Global Research

A chilling remark from a House of Lords debate just caught my eye.

Column GC355 in Hansard, the verbatim report of proceedings of the UK parliament, dated 4 November 2015, said:

Lord Mendelsohn: We welcome the appointment of the former British ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, who will have a key role in cyber security inside the Cabinet Office – a very useful and important position.

Sure enough, the UK government’s website confirms that Gould is now director of cyber security and information assurance at the Cabinet Office. “He and his team are focused on keeping Britain safe from cyber attack, through delivering the UK’s Cyber Security Strategy.”

They must think we have very short memories. As Britain’s first Jewish ambassador to Israel, Gould described himself as a “passionate” Zionist and while in Tel Aviv he was instrumental in setting up the UK-Israel Tech Hub. In the words of MATIMOP (the Israeli Industry Centre for Research and Development), the hub was established

to promote partnerships in technology and innovation between Israel and the UK, and is the first initiative of its kind for the British government and for an embassy in Israel. The hub’s creation followed an agreement between prime ministers David Cameron and Binyamin Netanyahu to build a UK-Israel partnership in technology.

Three years ago Cameron appointed venture capitalist Saul Klein as the UK Tech Envoy to Israel with the task of promoting the partnership, leading UK technology missions to Israel, bringing Israeli start-ups to Britain, and hosting technology events in both countries.

MATIMOP quotes Britain’s National Health Service as an example of successful UK-Israel technology collaboration. The NHS

has now formed strong collaborations with Israeli life sciences companies conducting clinical trials in the UK. The cooperation was made as part of the burgeoning partnership between Israel and Britain’s life sciences industries initiated by the UK-Israel Tech Hub.

Driven by the Israel lobby

Four years ago Craig Murray, a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, argued that British policy was being driven in an underhanded fashion by the Israel lobby. He linked Gould with the Fox-Werritty scandal and raised questionsabout meetings between disgraced former Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Fox’s friend/adviser, Adam Werritty (who was backed financially by Israel lobbyists but had no security clearance and therefore no authorised role) and Gould.

Murray wrote to Gould asking when he first met Werritty, how many times he had met him, and how many communications of every kind had passed between them. He was told these questions would be answered in Cabinet Secretary O’Donnell’s investigation. “But Gus O’Donnell’s report answered none of these questions,” wrote Murray. “It only mentioned two meetings at which Fox, Gould and Werritty were all three present…”

This prompted Murray to dig further. “There were at least six Fox-Werritty-Gould meetings, not the two given by O’Donnell… Matthew Gould was the only British Ambassador who Fox and Werrity met together. They met him six times. Why?”

Murray, with many useful sources from his days as an ambassador, claimed to have serious evidence connecting Gould with a secret plan to attack Iran, but the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Secretary blocked questions. Murray published his story, “Matthew Gould and the plot to attack Iran”, here.

In it he pointed out that

Matthew Gould does not see his race or religion as irrelevant. He has chosen to give numerous interviews to both British and Israeli media on the subject of being a jewish ambassador, and has been at pains to be photographed by the Israeli media participating in Jewish religious festivals. Israeli newspaper Haaretz described him as “Not just an ambassador who is Jewish, but a Jewish ambassador”. That rather peculiar phrase appears directly to indicate that the potential conflict of interest for a British ambassador in Israel has indeed arisen.

He went on to say that Gould stood suspected of long term participation with Fox and Werritty “in a scheme to forward war with Iran, in cooperation with Israel”. The stonewalling by O’Donnell and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office led Murray to conclude that “something very important is being hidden right at the heart of government”.

Labour Member of Parliament Paul Flynn remarked that no previous ambassadors to Israel had been Jewish so as to avoid conflict of interest and accusations of going native. He immediately came under intense flak. Flynn too asked about meetings between Werritty and Gould, as some reports suggested that Gould, Werritty and Fox discussed a potential military strike on Iran with Mossad. “I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories,” said Flynn, “but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran.”

Fox had earlier made the idiotic claim: “Israel’s enemies are our enemies” and “in the battle for the values that we stand for… Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together”. The Jewish Chronicle hailed him as “a champion of Israel within the government”. Furthermore, Fox continually rattled the sabre against Iran which, of course, was no threat to Britain but is regarded by Israel as a bitter enemy. Iraq too was Israel’s enemy, not ours. Yet Fox, according to the theyworkforyou.com, voted “very strongly” for the Iraq war. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Afghanistan.

Gatekeepers or fifth columnists?

Given that Fox so eagerly waved the flag of a foreign military power and was a man with dangerous beliefs and demonstrably weak judgement, how could those who appointed him not see that he was unemployable as a minister of the British Crown – unless they were similarly tainted?

When the Werritty relationship came to light Fox jumped before being flung from the battlements. But the good people of North Somerset, in their wisdom, re-elected him at the general election last May. He’s already on the road to political rehabilitation among the Conservative high command.

Gould’s new job as head of the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (OCSIA) involves giving strategic direction to cyber security and information assurance for the UK. This includes  internet crime, working with private sector partners on exchanging information, and engaging with international partners in improving the security of cyber space and information security. Does it seem right for such a person to be in charge of crucial security matters at the heart of our government? What was in fellow Zionist David Cameron’s mind when he appointed him?

Well, here’s a possible clue. In March of this year Francis Maude, the previous Cabinet Office minister responsible for cyber security, announced three UK-Israel academic collaboration ventures with cyber research funding, the partnerships being University of Bristol/Bar Ilan University, University College London/Bar Ilan University and University of Kent/University of Haifa. They’ll be working together on six specific areas of research:

• identity management
• governance: regulating cyber security
• privacy assurance and perceptions
• mobile and cloud security
• human aspects of security or usable security
• cryptography.

This builds on existing UK-Israel cooperation. Both parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding on digital cooperation in March 2014.

Still sitting comfortably? Only this week the Cameron government was lecturing us on threats to national security and announcing plans to trawl through our personal emails and web browsers in order to “keep us safe”. The question is, who trawls Gould’s private emails?

Doctors Without Borders released an internal review of what happened before, during, and after its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was bombed by U.S. military forces on October 3.

The review highlights how the U.S. violated the neutrality of the facility, which the U.S. had agreed to respect. It also demonstrates there were no “armed combatants” in the hospital and no fighting in the “direct vicinity” at the time of the airstrikes. It also significantly calls into question statements by anonymous officials or military operatives, which have been made to the press.

The aid group followed a “no weapons” policy, which had been implemented at the hospital, and staff remained in full control of the medical facility, according to the review. GPS coordinates were also provided to Kabul and New York, and the U.S. Defense Department and Afghan Ministry of Interior, as well as the U.S. Army in Kabul, were made aware of the location of the hospital.

Afghan MSF medical personnel treat civilians injured following an offensive against Taliban militants by Afghan and coalition forces at the MSF hospital in Kunduz. (Photo: MSF)

Dr. Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors Without Borders International or MSF International, said even though the internal review [PDF] was an ongoing process, the organization had made the decision to share details to “counter speculation” and to be “transparent.”

“What we know is that we were running a hospital treating patients, including wounded combatants from both sides—this was not a ‘Taliban base,’” Liu declared. “The question remains as to whether our hospital lost its protected status in the eyes of the military forces engaged in this attack—and if so, why. The answer does not lie within the MSF hospital. Those responsible for requesting, ordering and approving the airstrikes hold these answers.”

How the carnage unfolded

U.S. airstrikes started around 2 am. At the time, staff were treating 105 patients and attempting to catch up on a “backlog of pending surgeries” because the night had been relatively quiet.

A “series of multiple, precise, and sustained airstrikes targeted the main hospital building, leaving the rest of the buildings in the MSF compound comparatively untouched,” which happens to correlate with the exact GPS coordinates that were provided to “parties to the conflict.”

An aerial view of the damage on the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, after the bombing by U.S.-backed forces. (Médecins Sans Frontières)

Two of the three “operating theaters were in use,” and “three international and twenty-three national MSF staff were caring for patients or performing surgeries in this same main building. There were eight patients in the ICU and six patients in the area of the operating theaters.”

MSF staff recall that the first room to be hit was the ICU [intensive care unit], where MSF staff were caring for a number of immobile patients, some of whom were on ventilators. Two children were in the ICU. MSF staff were attending to these critical patients in the ICU at the time of the attack and were directly killed in the first airstrikes or in the fire that subsequently engulfed the building. Immobile patients in the ICU burned in their beds.

The review further recounts, “After hitting the ICU, the airstrikes then continued from the east to west end of the main hospital building. The ICU, archive, laboratory, ER, x-ray, outpatient department, mental health and physiotherapy departments as well as the operating theaters were all destroyed in this wave after wave of strikes.”

After the first strike, MSF medical teams working in the operating theaters ran out of the OT [occupational therapy room] and sought shelter in the sterilization room. The two patients on the operating table in the OTs
were killed in the airstrikes.

One MSF nurse showed up to the administrative building “covered from head to toe in debris and blood with his left arm hanging from a small piece of tissue after having suffered a traumatic amputation in the blast.” Staff immediately attempted to treat the nurse, who was bleeding from his left eye and oropharynx (the part of the throat behind the mouth).

Staff heard a propeller plane that sounded like an AC-130, the aircraft which was reported to have circled the MSF hospital.

Many of those interviewed describe massive explosions, sufficient to shake the ground. These bigger explosions were most frequently described as coming in concentrated volleys. MSF staff also described shooting coming from the plane.

The review recounts how staff were gunned down by the aircraft, as they tried to flee the main hospital building.

A map of Kunduz Trauma Center, the MSF hospital in Afghanistan destroyed by U.S. air strikes in October. (Doctors Without Borders)

“Some accounts mention shooting that appears to follow the movement of people on the run,” according to the review. “MSF doctors and other medical staff were shot while running to reach safety in a different part of the compound. One MSF staff member described a patient in a wheelchair attempting to escape from the inpatient department when he was killed by shrapnel from a blast. An MSF doctor suffered a traumatic amputation to the leg in one of the blasts. He was later operated on by the MSF team on a make-shift operating table on an office desk where he died.”

Other MSF staff describe seeing people running while on fire and then falling unconscious on the ground. One MSF staff was decapitated by shrapnel in the airstrikes.

The aftermath of the airstrikes

The main hospital building was the “principal target of the attack,” however, other parts of the compound were hit, “including in the southern area of the hospital compound where two unarmed MSF guards were found dead as a result of shrapnel wounds.”

Fires burn in part of the hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the Afghan city of Kunduz after it was hit by an air strike.

MSF determined three or four of the patients were “wounded government combatants” while around twenty patients were “wounded Taliban.” There were about 140 MSF national staff and nine MSF international staff in the hospital, and one International Committee of the Red Cross delegate was there as well.

Immediately after the airstrikes halted, wounded people arrived “in shock, vomiting, and screaming.” Numerous MSF staff remained at the compound from 3 am to 4 am while other staff searched for missing colleagues. The medical staff from the ICU, OTs, and ERs were apparently nowhere to be found.

Life-saving operations on the wounded began. MSF staff collected “what medical material they could and converted one of the administrative rooms into a make-shift emergency room, performing surgery on an office desk and a kitchen table. The medical team quickly tried to organize the patients and to triage the critical from the non-critical patients.” Attempts were made to stop severe bleeding and treat shock, but at least two MSF staff died during operations.

Afghan surgeons work inside a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital after an air strike in the city of Kunduz, Afghanistan, on Saturday. Photo: Medecins Sans Frontieres

Ambulances from the Ministry of Public Health arrived to pick up the wounded. At this time, some Afghan Special Forces entered the facility. There were two rounds of patients transferred to a Ministry of Public Health hospital.

“At the moment of transferring patients, the atmosphere was chaotic as there were a large number of patients to be transferred and Afghan Special Forces had just arrived at the hospital amidst ongoing clashes in the area outside of the hospital compound,” according to the review. “Some Afghan Special Forces started to search for Taliban patients in the MoPH and MSF ambulance on leaving the hospital. At approximately 6 am, an ambulance was caught in the crossfire while exiting the main gate of the Trauma Center. Bullet impacts are visible on the car.”

There was no fighting around the hospital when U.S. forces attacked

The day before, Friday, October 2, MSF put two flags on the roof of the hospital. All MSF staff indicated the area in and around the hospital was “very calm.”

“No fighting was taking place around the hospital, no planes were heard overhead, no gunshots were reported, nor explosions in the vicinity of the hospital,” the review indicates. And, “From approximately 12.20am to 1.10am, the MSF coordinator conducted the nightly security round of the hospital compound. The coordinator reported that the [hospital] was calm, with no armed combatants present, nor any fighting on the hospital grounds or within the audible vicinity. All MSF guards were on duty and MSF was in complete control of the compound. All of the MSF staff reported that the no weapons policy was respected in the Trauma Center.”

Fighting intensified on September 28. The review mentions MSF proposed patients “remove any military identification or clothing from the hospital, as is our standard practice to reduce possible tensions in the hospital with both parties to the conflict being treated within the facility.” Some wounded Afghan government forces were treated at the hospital, but for the most part, the Afghan government forces preferred to have their wounded transferred to another hospital.

The same day, at about 6 pm, “two Taliban combatants arrived at the hospital gates to inform MSF that they were in control of the area.” And by 10 pm, the medical teams at the hospital had treated 137 wounded, including 26 children.

As the fighting remained intense, on September 29, MSF once again emailed GPS coordinates to the U.S. Defense Department, Afghan Ministry of Interior and Defense, and U.S. Army in Kabul. The Defense Department and U.S. Army representatives confirmed they had received the coordinates. The Afghan Ministry of Interior confirmed the coordinates had been received as well.

Then, on October 1, a U.S. government official in Washington, D.C., who is not named in the report, asked if the hospital or any other MSF locations had Taliban “holed up” in them. The official asked about the safety of staff. MSF informed the official that staff was “working at full capacity in Kunduz and that the hospital was full of patients, including wounded Taliban combatants.” MSF made it clear that both sides had an obligation to respect the neutrality of the hospital.

U.S. military & other forces had agreements to respect the hospital

MSF had agreements with the health authorities of the Afghan government and the health authorities affiliated with “relevant armed opposition groups,” like the Taliban. The agreements referenced international humanitarian law and were established to guarantee the right to treat all wounded and sick individuals without discrimination. The intent was also to ensure patients and staff were not harassed while providing medical care, medical and patient confidentiality was respected, and medical staff were immune from prosecution for treating combatants.

“These commitments were discussed and endorsed by the militaries involved in the conflict, including all international military forces such as the United States, both the regular and special forces branches, ISAF and later Resolute Support command structures, Afghan National Army, National Police and National Security agencies as well as the military command structures of armed opposition groups,” according to MSF. “The local military hierarchy of all warring parties endorsed compliance by agreeing to a no-weapons policy within the MSF facility.”

Yet, Representative Duncan Hunter has apparently been informed by a few special forces operatives that the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, which is in charge of overseeing airstrikes, did not know the compound contained a hospital. The U.S. Army’s $5 billion intelligence network was down and affected the ability of forces to avoid bombing civilians.

The trouble with this new “fog of war” explanation for bombing the Doctors Without Borders hospital is it marks another shift in the U.S. account of what happened.

Fires burn in the MSF emergency trauma hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, after it was hit and partially destroyed by aerial attacks on October 3, 2015.

The story of what happened shifted four times in four days after the airstrikes. First, the U.S. military was unsure if the hospital had been bombed but claimed U.S. forces had been under fire. Then, the U.S. military claimed strikes were in the “vicinity” of the hospital and the bombing was an accident. Then, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan claimed Afghans had called for the strike and U.S. forces had never been under any threat. Then, while addressing a Senate committee, he stated U.S. forces had called for the airstrike after receiving a request from the Afghans.

The Associated Press has also reported a senior Green Beret officer advised a special forces unit on October 2 that MSF had personnel in the hospital, and the hospital was under control of “insurgents.” An objective for the next day was to “clear the trauma center” of any enemy forces, which was in clear violation of agreements MSF established with U.S. and Afghan forces. On top of that, there is no evidence that MSF was informed airstrikes were coming and so they needed to evacuate so U.S. forces could raze a hospital they suspected was under control of the Taliban.

There also is no legitimate explanation for why the U.S. military and the chain of command, which authorized strikes, did not believe MSF when it asserted the facility was not under Taliban control.

In the end, the Kunduz Trauma Center was one of the only facilities of its kind in northeastern Afghanistan. It offered free surgical care to victims of traffic accidents and civilians hit by bomb blasts or gunfire from ongoing warfare. Now, there is no facility for Afghans to receive treatment when they are caught in the crossfire and in need of medical attention.

The release Thursday of the 5,544-page text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries comprising nearly 40 percent of global output—confirms what even its most apocalyptic critics feared.

“The TPP, along with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], is the most brazen corporate power grab in American history,” Ralph Nader told me when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C.

“It allows corporations to bypass our three branches of government to impose enforceable sanctions by secret tribunals. These tribunals can declare our labor, consumer and environmental protections [to be] unlawful, non-tariff barriers subject to fines for noncompliance. The TPP establishes a transnational, autocratic system of enforceable governance in defiance of our domestic laws.”

A 2014 protest in Tokyo against the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. (Shizuo Kambayashi / AP)

The TPP is part of a triad of trade agreements that includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA, by calling for the privatization of all public services, is a mortal threat to the viability of the U.S. Postal Service, public education and other government-run enterprises and utilities; together these operations make up 80 percent of the U.S. economy. The TTIP and TiSA are still in the negotiation phase. They will follow on the heels of the TPP and are likely to go before Congress in 2017.

These three agreements solidify the creeping corporate coup d’état along with the final evisceration of national sovereignty. Citizens will be forced to give up control of their destiny and will be stripped of the ability to protect themselves from corporate predators, safeguard the ecosystem and find redress and justice in our now anemic and often dysfunctional democratic institutions. The agreements—filled with jargon, convoluted technical, trade and financial terms, legalese, fine print and obtuse phrasing—can be summed up in two words: corporate enslavement.

The TPP removes legislative authority from Congress and the White House on a range of issues. Judicial power is often surrendered to three-person trade tribunals in which only corporations are permitted to sue. Workers, environmental and advocacy groups and labor unions are blocked from seeking redress in the proposed tribunals. The rights of corporations become sacrosanct. The rights of citizens are abolished.

The Sierra Club issued a statement after the release of the TPP text saying that the “deal is rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades of environmental progress, threaten our climate, and fail to adequately protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal.”

If there is no sustained popular uprising to prevent the passage of the TPP in Congress this spring we will be shackled by corporate power. Wages will decline. Working conditions will deteriorate. Unemployment will rise. Our few remaining rights will be revoked. The assault on the ecosystem will be accelerated. Banks and global speculation will be beyond oversight or control. Food safety standards and regulations will be jettisoned. Public services ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the post office and public education will be abolished or dramatically slashed and taken over by for-profit corporations. Prices for basic commodities, including pharmaceuticals, will skyrocket. Social assistance programs will be drastically scaled back or terminated. And countries that have public health care systems, such as Canada and Australia, that are in the agreement will probably see their public health systems collapse under corporate assault. Corporations will be empowered to hold a wide variety of patents, including over plants and animals, turning basic necessities and the natural world into marketable products. And, just to make sure corporations extract every pound of flesh, any public law interpreted by corporations as impeding projected profit, even a law designed to protect the environment or consumers, will be subject to challenge in an entity called the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) section. The ISDS, bolstered and expanded under the TPP, will see corporations paid massive sums in compensation from offending governments for impeding their “right” to further swell their bank accounts. Corporate profit effectively will replace the common good.

Given the bankruptcy of our political class—including amoral politicians such as Hillary Clinton, who is denouncing the TPP during the presidential campaign but whose unwavering service to corporate capitalism assures her fealty to her corporate backers—the trade agreement has a good chance of becoming law. And because the Obama administration won fast-track authority, a tactic designed by the Nixon administration to subvert democratic debate, President Obama will be able to sign the agreement before it goes to Congress.

The TPP, because of fast track, bypasses the normal legislative process of public discussion and consideration by congressional committees. The House and the Senate, which have to vote on the TPP bill within 90 days of when it is sent to Congress, are prohibited by the fast-track provision from adding floor amendments or holding more than 20 hours of floor debate. Congress cannot raise concerns about the effects of the TPP on the environment. It can only vote yes or no. It is powerless to modify or change one word.

There will be a mass mobilization Nov. 14 through 18 in Washington to begin the push to block the TPP. Rising up to stop the TPP is a far, far better investment of our time and energy than engaging in the empty political theater that passes for a presidential campaign.

“The TPP creates a web of corporate laws that will dominate the global economy,” attorney Kevin Zeese of the group Popular Resistance, which has mounted a long fight against the trade agreement, told me from Baltimore by telephone. “It is a global corporate coup d’état. Corporations will become more powerful than countries. Corporations will force democratic systems to serve their interests. Civil courts around the world will be replaced with corporate courts or so-called trade tribunals. This is a massive expansion that builds on the worst of NAFTA rather than what Barack Obama promised, which was to get rid of the worst aspects of NAFTA.”

The agreement is the product of six years of work by global capitalists from banks, insurance companies, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto and other corporations.

“It was written by them [the corporations], it is for them and it will serve them,” Zeese said of the TPP. “It will hurt domestic businesses and small businesses. The buy-American provisions will disappear. Local communities will not be allowed to build buy-local campaigns. The thrust of the agreement is the privatization and commodification of everything. The agreement has built within it a deep antipathy to state-supported or state-owned enterprises. It gives away what is left of our democracy to the World Trade Organization.”

The economist David Rosnick, in a report on the TPP by the Center for Economic and Policy Research(CEPR), estimated that under the trade agreement only the top 10 percent of U.S. workers would see their wages increase. Rosnick wrote that the real wages of middle-income U.S. workers (from the 35th percentile to the 80th percentile) would decline under the TPP. NAFTA, contributing to a decline in manufacturing jobs (now only 9 percent of the economy), has forced workers into lower-paying service jobs and resulted in a decline in real wages of between 12 and 17 percent. The TPP would only accelerate this process, Rosnick concluded.

“This is a continuation of the global race to the bottom,” Dr. Margaret Flowers, also from Popular Resistance and a candidate for the U.S. Senate, said from Baltimore in a telephone conversation with me. “Corporations are free to move to countries that have the lowest labor standards. This drives down high labor standards here. It means a decimation of industries and unions. It means an accelerated race to the bottom, which we must rise up to stop.”

“In Malaysia one-third of tech workers are essentially slaves,” Zeese said. “In Vietnam the minimum wage is 35 cents an hour. Once these countries are part of the trade agreement U.S. workers are put in a very difficult position.”

Fifty-one percent of working Americans now make less than $30,000 a year, a new study by the Social Security Administration reported. Forty percent are making less than $20,000 a year. The federal government considers a family of four living on an income of less than $24,250 to be in poverty.

“Half of American workers earn essentially the poverty level,” Zeese said. “This agreement only accelerates this trend. I don’t see how American workers are going to cope.”

The assault on the American workforce by NAFTA—which was established under the Clinton administration in 1994 and which at the time promised creation of 200,000 net jobs a year in the United States—has been devastating. NAFTA has led to a $181 billion trade deficit with Mexico and Canada and the loss of at least 1 million U.S. jobs, according to a report by Public Citizen. The flooding of the Mexican market with cheap corn by U.S. agro-businesses drove down the price of Mexican corn and saw 1 million to 3 million poor Mexican farmers go bankrupt and lose their small farms. Many of them crossed the border into the United States in a desperate effort to find work.

“Obama has misled the public throughout this process,” Dr. Flowers said. “He claimed that environmental groups were supportive of the agreement because it provided environmental protections, and this has now been proven false. He told us that it would create 650,000 jobs, and this has now been proven false. He calls this a 21st century trade agreement, but it actually rolls back progress made in Bush-era trade agreements. The most recent model of a 21st century trade agreement is the Korean free trade agreement. That was supposed to create 140,000 U.S. jobs. But what we saw within a couple years was a loss of about 70,000 jobs and a larger trade deficit with Korea. This agreement [the TPP] is sold to us with the same deceits that were used to sell us NAFTA and other trade agreements.”

The agreement, in essence, becomes global law. Any agreements over carbon emissions by countries made through the United Nations are effectively rendered null and void by the TPP.

“Trade agreements are binding,” Flowers said. “They supersede any of the nonbinding agreements made by the United Nations Climate Change Conference that might come out of Paris.”

There is more than enough evidence from past trade agreements to indicate where the TPP—often called “NAFTA on steroids”—will lead. It is part of the inexorable march by corporations to wrest from us the ability to use government to defend the public and to build social and political organizations that promote the common good. Our corporate masters seek to turn the natural world and human beings into malleable commodities that will be used and exploited until exhaustion or collapse. Trade agreements are the tools being used to achieve this subjugation. The only response left is open, sustained and defiant popular revolt.

Last week’s activity within the UAF confirms the trends that have made themselves evident in earlier weeks, namely the efforts to consolidate the equipment that’s still operational and competent personnel in a small number of high-readiness units, while relegating the rest of the armed forces to garrison duty or manning fortifications and/or checkpoints.

The UAF’s core are the six “mobile” brigades formed on the basis of airmobile brigades and “heavied up” through the addition of artillery and tanks.

These units, like the 95th Airmobile Brigade depicted above, have been engaging in exercises which seem calculated for their PR effect – no exercise goes without a requisite and lengthy TV report which, incidentally, gives an idea of how these units are equipped.

Interestingly, the mobile brigades seem to be using mainly T-80 MBTs taken out of storage, rather than T-64BV, Bulat, or Oplot is really indicative of the dire situation within UAF’s tank forces. The use of the gas-turbine powered T-80 seems to be motivated by the fact that there aren’t enough fully operational T-64BV left–that tank fleet has been heavily worn down by the last year and a half of fighting and frontline deployment. While the T-80 is an even more maintenance-intensive tank than the T-64, those tanks have not yet been ground down.

A similar trend of consolidation is also evident in the military aviation. The main effort appears to be aimed at maintaining a force of Su-25 attack aircraft, with 19 aircraft believed to be still operational as of early November 2015.

An ammunition storage facility in Svatovo, a town in the still Ukraine-occupied part of Novorossia, blew up for unclear reasons. The facility was reported to have stored, among other things, ammunition for the 300mm Smerch MRLs, but there are also report the munitions stored there included Buk surface to air missiles. Therefore the fire might have been an effort to cover up illegal arms and ammunition sales, or even possibly an effort to cover up the MH17 shoot-down.

After all, it is a well-established fact that UAF Buk systems were deployed to the frontline during the war, and since the investigation of the MH17 catastrophe is still continuing, it may well be that the missile stockpiles had to be destroyed in order to conceal evidence that the Dutch investigators were looking for. The missile that shot down the MH17 had a serial and batch number, with UAF in all likelihood having other missiles belonging to the same batch. Therefore destroying them would remove an important piece of evidence implicating Ukraine.

Therefore it is no surprise that Poroshenko has authorized foreigners to serve in the Ukrainian military. Whether he will find many takers is questionable, however, Poroshenko has to resort to such desperate measures suggests the manpower shortage within the UAF has reached critical levels.

For that reason, the fact that Ukroboronprom is coming up with more and new ideas to provide Ukraine’s virtual soldiers with equally virtual weapons should not be surprising. The latest is the FICV, or Future Infantry Combat Vehicle, a heavy IFV of a completely new design that is supposedly in the works at the Morozov Design Bureau in Kharkov. However, so far nothing has been seen of it other than the computer graphics.

Predictably (and as predicted in an earlier edition of UMR), Ukroboronprom has a harder time of building actual vehicles than computer images of such vehicles.

Ukraine has been forced to renegotiate with Thailand the delivery schedule for the Oplot-M MBT, with now only 10 (TEN, Karl!) tanks scheduled to be delivered in 2016. That’s less than one tank a month. If that’s the best that Ukraine can do, the plans to re-equip the UAF with these tanks are most likely to remain on paper. One has to consider that the Oplot-M contract with Thailand is the single most important Ukroboronprom project at present time. In addition to the sheer prestige, it represents a significant source of foreign currency for the Kiev junta. The failure to maintain the terms of delivery (so far only 5 of 15 tanks scheduled for 2015 have been delivered, and it’s already November…) is suggestive of considerable decline within the Ukrainian defense industry.

Nitrogen is often associated with soils and crop-talk. “If nitrogen taken up early by the crop is sufficient for yield,” goes a piece from the Sidney Herald (MT) from May 5, 2012, “then it will get redistributed to help produce grain protein. In high yielding years, the in-season nitrogen addition could be decreased or omitted, resulting in substantial fertilizer cost savings.”

Riveting stuff. Take-up rates; stem-elongation; crop yields; fertilization. Not, and here, the step becomes a leap, one of execution. Nitrogen, in the customary sense, supposedly encourages yields. But Oklahoma took a rather different pathway in effectively re-introducing the gas chamber. The murderous protagonist here, instead of previously used hydrogen cyanide, is nitrogen.

This would involve sealing the victim in an airtight chamber filled with nitrogen gas. In the absence of oxygen, nitrogen goes to work, producing a range of effects. These might, for instance, entail the “raptures of the deep,” a term used in the context of deep-sea divers exposed to an excess of nitrogen (Slate, May 22, 2014). There might even be a sensation of euphoria.

Proponents for nitrogen’s use, in speaking on behalf of the putative condemned prisoner, claim that the person would suffer nothing abnormal, would endure no pain, and would not, strictly speaking, suffocate, given that carbon dioxide build-up, rather than an absence of oxygen, is the culprit at hand.

Much of this was put forth when cyanide gas fell foul of the Eight Amendment in 1994. Oakland technology consultant Stuart Creque was the dark knight of the moment, coming to the rescue of head-scratching executioners. Writing in 1995 for the National Review, Creque argued that nitrogen “would cause neither pain nor physical trauma, require no medical procedure (other than pronouncing death), and no hazardous chemicals.”

The governor of Oklahoma, Mary Fallin, had signed legislation permitting execution by nitrogen gas, provided drugs for lethal injection or the method itself, was deemed illegal. Last month, Fallin stayed the execution of Richard Glossip for 37 days over questions “about Oklahoma’s execution protocol and the chemicals used for lethal injection.”[1] He was scheduled to be executed on November 6, but this was in turn stayed indefinitely.

Humanitarian arguments are often sham ones, standard bearers for the worst form of moral charlatanism. They are attached to missile tips; they are aligned with arguments on how best to kill human beings for broader causes. We might not like the death penalty, but at least we can be assured that convicts are killed humanely. “You can oppose the death penalty and still see the merit in making executions more humane,” argues Tom McNichol (Slate, May 22, 2014).Lawrence Gist II, an attorney and professor of business law at Mount St. Mary’s College, similarly extols the virtues of more humane methods in the death industry, having become something of a propagandist for nitrogen-based killing. “If we’re going to take a life, then we should do so in the most humane, civilized manner as is possible.”

This is a false choice, bedded on some nasty logic. The oxymoronic dialogue on the death penalty is one of the more insidious ones in the lethal complex that sees states identify how best to dispatch their convicts. Death penalty advocates and those against the death penalty tend to find themselves at one on this. It is a form of tacit collusion: we will accept the death penalty, but we will be kind and strictly professional about it.

Absolutists against the death penalty are taken to task by such commentators as Boer Deng and Dahlia Lithwick for inciting officials to actually endorse substandard methods and techniques in killing. This is dangerous nonsense. Either the sanctity of human life, irrespective of how grizzly that human being might be, matters, or it does not. It is hardly preserved by killing the subject with professionally thought through methods.

The legal authorities have also been complicit in creating a fantasy of compassion behind killing. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that Kentucky’s three-drug protocol behind lethal injections abided by the constitution. But such sanitised rationales of lethality ignored human incompetence in the administering process. The death of Clayton Lockett in April 2014 was not merely vicious in its outcome but in its application. (He remained alive for forty-three minutes after the injections began.) As Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed during oral arguments, the protocol may have entailed “burning a person alive who’s paralysed.”

Then came the stay offered for Russell Bucklew last year, similarly taking issue with the needle. The court rationale from 2008 was looking unsteady. “Every age,” writes Nichol, “seems to feature a new and improved method of capital punishment, billed as more efficient and humane.” Killing can, according to such thinking, be progressive.

Scientific killings, state sanctioned murder theorised and then applied, has been a central feature of the modern State. The State’s monopoly on violence manifests itself as fury in cases when private citizens start appropriating such powers. The death penalty is a statement of sovereign selfishness, jealously guarded. Using nitrogen fittingly embraces the industrial complex, furthermore so given that the gas chamber, as a death delving device, was pioneered in the United States. Nazi Germany would duly take note and kill with even more zeal.

The internal inconsistencies of the death penalty arguments were always going to be evident with such constitutionally enshrined terms as “cruel and unusual punishment” as outlined in the Eight Amendment. Such wording has been interpreted by means various and exotic, always allowing for capital punishment. None have proven convincing, with the exception of Justice Stephen Bryer’s dissent in Glossip v Grosswhich agued that rather than trying “to patch up the death penalty’s legal wounds one at a time,” we should accept “that the death penalty violates the Eight Amendment.”[2]

The death penalty remains sadistically expressive, and its cruelty should be emphasised beyond a shadow of doubt. If it is to remain on the books, it should be exemplified, not lulled. Saudi Arabia, China and similar countries admit that suffering is fundamental behind having such a penalty. What, then, would be the point?

Bring in US-made beheadings. Bring in firing squads. Let the blood flow. Film it. Stream it. Demonstrate humanity’s inhumanity to itself. As the sponsor of the nitrogen execution bill Mike Christian, Republican member of the Oklahoman House of Representatives explained with crude honesty, humanitarianism has nothing to do with it. “I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and a former lawman, I really don’t care if it’s by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine, or being fed to the lions.”[3] To embrace a supposedly kinder form of killing sanitises murder, encouraging a hypocrisy that salves the bleeding conscience.

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

Notes

 [1] http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/30/us/oklahoma-richard-glossip-midazolam-execution/

[2] http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf

[3] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-oklahoma-came-to-embrace-the-gas-chamber

“I think most people who have dealt with me think I am a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am.” (Tony Blair, 21^st October 2011, BBC1.)

Given the ongoing revelations on the extent of Tony Blair’s duplicitous collusion in the illegal bombing and invasion of Iraq, it seems – to muddle metaphors – the “bunker busters” and Cruise missiles are finally coming home to roost.

In what has been dubbed “an apology” Blair even 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 as to disregard for law – and to hell with public opinion – 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 Mr. Tony. Statements entirely untrue. It is also 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.” Sorry Mr. Blair, the all was lawless, illegitimate and criminal – and Saddam Hussein was not “removed”, he was lynched, his sons and fifteen year old grandson extra-judicially slaughtered in a hail of US bullets – the all in a country whose “sovereignty and territorial integrity” was guaranteed by the UN.

