Millions of Americans believe that President Obama has normalized relations with Cuba and ended over 50 years of U.S. efforts to strangle its economy. They might have been puzzled when the United States stood up against every other nation save one, in opposing the UN General Assembly resolution which passed, 191-2, on October 27, 2015. That resolution condemned the continuing U.S. commercial, economic and financial embargo against Cuba. According to the Christian Science Monitor, “when the vote lit up on the screen many diplomats jumped to their feet in a standing ovation.” The U.S. ambassador was not among them.
The UN resolution welcomed the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and recognized “the expressed will” of Obama to work for the elimination of the embargo. But the world community clearly does not think that intentions are enough. Every year since 1992, the United States has unsuccessfully opposed these resolutions, ignoring the international consensus. In 2015, the U.S. deputy ambassador Ronald Godardsaid it was “unfortunate” that the text “falls short of reflecting … the spirit of engagement President Obama has championed.”
Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, called for concrete action instead. “The lifting of the blockade will be the essential element to give some meaning to the progress achieved over the past few months in the relations between both countries and shall set the pace towards normalization,” he told the General Assembly. Rodriguez said the blockade is “a unilateral act of the United States and should be lifted unilaterally, without asking anything in return.” He was critical not only of the U.S. Congress but also of Obama’s failure to take executive action to ease the blockade.
This criticism of Obama’s actions may surprise those who simply blame Congress’s inaction for continuing the economic blockade. Just three days earlier, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) unanimously adopted a resolution that criticized actions by the administration which seem to fly in the face of Obama’s proclaimed “spirit of engagement.”
According to U.S legal experts, most of the legislation over the last 55 years gives the administration the authority to block trade with Cuba — or not to. For example, the president could allow Cuba to sell its products to the U.S. market, but nothing has been done in that regard. Likewise, the U.S. Commerce Department’s January 2015 regulations generally only allow U.S. manufacturers to supply to private enterprises in Cuba, and only if they will then be utilized for privately owned property.
This is a crude attempt to impose privatization on Cuba. A Commerce Department spokesperson explained that a U.S. producer seeking to supply a private enterprise in Cuba with heating and air conditioning equipment to service a Cuban hospital could not do so under the new regulations, because Cuban hospitals are publicly owned.
The new U.S. regulations are also much more liberal regarding telecommunications than for trade generally. These arbitrary restrictions undercut the administration’s suggestion that Congress must act before the economic blockade can be lifted, although all agree that a full repeal requires congressional action.
The NLG resolution also noted three areas in which federal officials appear to be sabotaging attempts to normalize relations with Cuba:
1) The Internal Revenue Service is apparently moving ahead with its plans to revoke the 501(c)3 non-profit status of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization/Pastors for Peace (IFCO/PFP), based on its long history of using civil disobedience to challenge U.S. restrictions on travel to and trade with Cuba — even though the unit with responsibility to enforce these restrictions has not acted against IFCO/PFP.
2) The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has renewed its threats and prosecutions against U.S. persons based on previous travel to Cuba, four and five years ago, and has threatened to revive holding the “trials for travel” in Washington D.C. George W. Bush had instituted those trials but abandoned them in 2006.
3) The U.S. State Department has continued its pattern of unreasonably delaying or withholding issuance of non-immigrant visas to mainstream Cubans invited to visit and speak in the United States by academic and professional organizations. For example, when the American Sociological Association invited a gay Cuban doctor, who had headed Cuba’s program of comprehensive treatment for transgender people, to speak to its August 2015 convention in Chicago, it took the offices of Sen. Tammy Baldwin, and U.S. Reps. Gwen Moore, John Conyers and Barbara Lee to pry loose his visa, which was issued only at the last minute, making him miss most of the convention. As a result of these congressional efforts, he was then also able to speak at the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center and appeared on Chicago public television. This is the same experience of many invited Cubans, most recently a leading Cuban labor lawyer invited to speak at the October NLG convention, and this has happened year after year. Both of these Cuban experts have received U.S. visas in the past and visited here without incident, although each time they have had to wait until or after the very last minute to book their flights, often missing much of the conventions they were invited to attend.
Obama hopes to go down in history as having ended the half-century of U.S. hostility toward Cuba and its revolution. We do not know what the next administration will bring. We must pressure Obama to act decisively now to realize his promise to truly normalize relations with Cuba.
Art Heitzer ([email protected]) is an attorney and chair of the Cuba Subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild. For more information and actions you can take, visit www.wicuba.org or call 414 273-1040 ext. 12.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. See www.marjoriecohn.com.
Russia’s intervention in Syria changed the dynamic on the ground and regionally, potentially with global implications, a major geopolitical development, the most important one in decades.
Would the new America[Dr. Brzezinski] vowed for reject the absurd choices made by the big-headed and unqualified Donald Rumsfeld, considered as an American disaster by his biographer Andrew Cockburn?
Russia’s intervention in Syria changed the dynamic on the ground and regionally, potentially with global implications, a major geopolitical development, the most important one in decades.
By acting on invitation from al-Assad’s government, Russia has intervened (however cynically it may be viewed in the West) within the framework of international law. By fighting terror at its root source, the Russian government has usurped the role of providing security in the Mideast from the US.
On Friday the 30th of October, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he will send 50 U.S. Special Forces soldiers into Syrian territory, though Syria has presented no threat to U.S. national security and has not invaded any country. In fact, Syria is fighting against Islamic jihadists who present a threat also to the United States and Europe.
Russia’s intervention in Syria changed the dynamic on the ground and regionally, potentially with global implications, a major geopolitical development, the most important one in decades.
Washington is desperate to keep its imperial agenda on track and unchallenged – why John Kerry met with 17 of his counterparts plus EU and UN envoys in Vienna on Friday, following US, Russian, Turkish and Saudi foreign ministers meeting there on Thursday, Syria so far excluded from discussing its own future.
Washington’s intentions remain unchanged – replacing Assad with a US controlled puppet. Sending special forces to northern Syria (illegally without Security Council or Damascus authorization) with likely more to follow, solely to aid terrorist elements against Assad, along with continued lawless bombing of infrastructure targets, not ISIS as claimed.
It shows Obama wants war, not peace.
More Vienna talks planned for mid-November may go nowhere, a thinly veiled scheme to convince Russia Washington turned a new leaf – aiming to stop its air campaign, devastating ISIS and other takfiri terrorists, wrecking US hegemonic plans, Moscow determined to defeat the scourge of terrorism, not about to be pressured by America to back off.
Sergey Lavrov clearly stated Russia’s position, saying “(w)e have a common enemy, and we must not let this enemy gain power in Syria nor in any other state.”
“If a ceasefire is declared, no terrorist organizations should be subjected to it” – combating them to continue until they’re neutralized and destroyed.
Russia remains fully committed to fighting their scourge in full accord with international law principles, polar opposite how America operates, ignoring them altogether, risking global war in the process.
Moscow rejects US demands for Assad to go, Lavrov clearly saying “(t)he Syrian people (alone) should define the future of their country, including Assad’s fate.”
The statement issued following Friday’s meeting was largely meaningless rhetoric – sounding very much like earlier high-minded Geneva communiques accomplishing nothing.
A Final Comment
In one month of bombing ISIS and other terrorists in Syria, Russia flew around 1,400 sorties, destroying over 1,600 targeted sites – including 249 command posts, 51 training camps, 131 ammunition and fuel depots, and 786 field bases, according to General Staff Col. Gen. Andrey Kartapolov.
Air strikes killed 28 “most odious” terrorist leaders, he added. Syrian ground forces liberated over 50 towns and villages, comprising about 350 square km.
ISIS losses are massive, their forces in disarray, “complete victory” not yet achieved. Much work remains. Terrorists are clearly on the defensive – pummelled by Russian air power and Syrian ground forces.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
“If there is any doubt concerning the nefarious undertones of subversiveness in these NGO dealings, [National Endowment for Democracy] NED founder reportedly said the following in the 1990s: ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.’ What was once done at night under the cloak of ‘imperialism’ is now done during the day under the guise of ‘humanitarianism.’” ~The Wrong Kind of Green
Hindsight is a generous provider of absolution of the guilt from falling for the sophisticated western government or state propaganda and their media sleights of hand that so often deceive us into believing the narrative they present, one that’s so often designed to justify military intervention.
Invariably this is a narrative that all but ensures the massacre of innocent people under the pretext of ‘liberating’ them, or introducing ‘democracy’ that always promises to erase some perceived grievance of an western-backed opposition movement. Western nation-builders normally prescribe the same treatment every time: cutting a swathe through the host country’s society and culture either via proxy armies of foreign mercenaries under the guise of various terrorist factions or with an onslaught of bombs and assorted mass destruction or chemical weapons (including depleted uranium) which can render their land barren for decades and result in birth defects, increased cancer rates and a multitude of devastating side effects for generations after. While all this is going on, a parallel government has already been formed by the west, laying in waiting in some five star hotel in Paris or London.
HUMANITARIAN HOAXERS: Original disaster photo posted on April 14, 2013, before it was recycled by Syria’s White Helmets on Aug 20, 2015.
Despite such hindsight and the universally accepted knowledge that it was in factpure fiction that took us to war in both Iraq, and in Libya too, there is still a huge degree of cognitive dissonance at play over the Syria commentary. The lies regarding Syria, lies which are designed to justify western military intervention and arming proxy militants, are ongoing. Even today the New York Times provided a key Washington propaganda talking point in its headline which reads, “Violence in Syria Spurs a Huge Surge in Civilian Flight“, with the important subheading which states: “Government Offensives and Russian Strikes Are Catalysts”, essentially blaming Russia’s three week old air campaign for the “surge” of refugees entering Europe through Greece, all the while neglecting to mention most of these originate from the pool of almost 2 million who have been languishing in Turkey from as early as 2012. Like clockwork, western propaganda mills continues, all day, every day.
Disbelief is invariably registered when it is demonstrated that Syria is undergoing the same ‘truth laundering’ treatment as Libya and Iraq underwent previously, or that Syria’s resistance of the West’s open attempt at regime change attempts for nearly 5 years now is the reason for repeated spikes in propaganda. We’ve seen many different versions of the West’s creative narrative at any give moment, especial when Syria or its allies persistently thwarts the Colonialist vision for the region. Failed policies never play well on CNN or the BBC in real time, with any serious criticism reserved until a decade has passed and it’s safe for media operatives to comment because the politicians who sold those failed policies have since retired or have been cycled out of foreign policy decision-making positions.
Lethal Weapon: NGO Soft Power
“Along with military invasions and missionaries, NGOs help crack countries open like ripe nuts, paving the way for intensifying waves of exploitation and extraction” ~ Stephanie McMillan
The NGO ‘soft power complex’ is now one of the most destructive global forces. It is employed as an interface between civilians of a target nation, with government, economic or military structures of the colonialist force intent on harnessing any given nation’s resources or undermining its geopolitical influence. The Democratization process, or the path to regime change is facilitated by these undercover government or corporate proxy employees who, once embedded into a society, set about producing the propaganda that will justify intervention, either economically, politically or militarily. NGO propaganda will often employ slick social media marketing which is underpinned by advance applied behavioural psychology and advanced NLP-based ‘social enterprise’ sales pitches.
The perception of a ‘non profit’ complex who purport to be “working for the betterment and improvement of humanity” can be a difficult nut to crack, but it must be done. In the west. charities, not-for-profits and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are seen as “do gooders” and so they rarely fall under public scrutiny. Western governments know the general public has an inherent faith in their perceived integrity and this provides an ideal cover for western government and intelligence agencies to operate through their NGO and aid organisations.
“The Syrian army relies on loyal soldiers defending their country and their homes from a heavily subsidized, markedly foreign incursion, including many mercenaries paid by the Gulf monarchies and trained by the US. And the army is loyal because they know that although great sacrifices will be asked of them, they will be defending, not sacrificing, their families and loved ones. The rest of the world that supposedly cares about Syria can start by making it unnecessary for them to make such sacrifices.”
Much of the propaganda surrounding Syria and the “conflict” is indeed, mythology spun-up by western agents of influence. A mythology created and disseminated by the NGO complex working diligently on the ground in Syria and remotely in the labyrinths of power, ensures that a steady flow of misinformation continues uninterrupted, one that is custom designed to alter public perception about the situation in Syria and drive us towards supporting the identical mistakes made in Iraq and Libya.
It is no error or oversight that the media barely mention Libya these days as it is plunged deeper and deeper into anarchy, where warlords occupy the terror vacuum created by the NATO’s deceptive intervention in 2011. Perhaps if people were confronted by images of the daily horrors endured by the people of Libya these day, they would be more reticent about the passive-aggressive re-creation of that same scenario in Syria.
MARKETING: The familiar baby motif is been a hallmark of western cointel pro regime change marketing ever since the incubators in Kuwait.
The White Helmet Myth
The NGO hydra has no more powerful or influential serpentine head in Syria than the Syria Civil Defence aka The White Helmets who, according to their leader and creator, James Le Mesurier, hold greater sway than even ISIS or Al Nusra confabs over the Syrian communities.
As we pointed out in Part I of this exposé, The White Helmets humanitarian front is mainly financed by the British Foreign Office. According to Richard Spencer of the London Telegraph:
“The Foreign Office is currently the largest single source of funding. It is an irony that if Britain does effectively become an ally of Assad, and starts raids against Isil in Syria, it will be bombing from the air and paying for the bodies to be dug out on the ground. The White Helmets are also operating in at least one Isil-held area.”
In a speech given by Le Mesurier in Lisbon June 2015, entitled “Act 1: Witnesses to history in the making”, Le Mesurier informed his rapt audience that in a recent US Government survey conducted across a “diverse spectrum” of Syrian communities, 67% of those asked, nominated the White Helmets as the most influential community organisation. This, despite, their non-inclusion in the 15 respondents to the survey, that comprised ISIS, Al Nusra, & other political or armed groups. This is a bizarre claim on two fronts:
1. That the White Helmets should be included, by James Le Mesurier, in group that promotes themselves to be “unarmed”, apolitical and neutral, when it is obvious that they are politically biased and armed (see details below).
