed by Western experts. Because of destroyed infrastructure, Islamists encountered numerous problems with getting their much needed supplies. As the fear of being punished by warlords weakened among ISIL terrorists, they decided that it was easier to obtain weapons and supplies by killing other terrorists.

While witnessing its assets being destroyed, the United States rushed to help. On October 31, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken stated at a regional security summit in Bahrain that the U.S. was stepping up its efforts in Syria on all fronts. According to Blinken, the US government will allocate 100 million dollars to the opposition forces in Syria. Thus, the total official funding of “those opposing Assad” will reach 500 million dollars spent over the last 3 years. The US administration stressed that the money would allegedly be given only for peaceful purposes, namely to support of “civil society representatives” that have in reality served as cover for the butchering of the Syrian population for years.

Moreover, the White House has announced that it is going to deploy a limited number of special forces in Syria, without obtaining any sort of official permission from Damascus. Those NATO troops will be tasked with training the so-called “moderate opposition” and will also coordinate airstrikes from the ground. In other words, we are witnessing the creation of a new military alliance in Syria, that will include NATO, the United States, and all sorts of terrorists. The latter are entrusted with a single task: to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad by any means possible.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, didn’t leave ISIL Islamists waiting for help long either. General Mayhub said:

On October 26, according to the reconnaissance data, four planes from Turkey arrived to the airport of the city of Aden (Yemen). Two of them belong to Turkish Airlines, one — to Qatar Airways and one more aircraft owned by an airline of the United Arab Emirates,” said the Syrian army spokesman. “There were more than 500 militants of the Islamic State terrorist organization on board, they were taken from Syria to save them from Russian airstrikes.

It’s been reported that the militants should take part in operations conducted by the Saudi coalition in Yemen, that has suffered huge losses in battles against the Houthis. Syrian officials are convinced that redeployment of terrorists from Syria will continue, as Russia carries on with its airstrikes.

Some US experts openly admit that the leading US allies in the Middle East are sponsors of terrorism. Experts from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy noted that the Ministry of Finance of the United States recognizes that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are openly sponsoring terrorist groups in Syria. In 2014 the US Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, David Cohen, announced that Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups have received millions of dollars from their sponsors in the Persian Gulf, Pakistan and Turkey. Money supporting terrorists is still being raised in Kuwait and Qatar on a daily basis.

According to RIA Novosti, on November 4 the U.S. Representative for California, Dana Tyrone Rohrabacher directly accused the US of double standards and hostility towards Russia, adding that this policy has caused a lot of damage to the United States, especially in the Middle East. Rohrabacher underlined that Russia is a great world power that has its own interests, just like the US has. During the hearings on Russia before Congress, Rohrabacher stressed the fact that the US is confronting Russia because it is defending Bashar al-Assad, who is allegedly a terrible dictator, but the Saudi monarchy is also a dictatorial regime prepared to kill thousands of people to stay in power, and the same can be said about other Persian Gulf states.

Rohrabacher has underlined that the United States would not listen to Russia’s proposals on Syria since the outbreak of the conflict, which has resulted in the severe deterioration of the situation on the ground. The US Congressman stressed that Putin had been seeking a compromise with the US for five years in order to find some form of stability in Syria, yet Washington turned him down each time. He also added that should radical Islamists come to power in Syria, it will be a veritable nightmare for Washington.

Nevertheless, Washington keeps on pushing for major escalation in Syria, while excusing true state sponsors of terrorism. As it has been announced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all refused to coordinate their actions in Syria. Following the meeting in Vienna, Lavrov said he invited the representatives of those three countries to coordinate military operations in Syria, as Russia does with Jordan. Cooperation, he said, could be established through a formal agreement on the list of organizations that are to be regarded as terrorist. Lavrov regretted the decision of the above mentioned states not to work together with Russia, while adding that in Amman, Jordanian and Russian military experts will be working together to carry out combat operations against terrorism. Yet, shortly after the meeting, Saudi Minister Of Foreign Affairs , Adel Al Jubeir announced that his country would still be supporting the “moderate opposition”, or in other words, the terrorists. It seems there’s no other way to put it more clearly.

The question as to why Washington occupies such a non-constructive stance in Syria can be partially explained by US opinion polls. The Wall Street Journal has recently published a survey according to which 56% of respondents believe that Syria could become a threat to the United States. Another 23% said Syria is an imminent threat, while Russia is called a long-term military threat by 60% of all respondents.

Apparently, as long as the media in the US is dominated by certain political circles, Washington’s policies in a number of regions, including the Middle East, will not be determined by the best interests of the American people, but only by delusional ideas of those Washington politicians nostalgic of the Cold War who imagine themselves sitting in the trenches awaiting inevitable war.

Victor Mikhin, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

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It’s a bit like threatening to walk out of a marriage of four decades because your husband doesn’t put the top on the toothpaste tube.”

Mark Leonard, European Council on Foreign Relations Director, New York Times, Nov 10, 2015

The European Union has its problems.  These may, in the long term, prove terminal, unless internal, and dramatic reform take place across its various institutions. The critique of Europe from Britain has, however, often been framed as that of Britannia against the tyranny of continental ambitions, the dark cloud of land-based despotism. This version has had its moments.  Prime Minister David Cameron’s rather insipid efforts to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU is certainly not one of them.

The issue of Europe – and more precisely, the EU – has been at the forefront of his populist platform. He had repeatedly promised, to the scorn of many of his European counterparts, a change in the relationship with Brussels that will be palatable to the British voter, and the EU establishment.

On the referendum planned for 2017, Cameron has stressed Churchillian themes of destiny and opportunity.  “You will hold this country’s destiny in your hands; this is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes.”

The demands cover a range of specifics.  They include a proposed safeguard against discrimination based on currency, with Britain continuing to treasure its pound.  They highlight a fundamental cessation of the principle of seeking “ever closer union” with the EU, which is actually misread – the aim of the foundation documents suggest “an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.”  The familiar ground of cutting red tape is also pitched.

None of those proposals seem particularly startling. The real thrust lies behind the language of isolating, and insulating Britain from institutions that have done to regulate Albion’s own tendencies to tyranny.  A desire to run roughshod on human rights, for instance, has been frustrated by European legal institutions.

Perhaps the greatest of red herring Cameron has thrown in is the supposed problems posed by migrants.  This has been the classic Tory platform, taking the baton to the poor and desperate, while emphasising the element of emergency.  The EU might be a bureaucratically ridden entity, stacked to the rafters with regulations, but it does have one fundamental principle going for it: the principle of free movement.

The principle of mobility has openly been defied by several states keen on seeking a rather different EU.  Hungary, with a government fearing the Islamicisation of Europe, has been the noisiest in this regard, blatantly sealing its borders with razor wire.  Countries such as Denmark have imposed controls on movement.

Cameron has taken his queue in this regard, running down refugees, and migrants more broadly speaking, at key moments of political debate.  Benefits (and here, the wording is important) for low income workers would be restricted for up to four years after arriving in Britain, which is tantamount to saying that the country will accept labour without humanitarian assurances.  (The policy is actually suggested as a deterrent.)  Cameron’s figures on this, those claiming that 40 percent of recent European Economic Area migrants received an average of around £6,000 a year of in-work benefits, seem suspect.

European negotiators may end up pushing Cameron in the corner on this one, suggesting that any equivalent cut or reduction in benefits for European nationals should be accompanied by similar treatment for British employees.

Cameron has already anticipated this.  “I understand how difficult some of these welfare issues are for some member states, and I’m open to different ways of dealing with the issue.”

The proposal makes a nonsense of the non-discriminatory principle of the European zone, notably in terms of labour and movement. Other European leaders have been conciliatory, if only because they doubt Cameron can pull it off.  In German Chacellor Angela Merkel’s words, “we want to work through these proposals with the aim of working towards a solution.”

But even the welfare demand is not seen as enough by those who wish for a breezy, total exit.  Nigel Lawson, former Conservative chancellor, thought Cameron’s suggestions “disappointingly unambitious.”  Emphasis has been made on superficial change over substantive reform. And if there is a prime minister who has shown himself to be prone to shameless gimmickry, Cameron is it.

Such negotiating cycles with Brussels may prove to be pure measures of calculation, designed to play to appropriate home audiences while not disrupting the status quo. It is hard to see any giving in on the issue of reconstituting the EU’s internal market, which is governed by doctrinaires and dogmatists.  Should that happen, other states will also make noises, as, indeed, they already are. In that case, Britain will need the support of other Europeans for the project of reform, rather than a specifically British model of change.

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

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The Iraqi forces seized Turkish weapons and military equipment from the ISIL despite Ankara’s denial of any links with the Takfiri terrorist group.

The Iraqi forces gained control of al-Zawiye village, Northeast of Makhoul Mountains, in Salahuddin province after tough clashes with ISIL gunmen on Wednesday.

A source within al-Hashd al-Shaabi (popular forces) command center said the artillery units targeted a car bomb factory in al-Salman village near Makhoul Mountains, and destroyed it with all the terrorist inside.

Meanwhile, al-Hashd al-Shaabi forces thwarted two attacks by ISIL terrorists on positions of the Iraqi forces in al-Fatha area, North of Tikrit, and the area of al-Sad /5/, West of Tikrit, the capital of Salahuddin province. The clashes lasted for hours and inflicted heavy losses on the terrorists.

In Anbar, the Iraqi forces found dozens of barrels of Ammonium nitrate which turn into high explosives after mixing it with some materials.

A military source said the barrels carried “Made in Turkey” labels and dated back to 2 months before the date of the seizure.

The forces also found Turkish-made weapons, munitions and rockets in several areas in the provinces of Diyala and Salahuddin and in areas on the outskirts of the capital, Baghdad, during the liberation of those areas of the ISIL terrorists.

Turkey has repeatedly claimed that it has no ties with ISIL and labels it as a “terrorist group”.

Ankara asserts that it supports the al-Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, the Al-Nusra Front, but sees ISIL as an enemy.

Yet, many reports have so far surfaced the media proving that Turkey supports ISIL too.

The western media outlets released a report early this year proving that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s daughter has established and run a field hospital only 20km to the border with Syria where ISIL and Nusra terrorists wounded in clashes with the Syrian government receive treatment.

 

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European Union refuses to recognize Israeli sovereignty over Occupied Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem or the Syrian Golan

Consequently, all illegal settlers should be repatriated back to Israel, ­ all 500,000. 

Then, and only then, can there be a peace accord.

European Commission  Brussels, 11.11.2015 C(2015) 7834 final Interpretative Notice on indication of origin of goods from the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967

‘(1) The European Union, in line with international law, does not recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967, namely the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and does not consider them to be part of Israel’s territory1, irrespective of their legal status under domestic Israeli law2. The Union has made it clear that it will not recognise any changes to pre­ 1967 borders, other than those agreed by the parties to the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP)3’

Red Complete Report

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/israel/documents/news/20151111_interpretative_notice_indication_of_origin_of_goods_en.pdf

 

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Gene therapy is a game changer. It is not a treatment for diseases. It is a cure.

It is a cure for cancer, genetic defects, blindness, deafness, diabetes, even potentially aging.

It has already proven effective in clinical trials, curing people of leukemia who were otherwise certain to die, giving people their sight back, and already, there is one therapy approved for use in the European Union with several others approved in China.

The most remarkable aspect of gene therapy is that it overwrites your DNA once, then your cells replicate that new DNA each time they divide. In essence, the cure becomes a permanent part of you. One shot, one cure, for life, or close to it.

Image: Gene therapy works by reprogramming an ordinary virus to delivery modified genes to human cells. Once introduced, the modified genes are replicated by natural cell division. Missing or defective genes, over time, can be replaced by repaired genes, reprogramming the immune system to eradicate otherwise incurable diseases, or creating function in defective systems, curing blindness, deafness, diabetes, and even effects owed to aging. 

 

Why Haven’t We Heard More About This? 

As remarkable and as promising as gene therapy is, it poses an immense threat to the established healthcare industry. A shot in clinical trials using experimental equipment that costs only 20,000 USD to produce that cures leukemia, if brought into mainstream medicine would be cheaper still, and undercut existing and ineffective”treatments” that can reach costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Gene therapy, then, is essentially a disruptive technology that brings various healthcare rackets to an abrupt halt along with all the vast wealth and unwarranted power and influence big-pharma has enjoyed over the decades.