Whatever opinions of the former Iraqi government, the crimes committed by the US-UK war of aggression and aftermath, make the worst excesses of which Saddam Hussein’s Administration were accused pale by comparison.

Blair brushed off the mention of a war crimes trial and made it clear that he would trash Syria as Iraq, had he the chance. To this barrister (attorney) by training, legality is clearly inconsequential.

Now no less than the UK’s former Director of Public Prosecutions (2003-2008) 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 also continues to practice from Matrix Chambers.

In a scathing attack, Sir Ken states (1):

“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 …” Referring to the CNN interview he witheringly dismissed Blair’s performance saying: “ … playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage.”

Moreover: “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 misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death.” No wonder Sir Ken had headed the country’s legal prosecuting service.

Macdonald’s broadside coincides with further “bombshell revelation” in the Mail on Sunday (2) revealing that “on the eve of war” Blair’s Downing Street “descended in to panic” on being told by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith 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 centered on Lord Goldmith’s thirteen page legal opinion of 7^th March 2003 – just twenty days before the attack on Iraq. The “pandemonium” related to the fact that at this late juncture 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 gave the “burn”, “destroy” order, but the Mail quotes their information as coming from a former senior figure in Blair’s government. They then “got to work on” Lord Goldsmith. Ten days alter His Lordship produced an advice stating the war was legal. It started three days later, leading eminent international law Professor Philippe Sands to comment memorably: “We went to war on a sheet of A4.”

A spokesman for Tony Blair called the claims or orders to destroy “nonsense” adding that it would be: “ … quite absurd to think that anyone could destroy such a document.” With what is now known re 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 their near non-existent weapons, delivered to the UN on 7th December 2002 and Blair seemingly faithfully obeyed his Master’s voice or actions.

In context of the lies and subterfuge of enormity being told both sides of the Atlantic at the time, it is worth remembering George W. Bush, that same December, on the eve of a NATO summit, addressing students and comparing the challenge of the Iraqi President to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which led to World War II.

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 1^st November 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 Hussein.”)

Adding: “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 the assassination of a sovereign head of State.

Perhaps he had forgotten the last line of Attorney General Goldsmith’s legal advice of 12^th February 2003: “ … regime change cannot be the objective of military action.” (3)

So is Charles Anthony Lynton Blair, QC. finally headed for handcuffs and a trial at The Hague? Ian Williams, Senior Analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus, New York, has a view. He believes:

… 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 said, (may be) 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 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 jurisprudence slowly encroaches on Tony Blair.

Notes

1. http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news/how-tony-blair-lied-misled-and-cajoled-the-british-people-into-a-war-they-didn-t-want
2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3298498/Burn-destroy-Pressure-builds-Blair-Chilcot-report-s-revealed-ministers-told-destroy-key-evidence-eve-conflict-showed-Iraq-War-ILLEGAL.html
3. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/how-goldsmith-changed-advice-on-legality-of-war-2015252.html
4. http://presstv.ir/Detail/2015/10/26/435016/UK-Iraq-War-Tony-Blair-UN-Williams

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Michel Chossudovsky, November 5, 2015

U.S. President Bill Clinton gives a eulogy at the funeral of the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, 6 November 1995

Eulogy for the Late Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin by U.S. President Bill Clinton

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, 6 November 1995

Jordan’s King Hussein gives a eulogy at the funeral of the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, 6 November 1995

Eulogy for the Late Prime Minister and Defense Yitzhak Rabin by His Majesty King Hussein of Jordan

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, 6 November 1995

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak gives a eulogy at the funeral of the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, 6 November 1995

Eulogy for the Late Prime Minister and Defense Yitzhak Rabin by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, 6 November 1995

[emphasis added]

Excerpts from:  With blessing of U.S., Israel draws closer to Turkey and Jordan  –  Eyes on post-Saddam Iraq

by Amy Dockser Marcus, Wall Street Journal, 30 May 1996

[1]   The list below indicates that an overt military cooperation between Israel and Turkey was actually put into practice even before Yitzhak Rabin began his second term as a prime minister in July 1992:

source:  Timeline of Turkish-Israeli Relations, 1949–2006, by Brock Dahl and Danielle Slutzky, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), 2006

[2]   source:  Syria fears Israeli-Turkish joint air maneuvers and intelligence, by Leslie Susser, Jerusalem Report, 2 May 1996

[3]   [At the state dinner held by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in honour of Turkey’s Prime Minister Tansu Ciller at King David Hotel on November 3, 1994], Mrs Ciller told her hosts, “I can assure you that you will have your promised land!” […]  The Israelis’ “promised land” extends from the Nile to the Euphrates, and takes in Turkish territory!

(source: ‘Turkey likely to launch “American style” strikes against Syria and Lebanon’s Bekaa’, Mideast Mirror, 16 October 1998. Note: hyperlink added)

[4]   Commander of the Israeli Navy Ami Ayalon returned from Ankara on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.

From the archives:

“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East – The Infamous “Oded Yinon Plan”

[“A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties” article by Oded Yinon, 1982]

by Israel Shahak, Global Research, 6 September 2015

A Zionist in disguise: Prime Minister Erdogan’s phony anti-Israel rhetoric

by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 30 November 2012

Preparing the Chessboard for the “Clash of Civilizations”: Divide, Conquer and Rule the “New Middle East”

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, 26 November 2011

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm

[report by Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, June 1996]

Information Clearing House

ISIS threatens our way of life and security…We have plans to act militarily against them in the coming days. You will see. — Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu

A landslide victory in Turkey’s November 1 snap elections has removed the last obstacle in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s drive to war.  The surprise outcome of the balloting, which was widely denounced as “unfair and marred by fear and violence by international election observers”,  has given Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) 49 percent of the vote restoring single-party rule in Ankara. Shortly after the election results were announced, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called on Turkey’s political parties to scrap the existing constitution in order to grant President Erdogan nearly-limitless executive authority.

According to Turkey’s Today’s Zaman Davutoglu said,

“I’m calling on all parties entering parliament to form a new civilian national constitution…Let’s work together towards a Turkey where conflict, tension and polarisation are non-existent and everyone salutes each other in peace.”

In other words, the balloting is being used to sabotage democracy and establish the supreme power of the president. Less than 24 hours after Erdogan had regained single-party control of the government, he reiterated Davutoglu’s appeal for expanding presidential powers through a national referendum.

“An issue like the presidential system can’t be decided without the nation,” Erdogan told reporters at the press conference.

“If the mechanism requires a referendum, then we will hold a referendum … The executive presidency is not a question of our president’s personal future. He has already entered the history books. The basic motivation is to make the system in Turkey as effective as possible.”

So, according to Erdogan, the dictatorial powers of the president have already been established and the referendum is merely a formality.

Clearly, Erdogan wants to use the referendum to consolidate his power, establish one-man rule and terminate representative government in Turkey. He is a committed Islamist who wants to repeal democracy and create a Islamic regime that extends beyond Turkey’s present borders into Iraq and Syria. This is why he has been such an enthusiastic supporter of the jihadi groups fighting in Syria.

More important, Erdogan intends to use his landslide victory to persuade the Military High Command that he has a popular mandate for his foreign policy, a policy that has amassed thousands of Turkish troops, armored vehicles and tanks on the Syrian border for a possible invasion. Up to now, the military has resisted Erdogan on this matter, but now that Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel, has been replaced as head of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) by the more compliant General Hulusi Akar, the plan to invade Syria and secure a so called “safety zone” along the Syrian side of the Turkish border, becomes much more probable.

The plan to annex sovereign Syrian territory and use it to launch attacks on the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad dates back to 2012.  In 2015, however, the strategy was expanded upon by Brookings analyst Michael E. O’Hanlon in a piece  titled “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war”. Here’s an excerpt:

…the only realistic path forward may be a plan that in effect deconstructs Syria….the international community should work to create pockets with more viable security and governance within Syria over time… The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via special forces. … Western forces themselves would remain in more secure positions in general—within the safe zones but back from the front lines—at least until the reliability of such defenses, and also local allied forces, made it practical to deploy and live in more forward locations.

Creation of these sanctuaries would produce autonomous zones that would never again have to face the prospect of rule by either Assad ….The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones… The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force….to make these zones defensible and governable,….and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.

(Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Brookings Institute)

This is the Obama administration’s basic blueprint for toppling Assad and reducing Syria into an ungovernable failed state run by regional warlords, renegade militias and Islamic extremists. US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed our worst suspicions about this sinister plan in a speech he delivered
to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace just last week.  Here’s part of what he said:

In northern Syria, the coalition and its partners have pushed Daesh (ISIS) out of more than 17,000 square kilometers of territory, and we have secured the Turkish-Syrian border east of the Euphrates River. That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest…….

We’re also enhancing our air campaign in order to help drive Daesh, which once dominated the Syria-Turkey border, out of the last 70-mile stretch that it controls. (U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the Future of U.S. Policy in the Middle East, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

Repeat: “That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest.”

Why has Obama “authorized further activities to secure the rest”?

Because no one in Washington believes that the US-backed jihadis will beat the combined forces of the Russian-led coalition which is gradually annihilating the terrorist militias across Syria. So now, Obama is moving on to Plan B, the creation of a terrorist sanctuary on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border where the US and its partners can continue to arm, train and deploy their jihadi maniacs back into Syria whenever they choose to do so. Undoubtedly, Obama’s Special Forces will be used to oversee this operation and to make sure that everything goes according to plan.

There is, of course, a question about the Kurdish militias role in this strategy. Recently, the US has air-dropped pallet-loads of weapons and ammo to the Democratic Union Party (PYD)  hoping the group could help the US secure the last stretch of land along the border west of the Euphrates thus keeping vital supplylines open for the jihadis while establishing a safe haven on Syrian territory. Erdogan violently opposes any operation that will create a contiguous Kurdish state on the Syrian side of the border.

So how will this situation be resolved? Will Obama stick with the Kurds or realign with Erdogan in exchange for Turkish boots on the ground?

No one knows just yet, but certainly a Turkish-US alliance would be more formidable than a PYD-US coalition. Judging by Washington’s long history of choosing the most expedient solution to achieve its policy goals, we expect Obama to align himself with Ankara.

It’s worth noting that the Turkish parliament already “approved a possible deployment of Turkish ground forces in Syria and opened the door to basing foreign troops in Turkey” back in October 2014. Using the pretext of  “fighting terrorism” as an excuse for invasion, Erdogan said,  “We are open and ready for any kind of cooperation…However, Turkey is not a country that will allow itself to be used for temporary solutions… The immediate removal of the administration in Damascus, Syria’s territorial unity and the installation of an administration which embraces all will continue to be our priority.”

In other words, Erdogan will not provide ground troops unless the US says it is committed to regime change.

Erdogan has been the strongest proponent of “safe zones”, an idea that would require US warplanes to patrol the skies over Northern Syria with small groups of US troops on the ground. The plan greatly increases the probability of an unexpected clash with Russian warplanes that could lead to a direct confrontation between the two nuclear-armed adversaries.

Now check out this article that appeared in the UK Telegraph in June 2015, that was clearly premature in its prediction. The piece is titled “Turkey ‘planning to invade Syria’”:

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has authorised a change in the rules of engagement agreed by the Turkish parliament to allow the army to strike at Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), as well as the Assad regime, according to local newspapers.  The aim is to establish a buffer zone for refugees and against Isil…

Turkey has urged the creation of a buffer zone protected by international forces in the north of Syria ever since the civil war sent hundreds of thousands of refugees across the border…

Turkish media were briefed on new orders being given to the military to prepare to send an 18,000-strong force across the border…The troops would seize a stretch of territory 60 miles long by 20 deep, including the border crossings of Jarablus, currently in Isil hands, and Aazaz, currently controlled by the Free Syrian Army (FSA)…

(Turkey ‘planning to invade Syria, Telegraph)

Readers will notice the striking similarity between Erdogan’s plan and the Brookings strategy.  Washington and Ankara seem to share the same view of how Syria should be carved up following the prospective invasion. That said, it would be surprising if Erdogan and Obama are not able to iron-out their differences and settle on a way to achieve their common objective.

Erdogan has put considerable effort into removing the obstacles preventing him from launching an invasion on Syria.  He’s gotten the greenlight from Parliament to deploy the army if he feels there is a threat to Turkey’s national security. He’s effectively “internationalized” the conflict by allowing the US, UK and French warplanes to fly out of Incirlik. (which will absolve Erdogan and his minions from future legal accountability or war crimes.) And, finally, the elections provided Erdogan with the  mandate he needed to convince the military that his foreign policy has the full-backing of the Turkish people. So now that he has his ducks in a row, the only question is whether he will actually launch the invasion or not?

On Wednesday, Turkish foreign minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu confirmed that Erdogan is planning to invade Syria under the pretext of “fighting terrorism”. Here’s an excerpt from an article in the Daily Sabah:

“Turkey has plans to launch a military operation against ISIS in the near future, the Turkish foreign minister said on Wednesday. Feridun Sinirlioğlu was at a conference on the future of Middle East, held in Erbil in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region.

Daesh [ISIS] threatens our way of life and security. […] We have plans to act militarily against them in the coming days. You will see. We should all stand together against this danger,” he said…

“We will continue our efforts to eliminate all terrorist organizations. We will act in a responsible manner so that the Kurdish region and Iraq can be successful in the fight against terror. This is a very clear message to Iraq and the Kurdish region for a bright future,” he said.

(Turkey in plans to launch military operation against ISIS, foreign minister says, Daily Sabah)

Naturally, none of this has anything to do with fighting terrorism, in fact, Erdogan has been the terrorists best friend allowing them to pass back and forth across the border unimpeded.  What Sinirlioğlu’s announcement means is that Turkey is finally ready to seize the 60 mile stretch of  land referred to in the Telegraph article. As of this writing, we don’t know what the White House’s reaction to this Sinirlioğlu’s announcement will be, but we do know that Obama is scheduled to meet with Erdogan in Ankara in less than two weeks. By then, the administration will have decided whether they will stick with the Kurds or cast their lot with Erdogan. Either way, there’s going to be an attempt to create a safe zone from which Washington can continue to prosecute its war on Assad.  That much is certain.

These developments suggest that Putin will have to move fast if he wants to seal the border and derail Erdogan’s plan. The Russian president might have to deploy Russian Special Forces and armored divisions northward to discourage US-Turkey adventurism and to prevent the war from turning into a quagmire.

This is one situation where preemption could really pay off bigtime.

US-supported ISIS and other terrorists were caught red-handed using sarin and other chemical weapons against civilians in Syria numerous times – Assad wrongfully blamed for their crimes.

No evidence suggests his forces used them at any time throughout the conflict. Plenty shows CIA and US special forces train takfiri terrorists in chemical weapons use, perhaps supplying them with toxic agents to use.

Saudi Arabia was caught red-handed providing them with toxic agents in containers marked “made in KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).”

In early November, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) experts confirmed terrorists’ use of mustard gas and chlorine in Syria with “utmost confidence” – calling perpetrators “non-state actor(s).”

An OPCW statement said its Fact Finding Mission (FFM) “confirm(ed) that at least two people were exposed to sulfur mustard (commonly known as mustard gas), and that it is very likely that the effects of this chemical weapon resulted in the death of an infant.”

Mustard gas is a cytotoxic blistering agent, causing debilitating, potential lethal, internal and external chemical burns, affecting exposed skin and lungs when inhaled, able to penetrate wool and cotton fabrics.

A UK nurse during WW I commented on treating its burns, saying:

Patients “cannot be bandaged or touched. We cover them with a tent of propped-up sheets. Gas burns must be agonizing because usually the other cases do not complain, even with the worst wounds, but gas cases are invariably beyond endurance and they cannot help crying out.”

According to OPCW, “(m)ustard agent(s) (are) very simple to manufacture and can therefore be a ‘first choice’ when a country decides to build up a capacity for chemical warfare.”

In gas or liquid form, it “attacks the skin, eyes, lungs and gastro-intestinal tract. Internal organs may also be injured, mainly blood-generating organs, as a result of mustard agent being taken up through the skin or lungs and transported into the body.”

The delayed effect is a characteristic of mustard agent. Mustard agent gives no immediate symptoms upon contact and consequently a delay of between two and twenty-four hours may occur before pain is felt and the victim becomes aware of what has happened. By then cell damage has already been caused.

The 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibited use of “asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices,” as well as “bacteriological methods of warfare.”

The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and 1993 Chemical Weapons Conventions prohibit their production, storage or transfer.

America and Israel notoriously use chemical, biological and radiological weapons in warfare. Major media report nothing.

Did Washington supply ISIS with toxic chemical agents, including mustard gas for use OPCW just reported? On November 6,Pravda said “Russian intelligence (in early October) obtained records of secret negotiations of ISIS militants about the use of chemical weapons.”

It was said that the terrorists were going to use mustard gas ammo against government forces of President Bashar Assad.

In late August, The New York Times reported “ISIS using poison gas in Syria…according to local rebels (other terrorists) and an international aid group.”

The Syrian American Medical Society reported city of Marea civilian areas attacked with over 50 shells containing toxic agents. Symptoms showed chemical exposure. Some victims had blisters associated with mustard gas use.

So-called rebels said shells were fired from an ISIS controlled area. Kurdish forces in northern Syria and Iraq were attacked with toxic chemical agents. Many injuries were reported. ISIS was blamed in both countries.

On November 23, an OPCW Executive Council special session will be held to discuss its findings of chemical weapons use in Syria. The organization last year said Assad completed handing over his government’s entire CW stockpile in June 2014.

No evidence suggests it has any remaining agents. Syrian UN envoy Bashar Jaafari categorically said many times that “(t)he Syrian government has not used and will never use chemical weapons.”

Toxic chemical agents in the hands of ISIS and/or other terrorist groups pose dangers throughout the region and beyond.

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.

Was it ISIS – or somebody else?

First they said the downing of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 was most likely due to Russia’s “notorious” regional airlines, which supposedly are rickety and unreliable. The Egyptian government denied that terrorism is even a possibility, with Egyptian despot Abdel Fatah al-Sisi proclaiming:

When there is propaganda that it crashed because of Isis, this is one way to damage the stability and security of Egypt and the image of Egypt. Believe me, the situation in Sinai – especially in this limited area – is under our full control.

However, it soon came out that the person in charge of Sharm el-Sheikh airport, where the Russia plane had landed before taking off again, had been “replaced” – oh, but notbecause of anything to do with the downing of the Russian passenger plane! As the Egyptian authorities put it:

Adel Mahgoub, chairman of the state company that runs Egypt’s civilian airports, says airport chief Abdel-Wahab Ali has been ‘promoted’ to become his assistant. He said the move late Wednesday had nothing to do with media skepticism surrounding the airport’s security. Mahgoub said Ali is being replaced by Emad el-Balasi, a pilot.

Laughable, albeit in a sinister way, and yet more evidence that something wasn’t quite right: after all, everyone knows the Egyptian government does not have the Sinai, over which the plane disintegrated in mid air, under its “full control.” ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the crash hours after it occurred, is all over that peninsula.

Still, the denials poured in, mostly from US government officials such as Director of National Intelligence James “Liar-liar-pants-on-fire” Clapper, who said ISIS involvement was “unlikely.” Then they told us it couldn’t have been ISIS because they supposedly don’t have surface-to-air missiles that can reach the height attained by the downed plane. Yet that wasn’t very convincing either, because a) How do they know what ISIS has in its arsenal?, and b) couldn’t ISIS or some other group have smuggleda bomb on board?

The better part of a week after the crash, we have this:

Days after authorities dismissed claims that ISIS brought down a Russian passenger jet, a U.S. intelligence analysis now suggests that the terror group or its affiliates planted a bomb on the plane.

British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond said his government believes there is a ‘significant possibility’ that an explosive device caused the crash. And a Middle East source briefed on intelligence matters also said it appears likely someone placed a bomb aboard the aircraft.

According to numerous news reports, intercepts of “internal communications” of the Islamic State/ISIS group provided evidence that it wasn’t an accident but a terrorist act. Those intercepts must have been available to US and UK government sources early on, yet these same officials said they had no “direct evidence,” as Clapper put it, of terrorist involvement. Why is that? And furthermore: why the general unwillingness of Western governments and media to jump to their usual conclusion when any air disaster occurs, and attribute it to terrorism?

The answer is simple: they didn’t want to arouse any sympathy for the Russians. Russia, as we all know, is The Enemy – considered even worse, in some circles, than the jihadists.  Indeed, there’s a whole section of opinion-makers devoted to the idea that  we must help Islamist crazies in Syria, including al-Qaeda’s affiliate, known as al-Nusra, precisely in order to stop the Evil Putin from extending Russian influence into the region.

In a broader sense, the reluctance to acknowledge that this was indeed a terrorist act is rooted in a refusal to acknowledge the commonality of interests that exists between Putin’s Russia and the West. The downing of the Metrojet is just the latest atrocity carried out by the head-choppers against the Russian people: this includes not only the Beslan school massacre, in which over 700 children were taken hostage by Chechen Islamists, but also the five apartment bombings that took place in 1999.

The real extent of Western hostility to Russia, and the unwillingness to realize that Russia has been a major terrorist target, is underscored by the shameful propaganda pushed by the late Alexander Litvinenko, and endorsed by Sen. John McCain, which claims that the bombings were an “inside job” carried out by the Russian FSB – a version of “trutherism” that, if uttered in the US in relation to the 9/11 attacks, is routinely (and rightly) dismissed as sheer crankery. But where the Russians are concerned it’s not only allowable, it’s the default. A particularly egregious example is Russophobic hack Michael D. Weiss, who, days before the downing of the Russian passenger plane, solemnly informed us that Putin was “sending jihadists to join ISIS.” Boy oh boy, talk about ingratitude!

This downright creepy unwillingness to express any sympathy or sense of solidarity with the Russian people ought to clue us in to something we knew all along: that the whole “war on terrorism” gambit is as phony as a three-dollar bill. If US government officials were actually concerned about the threat of terrorist violence directed at innocent civilians, they would partner up with Russia in a joint effort to eradicate the threat: that this isn’t happening in Syria, or anywhere else, is all too evident. Not to mention our canoodling with “moderate” Chechen terrorists, openly encouraging them to carry on their war with Putin’s Russia. Our “war on terrorism” is simply a pretext for spying on the American people, and most of the rest of the world, and cementing the power of the State on the home front, not to mention fattening up an already grotesquely obese “defense” budget.

With the belated admission that the downing of the Russian passenger jet was an act of terrorism, we are beginning to hear that this a tremendous blow to Putin’s prestigeat home – something no one would dare utter about Obama’s or Cameron’s “prestige” if the Metrojet had been an American or British passenger plane. They say it’s “blowback” due to Russia’s actions in Syria, with the clear implication that it’s deserved. And yet, according to US officials and the usual suspects, the Russiansaren’t hitting ISIS so much as they’re smiting the “moderate” Islamist head-choppers – the “Syrian rebels,” as they’re known — who are being funded, armed, and encouraged by the West.

If that’s true, then what kind of blowback are we talking about – and from which direction is it coming? Given this, isn’t it entirely possible that Metrojet Flight 9268 was downed by US-aided –and-supported “moderates,” who moderately decided to get back at Putin?

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert andDavid Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

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

On November 4, the Wall Street Journal headlined “US, Allies to Boost Aid to Syria Rebels” – aka ISIS and other takfiri terrorists, US proxy foot soldiers, imperial death squads, no so-called “moderates” among them.

The Journal stopped short of explaining it, instead saying “(s)hipments of arms (and) supplies are aimed at pressuring Assad while countering Russia (and) Iran.”

According to the Journal, increased weapons shipments to anti-Assad elements aim to “challenge the intervention of Russia and Iran on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, US officials and their counterparts (from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf States) in the region said.

Obama declared proxy war on Russia after pledging to avoid it. He’s playing with fire. The more heavily armed ISIS and other takfiris become, the harder Russian aircraft will likely target them.

According to the Journal, “(i)n the past month of intensifying Russian airstrikes, the CIA and its partners have increased the flow of military supplies to rebels in northern Syria, including of US-made TOW antitank missiles, these officials said.”

Those supplies will continue to increase in coming weeks, replenishing stocks depleted by the regime’s expanded military offensive. An Obama administration official said the military pressure is needed to push Mr. Assad from power.

Shoulder-launched, man-portable, surface-to-air missiles (SAMS) defense systems (Manpads) are being supplied. “Those weapons could help target regime aircraft…and could also help keep Russian air power at bay,” said the Journal, citing unnamed US officials.

Manpads are relatively inexpensive, easy to operate and able to down low-flying aircraft. Helicopters are most vulnerable. So are fixed-wing planes during takeoffs, landings, and when operating at low altitudes.

Military aircraft systems alert pilots when missiles target them. Countermeasures to avoid being struck include evasive action, infrared flares and lasers.

Russian planes are safe at high altitudes. Special precautions are taken to protect them during takeoffs and landings.

So far, Putin outwitted Obama in Syria, effectively challenging his dirty game. He’s determined to eliminate the scourge of terrorism and keep it from spreading, especially to Central Asia and Russia.

A proxy state of war between America and Russia now exists – a hugely dangerous situation, risking possible direct confrontation between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.

Expect Putin to go all-out to avoid it. Put nothing past neocon lunatics in Washington – willing to risk destroying planet earth to own it.

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.

A prominent senior advisor to the Russian government and media consortium head millionaire was found dead inside a top Washington DC hotel on Thursday.

Sputnik News states, “Mikhail Lesin died from a heart stroke,” a family member told RIA Novosti.

On closer inspection of US media coverage, however, it appears that Washington’s propaganda machine has seized another opportunity to try and spin this story against Moscow.

Meanwhile, a Yahoo! News release says that Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department are now investigating the circumstances surrounding his death. In shameless fashion, Yahoo! Newsgoes on to try and paint the victim as an international criminal…

Unfortunately, however, following on with the western media’s now common practice of intentionally demonizing Russia, and personalizing every Russian-related news story by wrapping the narrative around “Putin” (Russian President Vladimir Putin), the original Yahoo! News story authored by Mike Levine and Justin Fishel ran with this headline:

“Putin Associate Found Dead in DC Hotel”.

In reality, Lesin was not merely a “Putin Associate”, but a senior Russian government advisor (2004 – 2009) holding the position of Press Minister (1999 – 20040, and was also a businessman who, as head of Gazprom-Media Holdings (2013 -2015), was well-known not just in Russia, but internationally too.

Lesin is also credited with creating the highly successful global news network Russia Today (RT).

Not surprisingly, the US news wire service took the liberty of inserting a number of cynical talking points into their new release which appear to be assembled in order to posthumanously discredit Lesin, portraying the deceased as a criminal and ‘state censor” and a criminal. Here are some of Yahoo’s defamatory statements:

Mikhail Lesin, the former head of media affairs for the Russian government who’s been accused of curtailing the country’s press freedoms…

Accused of what exactly, and by who? As expected, no specifics here. For some reason, Yahoo! News authors Levine and Fishel are waging a type of blanket ad hominem attack here. Of course, it didn’t stop there:

Lesin “led the Kremlin’s efforts to censor Russia’s independent television outlets,” one U.S. lawmaker charged last year.

Lesin had “acquired multi-million dollar assets” in Europe and the United States “during his tenure as a civil servant,” including multiple residences in Los Angeles worth $28 million.

“That a Russian public servant could have amassed the considerable funds required to acquire and maintain these assets in Europe and the United States raises serious questions,” Wicker wrote.

It’s unclear if the FBI ever begun a probe.

The last statement is extremely off. “It’s unclear if the FBI ever begun a probe,“… what kind of a leading statement is this exactly? Not a journalistic one.

This is yet another example of a western media outlet shamelessly using a tragedy, in this case someone’s death, in order to score cheap political or propaganda points. Disgraced French magazine Charlie Hebdo tried something similar (albeit much worse) this week when making fun of the 227 dead Russian airplane victims in a series of “cartoons”.

Levine and Fishel also took the opportunity to take a subtle dig at Russia Today (RT):

“Russia Today, the English-language news network backed by the Russian government.”

Notice the phrase “backed by the Russian government”, as if to insinuate that the Russian government is a nefarious entity in this case, instead of referring to it as what it really is – a partly state-funded media outlet.

It’s as if the Pentagon or the CIA authored this story and handed to Levine and Fishel for publication.

The fact that the US media are so quick to try and demonize the victim should raise serious red flags in this case. It’s as if the public relations operation is being managed by an external party – otherwise there would be no reason to rush to slander a dead man.

This is US propaganda at its worst, but sadly, it’s something we’ve come to expect over the last 24 months.

In early November, while celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk  proclaimed that “the Ukrainian army has been fighting and winning for 20 months.” This was a startling announcement for the head of a government which has lost pretty much everything that it is possible to lose due to lack of professionalism and stupidity.

Taking a look at the dry figures – the armed forces of Ukraine currently consist of 188,000 troops. Over the past year the number of generals has risen by 60% – from 121 in 2014 to 201 in September of 2015. In other words, the Ukrainian army now has one general for every 935 soldiers. What tangible successes have we seen from this intellectual machine that grows more bloated each month?

During the conflict in the Donbass, Ukraine lost about 24,000 soldiers in combat operations, almost 54,000 were wounded, and over 9,000 have gone missing. Deaths from non-combat-related fatalities totaled 1,309, including 873 suicides.

Over 3,000 pieces of basic military equipment were utterly destroyed, and another 2,000 items were seized by the armed forces of Novorossia as spoils of war. Destroyed were 929 battle tanks of various types, 887 AFVs, 238 BM-21 Grad multiple-rocket launchers, 836 vehicles, 21 military jets, 32 helicopters, and 46 UAVs.

A total of 2,500 soldiers were taken prisoner during the fighting, most of whom were later turned over to relatives or exchanged. But the hostilities did not always progress in such a way as to justify such examples of panic and surrender. For example, in August 2014 near the city of Ilovaisk, the commander of the southern operational command unit, Lt. Gen. Ruslan Khomchak, ordered his troops to break through the fortified positions held by the rebels, while personally escaping the area in the opposite direction. The general even abandoned his personal driver, who had been wounded. Nearly a thousand Ukrainian soldiers died that day.

Burnt Ukrainian battle tank near Kransyi Luch, Lugansk region, August 2014

It was no surprise that Major General Viktor Nazarov, who was at the time the Chief of Staff of the Anti-Terror Operation (ATO), claimed that mass desertions began taking place soon thereafter. The military prosecutor’s office of Ukraine has launched an official investigation into 16,000 cases of desertion from the “zone of the ATO,” as well as 6,000 cases of failure to follow orders (the majority are against officers who refused to carry out suicidal orders and tried to pull their troops out of these “cauldrons” – or areas where they were encircled by enemy forces – in order to minimize casualties). In the end, about 7,000 criminal cases were opened against men who were eligible for the draft but evaded their mobilization orders.

The celebrated 24th Mechanized Brigade, created in the city of Yavoriv in Western Ukraine (now home to NATO instructors and trainers), was on the verge of disbandment after repeatedly being trapped in tactical encirclements in the East and suffering heavy losses.

Corruption, theft, and a lack of supplies are just the cherry on the sundae of the Ukrainian army’s self-destruction. Four million hryvnia ($160,000) was embezzled by just a single head of financial services within the Ukrainian armed forces, Major Andrey Kvirel, which he took from the soldiers’ military pay. This amount was enough to have supported an entire regiment in the “Anti-Terror Zone” for four months.

Finally, Ukraine has virtually no air force or navy, and billions of hryvnia have been pumped into the construction of meaningless fortifications on the Russian border.

If this is what Prime Minister Yatsenyuk calls “victories,” then what would he consider a military fiasco?

Last week, Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper reported that Tony Blair had finally apologized for the Iraq war. This week it claimed that ministers in the Blair government ordered that a written legal opinion that the war was illegal be burned.

With controversy raging over the endlessly delayed Chilcot report on the Iraq war, pressure on the former British prime minister is relentless. But the Mail got ahead of itself in proclaiming that Blair had apologized. In an interview with the US television channel CNN, he acknowledged that the rise of Daesh may not be unconnected with the war but came nowhere near to admitting that British intervention in Iraq was a terrible mistake for which he was to blame.

Cynics assumed that, with an announcement imminent about the publication date of the Chilcot report, Blair was anxious to pre-empt leaked indications that it underlined his culpability. However, the inquiry’s chairman, Sir John Chilcot has now confirmed that his report, already six years late, will not appear until the summer of 2016. For the moment, the only thing known about the report is that it is of prodigious proportions.

The truth is that Blair cannot bear to go unnoticed. Though narcissism is scarcely unusual among politicians, Blair’s appetite for self-exposure long ago signaled that his own brand of it is extreme. Characteristically, narcissists are fantasists who live in a world of their own. What is extraordinary in Blair’s case is that he persuaded the Labour Party and a large swathe of the British public to share his fantasy — with woeful consequences when it came to foreign policy.

Under Blair, the Labour Party made a fetish of PR and spin. In concert with his director of communications, Alastair Campbell, whose appetite for publicity rivals his own, Blair became obsessed with “micro-managing” the news, with controlling the media “narrative.” The narrative on Iraq projected him as a messiah with a mission to rid the world of a tyrant who was oppressing his own people dictator and threatening the west with weapons of mass destruction. Blair still speaks as though he personally toppled Saddam Hussein.

In a BBC radio program on the Chilcot inquiry, the journalist Peter Oborne highlighted how Blair bent the truth. The former United Nations’ weapons inspector, Hans Blix, explained how Blair transformed the uncertainties in his report on Iraq’s WMD into absolute certainties. A veteran diplomat, Blix stopped short of saying that Blair lied but had no hesitation in saying that his findings were systematically misrepresented. Another contributor to the program, Sir Stephen Wall, Blair’s European Union special adviser, recalled how the Blair government twisted the words of French President Jacques Chirac, briefing that France would not support military action in Iraq in any circumstances when Chirac had in fact declined to back it on the basis of the existing evidence. While making no reference to orders to incinerate awkward documents, Wall also remembered how Blair’s Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, faced intense pressure to alter his original determination that military intervention was illegal.

Peter Oborne pointed out that no audit on Blair and Iraq could ignore the verdict of Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former director of British internal intelligence, M15, that the war produced the opposite effect to the one promised by Blair. Instead of lessening the terrorist threat to the UK, it greatly exacerbated it, obliging the security services to seek a massive expansion in their resources.

Yet the British preoccupation with Blair’s betrayal of public trust can smack of national narcissism, a wider detachment from reality. After all, if Blair owes his own people an apology, what of the apology he owes to the people of Iraq — not to mention to the Palestinians, whose friend he affected to be in his fruitless latter-day incarnation as the West’s Middle East Peace Envoy? Moreover, what does it say about a country capable of re-electing such a politician in the face of mounting evidence that he had manipulated the British parliament into endorsing a calamitous war of dubious legality? Blair may have much to answer for, but so too, perhaps, does the nation that for 10 years placed its destiny in his suspect hands.