2. That the White Helmets can lay claim to this influence, despite the fact that when asked, the majority of Syrian people have never heard of them, except perhaps for those in Al Nusra, ISIS or [the dwindling] Free Syrian Army held territories.
Clearly, what Le Mesurier is attempting to create is the myth of an organic, nonaligned and independent humanitarian organisation, when it’s really a synthetic covert intelligence and forward-operating disinformation asset which is being funded by the British government, and headed by one of the UK’s very best military operatives in Le Mesurier.
It is important to analyse the White Helmet mythology, all generated by an incredibly slick and high-gloss media and marketing apparatus, overseen and driven by a George Soros partnered PR company called Purpose.
The following is a direct quote from the White Helmet website:
“The volunteers save people on all sides of the conflict – pledging commitment to the principles of “Humanity, Solidarity, Impartiality” as outlined by the International Civil Defence Organisation. This pledge guides every response, every action, every life saved – so that in a time of destruction, all Syrians have the hope of a lifeline”
“The White Helmets mostly deal with the aftermath of government air attacks. Yet they have risked sniper fire to rescue the bodies of government soldiers to give them a proper burial”
As part of the myth-building process, White Helmet members who are repetitively described as ‘ordinary people’, specifically, “bakers, tailors, engineers, pharmacists, painters, carpenters, students”,and are relentlessly depicted as heroes, miracle workers, saints and super-humans scaling the “Mount Everest” of war zones with impartiality and neutrality. “Unarmed and unbiased” is their strapline, as they sacrifice themselves for the “Syrian People”. Indeed, those same Syrian people who have never heard of them. The myth-making continues…
“When I want to save someone’s life I don’t care if he’s an enemy or a friend. What concerns me is the soul that might die” ~ Abed, the White Helmets.
“After the bombs rain down, we rush in to dig for survivors. Our motto, “to save one life is to save all humanity,” is what drives us on.” ~ Raed Saleh, White Helmet leader and UN spokesperson.
Can an organisation rightly called an ‘independent relief organisation’ when it is being funded by a foreign government who is directly involved in the military over-throw of Syria’s government? Most intelligent people should have no problem answering that question.
The Myth Exposed: ’Moderate’ Terrorists
Neutrality
In previous articles we have exposed the White Helmets’ associations with the terrorist group Al Nusra Front and their presence in known ISIS strongholds in Syria. We have also explored, in depth, their donor base and demonstrated how impartiality is a hard claim to justify when taking into account that their finance sources consist of hard-line regime changers, hell-bent on removing the Syrian Government and portraying President Bashar al Assad as the devil incarnate.
These donors include, the British Government, known US regime change facilitators USAID, and the US and NATO-backed ‘Syrian National Council’, a parallel government in-waiting which the west claims represents the Syrian opposition. This is discussed in depth in: White Helmets: War by way of Deception Part I
Time now to observe the White Helmets in action and question their impartiality on the ground in Syria…
This video below reveals a White Helmet operative describing the “throwing of Shabiha bodies in the trash”. Shabiha is a derogatory term for Syrian Government militia or state-employed security forces but is liberally applied by terrorist aka “rebel alliance” factions to any member of the Syrian military, irrespective of whether they are Alawite, Sunni, or Shia. Let’s remind ourselves of White Helmet claims on their websites of how its ‘aid workers’ “have risked sniper fire to rescue SAA bodies to give them a proper burial.”
Watch this shocking video here:
This same neutral White Helmet operative goes on to pledge allegiance to the terrorist forces in the region stating:
“They are our role models, the best of people and we have the honour to serve them”“SERVE THEM [armed terrorists, Al Nusra/Al Qaeda]”, curious turn of phrase for a neutral, impartial humanitarian “moderate” organisation? Watch here:
VIDEO STILL: ‘Neutral’ White Helmet operatives flash the victory sign as they cart off dead Syrian Army corpses.
Moving on to another video, this time revealing White Helmet operatives standing on the discarded dead bodies of SAA [Syrian Arab Army] soldiers and giving the victory sign. This display of support for the Al Nusra extremist terrorists who have just massacred these soldiers once again demonstrates where their true allegiances lie.Watch here:
We also know via reports from within Aleppo city that it was the Al Nusra terrorists who massacred hundreds if not thousands of civilians before dumping their bodies into the River Queiq: The Truth from inside Syria’s Terrorist Underworld rendering the water supply to Aleppo’s civilian population toxic and undrinkable.
Were these SAA bodies which have been piled-up unceremoniously, one on top of the other, and trampled upon by these same White Helmets who a sold as “saints and neutral saviours”, added to others flung before them, into the disease infested waters of the River Queiq? It appears so.
“Moderate” Rebels Targeting Civilians in Syria
This is one example of how powerful western propaganda can invert reality. For years now, there’s been a tsunami of western government and media talking points which claim that “Assad is targeting his own people indiscriminately”, and these round-the-clock allegations are always backed up by the same pro-opposition news source – the self-styled ‘Syrian Observatory For Human Rights‘ (SOHR) which until recently, was being run by Syrian ex-convict, Osama Ali Suleiman, whose uses the media stage name of “Rami Abdul Rahman”. He runs his dubious organisation (see his website here) from his flat in Coventry, England, and is said to travel frequently to Turkey as part of his operation. SOHR has received funding from the EU and like the White Helmets, has been openly affiliated with the British Foreign Office, being summoned to private meetings there.
The SOHR has been the “go to” source for all civilian casualty numbers in Syria, even though the numbers put forth cannot be independently corroborated or are not check at all for their veracity.
FIXER: Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, leaves the Foreign and Commonwealth Office after meeting Britain’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in central London November 21, 2011. Photo Source: REUTERS/Luke MacGregor.
The SOHR and western media completely ignore (and cover-up) regular incidents of s0-called “moderate” rebels, supported directly by the US and its CIA, who regularly target civilian areas. They are targeting civilians and then blaming these on the Syrian government through the same ‘activist’ media channels.
Where is the claimed ‘neutrality’ in the White Helmet reporting in these same conflict areas where they are embedded? We hear incessantly of the “regime barrel bombs”, but we never hear one mention of the flesh tearing ‘Hell Cannon’ fired indiscriminately upon Aleppo civilians, in a hail of mortars and rockets that regularly rain down upon civilian areas, including into Damascus, from terrorist cells embedded in suburbs.
MODERATE TERRORISTS: Aleppo “Rebels” fill gas canisters with nails and high explosive to be fired from the Hell Cannon.
Likewise, we are never told about the car bombs that have devastated civilian areas in Homs and Latakia, including schools and hospitals. When do we hear about the tunnels dug under civilian homes and streets by the terrorists that are detonated – as a distraction to divert the SAA into ambushes and sniper fire?
These neutral humanitarians would do well to talk about the terrorist snipers who kill and maim civilians on a regular basis. Instead, they ignore atrocities committed against the Syrian army, an army which, unlike the foreign mercenary “rebel alliance” terrorists, is comprised of actual Syrian citizens.
A genuinely neutral report or analysis should surely take all of these factors into account, or are these “other” Syrian civilians not to be registered as such in the western electorate minds and hearts? If so, why not?
“The UN estimates 220,000 deaths thus far in the Syrian war. But almost half are Syrian Army soldiers or allied local militia fighters, and two thirds are combatants if we count opposition fighters. Either way, the ratio of civilian to military casualties is roughly 1:2, given that the opposition is also inflicting civilian casualties. Compare that to the roughly 3:1 ratio in the US war in Iraq and 4:1 in the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-9. (The rate of Palestinian to Israeli casualties was an astronomical 100:1.)” ~ Paul Larudee – Mythology, Barrel Bombs and Human Rights Watch.
AMERICAN PROXY: A “moderate rebel” fighter takes position behind sandbags in Aleppo’s Al-Ezaa neighbourhood – May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Hosam Katan
“In April and June 2014, I spent a cumulative month in Syria, in various areas of Damascus, with visits to Latakia, Homs, and Ma’aloula. At the time, Damascus was being intensely shelled by mortars, frequently in my vicinity, including just behind the hotel housing the Peace Delegation which I accompanied for the first week (photo). This attack killed three civilians and one Syrian soldier. We saw some of the 60 plus children injured in the April 15 shelling of a school, not an isolated occasion, an attack which also killed one child. Mortars rained down at close-proximity on many occasions in different areas of the Old City where I had then found lodging.” ~ Eva Bartlett
This is a statement from an Aleppo citizen. Another Syrian civilian who has never heard of the White Helmets.
“The terrorists are using mortars, explosive bullets, cooking-gas cylinders bombs and water-warming long cylinders bombs, filled up with explosives and shrapnel and nails, in what they call “Hell Canon”. Google these weapons or see their YouTube clips. The cooking-gas cylinder is made of steel, and it weighs around 25 kg. Imagine it thrown by a canon to hit civilians? And imagine knowing that it’s full with explosives?… Yet, the media is busy with the legendary weapon of “barrel bombs”! They came to spread “freedom” among Syrians! How dare they say that Syrian army shouldn’t fight them back?” ~ from Syria, welcome to Hell.
‘Moderate’ rebel Hell Cannon, in Aleppo.
How can the White Helmets make a claim of neutrality while providing simplistic, largely unverified, biased and prejudicial reports that reflect only a percentage of the reality of this complex conflict and blatantly further the objectives of their donors in the region while ignoring the sacrifice being made by the Syrian Arab Army to defend their families and homeland from the invading NATO-supported death squads.
“Aleppo city has shrunk to a fifth of its original size, and became so crowded with refugees that fled their areas after they fell into terrorist hands. I walk everyday in the city. I see children, young girls without limbs because of a terrorist mortar or shrapnel that targets them randomly and causes terrible wounds and horrific memories that will never leave them. The girl who lost one leg is standing on her good leg and selling bread, while the little boy who lost one arm is selling chewing gum. Those are the “injured” people who are mentioned fleetingly in the news, just numbers in one line of a report, after each attack from the terrorists. “Injured” doesn’t mean scratched or having a bleeding finger; it means someone lost his eyes or her limbs.”
Finally, the photo below was taken shortly after Russia had legally entered the conflict in Syria by invitation of the Syrian Government. Does it not seem a strange message to be conveyed by a neutral, unbiased humanitarian organisation with a self-proclaimed mandate to protect ALL Syrian people? The White Helmets will not kneel? They are neutral are they not, to whom would they kneel or not kneel if indeed they serve all Syrians regardless of “race, religion, gender or political affiliation”, or so the marketing language goes…
White Helmets: Execution Facilitators
There is an entire library of White Helmet propaganda images that have been proven to be recycled, fake or at best, inaccurate, but perhaps the most shocking and most widely publicised was the footage of what appears to depict their participation in an Al Nusra execution of a civilian in Hreitan, Northern Aleppo.
This is perhaps one of the most damning indictments of White Helmet collusion with the terrorist group.
‘MODERATES’: Video stills here show White Helmets ‘cleaning up’ after Al Nusra execution in Aleppo dated 5/5/2015.
This video was wiped from most channels by the White Helmets immediately after its release, however the website Liveleak has managed to keep a protected copy which has escaped YouTube communitarian-style censorship.
Live Leak says: “As expected, youtube deleted this very incriminating video of the s-called “White Helmets” working hand in hand with Al Qaeda. Another CIA fail, trying to sell us these “White helmet” as civilian workers and volunteers, while they are simply Nusra jihadists. What to think of theri claims about ‘chlorine’?”
WARNING: Graphic content below, not suitable for children.
The White Helmets were forced to release a statement explaining the events in this video. According to their own admission here, the sequence of events on the day, 5th May 2015 were as follows: Al Nusra called the White Helmets 25 minutes prior to the execution. White Helmets arrived on the scene at 11.35 am, 5 minutes BEFORE the execution was carried out at 11.40. These impartial humanitarian workers did NOTHING to prevent this execution, they appear a full 5 minutes prior to this murder at the behest of the executioners and they are ushered into shot immediately after the victim is shot twice at close range in the head, to collect the body.
Are these really neutral humanitarians at work saving every Syrian civilian “irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation”?
This is also taken from the White Helmet official statement AFTER their execution facilitation had gone viral on social media:
“We unequivocally condemn the killing of civilians no matter who the perpetrator.”
The perpetrator is clearly Al Nusra Front, and it seems as if the White Helmet are avoiding naming the group, and readers would be right to ask why not. So where is their condemnation of this and countless other executions of civilians by Al Nusra – in those White Helmet reports to the UN?
Here are more responses by the White Helmets to the highly controversial video:
“The discussion over the video from Hreitan has highlighted the absence of a published code of conduct to which civil defence volunteers can be held accountable. The leaders of Syria Civil Defence commit to the development and publication of a code of conduct for members and its public posting on the www.SyriaCivilDefence.Org website in English and Arabic within one month.”
We are now coming up to November 2015, and there has still been no amendment to their “code of conduct”. These humanitarians upon whose testimony, hangs the entire Western intervention policy in Syria, have not been officially investigated or even questioned over their suspected role in the “clean up” of a summary execution of a Syrian civilian by terrorist groups in Syria.
“The White Helmets are unpaid and unarmed, and they risk their lives to save others…….. Wearing simple white construction helmets as feeble protection from those “double-tap” bombings, the White Helmets are strictly humanitarian. They even have rescued some of the officers of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad who are bombing them.”
ARMED: Screenshot from video shot in Aleppo clearly showing White Helmet members automatic combat rifles.
Video clearly showing armed White Helmets on the streets of Aleppo:
It appears that Agha plays a dual role in Syria’s conflict, White Helmet by day, and Al Nusra armed terrorist by night, seen here on his own Twitter page posing on board an Al Nusra tank, gun in hand.
Here is a very clear case of the lines between unarmed humanitarian and armed terrorist mercenary being more than a little blurred. In one photo Agha is seen clearly celebrating with Al Nusra wearing his White Helmet tabard. In the stills taken from the alleged Russian hospital bombing in Sarmine, Idlib, he is spotted emerging from the “bombed” building. Again, contrary to White Helmets public claims of neutrality, his association with Al Nusra and his brazen show of armed affiliation yet another White Helmet who’s role in this conflict and it is far removed from that of an impartial, unarmed ‘humanitarian’.