Image: Dr. Carl June (center) led a team that developed a breakthrough gene therapy that effectively reprograms the immune system to hunt and kill leukemia cancer cells. Most of the patients, otherwise sure to die from their cancer, have gone into permanent remission. 

How can big-pharma continue on with its monopolies, wealth, and influence by curing everyone with one shot that costs almost nothing to make?

Their strategy is two-fold. First, they have intentionally dragged their feet for as long as possible until they can figure this problem out, letting people die of now curable diseases simply because they want to protect their existing business models and bottom lines.

Second, they have begun to mold public opinion through intense lobbying across the media and medical journals, ignoring the actual costs involved in producing the therapies, and instead cashing in on what they think it is worth to people, or in other words, dangling cures for crippling, deadly diseases over dying and/or desperate people’s heads, and seeing how much they are willing to pay for them.

The Washington Post, in its article, “Gene therapies offer dramatic promise but shocking costs,” writes (emphasis added):

A gene therapy approved in Europe in 2012 costs close to $1 million, and prices are expected to follow suit in the United States. The therapies in the pipeline are mostly for rare genetic diseases: sickle cell, hemophilia or immune deficiency. Their likely high prices stem from the expected value; unlike drugs that a person takes regularly, gene therapies are designed to be given once and have lasting effects.

The Washington Post continues by reporting (emphasis added):

But everyone involved anticipates the potential backlash against a seven-figure price tag, which is leading to radical proposals. Instead of paying for a treatment all at once, insurers and patients could make installment payments as long as the therapy works, similar to a mortgage on a house. Some researchers are adding up the cost of the traditional treatments that a patient will be able to avoid each year to determine a price that, although high, could lead to savings for the health-care system. 

To Corona [a young woman whose eyesight has been improved by gene therapy], the gift of vision is something approaching a miracle. But how much is that miracle worth in dollars?

Finally, the Washington Post concludes by saying:

Corona, who excitedly woke up her family in the middle of the night when she read about the possibility of gene therapy years ago, didn’t have to pay for her treatment, because she was part of a clinical trial. 

But she said her family would have found a way to get her the therapy if it had already been on the market, even if it meant battling an insurance company or taking out a loan. After all, she said, it’s not only about seeing better. She now feels like a happier, more confident person. That part feels priceless.

There seems to be nothing worse than exploiting human suffering, and the Washington Post has described perhaps the most blatant case-study of just such exploitation. It does not cost millions of dollars to prepare one of these therapies. Research may be costly, but is generally funded by taxpayers’ money through government grants to research laboratories. With the potential gene therapy offers it is likely the public could be convinced to invest even more public money into the development of such therapies.

Instead, what is happening, is public-funded research is then being handed over to corporations to commercialize these therapies. These corporations seek to minimize investments, and maximize profits and a complicit government is letting them do just that.

In the case of leukemia-beating therapies developed by Pennsylvania University, big-pharma giant Novartis swooped in only after clinical trials proved an astounding success. Likely the most pressing issue holding back this revolutionary cure from saving more lives in the immediate future is not medical or technical, but rather how best to cash in on a literal cure for cancer. A recent patent dispute has already delayed research that literally could make the difference between life and death.

An Alternative Reality  

Imagine greater amounts of public funding going into the research and development of gene therapy. Imagine cures for diseases that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars instead of tens of thousands of dollars or a ridiculous sum of 1 million dollars. And imagine open source journals publishing the results and findings as the field of gene therapy expands so other institutions both in the United States, and around the world could benefit from this revolutionary breakthrough.

Images: Emily Whitehead today (left) after receiving revolutionary gene therapy developed by Pennsylvania University, and Emily Whitehead beforehand (right) at the end of failed conventional chemotherapy for her leukemia. Had she not received gene therapy as part of a clinical trial, she surely would not be alive today. Big-pharma believes only those willing to pay heavily for such “miracles” deserve to benefit from them. 

Indeed, gene therapy can not only save public health programs money, they can transform them entirely. Imagine needing but a single shot to permanently cure your condition, instead of spending a lifetime seeing doctors, specialists, pharmacists, and insurance agents treating a persistent disease or condition. Image the burden that would be lifted off of local clinics, hospitals, and the public funds that could then be diverted elsewhere.

We stand at the precipice of conquering human health by mastering it at the genetic level. It would be a step of historic proportions not unlike the industrial revolution, the information age, or the discovery of DNA itself. Unfortunately, stakeholders who have made immense fortunes and who have built entire empires on exploiting human sickness and all the desperation associated with potentially losing one’s life or the life of a loved one, stand in the way.

Not only are they standing in the way, they have begun to clearly draw a line publicly, defining just how this revolution will be harnessed to their benefit and at the expense of literally everyone else.

Fighting Back

Wielding the power of gene therapy requires an understanding of biotechnology, the ability to use the tools and techniques of biotechnology in a properly equipped laboratory, with competent technicians, doctors, and researchers. Until recently, all of this required huge sums of financial support and the backing of the state, institutions, and/or large, well-established corporations.

Today, however, the cost for much of the equipment used in biotechnology has come tumbling down. Open source tools and techniques are finding their way onto the Internet, and laboratories built by and for communities have begun springing up around the globe. Called DIYbio labs or community labs, they have so far focused on simpler goals, such as genetically testing food, re-engineering bacteria, or simply developing better versions of existing open source lab equipment, software, and protocols.

Image: Liz Parrish has become the first of what is likely to be many, who has short-circuited big-pharma’s attempted monopoly over gene  therapy by developing and testing on herself two potential breakthroughs. 

A smaller and lesser known sub-culture known as “grinders,” focus on DIYbio applied to human health. Many of the experiments they conduct are conducted on they themselves. The most extreme and relevant example of this involved Elizabeth Parrish, a 44-year-old CEO of the biotech startup BioViva, who conducted tests with two different experimental gene therapies on herself.

Whether Parrish’s experiments prove a success or not is irrelevant. According to MIT’s Technology Review in an article titled, “A Tale of Do-It-Yourself Gene Therapy,” the actual process of preparing a therapy is not particularly complicated and can be done in any properly outfitted lab.

MIT Technology Review states specifically (emphasis added):

Another prominent science advisor listed by BioViva is Harvard Medical School genomics expert George Church, who includes BioViva in a list on his website of around 100 companies he collaborates with. Church said last week he was also trying to learn what exactly had occurred in Latin America. “I think it is real,” he said in an interview. “There were some indications it might happen. Companies in stealth mode can do anything they want.” 

Church says he didn’t agree with dodging regulators and added that BioViva appears to be “a one-person show.” But he says he found Parrish’s claims plausible. A student in his lab, he says, could prepare a genetic treatment suitable for experiments in animals in a matter of days.

If that is so, Parrish is likely only the first of many soon to follow. Faced with either a lifetime in debt to big-pharma, or even the prospect of dying from a curable condition big-pharma simply refuses to provide the cure for because of financial considerations, a growing number of people will turn to “labs” that could prepare genetic treatments at drastically reduced costs and with minimum or nonexistent barriers to accessibility.

Image: Increasingly common around the world are DIYbio labs, or community labs where enthusiasts have begun to harness the power of biotechnology for their community’s own benefit. The expansion of these local institutions stands to challenge the corrupt, inhuman monopolies erected by big-pharmaceuticals, and liberate humanity from what is for all intents and purposes a growing scientific and medical dictatorship.  

Dangerous? Yes. But if you are dying from cancer, and as big-pharma itself has pointed out, you’re likely to do anything – whether it is putting yourself in debt to big-pharma for a million dollars, or rolling the dice with a treatment drummed up in an underground biopunk lab.

As the capabilities of DIYbio labs grow in general, it will become increasingly possible for dedicated teams of citizen scientists and activists to reverse engineer existing therapies, reproduce them, and put them online in a biological version of existing peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Independent research and development toward human health applications and even gene therapy itself will also become increasing possible.

Eventually, because of big-pharma’s shortsighted greed, it will be displaced entirely by this growing network of localized medicine, all because it decided to turn this historic corner as plunderers instead of as enlightened leaders.

For average people out there interested in getting involved, simply use your favorite Internet search engine, type in “DIYbio” and the city you live in or near, and start attending meetings, workshops, and participating in projects today. All great journeys initially start with single steps in more or less familiar surroundings, but collectively lead to something far more significant.

 

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Shocking, Little-Known Facts About Debt. Private Debt Exploding

November 12th, 2015 by Washington's Blog

Both liberals and conservatives assume they have a rough idea of how much “the debt” is.  But the real numbers are shocking …

Public Debt Is Soaring

Global debt has soared to $199 trillion dollars.

The debt to GDP ratio for the entire world is 286%.  In other words, global debt is almost 3 times the size of the world economy. (William Banzai sarcastically suggests we send out a space beacon asking aliens tobail us out.)

The Hill reports:

The former U.S. comptroller general says the real U.S. debt is closer to about $65 trillion than the oft-cited figure of $18 trillion.

Dave Walker, who headed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said when you add up all of the nation’s unfunded liabilities, the national debt is more than three times the number generally advertised.

***

If you end up adding to that $18.5 trillion the unfunded civilian and military pensions and retiree healthcare, the additional underfunding for Social Security, the additional underfunding for Medicare, various commitments and contingencies that the federal government has, the real number is about $65 trillion rather than $18 trillion, and it’s growing automatically absent reforms ….

But former Senior Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and current Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff says that – when unfunded liabilities are taken into account – the fiscal gap for the U.S. is actually 3 times higher … $205 trillion.

Many states are also deeply in the red … For example:

  • New Jersey faces a structural deficit of $10.2 billion dollars
  • Pennsylvania has to deal with a $2.3 billion budget deficit

And unfunded pension debts of the states collectively total between $1.4 trillion (according to Federal Reserve figures) and more than $3 trillion dollars (according to a Stanford finance professor).

Europe is in poor shape as well.  For example:

  • Greece’s debt is 175% of its GDP
  • Italy’s debt is 132% of its GDP
  • Portugal’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 130%

Asia is not immune:

  • Japan has the most debt of any country on Earth … with a 245% debt-to-GDP ratio

Private Debt is Also Exploding

Goldman Sachs notes that U.S. corporate debt has doubled since 2008.

Corporate debt in emerging markets has exploded.   For example, it’s gone absolutely ballistic in China.

The Telegraph reported in September:

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued a double warning over higher US interest rates, which it said could trigger a wave of emerging market corporate defaults and panic in financial markets as liquidity evaporates.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) … said corporate debts in emerging markets ballooned to $18 trillion (£12 trillion) last year, from $4 trillion in 2004 as companies gorged themselves on cheap debt.

It said the quadrupling in debt had been accompanied by weaker balance sheets, making companies more vulnerable to US rate rises.

Household debt is also rising in most of the world:

Household debt is “reaching new peaks”. Only in Ireland, Spain, the UK and the US have households deleveraged. According to the study, not only have household debt-to-income ratios continued to rise, they now actually exceed the peak levels in the crisis countries before 2008 in some cases, including advanced economies such Australia, Canada and Denmark.

And young adults are piling it on.   For example, student debt in the U.S. has grown to $1.2 trillion.

Does Debt Matter?

Mainstream economists believe that deficits don’t matter … and that private debt doesn’t even “exist as a force that acts on the economy.

Indeed, mainstream economists such a Alan Greenspan thought that paying off America’s national debt would be so harmful to the economy that he suggested cutting taxes on the wealthy … to intentionally increase our debt.

People assume that this is a “Keynesian” versus “hawkish” debate … but that’s barking up the wrong tree. We’ve got to get beyond labels to see what’s really happening.

The world’s most prestigious financial institution, known as the “Central Banks’ Central Bank” – the Bank for International Settlements – warned in 2008 that bailing out the big banks would create sovereign debt crises, transferring the banks’ problems to their host nations. That’s exactly what’s happened.

Last year, the head of the Bank for International Settlements said that things have gotten worse:

The world economy is just as vulnerable to a financial crisis as it was in 2007, with the added danger that debt ratios are now far higher and emerging markets have been drawn into the fire as well, the Bank for International Settlements has warned.