(Please read Part I before this article)

The Central Balkans

Description:

This bloc of interests is still taking shape, but unlike the others that have been mentioned, it’s actually opposed to the Intermarum’s geopolitical dictates and can be understood as being the multipolar world’s frontline defense organization. The Central Balkans are geographically centered on Serbia but also include Republika Srpska, Macedonia, and possibly even Montenegro in the cultural-political sense if the citizens of Podgorica succeed in keeping their country out of NATO. The grouping of states might not have ‘naturally’ begun to form had it not been for the majority of their citizens’ shared fear of NATO and unipolar occupation. The New Cold War has finally given the region a viable and presentable alternative to Euro-Atlanticism through a rejuvenated Russia that’s eager to expand its strategic partnerships, especially in areas of similar civilizational experience like the Central Balkans.

Military-Political Threat Analysis:

The Central Balkans, if they can succeed in strategically reintegrating under Russian support, could become an influential geopolitical force in Europe, but alas, it would come with certain predestined geopolitical enemies. First of all, this would be St. Stephen’s Space, and the tension between the two rival groups is already playing out over the refugee crisis. Hungary has fenced off Serbia, with Croatia planning to follow its former imperial hegemon in the near future, the effect of which is to pursue a coordinated anti-Serbian policy along the country’s northern border. Taking it a step further, Hungary, especially under a Vona Presidency, could become wildly assertive in promoting what it says to be the interests of its ethnic diaspora, which in this instance would be a Budapest-driven demand for autonomy in Vojvodina. Croatia could also use the influence it has over certain political forces in Sarajevo to agitate for a revision of the Dayton Accords in order to raise tensions with Republika Srpska right around the same time, in yet another coordinated attempt of Budapest-Zagreb to throw the Central Balkans off balance.

Looking eastward, the Black Sea Bloc isn’t expected to jump into the fray, but it could take certain moves to increase border tensions against Serbia and Macedonia. This is very probable in the case of Bulgaria, which as previously explained, has staked a large part of its political and cultural identity on de-facto irredentism against Macedonia. What is most troubling from the southern sector, however, isn’t Bulgaria (as threatening as it may become), but Albania, since its transnational ethnic community in the occupied Serbian Province of Kosovo and Northwestern Macedonia can be activated to assist in asymmetrical warfare operations against the Central Balkans. Furthermore, this bloc is remarkably vulnerable to attacks by any dissatisfied “stay-behind” ‘refugees’ that might get armed by the KLA or any other yet-to-be-named Albanian-affiliated terrorist organizations. Another threat comes from the Color Revolution that the US is planning in Macedonia, and if Serbia continues with its pro-Russian orientation, then it will also be victimized yet again as well. All of these factors combine to make the Central Balkans the most destabilization-prone region in Europe, and it’s all due to the US and its proxy allies’ connivances against it in trying to exterminate the last vestiges of multipolarity on the continent.

“The Best Laid Schemes Of Mice And Men”

As the saying goes, “the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry”, and the Intermarum is no exception in this regard. Aside from any unpredictable results that a possible Balkan War might bring in offsetting the utility and cohesiveness of the Intermarum as an anti-Russian geopolitical instrument, there are three other possible scenarios that could play out as well, and they’re all related to the space’s “squeaky hinges”:

Squeaky Hinges:

There are three geopolitical ‘hinges’ in the Intermarum that might not ‘behave’ as they are expected to, which could create some unforetold problems for the foreign decision makers tasked with bringing them to heel. To start off, this geopolitical category is composed of states that aren’t pivots in their own right, but whose movement one way or another has a significant impact on the nearby pivot state. Using this understanding, one can see that the concept isn’t limited to the Intermarum, but for the sake of the article’s scope, it’s being limited to that space. The three hinges under study are Lithuania, Slovakia, and Moldova, and their unpredictable precisely because there’s no guarantee that they’ll accept being placed in a position of servitude vis-à-vis their envisioned geopolitical ‘master’.

Lithuania:

This country is unusually proud of its history and has recently experienced a tidal wave of uncontrollable nationalism that’s been directed against Russia. However, as with all manner of nationalisms in Eastern Europe, it has the chance of overstepping its ‘useful’ anti-Russian function and moving in an ‘unwanted’ direction that runs contrary to American geopolitical designs. Just as some Ukrainians’ hate for Russia has revived a near-equal hate for Poles, so too could a similar effect take place in Lithuania, which was humiliated for centuries as a junior partner to Poland. The relatively fresh memories of Poland’s interwar aggression against Lithuania can easily be unearthed, especially as Warsaw tries to impose its hegemony on Vilnius once more.

If Lithuania balks and begins to suspect Poland of the same type of “imperialism” that it hyperactively accuses Russia of, then it could find itself creating a chain reaction of two-sided paranoia in the entire Baltic chain that could turn against the Viking Bloc and Neo-Commonwealth. It doesn’t mean that this space would be any closer to Russia, but it would obstruct the functioning of these two blocs and create unexpected difficulties that could give rise to new, unpredictable challenges in the strategic environment. These would of course play against the expectations of the US and represent a sort of backtracking in its previously unquestioned dominance over the region. It could also by extent make it harder for Sweden to pursue its neo-imperialist agenda in the Baltics, too (which in any case would have been on the US’ strategic behalf anyway).

Slovakia:

Bratislava had passed centuries under Hungarian control, thus leading to a post-independence suspicion of its former hegemon, especially since a vocal Hungarian minority still populates the southern part of the country. As Hungary becomes more demanding in promoting the perceived (or Budapest-manipulated) interests of its ethnic diaspora, it’s a sure bet that Hungarians in Slovakia will be brought into the mix in some shape or form. This is bound to send alarm bells ringing all throughout Bratislava, as many Slovakians had suspected this type of scenario for years and would immediately become reactionary to any Hungarian advances in this direction. Still, like what was written before, if pressed to choose between an emboldened Poland and an emboldened Hungary, Slovakia might find itself overly pressured to side with the “devil it knows” in Budapest than an unfamiliar one in Warsaw.

But then again, as was also written about earlier, the Visegrad Group could function as a type of forerunner to external hegemony over Slovakia’s affairs, and it could theoretically provide Poland with just as much opportunity to dominate Slovakia as it does Hungary. In fact, Slovakia might even find Poland to more preferential to Hungary, especially given the fears that ethnic Slovaks have of Hungarian successionism or some type of ethnic-related disturbance. This might of course engender exactly that type of (re)action from Hungary – support of ethnic-related destabilization in Slovakia – in order to advance its nationalist agenda, feeling equally as emboldened as Poland is, and also aiming to augment its influence over the Carpathian state. If a type of hegemonic rivalry between Poland and Hungary breaks out over Slovakia, then it could turn the two ‘bloc buddies’ against each other and create such an atmosphere of distrust that strategic coordination between them is all but impossible.

Moldova:

The government in Chisinau is inherently unstable, having been unable to hold itself together and function anywhere near as similarly to its Western European counterparts. This makes it highly unpredictable and easily susceptible to foreign interference over its affairs, which depending on the administration in charge, readily accepts and even encourages in some cases. The crux of conflict here and the reason the country is such a ‘squeaky hinge’ is because there is a fair chance that the population could put a Russian-pragmatic government into power that might make moves to judiciously resolve the Transnistria issue. Of course, what’s meant by this is a fair and even settlement unlike anything that the West would ever find acceptable (to them outright domination is the only answer), and of course, Romania would in this scenario find a way to harness its sympathetic followers in Moldova to agitate for political integration with Bucharest. This forecast isn’t unique by any measures, but because of its importance in the context of the Intermarum and the likelihood that it could precipitate a crisis that Romania itself may not have been ready for (but pushed into creating or responding to by the West), it deserves to be mentioned when speaking about unexpected incidents that could offset the cohesiveness of the Intermarum space.

Concluding Thoughts

The US is taking the New Cold War directly to Russia’s doorstep, literally, and the pursuit of the Intermarum is a direct case in point. Poland’s latest elections have placed the ultra-pro-American governing party in a position to rubber stamp all of the ‘Gray Cardinal’ Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s proposals for creating the Neo-Commonwealth. This key cornerstone of the Intermarum’s division into regional NATO blocs will go a long way towards furthering the US’ grand strategy of keep Europe divided, in this case between a pro-American East and a possibly Russian-pragmatic West, which would thus extend Washington’s control over the continent into the foreseeable future. The contours of the Intermarium reflect historical boundaries between the former European empires, with the only exception being the Central Balkans, which is an entirely new idea that incorporates the most strategic remnants of the former Yugoslavia. As the Intermarum speeds along in its formation, it might run into three unexpected challenges through the ‘squeaky hinges’ of Lithuania, Slovakia, and Moldova, which could lead to the bloc struggling to maintain its cohesiveness as its members are distracted by certain geopolitical diversions in their regions. As an overall assessment of the processes that are currently taking shape in Europe, it’s clear that strategic blocs are being formed on a regional basis, but due to the tense atmosphere that they create (especially as regards the Intermarum’s likely aggression against the Central Balkans), the durability of peace in Europe has never been more fragile.

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentaror currently working for the Sputnik agency, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW.

People should know my life was edited and contrived.

Essena O’Neill

The vacuity of television, it has been said, says nothing about it as a medium and everything about its users. “Television,” claimed Malcolm Muggeridge, “was not invented to make human beings vacuous, but is an emanation of their vacuity.” The mechanism may draw you in, but the hollowness was there to begin with.

Social media platforms enable a continuing, virtual paradise of exhibitionism. While Twitter may well be a vehicle for revolution, the bane of governments, there is very little to assume that it cannot be, equally, a weapon for deception, a playground for hoaxers. Instagram, with its candy, pictorial dimension, is similarly riddled with mendacity and sweet bits for those who wish to believe what they want to.

The posting of banal videos featuring pets on such platforms as YouTube; the uploading of curiosities and fragments of the insignificant life simply suggest the allure of the prosaic. It transforms an 18-year-old like Essena O’Neill of no obvious qualities other than youthful good looks into a subject with 600 thousand followers. That some of the pictures are racy, with figure hugging dresses and bikinis, suggests a range of forces at work: the hungry male gaze, and the seductive look. Equally, it involves the gaze of emulation and envy.

There is absolutely nothing this young lady has told us other than promoting an insecurity that, for all we know, might itself be a fabrication. She claimed, as they all do, that she “fell in love with this idea that I could be of value to other people.” After all, in the manner of the Epimenides paradox, if all Cretans are liars, how do we know the Cretan who claims not to be lying is telling the truth?

O’Neill certainly wishes us to now heed another professed truth – her unhappiness. “Yeah 16-year old Essena would have been like ‘WTF girl you have the dream life’. So why did I feel so lost, lonely and miserable?” It was, she concluded, all an addiction, one that was fed by a readily available form of technology. “I believed how many likes and followers I had correlated to how any people liked me.”

A closer look at the entire world of Internet-speak, where images and views are posted with a certain manic lack of discrimination, should invite scepticism. Yelp uses a filtering system that leaves out reviews about businesses that might be biased. Discussion forums reek of political manipulation and insincerity. Trolls roam with slanderous claims masquerading as fact. Entire Facebook profiles suggest a good degree of manipulation. And Twitter profiles have been created to give the impression of revolutionary or troubled authenticity, when the individual may have never left his town, let alone country.[1]

The O’Neill response is therefore caught in a nightmarish maze. Every emotion she expresses via such forums can, to that end, be deemed faked, constructed, and calculated. The money is doing the talking; the LA modelling scene is coming through.

In a fit of re-editing and deletions of her Instagram account, O’Neill has attempted to revise a past that cannot be forgotten, effectively re-staging what was itself staged. “Candid” bikini shots, she admitted, were agonisingly planned; pictures supposedly taken before nature’s wishes were sponsored; “hot body” shots concealed an unhealthy diet and sucked in tum; hours were expended getting the “perfect selfie”, concealing acne. “Happiness based on aesthetics will suffocate your potential here on earth.”

Tears can sell, and soulful pleas posted on the very format one despises can have the same effect as an endorsement for it. Her weepy video, sans makeup, seemed like a counterpoint, meditations on a wicked world, when it was merely an affirmation.[2]  One uses the very medium one is abandoning. A more plausible departure entailing total, monk-like abnegation and dismissal might have been more plausible. Instagram and Facebook, get on your bike!

No such luck with O’Neill. Whatever she was advised to do and whoever her sages are, the entire effort cannot look anything but a replication of its own emptiness. She had been offered various sums to wear dresses, outfits, and brand labels. She launched a modelling career in Los Angeles. And of course, she was going to offer everybody advice, on following her new site, how to accomplish their own Vedic cleansing of social media seductiveness. Only true sinners would understand.

Other bloggers have certainly regarded O’Neill’s gesture as uncreditable. It is a publicity stunt that also eschews publicity. In bouts of true playground bitchiness, YouTube “bloggers” such as Nina and Randa Nelson have decided they know what O’Neill was really up to. She left the world of Instagram, they claim, because her boyfriend left her. This entailed a “promotional stunt”, in short, a hoax.[3] Once in the system of such use, you can never extricate yourself.

This entire affair has been deemed one of exploitation. Certainly, if one understands that with such media, forces are complimentary. The users are also the used. The publicist from nowhere privileges a particular platform that venerates such publicity. But this is the golden goose which, if killed, reveals no gold inside.

In that sense, there is no “dark side” to the matter. It is simply a deception practiced on those who collude with it, one that consumes all its agents. It may well be disingenuous for O’Neill to have publicised her fakery in order to then proceed to advertise ways of avoiding such fakery. But she has acted as seducer and the seduced. The voice of the inauthentic sells, even when one is trying to avoid it.

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

Notes

[1]http://www.salon.com/2015/07/23/a_gay_girl_in_damascus_behind_the_twisted_tale_of_a_blogger_who_catfished_the_whole_world/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1Qyks8QEM

[3] http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/news/a48797/essena-oneill-friends-nina-randa-call-her-out/

On Thursday French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo published another insulting cartoon on the tragic incident of Russian plane crash in Sinai, Egypt. Charlie Hebdo ridiculed the plane crash by two cartoons. The first cartoon shows parts of the aircraft and a passenger falling toward the ground, while an Islamic State militant, armed with a gun, ducks for cover to avoid the falling debris. Underneath the caricature is the caption: “Daesh: Russia’s aviation intensifies its bombardments.” And the second cartoon showed a skull and a destroyed plane on the ground, with the caption: “The dangers of low-cost Russia. I should have taken Air Cocaine.””

From the very beginning, Charlie Hebdo has been intentionally injecting inhumane hatred in traditional societies worldwide. It published cartoons of Prophet Mohammad (PUBH) who has a follower of more than 1.5 billion, to pump up religious hatred worldwide.  It published a cartoon after the discovery of plane wreckage confirmed to belong to missing Malaysian Airline flight MH370. The cover of the edition showed a pair of hands groping what appeared to be at first glance coconuts, but was actually a pair of breasts. And the caption says, “We’ve found a bit of the pilot and the air hostess,” as two onlookers celebrate in the background.

Another publication mocked the drowning of Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi who died during a perilous journey across the Mediterranean to try and reach Europe along with his family. The poster showed Jesus walking on water with the dead Muslim boy next to him. And the caption said, “Welcome migrants, you are so close to the goal.” There was another cartoon with captioned “Christians walk on water… Muslims kids sink,” They kept their unacceptable offensive satirical reporting despite the global wave of empathy after their office suffered a deadly terrorist attack in January 2015.

Charlie Hebdo never criticizes liberalism or liberal ideologies. It works irresponsibly as a tool for the liberals. It attacks recklessly any kind of anti-liberal, anti-western establishments. On the other hand, on the disguise of liberalism or freedom or freedom of expression they are being used as a tool of social-psycho oppression for the West. The Western geopolitical aims to destroy the organic social harmony and install puppet governments in resilient states, are very aligned to the Charlie Hebdo’s editorial policy.

So Charlie Hebdo is a direct threat to traditional cultures and lifestyles. It is a hate-machine! It is a Western tool to promote psychopathic hatred among different racial and cultural groups in the name of “freedom of expression” to serve geopolitical purposes of theirmasters.

Ahmed Rajeev is the Executive Editor of Bangla Hunters News web-site.

Presidential succession struggles continue in many nations on the African continent, including the vastly resource rich Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and its neighbors to both the east and west. The succession struggles in the DRC’s neighbors are important to the DRC as well, because so many of its neighbors, most of all Rwanda and Uganda, have invaded DRC, leaving millions dead and plundering its resources during the past two decades. President Obama and the U.S. State Department, however, express far more concern with the presidential succession struggle in Burundi than with those in Uganda and Rwanda, or in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo itself. President Obama has even excluded Burundi fromt the African Growth and Opportunity Act trade agreement.

Reuters reports that the ruling party led by President Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo says that elections must be delayed up to four years until a national census and revision of the voter rolls can be completed. Dozens of Congolese have been killed or imprisoned for protesting against Kabila’s attempt to cling to power.In the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s neighbor to the west, a referendum that would allow President Sassou Nguesso to stand for a third term passed this week with a voter turnout that Reuters described as a trickle in the country’s capital, after the opposition encouraged a boycott of the polls. The Republic of Congo’s opposition also held a commemoration for the 17 people they say were killed during national demonstrations earlier this month; President Nguesso’s party says that only four were killed.

In Uganda, one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s neighbors to the east, President Yoweri Museveni doesn’t need to overcome term limits because Uganda’s Parliament abolished them in 2005. He has already announced that he will run again in 2016, his 30th year in power. Museveni’s Parliament has also passed a “Public Order Management Bill,” which makes it illegal for more than three people to lawfully assemble in public.

Earlier this week in Rwanda, another of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s neighbors to the east, the lower house of Parliament unanimously passed a constitutional amendment that would allow President Kagame to remain in office until the year 2034. No one reports any opposition expected in the upper house or the succeeding public referendum.

Rwandan American attorney Charles Kambanda writes that the constitutional amendment makes extraordinary provisions to enable Kagame alone to hang on to power and making him far more than equal to other Rwandan citizens before the law. Kambanda also says that this is not an “amendment to the constitution,” but a constitutional coup.

In Burundi, Rwanda’s neighbor and another of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s neighbors to the east, President Nkurunziza claimed the right to be elected twice by universal suffrage and won the election, as Rwanda’s President Kagame did in 2010 and DR Congo’s President Kabila did in 2011. Nkurunziza’s right to run again was confirmed by Burundi’s highest court.

After a failed May coup attempt in Burundi, the coup plotters took up arms against the government. Violence has continued in the capital Bujumbura, with police, government officials, protestors and opposition leaders all suffering casualties reportedly totalling as high as 200. Burundian officials accused Rwanda of backing the coup plotters after clashes on the Rwandan Burundian border.

Neither President Obama nor the U.S. State Department protested Kagame or Kabila’s second election by universal suffrage, but both have adamantly protested Nkurunziza’s. The Black Star News asked the U.S. State Department to comment on the constitutional amendment that will allow Kagame to serve until the year 2034. State’s press office promised a response as yet unreceived, but, in response to past inquiries, State has gone on record in opposition to another term for Kagame.

Kennedy Gihanna, a Rwandan lawyer living in exile in South Africa, told the South African Broadcasting Corporation that the constitutional amendment will be a catastrophe for Rwandans.  “It is a catastrophe for Rwanda … it was after genocide … we lost almost 1 million people, and we came out and had this beautiful constitution, even though it has been changed many times. But that provision, Section 101, which prohibits a person to have more than two terms as president.…  When you look back on that provision, you see that under no circumstances a person can hold the office of president more than two terms. Now, he has removed that term by calling a referendum to remove it. The referendum is against the constitution, so he has overthrown the constitution.”

Many Congolese say that another term for Kagame could be catastrophic for them as well.

This text was originally published in 2008

As Baroness Helena Kennedy QC explained in her Remembrance Day lecture, the 2003 Iraq war was illegal. There were no grounds for a claim of self-defence or humanitarian intervention; regime change has no basis in international law; and the argument that the authority to use force conferred by a previous Security Council resolution had been revived by Iraq’s material breach of its disarmament obligations was described by Lord Steyn as ‘scraping the bottom of the legal barrel’.¹

So why can’t the former Prime Minister and others be prosecuted for the crime of aggression? After all, in his advice on 7 March 2003, the Attorney General envisaged an attempted prosecution for what the Nuremberg Tribunal described as the supreme international crime. He wrote: ‘Aggression is a crime under customary international law which automatically forms part of domestic law. It might therefore be argued that international aggression is a crime recognised by the common law which can be prosecuted in the UK courts.’²

The crime’s existence in customary international law was recognised by the House of Lords in R v Jones and others.³ With reference to Article 5 of the Rome Statute, which states that the International Criminal Court cannot exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression until a provision has been adopted defining it and setting out the conditions for exercising jurisdiction, the Crown argued that the crime lacked the certainty of definition required of any criminal offence, particularly a crime of such gravity. But Lord Bingham accepted the appellants’ proposition that, since 1945 at least, the core elements of the crime had been understood with sufficient clarity to permit the trial of persons accused of committing it. He said: ‘It is unhistorical to suppose that the elements of the crime were clear in 1945 but have since become in any way obscure.’⁴

While Lord Bingham accepted that a crime recognised in customary international law may be assimilated into our criminal law, however, he held that in the absence of statutory incorporation the crime of aggression is not a crime in English law. Today, he said, the courts have no power to create new criminal offences and when domestic effect is to be given to crimes in customary international law, the practice is to legislate.⁵ This reflects an important democratic principle: ‘it is for those representing the people of the country in Parliament, not the executive and not the judges, to decide what conduct should be treated as lying so far outside the bounds of what is acceptable in our society as to attract criminal penalties.’

There were compelling reasons for not departing from that principle: ‘A charge of aggression would involve determination of an individual’s responsibility as a leader but would presuppose commission of the crime by his own State or another State. Thus, resolution of the charge would (unless the issue had been decided by the Security Council or some other third party) require a decision on the culpability in going to war of Her Majesty’s Government or a foreign government, or perhaps both if the states had gone to war as allies. But there are well-established rules that the courts will be very slow to review the exercise of prerogative powers in relation to the conduct of foreign affairs and the deployment of the armed services, and very slow to adjudicate upon rights arising out of transactions entered into between sovereign states on the plane of international law.’⁶

The House of Lords certainly got the right answer from an international law perspective. There is no doubt that the crime of aggression exists in customary international law. Were they also correct from a constitutional law and a human rights perspective? One cannot argue with the proposition that new criminal offences are for Parliament alone to establish. But is the crime of aggression a ‘new’ criminal offence? It is not as though their Lordships were being asked to create or recognise a brand new crime. Lord Bingham accepted that the crime of aggression has existed since at least 1945.

As for human rights, some people might argue that the crime of aggression is not defined with sufficient certainty to pass the test used by the European Court of Human Rights when considering whether something is ‘law’. That term has a qualitative dimension implying accessibility and forseeability. In particular, it must be possible to ascertain where the limits of acceptable behaviour are so that those affected can regulate their conduct. At the time of the Iraq invasion, was the crime of aggression – a leadership crime – defined clearly enough for a State’s leaders to regulate their conduct? Their Lordships thought so as far as customary international law is concerned, but that did not obviate the need for statutory authority on the domestic front. So we are where we are: the crime of aggression does not yet exist in English law, unfortunately, and therefore no one can be prosecuted for it in our courts, however flagrant the violation.

Nick Grief is the Steele Raymond LLP Professor of Law at Bournemouth University and an associate tenant at Doughty Street Chambers

Notes:

1 The Times, October 19, 2005.

2 Para 34 of the AG’s advice.

3 (2006) UKHL 16. The case raised the question whether the crime of aggression is a ‘crime’ for the purpose of s 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 or an

‘offence’ within the meaning of s 68(2) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

4 Ibid. para 19.

5 See e.g. sections 51 and 52 of the International Criminal Court Act 2001. Lord Bingham observed that the crime of aggression had obviously been

deliberately excluded from the Act.

6 Jones, loc sit, paras 29-30

Image: Professor James Petras

Incumbent politicians and parties, both center-left and right, have suffered serious defeats in recent elections. The principal beneficiary has been the extreme right. Nowhere did the ‘consequential left’ register a victory, although in a few instances it marginally increased its vote. The one major exception has been Turkey, where the incumbent Erdogan regime scored a ‘victory’ on November 1, 2015 by resorting to widespread violence during the general election campaign to intimidate and silence his opposition after having suffered a sharp (and surprise) defeat five months earlier in June 2015 when secular civil groups, leftists and Kurdish linked parties upset Erdogan’S parliamentary majority.

During the recent campaign, Erdogan resumed bombing of Kurdish regions, both inside Turkey and across the border in Syria and Iraq. He shut down opposition newspapers and TV stations, and imprisoned hundreds of secular, leftist activists. Scores of opposition party regional offices were firebombed and wrecked. Most ominously, Erdogan and Turkish intelligence operatives have been implicated in the horrific massacre of scores of opposition peace marchers, leftists, trade unionists and Kurdish political party activists in the capital Ankara on October 10 and elsewhere. In other words, Erdogan prevented the electoral decline of his incumbent right-wing regime through terror, purges and mob violence. Washington and the EU promptly congratulated the Erdogan regime for its blood-stained ‘victory’.

This essay will address the reasons why incumbents lost worldwide. We will examine social policies, economic crises, personalities, corruption scandals, commodity cycles and growing class inequalities – and a combination of all of the above.

Secondly, we will discuss why the alternatives oscillate between the ‘center-left’ and the hard right and not the ‘consequential left (for lack of a better term)’ – the CL.

Thirdly, we will explore the historical and external and internal contemporary factors limiting the CL’s growth, and why the Left does not attract the mass of voters as an alternative to the Right and Center-left.

Center-Left and Right Incumbents in Retreat

This year, center-left and rightwing incumbents have suffered major defeats in elections in Poland, Canada, Portugal, Ukraine, Turkey, Spain, Colombia, Argentina and France. According to reliable polls, incumbent regimes in Venezuela and Brazil are expected to suffer serious losses in coming elections.

Moreover, center-left incumbents in Bolivia, Ecuador, Greece and El Salvador have secured their re-election by shifting to the right. For example, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales asked the Financial Times to organize a meeting on Wall Street inviting the CEO’S from 130 of the biggest multi-nationals. In this imperial ‘love-fest’, Evo offered every kind of economic inducement imaginable – outperforming the most openly neo-liberal client rulers. Across the ‘pond’, Greek Prime Minister Tsipras turned over his nation’s sovereignty to the financiers of the European Union, promising to ‘privatize’ $50 billion worth of valuable public assets, while cutting salaries and pensions and ending state subsidies for family farmers.

Why Do Incumbents Lose?

What is striking about the near universal defeat of center-left and rightwing incumbents across the political spectrum is the fact that their regimes have identical policies which have worsened inequalities, reversed 70 years of social welfare legislation, concentrated wealth and imposed regressive class-based “austerity” on their populations.

Having weakened trade unions and undermined collective action, wage and salaried workers can only protest by voting out the incumbents. However, as class-based struggles decline, so does class-consciousness. As a result, ‘alternatives’, which are only minimally different from the incumbents, are elected.

Voters have another option: abstention from the polls. Voter turnout has plummeted. The uncounted ‘none of the above’ vote has increased significantly across the globe with few political consequences.

Impoverishment and growing popular discontent is exacerbated by the worldeconomic crisis, the sharp decline in commodity prices (especially in agro-mineral export countries) and the regressive fiscal policies and cutbacks adopted by incumbents.

Most workers, especially those employed in the more vulnerable private sectors, are rarely organized or politically conscious. The loss of stable wage employment results in the growth of self-employment (street vendors, domestic servants and private contractors) and the loss of collective organizations.  This makes them especially prone to the appeal of clientelistic politics from the right and center-left.

Moreover, EU dominance of its ‘vassal-members’ has awakened ‘nationalist’political consciousness rather than class-consciousness, with the result that the alternative to neo-liberal regimes is increasingly the hard nationalist-paternalistic right.

The paradox is that, the worse the capitalist crisis grows, the weaker the collective response from working class organizations and the more severe the austerity measures imposed by international financial-capital, the more likely the hard nationalist right will emerge as the principle alternative.

Intensification and Spread of Class Struggle… from Above: ‘Austerity’

The reason for the growth of the hard right is clear: ‘Austerity’ , a misnomer on all counts. First and foremost, the primary purpose of ‘austerity’ is to advance bourgeoisclass warfare in every sense of the word. Regressive economic policies grew out of a series of successful legislation designed to dismantle the legal and organizational institutions of the working class (portrayed as ‘flexibility’ and ‘labor reforms’). ‘Austerity’, the next phase in class warfare, encompasses far more than regressive socio-economic policies. It involves wholesale changes facilitating (1) capitalist firing of workers arbitrarily; (2) drastic changes in labor contracts including multi-tiered wages and the replacement of long-term employees with short-term contingent workers, (3)elimination of severance pay; (4) the power to ‘fire on the spot’; (5) and rotating employment.

‘Austerity’ measures are designed to undermine collective organization and encourage divisive competition among workers for jobs and scarce benefits.

Austerity leads to the replacement of senior, stable, class-experienced workers in favor of young vulnerable workers, refugees, and immigrants who are willing to work long hours, for lower pay with fewer benefits, while tolerating outright theft of their wages and other illegal practices.

The class warfare provisions accompanying ‘austerity’ are the essential political foundations for implementing these regressive socio-economic measures.

Since both center-left and rightwing regimes impose austerity policies, the working class, which has been weakened, threatened and fragmented, lacks a political basis for launching a class-wide offensive. Instead we find occasional instances of localdirect action and, more rarely, national one-day protests.

Why the Consequential Left is Not an Alternative

The defeat and decay of incumbent regimes of both the neo-liberal right and center-left should have benefited the ‘consequential left’ (CL) — by which we meanpolitical leaders and parties, which have been consistently opposed to capitalism and imperialism in all of its forms and structures.

That has not happened for several obvious reasons, which need to be examined in some detail. First of all, the CL has given ‘critical support’ to the center-left in various campaigns and, in the process, surrendered its identity, restrained the class struggle and, in some cases, even accepted ‘decorative’ positions (like ‘Secretary for Cultural Affairs’) within center-left regimes.

As a result, the CL provided a left veneer for the center-left regime in power and has not been able to capitalize on its demise in subsequent elections.

Secondly, where the CL managed to retain its independence and engage in frontal attacks on the center-left, it often happened in the context of a center-left regime still enjoying popular credibility based on ‘redistributive’ policies and anti-neo-liberal rhetoric. As a result the CL was not able to attract the mass following that brought the center-left to power.

Thirdly, the CL was badly hit by the regressive socio-economic changes that the rightwing regimes implemented. The loss of trade union rights, the changes in labor contracts and the growth of temporary workers weakened the social base for the CL and undermined its capacity for direct action and class struggle – essential elements in building grassroots organization.

In contrast to the CL, the center-left relies on election appeals to discontented voters and attracts their votes through the political mass media without needing to organize them in any collective movement.

When the incumbent neo-liberal right or center-left regimes fall from power, they leave in place a political, social and economic framework, which inhibits collective organization and struggle.

The neo-liberal right consistently dismantles working class organizations, whereas the ‘hard right’ diverts the working class to nationalist-chauvinist and anti-immigrant consciousness.

Beyond these external factors weakening the CL, there is the problem of the social composition of its leadership, which is ‘top-heavy’ with academics and ‘intellectuals’ – journalists, lawyers and professionals.

These leaders are the most vehement critics of capitalism when they are in opposition, but they are submissive, impotent and incapable of confronting the hard right and the international financial institutions of the neo-liberal right when they occupy positions of power.

Moreover the intellectual left is used to addressing self-generating ‘socialist forums’, writing for small journals produced by and for the same intellectuals, and have no experience in direct face-to-face long-term, large-scale worker education.

Most have engaged, at some point, in student academic struggles – but have episodic or no experience in working class or community organizations. In many cases, their idea of ‘class struggle’ is linking up with the center-left and providing a ‘radical’ rationale, justifying co-habitation between the CL in ‘critical’ opposition and the center-left in power.

Over time the academic left is either absorbed by the center-left or they are marginalized, expelled, or defect when the center-left moves right. The academic left intellectuals, well situated in comfortable life-time academic or institutional appointments, have no direct contact or intimate knowledge or existential awareness of the political explosiveness of unemployed and contract workers, low paid, immigrant and female workers.

If and when the struggle turns militant, with a hard right crackdown, they fashion elaborate ideological justifications for retiring to academia.

Strong academic and professional class representation among the CL ensures itsisolation from mass struggle; perpetuates internal “conversations”, paralyzes direct action and relies on unintelligible ‘narratives’ to insure popular incomprehension and discredit.

The Right Surges; the Left Recedes

In contrast, the hard right has gained mass support by relying on plebian language, direct action, popular nationalism, opposition to oligarchical international organizations and ethno-clerical chauvinism.

The single most important insight, which the hard right exploits, is the fear, loathing and resentment accompanying the real and clearly perceived downward mobility of vast sectors of the working and lower middle class.

Neo-liberalism has not only smashed the trade unions but it has severely torn the social safety net for unorganized workers and employees. The hard right has no truck for trade unions, but is deeply involved in restoring a vision of a ‘safety-net’ via corporatist social organizations involving employer, employees and state social pacts.

The hard right has gained influence by opposing the neo-liberal policies that raised the retirement age, reduced health coverage, undermined job security and block social advancement (blaming these losses on ‘immigrants and minorities’). They blame the neo-liberal immigration policies, which have increased the reserve army of unemployed and underemployed workers.

The hard right responds by launching racist attacks on the immigrants, and not on the capitalists who hire and exploit immigrant workers to increase profits. As multi-national corporations close factories and move to off-shore, cheap labor, low corporate tax sites, the hard right denounces globalization and calls for a national industrial policy. While the trade unions march in protest and shop delegates confront bosses, the far right reaps the electoral votes.

The hard right in France, Poland, Greece, Hungary, Austria and elsewhere has captured the support of discontented workers by attacking the neo-liberal right and center-left. They take advantage of the self-marginalized left. They have pre-empted class polarization by a kind of ersatz ‘nationalist polarization’. Their opposition to the EU, IMF and WTO is directed against the economic dominance of blatant neo-liberalismnot capitalism, against the European Union, but not against US-dominated NATO militarism (which has exacerbated the flood of refugees and migrants).