Here, the immortal words of Russian Foreign Minsiter, Sergei Lavrov, spring to mind:
“If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?”
Top left: Musawiya Agha Hassan in White Helmet mode. Top Right: As Al Nusra mercenary on tank in Idlib [taken from his Twitter page profile]. Bottom left: celebrating with Al Nusra terrorists. Bottom right: Screen shot from alleged Russian air strike on hospital in Sarmine, Idlib.
DISTURBING: Muawiya Hassan Agha Facebook page on 24/10/2015 shows the celebrating the death of a Syrian Army soldier.
A very cursory scroll down Agha’s Facebook page also reveals very recent photos of SAA corpses accompanied by a number of celebratory, albeit disturbing comments.
In this report, we have only touched on a small percentage of the available archives of White Helmets deception and its misleading and highly prejudiced propaganda campaigns, but the examples presented here should begin to confront the highly effective Purpose built marketing campaign that so far has portrayed these men as benign, unprejudiced saviours of beleaguered civilians, when in fact many of them are actually paid mercenaries, impostors and agents for regime change – a drama which is unfolding in areas known to be terrorist strongholds and often, virtually devoid of civilian populations.
As Syrian nun Mother Agnes Mariam stated unequivocally in her recent interview, 90% of IDPs [internally displaced persons] in Syria have actually taken refuge in Government held areas.
In Summary
The success of the White Helmet and NGO complex propaganda is dependent upon the skewing of our moral compass by using the media and government institutions that are proven experts at “nudging” public opinion towards any particular policy.
If we really want to support Syria in this battle against such a complex array of interventionist forces, we must locate that compass and allow it to point us squarely towards the truth, however hard that truth is to accept and however remote might appear from the mainstream narrative. In fact I would go as far as to say, the further away you get from the mainstream naarative, the closer you get to the truth.
One final example of White Helmet propaganda at work:
“White Helmets claim to have rescued an SAA soldier who had in reality been captured by Al Nusra terrorists 10 days previously. In the Al Nusra version, this soldier is described as a “Shia pig” and was most probably summarily executed as an apostate according to Wahabi doctrine. Hard to imagine how the White Helmets then rescued him, unless of course they dug up his body for publicity purposes.”
Above: on the left hand side is apost dated Oct 16, 2014 from the Syrian Civil Defense Facebook page, the White Helmet ‘rescue’ version , while the right hand side is from an earlier Oct 4, 2014 Twitter post shows Al Nusra Front’s likely ‘execution’ version of the same event.
At this point, the question should really be asked, are these two groups working together (or are they one in the same)?
END OF PART II
Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.
A statement signed by Belgian development and solidarity organisations have called for a ban on the sale of arms to Israel and the suspension of the partnership agreement between Tel Aviv and the European Union in the wake of the recent wave of violence in the Palestinian territories.
In a statement released yesterday the groups said Article II of the Arms Trade Treaty allows for the suspension of the agreement in the event of human rights violations.
The organisations expressed concern about the escalating “wave of violence” in the Palestinian territories, especially in Jerusalem, saying the provocation policy practiced by Israeli settlers backed by the army in Al-Aqsa Mosque is the main reason for the wave of violence.
The Belgian organisations described what is happening in Jerusalem as part of the persecution suffered by four million Palestinians in the Palestinian territories due to the Israeli occupation including the war on Gaza in 2014.
Is this the Third Intifada?
Rising tensions in the Occupied Territories have led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of clashes.
They demanded the Belgian government and the European Union take all necessary measures to stop the Israeli occupation and exclude the Israeli settlements from all bilateral relations between Belgium and Israel.
The statement demanded the Belgian government request the Israeli government cancel the administrative detention of Palestinian prisoners and reform its judicial system to allow for a fair trial for Palestinians
Professor Tim Lenton (Chair in Climate Change/Earth Systems Science, University of Exeter) provided one of the many positive outcomes of this summer’s climate change conference in Paris.
You may have missed this major admission from Professor Lenton which we originally broke in our Paris Report, so we revisit it here and round off with a little more discussion.
His “revelations” occurred on day 2 of the climate change conference in Paris that ran from 7th to 10th July, 2015.
As you will see from the transcript and video excerpts, below, Professor Lenton initially denied that geoengineering activities were already occurring but, when pressed further, he threw in the towel and conceded that the geoengineering of our skies was indeed already happening.
For any newcomers to this topic, we are officially told by Her Majesty’s Government that geoengineering – which includes releasing vast amounts of toxic substances into the sky from aircraft in a supposed bid to block out the sun and reduce ‘global warming’ – is just a proposal, and that any current geoengineering “experiments” are being performed only on a “small scale.”
Transcript of Geoengineering-related Discussions
Olga Raffa, Chemtrails Project UK: My name’s Olga Raffa, from ClimateChangeSense.org. I represent a large group of people who are wondering why programmes such as weather modification and ongoing geoengineering programmes throughout the World have not been taken into consideration with a lot of the research done. And we notice, on a daily basis, that our environment is being tipped through the aerosols being dumped into the atmosphere blocking our sun. And there seems to be a lot of aluminium in the environment – within the bees now have aluminium, and it’s destroying their, well, there’s a bee collapse obviously with the insects and the biodiversity. Aluminium… found in whales. So we recognise this is a military programme. And the EMFs – so you’ve got your cell towers, your HAARP… which is putting heat into the atmosphere, into the ionosphere and seems to be moving the jet streams. Have you done any research and published on the tipping points that this is doing and will cause in the future. Thank you.
Prof. Tim Lenton, University of Exeter: Not precisely on those interventions, but I am someone who’s obviously worked on tipping points and also on trying to evaluate these… well, I would think of them more as proposed, existing proposals for geoengineering inverventions – either in the camp of sunlight reflection methods or large-scale carbon removal methods. I’ve been on my own journey with my thinking about that but, as I’ve said publicly and in the literature, I’m now of a view that the risks posed by large-scale attempts to reflect sunlight back to space… far outweigh the potential benefits in terms of reducing risk of higher temperatures and associated tipping points. So I still feel that there’s a space for and there’s a need, in fact, to look at the options for carbon removal as I think we may need that later this century. But that’s not what you’re most concerned about.
The next Q&A covers another subject raised by another attendee, before the geoengineering topic is rekindled by Dr. Colin Pritchard.
Dr. Colin Pritchard, University of Edinburgh: My question is again for Tim. Colin Pritchard, Edinburgh University. Hi, Tim. Thank you very much for your very cogent explanation. I would basically agree with you on geoengineering – except, may I infer that you prefer an enormous global-scale uncontrolled experiment in geoenginerring as opposed to a small-scale uncontrolled [sic] one. At the moment we are in the former. And it seems to be a little bizarre to prefer the former to the latter.
Prof. Tim Lenton, University of Exeter: I’m certainly not preferring carrying on with our current uncontrolled experiment. And I’m not – what’s the right word – I’m not monolithically set against things that are being discussed under the banner of geoengineering. So it’s quite a nuance… I think that’s quite a nuance discussion to have, perhaps over lunch, because it really depends on the options you’re considering. So you’ve got some things which would be reflective roofs and road surfaces that are very practical, local adaptation options against urban heat islands that, if you did on a large enough scale, could have some measurable effect on regional climate and I think are very sensible. So we have to just be… I think we have to be nuanced on specific proposals, specific technologies. But I think we can perhaps all agree that certainly none of us want to continue the current uncontrolled experiment. I guess, knowing the numbers, we realise that we would like the strongest mitigation efforts possible but we now know that additional things including carbon removal from the atmosphere may… we may want to develop that capability because we may need it as part of the risk management portfolio.
Video Excerpt
Lasting 4 minutes 24 seconds (if you cut out the interjecting question/answer by skipping from 1:26:16 to 1:29:59), here are the above exchanges from the official footage:
Professor Lenton’s U-turn on whether geoengineering activities are already underway, although spectacular, is actually quite understandable.
Geoengineers proposing to spray aerosols from aircraft to block out the sun when the same effects, we’re told, are already being achieved with “ordinary condensation trails” is the ludicrous scenario currently being served up by Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) – one that does not merit the vast amounts of taxpayers’ money that has already been invested in geoengineering.
It appears the fine line being walked by Professor Lenton and company is that, on one hand, they must not be seen emboldening ridiculous claims such as the “ordinary condensation trails” one made by HMG but, on the other hand, trying not to bite that same hand that is feeding them financially. I believe it is this dilemma that we witness Professor Lenton struggle with as it best explains his initial denial then later admission that geoengineering is already occurring.
It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the money received by these establishments is adversely affecting the quality of their work. They are compromised.
So too the media, creating their nonsensical ‘pro-environmental’ fanfare for the IPCC as they set about hammering the final few nails into our New World Order coffin, with virtually no mention of the real scientists and the real campaigners who, with no financial incentive, continue to spread the truth about the underlying ‘phenomenon’ of global warming.
Such individuals – those with the intelligence, independence and decency to stand against the mainstream deception – are ensuring that the cracks of Agenda 21 and the NWO continue to progress…
…until the whole system is inevitably exploited for what it is.
It’s Being Ignored
The second major issue that is confirmed for us by Professor Lenton (and as confirmed elsewhere) is that these geoengineering activities – that we now agree exist – have not been taken into account in the IPCC’s climate models or in other mainstream climate research.
With the warming effects that persistent aircraft trails can have on surface temperatures already acknowledged by the IPCC but not included in their climate models, scientists such as Professor Lenton must realise that the geoengineering elephant in the room must now be addressed if these scientists – and their work – is to emerge with any credibility whatsoever.
The question we witnessed Dr Pritchard raising was especially helpful as it ultimately caused Professor Lenton to concede, but one is left wondering to what extent other institutions are benefiting from adopting the flawed stance that “the climate is changing due to human activity, but let’s ignore the climatic effects of years of geoengineering.”
More specifically, if UK universities are being ‘rewarded’ with vast amounts of research money to facilitate the nonsense of geoengineering, then how lucrative must be the benefits of upholding the underlying global warming alarmism that we already know to be flawed? To look at it another way, how many millions would it cost them if they allowed the wheels to come off the global warming bandwagon? Ethics aside, it is clear why their main incentive is to promote the paired issues of global warming and geoengineering. Money talks.
By way of contrast, consider the 30,000 independent US scientists (of which 9,000 had PhDs) that signed the Oregon Petition:
We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
With no financial motivation for these scientists, what prevailed was the opportunity for truth and transparency. No threat required. No spotlight required.
Learn more about the global warming deception that is facilitating the geoengineering crime at our sister site, Climate Change Sense.
There’s No Way Forward
For Professor Lenton himself, now that he has conceded geoengineering is contributing to climate change, is he going to continue his absurdly flawed promotion of geoengineering also being a solution to climate change?! Or will he find the necessary resources to investigate geoengineering and chemtrails as a causal factor of climate change – and maybe even reconsider his stance on global warming? With no financial incentive, such a change in direction may appear unlikely but, given his own admission, how else can his work be taken seriously?
The same questions, of course, apply to all mainstream climate scientists and the IPCC, because what Professor Lenton’s words have done is invalidatehis work, his department’s work and that of the IPCC. This is because we now have official acceptance that geoengineering is happening and it’s effects are not being taken into account, which is rendering the whole ‘anthropogenic global warming’ claim an utter shambles.
For Professor Lenton and every other climate scientist now unable to plead ignorance, without the necessary change in direction, will their work eventually be subject to charges of fraud?
We know we live in a World rife in corruption and there is no reason to presume the scientists, politicians and journalists involved in the global warming and geoengineering scandals should be any exception to the rule. Shamefully, the only sacrifice they appear willing to make is to permit the current, growing threat to their own children and grandchildren’s physical health.
Such sacrifice appears to be made for the purpose of simply securing their own personal salaries and livelihoods. In today’s climate of financial hardship and debt, it can be understood how simply getting themselves over the line may be a priority for the ‘me’ generation, but any assumption that their offspring may enjoy a net benefit seems especially shortsighted.
Sadly, all too often, cash is king. But if their ultimate motive does boil down to financial security, you would expect these intelligent people to engage their foresight and acknowledge the imminent ramifications of being so closely associated with and facilitating what may deservedly go down as the greatest crime of modern history. A crime that, by their own admission, is now unfolding before us.
May this article serve as a call for these scientists to turn their attentions to the bigger picture and to change their course of action accordingly, so they are no longer:
Damaging the health of themselves and their own families.
Standing by and watching the destruction of our wildlife, plant life, human life, our food, our water, our land and our oceans. Facilitating the attempted destruction of Mother Nature.
This article has been written to urge these scientists and others in positions of influence to make proper, responsible use of their opportunity – to no longer stand aside and facilitate but to stand strong, to break the hush and to do what they can to bring these disastrous geoengineering crimes to an end. Be the change the World so desperately needs.
Daily Israeli atrocities continue, Palestinians are being murdered daily – the latest victim an 8-month-old baby boy. The PA health ministry said Ramadan Mohammad Faisal Thawabta died from toxic tear gas inhalation – another victim of Israeli state terror.
Since October 1, Israeli forces murdered 71 Palestinians in cold blood, including women (one pregnant), over a dozen children and two infants.
Three died on Friday alone:
the 8-month-old infant;
East Jerusalem youth Ahmad Hamada Qneibi, shot multiple times at point blank range, left to bleed to death, medics prevented from aiding him; and
Qabatia youth Qasse Saba’na, another phony attempted stabbing incident claimed.
Stop the Wall activist Jamal Juma said Israel’s ethnic cleansing scheme and plan to judaize al-Quds (Jerusalem) is being “hit strongly in the heart by the Palestinian youth uprising.”
It changed the whole equation. The whole Israeli calculation toward what is happening in the West Bank (and East Jerusalem) has been hit in the heart.
Israel never learns from history, Juma explained. “In all the Intifadas…the thing that makes (them) bigger and bigger…is Israeli violence.”
This is not going to stop the Palestinians. The more there’s crime, the more the Palestinians will go out to the streets and their resistance will be increasing.
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahhar urged all Palestinians to unite against Israeli state terror. Ongoing resistance restores the stature of the Palestinian cause, he said.