A study of 124 banking crises by the International Monetary Fund found that propping up banks which are only pretending to be solvent – instead of forcing them to write off their bad debt – typically shreds the nation’s economy:

Existing empirical research has shown that providing assistance to banks and their borrowers can be counterproductive, resulting in increased losses to banks, which often abuse forbearance to take unproductive risks at government expense. The typical result of forbearance is a deeper hole in the net worth of banks, crippling tax burdens to finance bank bailouts, and even more severe credit supply contraction and economic decline than would have occurred in the absence of forbearance.

Cross-country analysis to date also shows that accommodative policy measures (such as substantial liquidity support, explicit government guarantee on financial institutions’ liabilities and forbearance from prudential regulations) tend to be fiscally costly and that these particular policies do not necessarily accelerate the speed of economic recovery.

***

All too often, central banks privilege stability over cost in the heat of the containment phase: if so, they may too liberally extend loans to an illiquid bank which is almost certain to prove insolvent anyway. Also, closure of a nonviable bank is often delayed for too long, even when there are clear signs of insolvency (Lindgren, 2003). Since bank closures face many obstacles, there is a tendency to rely instead on blanket government guarantees which, if the government’s fiscal and political position makes them credible, can work albeit at the cost of placing the burden on the budget, typically squeezing future provision of needed public services.

Similarly, Bloomberg notes that high debt leads to austerity:

Concerned that high debt loads would cause international investors to avoid their markets, many nations resorted to austerity measures of reduced spending and increased taxes, reining in their economies in the process as they tried to restore the fiscal order they abandoned to fight the worldwide recession.

And contrary to another mainstream myth, military spending is HORRIBLE for the economy … especially in the long-term.

But What About Private Debt?

But what about the global build-up of private debt?

In 2008, the most prestigious financial agency in the world – the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), often described as the “central bank for central banks” – said that failing to force companies to write off bad debts “will only make things worse”.

Moreover:

The recent edition of the Geneva report – “an annual assessment informed by a top drawer conference of leading decision makers and economic thinkers” – finds that the“poisonous combination” of spiraling debts and low growth could trigger another crisis. The report also notes:

Contrary to widely held beliefs, the world has not yet begun to de-lever and the global debt to GDP ratio is still growing, breaking new highs.

And as the Telegraph put it last year:

On a global level, growth is being steadily drowned under a rising tide of debt, threatening renewed financial crisis, a continued squeeze to living standards, and eventual mass default.

In addition, some top economists and economic agencies have recently verified that bubbles cause huge crashes, and are thus bad for the economy.  See thisthis and this.

Indeed, some Keynesians now acknowledge that “reaction to phases of excessive boom” was one of the primary causes of major recessions.

And that is why, in June 2007, the Bank for International Settlements “warn[ed] of Great Depression dangers from [the] credit spree“:

The Bank for International Settlements, the world’s most prestigious financial body, has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fueled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy more vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump than generally understood.

Virtually nobody foresaw the Great Depression of the 1930s, or the crises which affected Japan and southeast Asia in the early and late 1990s. In fact, each downturn was preceded by a period of non-inflationary growth exuberant enough to lead many commentators to suggest that a ‘new era’ had arrived.

In other words, the bigger the bubble, the bigger the bust.  And given that the enormous super-bubble of debt may be about to burst, the world’s skyrocketing might not look very smart in the coming years.

Despite what mainstream economists think, 141 years of history shows that excessive private debt – in and of itself  – can cause depressions.

Indeed, an economics professor who bases his analysis on computer models says we’ll have “a never-ending depression unless we repudiate the debt, which never should have been extended in the first place”.

Well-known economist Michael Hudson agrees (starting around 4:00 into video):

If the problem that is grinding the economy to a halt is too much debt, and if no one in the government – in either party – is looking at solving the debt problem, then … we’re going to go into a depression as far as the eye can see.

The Bottom Line

We don’t believe that all debt is good. For example, unlike many Keynesians, we don’t think that paying people to dig holes and then fill them back in helps the economy.

But we also don’t believe that all debt is bad. For example, we think that borrowing money for productive purposes – like funding basic innovation, helping to launch small businesses or re-tool manufacturing equipment – is beneficial.

But public and private debt have both been incurred for non-productive purposes.

For example, a very large chunk of the private corporate debt has gone into massive stock buybacks … to boost the bonuses of a handful of top executives.

In terms of public funding, we’ve fought the longest-running, most-expensive wars in American history… but they’re only decreasing our national security. We might as well flush money down the drain …

Indeed, not only does war lead to debt, but high levels of debt lead to more war.  For example, Martin Armstrong argued that war plans against Syria are really about debt and spending:

The Syrian mess seems to have people lining up on Capital Hill when sources there say the phone calls coming in are overwhelmingly against any action. The politicians are ignoring the people entirely. This suggests there is indeed a secret agenda to achieve a goal outside the discussion box. That is most like the debt problem and a war is necessary to relieve the pressure to curtail spending.

Billionaire investor Jim Rogers agrees:

Add debt, the situation gets worse, and eventually it just collapsesThen everybody is looking for scapegoats. Politicians blame foreigners, and we’re in World War II or World War whatever.

So do many other top economic advisers.

And virtually none of the public debt has gone into helping the economy.  Instead, governments chose big banks over their own people.  The huge amount of debt was racked up to bail out the big banks … and it’s still happening.

Central banks have been engaged in the the “greatest backdoor bailout of all time.”  Indeed, even mainstream economists are starting to admit that quantitative easing helps the rich … and hurts everyone else.

In essence, the elite financial players are manipulating the game so that they get the stimulus … and the little guy gets the austerity.  Indeed, the IMF is recommending “financial repression” of the average person, to plug the giant debt holes created by the bank bailouts.

That’s the opposite of using debt in order to help the main street economy and the average citizen.

Top economists say that Iceland did it right … and everyone else is doing it wrong.  Here’s why:

Arni Pall Arnason, 44, Iceland’s minister of economic affairs, says the decision to make debt holders [i.e. the people to whom the debts are owed … mainly bondholders] share the pain saved the country’s future.

Even the IMF points to Iceland as a model for debt write-offs as a way out of its economic slump.

Postscript: Debt-forgiveness was historically considered the cornerstone of both religion and liberty.

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Why are so many brave soldiers and veterans killing themselves?

Are they coming to the realization that they were never fighting for freedom and democracy as they were told?

Are they learning that the pretexts they are given as justification for endless war are actually warped, historical narratives designed to manufacture their consent?

Have they accepted the fact that the true, imperial geopolitical strategies at play are hidden from them and that their sense of patriotism has been cynically manipulated by those who benefit from enriching and empowering the military industrial complex?

Are they becoming aware that a complicit media uses psychological techniques to promote endless war as the inevitable solution to every crisis, ignoring and hiding the fact that these wars accomplish nothing but death, chaos and the empowerment of the very enemy they have ostensibly been sent to destroy?

Are they killing themselves not only because they have experienced the horrors of wars, but also the even greater horror of knowing that their criminal government sent them into harm’s way on false pretexts and that those in power place No value on their sacrifices or even their lives?

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US Supreme Court Expands Immunity for Killer Cops

November 12th, 2015 by Tom Carter

With the death toll from police brutality continuing to mount, the US Supreme Court on Monday issued a decision expanding the authoritarian doctrine of “qualified immunity,” which shields police officers from legal accountability.

When a civil rights case is summarily dismissed by a judge on the grounds of “qualified immunity,” the case is legally terminated. It never goes to trial before a jury and is never decided on its constitutional merits.

In March of 2010, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Chadrin Mullenix climbed onto an overpass with a rifle and, disobeying a direct order from his supervisor, fired six shots at a vehicle that the police were pursuing. Mullenix was not in any danger, and his supervisor had told him to wait until other officers tried to stop the car using spike strips. Four shots struck Israel Leija, Jr., killing him and causing the car, which was going 85 miles per hour, to crash. After the shooting, Mullenix boasted to his supervisor, “How’s that for proactive?”

The Luna v. Mullenix case was filed by Leija’s family members, who claimed that Mullenix used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights. The district court that originally heard the case, together with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, denied immunity to Mullenix on the grounds that his conduct violated clearly established law. The Supreme Court intervened to uphold the Mullenix’s entitlement to immunity—a decision that will set a precedent for the summary dismissal of civil rights lawsuits against police brutality around the country.

This is the Supreme Court’s response to the ongoing wave of police mayhem and murder. The message is clear: The killings will continue. Do not question the police. If you disobey the police, you forfeit your life.

So far this year, more than 1,000 people have been killed by the police in America. Almost every day, there are new videos posted online showing police shootings, intrusions into homes and cars, asphyxiations, beatings and taserings.

Last week, two police officers in Louisiana opened fire on Jeremy Mardis, a six-year-old autistic boy, and his father Chris Few. The boy’s father had his hands up during the shooting and is currently hospitalized with serious injuries. His son succumbed to the police bullets while still buckled into the front seat of the car.

The Supreme Court’s decision reflects the fact that in the face of rising popular anger over police killings, the entire political apparatus—including all of the branches of government—is closing ranks behind the police. This includes the establishment media, which has largely remained silent about Monday’s pro-police Supreme Court decision.

The police operate with almost total impunity, confident that no matter what they do, they will have the backing of the state. Two weeks ago, a South Carolina grand jury refused to return an indictment against the officer who was caught on video killing 19-year-old Zachary Hammond. This follows the exoneration of the police who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York City and Tamir Rice in Cleveland.

The Obama administration’s position regarding the surge of police violence was most clearly and simply articulated by FBI director James Comey in aspeech on October 23. “May God protect our cops,” Comey declared. He went on to accuse those who film the police of promoting violent crime. Meanwhile, in virtually every police brutality case that has come before the federal courts, the Obama administration has taken the side of the police.

On Monday, the Supreme Court went out of its way to cite approvingly anamicus curiae (friend of court) brief filed by the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), which defended Mullenix. With this citation, notwithstanding its ostensible role as a neutral arbiter and guarantor of the Constitution, the Supreme Court sent a clear signal as to which side it is on.

During the imposition of de facto martial law in Ferguson last year, NAPO issued statements vociferously defending Michael Brown’s killer, labeling demonstrators as “violent outsiders,” and denouncing “the violent idiots on the street chanting ‘time to kill a cop!’”

“Qualified immunity” is a reactionary doctrine invented by judges in the later part of the 20th century to shield public officials from lawsuits. As a practical matter, this doctrine allows judges to toss out civil rights cases without a jury trial if, in the judge’s opinion, the official misconduct in question was not “plainly incompetent” or a “knowing violation of clearly established law.”

Over recent decades, the doctrine has been stretched to Kafkaesque proportions to shield police officers from accountability. In the landmark case ofTennessee v. Garner (1985), the Supreme Court held that it violates the Constitution to shoot an “unarmed, nondangerous fleeing suspect,” and required an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury before the police could open fire. But the Supreme Court in its decision on Monday dismissed this language as constituting a “high level of generality” that was not “particular” enough to “clearly establish” any particular constitutional rights.

Since cases that are dismissed on the grounds of qualified immunity do not result in decisions on the constitutional issues, this circular pseudo-logic ensures that no rights will ever be “clearly established.” It also ensures that, instead of the democratic procedure of a jury trial, cases involving the police will be decided by judges.

The Supreme Court issued Monday’s decision without full briefing or oral argument, designating it “per curiam,” i.e., in the name of the court, not any specific judges.

Justice Antonin Scalia filed a concurring opinion, displaying his trademark sophistry. According to Scalia, Mullenix did not use “deadly force” within the meaning of the Supreme Court’s prior cases, since he was shooting at a car, not a person. (Four bullets struck Leija, but none of the six shots struck the engine block at which Mullenix was supposedly aiming.)

Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed the sole dissent, noting that this decision “renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow,” and sanctions a “shoot first, think later” approach to policing. However, Sotomayor wrote that she would have used a “balancing” analysis instead, in which a “particular government interest” would need to be “balanced” against the use of deadly force. This “balancing” rhetoric mirrors the Obama administration’s justifications for assassination and domestic spying, according to which national security is balanced against democratic rights.

The Bill of Rights itself—that old, yellow, forgotten piece of paper—does not make itself contingent on the subjective mental states of police officers, “clearly established law,” or the “balancing” of “government interests.”