The decline of the center-left throughout Latin America, namely in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador, is partly due to the corruption of high officials, which alienates the middle class as well as high inflation and unemployment, which erode living standards of the non-unionized majority of workers and informal sector self-employed. The center-left’s embrace of an agro-mineral export strategy and its recent collapse with the ‘end of the commodity boom’, has provoked mass discontent. State concessions to extractive capital (including the shredding of environmental protections laws) have alienated progressives, ecologists and indigenous communities. The neo-liberal right, in opposition, has gained the mass anti-incumbent vote by denouncing and mass organizing against corruption and by disguising their regressive socio-economic agenda.

The neo-liberal right has capitalized on the pervasive corruption among top center-left politicians in Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela to win back the middle class. Its promise to reduce inflation wins popular support. Its free market and pro-imperialist policies attract large-scale financial and media backing.

The consequential left, marginalized or embedded within the center-left regimes, is discredited. When it joins the attacks on the center-left, the right is in the best position to harvest the votes.

Sectors of the popular classes who want to preserve their hard-won gains and resent inflation-induced downward mobility have turned to the right.

Middle class resentment at the loss of their status does not augur well forsolidarity with marginal groups, indigenous peoples, immigrants and the dispossessed and displaced from the countryside.

Declining living standards and rising inequality, economic crisis and the end of the commodity cycle, in the present conjuncture, has radicalized popular sectors – but not in a leftward direction.

Rightwing demagogies link phony populist critiques of liberalism with militarist tub thumping and increased prerogatives for capitalism.

Eventually this rightwing turn will end in further mass disenchantment and a new round of mass protests. However, unless the left takes the lead, sheds its ‘professional’ mentors and engages in direct action, the pendulum may return the center-left to power once again!

U.S. President Barack Obama’s capstone to his Presidency, his proposed megalithic international ‘trade’ treaties, are finally coming into their home-stretch, with the Pacific deal finally being made public on Thursday November 5th.

The final Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) proposed treaty would leave each signatory nation liable to be sued by any international corporation that objects to any new regulation, or increase in regulation, regarding climate change, otherwise known as global warming. In no terminology is that phenomenon even so much as just mentioned in the “Environment” chapter.

Regarding labor issues, including slavery, the “Labour” chapter of the TPP contains merely platitudes. (Obama allowed Malaysia into the compact despite its notoriously poor record of non-enforcement of its ban on slavery, because he wants the U.S. to control the Strait of Malacca in order to impede China’s economic and military expansion; it’s part of Obama’s anti-China policy. Almost everything that he does has different motives than the ones his rhetoric claims.)

Throughout, the treaty would place international corporations in ever-increasing control over all regulations regarding workers’ rights, the environment, product safety, and consumer protection. But the environmental and labor sections are particularly blatant insults to the public — a craven homage to the top stockholders in international corporations. The world’s richest 80 people own the same amount of wealth as the world’s bottom 50%; and Obama represents those and other super-rich and their friends and servants in the lobbying and other associated industries. But he also represents the even richer people who aren’t even on that list, such as King Salman of Saudi Arabia, the world’s richest person. It’s people such as that who will be the real beneficiaries of Obama’s ‘trade’ treaties. The public will beharmed, enormously, wherever these treaties become law.

The full meaning of the terms that are set forth in the TPP agreement won’t be publicly known for at least four years, but the explicit terms that were made public on November 5th, and that will be presented to the 12 participating nations for signing, are entirely consistent with what had been expected on the basis of wikileaks and other earlier published information.

The 12 participating nations are: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam. Three countries were excluded by U.S. President Obama, because the U.S. doesn’t yet control them and they are instead viewed as being not allied with the main axis of U.S. international power: U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel. Those three outright-excluded countries are Russia, China, and India. (India, of course, has hostile relations with Pakistan, which is Sunni and therefore part of the Saudi-Qatar-Turkey portion of the U.S. international core, basically the Sunni portion of the core. By contrast, Russia and China have been determinedly independent of the U.S., and are therefore treated by President Obama as being hostile nations: he wants instead to isolate them, to choke off their access to markets, as much as possible. This same motivation also factored largely in his coup to take control of Ukraine, through which Russia’s gas passes on its way into the EU, the world’s largest gas-market.)

6 nations that Obama had invited into the TPP were ultimately unwilling to accept Obama’s terms and so were excluded when the final text was published: Colombia, Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, and Indonesia.

The phrases “global warming” and “climate change” don’t appear anywhere in the entire TPP document, nor does “climate” nor “warming” — it’s an area that’s entirely left to international corporations in each one of the separate participating nations to assault as much as they wish in order to gain competitive advantage against all of the other corporations that operate in the given nation: i.e., something for each corporation to sacrifice in order to be able to lower the given company’s costs. That raises its profit-margin. This also means that if any international corporation claims to be subjected in any participating nation, to global-warming regulation or enforcement which poses a barrier or impediment to that corporation’s profits, then that corporation may sue that given nation, and fines might be assessed against that nation (i.e., against its taxpayers) for such regulation or enforcement. National publics are no longer sovereign.

The “Labour” chapter is a string of platitudes, such as, “Article 19.7: Corporate Social Responsibility: Each Party shall endeavor to encourage enterprises to voluntarily adopt corporate social responsibility initiatives on labour issues that have been endorsed or supported by that Party.”

President Obama’s Trade Representative, his longtime personal friend Michael Froman, organized and largely wrote Obama’s proposed trade treaties: TPP for the Pacific, and TTIP and TISA for the Atlantic. Froman told the AFL-CIO and U.S. Senators that when countries such as Colombia systematically murder labor-union organizers, it’s no violation of workers’ rights — nothing that’s of any concern to the U.S. regarding this country’s international trade policies or the enforcement of them. On 22 April 2015, Huffington Post, one of the few U.S. news media to report honestly on these treaties, bannered “AFL-CIO’s Trumka: USTR Told Us Murder Isn’t A Violation,” and Michael McAuliff reported that, “Defenders of the White House push for sweeping trade deals argue they include tough enforcement of labor standards. But a top union leader scoffed at such claims Tuesday, revealing that [Obama] administration officials have said privately that they don’t consider even the killings of labor organizers to be violations of those pacts.”

In other words: This is, and will be, the low level of the playing-field that U.S. workers will be competing against in TPP etc., just as it is already, in the far-smaller existing NAFTA (which Hillary Clinton had helped to pass in Congress during the early 1990s). (Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, all campaigned for the Presidency by attacking Republicans for pushing such ‘trade’ deals. Their actions when they gain power, contradict their words. America and virtually the entire world has become rule of a suckered public, by perhaps as many as a thousand psychopathic aristocrats who own the international corporations and ‘news’ media, and who regularly do business with each other though they wall themselves off from the public.

Typically, at their level, it makes no real difference which country their passport is from.) “Trumka said that even after the Obama administration crafted an agreement to tighten labor protections four years ago, some 105 labor organizers have been killed, and more than 1,300 have been threatened with death.” The Obama Administration is ignoring the tightened regulations that it itself had managed to get nominally implemented on paper. “Pressed for details about Trumka’s assertion that murder doesn’t count as a violation of labor rules, Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff, told HuffPost that USTR officials said in at least two meetings where she was present that killing and brutalizing organizers would not be considered interfering with labor rights under the terms of the trade measures.”

Furthermore: “’We documented five or six murders of Guatemalan trade unionists that the government had failed to effectively investigate or prosecute,’ Lee said. ‘The USTR told us that the murders of trade unionists or violence against trade unionists was not a violation of the labor chapter.’”

That U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, is the same person Obama has negotiating with foreign governments, and with international corporations, both Obama’s TPP, and his TTIP & TISA.

The most important chapter in the TPP treaty is “Dispute Settlement,” which sets forth the means by which corporations will sue countries for alleged violations of their stockholders ‘rights’ to extract profits from operations of those corporations in the signatory countries. The underlying assuption here is that the rights of international stockholders take precedence over the rights (even over the sovereignty rights) of the citizens of any participating country.

Instead of these suits being judged according to any nation’s laws, they are allowed to be addressed only by means of private arbitration “Panels.” The Dispute Settlement chapter contains “Article 28.9: Composition of Panels.” Section #1 there is simply: “The panel shall comprise three members.” Each of the two Parties will appoint a member; one for the suing corporation, and the other for the sued nation; and both of those members will then jointly select a third member “from the roster established pursuant to Article 28.10.3”; and this third member will automatically “serve as chair.”

Article 28.10.3 says that anyone who possesses “expertise or experience in law, international trade, other matters covered by this Agreement, or the resolution of disputes arising under international trade agreements” may be selected for the roster, so long as the individual meets vague criteria such as that they “be independent of, and not be affiliated with or take instructions from, any Party.” No penalty is laid out for anyone on the roster who lies about any of that. Basically, anyone may become a person on the roster, even non-lawyers may, and even corrupt individuals may, especially because there are no penalties for anyone on the roster, none at all is stated.

Then, “Article 28.19,” section 8: “If a monetary assessment is to be paid to the complaining Party, then it shall be paid in U.S. currency, or in an equivalent amount of the currency of the responding Party or in another currency agreed to by the disputing Parties.”

There is no appeals-process. If a nation gets fined and yet believes that something was wrong with the panel’s decision, there is no recourse. No matter how much a particular decision might happen to have been arrived at in contradiction of that nation’s laws and courts and legal precedents, the panels’ decisions aren’t appealable in any national legal system. Whatever precedents might become established from these panels’ subsequent record of decisions will constitute no part of any nation’s legal system, but instead create an entirely new forming body of case-law in an evolving international government which consists of international corporations and their panelists, and of whatever other panelists are acceptable to those corporate panelists. Voters have no representation, they’re merely sued. Stockholders have representation, they do the suing, of the various nations’ taxpayers, for ‘violating’ the ‘rights’ of stockholders.

The roster of authorized panelists available to be chosen by any corporation’s panelists in conjunction with by any nation’s panelists, is customarily composed of individuals who move back and forth between government and private-sector roles, through a “revolving door,” so that on both ends of that, the ultimate control is with the owners of the controlling blocs of stock in various international corporations. This is the newly evolving world government. It will not block any nation from legislating protections of workers, or of consumers, or of the environment; it will simply hold a power to extract from any participating nation’s taxpayers fines for ‘violating’ the ‘rights’ of stockholders in international corporations. Citizens will increasingly be held under the axe, and the top stockholders in international corporations will be holding it. This isn’t the type of world government that was anticipated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, the founders of the U.N., and by the other early (pre-1954) proponents of world government. But, since 1954, the plans for this anti-democratic form of emerging world government were laid; and, now, those plans are the ones that are being placed into effect.

Thus, on 26 October 2015, the United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, the international legal expert Alfred de Zayas, headlined, “UN expert calls for abolition of Investor-State dispute settlement arbitrations.” That’s the system, otherwise called “ISDS,” which already exists in a few much smaller international-trade treaties, and which is now being introduced on the largest scale ever in TPP and in Obama’s other proposed treaties. The U.N. press release, calling for its “abolition” or explicit outlawing, said:

In his fourth report to the UN General Assembly, Mr. de Zayas focuses on the adverse human rights impacts of free trade and investment agreements and calls for the abolition of Investor-State dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS) that accompanies most of these agreements.

“Over the past twenty-five years bilateral international treaties and free trade agreements with investor-state-dispute-settlement have adversely impacted the international order and undermined fundamental principles of the UN, State sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law. It prompts moral vertigo in the unbiased observer,” he noted.

Far from contributing to human rights and development, ISDS has compromised the State’s regulatory functions and resulted in growing inequality among States and within them,” the expert stated.

Earlier, on 5 May 2015, I headlined, “UN Lawyer Calls TTP & TTIP ‘a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots’.” I close now by repeating the opening of that report:

The Obama-proposed international-trade deals, if passed into law, will lead to “a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots,” says Alfred De Zayas, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order.

These two mammoth trade-pacts, one (TTIP) for Atlantic nations, and the other (TTP) for Pacific nations excluding China (since Obama is against China), would transfer regulations of corporations to corporations themselves, and away from democratically elected governments. Regulation of working conditions and of the environment, as well as of product-safety including toxic foods and poisonous air and other consumer issues, would be placed into the hands of panels whose members will be appointed by large international corporations. Their decisions will remove the power of democratically elected governments to control these things. “Red tape” that’s imposed by elected national governments would be eliminated — replaced by the international mega-corporate version.

De Zayas was quoted in Britain’s Guardian on May 4th as saying also that, “The bottom line is that these agreements must be revised, modified or terminated,”because they would vastly harm publics everywhere, even though they would enormously benefit the top executives of corporations by giving them control as a sort of corporate-imposed world government, answerable to the people who control those corporations.

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

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced today that the US economy created 271,000 jobs in October, a number substantially in excess of the expected 175,000 to 190,000 jobs. The unexpected job gain has dropped the unemployment rate to 5 percent. These two numbers will be the focus of the financial media presstitutes.

What is wrong with these numbers?

Just about everything. First of all, 145,000 of the jobs, or 54%, are jobs arbitrarily added to the number by the birth-death model. The birth-death model provides an estimate of the net amount of unreported jobs lost to business closings and the unreported jobs created by new business openings. The model is based on a normally functioning economy unlike the one of the past seven years and thus overestimates the number of jobs from new business and underestimates the losses from closures. If we eliminate the birth-death model’s contribution, new jobs were 126,000.

Next, consider who got the 271,000 reported jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, all of the new jobs plus some—378,000—went to those 55 years of age and older. However, males in the prime working age, 25 to 54 years of age, lost 119,000 jobs. What seems to have happened is that full time jobs were replaced with part time jobs for retirees. Multiple job holders increased by 109,000 in October, an indication that people who lost full time jobs had to take two or more part time jobs in order to make ends meet.

Now assume the 271,000 reported jobs in October is the real number, and not 126,000 or less,

where are those jobs? According to the BLS not a single one is in manufacturing. The jobs are in personal services, mainly lowly paid jobs such as retail clerks, ambulatory health care service jobs, temporary help, and waitresses and bartenders.

For example, the BLS reports 44,000 new retail trade jobs, a questionable number in light of sluggish real retail sales. Possibly what is happening is that stores are turning a smaller number of full time jobs into a larger number of part time jobs in order to avoid benefit costs associated with full time workers.

The new reported jobs are essentially Third World type of jobs that do not produce sufficient income to form a household and do not produce exportable goods and services to help to bring down the large US trade deficit resulting from jobs offshoring.

The problem with the 5% unemployment rate is that it does not include any discouraged workers.

When discouraged workers—those who have ceased looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found—are included the unemployment rate is about 23%.

Another problem with the 5% number is that it suggests full employment. Yet the labor force participation rate remains at a low point. Normally during a real economic recovery, people enter the labor force and the participation rate rises.

The bullion banks acting as agents of the Federal Reserve used the phony jobs number to launch another attack on gold and silver bullion, dumping uncovered shorts into the futures market. The strong jobs number provides cover for the naked shorts, because it implies an interest rate hike and movement out of bullion into interest bearing assets.

If the US economy were actually in economic recovery, would half of the 25-year-old population be living with parents? The real job situation is so poor that young people are unable to form households.

See: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/10/29/us-on-road-to-third-world-paul-craig-roberts/ 

Note: This episode of the Global Research News Hour was originally published in January 2015. Russian-American engineer Dmitry Orlov is featured in a fascinating discussion on the current state of macroeconomic thinking and the politics surrounding it.

“They can’t really grasp the fact that everything they’ve built has stopped working, because their ideology forbids them from doing it. So that’s identical with what was going on in the Soviet Union.” -Dmitry Orlov

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 On the Global Research News Hour this week, we spend the hour discussing the looming collapse scenarios facing the United States with Russian-American engineer Dmitry Orlov.

Orlov’s perspective on collapse is informed by his extended trips to his former homeland before and during its collapse.

Orlov believes and states that the former Soviet Union was set up to be resilient in the face of collapse. This, he believes is not the case in the US or Canada.

In this interview, Orlov also comments on the current situation with low oil prices, peak oil and its impact on agriculture, Russian moves in alignment with China, overtures toward the EU, the politics of austerity, the Ukraine Civil War as Anglo-Imperialist Departure Strategy, and much more.

Dmitry Orlov has written two books, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects as well as the Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors’ Toolkit. Mr. Orlov is also the author of the blog cluborlov.com and is a much sought after geo-political analyst.

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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.

CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario. Tune in Wednesdays from 12am to 1am.

Government officials who pushed the Iraq War in 2002-2003 are fond of claiming that they were simply deceived by “bad intelligence,” but the process was not that simple. In reality, there was a mutually reinforcing scheme to flood the U.S. intelligence community with false data and then to pressure the analysts not to show professional skepticism.

In other words, in the capital of the most powerful nation on earth, a system had evolved that was immune to the normal rules of evidence and respect for reality. Propaganda had become the name of the game, a dangerous process that remains in force to this day.

Regarding the Iraq War case, one of the principal culprits fueling this disinformation machine was Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, who died on Nov. 3 at the age of 71 from a heart attack. Chalabi, head of the U.S./neocon-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC), not only pumped intentionally false data into this process but later congratulated his organization as “heroes in error” for rationalizing the invasion of Iraq.

The INC’s principal tactic was to deluge the U.S. intelligence community – and the mainstream media – with “defectors” who provided lurid accounts of the Iraqi government hiding WMD caches and concealing its ties to Al Qaeda terrorists. Because of the welcoming climate for these lies – which were trumpeted by neoconservatives and other influential Washington operatives – there was little or no pushback.

Image: President George W. Bush announcing the start of his invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

Only after the U.S. invasion and the failure to discover the alleged WMD stockpiles did the U.S. intelligence community reconstruct how the INC’s deceptions had worked. As the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee belatedly discovered, some “defectors” had been coached by the INC, which was fabricating a casus belli against Iraq.

In 2006, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a little-noticed study on the role of phony “defectors.” The report revealed not only specific cases of coached Iraqi “defectors” lying to intelligence analysts but a stunning failure of the U.S. political/media system to challenge the lies. The intimidated U.S. intelligence process often worked like a reverse filter, letting the dross of disinformation pass through.

The Iraqi “defectors” and their stories also played into a sophisticated propaganda campaign by neocon pundits and pro-war officials who acted as intellectual shock troops to bully the few U.S. voices of skepticism. With President George W. Bush eager for war with Iraq – and Democrats in Congress fearful of being labeled “soft on terror” – the enforced “group think” led the United States to invade Iraq on March 19, 2003.

According to the Senate report, the official U.S. relationship with these Iraqi exiles dated back to 1991 after President George H.W. Bush had routed Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait and wanted to help Hussein’s domestic opponents.

Start of a Complicated Friendship

In May 1991, the CIA approached Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shiite who had not lived in Iraq since 1956. Chalabi was far from a perfect opposition candidate, however. Beyond his long isolation from his homeland, Chalabi was a fugitive from bank fraud charges in Jordan. Still, in June 1992, the Iraqi exiles held an organizational meeting in Vienna, Austria, out of which came the Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi emerged as the group’s chairman and most visible spokesman.

But Chalabi soon began rubbing CIA officers the wrong way. They complained about the quality of his information, the excessive size of his security detail, his lobbying of Congress, and his resistance to working as a team player. For his part, the smooth-talking Chalabi bristled at the idea that he was a U.S. intelligence asset, preferring to see himself as an independent political leader. Nevertheless, he and his organization were not averse to accepting American money.

With U.S. financial backing, the INC waged a propaganda campaign against Hussein and arranged for “a steady stream of low-ranking walk-ins” to provide intelligence about the Iraqi military, the Senate Intelligence Committee report said.

The INC’s mix of duties – propaganda and intelligence – would create concerns within the CIA as would the issue of Chalabi’s “coziness” with the Shiite government of Iran. The CIA concluded that Chalabi was double-dealing both sides when he falsely informed Iran that the United States wanted Iran’s help in conducting anti-Hussein operations.

“Chalabi passed a fabricated message from the White House to” an Iranian intelligence officer in northern Iraq, the CIA reported. According to one CIA representative, Chalabi used National Security Council stationery for the fabricated letter, a charge that Chalabi denied.

In December 1996, Clinton administration officials decided to terminate the CIA’s relationship with the INC and Chalabi. “There was a breakdown in trust and we never wanted to have anything to do with him anymore,” CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

However, in 1998, with the congressional passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, the INC was again one of the exile organizations that qualified for U.S. funding. Starting in March 2000, the State Department agreed to grant an INC foundation almost $33 million for several programs, including more propaganda operations and collection of information about alleged war crimes committed by Hussein’s regime.

By March 2001, with George W. Bush in office and already focusing on Iraq, the INC was given greater leeway to pursue its projects, including an Information Collection Program. The INC’s blurred responsibilities on intelligence gathering and propaganda dissemination raised fresh concerns within the State Department. But Bush’s National Security Council intervened against State’s attempts to cut off funding.

The NSC shifted the INC operation to the control of the Defense Department, where neoconservatives wielded more influence. To little avail, CIA officials warned their counterparts at the Defense Intelligence Agency about suspicions that “the INC was penetrated by Iranian and possibly other intelligence services, and that the INC had its own agenda,” the Senate report said.

“You’ve got a real bucket full of worms with the INC and we hope you’re taking the appropriate steps,” the CIA told the DIA.

Media Hype

But the CIA’s warnings did little to stanch the flow of INC propaganda into America’s politics and media. Besides flooding the U.S. intelligence community with waves of propaganda, the INC funneled a steady stream of “defectors” to U.S. news outlets eager for anti-Hussein scoops.

The “defectors” also made the rounds of Congress where members saw a political advantage in citing the INC’s propaganda as a way to talk tough about the Middle East. In turn, conservative and neoconservative think tanks honed their reputations in Washington by staying at the cutting edge of the negative news about Hussein, with “human rights” groups ready to pile on, too, against the Iraqi dictator.

The INC’s information program served the institutional needs and biases of Official Washington. Saddam Hussein was a despised figure anyway, with no influential constituency that would challenge even the most outlandish accusations against him.

When Iraqi government officials were allowed onto American news programs, it was an opportunity for the interviewers to show their tough side, pounding the Iraqis with hostile questions and smirking at the Iraqi denials about WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda.

The rare journalist who tried to be evenhanded would have his or her professionalism questioned. An intelligence analyst who challenged the consensus view that Iraq possessed WMDs could expect to suffer career repercussions. So, it was a win-win for “investigative journalists,” macho pundits, members of Congress – and George W. Bush. A war fever was sweeping the United States and the INC was doing all it could to spread the infection.

Again and again, the INC’s “defectors” supplied primary or secondary intelligence on two key points, Iraq’s supposed rebuilding of its unconventional weapons and its alleged training of non-Iraqi terrorists. Sometimes, these “defectors” would even enter the cloistered world of U.S. intelligence with entrées provided by former U.S. government officials.

For instance, ex-CIA Director James Woolsey referred at least a couple of these Iraqi sources to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Woolsey, who was affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and other neocon think tanks, had been one of the Reagan administration’s favorite Democrats in the 1980s because he supported a hawkish foreign policy. After Bill Clinton won the White House, Woolsey parlayed his close ties to the neocons into an appointment as CIA director.

In early 1993, Clinton’s foreign policy adviser Samuel “Sandy” Berger explained to one well-placed Democratic official that Woolsey was given the CIA job because the Clinton team felt it owed a favor to the neoconservative New Republic, which had lent Clinton some cachet with the insider crowd of Washington.

Amid that more relaxed post-Cold War mood, the Clinton team viewed the CIA directorship as a kind of a patronage plum that could be handed out as a favor to campaign supporters. But new international challenges soon emerged and Woolsey proved to be an ineffective leader of the intelligence community. After two years, he was replaced.

As the 1990s wore on, the spurned Woolsey grew closer to Washington’s fast-growing neocon movement, which was openly hostile to President Clinton for his perceived softness in asserting U.S. military power, especially against Arab regimes in the Middle East.

On Jan. 26, 1998, the neocon Project for the New American Century sent a letter to Clinton urging the ouster of Saddam Hussein by force if necessary. Woolsey was one of the 18 signers. By early 2001, he also had grown close to the INC, having been hired as co-counsel to represent eight Iraqis, including INC members, who had been detained on immigration charges.

In other words, Woolsey was well-positioned to serve as a conduit for INC “defectors” trying to get their stories to U.S. officials and to the American public.

The ‘Sources’

DIA officials told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Woolsey introduced them to the first in a long line of INC “defectors” who then told the DIA about Hussein’s WMD and his supposed relationship with Islamic terrorists. For his part, Woolsey said he didn’t recall making that referral.

The debriefings of “Source One” – as he was called in the Senate Intelligence Committee report – generated more than 250 intelligence reports. Two of the reports described alleged terrorist training sites in Iraq, where Afghan, Pakistani and Palestinian nationals were allegedly taught military skills at the Salman Pak base, 20 miles south of Baghdad.

“Many Iraqis believe that Saddam Hussein had made an agreement with Usama bin Ladin in order to support his terrorist movement against the U.S.,” Source One claimed, according to the Senate report.

After the 9/11 attacks, information from Source One and other INC-connected “defectors” began surfacing in U.S. press accounts, not only in the right-wing news media, but many mainstream publications and news shows.

In an Oct. 12, 2001, column entitled “What About Iraq?” Washington Post chief foreign correspondent Jim Hoagland cited “accumulating evidence of Iraq’s role in sponsoring the development on its soil of weapons and techniques for international terrorism,” including training at Salman Pak. Hoagland’s sources included Iraqi army “defector” Sabah Khalifa Khodada and another unnamed Iraqi ex-intelligence officer in Turkey. Hoagland also criticized the CIA for not taking seriously a possible Iraqi link to 9/11.

Hoagland’s column was followed by a Page One article in The New York Times, which was headlined “Defectors Cite Iraqi Training for Terrorism.” It relied on Khodada, the second source in Turkey (who was later identified as Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, a former senior officer in Iraq’s intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat), and a lower-ranking member of Mukhabarat.

This story described 40 to 50 Islamic militants getting training at Salman Pak at any one time, including lessons on how to hijack an airplane without weapons. There were also claims about a German scientist working on biological weapons.

In a Columbia Journalism Review retrospective on press coverage of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, writer Douglas McCollam asked Times correspondent Chris Hedges about the Times article, which he had written in coordination with a PBS Frontline documentary called “Gunning for Saddam,” with correspondent Lowell Bergman.

Explaining the difficulty of checking out defector accounts when they meshed with the interests of the U.S. government, Hedges said, “We tried to vet the defectors and we didn’t get anything out of Washington that said, ‘these guys are full of shit.’”

For his part, Bergman told CJR’s McCollam, “The people involved appeared credible and we had no way of getting into Iraq ourselves.”

The journalistic competition to break anti-Hussein scoops was building, too. Based in Paris, Hedges said he would get periodic calls from Times editors asking that he check out defector stories originating from Chalabi’s operation.

“I thought he was unreliable and corrupt, but just because someone is a sleazebag doesn’t mean he might not know something or that everything he says is wrong,” Hedges said. Hedges described Chalabi as having an “endless stable” of ready sources who could fill in American reporters on any number of Iraq-related topics.

The Salman Pak story would be one of many products from the INC’s propaganda mill that would prove influential in the run-up to the Iraq War but would be knocked down later by U.S. intelligence agencies.

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s post-mortem, the DIA stated in June 2006 that it found “no credible reports that non-Iraqis were trained to conduct or support transnational terrorist operations at Salman Pak after 1991.”

Explaining the origins for the bogus tales, the DIA concluded that Operation Desert Storm had brought attention to the training base at Salman Pak, so “fabricators and unestablished sources who reported hearsay or third-hand information created a large volume of human intelligence reporting. This type of reporting surged after September 2001.”

Going with the Flow

However, in the prelude to the Iraq War, U.S. intelligence agencies found it hard to resist the INC’s “defectors” when that would have meant bucking the White House and going against Washington’s conventional wisdom. Rather than take those career chances, many intelligence analysts found it easier to go with the flow.

Referring to the INC’s “Source One,” a U.S. intelligence memorandum in July 2002 hailed the information as

“highly credible and includes reports on a wide range of subjects including conventional weapons facilities, denial and deception; communications security; suspected terrorist training locations; illicit trade and smuggling; Saddam’s palaces; the Iraqi prison system; and Iraqi petrochemical plants.”

Only analysts in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research were skeptical because they felt Source One was making unfounded assumptions, especially about possible nuclear research sites.

After the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence finally began to recognize the holes in Source One’s stories and spot examples of analysts extrapolating faulty conclusions from his limited first-hand knowledge.

“In early February 2004, in order to resolve … credibility issues with Source One, Intelligence Community elements brought Source One to Iraq,” the Senate Intelligence Committee report said. “When taken to the location Source One had described as the suspect [nuclear] facility, he was unable to identify it.

“According to one intelligence assessment, the ‘subject appeared stunned upon hearing that he was standing on the spot that he reported as the location of the facility, insisted that he had never been to that spot, and wanted to check a map’ …

“Intelligence Community officers confirmed that they were standing on the location he was identifying. … During questioning, Source One acknowledged contact with the INC’s Washington Director [name redacted], but denied that the Washington Director directed Source One to provide any false information. ”

The U.S. intelligence community had mixed reactions to other Iraqi “walk-ins” arranged by the INC. Some were caught in outright deceptions, such as “Source Two” who talked about Iraq supposedly building mobile biological weapons labs.

After catching Source Two in contradictions, the CIA issued a “fabrication notice” in May 2002, deeming him “a fabricator/provocateur” and asserting that he had “been coached by the Iraqi National Congress prior to his meeting with western intelligence services.”

However, the DIA never repudiated the specific reports that had been based on Source Two’s debriefings. So, Source Two continued to be cited in five CIA intelligence assessments and the pivotal National Intelligence Estimate in October 2002, “as corroborating other source reporting about a mobile biological weapons program,” the Senate Intelligence Committee report said.

Source Two was one of four human sources referred to by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his United Nations speech on Feb. 5, 2003. When asked how a “fabricator” could have been used for such an important speech, a CIA analyst who worked on Powell’s speech said, “we lost the thread of concern … as time progressed I don’t think we remembered.”

A CIA supervisor added, “Clearly we had it at one point, we understood, we had concerns about the source, but over time it started getting used again and there really was a loss of corporate awareness that we had a problem with the source.”

Flooding Defectors

Part of the challenge facing U.S. intelligence agencies was the sheer volume of “defectors” shepherded into debriefing rooms by the INC and the appeal of their information to U.S. policymakers.

“Source Five,” for instance, claimed that Osama bin Laden had traveled to Baghdad for direct meetings with Saddam Hussein. “Source Six” claimed that the Iraqi population was “excited” about the prospects of a U.S. invasion to topple Hussein. Plus, the source said Iraqis recognized the need for post-invasion U.S. control.

By early February 2003, as the final invasion plans were underway, U.S. intelligence agencies had progressed up to “Source Eighteen,” who came to epitomize what some analysts still suspected – that the INC was coaching the sources.

As the CIA tried to set up a debriefing of Source Eighteen, another Iraqi exile passed on word to the agency that an INC representative had told Source Eighteen to “deliver the act of a lifetime.” CIA analysts weren’t sure what to make of that piece of news – since Iraqi exiles frequently badmouthed each other – but the value of the warning soon became clear.

U.S. intelligence officers debriefed Source Eighteen the next day and discovered that “Source Eighteen was supposed to have a nuclear engineering background, but was unable to discuss advanced mathematics or physics and described types of ‘nuclear’ reactors that do not exist,” according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report.

“Source Eighteen used the bathroom frequently, particularly when he appeared to be flustered by a line of questioning, suddenly remembering a new piece of information upon his return. During one such incident, Source Eighteen appeared to be reviewing notes,”

the report said.

Not surprisingly, the CIA and DIA case officers concluded that Source Eighteen was a fabricator. But the sludge of INC-connected misinformation and disinformation continued to ooze through the U.S. intelligence community and to foul the American intelligence product – in part because there was little pressure from above demanding strict quality controls.

Curve Ball

Other Iraqi exile sources – not directly connected to the INC – also supplied dubious information, including a source for a foreign intelligence agency who earned the code name “Curve Ball.” He contributed important details about Iraq’s alleged mobile facilities for producing agents for biological warfare.

Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the CIA’s European Division, said his office had issued repeated warnings about Curve Ball’s accounts. “Everyone in the chain of command knew exactly what was happening,” Drumheller said. [Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2005]

Despite those objections and the lack of direct U.S. contact with Curve Ball, he earned a rating as “credible” or “very credible,” and his information became a core element of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq. Drawings of Curve Ball’s imaginary bio-weapons labs were a central feature of Secretary of State Powell’s presentation to the U.N.

Even after the invasion, U.S. officials continued to promote these claims, portraying the discovery of a couple of trailers used for inflating artillery balloons as “the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.” [CIA-DIA report, “Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants,” May 16, 2003]

Finally, on May 26, 2004, a CIA assessment of Curve Ball said “investigations since the war in Iraq and debriefings of the key source indicate he lied about his access to a mobile BW production product.”

The U.S. intelligence community also learned that Curve Ball “had a close relative who had worked for the INC since 1992,” but the CIA could never resolve the question of whether the INC was involved in coaching Curve Ball. One CIA analyst said she doubted a direct INC role because the INC pattern was to “shop their good sources around town, but they weren’t known for sneaking people out of countries into some asylum system.”

Delayed Report

In September 2006, four years after the Bush administration seriously began fanning the flames for war against Iraq, a majority of Senate Intelligence Committee members overrode the objections of the panel’s senior Republicans and issued a report on the INC’s contribution to the U.S. intelligence failures.

The report concluded that the INC fed false information to the intelligence community to convince Washington that Iraq was flouting prohibitions on WMD production. The panel also found that the falsehoods had been “widely distributed in intelligence products prior to the war” and did influence some American perceptions of the WMD threat in Iraq.

But INC disinformation was not solely to blame for the bogus intelligence that permeated the pre-war debate. In Washington, there had been a breakdown of the normal checks and balances that American democracy has traditionally relied on for challenging and eliminating the corrosive effects of false data.

By 2002, that self-correcting mechanism – a skeptical press, congressional oversight, and tough-minded analysts – had collapsed. With very few exceptions, prominent journalists refused to put their careers at risk; intelligence professionals played along with the powers that be; Democratic leaders succumbed to the political pressure to toe the President’s line; and Republicans marched in lockstep with Bush on his way to war.

Because of this systematic failure, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded four years later that nearly every key assessment of the U.S. intelligence community as expressed in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s WMD was wrong:

“Postwar findings do not support the [NIE] judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program; … do not support the [NIE] assessment that Iraq’s acquisition of high-strength aluminum tubes was intended for an Iraqi nuclear program; … do not support the [NIE] assessment that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake’ from Africa; … do not support the [NIE] assessment that ‘Iraq has biological weapons’ and that ‘all key aspects of Iraq’s offensive biological weapons program are larger and more advanced than before the Gulf war’; … do not support the [NIE] assessment that Iraq possessed, or ever developed, mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents; … do not support the [NIE] assessments that Iraq ‘has chemical weapons’ or ‘is expanding its chemical industry to support chemical weapons production’; … do not support the [NIE] assessments that Iraq had a developmental program for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ‘probably intended to deliver biological agents’ or that an effort to procure U.S. mapping software ‘strongly suggests that Iraq is investigating the use of these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.’”