“The Al-Quds intifada has ended all the occupation’s attempts to divide the Aqsa Mosque temporally and spatially,” he added.
Israel’s Channel 10 said Israeli Tel Aviv-Ariel line bus drivers prohibit Palestinians from boarding. Passengers without Israeli IDs are diverted elsewhere.
Segregation thrives in Israel. Even in US Jim Crow south, African Americans travelled on the same buses as whites, consigned to back row seats.
One Israeli driver was heard telling a Palestinian: “I’m not negotiating with you. Go down” – later saying “(t)here’s no such thing as a good Arab. Even one who looks so nice, so quiet, he isn’t. There’s no such thing.”
Ariel settlement mayor Eliyahu Shaviro agreed with keeping Palestinians off buses with Jews, saying:
Today we’re in a reality that anyone can pick up a knife and stab. Would you, or anyone else who watches us, would any father or mother who have a boy or a girl and on a certain bus there are 90 percent Palestinians, would he send his kid on that bus?
Last May, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon suspended plans to have Jews and Palestinians travel on different West Bank buses after high-level criticism.
President Reuven Rivlin called the proposal “unthinkable.” Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said separation presented legal challenges. Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog called “separating Palestinians and Jews on public buses a warrantless humiliation, (fanning the flames) of hatred toward Israel around the world.”
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.”
A Russian plane carrying over 220 people from Egypt to Russia disappeared from radars, and crashed in central Sinai, according to Russian and Egyptian authorities.
Kolavia Flight 7K9268, an Airbus A321, went off radar 23 minutes after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport, Sergey Izvolskiy told the media citing preliminary data.
The plane was carrying 217 passengers and 7 crewmembers, he added. Seventeen of the passengers were children.
The Russian embassy in Egypt initially said all on board were Russian citizens. Later, the Belorussian embassy said one of the passengers was Belorussian. Egyptian authorities said three of the victims were Ukrainian, but Kiev didn’t immediately confirm that.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail confirmed that the Russian plane did go missing over Sinai and said a cabinet-level crisis committee has been convened to deal with the incident.
The crash site was discovered hours later in a desolate mountainous area of central Sinai, Egypt’s aviation ministry reported.
The plane was destroyed and all passengers and crewmembers were killed in the crash, Egyptian military and rescue officials told AP. Earlier, media reports suggested there might have been some survivors.
The Egyptian military told RT access to the crash site may be difficult for the press due to the volatile security situation in the Sinai. Large parts of the peninsula are dangerous due to the presence of militants, with only coastal areas in the north and south adequately guarded by security forces. The crash site is in the Hassana area 35 km south of Arish, the largest city in the Sinai.
The flight was traveling from the Egyptian resort to St. Petersburg. It belonged to the Kogalymavia airline, which also uses the brand name Metrojet, an operator popular among Russian tourists going to Egypt. The plane was supposed to contact air traffic in Turkish Cyprus’ Larnaca after leaving Egypt’s airspace, but failed to do so.
The tourist operator Brisco charted the ill-fated flight. The company is a business affiliate of Metrojet and they said the captain of the Airbus was an experienced pilot familiar with the aircraft.
“The captain was Velary Nemov, who has 12,000 flight hours under his belt, so he is definitely an experienced man. Of those, some 3,800 hours he spent piloting Airbus 320s. So we don’t have any reason to suspect human error from the crew,” a spokesman for Brisco said.
The plane climbed to its designated altitude of over 10,000 meters before rapidly losing speed, dropping and then vanishing from radar. Some reports in the Egyptian media cited eyewitnesses as saying the plane was on fire as it fell.
A source at Sharm El-Sheikh Airport told RIA Novosti the pilot of the missing plane requested a change of course, saying the jet would have to land in Cairo. The source said the crew of the crashed plane had complained to the airport’s technical service that the jet had engine problems.
It’s NOT confirmed that this flight has crashed. It descended 5000 feet before Flightradar24 coverage was lost. https://t.co/w5QKC7BXJX
The rapid drop the Airbus 321 reportedly experienced before crashing indicates pretty unusual circumstances and would suggest an emergency descent maneuver conducted by the crew, Captain Richard Woodward, former vice-president of the Australian and International Pilots’ Association (AIPA), told RT.
“If engines had failed, that would give you a dramatic loss of speed initially, but the crew would have lowered the nose and commit what is called a glide descent,” he explained. “My initial thought was that it might have been an emergency descent by the crew because they had a pressurization problem or dare I say perhaps a bomb on board.”
Russia has declared Sunday a day of national mourning for the crash victims.
Metrojet had a fatal incident in 2011, when one of its planes caught fire on a runway in Surgut Airport in Russia’s Urals. Three people died and 40 were injured as the plane burned out in just 10 minutes.
The last large-scale Russian airline incident happened in November 2013, when Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363 crashed at Kazan International Airport while attempting to land. Fifty people died in the incident.
Another flu death of an otherwise healthy person after receiving the flu vaccine has been reported in Wisconsin. WISN in Wisconsin is reporting that 26-year-old Katherine McQuestion has died from flu complications, after she received the flu shot. Katherine was reportedly a newlywed, and was required to receive the flu shot as part of her employment. She was a radiology technician and worked at St. Catherine’s Medical Center in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin according to WISN.
McQuestion’s mother said her daughter was healthy, beautiful and smart. She married in September, and her funeral was held on Tuesday. (Source.)
A health official interviewed by WISN stated that this is “rare”, and that everyone should get their flu shot. She apparently failed to mention that the CDC has stated that this year’s flu shot is mostly ineffective against the current influenza strains.
Are Flu Deaths After Vaccination Really “Rare”?
So how rare are these flu deaths following flu vaccinations? Can we really trust the health officials who are saying they are “rare” and encouraging everyone to receive the flu shot even when it is known it is not very effective?
In covering these flu deaths following flu vaccinations in the mainstream media, I have yet to see any truly investigative reporting showing any science or facts to back up health officials’ claims that these deaths are “very rare.” So let’s take a look at a few facts that can actually be verified.
Flu Vaccine Injuries and Deaths are by Far the Most Compensated in Vaccine Court
A review of the quarterly reports issued by the Department of Justice showing cases in which the government has paid out damages for vaccine injuries and deaths clearly shows that the majority of cases are awarded to flu vaccine victims. This information is never published in the mainstream media, but Health Impact News publishes it. You can read the most recent report from December 2014 in which the government paid out damages to 80 people who were injured or killed by the flu vaccine: Government Pays Compensation to 80 Flu Vaccine Injuries and Deaths.
Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) is the most common side effect and injury due to the flu vaccination. It is listed as a side effect with a warning in the flu vaccine package insert. The CDC and other sources claim that the incidence of GBS from the flu shot is about 1 or 2 per 1 million shots. Death rates from the flu are not given, but one must assume it is far lower than GBS.
And yet, we have seen a rash of media reports this flu season reporting that otherwise healthy individuals who received the flu shot died from flu complications. For some of the other stories, see:
Is the Science Behind Flu Vaccines Exempt from Scrutiny?
Is not one death from the flu in a healthy individual after receiving the flu vaccination worthy of an investigation into the safety of flu vaccines, and the supposed science behind them? When multiple deaths occur, when health officials call it “rare” after healthy individuals die from the flu after receiving the flu shot, does that not qualify as an “epidemic?” More people have now died from the flu after the flu shot in the United States than from Ebola.
One doctor who has sounded the alarm on the supposed science behind the annual flu vaccine is Dr. Mark Geier:
In this video, Dr. Mark Geier explains the fraud behind the flu vaccine. Dr. Geier is NOT anti-vaccine. He is an MD and has a PhD in genetics. He spent 10 years working at the National Institute of Health, and was a professor at Johns Hopkins University as a geneticist. He is also the author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications.
He worked on vaccine safety and efficacy for more than 30 years. He was one of four scientists who worked to replace the DTP vaccine, a vaccine that caused every child to become sick with a high fever at the time of vaccination, with the DTaP vaccine, which is an attenuated vaccine and causes illness due to fever in only 3% of those vaccinated.
In the video above, he explains that the flu shot causes Guillain-Barré Syndrome, and that the flu shot is not very effective in preventing the flu. He also explains that the CDC does not follow the law for vaccines in requiring long-term safety testing for the influenza vaccine like they do with other vaccines, as it is impossible to test a vaccine that changes every year. So the flu vaccine is basically an experimental vaccine that they want to give out to 300 million people every year. There are also no studies showing the safety of giving the flu vaccine to the same person every single year. However, Dr. Geier points out that the CDC is in the business of distributing flu vaccines, because they represent 300 million doses per year, whereas all the childhood vaccines together only number 20 million.
Dr. Geier goes on to explain that flu is “the wrong thing to vaccinate against” because you have to keep re-vaccinating against it every year, unlike childhood infectious diseases, such as smallpox, that are only vaccinated for once. Dr. Geier points out how ridiculous it is spend billions of dollars on a vaccine that might, at its best, save about 50 lives a year, when there are far more serious problems causing death that are more worthy of that kind of expenditure.
Be informed, don’t become a statistic of those damaged or killed by the flu vaccine! There are many other less dangerous ways to protect oneself from influenza.
Online petition campaigns were launched this week to stop Wal-Mart from selling Israeli soldier Halloween costumes and to get Wheaties cereal to start putting U.S. soldiers on its cereal boxes — boxes known for featuring photos of outstanding athletes.
The two campaigns have no relation to each other. Wheaties has not, to my knowledge, indicated the slightest interest in doing what the petition asks it to do.
I’d like Wal-Mart and every other store to stop selling all (not just Israeli) military and every other sort of armed, killer costume, including science-fiction futuristic Star Wars and any other. Sure, it’s a particular problem that the U.S. government gives Israel billions of dollars in free weapons every year with which to attack civilians, and that presidential candidates in the United States behave as if they’re campaigning to represent Israel. But if you oppose celebrating murder, including organized state-sanctioned uniformed murder, then you oppose everything that normalizes and encourages it.
So, of course, I also oppose glorifying “our troops” on cereal boxes. For one thing, it conflates the idea of an athlete with the idea of a soldier (which I use here as shorthand for sailor, Marine, airman, drone pilot, mercenary, special force, etc., etc.). An athlete doesn’t kill anyone, maim anyone, turn anyone’s house to rubble, traumatize any children, overthrow anyone’s government, throw any regions of the world into chaos, produce radical violent groups that hate my country, drain the public treasury of $1,000,000,000,000 a year, justify the stripping away of civil liberties in the name of wars for freedom, devastate the natural environment, drop napalm or white phosphorus, use DU, imprison people without charge, torture, or send missiles into weddings and hospitals killing one vaguely-identified victim for every 10 people murdered. An athlete plays sports.
Note that I’m also not proposing that we put troops on cereal boxes with devil horns inked onto their heads, blaming them for the faults of the whole society into which they were born. Sure, I blame them. Sure, I’d rather celebrate conscientious objectors. But there is an almost universal delusion in our culture which holds that when you blame someone for something, you exonerate everyone else. So, although it makes not the slightest sense, people interpret blaming a soldier for participating in a war as un-blaming the presidents, Congress members, propagandists, profiteers, and everyone else who helped make that war happen. In reality, blame is a limitless quantity, and everyone gets some, including me. But in the fantasyland we live in, you can’t go around blaming anyone for something done by many people, unless you are allowed a paragraph of explanation. And, besides, I’d start with all the presidents, Congress members, etc., as war criminals before reaching any rank-and-file in the list of candidates for cereal box condemnation.
Also, “our troops,” are simply not our troops, not collectively. Many of us vote against, petition against, demonstrate against, write against, and organize against the use and the expansion and the existence of the military. One wishes it were needless to say, but this does not suggest some sort of hatred for the individuals who are soldiers, the majority of whom say that economic option limitations was one big factor in their joining up, and many of whom believe what they are told about doing good for the places they invade. Nor of course does opposition to militarism imply some sort of twisted support for the militarism of some other nation or group. Imagine disliking soccer and consequently being denounced for supporting some other soccer team. Opposing war is the same way — it actually means opposing war, not routing for the “team” opposed by someone else.
“Team” is a horrible metaphor for a military. The military can involve lots of teamwork, but it has been a century now since a war involved two teams competing on a battlefield. In World War II and ever since, wars have been fought in people’s towns, and the majority of the victims have been civilians not signed up on any team. When groups like Veterans For Peace speak out against further participation in war, on the grounds that war is the unjustifiable, counter-productive slaughter of men, women, and children, they do so out of love for soldiers and potential future soldiers. Of course, many other veterans do not share that belief, or do not voice it aloud or publicly if they do. Perhaps not unrelated is the fact that the leading cause of death of U.S. soldiers sent into recent and current wars is suicide. What more profound statement that something is amiss could be made than that? What could I possibly say to even approach it?
Here’s the text of the petition in favor of putting troops on cereal boxes:
The Wheaties Box is an iconic image in America. It celebrates our best, our brightest, and those achieving high honors on the athletic field. Isn’t it time to honor another set of American heroes? Our troops who served their country and gave their all, deserve the same honor as our great athletes.
In fact our brightest and most creative intellects are not honored at all on Wheaties. Neither are our firemen and women, our emergency crews, our environmentalists, our teachers, our children, our poets, our diplomats, our farmers, our artists, our actors and actresses. No. It’s just athletes. If you think troops deserve an honor, clearly it is not, in fact, the same as athletes. And what of those of us who agree with President Kennedy (“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today”) — Should we get our heroes on cereal boxes, too?
Imagine the national pride of seeing a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor on the Wheaties box. General Mills, proud maker of Wheaties, can make this a new tradition. Next to the sacrifice these heroes and their families have made, it’s a small honor. But in our celebrity-obsessed culture, it can be a new tradition we all can be proud to share.
It’s just not true that we would all be proud. Some of us would deem it fascistic. Of course, we could just choose not to buy that cereal, while Anderson Cooper and anyone else who despises conscientious objectors could just not buy any cereal box honoring that tradition. But this petition is not proposing to force Wheaties to honor soldiers, just recommending it. Well, I’m just recommending against it.