America confronts a massive social crisis. Decades of endless war and occupations abroad, the degradation of wages and living conditions at home, the enrichment of a tiny layer of financial criminals at the expense of the rest of the society, rampant speculation and corruption at the highest levels—these factors contribute to mounting social tensions and the danger, from the standpoint of the ruling class, of the growth of social opposition. Such opposition can already be seen, in its earliest stages, in the struggle by autoworkers against the sellout contract being imposed by the United Auto Workers union.

Like the tyrant who proposes to solve the problem of hunger by imposing a hefty fine on everyone who starves, the Supreme Court’s decision Monday confirms that the entire social system has nothing to offer by way of a solution to the crisis except more of the same.

The abrogation of democratic rights, torture, military commissions, drone assassinations, unlimited surveillance, the lockdown of entire cities, internment camps, beatings, murder, martial law, war—this is how the ruling class plans to deal with the social crisis. Notwithstanding the epidemic of police violence, the flow of unlimited cash and military hardware to police departments from the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon continues unabated.

The buildup of the police as a militarized occupation force operating outside the law, pumped up and ready to kill, must be seen as a part of preparations by the ruling class for mass repression and dictatorship in response to the growth of working class opposition.

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The White House indicated Tuesday that President Barack Obama will sign into law a Pentagon spending bill that significantly raises the base budget of the US war machine while prohibiting the shutdown of the prison camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba or the transfer of its detainees to US facilities.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provides for a base Pentagon budget (excluding expenditures on active military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria) of $548 billion, larger than any year since the end of the Cold War.

On top of the base budget, the funding bill includes $50.9 billion for “overseas contingency operations,” that will pay for ongoing military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, down from $64.2 billion in the last fiscal year. Together with a few smaller increments, this brings the total in military spending to $607 billion for the fiscal year that began October 1.

Over the past 15 years, the base Pentagon budget has risen by 42.7 percent, growing steadily as Obama replaced Bush, the Iraq war was wound down and then restarted, and the Afghanistan war was escalated and then scaled back.

The White House indicated that Obama would approve the legislation. “I would expect that you would see the president sign the NDAA when it comes to his desk,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a news briefing.

The fiscal year 2016 military budget sent to the White House was passed by the US Senate in an overwhelming 91-3 vote on Tuesday, following the passage of a similar bill by the House of Representatives last week by a margin of 370-58, allowing Republican congressional leaders to claim clear bipartisan support for keeping Washington’s infamous offshore detention camp open.

Last month, Obama vetoed an earlier incarnation of the bill, citing budgetary considerations as his first concern, insufficient reforms to military procurement his second and the ban on Guantanamo’s shutdown only third.

The Republican leadership had attempted to keep in place spending caps imposed in a 2011 budget-cutting measure known as the sequester, while still raising the Pentagon’s real budget by shifting increased appropriations into an overseas contingency operations (OCO) slush fund used to pay for ongoing American military interventions abroad.

Under a two-year budget deal worked out between the White House and the Congress, the caps were raised on both areas of spending, allowing for an increase in the Pentagon’s base budget of nearly 7.7 percent, raising it from $496 billion to $548 billion in fiscal year 2016.

The increase in military spending is being driven overwhelmingly by the procurement of new weapons systems aimed at preparing for war against another major power; in the first instance, Russia and China.

The budget provides $5.7 billion for the Air Force to buy another 44 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from Lockheed Martin, continuing the most expensive arms acquisition program in US history.

The Navy is moving ahead with a program to build 12 new nuclear missile-firing submarines at the cost of $6 billion each. The overall plan for building battle force ships presented by the Navy calls for the spending of over a third more in the next 30 years than was spent in the last 30, with estimated annual costs at over $20 billion.

The Pentagon budget also includes nearly $11 billion for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, comprising some 71,000 commandos deployed in some 80 countries. To augment the reach of these killer squads, the budget includes funding for the purchase of a new generation of Reaper armed drone aircraft used in “targeted killings,” i.e., assassinations.

Also included in the NDAA is another $300 million in military aid to the right-wing, anti-Russian regime in Ukraine for the continued US training of security forces, including battalions drawn directly from neo-fascist forces, and the provision of “lethal assistance such as anti-armor weapon systems, mortars, crew-served weapons and ammunition, grenade launchers and ammunition, and small arms and ammunition.”

Significantly, the Pentagon funding bill includes provisions that shift substantial control over weapons programs and acquisitions from the secretary of defense to the uniformed chiefs of the armed services, further eroding civilian control over the military.

The rise in the Pentagon’s budget is being initiated under conditions in which US military spending is already nearly three times as much as China’s and more than seven times as much Russia’s. In 2015, Washington spent more on its military than the next seven countries—five of them US allies—combined.

The only explanation for such a build-up is that US imperialism is preparing for a major escalation of military aggression on a world scale.

This eruption of US militarism goes hand-in-hand with the assault on basic democratic principles and rights, making the provisions to maintain the Guantanamo prison camp a logical corollary to the Pentagon legislation.

Much has been made in the media about Obama confronting a challenge to his “legacy” in failing to remove the Guantanamo provisions from the spending bill.

On his first full day in office, the Democratic president announced an executive order promising to close down the prison camp within one year. This will be the sixth Pentagon budget in a row that he has signed precluding such a shutdown. The restrictions were first put in place by a Democratic-controlled House and Senate.

The latest legislation not only bans the transfer of prisoners to the US, but also prohibits their being sent to third countries, including Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia.

Approaching the end of his second term, Obama has yet to present any plan to Congress for closing Guantanamo, and there is speculation that he could issue an executive order claiming the power as “commander in chief” to determine the fate of the detainees without congressional approval.

Given that Obama has submitted to congressional restrictions for the past seven years, it is questionable whether the courts would uphold such an order. Federal courts recently blocked his executive order limiting deportations of undocumented immigrants.

Moreover, it is highly unlikely that Obama would do anything regarding Guantanamo in the run-up to the November 2016 election.

There are still 112 detainees held in Guantanamo’s cells. Over 800 men have been incarcerated in the prison camp since it opened in 2001 as an offshore facility where those abducted by the US military and intelligence agencies could be arbitrarily held without charges or trials and subjected to interrogation under torture.

Only ten of those currently held are facing criminal charges before military commissions. The other 102 have never been charged, while some have been held for 13 years. Of them, 53 have been cleared for release for the last five years, most of them Yemenis, but they remain imprisoned even though Washington admits they pose no security threat.

Among the others are the so-called “forever prisoners,” whom the US cannot bring to trial in any civilian court because the alleged evidence against them was gained through torture and other illegal methods.

Obama’s proposal is to transfer these prisoners to a US maximum security prison, effectively a “Guantanamo North.” Alternative sites have been indicated in Leavenworth, Kansas, Colorado and elsewhere.

Obama’s claims that such a transfer would somehow be consistent with American “values” are utterly hypocritical. In reality, it would have the effect of further institutionalizing an illegal system of arbitrary imprisonment on US soil, setting the precedent for the indefinite detention of American citizens as well.

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Behind the headline news of clashes between Palestinian youths and armed Israeli soldiers, Israel has – as ever – been quietly tightening its grip on Palestinians’ lives in the occupied territories.

Last week in Hebron, a current flashpoint, 50 embattled families still living in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood faced a new restriction on movement designed to help free up the area for intensified Jewish settlement.

Some of Tel Rumeida’s residents could be seen silently queuing at the local checkpoint to register their ID cards. Anyone not from the neighbourhood and not on the military’s list will be barred from entering.

Their response differed starkly from the reaction 21 years ago, when residents faced a similar order. Then, the entire neighbourhood refused to register. Israel punished them with a curfew for six months, allowing the families out for a few hours a week to buy food.

How to respond to military orders of this kind stands at the heart of a debate that has revived among Palestinians about the relative merits of armed struggle and non-violent resistance.

A poll in the early summer showed 49 per cent of Palestinians aged between 18 and 22 supported an armed uprising. By September, after the first clashes in Jerusalem, that figure had surged to 67 per cent.

The volatility can in part be explained by an inevitable thirst for revenge as Palestinians watch compatriots being killed and maimed by Israeli soldiers.

But it also reflects a void of Palestinian leadership and strategy. Instead, Palestinians have been buffeted into polarised camps that, put simply, pit Hamas’ rhetoric of armed struggle against the stalled diplomacy of Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority.

Non-violence once earnt a central place in Palestinian resistance to occupation. During the first intifada of the late 1980s, Palestinians engaged in mass civil disobedience: they refused to cooperate with the military authorities, burnt their ID cards, refused to pay taxes and held strikes.

That approach never entirely ended. Today it finds expression in the weekly protests and marches by villages against Israel’s steel and concrete barrier eating away at Palestinians’ agricultural lands. These protests remain largely peaceful, even in the face of unceasing army brutality.

But the use of non-violence has been limited to local struggles, waged with the aim of small, isolated victories. It has also invariably coexisted with more violent approaches, from stone-throwing to the current knife attacks.

Much of the blame falls to Abbas, who has appropriated the language of non-violence while failing to harness it to a national strategy of resistance. Even the PA’s support for the villagers’ battles against Israel’s wall have been less than half-hearted.

In the minds of many Palestinians, non-violence has become tainted by association with Abbas’ years of ineffectiveness: his desperate and unsuccessful attempts both to push Israel into peace talks and to cosy up to Washington. The nadir was his declaration of the “sacred” status of the PA’s security coordination with Israel.

It has also not helped that prejudicial demands for non-violence are regularly made of Palestinians by outsiders and dishonest brokers such as Washington. Last month US secretary of state John Kerry singled out Palestinians for blame in the latest clashes. “There’s no excuse for the violence,” he scolded, ignoring decades of Israel’s violent suppression of Palestinian efforts at liberation.

Nonetheless, some Palestinian intellectuals are advocating non-violent resistance as they warn against an armed uprising. Palestinians have a right in international law to resist the occupation, even violently, but this group emphasises the futility of violence faced with Israel’s military superiority. Theirs is a pragmatic argument.

In an article headlined “Don’t go out to die, Palestine needs you alive”, journalist Mohammed Daraghmeh called on Palestinians to “channel the national anger toward mass protest”. Reminding Palestinians that the western world created the conflict and must fix it, Daragmeh warned: “It will not do so if we commit suicide.”

Similarly, Palestinian businessman Sam Bahour has coined the term “smart resistance”, arguing that all the Palestinian factions should commit to non-violent resistance as a way to national liberation.

Both have drawn on earlier strategies of communal solidarity and collective sacrifice – as demonstrated by Tel Rumeida’s inhabitants two decades ago.

One of the architects of the first intifada’s non-violent resistance, Mubarak Awad, recently reminded Palestinians that it is no soft option. “It’s about using nonviolence militantly, like a kind of unarmed warfare,” he told an interviewer.

He suggests instead refusing to carry Israeli-issued IDs, defying curfews, blocking roads, planting trees on sites intended for settlement, tearing down fences, staging sit-ins and and inviting mass arrests to fill to breaking point Israel’s jails.

Such actions require mass participation, mobilising women, children and the elderly – the very groups likely to be excluded by armed struggle.

And, as Awad notes, non-violence also needs a people trained in its techniques and principles. That is why he has translated into Arabic the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Political organisers and strategists like Awad have always topped Israel’s list for arrest. He was jailed and tortured at the start of the first intifada and later expelled to the US.

The power of disciplined non-violent resistance, he adds, is that it forces on the occupier a heavy burden: to “deal with our willingness to stand up for ourselves with nothing but our bodies and hearts”.

It forces Israelis to “choose what kind of people they are”, and creates division and dissent among the oppressor population, weakening its resolve.

It is a challenging message, especially when Israel is so ruthlessly crushing Palestinian hope and dignity. But Awad argues that it is precisely by demonstrating an irrepressible humanity that Palestinians can again discover hope, reclaim their dignity and win freedom.