Today, you can see a similar process as the Obama administration relies on “strategic communications” – a mix of psy-ops, propaganda and P.R. – to advance its strategic goals of “regime change” in Syria, maintenance of an anti-Russian regime in Ukraine, and escalation of hostilities with Russia.

When pivotal events occur – like the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus, the Feb. 20, 2014 sniper shootings in Kiev, or the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine – the propaganda machine clicks back into gear and the incidents are used to smear U.S. “adversaries” and strengthen U.S. “friends.”

Thus, truth has become the routine casualty of “info-war.” The American people are serially deceived in the name of “national security” and manipulated toward more conflict and military spending. Over the years, this process surely put a crooked smile on the face of Ahmed Chalabi, who proved himself one of its masters.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

The Emirati Armed Forces has started to use actively the Eritrean ports. According to our information, at least, three landing craft belonging to the United Arab Emirates were docked in the port of Assab on September 16.

A diplomatic row between Djibouti and UAE took precedence of these developments. On 28 April the UAE consulate in Djibouti was closed after the altercation between Wahib Moussa Kalinleh, the commander of the Djibouti Air Force, and Ali Al Shihi, Vice Consul of the UAE.

Indeed, it was the a formal reason of the departure of the Gulf Cooperation Council troops based on a plot of land that Djibouti had put at its disposal in Haramous in early April to set up its military base. Then Saudi Arabia and UAE redirected their efforts aimed to build a military base on Eritrea.

In turn Eritrea will likely seek to expand its relationships beyond the region in an attempt to break its isolation in the region. Djibouti and Ethiopia have been trying to turn it into a regional rogue state through the African Union. So, from Eritrea’s perspective, accepting Saudi and Emirati cash and resources would be a logical move. Indeed, Eritrea is ready to accept cash and resources from anybody who is ready to provide them.

There was a time when Eritrea supported Yemen’s Houthi fighters and functioned as a transshipment location for Iranian supplies heading to them. Thus, the Saudi and Emirati attempt to involve a new member state into their coalition has 3 goals.

First is to prevent contacts among Eritrea, Iran and Houthi. It will reduce Iran’s possibility to provide supplies to its allies in Yemen.

Second is to use the port of Assab as a local logistics hub, situated relatively close to the conflict. Given the distances that must be traveled over sea to get to Aden from Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, the port of Assab is located at a vantage ground.

Third is Saudi Arabia will be able to turn Eritrea into a tool to destabilize the situation in Ethiopia. It’s possible through the monoethnic communities of Ogaden and Oromo controlled by Eritrea. The Ethiopian government is conducting a rough anti-Saudi politics and, de facto, destroying all pro-Saudi Islamist entities.

Alternatively, a recent U.N. report claimed that 400 Eritrean soldiers were deployed to Aden to support the Saudi-led coalition. The Emirati vessels in Assab could either transport the Eritrean troops or ferry equipment and supplies to the Eritrean troops already in Yemen. Assab is becoming a point on the Saudi-led coalition’s main supply route.

In any case, the Saudi and Emirati presence in Eritrea won’t be limited by the Yemeni conflict’s length. According to unconfirmed reports, the UAE took on lease Assab for 30 years. Separately, the UAE is seeking to take on lease a former naval base in Berbera in Somaliland. Thus, the Emirati activity in Eritea is a first step in a big plan to establish a naval base network at the Horn of Africa’s coast.

Longstanding Israeli policy brutalizes Palestinian children solely for political reasons.  

Palestinian Detainees Committee head Issa Qaraqe reported shocking information. In October, Israeli soldiers and police kidnapped over 800 Palestinian children, some too young to understand what happened or why – subjecting them to severe torture and abuse.

“This is a systematic Israeli policy targeting the children, the future of Palestine,” Qaraqe explained. “The large number of abductions in (a single month) shows a deliberate policy, and a serious level of military escalation.”

A large number of abducted children have been assaulted and beaten by the soldiers. They have also been tortured by the Israeli interrogators and jailers.

Brutal measures used include:

• beatings, punching, kicking and striking children with rifle butts and batons;

• terrorizing them with vicious dogs;

• subjecting them to sleep, food and water deprivation;

• using them as human shields during neighborhood raids;

• humiliating them and their family members;

• threatening them with more severe violence;

• denying wounded children medical care for extended periods;

• interrogating them brutally with their wounds untreated;

• forcing them to sign confessions in Hebrew they don’t understand, admitting alleged crimes they didn’t commit;

• isolating them in solitary confinement without access to counsel or family members; and

• painfully shackling them to hospital beds when finally permitted treatment.

They’re targeted with live fire, potentially lethal rubber/plastic-coated steel bullets, stun grenades and toxic tear gas. They face prison terms for alleged stone-throwing. Their families face large fines and possible loss of their homes, bulldozed for exclusive development.

Many children are imprisoned administratively – uncharged and untried for indefinite periods, with no chance for appeal.

Qaraqe said Israel turned Palestinian children into targets – 17 murdered in cold blood since October 1, another 495 wounded from live fire and rubber bullets, scores of others beaten and/or harmed by toxic tear gas.

Israel is the world’s only country subjecting young children to military tribunal injustice – guilt by accusation automatic, no right of appeal.

On average, up to 700 Palestinians are tried in military courts annually. October’s total exceeds this number. Since 2000, over 10,000 Palestinian children were lawlessly kidnapped, separated from family and legal counsel, brutalized in captivity.

Imprisonment is hugely hard to handle for anyone, near impossible for young children to cope, denied virtually everything needed to sustain normal life. The experience leaves many scared for life.

Israel is a flagrant human rights abuser, getting away with murder and daily atrocities with impunity. UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov said “(a) complete generation has lost hope in peace and a two-state solution…”

In Hebron where he visited, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said 77% of the residents are impoverished.

The Hebron district accounts for around a third of the West Bank’s economy, the Old City now a ghost town. Over 1,800 Palestinian shops closed since the Second Intifada erupted in September 2000.

Movement restrictions alone prevent normal living. Violating draconian rules risks getting lethally shot. Hebron Mayor Kamil Hmeid said 30,000 Palestinian residents face daily violence from 700 heavily protected settlers, living where they don’t belong.

Settlers, soldiers and police aren’t held accountable for crimes committed against Palestinians. Israeli instigated violent clashes occur daily across the Territories. Death, serious injury or arrest haunts an entire population, victimized by state-sponsored terrorism.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

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“Patients burned in their beds, medical staff were decapitated and lost limbs, and others were shot by the circling AC-130 gunship while fleeing the burning building.”

So reads the opening of an initial review issued Thursday by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders—MSF), documenting the horrifying October 3 US airstrike on the charitable agency’s hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

While spelling out the carnage inflicted upon wounded men, women and children as well as doctors, nurses and other medical staff that day, the report adds to the already overwhelming evidence that the attack was neither an accident nor a case of “collateral damage,” but rather a deliberate war crime ordered by the Pentagon to further US military objectives in Afghanistan.

Among the new information provided by the report is that, after repeatedly providing the Pentagon, the US Army in Kabul as well as the Afghan authorities with the coordinates of the well-known medical facility, MSF staff at the Kunduz hospital received a phone call two nights before the attack from a US government official in Washington. He asked whether it “had a large number of Taliban ‘holed up’ there.” The official was told that the hospital was functioning normally and at full capacity, with some wounded Taliban fighters among the patients.

The hospital, the report states, was well-lit and clearly marked, with MSF insignia on its roof. Based on interviews with some 60 staff members, the report establishes that there were no armed individuals in the facility and, indeed, there had been no fighting, gunshots or explosions in the vicinity of the hospital in the evening preceding the attack.

The attack by the slow-moving, propeller-driven AC-130 gunship lasted between an hour and an hour and 15 minutes, with the plane continuously circling the hospital, hitting it with its multiple rapid-fire cannon, precision bombs and missiles.

“The view from inside the hospital is that this attack was conducted with a purpose to kill and destroy,” Christopher Stokes, MSF’s general director, told reporters at a press conference in Kabul on Thursday. “A mistake is quite hard to understand and believe at this time.”

The MSF report gives a chilling sense of the brutality of this crime. It recounts that the first area to be hit was the Intensive Care Unit, where immobile patients, including two children, were killed outright or burned to death in their hospital beds.

The operating theaters were then destroyed, with at least two patients killed as they lay on operating tables.

“An MSF nurse arrived at the administrative building covered from head to toe in debris and blood with his left arm hanging from a small piece of tissue after having suffered a traumatic amputation in the blast,” the report recounts.

Staff members described people being mowed down as they tried to flee the airstrike. “MSF doctors and other medical staff were shot while running to reach safety in a different part of the compound,” the report adds.

“One MSF staff member described a patient in a wheelchair attempting to escape from the inpatient department when he was killed by shrapnel from a blast,” the report states. “Other MSF staff describe seeing people running while on fire and then falling unconscious on the ground. One MSF staff was decapitated by shrapnel in the airstrikes.”

The US airstrike turned what had been the principal medical facility for over one million people in northeastern Afghanistan into hell on earth. In addition to wantonly killing patients and medical staff, it left the region’s entire population without badly needed medical care.

There are two plausible theories that have been advanced to explain the attack. The first, based on reporting by AP, indicates that the strike was ordered out of suspicion that a Pakistani intelligence officer who was coordinating operations with the Taliban was present in the hospital. In other words, mass murder against innocent civilians was carried out as part of a “targeted assassination” against one man.

The other explanation is that the US military decided to obliterate the hospital because it was treating wounded Taliban fighters.

In either case, under international law the attack constitutes a war crime, the kind of offense for which Nazi officers were tried and convicted at Nuremberg.

But not so under the legal rationales for US criminal aggression fashioned under the Obama administration.

As the four-part series, “The Pentagon’s Law of War Manual,” being finalized on the World Socialist Web Site today establishes, the pseudo-legal doctrine that has been crafted for the US military, while giving a formal nod to international law’s prohibition against targeting civilians, makes clear that in practice such attacks are not only allowed but encouraged.

“Civilians may be killed incidentally in military operations; however, the expected incidental harm to civilians may not be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage from an attack,” the law of war manual states. In other words, the US military is allowed to kill civilians, and the greater the military objective, the more innocent men, women and children, not to mention doctors, nurses and patients, may be slaughtered.

Similarly, while stating that “feasible precautions” should be taken to “avoid” civilian casualties, the manual goes on to affirm that, if US commanders determine that “taking a precaution would result in operational risk (i.e., a risk of failing to accomplish the mission) or an increased risk of harm to their own forces, then the precaution would not be feasible and would not be required.” This is a clear mandate to US military officers to wipe out however many civilians they deem necessary to “accomplish the mission” or reduce their own casualties.

No doubt, within the US chain of command, such calculations were made to arrive at the decision to order an AC-130 to slowly and deliberately reduce a civilian hospital to rubble, killing at least 30 patients and medical staff and wounding many others.

The responsibility for this crime lies not merely with the crew of the flying gunship, the commanders on  the ground in Afghanistan or the top brass of the US military. It extends to the top of the US political establishment, including President Barack Obama and his top aides, who have done so much to make murderous violence around the world routine, from aggressive war, to drone assassinations to cold-blooded massacres.

The White House and the Pentagon have thus far stonewalled MSF’s demand for an independent investigation into the Kunduz hospital massacre.

Even more telling, Joanne Liu, president of MSF, reported this week that the agency had appealed to some 76 governments seeking support for an impartial investigation, but had received none. “The silence is embarrassing,” Liu told Reuters.

Behind this apparent indifference by capitalist governments around the globe to the horrors unleashed by the US military in Kunduz lies the recognition that this attack constituted not the exception, but the rule, not the product of a “tragic error” or “collateral damage,” but the inevitable expression of  the criminality of American imperialism.

It took almost two weeks for the Syrian forces to liberate the Khanasser-Ithriya highway. Nonetheless, they were finally able to secure the remaining territory along the strategic supply route that had been captured by ISIS. 

On Wednesday, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), Hezbollah, the National Defense Forces (NDF) and the Palestinian pro-government militia “Liwaa Al-Quds” broke-through ISIS’ remaining frontlines to the north of Ithriya and conducted a massive retreat of the militants to the town of Tabaqa in the Al-Raqqa province. Separately, the terrorists retreating along the Salamiyah-Raqqa highway came under attack from the Russian Air Force’s SU-24 fighter jets.

Transcript

The liberation of the Khanasser-Ithriya highway was of the utmost importance for the Syrian Arab Army’s Central Command these last few days, as the roadway is the only supply route to continue the SAA advance in the Aleppo province. It isn’t clear when the supplies will be restored because militants set many explosive devices at the highway. According to the SAA, mine clearance specialists have already started to demine them.

The SAA supported by the NDF and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) continued their advance in the Latakia province. They began the assault at the southern perimeter of the village of Mafraq Beit Abu Reesha, where they struck the combined forces of Al-Nusra and the FSA. Following a series of intense firefights the SAA took control of the village. Then the pro-government forces seized the village of Khirbat Jubb Al-Za’rour. The SAA’s success was due in large part to the Russian Air Force’s MI-24 Hind Helicopter Gunships that were pounding the militants before the Syrian infantry units reached their positions.

Separately, the SAA and NDF imposed full control over the Gas Station and the Northern Highlands inside the town of Harasta after the Jaysh Al-Islam militants withdrew from this area in the Damascus countryside. According to the field reports, the SAA advance along the Homs-Damascus highway.

The US military will continue airdropping munitions to militant groups in Syria because it is encouraged by how the fighters used the equipment during a recent offensive to capture new ground, US Army Colonel Steve Warren told reporters on Wednesday. The successful offensive in the city of Al-Hal was a “validator” of the US plan to airdrop munitions to the Syrian militants.

Warren explained that the new militant alliance operating under the name “The Syrian Arab Coalition” took control over 200 plus kilometers during a conventional offensive in northern Syria that was launched within the past two weeks.

The Iraqi Security Forces are continuing a large-scale military operation against ISIS in the Anbar province. The Iraqi forces attempted to encircle and retake Ramadi, but ISIS resistance prevented them from cutting supply lines across the Euphrates River. Iraqi forces need to take the Palestine Bridge on the Euphrates to constrict ISIS’ ability to resupply and communicate. Taking Ramadi will be difficult because ISIS has had months to prepare complex urban defenses that will make for a dangerous fight.

This is the last of four articles analyzing the new US Department of Defense Law of War Manual. The first article was posted November 3. The second article was posted November 4. The third was posted November 5.

Pentagon embraces “just following orders” justification for war crimes

As previous segments have noted, key conceptions advanced in the Pentagon’s Law of War Manual amount to little more than a rehash of authoritarian legal theories upheld by the Nazi regime and other fascist governments.

The Department of Defense (DOD) manual’s protocols for enforcing the law of war and establishing the legality of military orders fall into this category, bearing an eerie resemblance to the doctrine asserted by the main defendants at the Nuremberg Tribunal—that they were “just following orders.” In flat contradiction to the principles upheld at Nuremberg, subordinates are instructed to “presume” that commands are lawfully issued and are granted sweeping immunity from responsibility for war crimes committed under orders from the military brass.

US military personnel are instructed and trained to regard orders emanating from the command unit as legal by default, the DOD manual states. The document states: “Subordinates, absent specific knowledge to the contrary, may presume orders to be lawful. The acts of a subordinate done in compliance with an unlawful order given by a superior are generally excused.” (P. 1,148)

“Except in such instances of palpable illegality, which must be of rare occurrence, the inferior should presume that the order was lawful and authorized and obey it accordingly,” one footnote declares, citing Winthrop Military Law and Precedents in defense of this position. (P. 1,058f)

Image: Lt. Col. Oliver North testifying during the Iran-Contra congressional hearings in 1987

In cases of ambiguity, junior officers are encouraged to concoct an “interpretation” of orders that might render them more lawful. “Commands and orders should not be understood as implicitly authorizing violations of the law of war where other interpretations are reasonably available,” the manual states.

The authors write that the law is enforced through “military instructions, regulations and procedures” issued by the Pentagon. “The implementation of law of war treaties and obligations through military instructions, regulations, and procedures has the effect of making such rules enforceable because military personnel are required to comply with duly issued instructions, regulations, and procedures,” the manual states. (P. 1,069)

These formulations point to the fact that there is no real distinction between the decrees of the Pentagon bureaucracy and the DOD “Law of War”, which, far from being actual law, is merely a special collection of military orders issued by cabals of military lawyers and career defense officials.

Planning for mass repression at home

In addition to its international significance, the Law of War Manual summarizes and integrates plans for mass repression and martial law within the US itself that have been developed since the late 1960s by the US Defense Department in direct response to the political radicalization of the working class and layers of the middle class.

The procedures governing mass detention enumerated in the Law of War Manual have already been partially worked out by numerous agencies and programs run by the Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Directorate, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Department of Homeland Security, which now incorporates FEMA.

The driving impetus behind these preparations has been the threat of insurrectionary struggles by the working class and the associated growth of anti-war sentiment within the population.

In the aftermath of the 1967 urban upheavals, DOD established the Directorate of Civil Disturbance Planning and Operations as a permanent body to oversee plans for suppression of domestic unrest by federal troops.

Image: The Mochida family awaites evacuation to an internment camp in 1942

Beginning in 1968, US military planners developed frequent updates to the US Army Civil Disturbance Plan, codenamed “Operation Garden Plot.” Updated on an almost yearly basis since then, Garden Plot calls for the rapid deployment of federal military forces to every major city in the US, with initial contingents of troops scheduled to arrive within six hours of call-up. The plan was touted by its original architects as a “counterrevolutionary” response to the mass strikes, anti-war protests, ghetto uprisings, and radicalization of university campuses during this period.

Garden Plot operations were to be activated in response to “strikes, civil disturbances and labor disturbances which affect military installations or other strikes or labor and civil disturbances of sufficient magnitude to indicate a probable employment of Federal troops to preserve or restore order.”

The document continued:

“Civil disturbances which are beyond the control of municipal or state authorities may occur at any time. Dissatisfaction with the environmental conditions contributing to racial unrest and civil disturbances and dissatisfaction with national policy as manifested in the anti-draft and anti-Vietnam demonstrations are recognized factors within the political and social structure. As such, they might provide a preconditioned base for a steadily deteriorating situation leading to demonstrations and violent attacks upon the social order.”

Garden Plot called for “saturation of areas with police and military patrols,” continuous helicopter sorties over targeted areas, and deployment of artillery, tanks, tactical air support and psychological warfare against demonstrators in US cities.

“Disturbances requiring Federal intervention will occur simultaneously in up to 25 objective areas throughout the CONUS [continental United States], necessitating the employment in each objective area of up to five 2,000-man brigades plus supporting troops, with the exception of Washington, D. C., when forces totaling 30,000 troops may be employed,”

the plan stated. (Quoted from “US Department of the Army Civil Disturbance Plan ‘GARDEN PLOT’ 10-September-1968”).

Planning for Continuity of Government (COG), a euphemism for martial law, “assumed its current shape in response to the mobilization of US Army intelligence and the CIA against left-wing Americans during the civil disorder of the 1960s and 1970s,” as Peter Dale Scott noted in his study of the growth of the military-intelligence apparatus during the postwar era (9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America, 11).

To provide intelligence for domestic counterinsurgency operations, during the 1960s and 1970s the DOD oversaw the establishment of Emergency Operations Centers (EOC), staffed by cells of federal military intelligence analysts maintaining constant communication with the Pentagon’s “domestic war room” in National Guard headquarters across the country.

These initiatives were jumpstarted in May 1971 with the establishment of the California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI), authorized by then-Governor Ronald Reagan. Between 1971 and May 1975, more than 4,000 officials from the National Guard, the Army, police agencies and private corporations received training in “emergency preparedness” at the CTSI in San Luis Obispo.

As the social counterrevolution gained steam after 1975, martial law planning was steadily embedded in the upper reaches on the state apparatus and institutionalized through further executive orders.

FEMA and REX 84

The past four decades have witnessed a feverish build-up of authoritarian legal and political instruments that have been entrenched as a permanent part of the executive branch. Virtually every year has seen new orders and protocols developing the scaffolding of a police state.

The duration and continuity in such planning demonstrates that it is not simply the initiative of this or that reactionary bourgeois politician, but rather something that emerges organically from class relations within the United States and the deteriorating position of American imperialism in the world.

The Law of War Manual expands upon existing DOD plans authorizing mass detention of US citizens, dating from at least the 1970s. The 1978 update of the US Army Civil Disturbance Plan called in no uncertain terms for DOD to prepare to establish detention camps in liaison with state and local agencies.

“Plans for detention assistance to civilian authorities will range from the absolute minimum, such as assisting civil police in the guarding of civilians apprehended and awaiting transfer or en route to detention facilities, to the establishment and operation of temporary detention facilities to supplement those operated by civil authorities,”

the document stated.

The civilian apparatus of the US government was increasingly remodeled over decades to serve as the administrative wing of the emerging military dictatorship-in-waiting. Executive decrees issued by the Carter administration consolidated civil and military planning for “national emergencies” under the control of the newly created Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Executive Order 12148, signed by President Carter in 1979, mandated continuous joint preparations by FEMA and DOD aimed at “civil defense planning.”

Image: The Miami Herald of July 5, 1987 documented the existence of a “parallel government behind the Reagan administration engaged in secret actions including … a contingency plan to suspend the Constitution and impose martial law in United States in case of nuclear war or national rebellion.”

In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration presided over a further entrenchment of martial law planning cadres within the highest levels of the executive branch. In 1981, CTSI lead planner Colonel Louis Giuffrida was appointed “emergency czar” by President Reagan.

Giuffrida had attracted favorable attention from political forces assembled around the future President Reagan for his role in the development of the CTSI and his US Army War College thesis paper, “National Survival/ Racial Imperative,” which envisioned plans for detention of millions of “American Negroes” in “assembly centers or relocation camps.”

In December 1982, Reagan approved the formation of the Emergency Mobilization Preparedness Board (EMPB) to serve as a planning body for an expanded “Civil/Military Alliance in Emergency Management,” headed by FEMA and DOD.

It was while sitting as a member of the EMPB that Lt. Colonel Oliver North of Iran-Contra notoriety developed the REX 84 plan, a major precursor to the 2015 Law of War Manual.

As described by Alfonzo Chardy, a journalist who exposed the plans in a 1987 article for the Miami Herald, REX 84 outlined procedures for “suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments, and declaration of martial law during a national crisis.”

Public exposure of REX 84 by Chardy and its mention during a congressional hearing on the Iran-Contra scandal, which involved the secret and illegal funding of the Nicaraguan Contras by the US government, did not succeed in slowing the elaboration of the legal and political foundations for direct military rule.

Expanding upon the Carter administration’s Executive Order 12171, Executive Order 12681, signed by President George H. W. Bush in 1989, exempted FEMA’s National Preparedness Directorate from the National Labor Relations Act, authorizing FEMA to develop forced labor programs and oversee the direct takeover of sections of the economy by the military and intelligence agencies.

The twenty-five years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union have witnessed a further intensification of preparations for military occupation of the continental United States. The Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations all oversaw large-scale mobilizations of the US military against the domestic population.

In April 1992, the Bush I administration ordered thousands of federal soldiers, Marines and intelligence agents to occupy Los Angeles in response to the riots that began on April 29. During the Republican National Convention in August of 2000, DOD placed federal military units on standby “to execute Operation Garden Plot and quell any serious civil disturbances,” according to confidential FEMA documents acquired by Wired News. (Declan McCullagh, US military poised to respond to attack on GOP convention, Wired News, August 2000)

In April 2002, the Bush administration authorized the creation of the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) as part of a new “Unified Command Plan.” NORTHCOM, the first full-blown US military command focusing on the continental United States, was the descendant of military commands tasked with preparing and developing Garden Plot over the previous period. A NORTHCOM planning document leaked in 2010, titled CONPLAN 3501, showed that the command had rapidly developed a highly detailed division of labor for military occupation of the continental United States during the years following its formation.

Conclusion

The Law of War Manual is a watershed in the breakdown of American bourgeois democracy and the repudiation by the ruling elite of the democratic principles laid down in the Constitution. Outside of a brief protest by the New York Times, in a single editorial, the corporate-controlled media has said nothing about the new codification of Pentagon doctrine. Nor have any of the presidential candidates, Republican or Democratic, from the “libertarian” Rand Paul to the supposed “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders.

As envisioned by the manual, the US military apparatus becomes the ultimate legal authority on the planet, making up and modifying its own “laws” in the course of military operations aimed at subjugating the entire world population to its dictates.

Rather than the outcome of megalomania on the part of US generals and officials, the manual flows from the objective logic of the development of capitalism as a world-historic social formation.

As Vladimir Lenin explained in his epochal work, The State and Revolution, beginning from the late 19th century, the development of the capitalist state in general has been characterized by the “perfecting and strengthening of the ‘executive power,’ its bureaucratic and military apparatus.”

Image: Military forces ding house-to-house searches during the Boston lockdown in April, 2013 [Photo: rilymoskal7]

Despite differences in the forms of government of various capitalist nations, Lenin explained, there remains a clear universal tendency toward the increasing centralization of power in the hands of the vast and permanent bureaucracies that constitute, in every capitalist state, a veritable “permanent government” that remains in power no matter which parties or individuals have won the latest round of elections.

In another of his central works, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin identified the essential economic processes driving this development. From the 1870s onward, the growth of monopolies and the extraction of super-profits from colonial or semi-colonial countries ensured the ever-greater concentration of wealth and power in the hands of financial oligarchies.

As Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution, explained in the Manifesto of the First Congress of the Comintern, the major US and European finance houses integrated themselves with the military agencies of the bourgeois state during and after the First World War. “Finance capital, which plunged mankind into the abyss of war, itself underwent a catastrophic change in the course of this war,” Trotsky wrote in 1919.

“During the course of the war, the regulating-directing role was torn from the hands of these economic groups and transferred directly into the hands of the military-state power. The distribution of raw materials, the utilization of Baku or Rumanian oil, Donbas coal, Ukrainian wheat, the fate of German locomotives, freight cars and automobiles, the rationing of relief for starving Europe—all these fundamental questions of the world’s economic life are not being regulated by free competition, nor by associations of national and international trusts and consortiums, but by the direct application of military force, for the sake of its continued preservation.

“If the complete subjugation of the state power to the power of finance capital had led mankind into the imperialist slaughter, then through this slaughter finance capital has succeeded in completely militarizing not only the state but also itself; and it is no longer capable of fulfilling its basic economic functions otherwise than by means of blood and iron.” (The First Five Years of the Communist International, Volume 1, P. 46)

With these conceptions, Trotsky and the Third International had already recognized the main tendencies of imperialist development that would dominate the interwar years and reach new heights during the post-World War II era.

With the passage of the National Security Act of 1947—legislation drawn up by Wall Street’s favored law firms that created the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, and the US Air Force—the major US banks laid the foundations for the growth of a permanent “national security state” on a scale far beyond anything that had existed when Lenin first wrote of the “perfecting” of the bourgeois state.

The closing decades of the 20th century and the first 15 years of the 21st have witnessed an explosive growth of social inequality, as the US ruling class turned to financialization and dismantled vast sections of industry. Under these conditions, the Law of War Manual amounts to nothing less than a call for “all hands on deck” in defense of the capitalist order. Engaged in a relentless counterrevolutionary offensive that is destroying the living conditions of the vast majority of the global population, and facing an American population that is increasingly hostile towards all of the official institutions, the military chiefs in Washington and their paymasters on Wall Street are preparing to defend their privileges by means of dictatorship at home and total war internationally.

Concluded

It is too early to draw definitive conclusions about the tragic plane crash of the Russian civil airliner 7K9268 in Sinai in which at least 224 people lost their lives. But that does not mean that one should refrain from drawing a preliminary analysis.

We live in a time when the corporate media intentionally obscures the facts and when US-supported terrorists in Syria place women in large cages above buildings as human shields in order to avoid Russian bombings. This leaves us with little choice but to try to make sense of events ourselves.

It was a mere several hours after the tragic air crash of the Russian airliner, that Debka File, an Israeli right-wing website with a mixed record, run by a former Israeli intelligence operative, claimed that the plane was shot down by a missile fired by ISIS. Debka also claimed that Russia sought to obscure the location of the crash and falsely claimed that the plane went missing near Cyprus.

This seems unreasonable. Firstly, it would make little sense for Russia to obscure a fact that can be easily discovered. Secondly, Russia would have every interest in exposing the truth about the crash as soon as possible and not working to further disinformation.

At that stage, it was equally probable that the crash was an accident or a terror attack.

However, it was later discovered that the pilot did not call to report a technical failure.  This indicates that the event likely caught the pilot by surprise, leaving no time for response. Most accidents or mechanical failures would probably give the pilots enough time to report the incidence. According to reports, the plane did not suffer from a technical malfunction as reported earlier. ISIS claimed responsibility for the crash but its claim is not a proof in itself. ISIS would naturally seek to claim responsibility for such an action, therefore demonstrating its power to strike back at Russia.

The video of the plane being shot down by a missile may or may not have been released by ISIS but even if it was, that does not mean that ISIL brought it down. The Russian airline flew at 10,000 meters above ground and ISIL would need a sophisticated surface-to-air missile since a man-portable anti-aircraft missile will be unlikely to hit the plane. Such missiles are currently probably not in the hands of jihadist fighters in Sinai. Surface-to-air missile could be smuggled in from Libya, but such a transfer would probably become known within a very short period of time, as the Bedouin track nearly everything that takes place in the area and rumors spread quickly. Also, operating it would requite a high level of expertise that jihadist fighters in Sinai probably do not possess.

Egypt rushed to deny that the crash was a terrorist attack and later said that one should wait until the investigation is complete. This is understandable.

Egypt is interested in good relations with Russia and in tourism from Russia and the possibility of a terrorist attack was too scary to consider. Egypt may have also been embarrassed by the fact that it does not have full control over Sinai as terrorist groups that operate there have attacked police stations in the past.

Moreover, in Sinai where bribery is very common, it is possible that a person managed to make his way to the plane while it was still at the airport and plant a bomb there or damage the plane in such a way that it would later crash. Such a scheme, however, would possibly require the collaboration and participation of the security guards of the airport and of the Egyptian police. Egypt is generally naturally embarrassed about the corruption that exists among some of the police.

By now, it appears that Russian investigators have generally ruled out mechanical errors and believe that the plane was brought down due to an external factor. The plane appeared to have broken apart in the air.

Based on what we know so far, a reasonable scenario, and it is of course not proven at this stage, is that someone managed to plant a bomb on the plane before it took off. Engaging in such a sophisticated plot would serve several purposes. First, it would be difficult to trace the cause of the crash until several days later if the cause will ever be found. Secondly, it is easier to bring down a plane in that way than by a missile. These advantages would only be doubled if the kind of bomb placed was not a regular bomb but one that would cause the plane to unravel due to sophisticated technology that does not leave the traditional traces of fire.

If the above is true, it is possible that the high expertise demanded from those who planted a bomb or several in such a way that they will not be discovered by the security crew nor would the cause be evident, could only take place with the help of highly skilled professionals, who may have not come from the ranks of jihadist fighters in Sinai. Since it is seems that the plane broke up in air and yet no traces of explosion can be seen, it should not be ruled out that exceptionally advanced technology was used and that such a technology was unlikely to be in the hands of ISIL.

In 1976, two bombs exploded in the Cubana flight 455 a short while after it took off. The pilot attempted bravely to save the plane and landed it in the sea but all 73 passengers were killed, among them 24 members of the Olympic fencing team. The action was carried out by CIA-sponsored Cuban terrorists and led by Luis Posada Carriles, who was trained with explosives by the agency.

In 1985, Luis Posada Carriles was indicted in Venezuela for the action. He escaped shortly after and went on to work for the CIA. He now has found refuge in Miami. The only trial he faced in the US was for the minor charge of infringing immigration rules.

The Cubana 455 incident is significant as it proves that the CIA had no moral qualms sending people to plant bombs on civilian planes. It is reasonable to fear that what was true for the US when dealing with tiny Cuba may also be true for the US when dealing with the Russian Federation which poses far more of a challenge to the hegemony of the former. There is the possibility, which cannot be proven at this stage but should be raised, that CIA-sponsored terrorists planted an advanced bomb on the Russian airliner in the airport on the night before it took off and used a unique technological devise that could result in the plane breaking apart and does not leave signs of a fire.

This would serve to pay back Russia for its operations in Syria and to prolong the investigation onto its causes while even provoking Russia into action and in turn presenting it as irrational and whimsical. Bringing down a civilian plane would be in the interest of the US, as it may turn the Russian public, pained and shocked by the heavy toll of civilians, against Putin and against the war in Syria. Indeed, since John McCain unabashedly recommended arming rebels with surface-to-air missiles to bring down Russian military planes in Syria, it should not be ruled out, based on the senator’s statement, that Western intelligence agencies brought down a Russian airliner.

If in the coming days it becomes clear that the plane exploded due to bombs placed on it, it is not impossible that those who planted the bomb received help and training from the CIA. Bringing down planes while leaving no clear traces that point to the cause of the wreckage would serve as an ideal modus operandi for the US in its war against Russia. The mysteriously absent lack of evidence would not allow Russia to blame a particular actor while the crash would intensify pressure on Putin to end his operations in Syria and would create despair and panic in Russia. It would also provoke Russia to act hurriedly in response while then its actions would later be seen as provocations that came out of the blue.

Suggesting such a scenario may seem wild and irresponsible, and it should not be claimed as fact, but in light of Senator McCain’s own words, it is possible. The anti-Russian hysteria in the US that suggests that the US intends to intensify its encirclement of Russia and the fact that the US is already arming jihadist rebels in Syria and sponsored terrorists who brought down planes in the past mean that such a scenario should be investigated and considered. Of course, nothing can be said with certainty until the investigation is complete. But the latest crash of a Russian-built plane in South Sudan is worrying due to the proximity of events.

In light of the possibility that many Americans are probably convinced that Russian planes are faulty and continue to crash for no reason due to the sense of superiority with which they view the country, Americans would be served well if they would educate themselves on the history of the US bringing down civilian planes, which also include the Iran Air 655, as most are probably convinced that only bearded terrorists conducted such actions.

One would hope that exhaustive investigations would shed more light on the matter.

BBC reports on the aftermath of an attack on a school in Syria in 2013 were largely, if not entirely, staged, according to British blogger and publicist Robert Stuart.

In his latest report Stuart exposes evidence proving the reports contain fabricated data and video footage. The attack itself allegedly took place on August 26th, 2013.