General Mills, we are asking you to please add servicemembers [sic] who have been honored for their distinct service and heroism, to your rotation of those recognized on the Wheaties Box. We don’t do enough to honor those who served, especially those people who gave the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield. And while an image on a box of cereal may not seem like much, it’s a gesture that says so much about what we value. It’s the type of gesture we need to see happen more often. We hope General Mills will show us that these men and women are worth recognizing on their iconic brand. Please sign and share the petition telling General Mills to place our honored heroes from the military on their Wheaties box.
The U.S. military spends a fortune in public tax dollars advertising itself on race cars and in ceremonies at football games, and so on. Were Wheaties to pick up on this idea and profit from it by making the military pay, that would be bad enough. Doing it for free would be worse. But I don’t think the military would pay for it. The military advertises the generic faceless troop, not an actual specific soldier. Many veterans are essentially abandoned by the military, denied healthcare, left homeless, and — again — in many cases doomed to suicide.
During the war on Vietnam, recipients of medals of honor, angrily threw them back, rejecting what they had been part of. Any actual specific war hero could do that. And then where would Wheaties be?
Once in recent years the military tried to honor a particular flesh-and-blood soldier, and at the same time to merge its image with that of athletes. The soldier’s name was Pat Tillman. He had been a football star and had famously given up a multi-million dollar football contract in order to join the military and do his patriotic duty to protect the country from evil terrorists. He was the most famous actual troop in the U.S. military, and television pundit Ann Coulter called him “an American original — virtuous, pure, and masculine like only an American male can be.“
Except that he came to no longer believe the stories that had led him to enlist, and Ann Coulter stopped praising him. On September 25, 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Tillman had become critical of the Iraq war and had scheduled a meeting with the prominent war critic Noam Chomsky to take place when he returned from Afghanistan, all information that Tillman‘s mother and Chomsky later confirmed. Tillman couldn‘t confirm it because he had died in Afghanistan in 2004 from three bullets to the forehead at short range, bullets shot by an American.
The White House and the military knew Tillman had died from so-called friendly fire, but they falsely told the media he‘d died in a hostile exchange. Senior Army commanders knew the facts and yet approved awarding Tillman a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and a posthumous promotion, all based on his having died fighting the enemy. They would no doubt have also approved his photo for a Wheaties box.
And then where would the Wheaties thank-a-warrior campaign have been when the truth about Tillman’s death and the truth about Tillman’s views came out? I say: Wheaties, do not risk it. The Pentagon has not risked it since Tillman. Its generals (McChrystal, Petraeus) inevitably attract the spotlights and inevitably disgrace themselves. No rank-and-file troops are put forward as “icons.” They’re just used to justify massive spending “for the troops” that goes to weapons profiteers and not to one single troop.
The thought of blood just doesn’t go with breakfast cereal, Wheaties, and even the thought that this proposal came from somewhere in this country is enough to make me slightly nauseated.
* Thanks to D Nunns for calling the Wheaties thing to my attention.
The US State Department has falsely accused Russia of striking hospitals in Syria during their fight against ISIS, despite a rejection of the claims by the medical staff at Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Red Cross.
The embarrassing contradictions to US claims will strike a blow to the US propaganda machine, who have tried desperately to downplay Russia’s ever-increasing important role in defeating ISIS in the Middle East.
Dounia Dekhili said that MSF hospitals have no information on which to base the US allegations that Russia is responsible for the destruction of hospitals.
On Thursday, the medical organization reported that 12 hospitals had been targeted in Syria, six of them MSF institutions. However, MSF declined to assign responsibility for the attacks.
#Syria: Massive displacement due to increase of violence. 12 hospitals targeted including 6 supported by #MSFhttps://t.co/VfcnMMaYyt
“It is difficult to determine who is responsible for the air strikes that led to the destruction of the hospitals,” said Dekhili. “We were not witnesses, so we cannot be precise on that.” Dekhili explained that many areas of Syria are inaccessible, and the organization relies on reports from medical personnel on the ground, none of whom have said that Russia carried out an airstrike against a hospital.
The interview Dounia Dekhili gave to French Sputnik.
Dekhili expressed the medical professionals’ despondency at the violence which had left medical facilities and countless other civilian structures devastated in the course of the conflict, explaining that for years its institutions have reported being targeted by aerial bombardment.
“Regardless of who the parties to the conflict are, there is a total violation of medical and civilian structures.”
On Thursday, spokesman for the US State Department John Kirby was asked to provide sources to substantiate its grave allegations that Russia was responsible for damaging hospitals.
Kirby said that “we have seen some press reporting to that end,” and referred to “Syrian civil society groups” and “other operational information” which led the US administration to make the allegations, but was unable to provide any evidence.
Kirby was asked for substantiation after Red Cross Director Dominic Stillhart said that its personnel on the ground had not reported any airstrikes by Russian planes on civilian targets, including hospitals.
On October 29, the organization said it was “beyond doubt” that the Saudi-led coalition carrying out bombings in Yemen, had hit its hospital in Haydan on October 26.
Earlier this week, a Monsanto research facility in France was burned to the ground. Monsanto and investigators suspect an arsonist was responsible for the blaze.
Monsanto representative Jakob Witten told Reuters that investigators“strongly suspect it was a crime as no electrical or other sources were found.”He added that “No Monsanto sites in Europe have so far been the victim of fires of criminal origin, this is unprecedented violence.”
The fire had multiple points of origin, meaning it is unlikely the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction or other natural causes. Investigators also noticed a strong smell of gasoline in different areas of the site.
France announced in June that it was banning sales of Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide, amid public pressure and the World Health Organization’s announcement that the product is probably carcinogenic. Further, last month the country announced it was strengthening its ban on genetically modified crops. Monsanto is one of the most hated corporations on the planet and faces particularly strong resistance in France. If the fire is confirmed to have been arson, it is possible this vociferous opposition might have been a motivating factor.
Nevertheless, the recent fire is merely the tip of the iceberg with regard to Monsanto’s recent problems.
The company recently moved to close three different research facilities to save money in the face of declining profits. As Reuters reported last week, Monsanto research centers in Middleton, Wisconsin, Mystic, Connecticut, and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, will soon be closed to cut costs.
Last month, the infamous company announced it would be cutting 2,600 jobs — 12% of its workforce — in order to lower costs. Monsanto also announced a loss of 19 cents per share in the most recent quarter. Profits are expected to remain low throughout the year.
The Associated Press reported that Monsanto lost $156 million in the final quarter of last year alone, and this year is expected to be even worse.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki has submitted a fresh dossier of evidence on Israeli war crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Following a Friday meeting with ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in The Hague, Maliki told reporters that the new dossier, the third he has submitted this year, contains evidence of “extrajudicial killing, home demolition, [and] collective punishment” by the Israeli forces.
The submission of the dossier comes at a time when tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories have dramatically escalated in recent weeks.
Maliki added that “examples of cases that have really occurred in the last 40 days of Israeli aggression against innocent Palestinians around occupied territory” were also included in the document.
Israel declares parts of al-Khalil as military zone
On Friday, the Israeli military issued an order to turn several neighborhoods in central al-Khalil (Hebron) into a closed military zone. The Israeli regime has informed Palestinians that they will be given special permits that will allow them to enter and exit their homes.
The order was issued following a series of violent clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli forces in several towns across the occupied West Bank after the Friday prayers.
Palestinian protesters run for cover from teargas fired by Israeli forces during clashes at the entrance of the Palestinian town of al-Bireh on the outskirts of Ramallah in the West Bank on October 30, 2015. (AFP photo)
At least 72 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis since the beginning of October. Some 7,200 others have been injured either in direct confrontation with the Israelis or during protests.
The fresh wave of tensions in the occupied territories was triggered by the Israeli regime’s imposition of restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque in August. Palestinians say the Tel Aviv regime seeks to change the status quo of al-Aqsa.
Russia’s anti-terrorist campaign began with a bang on September 30th. ISIS and al-Nusra positions were hammered by Russian fighters in northeast and northwestern Syria, respectively.
Within days, reports came in confirming many rebel terrorists had fled Syria into Iraq, and many more had abandoned the field altogether by escaping south into Jordan. Having secured a buffer zone around Latakia, Su-30 and Su-34 bombing runs are still ongoing at a brisk pace in northern Syria. The Kurdish YPG is eager to work with Russian forces and provide coordinates of ISIS strongholds. Targets in Raqqa have already been hit by Russian jets. Further, elite Iranian IRGC troops have publicly committed to help with ground units, most likely with Shiite militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanese Hezbollah. The US has scaled back operations to avoid any confrontations, but is still operating clandestinely in Syria, with commando raids and arms airdrops.
One month in from the start of Russian intervention, world leaders are still recovering from the aftershock. The Russian Federation has willingly stepped in as the guarantor of security in Syria. Rumors are already floating over future Russian airstrikes in Iraq, and how soon allied ground forces can retake key nodes from ISIS control. What is clear is this: Russia has special interests in Syria and the Middle East which it simply cannot ignore, look away from, or turn its back on. Specifically, Russia worries about the spread of ISIS into the Caucasus region and Central Asian states. This is Russia’s “soft underbelly” that Western geo-analysts had often discussed during the Cold War.
The Russian provinces of Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia suffer from a Caucasian emirate loyal to ISIS and are responsible for numerous terror bombings, high poverty, and Islamist firebrand mullahs who radicalize vulnerable youths, and the disaffected and deranged. Abroad, ISIS has set up camps in northern Afghanistan and threatens to infiltrate Tajikistan, where Islamists and former military have already begun attacks and where Russian troops offer key support. In Ankara, Turkey, President Erdogan, in his unholy alliance with the Gulf monarchies, now has brought death back to his own country, with the Oct. 10th bomb blasts tied to ISIS killing over 100 innocents.
In the US, Obama has continued to parrot his “no combat troops in Syria” line, even as Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter publicly refuses to rule out the use of troops. Clearly, this disconnect reveals the growing polarization between US policy elites. Even the buffoonish Republican candidate Donald Trump approves of Russia’s intervention and Obama’s new hands-off policy in Syria, while the rest of the war-hawk Republicans and Hillary Clinton are eager to denounce Russia and escalate the conflict. Violence and conflict is all they know of politics, just as they were willing to engage in the atrocious interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, three countries still embroiled in civil war and anarchy.
Expect Russia and Putin to gain more respect and international clout as Federation airstrikes continue to pound Islamist terrorists to dust in Syria. If NATO ever finally accepts the mendacities and duplicity of its Gulf monarchy allies, it can begin to further disentangle itself from the region, which the world would greet with welcome relief. Syria has a violent and fractious history as a nation, and Russia certainly has built up intelligence assets from the Soviet-era alliance with Damascus. The US and the West must be satisfied as junior partners in any future coalition, as it is Moscow’s combination of a shared culture of fighting Islamism, deep intelligence work, and warrior ethos that is winning in Syria, not NATO’s half-hearted coalition with Gulf nations, or its self-proclaimed military and economic supremacy.
By acting on invitation from al-Assad’s government, Russia has intervened (however cynically it may be viewed in the West) within the framework of international law. By fighting terror at its root source, the Russian government has usurped the role of providing security in the Mideast from the US. This is a direct challenge to US imperium, of assuming the mantle of global security, so we shouldn’t expect Washington to go quietly anytime soon.
The US-Turkish-Saudi-Gulf alliance, by funneling arms to the Syrian “moderate resistance” and escalating what is now a four-year long civil war, has proven it is willing to team up with barbaric jihadists in order to achieve its imperial ambitions, further the Gulf States’ Sunni oil/gas pipeline political agenda, take out Assad, and stymie Iranian and Russian power in the region. As to whom the rogue states are, the ones contravening international agreements and supplying terrorists with weapons, it is plain for the world to see.
William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and environmental issues. You can reach him at [email protected].
Where is the rationale? How can it be possible that various idealists some students; some mid-career and others just retired, convince themselves that they will find peace, happiness and fulfilment in one of the most dangerous places anywhere in the world certainly for a Jew to live?
How is it possible that such otherwise sensible individuals believe that by giving up good jobs, homes, friends and security for a fantasy script written by political propagandists working for a foreign government ministry that they will find happiness when, in reality, what they will find is a society ridden with guilt, and increasingly suffering from PTSD in the face of killings, stabbings, shootings and mayhem as its occupying military force tries to keep the lid on a persecuted, occupied indigenous people?
To swallow the myth in the face of incontrovertible fact can only be explained by understanding the power of the sect, or tribe. Logic and reason have no place within faith. Nor should they. More than half the population of the world subscribes to one faith or another. But often religious zeal causes war and a propensity to isolate, persecute or even kill those who are seen as non believers. Only the faithful few are the chosen ones of God. But which God?
This we see all too vividly today as extremists kill innocents in the name of their chosen faith: in Damascus, Hebron, Aleppo, Jerusalem and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Yet otherwise sensible, sane individuals still rush to sell their homes in Europe and America in order to buy an overpriced, seafront apartment in a war zone!They not only believe, against all logic and reason, that they will have a happy and safe future but that there will be peace and goodwill to all men, and that the land will flow with milk and honey instead of, as in reality, blood and body parts. That illustrates perfectly the pervasive, persuasive power of political propaganda.
Meanwhile on the Tel Aviv waterfront, they still sit and drink a latte, or cola, while staring out over the blue Mediterranean; convincing themselves that living in a 21st century ghetto makes good sense provided they can still transfer their shekels into US dollars and that, in extremis, they can still use their open ticket on a Delta, United or BA flight out.
What a tranquil way to live compared to that in Brooklyn or Hampstead Garden Suburb.
The U.S. is invading Syria (first with bombers, and now even with its first troops) to overthrow Syria’s elected President, whom even Western-allied polling shows still to be supported by a majority of Syrians. When America’s ally the Qatari regime, which funds al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria), hired a polling firm in 2012 to survey Syrians, the finding was that 55% of Syrians wanted Assad to remain as President. Then, as I reported on 18 September 2015, “Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS,” and those recent polls were from a British firm that has ties to Gallup.
Russia, in contrast to America, hasn’t invaded Syria at all, but was instead urged to assist the elected government in its defensive war against the invading islamic jihadists and American bombers; and Russia is now providing the requested assistance.