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The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) achieved its greatest victory in the four year-long war on Tuesday when it recaptured the strategic Kuweires military airbase in North Syria. Hundreds of ISIS terrorists were killed in intense fighting while hundreds more were sent fleeing eastward towards Raqqa. The victory was announced just hours after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said in an interview with CNN’s  Christiane Amanpour that Turkey would be willing  to invade Syria as long as Washington agreed to provide air support, create a safe zone along the Syrian-Turkish border, and remove Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

Now that Kuweires has been liberated, Davutoğlu will have to reconsider his offer taking into consideration the fact that  Russian warplanes will now be within striking distance of the border while troops and artillery will be positioned in a way that makes crossing into Syria as difficult as possible. The window for Turkish troops to enter Syria unopposed has closed. Any attempt to invade the country now will result in stiff resistance and heavy casualties.

To fully understand the significance of Kuweires, we need take a look at Amanpour’s interview with Davutoglu and see what was being planned. Here’s an excerpt:

Christiane Amanpour:  Would Turkey, under the right conditions, agree to be a ground force?

PM Ahmet Davutoğlu:   “A ground force is something which we have to talk [about] together.  There’s a need of an integrated strategy including air campaign and ground troops. But Turkey alone cannot take all this burden. If there is a coalition and a very well designed integrated strategy, Turkey is ready to take part in all senses.”

C.A.:  Including on the ground?

Davutoğlu:  Yes, of course….We have to solve the Syrian crisis in a comprehensive manner.

C.A.:  So I understand what you’re saying is that the condition for Turkey to be more involved would be an agreement by a coalition to also go after Assad?

Davutoğlu:   Yes, and against all groups and regimes that are creating this vacuum and this problem. On many days we are assisting the coalition in (the fight) against ISIS, but it is not enough. Now we are suggesting to our allies for many months–and now we are suggesting again–to create a safe haven and to push ISIS far away from our borders.

C.A.: So what do you make of the US, Europe and especially Russia saying Assad must and can stay for a period of time?

Davutoğlu:  …..The question is not how long can Assad stay, the question is when and how Assad will go. …What is the solution. The solution is very clear. It is when millions of Syrian refugees are able to return home, assuming there is peace in Syria, then this is the solution. And if Assad stays in power in Damascus,  I don’t think any refugee will go back. There is a need of a step by step strategy, but what is the endgame? What is the light at the end of the tunnel, that is what is important to the refugees.

C.A.:  Why is the Turkish government making it hard for the US government to arm and train and use Kurdish fighters as their ground troops?

Davutoğlu:   (we are not making it hard for the US government to use the) “Kurds”, but the PYD as a wing of the PKK…

There is another Kurdish group, the Peshmerga. We allowed the Peshmerga to go through Turkey to go to Kobani in order to help Kobani to be free. If the US wants to arm Kurdish fighters on the ground against ISIS, we are ready. But not Kurdish terrorists like PKK. If they want to arm and help Barzani, or Peshmerga and help them go to Syria, we are ready to help. But everybody must understand, that today PKK is attacking our cities, our soldiers and our civilians. We will not tolerate any help to any PKK-related groups inside Syria or Iraq. If that happens, Turkey will take all measures to stop it.” (“For refugees to return, Assad must go, says Turkish PM“, CNN)

Let’s recap: Even though the Russian-led coalition is conducting major military operations in Syria, Turkey is willing to invade provided that Washington meet its demands, demands that have never changed and which (we have said in earlier columns) were part of a secret deal for the use of the Incirlik airbase so the USAF could conduct sorties over Syria.

What are Turkey’s demands:

1 A safe zone on the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border

2 A no-fly zone over areas where Turkish troops are conducting operations

3 A commitment to remove Assad.

For a while it looked like the Obama administration might abandon their alliance with Turkey and join with the PYD (The Kurds) in their effort to create a buffer zone where they could harbor, arm and train Sunni militants to continue hostilities in Syria. In fact, Obama went so far as to air-drop pallet-loads of weapons and ammo to the Democratic Union Party (PYD) militia just 10 days ago. (Note:  The US has already stopped  all weapons shipments to the PYD) Whether Obama did this to force Turkey into playing a more active role in Syria, we don’t know. But what we do know is that a Turkish-US alliance is more formidable than a PYD-US alliance, which is why Washington is planning to sell out the Kurds to join-forces with Turkey.

Another sign that US-Turkish relations have begun to thaw, is the fact that Obama phoned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to congratulate him on his party’s victory eight days after the election. The delay suggests that they were working out their differences before expressions of support.   Erdogan needed the landslide victory to consolidate his power in Parliament and to persuade the military brass that he has a mandate to carry out his foreign policy.  Obama’s phone call was intended to pave the way for backroom negotiations which would take place during next week’s G-20 meetings in Ankara.  But now that the Russian-led coalition has retaken Kuweires, it is impossible to know how the US and Turkey will proceed. If Putin’s warplanes and artillery are able to seal the border, then Washington will have to scrap its plan for seizing the 60-miles stretch of northern Syria that’s needed to keep vital supplylines to US-backed jihadis open or to provide sanctuary for mercenaries returning from the frontlines.  The changing battlescape will make a safe zone impossible to defend.

The fact is, Kuweires changes everything. ISIS is on the run, the myriad other terrorist organizations are progressively losing ground, Assad is safe in Damascus, the borders will soon be protected, and the US-Turkey plan to invade has effectively been derailed. Barring some extraordinary, unforeseeable catastrophe that could reverse the course of events; it looks like the Russian-led coalition will eventually achieve its objectives and win the war. Washington will have no choice but to return to the bargaining table and make the concessions necessary to end the hostilities.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Global Research: More than 1.9 Million Readers a Month

November 11th, 2015 by Global Research News

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First Published by GR on Remembrance Day November 11, 2010

“You fasten all the triggers for the others to fire,
Then you sit back and watch when the death count gets higher,
You hide in your mansion’s as young people’s blood flows,
Out of their bodies and in to the mud.”
Bob Dylan.

Today, is Remembrance Day, on both sides of the Atlantic. At the eleventh minute, of the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns of the First World War fell silent, leaving the estimated nine million who had died in battle, to the graves’ muteness across continents, and to France’s poppy fields. It remains the day when the deaths of subsequent tragedies and imperial follies are remembered. A day when even the cynical pause to read heartfelt notes on poppy wreaths, laid at the base of memorials, flowers refreshed on graves, stories of the lost, passed down and revisited, as more recent shared laughter, now also silenced.

Given the still mounting death toll of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and America, British and “coalition” youth, lives condemned by former President Bush and former Prime Minister Blair, on spurious claims at best and outright untruths at worst, it might be expected they would be spending some time on their knees in a place of sanctity and offering condolences to the bereaved.

Mr Bush’s plans are unknown, but Mr Blair’s are tastelessly bizarre. The man with streets and children named after him in Kosova, recipient of the Congressional Medal, Liberty Medal and other glittering honors, is to address a conference of manufacturers of toilets, toilet paper and cleaners, tampons, and vacuums, at the International Sanitary Suppliers Association (ISSA) in Orlando, Florida. He will rake in an estimated £50,000 for a forty five minute address.

Blair, of course, famously, reportedly, cleaned out No 10 Downing Street, when he left, of the gifts given him as Prime Minister. Anything over £140, is supposed to be property of the nation, but seemingly fine carpets, jewellery and all manner of collectables, moved with the Blairs.

The speaker has been flown in, courtesy Diversey Inc.who, in 2010 began: ” .. a new chapter in a long legacy of environmental sustainability … committed to a cleaner, healthier future… for everyone.” Perhaps their guest’s involvement in reducing a number of countries to largely futureless rubble, peopled with the sick, limbless and with rising cancers and deformities, in an environment poisoned by western weaponry, so far from these admirable aims, had inexplicably escaped them. Ironically, the organizers credit him with his tenure resulting in: “More people receiving faster access to health care, with improved survival rates for cancer and coronary heart disease.” Tell that to the people of the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Being a bit of a busted flush, so to speak, in the U.K., few media outlets seem to have noticed this latest engagement. One India News referred to his: “Toilet Roll Talk”, in their heading on a piece displaying advertisements including one for “Feminine Hygiene Disposal Sanitary Bins”, and another for their rental. Exhibition News revealed: “Blair takes Soapbox at U.S., Cleaning Show.”

The Daily Mail, never reticent in giving Blair a kicking, referred to his: ” … career plumbing new depths (in addressing) a conference of toilet roll and disinfectant manufacturers.” The ISSA: “… website’s glowing profile … has cleaned up his record as thoroughly as any of the stain removers on show”, chortles the paper, pointing out that: “Nowhere is there a mention of the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the dirty tricks (the) sleaze ..”, or the strange death of: “Ministry of Defence weapons expert, Dr David Kelly”, a death of which, it has been ordered, all documentation relating to, will remain sealed for seventy years.

Mail readers have also been less than kind. An apt venue: “… for a man who took his country to the cleaners in more ways than one can imagine”, wrote one; another ventured pettily that his speeches were worth less than toilet paper, anyway; another that: “Mud sticks, what better place for him to clean himself up.”

He could also: “Take the opportunity to win one of five Flex hand driers”, to be given away during the gathering.

Later in the day, he could join the Show Floor Happy Hour and: “… star in a band during Karaoke Live. Step into the spotlight – center stage” (no better man) “to jam with a live band complete with backup singers who make even a novice look like a rock star.” Should be in his element, it has been a good while since he fronted a group called “Ugly Rumours”, inspite of having created a good few in recent years.

If he is at a loose end waiting for his freebie flight out, he could pop over to Orlando’s Disneyland and take in the “Small World”, originally designed by a Mary Blair, where an animation of children of the world, frolick: “In a spirit of international unity, in a theme of global peace.”

He could then take in:”Great Moments with Mr Lincoln”, a celebration of the great man’s sayings which includes:

“Let reverence for the [law] be breathed by every … mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, [in] spelling-books, and almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly [at] its altars.”

On his way out, he could suggest a new Magic Mystery Tour: “The quest for Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Then back on the plane, with his ISSA goodie bag. With seven mansions to keep up, those cleaning products should come in useful.

And did he, the “Peace Envoy”, and new broom Catholic, at the eleventh minute, of the eleventh hour, take just those sixty seconds, in a quiet place, and reflect?

On Monday evening, an American Airlines flight from Miami, Florida to Barbados was boarded by a paramilitary police unit wielding assault rifles, who demanded that passengers put their hands on their heads as they were forced off the flight.

Large sectors of the airport were effectively placed under lockdown during the operation. The gates of terminal cafes and restaurants were closed, leaving patrons locked inside by iron bars as police SWAT teams decked out in body armor and toting assault rifles swept through the terminal.

Photos and videos posted to social media documented the egregious violation of passengers’ constitutional right to be free of unwarranted searches and seizures. “There were very large machine guns, body armor, all of that,” one passenger told a local CNN affiliate. “Very, very frightening.”

Some 70 flights were delayed and nine were diverted as a result of the lockdown, which shut down two concourses for almost three hours.

Officials claimed the cause of the lockdown was a breach in procedure by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which allowed a passenger who had been flagged as having a suspicious carry-on bag to board the plane. A TSA spokesman added that “in the process of transitioning other passengers to an adjacent screening lane, standard procedures were not adhered to and the passenger was allowed to depart the checkpoint and proceed into the terminal.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation later admitted that the passenger was a dentist, and that the “suspicious” bag he had been carrying contained nothing more than fillings and other dental supplies.

TSA spokesman Mike England said that the lockdown was conducted “out of an abundance of caution” as federal officials “worked with airport operators to direct gate operations to cease while the passenger was located.”

He added that once the dentist was apprehended, “a manual inspection was conducted and law enforcement officers determined conclusively that neither the passenger nor his carry-on bag posed a threat.”

The incident took place amid the conspicuously growing incursion of militarized police, and even the military, into daily life in American cities. Even as the lockdown in Miami was occurring, flights at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) were being diverted over populated sections of Los Angeles to accommodate secret military exercises taking place near the city.

Residents of the second-largest US city were startled Saturday to see a bright light in the sky over the Pacific Ocean, which military sources later said was a test of a Trident II intercontinental ballistic missile. Such missiles are used exclusively to deliver nuclear weapons; the Trident II deploys 14 separate warheads, each 30 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, although officials said the missile used in the test was unarmed.

In June, residents in Flint, Michigan were shocked to hear military helicopter landings, live-fire rounds and explosives being used in an office building in the city’s downtown, as military and police trained in the dead of night for snatch-and-grab and targeted assassination missions traditionally associated with paramilitary death squads. “We come in doing the hit, and extracting,” one military officer put it.