According to reports, the Syrian government dropped a flammable napalm bomb on a school in Syrian village of Urm Al-Kubra, near Aleppo.

People walk on the rubble of damaged buildings after Syrian military helicopter allegedly droped barrel bombs over the city of Daraya, southwest of the capital Damascus © AFP 2015/ FADI DIRANI

Later the BBC aired a documentary called “Saving Syria’s Children” as well as several other reports about the consequences of the attack. Video footage included scenes from the hospital in Aleppo, where the victims supposedly underwent treatment, and interviews with them.

The use of napalm bombs against civilians has been one of the main accusations that Western countries have brought against Syrian incumbent President Bashar al-Assad.

They used it as a justification for their continuous calls for regime change in the country.

However, Stuart, who has been investigating the case for almost two years, points out at many contradictory accounts of the victims as well as other discrepancies. He spoke to Sputnik in an exclusive interview.

There were a few things that made me want to investigate this report and the more I looked the more I found out. I think it is staged as there are a number of inconsistencies in the whole event. One of them is that no one can agree when exactly this incident actually happened.

He further said, “Different people said that it happened at different times, some said in the day some said in the evening, they all contradict each other. Looking at YouTube video there are a number of discrepancies one of them is that in the video a woman appears who is wearing a very distinct dress and a headscarf. The same dress then appears on another victim now in the hospital shot in an amateur video. It is quite bizarre as two people are wearing the same dress.”

There is a local Syrian investigation team that has been looking at this matter and according to a person from this team he said that he was there at the time of the alleged attack and there was no attack on the school.

I was contacted by a woman in Amsterdam who traveled to Syria and she asked me not to post these photographs that I was posting on Facebook as she was worried of being identified in them as she is quite a distinctive looking woman.

Talking about other reports that may have been falsified regarding the Middle East and Syria, Stuart said that this case according to him is unique because, “actors or volunteers have been used to stage an atrocity for the cameras or propaganda purposes.”

He said that this could be a case of ‘manufacturing consent’ to allow British people to see what is going on in Syria and permit the British soldiers to go to war. “BBC is blocking all videos of this footage on YouTube and any frame that appears is immediately taken down.”

He then goes on to say what the public and journalists can do in order to get the real story behind this allegedly fabricated video.

Today’s long-awaited release of the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) reveals that the pact replicates many of the most controversial terms of past pacts that promote job offshoring and push down U.S wages while further expanding the scope of the controversial investor-state system and rolling back improvements on access to affordable medicines and environmental standards that congressional Democrats forced on the George W. Bush administration in 2007.

“Apparently, the TPP’s proponents resorted to such extreme secrecy during negotiations because the text shows TPP would offshore more  American jobs, lower our wages, flood us with unsafe imported food and expose our laws to attack in foreign tribunals,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

“When the administration says it used the TPP to renegotiate NAFTA, few expected that meant doubling down on the worst job-killing, wage-suppressing NAFTA terms, expanding limits on food safety and rolling back past reforms on environmental standards and access to affordable drugs.”

On some key issues, the text reveals provisions that will cost TPP support from members of Congress who supported the narrow passage of Fast Track trade authority this summer, and affirm for the many members of Congress who backed past trade deals but opposed Fast Track that the TPP must be stopped.

“Many in Congress said they would support the TPP only if, at a minimum, it included past reforms made to trade pact intellectual property rules affecting access to affordable medicines. But the TPP rolls back that past progress by requiring new marketing exclusivities and patent term extensions, and  provides pharmaceutical firms with new monopoly rights for biotech drugs, including many new and forthcoming cancer treatments,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. “The terms in this final TPP text will contribute to preventable suffering and death abroad, and may constrain the reforms that Congress can consider to reduce Americans’ medicine prices at home.”

The text also confirms that demands made by Congress and key constituencies were not fulfilled.

“From leaks, we knew quite a bit about the agreement, but in chapter after chapter the final text is worse than we expected with the demands of the 500 official U.S. trade advisors representing corporate interests satisfied to the detriment of the public interest,” said Wallach.

Today’s text release confirms concerns about TPP that were based on earlier leaks and reveals ways in which the TPP rolls back past public interest reforms to the U.S. trade model and expands anti-public-interest provisions demanded by the hundreds of official U.S. corporate trade advisers:

Worse anti-public-interest provisions relative to past U.S. trade pacts

• The TPP Intellectual Property Chapter would roll back the “May 2007” reforms for access to medicines.
• The TPP Environment Chapter would roll back the “May 2007” reforms by eliminating most of the seven Multilateral Environmental Agreements that past pacts have enforced.
• The TPP Investment Chapter would expand the scope of policies that can be challenged and the basis for such challenges, including for the first time ever allowing ISDS enforcement of World Trade Organization intellectual property terms and new challenges to financial regulations.
• With Japanese, Australian and other firms newly empowered to launch ISDS attacks against the United States, the TPP would double U.S. ISDS exposure with more than 9,200 additional subsidiaries operating here of corporation from TPP nations newly empowered to launch ISDS cases against the U.S. government. (About 9,500 U.S. subsidiaries have ISDS rights under ALL existing U.S. investor-state-enforced pacts.)
• The TPP E-Commerce Chapter would undermine consumer privacy protections for sensitive personal health, financial and other data when it crosses borders by exposing such policies to  challenge as a violation of the TPP limits on regulation of data flows.
• TPP “Sanitary and Phytosanitary” chapter terms would impose new limits on imported foods safety relative to past pacts. This includes new challenges to U.S. border inspection systems that can be launched based on extremely subjective requirements that inspections must “limited to what is reasonable and necessary” as determine by a TPP tribunal. New language that replicates the industry demand for a so-called Rapid Response Mechanism that requires border inspectors to notify exporters for every food safety check that finds a problem and give the exporter the right to bring a challenge to that port inspection determination meaning  new right to bring a trade challenge to individual border inspection decisions (including potentially laboratory or other testing) that second-guesses U.S. inspectors and creates a chilling effect that would deter rigorous oversight of imported foods.

Anti-public-interest provisions that are the same as past U.S. pacts

• The TPP Investment Chapter would eliminate many of the risks and costs of relocating American jobs to low-wage countries, incentivizing more American job offshoring.
• The TPP procurement chapter would offshore our tax dollars to create jobs overseas instead of at home by giving firms operating in any TPP nation equal access to many U.S. government procurement contracts, rather than us continuing to give preference to local firms to build and maintain our public libraries, parks, post offices and universities.
• Contrary to Fast Track negotiating objectives, the TPP would grant foreign firm greater rights that domestic firms enjoy under U.S. law and in U.S. courts. One class of interests – foreign firms – could privately enforce this public treaty by skirting domestic laws and courts to challenge U.S. federal, state and local decisions and policies on grounds not available in U.S. law and do so before extrajudicial ISDS tribunals authorized to order payment of unlimited sums of taxpayer dollars.
• There are no new safeguards that limit ISDS tribunals’ discretion to issue ever-expanding interpretations of governments’ obligations to investors and order compensation on that basis. The text reveals the same “safeguard” Annexes and terms that were included in U.S. pacts  since the 2005 Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that have failed to rein in ISDS tribunals. CAFTA tribunals have simply ignored the “safeguard” provisions that are replicated in the TPP and as with past pacts, in the TPP such tribunal conduct is not subject to appeal.
• The TPP would ban the use of capital controls and other macroprudential financial regulations used to prevent speculative bubbles and financial crises.

Please see a bullet point analysis of key TPP investment, food safety, labor and environmental, market access, rules of origin, procurement, and other provisions prepared by labor and public interest experts for more details. More detailed analyses of each chapter will be available next week.

The TPP can take effect only if the U.S. Congress approve it given the rules about conditions for the TPP to go into effect. The TPP’s fate in Congress is uncertain at best given that since the trade authority vote, the small bloc of members of the U.S. House of Representatives who made the narrow margin of passage possible have expressed concerns that the text release shows were not addressed.

Ten U.S. presidential candidates have pushed anti-TPP messages in their campaigning, stoking U.S. voters’ ire about the pact.

An unprecedented number and wide array of organizations oppose any attempt to railroad the TPP through Congress by using the Fast Track process. Groups united on this extend well beyond labor unions and include consumer, Internet freedom, senior, health, food safety, environmental, human rights, faith, LGBTQ, student and civil rights organizations.

“Now that Congress and the public can scrutinize the actual text,  the reality that it fails to meet Congress’ demands and its terms would be harmful to most Americans will replace the administration’s myth-based sales job for TPP, further dimming the TPP’s prospects in Congress,” Wallach said.

There is a global depopulation agenda. The plan is to remove the ‘undesirables’, ‘the poor’ and others deemed to be ‘unworthy’ and a drain on finite resources. However, according to Rosemary Mason, the plan isn’t going to work because an anthropogenic mass extinction is already underway that will affect all life on the planet and both rich and poor alike. Humans will struggle to survive the phenomenon.

A new paper by Rosemary A Mason in the ‘Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry’, indicates that a ‘sixth extinction’ is under way (the Holocene extinction, sometimes called the Sixth Extinction, is a name describing the ongoing extinction of species during the present Holocene epoch – since around 10,000 BCE). In her paper, ‘The sixth mass extinction and chemicals in the environment: our environmental deficit is now beyond nature’s ability to regenerate’, she argues that loss of biodiversity is the most urgent of the environmental problems, as biodiversity is critical to ecosystem services and human health. And the main culprit is the modern chemical-intensive industrialised system of food and agriculture.

Mason asserts there is a growing threat from the release of hormone-disrupting chemicals that could even be shifting the human sex ratio and reducing sperm counts. An industrial agricultural revolution has created a technology-dependent global food system, but it has also created serious long-run vulnerabilities, especially in its dependence on stable climates, crop monocultures and industrially produced chemical inputs. In effect, farming is a principal source of global toxification and soil degradation.

Without significant pressure from the public demanding action, Mason argues there could little chance of changing course fast enough to forestall disaster. The ‘free’ market is driving the impending disaster and blind faith in corporate-backed technology will not save us. Indeed, such faith in this technology is actually killing us.

Since the late 1990s, US scientists have written in increasingly desperate tones regarding an unprecedented number of fungal and fungal-like diseases, which have recently caused some of the most severe die-offs and extinctions ever witnessed in wild species and which are jeopardizing food security. Only one paper dared to mention pesticides as being a primary cause, however.

Mason cites a good deal of evidence to show how the widespread use on agricultural crops of the systemic neonicotinoid insecticides and the herbicide glyphosate, both of which cause immune suppression, make species vulnerable to emerging infectious pathogens, driving large-scale wildlife extinctions, including essential pollinators.

Providing evidence to show how human disease patterns correlate remarkably well with the rate of glyphosate usage on corn, soy and wheat crops, which has increased due to ‘Roundup Ready’ crops, Mason goes on to present more sources to show how our over-reliance on chemicals in agriculture is causing irreparable harm to all beings on this planet. Most of these chemicals are known to cause illness, and they have likely been causing illnesses for many years. But until recently, the herbicides have never been sprayed directly on food crops and never in this massive quantity.

The depopulation agenda

Mason discusses how agriculture and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) fit into a wider agenda for depopulating the planet. She notes that on the initiative of Gates, in May 2009 some of the richest people in the US met at the home of Nurse, a British Nobel prize-winning biochemist and President (2003–10) of Rockefeller University in Manhattan, to discuss ways of tackling a ‘disastrous’ environmental, social and industrial threat of overpopulation. The meeting was hosted by David Rockefeller Jr. These same individuals have met several times since to develop a strategy in which population growth would be tackled.

The Rockefeller Foundation (RF) was involved in extensive financing of eugenics research  in league with some of the US’s most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthy élite families, such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman and others since the 1920s, has embodied what they termed ‘negative eugenics’, the systematic killing off of ‘undesired bloodlines’.

RF funded the earliest research on GMOs, which Mason regards as part of the depopulation agenda. The RF funded the earliest research on GMOs in the 1940s and effectively founded the science of molecular biology.

Mason cites Steven Druker to show the fraud behind GMOs and how governments and leading scientific institutions have systematically misrepresented the facts about GMOs and the scientific research that casts doubt on their safety. Druker has shown that GMOs can have severe health impacts, which have been covered up.

The Royal Society is the preeminent scientific body within the UK that advises the government. It has misrepresented the facts about GMOs and has engaged in various highly dubious and deceptive tactics to promote the technology.

Druker wrote an open letter to RS as it has an obligation to the British public to provide a public response and ‘put the record straight’ on GMOs. Although Sir Paul Nurse’s presidency of Rockefeller University terminated in 2010, after he assumed the Royal Society presidency, Mason notes that Nurse is said to have maintained a laboratory on the Rockefeller campus and has an ongoing relationship with the university.

She asks: is that why Sir Paul was unable (or unwilling) even to discuss GMOs with Steven Druker? Was he sent to London by the Rockefeller Foundation to support the UK Government in their attempt to bring in GM crops? The UK Government and the GM industry have after all been shown to be working together to promote GM crops and foods, undermine consumer choice and ignore environmental harm.

Mason then goes on to discuss the impact of glyphosate residues (herbicide-tolerant GM crops are designed to work with glyphosate), which are found in the organs of animals, human urine and human breast milk as well as in the air and rivers. She documents its widespread use and contamination of soil and water and notes that the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer’s assessment of glyphosate being a 2A carcinogen (probably carcinogenic in humans) is unwelcome news for the agrochemical industry. She also notes that Roundup usage has led to a depletion of biodiversity and that loss of biodiversity is also correlated with neonicotinoids. However, despite the evidence, the blatant disregard concerning the use of these substances by regulatory agencies around the world is apparent.

To provide some insight into the impact on health of the chemical-intensive model of agriculture, Mason shows that in the US increases in Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, breast cancer, oesophageal cancer, congenital anomalies and a growing burden of disability, particularly from mental disorders are all acknowledged.

She claims that plans are under way to depopulate the planet’s seven million plus people to a more manageable level of between 500–2000 million by a combination of means, including the poisoning and contamination of the planet’s food and water supplies via chemical-intensive industrialised agriculture. Mason also notes that health-damaging GMOs are being made available to the masses (under the guise of ‘feeding the poor’), while elites are more prone to eat organic food.

We may be gone before planned depopulation takes hold

Although Mason cites evidence to show that a section of the US elite has a depopulation agenda, given the amount of poisons being pumped into the environment and into humans, the thrust of her argument is that we could all be extinct before this comes to fruition – both rich and poor alike.

In concluding, she states that the global pesticides industry has been allowed to dominate the regulatory agencies and have created chemicals of mass destruction that can no longer be controlled. She has some faith in systems biology coming to the fore and being able to understand the complexity of the whole organism as a system, rather than just studying its parts in a reductionist manner. But Mason believes that ultimately the public must place pressure on governments and hold agribusiness to account.

However, that in itself may not be enough.

It is correct to highlight the poisonous impacts of the Rockefeller-sponsored petrochemical ‘green revolution’. It has uprooted indigenous/traditional agriculture and local economies and has recast them in a model that suits global agribusiness. It is poisoning life and the environment, threatening food security across the globe and is unsustainable. The ‘green revolution’ was ultimately a tool of US foreign policy that has been used in conjunction with various institutions like the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation. GMOs represent more of the same.

In this respect, Mason follows the line of argument in William F Engdahl’s book ‘Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation’, which locates the GM issue and the ‘green revolution’ firmly within the context of empire. Engdahl also sees the Rockefeller-Gates hand behind the great GMO project to a sinister eugenicist strategy of depopulation.

Mason’s concerns about depopulation therefore should not be dismissed, particularly given the record of the likes of the Gates and Rockefeller clans, the various covert sterility programmes that have been instituted by the US over the decades and the way agriculture has and continues to be used as a geopolitical tool to further the agendas of rich interests in the US.

To understand the processes that have led to modern farming and the role of entities like Monsanto, we must appreciate the geopolitics of food and agriculture, which benefits an increasingly integrated global cartel of finance, oil, military and agribusiness concerns. This cartel seeks to gain from war, debt bondage and the control of resources, regardless of any notions relating to food security, good health and nutrition, biodiversity, food democracy, etc.

Food and trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma notes the impacts in India:

“India is on fast track to bring agriculture under corporate control… Amending the existing laws on land acquisition, water resources, seed, fertilizer, pesticides and food processing, the government is in overdrive to usher in contract farming and encourage organized retail. This is exactly as per the advice of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as well as the international financial institutes.”

In Punjab, India, pesticides have turned the state into a ‘cancer epicentre‘. Moreover, Indian soils are being depleted as a result of the application of ‘green revolution’ ideology and chemical inputs. India is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is become deficient in nutrients and fertility.

And now, there is an attempt to push GM food crops into India in a secretive, non-transparent manner that smacks of regulatory delinquency underpinned by corrupt practices, which suggests officials are working hand in glove with US agribusiness.

As smallholders the world over are being driven from their land and the GMO/chemical-industrial farming model takes over, the problems continue to mount.

The environment, the quality of our food and our health are being sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit and a type of looting based on something we can loosely regard as ‘capitalism’. The solution involves a shift to organic farming and investment in and reaffirmation of indigenous models of agriculture. But ultimately it entails what Daniel Maingi of Growth Partners for Africa says what we must do: “… take capitalism and business out of farming.”

It must also entail, according to Maingi, investing in  “… indigenous knowledge and agroecology, education and infrastructure and stand(ing) in solidarity with the food sovereignty movement.”

In other words, both farmers and consumers must organise to challenge governments, corrupt regulatory bodies and big agribusiness at every available opportunity. If we don’t do this, what Mason outlines may come to pass.

Americans have some vague understanding that the U.S. wants Syria’s Assad to go, while Russia wants him to stay.

And Americans know that the U.S. “war against ISIS” hasn’t done much, while the Russians have been pounding Syrian targets with jets.

But Americans have no idea that the U.S. is deploying fighter jets designed solely to engage in plane-to-plane dogfighting … in order to counter the Russians.

And we don’t understand that the U.S. is arming the Syrian “rebels” with shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons. As the Wall Street Journal  reports:

The U.S. and its regional allies agreed to increase shipments of weapons and other supplies to help moderate Syrian rebels hold their ground and challenge the intervention of Russia and Iran on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials and their counterparts in the region said.

The deliveries from the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Arabia and other allied spy services deepen the fight between the forces battling in Syria, despite President Barack Obama’s public pledge to not let the conflict become a U.S.-Russia proxy war.

Saudi officials not only pushed for the White House to keep the arms pipeline open, but also warned the administration against backing away from a longstanding demand that Mr. Assad must leave office.

In the past month of intensifying Russian airstrikes, the CIA and its partners have increased the flow of military supplies to rebels in northern Syria, including of U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles, these officials said. Those supplies will continue to increase in coming weeks, replenishing stocks depleted by the regime’s expanded military offensive.

An Obama administration official said the military pressure is needed to push Mr. Assad from power. 

“Assad is not going to feel any pressure to make concessions if there is no viable opposition that has the capacity, through the support of its partners, to put pressure on his regime,” the official said.

In addition to the arms the U.S. has agreed to provide, Saudi and Turkish officials have renewed talks with their American counterparts about allowing limited supplies of shoulder-fire man-portable air-defense systems, or Manpads, to select rebels. Those weapons could help target regime aircraft, in particular those responsible for dropping barrel bombs, and could also help keep Russian air power at bay, the officials said.

Mr. Obama has long rebuffed such proposals, citing the risk to civilian aircraft and fears they could end up in the hands of terrorists. To reduce those dangers, U.S. allies have proposed retrofitting the equipment to add so-called kill switches and specialized software that would prevent the operator from using the weapon outside a designated area, said officials in the region briefed on the option.

U.S. intelligence agencies are concerned that a few older Manpads may already have been smuggled into Syria through supply channels the CIA doesn’t control.

(This comes a week after ISIS may have used a Manpad to shoot down a Russian civilian airliner.)

Americans don’t know that sending Manpads into Syria and trying to establish a no-fly zone is what Al Qaeda leaders have been hoping for, and that ISIS and Al Qaeda will end up with all of the weapons which the U.S. sends to Syria.

Americans don’t know the history of American regime change in Syria:

• The U.S. carried out a coup in Syria in 1949

• In 1957, the U.S. president and British prime minister agreed to use Arab extremists – including the Muslim Brotherhood –  to effect regime change in Syria

• In 1991, the U.S. hawks started planning another round of regime change in Syria

• The U.S. has been arming the Syrian opposition since 2006 … years before the uprising started

Americans don’t know that it was the “rebels” – not the Syrian government – who carried out the chemical weapons massacre in Syria.

Americans don’t know that U.S. backed rebels told Christians, “Either you convert to Islam or you will be beheaded.”   Syrian rebels slit the throat of a Christian man who refused to convert to Islam, taunting his fiance by yelling: “Jesus didn’t come to save him!”  A former Syrian Jihadi says the rebels have a “9/11 ideology”.  Indeed, they’re literally singing Bin Laden’s praises and celebrating the 9/11 attack.

Americans don’t know that the U.S. and its allies are largely responsible for creating ISIS, that U.S., Turkey and Israel have all been acting as ISIS’ air force, and that influential American figures are calling for openly arming Al Qaeda … and perhaps even ISIS.

Americans don’t know that Russia and China are catching up to the U.S. military, and that this isn’t a mere proxy war … but is “one step closer” to all out war between the U.S. and Russia.

And Americans don’t know that  history shows that empires collapse when they overextend themselves militarily … and fight one too many wars.

Postscript.  Americans also don’t know how close we’ve come to the worst-case scenario:

• We came very close to nuclear war with Russia numerous times in the past … and only the courage of a handful of men to disobey the commands of their superiors saved the world

• In 1962, the head of the U.S. Air Force – General Curtis LeMay – pushed president Kennedy to use the “opportunity” to launch a nuclear war against Russia, and was bitterly disappointed that Kennedy instead opted for peace.  As highly-regarded reporter David Talbot said recently:

The military in this country and the CIA thought that we could take, you know, Castro out. During the Cuban missile crisis, they were prepared to go to a nuclear war to do that. President Kennedy thought people like Curtis LeMay, who was head of the Air Force, General Curtis LeMay, was half-mad. He said, “I don’t even see this man in my—you know, in my sight,” because he was pushing for a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. And even years later, Curtis LeMay, after years after Kennedy is dead, in an interview that I quote from in the book, bitterly complains that Kennedy didn’t take this opportunity to go nuclear over Cuba. So, President Kennedy basically, I think, saved my life—I was 12 years old at the time—saved a lot of our lives, because he did stand his ground. He took a hard line against the national security people and said, “No, we’re going to peacefully resolve the Cuban missile crisis.”

• One of the world’s leading physicists (Michio Kaku) revealed declassified plans for the U.S. to launch a first-strike nuclear war against Russia in the 1987 book To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans.  The forward was written by the former Attorney General of the United States, Ramsey Clarke

• The U.S. is so enamored with nuclear weapons that it has authorized low-level field commanders to use them in the heat of battle in their sole discretion … without any approval from civilian leaders. Indeed, some fundamentalist U.S. military leaders want to start a nuclear war in the Middle East

• American, Russian and other experts warn that U.S. and Russian conflicts elsewhere could lead to nuclear war

• Russia has constructed massive underground shelters and taken other actions in anticipation of nuclear war

“Worse than anything we could’ve imagined.”

“An act of climate denial.”

“Giveaway to big agribusiness.”

“A death warrant for the open Internet.”

“Worst nightmare.”

“A disaster.”

As expert analysis of the long-shrouded, newly publicized Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) final text continued to roll out on Thursday, consensus formed around one fundamental assessment of the 12-nation pact: It’s worse than we thought.

“From leaks, we knew quite a bit about the agreement, but in chapter after chapter the final text is worse than we expected with the demands of the 500 official U.S. trade advisers representing corporate interests satisfied to the detriment of the public interest,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

In fact, Public Citizen charged, the TPP rolls back past public interest reforms to the U.S. trade model while expanding  problematic provisions demanded by the hundreds of official U.S. corporate trade advisers who had a hand in the negotiations while citizens were left in the dark.

On issues ranging from climate change to food safety, from open Internet to access to medicines, the TPP “is a disaster,” declared Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now.

“Now that we’ve seen the full text, it turns out the job-killing TPP is worse than anything we could’ve imagined,” added Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America. “This agreement would push down wages, flood our nation with unsafe imported food, raise the price of life-saving medicine, all the while trading with countries where gays and single mothers can be stoned to death.”

‘Act of Climate Denial’

Major climate action groups, including 350.org and the Sierra Club, were quick to point out that the text was notable as much for what it didn’t say as what for what it did. “The TPP is an act of climate denial,” said 350 policy director Jason Kowalski on Thursday. “While the text is full of handouts to the fossil fuel industry, it doesn’t mention the words climate change once.”

What it does do, however, is give “fossil fuel companies the extraordinary ability to sue local governments that try and keep fossil fuels in the ground,” Kowalski continued. “If a province puts a moratorium on fracking, corporations can sue; if a community tries to stop a coal mine, corporations can overrule them. In short, these rules undermine countries’ ability to do what scientists say is the single most important thing we can do to combat the climate crisis: keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

Furthermore, Friends of the Earth (FOE) said in its response to the final text, the agreement “is designed to protect ‘free trade’ in dirty energy products such as tar sands oil, coal from the Powder River Basin, and liquefied natural gas shipped out of West Coast ports.” The result, FOE warned, will be “more climate change from carbon emissions across the Pacific.”

“President Obama has sold the American people a false bill of goods,” said FOE president Erich Pica. “The TransPacific Partnership fails President Obama’s pledge to make the TPP an environmentally sound trade agreement.”

International observers were no less critical. Matthew Rimmer, a professor of intellectual property and innovation law at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology and trade policy expert, told Fairfax Media it looks like U.S. trade officials have been “greenwashing” the agreement.

“The environment chapter confirms some of the worst nightmares of environmental groups and climate activists,” Rimmer told the news outlet. “The agreement has poor coverage of environmental issues, and weak enforcement mechanisms. There is only limited coverage of biodiversity, conservation, marine capture fisheries, and trade in environmental services.”

‘Attack Sensible Food Safety Rules’

With its provisions that tie the hands of food inspectors at international borders and give more power to biotechnology firms, “the TPP is a giveaway to big agribusiness and food companies,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch executive director. Such corporate entities, she said, want to use trade deals like the TPP “to attack sensible food safety rules, weaken the inspection of imported food, and block efforts to strengthen U.S. food safety standards.”

Last month, the Center for Food Safety outlined the top five reasons “eaters should be worried about Obama’s new trade deal.” At the top of the list was the TPP’s ability to undermine efforts to label GMO foods. “More broadly,” the Center wrote in October, “any U.S. food safety rules on labeling, pesticides, or additives that [are] higher than international standards could be subject to challenge as ‘illegal trade barriers’.”

Indeed, according to Food & Water Watch, the final text released Thursday indicates that under a TPP regime, “agribusiness and biotech seed companies can now more easily use trade rules to challenge countries that ban GMO imports, test for GMO contamination, do not promptly approve new GMO crops or even require GMO labeling.”

“The TPP food safety and labeling provisions are worse than expected and bad news for American consumers and farmers,” said Hauter. “Congress must reject this raw deal that handcuffs food safety inspectors and exposes everyone to a rising tide of unsafe imported food.”

‘Death Warrant for the Open Internet’

“If U.S. Congress signs this agreement despite its blatant corruption, they’ll be signing a death warrant for the open Internet and putting the future of free speech in peril,” stated Evan Greer, Fight for the Future (FFTF) campaign director.

Among the “several sections of grave concern” identified by FFTF are those covering trademarks, pharmaceutical patents, copyright protections, and “trade secrets.”

Section J, which addresses Internet Service Providers (ISPs) “is one of the worst sections that impacts the openness of the Internet,” according to the digital rights group, which explained further:

This section requires Internet Service Providers to play “copyright cops” and assist in the enforcement of copyright takedown requests — but it does not require countries to have a system for counter-notices, so a U.S company could order a website to be taken down in another country, and there would be no way for the person running that website to refute their claims if, say, it was a political criticism website using copyrighted content in a manner consistent with fair use.

Section J makes it so ISPs are not liable for any wrongdoing when they take down content—incentivizing them to err on the side of copyright holders rather than on the side of free speech.

‘Public Review Is Needed’

Like-minded groups in Canada, where newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been on the job for all of one day, are sounding similar alarms.

Citing concerns about how the deal would impact human rights, health, employment, environment, and democracy, the Council of Canadians on Thursday demanded a full public consultation—including an independent human rights, economic, and environmental review of the document—before Trudeau goes any further. The group expressed particular concern over investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions, which allow corporations to sue states for lost profits, asking that they be excised from the deal.

“Trudeau is under a lot of pressure to adopt this deal as soon as possible, with calls already coming in from U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese President Shinto Abe,” acknowledged the Council’s national chairperson, Maude Barlow. “But a thorough public review is needed before he can establish whether the TPP is truly in Canada’s interest.”

Or anyone else’s, for that matter.

Imagine an arsonist lighting a building ablaze, then turning around, changing into a firefighter’s uniform, and running back toward it, not with a fire hose but instead, rolling a drum of gasoline in front of him. Would anyone believe that his intentions are to extinguish the blaze? Or would it be obvious that the goal is to compound the fire, so that no matter how much effort is organized against it, it can never be put out – not until everything is destroyed first?

Meet the Arsonists 

The United States has been illegally plying the airspace above Syria for over a year. It has been openly arming, funding, and training terrorists along Syria’s borders in Turkey and Jordan, admittedly, for much longer. And before the conflict began in 2011, the United States had conspired as early as 2007, revealed in interviews conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 9-page report “The Redirection,” to destabilize and overthrow the government of Syria through the use of sectarian extremists – more specifically, Al Qaeda – with arms and funds laundered through America’s oldest and stanchest regional ally, Saudi Arabia.

The rise of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL) itself, turns out also to be part of this premeditated “deconstruction” of Syria. A Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) report drafted in 2012 (.pdf) admitted:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).  

To clarify just who these “supporting powers” were that sought the creation of a “Salafist principality,” the DIA report explains:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime. 

It is clear who the arsonists are.

Rolling in Drums of Gasoline to “Fight the Fire” 

Nothing about the US’ recent moves have been honest. US policymakers have openly conspired to commit to strategies not aimed at actually fighting ISIS or ending the destructive conflict in Syria they themselves have started, but instead to counter Russia’s attempts to do so, merely under the guise of fighting ISIS, or helping refugees, or virtually any excuse they believe the public might support.

The truth has begun to emerge even in the West’s own newspapers. The Washington Post in an article titled, “Obama has strategy for Syria, but it faces major obstacles.” states explicitly that:

[The US] will increase air operations in northern Syria, particularly in the Turkish border area to cut the flow of foreign fighters, money and materiel coming in to support the Islamic State.

Here, the Washington Post openly admits that support for the Islamic State is flowing out of NATO-member Turkey. It is clear that to stop this “flow,” efforts should be concentrated on the Turkish-Syrian border before supplies and reinforcements reach Syria. It is clear that ISIS is intentionally being allowed to resupply and reinforce its fighting capacity within Syria from NATO territory, specifically to serve as a pretext for wider and more direct Western intervention in Syria itself as was noted in June of 2014 when ISIS first appeared in Iraq.

ISIS represents the drums of gasoline, rolled in by the US intentionally not to extinguish the flames, but to compound them into an inferno greater still.

The Arsonists Seek an Inferno Greater Still 

The same Washington Post article would reveal the true intentions of the US and its “boots on the ground” in Syria. While they claim they seek to “fight ISIS,” the truth is far more sinister. Under the pretext of fighting ISIS, these US forces, backing militants armed, trained, and funded by the US and its regional allies, will take and hold territory, effectively fulfilling US policy papers that have long-expressed the desire to “deconstruct” Syria as a secondary means of destroying it as a functioning nation-state if direct regime change was unachievable.

The Washington Post states specifically:

Defeating the Islamic State in Syria, under Obama’s strategy, rests on enabling local Syrian forces not only to beat back Islamic State fighters but to hold freed territory until a new central government, established in Damascus, can take over.

Since there is already an established central government in Damascus, it is safe to assume these regions carved out by US-backed militants will never be relinquished until Damascus falls. If successful, it will mean the Balkanization of Syria, and its cessation as a unified nation.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/06/us-in-syria-stopping-the-arsonist-firefighter/

Comparing this recent admission by the Washington Post, predicated on “fighting ISIS,” with plans laid out before the rise of ISIS, reveals that ISIS itself is only one of many in a long line of pretexts used to implement US objectives that were laid out, clearly, before the first shot was even fired during the Syrian crisis.

In the March 2012 Brookings Institution”Middle East Memo #21″ “Assessing Options for Regime Change” it is stated specifically that (emphasis added):

An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.

The plan to use US special forces to take and hold Syrian territory was also specifically laid out  in a June 2015 Brookings document literally titled, “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war.” In it, it stated that (emphasis added):

The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via the presence of special forces as well. The approach would benefit from Syria’s open desert terrain which could allow creation of buffer zones that could be monitored for possible signs of enemy attack through a combination of technologies, patrols, and other methods that outside special forces could help Syrian local fighters set up.

Were Assad foolish enough to challenge these zones, even if he somehow forced the withdrawal of the outside special forces, he would be likely to lose his air power in ensuing retaliatory strikes by outside forces, depriving his military of one of its few advantages over ISIL. Thus, he would be unlikely to do this.

 It is clear that America’s most recent scheme is simply a continuation of its long-standing criminal conspiracy arrayed against Syria and exposed as early as 2007 by Seymour Hersh.

To Stop Arsonists, Call Them Arsonists 

The United States clearly can stop ISIS, and without setting a single boot down on Syrian soil, or flying a single sortie in Syria’s skies.

For Russia, it only has the authorization of Syria’s legitimate government to operate within Syrian territory to confront ISIS. Ideally, Russia would want to interdict ISIS supplies and reinforcements before they reached Syrian territory, however, Moscow does not have the cooperation of nations harboring, aiding, and abetting the terrorist organization – namely Turkey and Jordan.

Additionally, Russia has limited leverage over other sponsors of ISIS, including Saudi Arabia whose entire existence is owed to billions in weapons sales from the United States, a ring of US military bases built around it throughout the Persian Gulf to protect it from its ever-increasing number of well-earned regional enemies, and the constant political legitimacy granted to it by the West’s diplomatic and media circles.

The United States however, is based in Turkey. It is based at Incirlik Air Base, and has for several years now, operated along the Turkish-Syrian border – its Central Intelligence Agency providing weapons to terrorists, its special forces carrying out cross-border operations, and its military’s administration of training camps to prepare terrorists before they enter Syrian territory, thus perpetuating the conflict. The United States also holds significant leverage over Saudi Arabia, its political and military support being essential for the regime in Riyadh’s continued existence.