What right does the U.S. have to invade Syria, and to assist Sunni forces to overthrow the Shiite President of Syria, whom polls show to be still supported even by a majority of Syria’s Sunnis? None that I can see. Consequently, shouldn’t the Syrian Government be seeking compensation from the United States? When will the request come? How will the request come? The damages from U.S. bombing of Syria’s infrastructure are already enormous.
The U.S. asserts that it is supporting ‘democracy’ but is actually allied here with two dictatorial totalitarian theocratic-royal regimes, trying to overthrow the Assad government, which is neither totalitarian nor theocratic, nor even royal, though the current leader (Bashar al-Assad) wouldn’t have come to power if his father’s party hadn’t chosen him to become their leader. That’s not quite the same thing as in Saudi Arabia and in Qatar, which are absolute monarchies and entirely dependent upon the clerics for their right to rule. But the U.S. allies with them, against Assad.
The U.S. is, of course, trying to help the Sunni royal families, the Sauds of Saudi Arabia, and the Thanis of Qatar, impose a Sunni government also on Syrians, so that Syria can then become a pipeline-route for Qatari (or Thani) gas and Saudi (specifically King Salman’s) oil, to flow into the EU, which the United States wants because the U.S. Government is trying to force Russia’s (extremely popular) President Vladimir Putin out of office, and is trying to choke the Russian economy in order to make that happen — and strangulating Russia’s oil-and-gas sales to Europe is an important part of that strategy.
The U.S. aim is a failed Syrian state, so Russia will lose an ally. Thus, on October 13th, Brandon Turbeville headlined, “As Russia Bombs ISIS, US Bombs Syrian Civilian Power Stations.” The U.S. is trying to destroy Syria; Russia wants to salvage Syria. So: while Russia bombs ISIS and other jihadists, the U.S. bombs Syria’s infrastructure. A nation without the infrastructure to hold it together is a failed state — America’s goal.
By what right does the U.S. do any of this? Why isn’t the International Criminal Court publicly (very publicly) seeking jurisdiction to investigate that?
Will one of the U.S. news editors (there are over a hundred of them) who receive each of my news reports and commentaries submitted for publication but who have never published any of them, please now publicly address this question in their news-reporting? I here ask each of them: if you think that the U.S. possesses the right to do this, then will you please publicly explain why?
Or, if you won’t, then will you please publish this article that poses this question, so that your readers or audience may consider the question?
This article is being sent to virtually the entire U.S. news-media. Let’s see if any of them publish it — or else explain why they support the U.S. invasion of Syria.
President Obama is sending a small number of Special Operations troops to northern Syria, marking the first full-time deployment of U.S. forces to the chaotic country.
The mission marks a major shift for Obama, whose determination to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been balanced by an abiding worry that U.S. troops not be pulled too deeply into the intractable Syrian conflict.
The latest deployment will involve fewer than 50 Special Operations advisers, who will work with resistance forces battling the Islamic State in northern Syria but will not engage in direct combat, Obama administration officials said.
Admission of Special Forces in Syria is Just the Beginning
click on the image to enlarge
While the US claims this move is to “defeat the Islamic State (ISIS),” it is instead clearly a move to establish long-sought “buffer zones” or “safe zones” in Syria where the Syrian government can no longer operate. US airpower will also undoubtedly be used to cover these special forces, creating a defacto no-fly-zone wherever they operate.
The map accompanying the Washington Post article clearly shows ISIS territory straddling the last remaining supply corridor being used to supply the terror group as well as others including Al Qaeda’s al Nusra Front from NATO-member Turkey’s territory. US special forces will likely begin operating in these areas, and zones carved out as US operations expand.
The eventual outcome, if these operations are successful, will be the division and destruction of Syria as a nation-state. This is more than mere speculation – this is a conclusion drawn by signed and dated policy papers produced by the Brookings Institution, who has called for such zones since as early as 2012, but under different contrived pretexts.
In the March 2012 Brookings Institution”Middle East Memo #21″ “Assessing Options for Regime Change” it is stated specifically (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 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.
Unfortunately for US policymakers, it is no longer only Syria that US special forces and accompanying airpower must worry about. Russia, by invitation of Damascus, is now operating militarily across Syria, including along Turkey’s border where the US has long sought to establish its “safe zones.”
The US has openly committed to the invasion and occupation of Syrian territory. It does so with the intent of carving Syria up into a series of dysfunctional, weak zones to literally “deconstruct” Syria as a functioning nation-state. It is doing this unable to cite any credible threat Syria poses to US national security and without any semblance of a mandate granted by the United Nations. It also does so with the prospect of triggering direct war with nuclear-armed Russia in a region Russia is operating legally.
A Desperate Move to Save a Bankrupt Foreign Policy Agenda
America’s latest actions are a desperate move sought by an increasingly hysterical political and corporate-financier establishment in Washington and on Wall Street. Recent hearings conducted by the US Senate Committee on Armed Services have struggled to produce a credible response to America’s unraveling criminal conspiracy aimed at Syria, particularly in the wake of Russia’s recent intervention. The committee and witnesses brought before it, have struggled to formulate a response – however – no-fly-zones and US troops on the ground have been discussed at length.
It is a poorly calculated bluff. The presence of US special forces and US airpower operating illegally in and above Syria, meant to deny Syria access to its own territory will take time to implement. The official number of US special forces being sent into Syria is said to not exceed 50. Syria and its allies could insert an equal or larger number of forces into these same areas to essentially create a “safe zone” from “safe zones.” Bringing America’s illegal actions before the UN would also be a sound measure ahead of potential confrontations with US forces operating uninvited in Syria.
The premise that ISIS must be fought and defeated by striking them in Iraq and Syria is betrayed by America’s own admission that the organization has already spread far beyond the borders of either nation. ISIS is clearly not supporting itself on the limited resources found within either country. Were the US truly interested in stopping ISIS, it would strike at its sponsors in Ankara and Riyadh. Of course, it was clear, well over a year ago, that the appearance of ISIS would be used intentionally to accomplish US geopolitical objectives in both Syria and Iraq, serving as a pretext for wider, long-sought after direct Western military intervention.
The myth that dividing and destroying Syria while deposing its sitting government will somehow alleviate the violence in Syria and reduce the ongoing migrant crisis Europe faces, is betrayed by the fact that a similar premise used to sell intervention in Libya has only led to greater chaos in North Africa, and the creation of the migrant crisis in the first place.
If the world, including Europe, seeks to prevent the spread of ISIS and the expansion of an already growing migrant crisis, stopping the United States and its partners before they create another “Libya” in the Levant must become top priority. And while it is unlikely that Europe will show any resolve in doing so, it would be hoped that Syria and its allies realize the consequences of failing now, at this juncture, and to whom’s borders the chaos will attempt to cross over into next.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
The Netanyahu government has conveniently and consistently separated the occupation of the West Bank from the repeated eruption of violence, insisting that the Palestinians’ unrest is a result of incitement by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, when in fact he has been attempting to reduce the tension.
Not once has any Israeli official suggested that nearly 50 years of occupation might have brought the Palestinians to a boiling point. Any incident could have ignited a new violent flare-up, and the conflict over the Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif provided the spark that led to the current fire, regardless of whose side was at fault.
The most troubling issue is that successive Israeli governments remained blind and refused to connect much of the Palestinian violence to the occupation; what is worst is that the Israeli public has largely bought into the fallacy of this argument.
They are persuaded by the pervasive and misleading official narrative that even if Israel were to evacuate the West Bank, the Palestinians will not end their violent resistance to Israel’s very existence.
They insist that the Palestinians are determined to take over all of Mandatory Palestine rather than establishing a Palestinian state limited to the West Bank and Gaza, to live side-by-side Israel in peace.
Ironically, whereas this charge against the Palestinians is deeply ingrained among right-wing Israelis, they cheer the fact that many members of the Israeli government categorically reject the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of the Jews’ ‘biblical homeland.’
To make the case against the withdrawal from the West Bank, Israeli officials point to Israel’s evacuation of Gaza in 2005, its subsequent takeover by Hamas, and the violence emanating from it.
Netanyahu and his ultra-conservative cohorts argue that Israel must learn from this experience and thus should not withdraw from the West Bank, which is far closer than Gaza to Israel’s urban centers.
They further argue that should Israel evacuate the West Bank, Hamas will certainly take over and turn it into another staging ground from which to launch rocket attacks, cut Israel in half, and inflict incalculable losses in lives and property.
Ironically, this suggests that Palestinian radicalism can be contained under occupation when in fact the occupation itself is the prime cause behind the intensified Palestinian extremism.
Brigadier General Guy Goldstein, Deputy Director of Government Activities in the Territories no less, stated only yesterday: “It’s a rebellion of…terror that comes from pain and frustration.” But then leave it to the hypocrites in Netanyahu’s government to justify continuing the occupation, presumably to stem the rise of violent extremism.
Indeed, if Israel were to precipitately and unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank, as it did from Gaza, a similar result could theoretically reoccur. As such, the withdrawal from Gaza offers a different kind of lesson from which Israel must learn.
Unlike the conditions that existed in Gaza, the PA has begun in earnest to build the foundations of a state with schools, clinics, a network of roads, and private and government institutions. They were even praised by Israel’s top security officials for their full cooperation with Israel on all security matters, even in times of increased tension between the two sides, as is currently the case.
What is most worrisome, however, is that neither Netanyahu nor any of his coalition partners know where Israel will be if the occupation continues for another five to ten years, how many more Palestinian uprisings will occur, and what will be the death toll and destruction both sides sustain?
I believe that the Israelis who have been traumatized by the violent events of the past few weeks should ask themselves a simple question:
If a handful of Palestinians have managed to cause such havoc with the entire Israeli security apparatus in place and thousands of Israeli troops stationed throughout the West Bank, by what logic can any honest person say that the occupation bolsters Israel’s national security?
If anything, the occupation has been and will continue to be the very evil that Israel needs to rid itself from, and they must do so for their own sake rather than the Palestinians’, as the occupation poses the greatest threat to Israel’s future well-being.
To remove this perpetual threat, Israelis must examine this disastrous state of affairs and demand the withdrawal from the West Bank under terms and conditions consistent with Israel’s requirements to ensure the safety of its citizens.
The Gaza experience in a way was positive and instructive in that it has shown the mistakes that the late Prime Minister Sharon made, and how to avoid similar mistakes in any future disengagement from territories in the West Bank.
The Palestinians, with the support of the Arab states and the international community, will never give up their aspiration to establish a state of their own.
Israel should sooner than later accept this fact, particularly because of its unchallenged military prowess and that it is in a perfect position to withdraw from the West Bank, with some land swaps, without risking any aspect of its legitimate national security concerns.
The Israeli withdrawal should be based on a number of agreed-upon phases to be implemented over a period of ten years or more, and entail well-defined reciprocal measures by both sides to be executed on a schedule with monitoring mechanisms to ensure full compliance.
In fact, a withdrawal based on preconceived security plans and collaborative economic developments will prompt the Palestinians to develop vested interests and give them the incentive to preserve it and in return, it would dramatically enhance rather than undermine Israel’s security.
More importantly, the Palestinians know only too well that should they threaten Israel by violating such an agreement, Israel is and will remain in a position to reoccupy the land almost at will, except this time Israel will have a solid moral and tangible ground to stand on that potentially engenders the support of the international community.
Is this a risk worth taking by any Israeli government? I believe the answer is clear. The occupation is not sustainable; it is costly both in blood and treasure, Israel’s national security will remain at risk, and the country will become ever more internationally isolated while risking its very identity as a Jewish state.
I am not naïve enough to suggest that the current Netanyahu government will ever be willing to end the occupation. It is now up to the Israelis to seek new leaders who will, because it is they who will pay the ultimate price that the evil of occupation will exact.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.
The battle for east Aleppo has recently intensified between the pro-government forces and ISIS, as both forces have exchanged large-scale offensives in this tug-of-war fight for control of the areas in Syria’s northern countryside.
On Thursday, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the National Defense Forces (NDF) and Kataebat Al-Ba’ath advanced on the terrorists’ positions at the mounds of Sheikh Ahmad. According to reports, the Syrian forces were able to advance inside the southern neighborhoods of Sheikh Ahmad. Nonetheless, they still have a long way to go before being able to impose full control over this town near the Kuweries Military Airport.
Pro-Syrian sources argue that the next 48 hours in this sector will be critical for both the Syrian Armed Forces and ISIS, as the former attempts to lift the two year long siege on the Kuweries Military Airport. In turn, we expect a continuation of the heavy fighting in the settlements’ building blocks. It will be likely resulted in impossibility of the both sides to gain a momentum to get a significant success at the frontline in a short time.
The SAA’s 66th Brigade of the 11th Tank Division has been taking part in fierce clashes against the ISIS militants for control of the Khanasser-Ithriya Highway. It leads to the Syrian Government controlled areas of the Aleppo province. On account of this battle, the pro-government forces have been forced to abandon their southern Aleppo offensive in order to reopen this strategic supply route. On Thursday, the Syrian Arab Army’s 66th Brigade received a much needed boost when a contingent from Hezbollah arrived from the town of Khanasser to purge militants from this area.
Hezbollah fighters took control of the integral hilltop at Tal Ithriya after a series of intense firefights. This has allowed the SAA to concentrate some of their units to the Sheikh Hilal front, where they confronted another ISIS assault on this town located along the Raqqa-Salamiyah highway. In turn, ISIS terrorists pushed north towards the town of Sheikh Hilal. ISIS attacks were fixed near the town of Al-Sa’an. Northeast of al Safira, ISIS attempted to infiltrate into the town of Al-Aziziyah for the second time in 72 hours. The SAA servicemen repelled this attack in a fierce firefight.
Despite the pro-government forces’ efforts, the Khanasser-Ithriyah highway is still closed due to the ISIS presence. If it still remains closed, the Syrian Government will have to rely on airdrops in order to resupply their forces in Aleppo.
According to Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad, the Iraqi authorities have liberated almost all oilfields captured by ISIS in the country.