In December, 2,000 Marines staged urban warfare drills in Los Angeles, including the insertion of teams of heavily armed soldiers directly into the downtown area.

Such activities are accompanied by the increasing use of any pretense to impose paramilitary lockdowns on populated areas. Following the citywide lockdown after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, in which residents were told to “shelter in place” as armored vehicles patrolled the streets and police carried out house-to-house raids, any event, whether it be a prison escape, a minor security incident or even a weather event, has become a pretext to impose virtual martial law.

In June, at least 800 police and federal forces carried out a lockdown in upstate New York following the escape of two prisoners from Clinton Correctional Facility in the town of Dannemora in the Adirondacks. Militarized police wearing combat fatigues and body armor, and bearing assault rifles, forced businesses to close and prevented residents from traveling. After weeks of searching, officers shot and killed one of the escapees and wounded the other before taking a photo displaying the bleeding escapee as though he were a hunting trophy.

These events accompany the increasingly direct use of the military to crack down on popular opposition. Within the last 15 months, militarized police, accompanied by the National Guard, were repeatedly mobilized in the St. Louis and Baltimore areas to carry out mass arrests and shoot tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators against police violence.

While many of these incidents are presented by officials and the media as merely accidents or overreactions, they are in fact part of a systematic campaign to condition the US population to accept paramilitary tactics and violations of constitutional rights. Under conditions of growing poverty and social inequality, the ruling class can offer no response to opposition to its policies outside of turning to police-state methods traditionally associated with military dictatorships.

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Originally published in May 2015

We already know that the Great War did not “break out” suddenly and unexpectedly but had been wanted for quite some time by the elite of the European countries, that it was considered inevitable, that it was carefully prepared, and finally, that it was unleashed cold-bloodedly – with as pretext an assassination in Sarajevo that was not a real casus belli. The elite wanted and prepared the war in order to resolve once and for all the huge social problem to their satisfaction, that is, to chase away the spectre of revolution and to arrest the process of democratisation.

At the same time, it was the intention to achieve objectives of an economic nature, that is, imperialist objectives, namely to conquer territories that could yield raw materials and labour cheaply, provided ample investment opportunities, and whose markets could be monopolized; and in these mostly distant lands one could also get rid of many restless and potentially dangerous elements of the lower classes. It was precisely this kind of factors which, in the spring of 1915, caused Italy’s elite to lead their country, in cold blood and with open eyes, into the war, even though the overwhelming majority of the population wanted nothing to do with the bloody conflict raging to the north of the Alps.

In 1914, the Italian elite still found itself firmly in the saddle, but it had had two major reasons for concern. First, imperialist motives played an important role. The Italian elite realized that one of the two European sets of allies, either the Entente or the Central powers, would lose the war. Their colonies, and even some of their own territory, were likely to become available, and these spoils would only be pocketed by countries that were victors, not by those who had been mere spectators. Moreover, the gentlemen at the top of Italy`s social pyramid, apparently  infected by a case of megalomania, believed rather naively that their country`s support would cause one of the two sides to win the war. If Italy stayed on the sidelines, it would surely gain nothing, but an investment in war seemed to guarantee major dividends – at least, that is what a growing number of decision-makers within the transalpine elite started to believe. It only remained to decide which set of allies would be the lucky beneficiary of Italy`s favours.

From the Central Powers, the club of which Italy had been a member before the war, one could expect territorial presents at the expense of France and of Britain, such as Nice (Nizza), originally an Italian city, the birthplace of Garibaldi no less, that had been part of France only since the 1860s. Conversely, an alliance with the French and the British opened up prospects for the “liberation” of Italian-speaking regions of Austria-Hungary, such as Trentino and Trieste – morsels, just like Nice, of what was called Italia irredenta, “unliberated Italy” – and the Dalmatian Coast, where places like Spalato (Split) were inhabited by considerable numbers of Italians. From the Entente, one could also expect to receive as gifts bits and pieces of the huge Ottoman Empire. It was only shortly before, in 1912, that Italy had grabbed a piece of hat empire, namely Libya. This time Italian thoughts focused on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, especially the area around Izmir, and even on the Anatolian interior, for example Cappadocia.

Clamouring loudly for territorial conquest via war were the Italian nationalists, who presumably longed to “liberate” fellow Italians languishing on the wrong side of supposedly artificial borders and to fulfill Italy’s destiny, namely to become a great empire like the Roman Empire of old. But behind this jingoist façade there lurked industrialists such as Alberto Pirelli of the tire factory bearing his name and the automobile tycoon Giovanni Agnelli of FIAT. They expected to derive the familiar advantages from imperialist territorial extensions, raw materials etc. It was not a coincidence that their list of desiderata included regions such as Anatolia, not an “unliberated Italy” by any stretch of the imagination – but rich in minerals. War also promised the industrialists an instant maximization of profits through the sale of uniforms, ammunition, weapons, and other martial equipment. Similarly, like their counterparts elsewhere, the aristocratic and other large landowners saw bread in territorial expansion in regions far and near. It might become possible, for example, to get rid of Sicily’s and Calabria’s surplus rural proletariat by shipping them to Anatolia to colonize that land at the expense of the “natives.”

It was for those reasons that the country’s elite, on whose behalf the government functioned as a kind of executive committee, decided to go to war. But against whom, and on whose side? Negotiations were started with both sides, and finally it was decided to opt for an alliance with the Entente, because London and Paris promised more than Berlin and Vienne were able and willing to do. On April 26, 1915, a secret treaty was concluded in London, and on May 24 Italy declared war on the Central Powers. In the case of Italy, just as in the case of Japan, the entry into the war was thus obviously “motivated by imperialist ambitions,” as Max Hastings has observed. This is not one hundred percent correct, however, because the elite also had aspirations of a social-political nature, namely the ardent desire to halt and to roll back democratisation.

The war the Italian elite wanted was not only a war of imperialist expansion, but also a war against democracy, against socialism, against revolution. The Italian elite was extremely worried about the fact that, thanks to the universal suffrage (for men only) introduced in 1912, the socialists had achieved much progress during the elections of 1913. These socialists continued to talk about revolution, and the revolution had seemed to be close to breaking out in June 1914, during the so-called “red week,” characterized by a wave of strikes and riots. And it seemed likely that very soon a major electoral victory might allow Italy’s revolutionary socialists to come to power and overthrow the established order.

Such a scenario had to be prevented at any price, and war, believed to be a potent antidote to revolution, loomed like a small price to pay. Italy’s “bloc of industrialists and landlords,” writes Michael Parenti, believed that “war [would] bring [not only] bigger markets abroad [but also] civic discipline at home”; these gentlemen, he continues, “saw war as a way of promoting compliance and obedience on the labor front and…[were convinced that] war ‘would permit the hierarchal reorganization of class relations’.”

From the viewpoint of the country’s elite, the situation in Italy resembled that in France, Germany, etc., in 1914: it seemed that one had a choice between war and revolution, and that by opting for war one could prevent revolution. It was “war or revolution,” declared the Italian interventionists, “war on the frontiers [against an exterior enemy] or war in our own country [against an interior enemy].” It is therefore only logical that the decision to go to war reflected the lack of democracy and the elite’s hostility vis-à-vis democracy.

Everything happened in the greatest secrecy, without any information being dispensed to the members of Parliament; and war was declared in spite of the opposition expressed clearly by a parliamentary majority. Public opinion was likewise overwhelmingly opposed to the war. Most Italians wanted nothing to do with war, and certainly not with a seemingly absurd conflict against countries that had only recently been allies, and on the side of countries that had been considered enemies. “Public opinion was definitely against the war,” writes the French historian Marc Ferro, but “the leaders had no intention to keep the country out of the war.”

In fact, the Italian declaration of war amounted to a kind of coup d’état carried out by the elite and orchestrated by the king of Italy in person, Victor Emmanuel III, the prime minister, Antonio Salandra, and the minister of foreign affairs, Sidney Sonnino. In other countries, for example in France and in Germany, the elite went to war in order to be able to put a stop to democratisation. In Italy, one can say that the elite had already arrested the democratisation process before war was declared – or that it arrested democratisation, that it eliminated democracy, in order to be able to go to war. But these are details of minor importance, because the consequences were essentially the same.

Essential was that in Italy too, as in all belligerent countries, parliamentary life, reflecting a (modest) measure of democracy, was suspended for the duration of the war to the advantage of an elite that continued to monopolize all other power centres of the state. And, just as in all other belligerent countries, the transalpine elite also profited from the occasion to drastically limit the (modest) rights won by the trade unions before the war. Longer work hours were introduced, the right to strike was cancelled, workers could no longer change employers without permission, etc. In order to prevent social conflicts, committees of employers and union leaders were established, but if the union leaders were allowed some input de iure, they had no de facto influence whatsoever.

However, in Italy too all sorts of unexpected problems arose. A “Truce of God” did not descend on the country, because in contrast to their comrades in Germany, France, Belgium, and elsewhere, the Italian socialists spoke out courageously against the war. Italy’s socialist party was the only socialist party to refuse to approve the war credits, and it maintained its opposition to the war from the beginning until the end. The Italian socialists, or at least the majority of them, remained loyal to the principle of international solidarity, they declared the war to be a crime, and they appealed to the proletarians not to go to war against the proletarians of other countries. In other words, they found themselves on the same wave length as Lenin. Benito Mussolini, editor of the socialist newspaper Avanti, but in reality not a socialist at all, at first also spoke out against the war.

But a few months later he broke with the socialists in order to found his own newspaper in which he zealously proceeded to make pro-war and jingoist propaganda. He also founded a nationalist, extreme right-wing party of his own, the “Fasci of Revolutionary Action” (Fasci d’Azione Rivoluzionario), which would receive financial support from armaments firms and other corporations; its members, known as fascisti, “fascists,” would become mortal enemies of socialists, pacifists, and such. (The phenomenon of fascism is clearly not to be explained as a reaction to the Russian Revolution, as was done by Ernst Nolte and other historians, but originated earlier, namely in the context of the Great World War.)

One of the major reasons why the proletarians of France, Britain, Germany, etc. had gone to war so willingly in 1914, was that the socialist leaders had encouraged them to do so. In 1915, the Italian proletarians did not go to war meekly, but reluctantly and grudgingly, not only but certainly also on account of the fact that their socialist leaders condemned the war. On the other hand, Italy’s peasants and workers, who would have to provide the bulk of the cannon fodder, did not need socialist leaders to understand that they had nothing to gain, but everything to lose, from this war. Italy was only born as a modern nation state in the 1860s, and countless citizens did not yet identify fully with this state. Between 1860 and 1914, it still proved necessary for the state to “make Italians” (fare Italiani), as they used to say sarcastically at the time, in the entire country. The people’s loyalty went out first and foremost to their home, village, and region, their  paese (“village” or “land”), and the people there were their paesani, their “compatriots.”

With the inhabitants of Lombardy, for example, the Sicilians had little or nothing in common. The  majority of Italians were not (yet) Italians, they cared little where exactly the borders of their country were situated somewhere in the damp and foggy regions to the north, and they did not feel the slightest desire to leave their sunny paese in order to fight and die for the glory of the so-called fatherland. And they knew what was happening on the front in France and elsewhere and therefore did not believe what their “superiors” tried to tell them, namely that this war would be short, glorious, and triumphant. Among the recruits, consequently, no enthusiasm whatsoever was to be noticed. An Italo-American volunteer, who had just disembarked in Italy and traveled by train to the front, eagerly looking forward to martial adventure, was called a fool and a donkey by soldiers who accompanied  him; it was the fault of imbeciles like him, he was told, that the war might last a long time.

From the very start, the morale of the Italian soldiers was particularly low. The officers sought to remedy the situation by imposing an incredibly harsh, even draconian discipline. Severe punishment was meted out, even for the slightest peccadillo, and in the course of the war six percent of the men would be punished for some transgression. But that did not resolve the problem. Desertion wa a common phenomenon, even though it carried the death penalty. Officially, no less than 4,028 death sentences would be pronounced, a large part in absentia, as the perpetrators had managed to flee. In total, 750 Italian soldiers would be executed during the war: 66 in 1915, 167 in 1916, and 359, that is, more than half, in the catastrophic year 1917; but it is acknowledged that numerous executions also took place without the benefit of a formal trial. In addition, more than 15,000 men were condemned to prison sentences on account of violations of military discipline. Some of the convicted were still in jail in 1945, at the end of the Second World War! In order to discourage their soldiers from surrendering too easily, Italy’s political and military authorities made use of a particularly barbarous stratagem. They announced that they would not contribute financially, via the international Red Cross, to the care of their prisoners of war, as other countries did. To be taken prisoner, voluntarily or not, was considered to be a “sin against the fatherland.” The result was that tens of thousands of Italian POWs would die of starvation and cold in camps in Austria.