At any moment, should the US truly be interested in extinguishing this fire, it can shut down the Turkish-Syrian border, end Saudi aid to terrorist groups operating in Syria, and end the conflict in weeks, if not days. That it refuses to do so, illustrates the key role it plays in creating and perpetuating it, and more specifically, the creation and perpetuation of the “Islamic State” itself.

Syria and its allies must recognize this fact and formulate a realistic strategy to counter it. Negotiating with state-sponsors of the most appalling terrorist organization to have walked the Earth in recent memory does not seem like a viable option. Instead, Syria and Russia should seek the expansion of their coalition inside Syria, and in particular, in the regions the US seeks to carve out. An initial and overwhelming sized commitment of “peacekeeping troops” from various nations placed along the Turkish-Syrian border would effectively block all efforts by the US to perpetuate this conflict further.

If that is not possible, Syria and Russia must attempt to expand their operations across all of Syria faster than the US can spread chaos.

For now, the US has a handful of special forces serving as tenuous “human shields” for terrorists targeted by Russian and Syrian military operations. These are still vulnerable, and still capable of being turned back. The US, however, will undoubtedly continue to expand its presence in Syria, to a point where it may not be possible to turn them back.

Calling the arsonists out, and removing them before the fire irreversibly takes over the entire structure that is the current nation-state of Syria, may be the only way to prevent Syria from becoming the Levant’s “Libya.” It will also stop a dangerous geopolitical “blitzkrieg” clearly aimed at Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing next.

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

A new whistleblower has joined the ranks of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou and other courageous individuals. The unnamed person, who chose to remain anonymous because of the Obama administration’s vigorous prosecution of whistleblowers, is a member of the intelligence community.

In the belief that the American public has the right to know about the “fundamentally” and “morally” flawed U.S. drone program, this source provided The Intercept with a treasure trove of secret military documents and slides that shine a critical light on the country’s killer drone program. These files confirm that the Obama administration’s policy and practice of assassination using armed drones and other methods violate the law.

The documents reveal the “kill chain” that decides who will be targeted. As the source said, “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting—of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences, without notice, on a worldwide battlefield—it was, from the very first instance, wrong.”

These secret documents demonstrate that the administration kills innumerable civilians due to its reliance on “signals intelligence” in undeclared war zones, following cellphones or computers that may or may not be carried by suspected terrorists. The documents show that more than half the intelligence used to locate potential targets in Somalia and Yemen was based on this method.

“It isn’t a surefire method,” the source observed. “You’re relying on the fact that you do have all these powerful machines, capable of collecting extraordinary amounts of data and intelligence,” which can cause those involved to think they possess “godlike powers.”

It’s stunning the number of instances when selectors are misattributed to certain people,” the source noted, characterizing a missile fired at a target in a group of people as a “leap of faith.

The Obama administration has never provided accurate civilian casualty counts. In fact, CIA director and former counterterrorism adviser John Brennan falsely claimed in 2011 that no civilians had been killed in drone strikes in nearly a year. In actuality, many people who are not the intended targets of the strikes are killed. “The Drone Papers” tell us the administration labels unidentified persons who are killed in a drone attack “enemies killed in action,” unless there is evidence posthumously proving them innocent. That “is insane,” the source said. “But [the intelligence community has] made ourselves comfortable with that.” The source added, “They made the numbers themselves so they can get away with writing off most of the kills as legitimate.”

The administration’s practice of minimizing the civilian casualties is “exaggerating at best, if not outright lies,” according to the source.

Since the U.S. is involved in armed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, international humanitarian law—namely, the Geneva Conventions—must be applied to assess the legality of targeted killing. The Geneva Conventions provide that only combatants may be targeted.

From January 2012 to February 2013, a campaign dubbed Operation Haymaker was carried out in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. According to “The Drone Papers,” during a five-month period almost 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. This campaign paralleled an increase in drone attacks and civilian casualties throughout Afghanistan. What’s more, the campaign did not significantly degrade al-Qaida’s operations there.

The U.S. is violating the right to life enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Because the U.S. ratified this treaty, it constitutes binding domestic law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which states, “Treaties shall be the supreme law of the land.”

Under international humanitarian law, an “armed conflict” requires the existence of organized armed groups engaged in fighting of certain intensity. The groups must have a command structure, be governed by rules, provide military training and have organized acquisition of weapons, as well as communications infrastructure. Legal scholars, including University of Cambridge professor Christine Gray, have concluded that “the ‘war against Al-Qaeda’ does not meet the threshold of intensity of a non-international armed conflict, and Al-Qaeda does not meet the threshold of an organized armed group.”

The U.S. is not involved in “armed conflict” in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Thus, the law enforcement model must be applied to assess the legality of actions in those countries. This model limits the use of lethal force to situations where there is an imminent threat to life and nonlethal measures would be inadequate.

In 2013, as President Obama gave a speech at the National Defense University, the administration released a fact sheet that said the target must pose a “continuing, imminent threat to US persons” before lethal force may be used. But Obama has waived the imminence requirement in Pakistan.

Although a spokesperson for the National Security Council told The Intercept that “those guidelines remain in effect today,” “The Drone Papers” state that the target need only present “a threat to US interest or personnel.” This is a far cry from an imminence requirement. And once the president signs off on a target, U.S. forces have 60 days to execute the strike. A 60-day period flies in the face of the imminence mandate for the use of lethal force off the battlefield.

Philip Alston, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, affirms that a targeted killing is lawful only if required to protect life and no other means—such as capture or nonlethal incapacitation—is available to protect life.

Besides being illegal, Obama’s preference for killing instead of apprehension prevents the administration from gathering crucial intelligence. Obama stated in 2013, “America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists; our preference is always to detain, interrogate, and prosecute.” But Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told The Intercept, “We don’t capture people anymore.” Slides provided by “The Drone Papers” source cite a 2013 study by the Pentagon’s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force that said “kill operations significantly reduce the intelligence available from detainees and captured material.” The task force recommended capture and interrogation rather than killing in drone strikes.

The American public is largely unaware of the high number of civilian casualties from drone strikes. A study conducted by American University professor Jeff Bachman concluded that both The New York Times and The Washington Post “substantially underrepresented the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, failed to correct the public record when evidence emerged that their reporting was wrong and ignored the importance of international law.”

Gregory McNeal, an expert on national security and drones at Pepperdine School of Law, wrote that in Afghanistan and Iraq, “when collateral damage [civilian casualties] did occur, 70 percent of the time it was attributable to failed—that is, mistaken—identification.”

“Anyone caught in the vicinity is guilty by association,” “The Drone Papers” source notes. If “a drone attack kills more than one person, there is no guarantee that those persons deserved their fate. … So it’s a phenomenal gamble.”

Drones are Obama’s weapon of choice because they don’t result in U.S. casualties. “It is the politically advantageous thing to do—low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness,” according to former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. “It plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.” Part of the damage, as Flynn pointed out, is that drones make the fallen into martyrs. They create “a new reason to fight us even harder,” he said.

The United Nations charter’s mandate for peaceful resolution of disputes and prohibition of military force except in self-defense is not a pipe dream. A study by the Rand Corp.concluded that between 1968 and 2006, 43 percent of incidents involving terrorist groups ended by a “peaceful political resolution with their government,” 40 percent “were penetrated and eliminated by local police and intelligence agencies,” and only 7 percent were ended by the use of military force.

Nevertheless, The Wall Street Journal reported that the military plans to increase drone flights by 50 percent by 2019.

In describing how the special operations community views the prospective targets for assassination by drone, “The Drone Papers” source said, “They have no rights. They have no dignity. They have no humanity to themselves. They’re just a ‘selector’ to an analyst. You eventually get to a point in the target’s life cycle that you are following them, you don’t even refer to them by their actual name.” This results in “dehumanizing the people before you’ve even encountered the moral question of ‘is this a legitimate kill or not?’ ”

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed three lawsuits seeking information about the government’s use of lethal drones. Rep. Keith Ellison, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is calling for increased transparency and congressional oversight of the drone program. “The report makes it clear,” he noted, that “the U.S. drone program operates on highly questionable legal ground and offends our principles of justice.”

Drone pilots operate thousands of miles from their targets. But many of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Some are refusing to fly the drones. In September, the Air Force Times ran a historic ad—paid for by 54 U.S. veterans and vets’ organizations—urging Air Force drone operators and other military personnel to refuse orders to fly drone surveillance and attack missions.

“The Drone Papers” source implores us to take action to stop this travesty. “We’re allowing this to happen,” the source said. “And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.”

The newly released documents are a clarion call to us all to demand that our government stop the killing. It is illegal, it is immoral, and it makes us more vulnerable to terrorism.

All anti-Assad forces are US-trained, armed, funded, and directed terrorists, taught the fine art of killing, committing atrocities and using chemical weapons – including ISIS, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and various splinter groups.

The so-called Free Syrian Army and other alleged “moderates” exist only in US and go-along media propaganda reports, willful misinformation to deceive an uninformed public.

Wars depend on lies to gain popular support, or at least no significant opposition. ISIS et al represent proxy US foot soldiers, imported abroad from scores of countries.

Putin is effectively contesting Obama’s dirty game. Washington has no effective counter-strategy, increasingly transparent propaganda and dubious military moves alone, along with continued Russia bashing and fear-mongering.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, two State Department officials repeated tired old Big Lies.

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Anne Patterson and her European and Eurasian Affairs counterpart Victoria Nuland committed perjury – claiming Russian air strikes hit 85 to 90% “moderate” rebels and civilians in areas with no ISIS presence.

“Russia’s military intervention has dangerously exacerbated an already complex environment,” Patterson blustered.

“(T)his has not been a Russian fight against terrorism so much as an effort to preserve the Assad regime,” she duplicitously claimed.

Nuland remains infamous for orchestrating the coup against Ukraine’s sitting government.  Her testimony was a litany of Big Lies, saying Assad “continues to barrel bomb its own citizens with impunity, perhaps even emboldened by Moscow’s help.”

“The vast majority of Russian air strikes are targeted in areas where the Assad regime has lost territory to forces led by the moderate opposition.”

“We are accelerating the work we are doing to support the moderate Syrian opposition and to protect Syria’s neighbors” – code language of US supporting ISIS and other takfiri terrorists.

“(W)e are awaiting further evidence that Russia is sincere in its claims to want to fight ISIL and save Syria for the Syrian people, rather than simply protecting the dictator who bears direct responsibility for the country’s destruction…The quality of our cooperation with Russia in Syria depends on the choices Moscow makes.”

It’s hard imagining anyone believes Nuland’s utter disregard for the truth.

“What would positive cooperation by Russia look like,” she asked? Cease its military campaign, “insist” Assad pull back, work with Washington and its (rogue) partners for resolving things diplomatically.

Who are the so-called “moderate” rebels Washington consistently touts? Where are they? Last month, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia can’t identify them. Washington provides no information.

“From the very beginning of the operation in Syria, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have expressed the readiness to interact with the so-called moderate opposition,” Peskov explained.

“At the same time, it had to be stated that attempts to identify the so-called moderate opposition remained unsuccessful all the way.”

“(N)o moderate forces can be spotted in the patchy mass of terrorist and extremist organizations that pose a threat to Syria’s territorial and political integrity.”

“Regrettably, neither the US nor European partners, nor somebody else has been able to help us with this identification. Other countries are unable to point to some moderate forces capable of taking care of a settlement in Syria. Regrettably, there have been no tangible results.”

State Department spokesman Admiral John Kirby claims some (nonexistent) “moderate” rebels switched sides. Hot war success depends heavily on winning the propaganda one.

Putin’s effective war on terrorism shows America is losing on both fronts. He’s the preeminent leader for world peace and stability.

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.

Here’s a key story we [21st Century Wire] ran previously, and it’s even more relevant today.

Back in late 2013, an independent investigation revealed that at least 22 defense industry stakeholders were used by the likes of CNN, FOX News and others – as ‘experts’ and ‘correspondents’ in order to help sell another war in Syria (or anywhere else for that matter).

Just remember the following when you see the usual corporate media operatives on TV trying to sell you another next war…

Before the White House’s Syrian War flop, networks like CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Bloomberg TV wheeled out at least 22 different men who they claimed were “pundits” and “commentators”, but in actuality were merely bomb and missile salesmen – who held director, board and shareholding positions with military giants like Raytheon, DC Capital Partners and BAE Systems.

Yes, you heard that right.

Watchdog organisation, the Public Accountability Initiative, a non-profit research group, details this and many more disclosures in its recent and damning report on US media coverage to hype a war in Syria.

Should CNN, MSNBC, FOX lose their broadcasting licenses in the US for this gross breach of ethics, particularly when it’s used to sell something as violent and abhorrent as war? We say YES. Will that happen in the US? Well, no, because the media in the US is far from bias and is tightly linked in ownership and sponsorship to the war industry. Start with General Electric and work your way around the table from there.

Add to this, another long line of “experts” deployed by Rupert Murdoch’s perennially pro-war media shop FOX, and now the Wall Street Journal. Most notably here is John Kerry and John McCain’s belle de jour, pro-war spokesmodel, Elizabeth O’Bagy, who aside from being a key operative in helping to pad Washington and Israel’s militarised policy regarding Syria by constructing the “moderate rebel” myth, was dumped by Kimberly Kagan and William Kristol’s neoconservative and pro-Israeli think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) after it was discovered O’Bagy had claimed a nonexistent PhD from Georgetown University. In addition to this media darling and ‘Syria expert’ O’Bagy is policy director for a suspected CIA operation front and money-raising machine called the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF).

Below is a rather educational map, showing the relationships and the pay lines of the ISW crowd, which, in addition to the disgraced O’Bagy, it features war ‘expert’ and director at Raytheon, Stephen Hadley:


Once again, remember all of this each time they media come with a full court press of “experts” – who are nothing less than military salesman hyping their stock portfolios.

RT reports…

US media failed to cite pundits’ ties to defense industry in Syria strike debate.

Nearly two dozen of the commentators who appeared on major media outlets to discuss a possible US military strike on Syria had relationships with contractors and other organizations with a vested interest in the conflict, according to a new report.

The Public Accountability Initiative, a non-profit research group dedicated to “investigating power and corruption at the heights of business and government,” determined that 22 of the pundits who spoke to the media during the public debate over whether the US should bomb Syria appeared to have conflicts of interest. Seven think tanks with murky affiliations were also involved in the debate.

Some analysts held board positions or held stock in companies that produce weapons for the US military, while others conducted work for private firms with the relationships not disclosed to the public.

Perhaps the most notable example is that of [Raytheon director] Stephen Hadley (pictured right), a former national security advisor to President George Bush who argued in favor of striking Syria in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Bloomberg TV. He also wrote an editorial in The Washington Post with the headline, “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.”

Nowhere in those appearances was it disclosed, according to the report, that Hadley is a director with Raytheon, a weapons manufacturer that produces the Tomahawk cruise missiles the US almost certainly would have used had it intervened in Syria. Hadley earns an annual salary of $128,5000 from Raytheon and owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock. His holdings were worth $891,189 as of August 23.

“We found lots of industry ties. Some of them are stronger than others. Some really rise to the level of clear conflicts of interest,” Kevin Connor, co-author of the report, told The Washington Post. “These networks and these commentators should err on the side of disclosure.”

The report found that, out of 37 appearances of the pundits named, CNN attempted to disclose that individual’s ties a mere seven times. In 23 appearances on Fox News there was not a single attempt to disclose industry ties. And in 16 appearances on NBC or its umbrella networks, attempts at disclosure were made five times.

Retired General Anthony Zinni, former Commander-in-Chief of US Central Command, made multiple appearances on CNN and CBS. He is an outside director at BAE Systems, which is among the largest military service companies in the world and one that received $6.1 billion in federal contracts in 2012, serves on the Advisory Board of DC Capital Partners, a private equity firm that invests in defense contractors, and a Distinguished Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Zinni advocated a strike not just on Syria, but told CNN’s Candy Crowley that American hesitation in the Middle East has pushed US adversaries to act.

“Knowing the Iranians, they see everything as a potential opportunity to exploit,” he said. “And I’m sure they are calculating much how they could take advantage of this and maybe push the edge of the envelope.”

The retired general, speaking to the Post via email, said his membership is publicly available online.

“The media who contact me for comment should post any relevant info re my background including my board positions if they desire,” he wrote.

This report comes after Syria researcher Elizabeth O’Bagy was fired from the Institute for the Study of War think-tank for lying about her credentials. Multiple US lawmakers, most notably Secretary of State John Kerry [and Senator John McCain], cited an opinion piece O’Bagy wrote in the Wall Street Journal when calling for a military intervention. It was soon revealed that O’Bagy did not disclose her ties to a lobby group advocating for Syrian opposition forces when penning the column for the Journal.

The most-liked U.S. Presidential candidate Ben Carson believes that it’s okay to be born poor, but that anyone who stays poor is remaining poor because he or she is lazy. He also says that those poor people are trying to find excuses for their own laziness when they blame their adversities on other causes than themselves, such as the prejudices of others, or wrong governmental policies, or bad luck; and he is especially opposed to governmental policies that aim to provide special advantages to poor people: he believes that this liberalism only encourages the laziness of those people. He was born dirt-poor and now draws tens of millions of dollars in annual income; and he thinks that the reason he’s successful is that he’s terrific — and he wants all Americans to try to be terrific like he feels that he is; so, he’s on a campaign to make it happen by his becoming America’s President. And he’s turning out to be remarkably successful at this campaign, too.

Among the entire U.S. electorate including both political parties and also independents, candidate Ben Carson’s “Net favorable” rating is +21%. The second-most-popular candidate is Carly Fiorina, at +6%. The third-most-popular is Marco Rubio, at +5%. The fourth-most-popular, and the only Democrat whose net-favorable rating is positive rather than negative — i.e., who is more popular than he’s unpopular — is Bernie Sanders, at +4%. Based on the crucial predictive factor of net-favorability (or more-commonly refered to as “popularity”), the 2016 general-election campaign will thus likely be between Ben Carson and Bernie Sanders. That will probably be the ultimate contest.

This is the latest poll, issued on November 5th by Gallup; which says, “Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 19-Nov. 1, 2015, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 7,121 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.” So: this is more than just the typical national survey, which samples only 1,000 respondents.

The overwhelmingly most-popular candidate, Dr. Carson, says (8:30- here): “I hated poverty; I couldn’t stand it.” He said in that video there (at 18:00) “My role model is Jesus” and he then went into the “moral problem” of “the national debt,” and he continued, “Here’s the [Jesus] parable. A family falls on hard times” and the father in the parable says he’ll cut the allowance for some of his children but not for others. Carson concluded there: “How do you think that will go down? Not too well. Enough said.” In other words, Carson was asserting that governmental policies must not help the poor or disabled or otherwise disadvantaged, any more than they help the rich and successful and otherwise advantaged (including heirs to huge fortunes).

The rich must receive as much government-assistance as the poor, he says, because otherwise it wouldn’t be “proportional,” as he sees it. Carson immediately cited the biblical 10% tithing system as providing the fundamental solution, the type of values-based approach that he would push as America’s President: (19:40-) “[God] has given us this system. It’s called tithe. Now, we don’t necessarily have to do it 10% [as in the Bible]. But it’s the principle. He [God] didn’t say, if your crop fails, don’t give me any tithe. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithe. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality.”

Carson thus endorses a flat-tax system that taxes billionaires at the identical, or “proportional,” rate that even the poorest person will be taxed to pay — ignoring the fact that the poor have more needs than desires, and that the rich have more desires than needs: he’s assuming that a dollar to the poor does the same amount of good (benefit to the person) as a dollar to the rich does. (Scientific studies — such as this— show that that’s not actually true, it’s drastically untrue; and that income above around $75,000 per year provides no additional happiness to a person — none at all — and that its only motivation above that income-level is a purely competitive one to become king-of-the-hill, richer than other people are, sort of like an addiction to money instead of any healthy desire for income or for additional economic security.)

So, Carson, with his biblical beliefs, continued: (20:00-) “You make ten billion dollars, you put in a billion. You make ten dollars, you put in one.” (The existing U.S. system violates that biblical principle: The income-tax rate for the very poor is zero in the U.S., just as it is in every other country. Using the tithing-system as the basis for a nation’s taxation-system would be to introduce a sharp break away from the system in all modern nations, not only in the United States. It’s biblical, like the hijab is quranic.)

Carson’s basic assumption there is that everyone has the same obligation to fund the government: the homeless or disabled who sell something on the street must pay the same percentage “tithe” from that person’s meager income to the government as does a billionaire who flits from one mansion to another and who maybe inherited most of his wealth and all of the opportunities for growing it but whose stock dividends and interest-income pay for all of his or her consumption and then some.

Carson’s is a one-size-fits-all system, because “He [God] didn’t say, if your crop fails, don’t give me any tithe. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithe.” For Carson, if your crop fails and you can’t make your mortgage-payment, and you get thrown out onto the street, it’s just God’s way of punishing you, and there is no government that ought to interfere with that. To interfere with it woudn’t be “proportional,” unless billionaire gentleman-farmers get the same government-benefits. To interfere with it would violate “this system. It’s called tithe.” Any poor person who doesn’t like it should just lump it and be forced to do the right thing and be “proportional” instead of (as conservatives might put it) ’envy’ the rich person. If Bill Gates should pay 10% (or whatever the figure will be), then so should someone in a homeless shelter. (Any ‘charity,’ such as from Gates or from Carson, would be magnanimous but never obligatory; government is only the obligatory part. And if there is no charity to fill a particular person’s need, then: it’s just tough luck — that’s God’s will, too.)

Dr. Carson’s government would be — in terms of the interests served and the obligations demanded from those interests — one-dollar one-vote, not really one-person-one-vote. He is basically advocating for the idea that property should control the government, individuals (persons) should not control it except to the extent that they represent property. He believes in God, and he interprets a person’s wealth as reflecting God’s reward to that person; and he interprets a person’s poverty as reflecting God’s punishment. (Humans are not supposed to question God’s judgments.) Benjamin Carson doesn’t want any government that would try to undo the choices, the decisions, that are made by God. To a religious person, that would be ‘evil.’

Carson believes that God has rewarded him because he deserves it; and Carson doesn’t want any government that seeks to violate God’s system: (19:40-) “[God] has given us this system. It’s called tithe. Now, we don’t necessarily have to do it 10% [as in the Bible]. But it’s the principle. He [God] didn’t say, if your crop fails, don’t give me any tithe. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithe. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality.”

Evangelicals — fundamentalist Christians — have been flocking to Carson’s banner.Their sky-high favorability-ratings of him are a significant reason why he tops the overall list. But it’s not the only reason: many other Americans are not consciously shaped by biblical values, or else they’re shaped by biblical values that contradict the biblical values that conservatives focus on — by liberal biblical values — and many of those voters are also drawn to candidate Carson because they, too, admire a man who takes the Bible seriously, even if the parts of it that have shaped Carson contradict the parts of it that have shaped those liberals. Any religious Scripture (not just the Bible) can be cited to support drastically mutually-contradictory values; no religion provides any internally consistent value-system, other than the essential belief for any religion: that The Almighty defines what is good or bad; that might makes right. The fundamental religious belief alone is sufficient to propel Carson to the top, in America’s popularity-contest. Religion is basically conservative; and Carson is clearly the leading religious candidate, at the present time.

Carson might find inspiration from Matthew 13:12, where ‘Jesus’ directly instructs his disciples, “The person who has something will be given still more, until he possesses more than enough; but the person who has nothing will find even that taken away from him.” It might be the hypothetical farmer that Carson referred to as having experienced a bad crop-year (perhaps even at the wrong time), but whom Carson would nonetheless require to pay tax at the same percentage as a billionaire. However, many liberals might instead find inspiration in Matthew 19:24, where ‘Jesus’ says:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Though that fictional ‘Jesus’ ‘spoke’ out of both sides of ‘His’ mouth, both of them were appealing to the same fundamental authoritarian principle behind worship of The Almighty: Might makes right; God alone determines what is good, and what is bad.

In this deeper sense, Carson represents even religious people who disagree with him, people who draw their inspiration from liberal passages in their Scriptures. Perhaps this is the basis for his current wave of success — the wave that might carry Carson all the way into the White House. In the final analysis the billionaires who fund the Republican Party might collectively decide that he is their champion too.

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

Wednesday brought a veritable smorgasbord of “new” information about the Russian passenger jet which fell out of the sky above the Sinai Peninsula last weekend. 

First there was an audio recording from ISIS’ Egyptian affiliate reiterating that they did indeed “down” the plane. Next, the ISIS home office in Raqqa (or Langley or Hollywood) released a video of five guys sitting in the front yard congratulating their Egyptian “brothers” on the accomplishment.

Then the UK grounded air traffic from Sharm el-Sheikh noting that the plane “may well” have had an “explosive device” on board.

Finally, US media lit up with reports that according to American “intelligence” sources, ISIS was probably responsible for the crash.

Over the course of the investigation, one question that’s continually come up is whether militants could have shot the plane down. Generally speaking, the contention that ISIS (or at least IS Sinai) has the technology and/or the expertise to shoot down a passenger jet flying at 31,000 feet has been discredited by “experts” and infrared satelliteimagery.

But that’s nothing the CIA can’t fix.

With the Pentagon now set to deploy US ground troops to Syria (and indeed they may already be there, operating near Latakia no less), Washington is reportedly bolstering the supply lines to “moderate” anti-regime forces at the urging of (guess who) the Saudis and Erdogan.

Incredibly, some of the weapons being passed out may be shoulder-fire man-portable air-defense systems, or Manpads, capable of hitting civilian aircraft. 

But don’t worry, those will only be given to “select rebels.” Here’s more from WSJ:

The U.S. and its regional allies agreed to increase shipments of weapons and other supplies to help moderate Syrian rebels hold their ground and challenge the intervention of Russia and Iran on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials and their counterparts in the region said.

The deliveries from the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Arabia and other allied spy services deepen the fight between the forces battling in Syria, despite President Barack Obama’s public pledge to not let the conflict become a U.S.-Russia proxy war.

Saudi officials not only pushed for the White House to keep the arms pipeline open, but also warned the administration against backing away from a longstanding demand that Mr. Assad must leave office.

In the past month of intensifying Russian airstrikes, the CIA and its partners have increased the flow of military supplies to rebels in northern Syria, including of U.S.-made TOW antitank missiles, these officials said. Those supplies will continue to increase in coming weeks, replenishing stocks depleted by the regime’s expanded military offensive.

An Obama administration official said the military pressure is needed to push Mr. Assad from power. 

“Assad is not going to feel any pressure to make concessions if there is no viable opposition that has the capacity, through the support of its partners, to put pressure on his regime,” the official said.

In addition to the arms the U.S. has agreed to provide, Saudi and Turkish officials have renewed talks with their American counterparts about allowing limited supplies of shoulder-fire man-portable air-defense systems, or Manpads, to select rebels. Those weapons could help target regime aircraft, in particular those responsible for dropping barrel bombs, and could also help keep Russian air power at bay, the officials said.

Mr. Obama has long rebuffed such proposals, citing the risk to civilian aircraft and fears they could end up in the hands of terrorists. To reduce those dangers, U.S. allies have proposed retrofitting the equipment to add so-called kill switches and specialized software that would prevent the operator from using the weapon outside a designated area, said officials in the region briefed on the option.

U.S. intelligence agencies are concerned that a few older Manpads may already have been smuggled into Syria through supply channels the CIA doesn’t control.

If that sounds insane to you, that’s because it is. Even as US intelligence (which we can only assume emanates from the CIA) indicates that IS Sinai likely brought down a Russian passenger jet with 224 people on board, the same CIA is working with the Saudis to supply “select rebels” with weapons capable of shooting down commercial airliners.

In order to make sure no one ends up blowing a 747 out of the sky, Washington will “retrofit” the weapons with “special” software that makes sure they can only be used in certain areas.

Make no mistake, this has gone beyond absurd and is now bordering on the bizarre. It’s apparently not enough that the US is supplying anti-tank missiles to rebels shooting at the very same Iran-backed militias that the US implicitly supports across the border in Iraq so now, the CIA and Saudi Arabia will give these rebels the firepower to shoot down planes, meaning that in the “best” case scenario they’ll be firing at Russian fighter jets, and in the worst case scenario these weapons will end up in the “wrong” hands and be used to down commercial flights. 

It’s difficult to see how John Kerry can attend “peace” talks in Vienna and keep a straight face while chatting with Sergei Lavrov. That’s not to say that Russia bears no responsibility for its role in the conflict (sure, Moscow is supporting a “legitimate” government in Syria but they’re still dropping bombs on populated areas), but the US and the Saudis are arming Sunni extremist groups and encouraging them to shoot at Russian and Iranian forces. For Obama to suggest this isn’t a proxy war is absurd.

Putting this all together, it now appears possible that the US is, i) sending anti-tank weapons to rebels who are shooting at Iranian soldiers, ii) embedding ground troops near Latakia which means they’ll almost certainly be engaging Hezbollah directly, and iii) passing weapons capable of downing a commercial airliner to “select” militants days after a Russian passenger jet exploded in the skies above the Sinai Peninsula.

This is all in conjunction with the Saudis and Erodgan, who just rigged an election in Turkey on the way to rewriting his country’s constitution.

And the Western media reports this with a straight face as though it all makes some measure of sense…

In two recent articles in the Los Angeles Times and the academic studies that inspired them, the authors investigate the question of which war veterans are most likely to commit suicide or violent crimes. Remarkably, the subject of war, their role in war, their thoughts about the supposed justifications (or lack thereof) of a war, never come up.

The factors that take the blame are — apart from the unbearably obvious “prior suicidality,” “prior crime,” “weapons possession,” and “mental disorder treatment” — the following breakthrough discoveries: maleness, poverty, and “late age of enlistment.” In other words, the very same factors that would be found in the (less-suicidal and less-murderous) population at large. That is, men are more violent than women, both among veterans and non-veterans; the poor are more violent (or at least more likely to get busted for it) among veterans and non-veterans; and the same goes for “unemployed” or “dissatisfied with career” or other near-equivalents of “joined the military at a relatively old age.”

In other words, these reports tell us virtually nothing. Perhaps their goal isn’t to tell us something factual so much as to shift the conversation away from why war causes murder and suicide, to the question of what was wrong with these soldiers before they enlisted.

The reason for studying the violence of veterans, after all, is that violence, as well as PTSD, are higher than among non-veterans, and the two (PTSD and violence) are linked. They are higher (or at least most studies over many years have said so; there are exceptions) for those who’ve been in combat than for those who’ve been in the military without combat. They are even higher for those who’ve been in even more combat. They are higher for ground troops than for pilots. There are mixed reports on whether they are higher for drone pilots or traditional pilots.

The fact that war participation, which itself consists of committing murder in a manner sanctioned by authorities, increases criminal violence afterwards, in a setting where it is no longer sanctioned, ought of course to direct our attention to the problem of war, not the problem of which fraction of returning warriors to offer some modicum of reorientation into nonviolent life. But if you accept that war is necessary, and that most of the funding for it must go into profitable weaponry, then you’re going to want to both identify which troops to help and shift the blame to those troops.

The same reporter of the above linked articles also wrote one that documents what war participation does to suicide. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says that out of 100,000 male veterans 32.1 commit suicide in a year, compared to 28.7 female veterans. But out of 100,000 male non-veterans, 20.9 commit suicide, compared to only 5.2 female non-veterans. And “for women ages 18 to 29, veterans kill themselves at nearly 12 times the rate of nonveterans.” Here’s how the article begins:

“New government research shows that female military veterans commit suicide at nearly six times the rate of other women, a startling finding that experts say poses disturbing questions about the backgrounds and experiences of women who serve in the armed forces.”

Does it really? Is their background really the problem? It’s not a totally crazy idea. It could be that men and women inclined toward violence are more likely to join the military as well as more likely to engage in violence afterward, and more likely to be armed when they do so. But these reports don’t focus primarily on that question. They try to distinguish which of the men and women are the (unacceptable, back home-) violence-prone ones. Yet something causes the figure for male suicides to jump from 20.9 to 32.1. Whatever it is gets absolutely disregarded, as differences between male and female military experiences are examined (specifically, the increased frequency of female troops being raped).

Suppose for a moment that what is at work in the leap in the male statistic has something to do with war. Sexism and sexual violence may indeed be an enormous factor for female (and some male) troops, and it may be far more widespread than the military says or knows. But those women who do not suffer it, probably have experiences much more like men’s in the military, than the two groups’ experiences out of the military are alike. And the word for their shared experience is war.

Looking at the youngest age group, “among men 18 to 29 years old, the annual number of suicides per 100,000 people were 83.3 for veterans and 17.6 for nonveterans. The numbers for women in that age group: 39.6 and 3.4.” Women who’ve been in the military are, in that age group, 12 times more likely to kill themselves, while men are five times more likely. But that can also be looked at this way: among non-veterans, men are 5 times as likely to kill themselves as women, while among veterans men are only 2 times as likely to kill themselves as women. When their experience is the same one — organized approved violence — men’s and women’s rates of suicide are more similar.

The same LA Times reporter also has an article simply on the fact that veteran suicides are higher than non-veteran. But he manages to brush aside the idea that war has anything to do with this:

“‘People’s natural instinct is to explain military suicide by the war-is-hell theory of the world,’ said Michael Schoenbaum, an epidemiologist and military suicide expert at the National Institute of Mental Health who was not involved in the study. ‘But it’s more complicated.'”

Judging by that article it’s not more complicated, it’s entirely something else. The impact of war on mental state is never discussed. Instead, we get this sort of enlightening finding:

“Veterans who had been enlisted in the rank-and-file committed suicide at nearly twice the rate of former officers. Keeping with patterns in the general population, being white, unmarried and male were also risk factors.”

Yes, but among veterans the rates are higher than in the general population. Why?

The answer is, I think, the same as the answer to the question of why the topic is so studiously avoided. The answer is summed up in the recent term: moral injury. You can’t kill and face death and return unchanged to a world in which you are expected to refrain from all violence and relax.

And returning to a world kept carefully oblivious to what you’re going through, and eager to blame your demographic characteristics, must make it all the more difficult.

The “war on terror” was a hoax. Americans were deceived by policymakers, who are pursuing a hegemonic agenda. The American people were too trusting and too gullible and, consequently, Americans were easily betrayed by Washington and by the presstitute media.

The consequences of the deceit, gullibility, and betrayal are horrendous for Americans, for millions of peoples in the Middle East, Africa, Ukraine, and for Washington’s European vassals.

The consequences for Americans are an aborted Constitution, a police/spy state and rising resentment and hatred of America around the world.

The consequences for peoples in Somolia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Palestine, and Ukraine have been massive deaths and dislocations, infrastructure destruction, internal conflicts, birth defects, invasions, bombings, drones. Millions of peoples have been murdered by Washington’s pursuit of hegemony, and millions have been turned into refugees.