The army and security forces managed to drive ISIS out of the Saladin province. Thus, terrorist groups are controlling only a small amount of developed oilfields in the Nineveh province. He added ISIS was unable to develop oilfields in the Nineveh province as it required technical experience. ISIS has been reliant on funds raised from selling crude originating in Iraq and Syria. Last year, they captured the country’s largest oil refinery in Baiji. The Iraqi military reportedly retook the facility earlier in October.
Longstanding Israeli policy calls for inflicting maximum pain and suffering on the entire Palestinian population – collective punishment, making conditions unbearable, a shocking indictment of a vicious Arab-hating state, waging war against defenseless people.
Since October 1, deaths and injuries increased daily. According to the PA Health Ministry, the toll through Thursday includes:
68 Palestinians murdered in cold blood, including 13 children;
921 injured from live fire, another 855 from rubber or plastic coated steel bullets at times lethal;
208 suffering fractures and other injuries from assaults and beatings;
14 burned from tear gas and concussion grenades; and
well over 5,000 harmed by toxic tear gas inhalation.
On Thursday, Israeli forces stormed Palestine’s Al-Makassed Hospital for the third time this week – this time using tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets inside the premises, turning a medical facility into a war zone.
Dozens of patients and medical staff were injured. Witnesses said soldiers fired “indiscriminately” inside the hospital compound. Director Rafis al-Hussieni said undercover Israeli forces rampaged throughout the facility – insulting patients and staff before demanding medical records.
He refused, saying “(i)t is not our job to give any information about anyone who comes to hospital or to take any personal information. Our job is only to help them and provide them with medical treatment.”
Many times Palestinians are treated for injuries without collecting information on them or creating files.
Al-Husseini expressed outrage, adding “(t)he hospital has become desecrated by Israeli troops. Israeli violations against the Palestinian hospital are against the law, and…we cannot find anyone to protect the hospital, the patients, and the staff.”
On Friday, an Israeli jeep struck a Palestinian youth. Soldiers were prevented from reaching him. Journalists attempting to film areas violence were assaulted. Israel wants its high crimes concealed.
It continues blaming Palestinians unjustly. More draconian measures are being imposed, certain to increase violence, not curb it, why action is being taken.
Palestinian males aged 15 – 25 are being targeted, their movements more greatly restricted, forced to endure more intrusive security checks – measures designed to intimidate and terrorize, escalate resistance so Israeli forces can strike back harder.
Israel claims it’s instituting tougher measures because of many stabbing attacks. Since October 1, eight Israelis died, only two from stabbings. Sweeping accusations of knife wielding Palestinians are willful Big Lies, made to justify daily killings and other abuses.
More ruthless draconian measures imposed on Palestinians is part of longstanding Israeli apartheid policies, separating Jews from Arabs, forced segregation, violently enforced, including with shoot-to-kill orders.
Israeli media reported Netanyahu may establish a special court for security issues, perhaps a military one – handling arbitrary revocations of citizenship, illegal administrative detentions, punitive home demolitions, and anything Israeli officials call “terrorism.”
His scheme, if implemented, is about persecuting Palestinians more viciously than already – longstanding police state practice – brutalizing people for political reasons, fabricating charges, wrongfully imprisoning targeted individuals.
On Friday, Maan News reported Israel’s Jerusalem District Court indicted 13-year-old Palestinian Ahmad Manasra with attempted murder for an alleged stabbing incident.
He was seriously injured at the scene of the alleged crime, kicked and beaten, run over by a car, no charges filed against his assailants.
A video showing him lying injured and bloody on the ground went viral online. An Israeli is heard shouting: “Die, son of a whore! Die!” Another Israeli is heard telling a soldier to shoot Ahmad.
It’s unclear what, if anything, he did. At a hearing, lawyers representing him, Tareq Barghout and Lea Tsemel, said he had a knife but stabbed no one. When arrested, he told investigators he “didn’t stab anyone because I don’t like blood.”
While hospitalized, Barghout said he’s been treated badly. Israeli security guarding him threatened to kill him. They constantly yell at him.
Treatment of Palestinians is notoriously harsh, guilt by accusation assured. Military courts afford no justice. Ahmad could be imprisoned for years, once tried and convicted when he turns 14 in January.
He’ll be held at a closed facility until prosecuted. The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines childhood as anyone under age 18.
So do UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty. Israel willfully breaches all international laws, treating children like adults, brutally and inhumanely, including imprisoning them unjustly.
Israeli initiated violence continues raging throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Soldiers stormed the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem.
Residents were threatened over a loud speaker, one soldier yelling in Arabic: “We will gas you all until you die.”
Customer outrage got Walmart to pull its Israeli soldier kids costume and Sheik Fagin Nose, being sold for Halloween.
Author Max Blumenthal tweeted “Walmart is promoting occupation and the killing of innocent children this Halloween” – along with a photo of a Palestinian child receiving emergency medical care.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (AAADC) blasted Walmart, calling the costumes “offensive and racist,” saying “(s)uch…symbol(s) of fear and violence…should not be used for entertainment purposes.”
Anything for a buck in America – no matter how outrageous.
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.”
During the last days a large attack on the Syrian government supply line to Aleppo city was carried out by Jabhat al-Nusra (aka al-Qaeda in Syria) and the Islamic State (ISIS) seemingly in coordination with the U.S. military.
During September the U.S. anti-IS coalition carried out an average of 4.2 airstrikes on IS in predominately east Syria. This after an average of 6.8 per day in August. The rate in October was about the same as in September until Thursday October 22. Then, according to the U.S. Military Times, the strike rate decreased markedly:
~4 strikes per day up to Oct 20
4 – Oct 20 Tuesday
8 – Oct 21 Wednesday
1 – Oct 22 Thursday
0 – Oct 23 Friday
0 – Oct 24 Saturday
0 – Oct 26 Sunday
1 – Oct 27 Monday
0 – Oct 28 Tuesday
0 – Oct 29 Wednesday
The Islamic State used the lull in airstrikes in east Syria to move hundreds of fighters and heavy equipment towards the supply line that connects Damascus with the government held areas (green) of Aleppo.
After two days of no U.S. airstrikes in east Syria the Islamic State (purple) attacked the government supply corridor from the east while at the same time and at the same main point Jabhat al-Nusra (orange) attacked the supply corridor from the west. The attacks started with suicide car bombs against Syrian army checkpoints which suddenly had to defend themselves to the front and the rear.
For the first time in three months, the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) main supply route along the Khanasser Highway was closed due to an obstruction by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS); this chaotic situation forced the pro-government forces to call on hundreds of reinforcements from the Aleppo Governorate to help push back the encroaching terrorists.Initially, the Syrian Armed Forces were successful in repelling both ISIS and the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra” after they attacked from different axes in the Hama Governorate; however, ISIS regrouped near the Al-Raqqa Governorate border in order to launch another massive assault on the Khanasser Highway.
ISIS’ second assault on the Syrian Armed Forces’ defensive positions proved successful, as they cutoff the Khanasser Highway and pushed further west towards the strategic city of Ithriyah in east Hama.
The Islamic State fighters killed about a dozen government troops and captured several armed vehicles (gruesome photos here).
The Syrian army send reinforcements from the Palestinian resistance militia Liwaa Al-Quds to help clear the road. This was only somewhat successful as bad weather and a sandstrom on the 25th prevented air support.
The operations room in Damascus was not too unhappy with the situation even though the road was still cut. The thought was that having IS and Nusra fighters concentrated in an otherwise wide open rural area would help to eliminate them. On the 26th and 27the Russian and Syrian air forces flew some 90 attacks within 24 hours against the enemy held parts of the road.
These attacks cleared the IS held parts of the road but the Islamic State concentrated more forces on another part of the road further north and on October 27 it suicide-bombed another government checkpoint and again blocked the road. Additional support from Hizbullah arrived during the next days and the road is now mostly cleared though still endangered.
The closed supply route led to hardship for the nearly two million people in the government held parts of Aleppo as prices for produce and gasoline exploded.
The operations room in Damascus where Syria, Iran, Russia and Hizbullah coordinate the intelligence and operations in Syria suspects that the attack on the supply corridor was coordinated at a higher level than just between Nusra and the Islamic State.
The total cessation of U.S. air attacks on east Syria allowed the Islamic State to move hundreds of fighters and heavy equipment like tanks and cannons from its stronghold in Raqqa city to the west of Syria. At the same time Jabhat al-Nusra brought hundreds of fighters from other fronts south-eastward for its part of the attack. It is difficult to believe that these were just unrelated coincidences.
The NATO war machine is now engaged in its biggest military exercises since the end of the Cold War. Exercise Trident Juncture began on September 28 and continues through to November 6 with exercises taking place in all NATO countries but with major field operations taking place in Portugal, Spain and Italy. The exercises, involving 35,000 personnel, over 200 aircraft and 50 warships is taking place as the confrontation between the United States of American and its dependencies in the NATO war alliance on the one hand and Russia and its allies on the other continues to develop in a very alarming way on two fronts, Syria and Ukraine.
The NATO media centre states that the exercise is based on a “fictitious training scenario” termed SOROTAN, developed by the Joint Warfare Centre in Norway and is commanded by German Army Major General Reinhard Wolski, commander of the Centre. They state that the objective is to “assess NATO’s ability to meet projected operational challenges through 2020. What these “projected operational challenges” are, is not stated but we can read the text and subtext of the battle scenario they are using and come to a definite conclusion. That scenario consists of “rising political instability, ethnic tension, and persisting socio-economic challenges in a certain country that are climaxed by a blatant invasion of one state’s territory by another and results in a UN mandated NATO-led response…in a region far from NATO’s home territory” a region they call Cerasia.
The fact that OTAN in French and backwards in English means NATO and that SOR becomes ROS, close to RUS, strongly indicates, along with the exercise scenario, that this exercise is aimed at Russia and the real setting is meant to be Ukraine.
A few weeks ago an American general stated that NATO can expect Russian “hybrid warfare” operations to take place in the Baltic, and that this was “inevitable.” Since Russia has no motive or interest to conduct such actions this means that we can expect false flag operations by NATO in the Baltic, including violent street demonstrations, destabilization, propaganda and terrorism all of which will be presented as operations conducted by Russia. We can expect similar actions in eastern Ukraine, which best fits the scenario being used in Trident Juncture.
Since these exercises are not defensive in nature but openly aggressive, as were a series of other NATO exercises conducted in Europe all spring and summer of this year, these exercises must be condemned by all the peoples of the world.
The UN Charter, Chapter VI, Article 33 states that,
“The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.”
Article 39 states that,
“The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
There can be no other conclusion but that Trident Juncture is a preparation for aggressive war and is therefore a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace and constitutes an act of aggression. Therefore, the non-NATO members of the Security Council have every right to bring this to the attention of the Security Council and the people of the world and demand that these war preparations be stopped.
The exercises are even a breach of the NATO treaty, Article I of which states that,
“The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”
Article 3 states that NATO can only act when its member states suffer an armed attack. But in the Trident Juncture scenario there is no armed attack on a NATO country and therefore under the NATO Treaty NATO cannot act.
Further, Article 7 States that,
“This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow said in relation to Trident Juncture that NATO is concerned about “Russia’s military build-up” from Kaliningrad through the Black Sea, Crimea, to Syria and Turkey.” In other words the NATO overlords are concerned that their aggressive moves in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, all directed ultimately at Russia, are being met with resistance and this the western military mafia cannot tolerate.
Just a few days after the Trident Juncture exercise began Russian planes began hitting ISIL targets in Syria. On October 7th the NATO mafia were completely surprised by the cruise missile strike launched from the Caspian Sea. A few days later the US aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt, which was supporting the claimed US air strikes on ISIL targets in Syria, left the Persian Gulf, claiming on its website that is mission was over and was a success. A poor cover story but for the first time in a long time, the movement of the Roosevelt out of range of Russian cruise missiles meant there was no American carrier task force stationed in the Gulf. No doubt the Joint Warfare Centre did not take this new scenario into account when planning this massive exercise and we can only hope it upset their plans.
Bur what does all this mean for the rest of us? It means escalating anxiety, fear, and insecurity and we seem helpless to do anything about it. But there is a ray of hope and it is coming from Italy. Finally, the moribund anti-war movement seems to be coming to life, and in a significant way.
On Saturday October 24th an anti-NATO demonstration was held in Naples organized by the “NO TO NATO” Movement in Italy comprised of dozens of Italian citizens, citizen groups, musicians, writers, artists, civil society groups, the Communist Party, and other communist formations, various anti-fascist committees, women’s organizations and anti-imperialist formations and intellectuals. Another anti-NATO demonstration follows on Monday October 26 in Rome.
I quote here the letter of Andros Kyprianou of the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) in Cyprus, to the No To NATO Committee, as I could not say it better,
“Dear friends,
I salute today’s initiative undertaken by the “No Guerra,” No NATO” Committee which is taking place at the same time as the NATO exercise “Trident Juncture” is underway. The holding of this huge exercise in essence is a provocative show of strength and an attempt to intimidate the Russian Federation and the rest of the world.
This represents another step towards the militarization of Europe. NATO is the driving force that is pushing for the continuous militarization of the world and international relations. Indeed, at the same time as the peoples in Europe are suffering from the economic crisis and the implementation of austerity policies, NATO is demanding from its members that they increase their military expenditure and armaments.
It is obvious that NATO’s aggressiveness has intensified dramatically, with incalculable dangers for peace and security, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. It is for this reason that this initiative in Rome is particularly important. ….. It is our firm belief that the peace-loving, anti-war movements must mobilize European societies so that a wall of resistance is built to NATO aggression and that this military alliance will eventually be dissolved once and for all.”
I wish to add my voice to his call for the support of the No To NATO Movement by the citizens of every NATO country, not just in Europe, but in Canada, the United States, and by the citizens of every country, everywhere, who will be the victims of any world war that results from NATO’s continued aggression against the peoples of the world.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Political repression and violence are allegedly incompatible with Western liberal democratic values. Respect for human rights, freedom of expression, and protection of the rights of minorities are all purportedly the hallmarks of “free societies,” the goals toward which all nations should be striving. And yet, such standards of freedom and democracy are only selectively applied, and only when beneficial to the Western (US-UK-EU-NATO) agenda.