Among the Italians too, a wide gulf separated the ordinary soldiers from their officers. The Italian officers were privileged with respect to accommodation and food. And the Italian generals likewise wasted thousands of lives in attacks against strong enemy positions. In October 1915, the aforementioned Italo-American volunteer witnessed on the front how officers emerged from their solid bunker after a breakfast including hot chocolate, toast, and even wine. They went to the observation post to watch an attack from a safe distance and remained unperturbed as wave after wave of their men were mowed down by Austrian-Hungarian machine guns. The volunteer was sickened by the indifference displayed by the officers.

In the spring of 1915 the Italian elite hoped what the French and British elites had hoped in the summer of 1914, namely, that the war would be short and victorious. And, again like their French and British colleagues on the western front, the Italian generals expected that success would be yielded by an offensive strategy. However, on the front in Italy, just as on the western front, the defenders, in this case the troops of the Danube Monarchy, enjoyed all the advantages, including the high ground, barriers of barbed wire, and weapons such as machine guns and artillery, against which the attackers proved to be extremely vulnerable. However, the Italian commander in chief, field-marshal Luigi Cadorna, scion of a prestigious aristocratic family from Piedmont, believed that, after the troubles experienced in 1914, the Austrian-Hungarian soldiers would be weak and demoralised.

And so, starting in June 1915, he ordered attack after attack against enemy positions along the River Isonzo. He dreamed of a quick breakthrough, followed by the capture of Trieste and a march towards Vienna. But the Italian attackers suffered terrible losses and did not advance an inch. By the end of 1915 they were still as far away from Vienna as in the spring. Cadorna did not seem to care about his army’s huge losses. It is therefore not surprising that the Italian soldiers despised and hated him profoundly. “Our real enemy was not the Austrian, but Cadorna,” an Italian war veteran would later tell his son. (Cadorna was certainly not the only member of the Italian elite who, exactly like Haig in Britain, viewed things through Malthusian glasses and therefore found it advantageous that the plebeian “masses” were culled by the means of war; the journalist and poet Giovanni Papini, for example, who would later associate himself with Mussolini, declared that “there were too many people in this world, the pot of the [human] masses is threatening to boil over, and the morons multiply too fast.” He drew the conclusion “there are simply too many among us who are absolutely useless and redundant.”)

The fighting along the Isonzo Front, especially in the vicinity of the small town of Gorizia, are conjured up in the song O Gorizia tu sei maledetta (“O Gorizia, you cursed town”). This song is still popular in Italy, and is considered a musical symbol of the country’s anti-militarist tradition. It seems that it was already very popular among the Italian infantrymen of the Great War itself, but singing it then could cause a man to be accused of defeatism and executed. This is easy enough to understand, because the lyrics constitute an accusing finger pointed not only at generals such as Cadorna, who sent their men to a certain death, but also at the other “gentlemen officers” (signori ufficiali) who are denounced as “cowards,” “murderers,” and “traitors.” Here a few verses of this powerful song:

La mattina del cinque di agosto                On August fifth, in the morning
si muovevano le truppe italiane                The Italian soldiers set off
per Gorizia, le terre lontane                       For Gorizia, a town far away
e dolente ognun si partì.                             And they were all sad to leave.

Sotto l’acqua che cadeva a rovescio         While the rain came pouring down
grandinavano le palle nemiche                 They faced a hail of enemy bullets
su quei monti, colline e gran valli             In those mountains, hills, and valleys
si moriva dicendo così:                               They died with these words on their lips:

O Gorizia, tu sei maledetta                         O Gorizia, town cursed by
per ogni cuore che sente coscienza;          Everyone with a heart and a conscience;
dolorosa ci fu la partenza                            Leaving was painful enough
e il ritorno per molti non fu.                       And most of them never returned.

O vigliacchi, che voi ve ne state                  You cowards, who stayed safely
con le mogli sui letti di lana,                       In bed with your wives,
schernitori di noi carne umana,                 Laughing at us, meat for the slaughter,
questa guerra ci insegna a punir.               For this war you have to be punished.

Voi chiamate il campo d’onore                    You call ‘field of honor’
questa terra di là dai confini,                       That land over there on the border,
qui si muore gridando: assassini,               Those who die cry out : murderers,
maledetti sarete un dì.                                  The day of reckoning will come.

Traditori, signori ufficiali                            Gentlemen officers, you are traitors,
voi the guerra l’avete voluta                        You have wanted this war
scannatori di carne venduta                       You are butchers selling human meat
e rovina della gioventù.                               You are the ruin of Italy’s youth.

This is an excerpt from Jacques Pauwels forthcoming book: The Great Class War 1914-1918, to be published by James Lorimer in Toronto later in  2015.

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Selected Articles: “The War Drums are Beating”

November 11th, 2015 by Global Research News

Carter,AshtonU.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter Implies Russia and China Are “Enemies” of America. What Next?

By Eric Zuesse, November 11 2015

On Saturday November 7th, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter delivered a speech saying, “We are in the middle of a strategic transition to respond to the security challenges that will define our future. … We’re responding to Russia, one source of today’s turbulence, and China’s rise, which is driving a transition in the Asia-Pacific.”

veterans for peaceThe Glorification of War: “Veterans Day” Is Not for Veterans

By David Swanson, November 11 2015

When the U.S. changed Armistice Day into Veterans Day, the holiday morphed from a day to encourage the end of war into a day to glorify war participation.

A B61-12 nuclear weapon ©the Center for Investigative ReportingThe War Drums are Beating: Two Trident Missiles Launched over Los Angeles. Act of Provocation Directed against Russia and China?

By Joachim Hagopian, November 11 2015

Without warning just after sunset last Saturday night the US Navy purposely picked a time to launch an unarmed Trident II missile from the submarine the USS Kentucky from waters off the Southern California coast so hundreds of thousands of witnesses would be sure to observe the brightly lit up sky and headlines would certainly spread around the world.

IRAQI GIRL WALKS THROUGH RUBBLE OF DESTROYED BUILDING IN BAGHDADTen years on, Iraq Lies in Ruins as New Evidence confirms U.S. used Death Squads to Manufacture ‘Civil War’

By Joe Quinn, November 11 2015

As if to mock those who are against this illegal invasion and the lies and deceit that have been used to justify it, Ari Fleishcer today stated that, even if Saddam went into exile now, the US would still invade. It’s not about WMD, it’s about domination and the destructive principle.

syrian rebels ciaAmerica’s War Economy: Senate Defense Bill Halts Guantanamo Closure, Grants Military Aid to Kiev and Syrian Rebels

By RT, November 11 2015

The Senate has passed a defense spending bill that bans moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States. This throws a wrench in President Obama’s 2008 campaign promise of closing the camp.

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The Senate has passed a defense spending bill that bans moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States. This throws a wrench in President Obama’s 2008 campaign promise of closing the camp.

The $607-billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the Senate with a veto-proof 91-3, with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) notably casting a “no” vote.

The same defense funding package passed in a similarly overwhelming manner in the House last week, with a vote of 370-58. The legislation will now be sent to President Obama’s desk for signature.

The president had vetoed the original version of the NDAA in October largely due to concerns about an extra $38 billion in war funding.

Congress has also repeatedly thwarted Obama’s effort to fulfill a promise from his first presidential campaign to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which is located in US-occupied territory in Cuba.

“Why in the world you would bring these enemy combatants to domestic soil is mind-boggling. This is absolutely nothing short of gambling national security to keep a campaign promise?” Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) said on Monday.

However, White House officials have hinted that the president may use executive action to close the prison.

“I’m not aware of any ongoing effort to devise a strategy using only the president’s executive authority to accomplish this goal,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday. “But I certainly wouldn’t, as I mentioned last week, take that option off the table.”

Issues that both parties agreed on include the efficient maintenance and upgrade of the Pentagon’s capabilities in the wake of perceived aggression around the world.

“We must champion the cause of defense reform, rigorously root out pentagon waste, and invest to maintain our military technological advantage, and that is what this bill is about,” Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) said on Tuesday.

Among other things, the bill authorizes $300 million in lethal military aid to the US-backed government in Ukraine and extends a ban on torture to the CIA. It also grants the president’s request for $715 million to help fight Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq.

The passage of the budget bill will avert a disastrous default by the United States and puts the next round of struggle over spending and debt until after next year’s presidential and congressional elections.

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Tony Blair’s Criminality is Plain for all to See

November 11th, 2015 by Felicity Arbuthnot

Recent revelations about Blair’s war plot serve to bolster an already strong case, writes Felicity Arbuthnot

Given the ongoing revelations on the extent of Tony Blair’s duplicitous collusion in the illegal bombing and invasion of Iraq, it seems the “bunker busters” and cruise missiles are finally coming home with a bang.

In what has been dubbed “an apology,” Blair recently took to CNN in an interview with his pal Fareed Zakaria to (sort of) explain himself.

It was no apology but a weasel-worded damage-limitation exercise as more and more revelations of his disregard for law and “to hell with public opinion” attitude surface.

The fault was that “the intelligence we received was wrong,” there were “mistakes in planning” and a failure to understand “what would happen once you removed the regime,” said Blair.

Statements entirely untrue. It is now known he plotted with George W Bush in April 2002, a year before the onslaught, to invade, come what may.

He also found it “hard to apologise for removing Saddam.”

Blair brushed off the mention of a war crimes trial and made it clear that he would have trashed Syria as he did Iraq, had he the chance. Despite being a barrister by training, legality is clearly inconsequential to Blair.

Now no less than Britain’s former director of public prosecutions (2003-8) Sir Ken Macdonald has weighed in against Blair. That he held the post for five years during the Blair regime — Blair resigned in 2007 — makes his onslaught interesting. Ironically Macdonald has his legal practice at London’s Matrix Chambers, which he founded with Blair’s barrister wife Cherie, who continues to practice from there.

In a scathing attack in the Times, Sir Ken stated: “The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions.”

Of Blair’s CNN interview, he witheringly said: “Playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage.

“It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner, George Bush, and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible.”

Macdonald cuttingly cited Blair’s “sycophancy towards power,” being unable to resist the “glamour” he attracted in Washington.

“In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so.” Ouch.

“Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that, ‘hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right.’

“But this is a narcissist’s defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgement: it is certainly no answer to death.” No wonder Sir Ken was the top prosecutor in England and Wales.

His broadside coincides with a further “bombshell revelation” in the Mail on Sunday recently that “on the eve of war” Downing Street “descended into panic” after being told by attorney general Lord Gold

smith that “the conflict could be challenged under international law.”

There was “pandemonium.” Blair was “horrified” and the limited number of ministers and officials who had a copy of the written opinion “were told ‘burn it, destroy it’,” alleges the Mail.

The “burning” hysteria centred on Lord Goldsmith’s 13-page legal opinion of March 7 2003, just two weeks before the attack on Iraq.

The “pandemonium” occurred as, with “the date the war was supposed to start already in the diary,” Goldsmith was still “saying it could be challenged under international law.”

It is not known who ordered the briefing destroyed, but the Mail cites its source as a senior figure in Blair’s government.

No 10 then “got to work on” Lord Goldsmith. Ten days later his lordship produced advice stating the war was legal. It started three days later, leading eminent international law professor Philippe Sands QC to comment: “We went to war on a sheet of A4.”

A Blair spokesman dismissed the alleged order to destroy Lord Goldsmith’s original advice as “nonsense”, claiming that it was “quite absurd to think that anyone could destroy such a document.”

With what is now known about the lies, dodging and diving related to all to do with Iraq under Blair, the realist would surely respond: “Oh no it wouldn’t.”

The US of course stole and destroyed or redacted most of the around 12,000 pages of Iraq’s accounting for its near non-existent weapons, delivered to the UN on December 7 2002, and Blair seemingly faithfully followed his master.