The consequences for Washington’s European vassals is that the millions of refugees from Washington’s wars are now overrunning Europe, causing social and political discord and threatening the European political parties that enabled, and participated in, Washington’s massive war crimes in eight countries.

The populations of the eight countries and Washington’s vassals are stuck with the consequences of Washington’s evil, vicious, and illegal actions. And Americans are stuck with the police/spy state and militarized police who murder three Americans each day and brutalize countless others.

The countries we have destroyed have no recourse to restitution.

Our European vassals will have to provide from their own pockets for the refugees that Washington’s wars are sending to them.

As for Americans, they seem to have settled into acquiescence to the brutal police/spy state that has crowded out freedom and democracy.

But Americans could do something about it.

It is a proven fact that the police/spy state rests on a foundation of lies and deceptions, and these lies and deceptions are now known. Even George W. Bush has admitted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Thousands of independent experts consisting of physicists, nanochemists, structural engineers, highrise architects, fire fighters and first responders, and military and civilian pilots have provided the detailed explanations of September 11, 2001, that Washington failed to provide. Today not even an idiot believes the official explanation. The corrupt neoconservative Bush regime created a false reality and sold it to a trusting population that was anxious to prove its patriotism.

The American electorate knew that the Bush/Cheney regime had deceived them about many things, and the people, believing Obama’s promises of change, put him in office to rectify the situation. Instead, Obama protected the criminal Bush/Cheney regime and continued with the neoconservatives agenda.

We don’t have to stand for this. We can turn off Fox “News,” CNN, NPR and all the rest of the presstitutes who lie for a living. We can cease purchasing the useless newspapers. We can demand that the police/spy state that was created entirely on the basis of lies and deceptions be rolled back.

Who can possibly believe that the massive PATRIOT Act was written so quickly in the aftermath of 9/11? It is not possible that every member of Congress and the staff does not know that such a massive document was sitting on the shelf waiting its opportunity.

Who can possibly believe that a handful of Saudi Arabians acting without the support of any state and any intelligence service could outwit the entire apparatus of the American National Security State and inflict a humiliating defeat on the world’s only superpower?

9/11 is the worst national security failure in world history. Who can possibly believe that not a single one of the national security officials who so totally failed in their responsibilities was held accountable for their failures that brought total humiliation to the proud United States?

Who can possibly believe that the Bush regime’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a response to 9/11 when Bush’s Treasury Secretary publicly stated that the invasion of Iraq was the topic of the Bush regime’s first cabinet meeting long prior to 9/11?

Are the American people really such washed-up sheeple, such cowards, that they acquiesce to a police/spy state, the foundation of which consists of nothing but lies told by criminals and repeated endlessly by whores pretending to be journalists?

If so, the American people are not a people who any longer matter, and they will continue to be treated by Washington and by their local police as people who do not matter.

Release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership text confirms concerns about environmental risks, runaway corporate power, and weakened democracy.

The text of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership was released Thursday after a negotiating process shrouded in secrecy.

The release of the much-guarded text has renewed calls for action to stop the TPP as a “toxic deal” and “disaster for democracy.”

The 12-country transnational trade deal has been widely condemned for privileging corporate profits over international public interests. The secrecy around the deal and the negotiating process, which gave access to large corporations but largely locked out civil society, has been criticized as an assault on democracy.

“The TPP is a disaster for jobs, and environment and our democracy. It is the latest stage in the corporate capture of our society,” said Global Justice Now Director Nick Dearden in response to the release of the text.

For Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, the fact that the text of the deal doesn’t even include the words “climate change” hints at the kind of corporate sell-off the deal promotes and is “a dead giveaway that this isn’t a 21st-century trade deal.”

The TPP is widely seen by critics as a climate disaster, with lack of protections and “toothless” provisions in the deal’s environmental chapter that could threaten to undermine decades of struggle for the environment, according to Brune.

Campaigners and activists raise particular alarm over the investor-state arbitration mechanism that allows corporations to sue governments for enacting policies that infringe on the company’s potential future profits.

Trade unions criticize the corporate dispute settlement mechanism for promoting the outsourcing and offshoring of local jobs and negatively impacting working conditions. Others warn that the “corporate court” poses serious threats to the climate by discouraging strong environmental regulations since corporations will be able to take legal action against governments for public policies such as limiting mining or fossil fuel extraction.

In fact, the text of the deal reveals new and expanded rights for corporations to take such legal action against governments. Analysts say the rules will empower fossil fuel companies and other corporate giants to challenge environmental and other regulations, and ultimately worsen climate change.

Cases like Oceana Gold versus El Salvador, in which the mining giant is suing the Central American country for impacting profits by putting a moratorium on mining activity, offer a glimpse into the kind of corporate power-play that can be expected under the TPP. In the past, there have been over 600 such corporate challenges to over 100 government policies through similar mechanisms in other trade deals, such as NAFTA.

According to Global Justice Now’s Dearden, the TPP is a “turbo-charged NAFTA,” referring to the 1994 trade deal between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that resulted in more inequality and major job losses in the U.S.

“TPP has less to do with selling more goods, than with rewriting the rules of the global economy is favor of big business,” said Dearden. “Like the North American Free Trade Agreement, 20 years ago, it will be very good for the very richest, and a disaster for everything and everyone else.”

What’s more, Wikileaks has shown that the TPP will crack down on whistleblowing and make investigative journalism even more difficult. According to Wikileaks, the TPP text also reveals a “NSA-friendly” provision regarding telecommunications.

Countries in the deal now have a window to ratify or block the TPP. While U.S. multinational corporations will be eager to get the deal past lawmakers, activists around the world are looking to seize the opportunity to increase pressure on governments to put an end to the TPP once and for all.

Unions, environmental activists, consumer rights groups, and other campaigners will be ramping up their organizing to fight the TPP in coming months.

The 12-country trade agreement includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.

After five years of secret negotiations, the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has finally come up to open air.[1] Kept secret, watched over carefully by delegates all too distant from their own constituencies, the TPP did not disappoint in its disappointments.

The statement by US Trade Representative Michael Froman on the release of the text is bound to make the citizens from anyone of the 12 signatory states cringe. He starts by first claiming that a “commitment to transparency” was an ongoing process that culminated in the release of the text, complementing “a number of additional resources that we have made available on the same website, including state-by-state fact sheets, issue briefs, and chapter summaries.”

Froman has evidently been busying himself with a different diplomatic process altogether. Fact sheets barely cut the mustard, and he can hardly resort to the term transparency in this, given that Congress insisted in its Trade Priorities and Accountability Act that the President make the proposed text public for at least 60 days before signing the agreement.

Then, Froman comes out with the robust language of competition. He claims that the agreement “will position Americans to compete and win in tomorrow’s global economy.” Much of this piffle involves extolling that grand apparition called middle America, a reiteration of the Obama line that involves “middle-class economics – the idea that the country does best when everybody has got a fair shot, everybody is doing their fair share, everybody is playing by the same rules.”

This damning nonsense suggests that Froman and his colleagues are dangling a very different agreement in the sale than what they are in practice. The usual magical numbers are paraded – the elimination of 18,000 individual taxes on US products, the obsession with “made-in-USA”. This says nothing about translating the matter into actual, direct employment to US employees, nor does it bode well for the other signatory states.

From the start, it looked like various key areas would be in for a good battering. The environment, for one, was set for a commercially violent whack. “The agreement,” observes Matthew Rimmer of Queensland University of Technology, “confirms some of the worst nightmares of environmental groups and climate activists.”

As they should. There is minimal attention in the agreement paid to environmental factors, which demonstrates that the trade deal would entail a genuine trade off on matters of climate and degradation. There are mere mutterings on the issue of conservation more broadly speaking, biodiversity and trade in environmental services. And the most conspicuous omission of all is that of the term “climate change” itself.

In the case of the US, it is simply not clear whether the TPP Environment Chapter actually rolls back the May 2007 environmental standards Democrats in Congress impressed upon the Bush administration in making trade agreements. In the haggling, it was clear that several negotiating states, Malaysia foremost amongst them, were not happy to deal with the presence of various Multilateral Environmental Agreements that would have to be enforced. Watering down was inevitable.

As was already revealed in the various chapters released by WikiLeaks, the overwhelming emphasis in the agreement is the vesting of power, or should we say more power, in global corporate agents. Froman is certainly right in terms of enforceability in one sense. Corporate interests can well prevail over those of the state. These particular entities, being profit maximisers, have been granted the means in a more global sense to sue governments for diminished profits if facing policies pernicious to their trading interests.  Again, environmental policy, in this regard, is set for a pounding.

The same can be said for general public interest issues – health, for instance, or standards of employment. The former makes no suggestion that domestic medical systems have been immunised from the reach of big pharmaceutical interests. Other industries as well, notably those which have detrimental effects on health, such as tobacco, have reasons to celebrate as well, given the latent ambiguity on profit protection.

These areas all entail standards that do not bode well with vast money making ventures. The same goes for human rights standards more generally, which have seemingly vanished, or at the very least been demoted, in the discussions. The text certainly says nothing about those in violation of human rights conventions. Will there be any wrist slapping for offenders?

The release of the text, with its provisions foreshadowed in previous leaked drafts, now enables the various parliaments of the twelve states to debate the matter with varying degrees of thoroughness. Most are more likely to take the sauce offered them and vote for it, fearing such labels as protectionism and isolationism. The US Congress is unlikely to refuse it, but there are still voices of discontent over the lack of enforceable currency rules, and the issue of dispensations being made to various countries in specific areas.

There is also a manifest unevenness that will prove telling in the event of implementation. States such as Vietnam have a five-year pass on the issue of implementing complimentary labour standards. Given that there are also vast differences in the basic minimum wage in Vietnam, the notion that US, Australian or Canadian workers would be in an equal position of competition is patent nonsense. Companies will do the rest, exerting a downward pressure on wages on other parts of the zone. There is no reason why off shoring will continue with greater enthusiasm than ever. Welcome, in other words, to a rather grizzly future touched up in Orwellian dress.

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

Note

[1] https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text

Source: The full text was published on the website of the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT)

The text of the Agreement was released by TPP Parties on 5 November 2015 and can be accessed by chapter below.

The text will continue to undergo legal review and will be translated into French and Spanish language versions prior to signature.

• Preamble [PDF, 21KB]
• 1. Initial Provisions and General Definitions [PDF, 61KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annex:
    • Annex 1-A: Party-Specific Definitions
• 2. National Treatment and Market Access for Goods [PDF, 520KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 2-A: National Treatment and Import and Export Restrictions
    • Annex 2-B: Remanufactured Goods
    • Annex 2-C: Export Duties, Taxes or Other Charges
    • Annex 2-D: Tariff Elimination
  • Party-specific Annexes to the Chapter:
    • • 2-D: Australia General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 21KB]
      • 2-D: Australia Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 4.8MB]
      • 2-D: Brunei General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 21KB]
      • 2-D: Brunei Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 5.1MB]
      • 2-D: Canada General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 35KB]
      • 2-D: Canada Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 2.9MB]
      • 2-D: Canada Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 142KB]
      • 2-D: Canada Appendix B Appendix between Japan and Canada on Motor Vehicle Trade [PDF, 81KB]
      • 2-D: Chile General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 25KB]
      • 2-D: Chile Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 4.1MB]
      • 2-D: Japan General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 98KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 1.6MB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 305KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix B-1 Agricultural Safeguard Measures [PDF, 118KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix B-2 Forest Good Safeguard Measure [PDF, 39KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix C Tariff Differentials [PDF, 24KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix D Appendix between Japan and the United States on Motor Vehicle Trade [PDF, 128KB]
      • 2-D: Japan Appendix E Appendix between Japan and Canada on Motor Vehicle Trade [PDF, 67KB]
      • 2-D: Malaysia General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 18KB]
      • 2-D. Malaysia Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 4.9MB]
      • 2-D: Malaysia Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 48KB]
      • 2-D: Mexico General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 30KB]
      • 2-D. Mexico Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 3.6MB]
      • 2-D: Mexico Appendix A, B and C Tariff Rate Quotas and Tariff Differentials [PDF, 88KB]
      • 2-D: New Zealand General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 17KB]
      • 2-D. New Zealand Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 3.9MB]
      • 2-D: Peru General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 18KB]
      • 2-D: Peru Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 2.7MB]
      • 2-D: Singapore General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 10KB]
      • 2-D: Singapore Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 2MB]
      • 2-D: United States General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 35KB]
      • 2-D: United States Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 6.5MB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 278KB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix B Agricultural Safeguard Measures [PDF, 68KB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix C Tariff Differentials [PDF, 144KB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix D Motor Vehicle Trade [PDF, 133KB]
      • 2-D: United States Appendix E Earned Import Allowance Program [PDF, 20KB]
      • 2-D: Viet Nam General Notes to Tariff Schedule [PDF, 34KB]
      • 2-D. Viet Nam Tariff Elimination Schedule [PDF, 2.4MB]
      • 2-D: Viet Nam Appendix A Tariff Rate Quotas [PDF, 32KB]
• 3. Rules of Origin and Origin Procedures [PDF, 155KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 3-A: Other Arrangements
    • Annex 3-B: Minimum Data Requirements
    • Annex 3-C: Exceptions to Article 3.11 (De Minimis)
  • Annex to the Chapter:
    • Annex 3-D: Product Specific Rules of Origin [PDF, 702KB]
    • Appendix 1 to Annex: 3-D: Provisions related to the Product-Specific Rules of Origin for certain vehicles and parts of vehicles [PDF, 28KB]
• 4. Textiles and Apparel [PDF, 70KB]
  • Annexes to the Chapter:
    • Annex 4-A: Textiles and Apparel Product-Specific Rules of Origin [PDF, 84KB]
    • Appendix 1 to Annex 4-A: Short Supply List of Products [PDF, 172KB]
• 5. Customs Administration and Trade Facilitation [PDF, 59KB]
• 6. Trade Remedies [PDF, 52KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annex:
    • Annex 6-A: Practices Relating to Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Proceedings
• 7. Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures [PDF, 92KB]
• 8. Technical Barriers to Trade [PDF, 198KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 8-A: Wine and Distilled Spirits
    • Annex 8-B: Information and Communications Technology Products
    • Annex 8-C: Pharmaceuticals
    • Annex 8-D: Cosmetics
    • Annex 8-E: Medical Devices
    • Annex 8-F: Proprietary Formulas for Pre-packaged Foods and Food Additives
    • Annex 8-G: Organic Products
• 9. Investment [PDF, 262KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 9-A: Customary International Law
    • Annex 9-B: Expropriation
    • Annex 9-C: Expropriation Relating to Land
    • Annex 9-D: Service of Documents on a Party Under Section B (Investor State Dispute Settlement)
    • Annex 9-E: Transfers
    • Annex 9-F: DL-600
    • Annex 9-G: Public Debt
    • Annex 9-H
    • Annex 9-I: Non-Conforming Measures Ratchet Mechanism
    • Annex 9-J: Submission of a Claim to Arbitration
    • Annex 9-K: Submission of Certain Claims for Three Years After Entry into Force
    • Annex 9-L: Investment Agreements
  • Drafters’ Note on Interpretation of In Like Circumstances [PDF, 43KB]
  • See country-specific Annexes to the Agreement
• 10. Cross-Border Trade in Services [PDF, 126KB]
  • The Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 10-A: Professional Services
    • Annex 10-B: Express Delivery Services
    • Annex 10-C: Non-Conforming Measures Ratchet Mechanism
  • See the country-specific Annexes to the Agreement
• 11. Financial Services [PDF, 251KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 11-A: Cross-Border Trade
    • Annex 11-B: Specific Commitments
    • Annex 11-C: Non-Conforming Measures Ratchet Mechanism
    • Annex 11-D: Authorities Responsible For Financial Services
    • Annex 11-E
  • See the country-specific Annexes to the Agreement
• 12. Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 43KB]
  • Party-specific Annexes to the Chapter:
    • Annex 12-A. Temporary Entry for Business Persons
      • 12-A. Australia Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 39KB]
      • 12-A. Brunei Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 48KB]
      • 12-A. Canada Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 97KB]
      • 12-A. Chile Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 48KB]
      • 12-A. Japan Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 69KB]
      • 12-A. Malaysia Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 53KB]
      • 12-A. Mexico Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 57KB]
      • 12-A. New Zealand Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 42KB]
      • 12-A. Peru Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 55KB]
      • 12-A. Singapore Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 19KB]
      • 12-A. Viet Nam Temporary Entry for Business Persons [PDF, 39KB]
• 13. Telecommunications [PDF, 125KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 13-A: Rural Telephone Suppliers – United States
    • Annex 13-B: Rural Telephone Suppliers – Peru
• 14. Electronic Commerce [PDF, 60KB]
• 15. Government Procurement [PDF, 130KB]
  • Party-specific Annexes to the Chapter:
    • Annex 15-A. Government Procurement
      • 15-A. Australia Government Procurement [PDF, 102KB]
      • 15-A. Brunei Government Procurement [PDF, 52KB]
      • 15-A. Canada Government Procurement [PDF, 117KB]
      • 15-A. Chile Government Procurement [PDF, 45KB]
      • 15-A. Japan Government Procurement [PDF, 122KB]
      • 15-A. Malaysia Government Procurement [PDF, 120KB]
      • 15-A. Mexico Government Procurement [PDF, 114KB]
      • 15-A. New Zealand Government Procurement [PDF, 61KB]
      • 15-A. Peru Government Procurement [PDF, 157KB]
      • 15-A. Singapore Government Procurement [PDF, 53KB]
      • 15-A. United States Government Procurement [PDF, 72KB]
      • 15-A. Viet Nam Government Procurement [PDF, 244KB]
• 16. Competition Policy [PDF, 44KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annex:
    • Annex 16-A: Application of Article 16.2, Article 16.3 and Article 16.4 to Brunei Darussalam
• 17. State-Owned Enterprises and Designated Monopolies [PDF, 221KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 17-A: Threshold Calculation
    • Annex 17-B: Process for Developing Information Concerning State-Owned Enterprises and Designated Monopolies
    • Annex 17-C: Further Negotiations
    • Annex 17-D: Application to Sub-Central State-Owned Enterprises
    • Annex 17-E: Singapore
    • Annex 17-F: Malaysia
    • Annex IV: Non-Conforming Activities
  • See country-specific Annexes to the Agreement
• 18. Intellectual Property [PDF, 411KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 18-A: Annex to Article 18.7.2 (International Agreements)
    • Annex 18-B: Annex to Article 18.50 (Protection of Undisclosed Test or Other Data) and Article 18.52 (Biologics)
    • Annex 18-C: Annex to Article 18.50 (Protection of Undisclosed Test or Other Data) and Article 18.52 (Biologics)
    • Annex 18-D: Annex to Article 18.46 (Patent Term Adjustments for Patent Office Delays), Article 18.48 (Patent Term Adjustment for Unreasonable Curtailment), Article 18.50 (Protection of Undisclosed Test or Other Data) and Article 18.52 (Biologics)
    • Annex 18-E: Annex to Section J (Internet Service Providers)
    • Annex 18-F: Annex to Section J (Internet Service Providers)
• 19. Labour [PDF, 73KB]
• 20. Environment [PDF, 170KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annexes:
    • Annex 20-A
    • Annex 20-B
• 21. Cooperation and Capacity Building [PDF, 27KB]
• 22. Competitiveness and Business Facilitation [PDF, 20KB]
• 23. Development [PDF, 33KB]
• 24. Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises [PDF, 21KB]
• 25. Regulatory Coherence [PDF, 39KB]
• 26. Transparency and Anti-Corruption [PDF, 88KB]
  • This Chapter includes the following Annex:
    • Annex 26-A Transparency and Procedural Fairness for Pharmaceutical Products and Medical Devices
• 27. Administrative and Institutional Provisions [PDF, 34KB]
• 28. Dispute Settlement [PDF, 105KB]
• 29. Exceptions and General Provisions [PDF, 62KB]
• 30. Final Provisions [PDF, 29KB]

Zip file of all 30 Chapters (excluding Annexes) [ZIP, 3.15MB]

The Government of China promotes the internationalization of «the people’s currency» (‘renminbi’) through a policy of alliances that does not take ideological barriers into account. In an initial stage the diplomatic forces of the yuan were concentrated in the Asia Pacific region,  but in a second stage, it became necessary to gain the support of the West. After the President Xi Jinping visited London, between the 19th and the 23rd of October, the bases of the «golden age» between China and the United Kingdom were established. 

The Government of China promotes the internationalization of «the people’s currency» (‘renminbi’) through a policy of alliances that does not take ideological barriers into account. In an initial stage the diplomatic forces of the yuan were concentrated in the Asia Pacific region,  but in a second stage, it became necessary to gain the support of the West. After the President Xi Jinping visited London, between the 19th and the 23rd of October, the bases of the «golden age» between China and the United Kingdom were established. 

A Canadian farmer that provides raw milk to his community was reportedly arrested and jailed for removing government surveillance cameras from his own property. The Canadian government is filing charges against the man for ‘theft.’

When Michael Schmidt found cameras on his land that had been spying on him and his friends, he simply removed them and contacted the local police department to find out who they might belong to. It was at this time that he was charged with theft after refusing to hand the cameras over to the police.

Only later did Schmidt find out that the cameras, which had no markings or identification, were placed there by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) to keep an eye on Glencolton Farms.

On September 30, 2015 Schmidt was slapped with a summons to appear for fingerprinting and a mug shot. He has been harassed by government food authorities before. He has been producing raw milk for over 21 years for a member’s food club.

In 2004, Schmidt underwent multiple raids. The Ontario government charged him with violating provincial prohibitions on raw milk sale, but later he was acquitted. The government appealed and Schmidt ended up having to sell his farm to the people in his club and could only continue business as a hired ‘manager’ for his own farm.

He is certain that the latest video camera intrusion is a form of revenge. His club members stood their ground and wouldn’t let government officials seize equipment or leave with product when a second raid occurred just weeks later.

Schmidt was released from an overnight stay in jail on October 20, 2015, but he feels the government is using the judicial system to harass a peaceful farmer. The Canadian Constitution Foundation is raising funds to help Schmidt with legal expenses.

Marta Bak, a co-owner of Glencolton Farms said:

“We will continue to peacefully procure the foods of our choice from the farmers of our choice. This food comes from our farm. We are now in the mode of total non-compliance to government harassment. We will peacefully resist in defense of our food–whatever it will take to demonstrate our inherent right to choose the food we wish to consume.”

Mass European Protest Against TTIP Corporate Takeover: EU Commission Sanctions “Revolution Against Law”

It’s way too early to know why Russian Kolavia Metrojet Flight 7K9268 crashed 23 minutes after takeoff from Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt en route to St. Petersburg, Russia – killing all passengers and crew members.

At least weeks are needed to examine the crash site and evaluate black box information, vital to understand what happened. A definitive assessment will likely take months, including reconstructing the aircraft from its shattered parts.

Comments now making headlines are pure speculation. Yet major media reports now circulating say US and UK sources claim information they have suggests a bomb planted aboard the aircraft downed it.

AP: “Bomb May Have Downed Russian Jet, US, UK Officials Say.”

The New York Times published the AP report.

Reuters: “Bomb by Islamic State likely caused Russian plane crash: security sources”

Washington Post: “Britain suspends flights from Sinai, citing bomb fears”

It’s a short leap to suspending flights to Russia or discouraging travelers from going there. Would fear-mongering follow a US airliner crash, whatever the possible cause? Normal activities always resume.

Wall Street Journal: “UK Suspends Flights from Sinai Airport, Saying ‘Explosive Device’ May Have Downed Russian Jet”

London Guardian: “Russian plane crash in Egypt may have been result of bomb, US and UK say…”

BBC: “Sinai plane crash: Bomb may have downed airliner, US and UK say”

These type fear-mongering headlines now circulate throughout the Western media – suggesting flights to Russia (on Russian or other airlines) may be hazardous.

According to UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Philip Hammond:

“We have concluded that there is a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft…We are now advising against all but essential travel by air through Sharm el-Sheikh airport. That means that there will be no UK passenger flights out to Sharm el-Sheikh from now.”

A Number 10 spokesman said

“(t)he prime minister chaired a COBR (Cabinet Office Briefing Room) meeting this evening to agree what steps we should take to help ensure the safety of British citizens traveling to and from Sharm el-Sheikh.”

“The meeting considered the implications of a range of information, including some that has recently come to light, which has increased our concerns that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device.”

“Consequently, ministers agreed…to temporarily suspend flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh with immediate effect.” The Irish Aviation Authority also suspended operations from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh airport.

CNN headlined: “Russian plane crash: US intel suggests ISIS bomb brought down jet,” saying:

“(A) US intelligence analysis now suggests that the terror group or its affiliates planted a bomb on the plane…The latest US intelligence suggests that the crash was most likely caused by a bomb planted on the plane by ISIS or an affiliate, according to multiple (unnamed) US officials who spoke with CNN.”

Britain and America have no access to crash site forensic evidence, the only way to determine what happened. So-called intelligence (real or invented) is suspect based on communications chatter. Anything can be said by anyone for any purpose. Reliability is dubious at best.

Crash site forensic and black box evidence is definitive. Other assessments are hype, especially from Washington and close allies about Russia.

On Wednesday, Egypt’s Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper said black box information available so far indicates an engine blast, possibly powerful enough to render both aircraft engines inoperative.

“The investigation did not point yet have any links to terrorists,” the broadsheet said. Forensic evidence is being evaluated to learn if explosive materials were on the plane, or if engine blast failure was mechanical.

It’s unknown either way so far. Hyping terrorism is irresponsible. Let the evidence speak for itself once analyzed properly. So far no official announcements were made.

A Russian source said “(t)here were no signs of an explosion impact found during the preliminary examination.” An Egyptian expert added “there were no signs of external impact” found on recovered bodies.

Why the current Western hype? Russia bashing propaganda persists – part of longstanding US-led NATO policy, wanting Moscow co-opted, contained, isolated, destabilized, weakened and eventually made a US vassal state.

Timing is always significant. Moscow is successfully challenging Washington’s imperial agenda – waging real war on terror, changing the dynamic on the ground in Syria and the Middle East with potential global implications, a major geopolitical development.

US policymakers are desperate to counter it, so far with no success. Tactics include propaganda, sanctions, deploying more combat troops to Iraq,  dozens to Syria illegally, and now fear-mongering – efforts to scare travelers from visiting Russia.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations (UN) says the Tel Aviv regime is harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

Riyad Mansour said in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday that the bodies of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces are “returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power.”

“A medical examination conducted on bodies of Palestinians returned after they were killed by the occupying power found that they were missing organs,” Mansour wrote in the letter.

The Palestinian envoy further protested Israel’s “persistent aggression against the Palestinian people” over the past month and the regime’s “insistence on use of violent force and oppressive measures.”

The issue of organ theft by Israel was first brought to the fore in a report published by Sweden’s most highly-circulated daily Aftonbladet in 2009.

US daily The New York Times also said in an August 2014 report that transplant brokers in Israel have pocketed enormous sums of money. Based on the Times analysis of major organ trafficking cases since 2000, Israelis have played a ‘disproportionate role’ in organ trafficking.

The Palestinians whom Mansour was referring to were killed amid tensions in the occupied territories, which have dramatically escalated in recent weeks.

The Israeli regime’s imposition of restrictions in August on the entry of Palestinian worshipers to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) has become the lightning rod for the surge of recent confrontations.

According to the latest figures by the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 74 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of October. At least 11 Israelis have also been killed during that period.

The bodies of the Palestinian victims are most often held in Israeli custody for long periods of time before they are returned to relatives.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. The use of glyphosate is widespread throughout Europe. However, on 20 March the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said that glyphosate was “classified as probably carcinogenic to humans.” This is just one step below the risk designation of “known carcinogen.”  

Glyphosate has been detected in human bodies, food, water and in the air. Its use has been strongly associated with various diseases (see this and this).

Following the WHO’s classification, the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) has been conducting an evaluation of glyphosate and will send its final conclusions to the European Commission (EC) for consideration within the next few days. The EC will then decide whether this herbicide should be included in the EU’s list of approved active substances.

The original sanctioning and testing of glyphosate for commercial use was seriously flawed: for example, see this, this, this, and this which highlight the non-transparent, secretive and seriously compromised processes that smack of regulatory delinquency at best and outright fraud at worst in order to protect and benefit the interests of rich agribusiness.

Sustainable Pulse has moreover discovered documents from 1991 that show how the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was fully aware of glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential. In 1985, the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate was first considered by an EPA panel. This committee went on to classify glyphosate as a Class C Carcinogen with “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential.”

This Class C classification was changed by the EPA six years later to a Class E category which suggests “evidence of non-carcinogenicity for humans.” The conclusion is that the US government is to blame for allowing glyphosate onto the commercial market because it wanted to push it as part of as global campaign to support the US biotech industry in its attempt to dominate global agriculture.

In other words, the health of the public was put before the need to protect company profits and foreign policy aims.

According to Dave Schubert, head of the cellular neurobiology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California:

“There are a number of independent, published manuscripts that clearly indicate that glyphosate… can promote cancer and tumor growth. It should be banned.”

New report: human guinea pigs

In their recent paper, ‘Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases IV: cancer and related pathologies’, Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff paper reviewed the research literature to evaluate the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate. The paper, published in the ‘Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry’ and to be made available online shortly, concludes that glyphosate has a large number of tumorigenic effects on biological systems, including direct damage to DNA in sensitive cells, disruption of glycine homeostasis, succinate dehydrogenase inhibition, chelation of manganese, modification to more carcinogenic molecules, such as N-nitrosoglyphosate and glyoxylate, disruption of fructose metabolism, etc.

Samsel and Seneff state that epidemiological evidence supports strong temporal correlations between glyphosate usage on crops and a multitude of cancers that are reaching epidemic proportions, including breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, thyroid cancer, liver cancer, bladder cancer and myeloid leukaemia.

The authors support these correlations through an examination of Monsanto’s early studies on glyphosate and explain how the biological effects of glyphosate could induce each of these cancers.

Samsel and Seneff conclude:

“We have reviewed the research literature on glyphosate and on the biological processes associated with cancer, and we have provided strong evidence that glyphosate is likely contributing to the increased prevalence of multiple types of cancer in humans. Monsanto’s own early studies revealed some trends in animal models that should not have been ignored. Forty years of glyphosate exposure have provided a living laboratory where humans are the guinea pigs and the outcomes are alarmingly apparent. We believe that the available evidence warrants a reconsideration of the risk/benefit trade-off with respect to glyphosate usage to control weeds, and we advocate much stricter regulation of glyphosate.”

They go on to state that multiple studies have shown that glyphosate damages DNA, a direct step towards tumorigenicity, and that epidemiological studies strongly support links between glyphosate and multiple cancers, with extremely well-matched upward trends in multiple forms of cancer in step with the increased use of glyphosate on corn and soy crops.

The authors state that while these strong correlations cannot prove causality, the biological evidence is strong to support mechanisms that are likely in play, which can explain the observed correlations through plausible scientific arguments.

They argue that glyphosate’s links to specific cancer types can often be explained through specific pathologies. For example, glyphosate’s action as an oestrogen mimetic explains increased breast cancer risk. Prostate cancer is linked to sarcosine, a by-product of glyphosate breakdown by gut microbes. Impaired fructose metabolism links to fatty liver disease, which is a risk factor for hepatic tumorigenesis. Impaired melanin synthesis by melanocytes due to deficiencies in the precursor, tyrosine, a product of the shikimate pathway, can explain increased incidence of skin melanoma. This is compounded by tryptophan deficiency, as tryptophan is also protective against UV exposure. Manganese deficiency stresses the pancreas and impairs insulin synthesis, and this could explain the recent epidemic in pancreatic cancer. Increased oxalate, due in part to the proprietary formulations, stresses the kidney and contributes to risk of renal tumours. Glyphosate’s accumulation in bone marrow can be expected to disrupt the maturation process of lymphocytes from stem cell precursors. Glycine forms conjugates with organic benzenederived carcinogenic agents, and glyphosate likely interferes with this process. Glyphosate’s interference with CYP enzyme function impairs detoxification of multiple other carcinogenic agents, increasing their carcinogenic potential.

Samsel and Seneff conclude that, overall, the evidence of the carcinogenicity of glyphosate is compelling and multifactorial. Now we wait for the results and recommendations of the EFSA’s evaluation.

Given the overwhelming evidence to ban glyphosate, we can only hope that, this time, it doesn’t end up as a case of ‘move along, nothing to see‘, as the public interest and public health are again sacrificed on the altar of private commercial interests and corporate profit.

It came as no surprise, to those following the ongoing nuclear melt-downs at Fukushima, and the continuation of pouring seawater to cool the Corium masses, the T.E.P.C.O would “simply run out of room” for the highly radioactive waste water created and stored in the large tanks on the site.

“We knew they would have to eventually dump into the Ocean”, stated Ray Masalas, of the International Watch Group, Rainbow Warriors. “Not only were they illegally transferring waste into the ocean before seeking permission from affected groups, but they continue the practice now daily”

T.E.P.C.O have continually tried to allay Global concern over the illegal (by international treaties and definition) releases of radioactive cooling water into the Pacific Ocean.

A List of Failed T.E.P.C.O mitigation attempts.

1. Diversion channels for ground water around the reactors
2. Sea barrier in the harbor wall
3. ARRIVA filtration system
4. Ice wall around the reactors
5. On site storage tanks.

Since the failure of the above mentioned, TEPCO have no choice but to pour the cooling water straight back into the Pacific Ocean from whence it came, after assurances that this practice was never going to happen.

The implications and ramifications for the Pacific ocean, and food chains around the world, is a fact and an eventuality, no longer a possibility.

As this is a first time Global crisis phenomenon, there is no data, no science and no research to lead us on with a solution, nor guide us with any protective measures as to the ongoing crisis.

TEPCO released the following information on sheer volume of the highly toxic, deadly radiocative releases going on, on a daily basis from Fukushima.

The World’s Media is silent, and one has to conjecture that it is because of the enormity and scale of this crisis on a Global level, that they choose to remain so.

August 26th, 2014

TEPCO made the startling admission today at a press conference that the plant is leaking 8 billion bequerels per day. (8 gigabequerels)

5 billion bq of strontium 90
2 billion bq of cesium 137
1 billion bq of tritium * (later corrected to 150)

This is the ongoing daily release to the Pacific. These release numbers are also within the realm of what some oceanographers have been warning about since last year, that there was an ongoing and considerable leak to the sea. According to journalist Ryuichi Kino TEPCO said this may be due to failings of some sort within the “glass” wall at the sea front. This is an underground wall made in the soil by injecting a solidifying agent to block water flow.

This daily release would add up to 11,680,000,000,000 = 11 terabequerels over 4 years time in addition to the initial sea releases during the meltdowns.