Given the enormous lies and subterfuge on both sides of the Atlantic at the time, it is worth remembering Bush gave an address to students that same December, on the eve of a Nato summit, in which he compared the challenge posed by Saddam with the nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938.

“We face … perils we’ve never seen before. They’re just as dangerous as those perils that your fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers faced.”

On November 1 this year, in an interview on BBC1, Blair was asked: “If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?”

He replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove [Saddam].

“I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.”

Thus he would, seemingly, have concocted a different set of lies to justify regime change in a sovereign state.

Perhaps he had forgotten the last line of Lord Goldsmith’s original legal advice: “Regime change cannot be the objective of military action.”

So is Anthony Charles Lynton Blair finally headed for handcuffs and a trial at The Hague?

Ian Williams, senior analyst with US think tank Foreign Policy in Focus, believes that “it’s increasingly serious enough to be worrying to him. And I think Tony Blair is rapidly joining Henry Kissinger and Chilean dictator [Augusto Pinochet] and other people around the world.

“Now, he’s got to consult international lawyers as well as travel agents, before he travels anywhere, because there’s … maybe, a prima facie case for his prosecution either in British courts or foreign courts under universal jurisdiction or with the International Criminal Court, because there is clear evidence now that he is somebody who waged an illegal war of aggression, violating the United Nations charter and was responsible for all of those deaths.”

Justice, inadequate as it might be given the enormity of the crime, may be finally edging closer for the people of Iraq as international law slowly catches up to Tony Blair.

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Japan’s Abe Shinzo government is commonly held to be in thrall to nuclear power, not least because it came into office in December 2012 committed to nuclear restarts and other policies promoted by the nuclear village. Yet clearly much has changed over the past three years. The Abe government’s repositioning on energy is evident in an accelerating shift away from support for the nuclear village, in spite of a few restarts, and towards an increasingly impressive commitment to energy efficiency and renewable energy. The evidence is striking: On top of proposing massive increases in its fiscal 2016 expenditures on energy efficiency and renewables, which we reviewed in October,1 the cabinet is about to undertake an administrative review targeting billions of yen in controversial nuclear-related expenditures.

Specifically, from November 11 to 13, 2015 Japan will undergo an administrative review of YEN 13.6 trillion worth of expenditure requests in the over YEN 102 trillion proposed budget for fiscal 2016. This “Fall Review” (Aki no rebyuu) will be open to the public and broadcast online, as was the case with previous administrative review processes.2 But among the many unusual aspects of this year’s initiative is that the review will be overseen by the resolutely antinuclear Liberal Democratic Party cabinet minister (since October 7, 2015) Kono Taro.

Kono’s team of outside advisors will also include such explicitly antinuclear experts as the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation’s (JREF) Director Ohbayashi Mika3 and JREF Senior Research Fellow, Fujitsu Research Institute Research Fellow and Tsuru University Professor Takahashi Hiroshi.4 Kono and his colleagues in the LDP have been working hard in advance of the review to draw attention to its focus on nuclear-related expenditures, resulting in significant and steadily increasing press coverage. In addition, Kono has taken the apparently unprecedented step of producing a 1-hour video, released on November 9, to explain the process and its focus on nuclear-related expenditures. He prefaces his detailed arguments about the content of the review with (at the 5:50 mark) an unambiguous declaration that he not only cleared the substance of the review with Prime Minister Abe, but also received the latter’s encouragement.5

Kono Taro explains his review Ohbayashi Mika Takahashi Hiroshi

The Administrative Review

These “Fall Review” procedures were initiated by the Democratic Party of Japan Government, in 2010. They also matter, as is evident from the fact that the Fall Review of 2014 (for the FY 2015 budget) resulted in over YEN 360 billion in cuts and repayments to public funds.6 The previous year had seen even deeper cuts, amounting to roughly YEN 500 billion in expenditure reductions.7

Of the Japanese central government’s over 5000 spending programs, 55 have been chosen for this year’s review. While that number may seem small, as noted earlier these programs total over YEN 13.6 trillion and thus represent over 10% of the proposed YEN 102 trillion fiscal appropriations for the 2016 budget. Given that Japan’s public debt load of 226% of GDP is unprecedented in the history of the OECD,8 the pressure for cuts is likely to be stronger than in previous years. Particularly significant is the fact that the items slated for review are heavily oriented towards energy. Indeed, fully 24 of the 55 items are energy- and environment-related, and the vast majority of those are devoted to nuclear facilities as well as to measures related to achieving the recycling of nuclear waste in breeder reactors.9

The Nuclear Fuel Carrier Kaieimaru

One target that is ripe for scrutiny is the Kaieimaru, a nuclear fuel ship built in 2006 and used four times to transport a total of 16 tonnes of spent fuel to the Tokai Mura facility10 in Ibaragi Prefecture. Since the vessel has not been used to transport fuel since its most recent trip in 2009, Kono has included it in the review. Between 2010 and 2014, the cost of its upkeep totalled just under YEN 5.8 billion, and its projected costs to 2031 would see an additional YEN 18.1 billion spent on it. The ship has been featured in recent television broadcasts, including a TBS broadcast on November 9, and has featured in the Japanese Wall Street Journal,11 the Tokyo Shimbun,12 and other national and local press. Kono has skillfully chosen a striking symbol of extravagance for review.

An additional nuclear-related facility targeted by Kono’s review is the “Recycle Equipment Test Facility (RETF).” This is yet another costly and risky element of Japan’s very controversial accumulation of infrastructures and programs to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The RETF’s construction began in January 1995, and has received tens of billions of yen worth of investment even though it has not been used. Precisely 20 years ago, Shaun Burnie, Senior nuclear campaigner with Greenpeace Germany, warned that the true importance of the RETF, and the great risk that it poses: “is that it and the facilities that will follow will give Japan access to plutonium that is even purer than weapons-grade. The reason for this is that the plutonium produced in the uranium blanket of FBRs (ed. “fast breeder reactors”) and reprocessed by the operators is what is called supergrade. With a large-scale deployment of FBRs in Japan, and the reprocessing facilities to support the reactors, large quantities of weapons grade material will be available for non-peaceful use.”13

Japan’s “Recycle Equipment Test Facility

In their 2010 book In Defence of Japan: From the Market to the Military and Space Policy, Saadia M. Pekkanen (Professor, University of Washington) and Paul Kallender-Umezu (PhD Candidate, Keio University) cite Burnie, showing that his concern remains quite relevant. Indeed, they add to the warning by emphasizing that “the point about supergrade plutonium is that very little is required to produce nuclear warheads (possibly 800 to 900 grams); it is thus especially suitable for miniaturized nuclear warheads like MRIV-type ICBMs.14

The above examples are especially noteworthy, but are only two of the nuclear–related items up for consideration in this administrative review. Others include subsidies for securing uranium from overseas projects, storing the uranium, locating and constructing nuclear facilities, as well as funds for PR supporting nuclear power in the Japanese public debate.15

What is almost as impressive as the focus on nuclear is the complete absence of any targeting of expenditure programs for efficiency and renewables. Japan’s FY 2016 budget allocations for these items show dramatic increases over the current fiscal year. So one would hardly be surprised to see at least a couple of renewable-related programs put on the table, if only to placate the presumably outraged nuclear interests. But the only clearly non-nuclear energy programs included in the review relate to carbon-capture and storage (CCS). And if putting CCS on the block indicates that Japan is backing away from coal, that is another reason for applause.

Let us conclude with a note on Kono Tarohimself. He is a major figure in the Liberal Democratic Party, first elected in 1996. Like many LDP members, he comes from a family of politicians. But unlike most LDP politicians, he is resolutely antinuclear and is a strong internationalist. His website comes with Korean and Chinese versions as well as an English version.

In the wake of March 11, 2011 (3-11) natural and nuclear disasters, centred on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Kono became well-known among international observers as a strong opponent of the domestic nuclear village and its plans to increase Japan’s dependence on nuclear to over 50% of power by 2030 as well as recycle waste in breeder reactors.

In addition to numerous public appearances, books, and interviews in which he was critical of the nuclear village and its dominance of the Japanese power industry, he maintained a blog with regular contributions critical of the Fukushima incident and its aftermath. He also criticized the Abe government’s efforts to restart nuclear reactors.

Kono Taro enters Abe Cabinet, Oct 7, 2015

But when Abe undertook his October 7, 2015 cabinet revision, Kono surprised many by entering the cabinet as Minister in charge of Administrative Reform as well as Civil Service Reform, Consumer Affairs and Food Safety, Regulatory Reform and Disaster Management (the latter three portfolios being Minister of State positions).16

Upon entering the cabinet, Kono’s blog posts became inaccessible. Not a few observers interpreted Kono’s simultaneous entry into the cabinet and suspension of his heavily antinuclear blog as an indication that he had been effectively silenced as an exponent of abandoning nuclear and ending Japan’s dangerous and expensive effort to create a plutonium-based nuclear economy.

However, this interpretation ignored Kono’s argument that he could be more effective in achieving his objectives from within the cabinet than from without.

The proof of the pudding is, as they say, in the eating. It would appear that Kono is setting up a feast this week. And it certainly merits attention from those interested in Japan’s fiscal sustainability, its energy policy on the eve of climate talks in Paris, its plutonium problem, and the ongoing transformation of the LDP.

Andrew DeWit is Professor in Rikkyo University’s School of Policy Studies and an editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal. His recent publications include “Climate Change and the Military Role in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response,” in Paul Bacon and Christopher Hobson (eds) Human Security and Japan’s Triple Disaster (Routledge, 2014), “Japan’s renewable power prospects,” in Jeff Kingston (ed) Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan (Routledge 2013), and (with Kaneko Masaru and Iida Tetsunari) “Fukushima and the Political Economy of Power Policy in Japan” in Jeff Kingston (ed) Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan’s 3/11 (Routledge, 2012). He is lead researcher for a five-year (2010-2015) Japanese-Government funded project on the political economy of the Feed-in Tariff.

Notes

1 On the budget increases and other green measures, see Andrew DeWit, “Japan’s Bid to Become a World Leader in Renewable Energy”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 39, No. 2, October 5, 2015.

2 An introduction (in Japanese) to this and previous years’ administrative review processes is available at the Japanese Cabinet Secretariat’s website.

3 Ohbayashi’s JREF profile is here.

4 On the participation of Ohbayashi and Takahashi, see (in Japanese) “List of 30 Participants in Administrative Review Released,” Nikkei Shimbun, November 11, 2015.

5 The broadcasts (in Japanese) are available at: (part 1), (part 2)

6 See (in Japanese) “Reflection of the Fall Review in the FY 2015 Budget (Outline),” MOF Budget Bureau, January, 2015.

7 Kansai University Professor (Public Finance) Uemura Toshiyuki explains the 2013 process and its outcome in detail (in Japanese) in “Towards a half-trillion yen in cuts to the 2014 budget,” January 30, 2014.

8 See p. 4 OECD Economic Surveys, Japan, April 2015. OECD.

9 On this, see (in Japanese) “Power Facility Location Disbursements and others are the focus of Administrative Review,” Denki Shimbun, November 9, 2015.

10 On the facility, see Japan Atomic Energy Agency, “Nuclear Fuel Cycle Engineering Laboratories,” (no date).

11 See (in Japanese) “Nuclear-related budgets slated for review: Monju, Nuclear Fuel Ship,” October 30, 2015.

12 See (in Japanese) “Maintenance for Spent-Fuel Ship Costs YEN 5.9 Billion,” Tokyo Shimbun, October 29, 2015.

13 See p. 38 in Shaun Burnie, “50 Years after Nagasaki: Japan as Plutonium Superpower,” in (ed by Douglas Holdstock and Frank Barnaby) Hiroshima and Nagasaki: retrospect and prospect. Frank Cass: London, 1995.

14 See their footnote 27 on p. 357. Saadia M. Pekkanen and Paul Kallender-Umezu, In Defence of Japan: From the Market to the Military and Space Policy. Stanford University Press: 2010.

15 The full list of items is available [in Japanese] in the “Projects for Consideration in the Annual Fall Public Review,” Cabinet Office, Japan, October 30, 2015.

16 See the list of posts at the English-language site “Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet”.

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