Western media and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are quick to highlight abuses, both real and imagined, in countries where it is politically useful to do so, such as in North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and China. However, when it comes to the US-EU project in Ukraine, magically the liberal democratic values and human rights are no longer of central importance. Indeed, were one to read the Western media coverage of Ukraine, not only is political repression and violence not concerning, it’s downright funny.
The Real Story
An article published in the exalted liberal pages of Britain’s The Guardian ran with the headline The force awakens (in Ukraine): Darth Vader statue replaces Lenin monument (23 October 2015). The story highlighted the transformation of a statue of Lenin in the city of Odessa, into the Star Wars villain Darth Vader by Ukrainian artist Alexander Milov. The lighthearted tone of the piece, with tongue-in-cheek references to “the Force” (a Star Wars plot point) of the WiFi being radiated from the statue’s head belies the seriousness of the issue – the intimidation and violent repression of political forces in the ‘New Ukraine’ – which the author conveniently downplays.
The story makes only passing mention of the “decommunization laws” – conspicuously referenced in parentheses with a hyperlink, as if they were an afterthought – under which this statue has now legally been defaced and destroyed. In fact, the “controversial decommunization laws” were not merely an attempt to erase the symbols of Soviet history, but part of a broader process of political repression that has included violence, kidnappings, and death. In fact, the appropriation of the Lenin statue is merely an outgrowth of the repeated attacks upon the Communist Party and its grassroots organizers all throughout Ukraine, as the pro-fascist government and police systematically attacked, and ultimately dissolved the entire Party which had been traditionally one of the most popular in the country.
In a grossly dishonest bit of writing, the author of the article noted that, “Darth Lenin is in a factory in the Black Sea port city, which has been the location of clashes between separatist and pro-Ukraine forces, and recently saw pro-western former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili installed as governor of the region.” Note the twin distortions embedded in the excerpt.
First, describing the infamous May 2, 2014 massacre of leftist activists at the Trade Unions House in Odessa (which left at least 43 dead and remains the single most heinous act of repression since the war began) as “clashes,” is yet another attempt towhitewash the pogrom. Such language seeks to both obscure the fact that the fascists presented to western audiences as “nationalists” and “patriots” were little more than Nazi thugs, and to present the illusion of equivalence between the two sides. This was no clash, it was a one-sided slaughter. But by continuing to present the incident as “clashes,” The Guardian merely upholds the political and editorial line of the Western political establishment which desperately tries to justify its continued support for the oligarch-fascist government in Kiev.
Secondly, the author completely distorts the undemocratic, dare I say fascist, nature of the appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili as governor of Odessa. One sees here Saakashvili described as “pro-western” because, as The Guardian understands perfectly well, in the context of Ukraine and Russia, the term “pro-western” is supposed to be synonymous with goodness and justice, while “pro-Russian” is evil and sin; Russophobia is still deeply embedded in the collective psyche of Westerners.
Of course, the author fails to mention that Saakashvili is a fugitive from justice, having fled Georgia rather than face charges ofcorruption and human rights violations stemming from his brutal crackdown on political protesters while he was president. Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of the fact that Saakashvili, close friend and ally of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Petraeus, John McCain and the entire neocon establishment, is directly responsible for egregious war crimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, namely unprovoked aggression which sparked the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.
Indeed, The Guardian itself reported back in 2009 on the EU-commissioned report into that war:
An investigation into last year’s Russia-Georgia war delivered a damning indictment of President Mikheil Saakashvili today, accusing Tbilisi of launching an indiscriminate artillery barrage on the city of Tskhinvali that started the war… the conclusions will discomfit the western-backed Georgian leader, Saakashvili, who was found to have started the war with the attack on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, on the night of 7 August last year, through a “penchant for acting in the heat of the moment”…The war started “with a massive Georgian artillery attack”, the report said, citing an order from Saakashvili that the offensive was aimed at halting Russian military units moving into South Ossetia…Flatly dismissing Saakashvili’s version, the report said: “There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation … Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive could not be substantiated … It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack.”
So, it should not be a secret to anyone, least of all the staff at The Guardian, that Saakshvili is a war criminal who has simply not yet been convicted of his crimes. And yet, The Guardian thought it not worth commenting on, instead choosing to simply note that he is the “pro-western former Georgian leader.” Imagine referring to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, guilty of having committed countless crimes including crimes against humanity, simply as the “pro-American former Chilean leader,” or Somoza as the “pro-American former Nicaraguan president.” It would be considered dishonest at best, downright contemptible at worst. And yet that is precisely how The Guardian presents Saakashvili, a man who is not even Ukrainian.
The only hint of criticism in the sentence is an implication, using the word “installed” to describe how Saakashvili came to power in Odessa. However, such an implication certainly does not do justice to the reality of the situation, one in which non-Ukrainians loyal to Washington and NATO are installed alongside Ukrainian quislings to do the bidding of the Kiev regime’s sponsors in the US and Europe.
And it is just such examples of deliberate obscurantism over Ukraine that has to a large extent discredited many Western media outlets when it comes to the continuing conflict in the country.
Odessa and the Real Dark Side of the Force
A serious journalist writing about Odessa, and using the metaphors of “Darth Lenin” and Star Wars might have explored the truly sinister forces at work in Ukraine’s all-important port city. A hotbed of political activism and site of the infamous May 2nd massacre, Odessa has been the scene of some of the worst, but by no means exceptional, political repression. Activists, journalists and bloggers have been deliberately targeted for physical attacks, kidnapping, and arbitrary imprisonment, all under the watchful eye of the allegedly ‘democratic’ government in Kiev, backed by the US-NATO powers.
In late 2014 and early 2015, editors at the important anti-Kiev website infocenter-odessa.com were intimidated and arrested for various so-called ‘crimes,’ including being in possession of video evidence of illegal shelling by Ukrainian military, and of a list of names of political prisoners held without trial in Odessa. One would think that Western journalists, in the interests of their Ukrainian colleagues, and in defense of the Geneva conventions protections for journalists, would perhaps consider such information worthy of publication. Alas, not.
Aside from journalists, a large number of activists have been detained, kidnapped, and/or tortured by Ukrainian authorities and their fascist goons. Key members of the Borotba (Struggle) leftist organization have been repeatedly harassed, arrested, and beaten by the police. So too have been communist activists and party members such as Pavel Shishman and Nikolai Popov, among many others. These courageous men and women are the real victims of the “decommunization” laws and, unlike the Lenin statue, their persecution and repression cannot be trivialized as a mere humorous footnote.
Aside from these shameful attacks on leftist formations, multicultural institutions in Odessa have also been repressed under the pretext of “Russian separatism.” A multiethnic, multi-nationality organization known as the Popular Rada of Bessarabia (PRB) was founded in early April 2015 in order to push for regional autonomy and/or ethnic autonomy in response to the legal and extralegal attacks on minorities by the Kiev authorities. It was reported that within 24 hours of the founding congress, Ukraine’s SBU (security services) had detained the core leaders of the organization. Within two weeks 30 more PRB activists were arrested, including founding member Vera Shevchenko. Perhaps such egregious political repression should have found its way into the pages of The Guardian? Alas, no.
It is plainly obvious that The Guardian, like all Western corporate media, intends to continue to distort the true nature of the situation in Odessa, and in Ukraine generally. Of course, the argument in this case could be that the article simply was covering a kitschy pop culture story, rather than a deeply political issue. But such a response is pure deflection. Everything in Ukraine is political in this time of civil war and instability. And to gloss over the repression and violence is to tacitly approve of it.
Naturally, this is simply par for the course for Western media, be it of the liberal or conservative variety. But, increasingly each day, these outlets are discrediting themselves by showing just how hypocritical they are. They’ll run a light-hearted story about a Lenin statue, but make no mention of the murder of journalists, or of the Nazi rallies in support of the murderers in the very same city.
This is shameful. This is embarrassing. This is Western propaganda at its finest.
Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
In [a] nationally televised conference, I declared that the consequence of jobs offshoring would be that the US would be a Third World country in 20 years.
While Canada slashes budgets for research, education and public broadcasting, there is one part of our economy that enjoys remarkable support from the Canadian taxpayer: the energy sector. The International Monetary Fund estimates that energy subsidies in Canada top an incredible $34 billion each year in direct support to producers and uncollected tax on externalized costs.
Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile — Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, 1935
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was a proposed US-backed agreement to eliminate or reduce the trade barriers among all countries in the Americas. […] However, critics saw this as a move that, as was the case with NAFTA, would only serve to benefit the rich and powerful.
The Economist published an article titled, “And the law won: The rise and fall of China’s civil-rights lawyers says much about the Communist Party’s approach to the rule of law.” The long-winded and pretentious title would have been more accurate if instead of “China’s civil-rights lawyers,” it said “US-backed agitators.”
China and Russia are still behind the U.S. militarily. But they are both showing surprising breakthroughs that – sometime down the road in the future – could threaten U.S. hegemony.
As usual, those who want to continue making money off of sick individuals will find a way to omit crucial details and dance through loopholes, trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the tampon industry is no different; although they’re adamant that tampons are safe, women have died from their use and continue to destroy their bodies with them, as history and published studies repeatedly prove. Nevertheless, both industries do whatever it takes to keep the $718 million market alive.
In fact, the FDA went so far as to recently update their web site, addressing “allegations about tampons [that] are being spread over the Internet.” They maintain that tampons are not contaminated by asbestos or dioxin during the manufacturing process and that it is simply not true that the rayon fibers can cause toxic shock syndrome (TSS). “The available scientific evidence does not support these rumors,” their web site says.
Really?
The health hazards of making products look pretty
Not surprisingly, the FDA web site makes no mention of a vital statement left out of memos found in 1992 in which the FDA addressed the life-threatening chemical dioxin by stating, “It appear[s] that the most significant risks may occur in tampon products.” Ah, it’s what you don’t say that can also cover up the truth, right?
Dioxin, by the way, is part of the process that makes products “whiter than white”; in this case, it’s used on the wood pulp that becomes rayon fibers in tampons. During the process, chlorine gas bleaches the wood pulp, creating dioxin, which is part of a class of chemicals that are linked to horrific health problems such as cancer, endometriosis, birth defects and TSS.
Instead, the FDA web site mentions that when tested, such chemicals are below the detectable limit, which apparently means women should cast their worries aside. Besides, new and improved tampons have been on the market that don’t use “elemental chlorine gas to purify the wood pulp.”
Does this mean that women everywhere can feel secure by the FDA’s efforts to address tampon rumors?
Not so fast.
Chemicals from tampons can linger in your body for up to three decades
There’s something else that’s not on the FDA web site: an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found that dioxin bioaccumulates; it has the ability to stay in the body upwards of 30 years after exposure. Furthermore, it’s been found that repeated contact increases a woman’s health dangers. Now, consider that the average woman uses about 16,800 tampons in her lifetime. Yikes.
Then there’s another fact that is conveniently not mentioned on the FDA site: Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) cases surged in the 1980s, coinciding with the advent of Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) super absorbent synthetic tampon, Rely. After 813 menstrual-related TSS cases that included 38 deaths, the FDA eventually urged P&G to issue a product recall for Rely. They did, and they also exited the market, only to re-enter the tampon production business later when they bought the makers of Tampax, Tambrands, in the late 90s.
What about the tampons that sound wonderful because of their use of cotton? They’re not as good for you as their clever marketing and packaging suggest.
Don’t fall for natural-sounding tampon options and marketing hype
You’ve certainly heard of Monsanto’s cancer-causing glyphosate. More than one billion tons of pesticides and herbicides are sprayed on cotton crops annually in the United States, elements of which could make their way to tampons.
The industry knows that sometimes playing on fears can sell products. A roommate finding out you have your period? How embarrassing! Noticing a different odor during your period? Terrible!
Through the decades, the tampon industry has lured women with perfumed tampons, pocket-sized ones in a selection of colors to conceal that it’s actually a tampon, and various messaging to help resolve the awkwardness of experiencing a natural part of life.
Choose safer alternatives
Fortunately, many health-minded women are becoming more aware of tampon dangers while simultaneously embracing their bodies, menstrual blood and all.
For example, many turn to menstrual pads, which offer the benefit of resting on underwear without the risks that come from inserting chemicals and objects directly in the vagina. Then there is new-to-market THINX, which are “period-proof underwear” that, despite reactions over some of their ads being too risque, are generating attention for their effectiveness.
Yet the madness continues.
The tampon industry continues to do its best to get women to feel shame about having their periods or suggests the annoyance of wearing pads, while the FDA is addressing rumors by omitting facts throughout history. The bottom line is that it’s best to forego using tampons and instead turn to other alternatives that won’t destroy your health. Sources for this article include: FDA.gov FNewsMagazine.com UMB.edu OrganicConsumers.org SheThinx.com NYDailyNews.com
On January 6, 2004, Senator Charles Schumer and I challenged the erroneous idea that jobs offshoring was free trade in a New York Times op-ed. Our article so astounded economists that within a few days Schumer and I were summoned to a Brookings Institution conference in Washington, DC, to explain our heresy. In the nationally televised conference, I declared that the consequence of jobs offshoring would be that the US would be a Third World country in 20 years.
That was 11 years ago, and the US is on course to descend to Third World status before the remaining nine years of my prediction have expired.
The evidence is everywhere. In September the US Bureau of the Census released its report on US household income by quintile. Every quintile, as well as the top 5%, has experienced a decline in real household income since their peaks. The bottom quintile (lower 20 percent) has had a 17.1% decline in real income from the 1999 peak (from $14,092 to $11,676). The 4th quintile has had a 10.8% fall in real income since 2000 (from $34,863 to $31,087). The middle quintile has had a 6.9% decline in real income since 2000 (from $58,058 to $54,041). The 2nd quintile has had a 2.8% fall in real income since 2007 (from $90,331 to $87,834). The top quintile has had a decline in real income since 2006 of 1.7% (from $197,466 to $194,053). The top 5% has experienced a 4.8% reduction in real income since 2006 (from $349,215 to $332,347). Only the top One Percent or less (mainly the 0.1%) has experienced growth in income and wealth.
The Census Bureau uses official measures of inflation to arrive at real income. These measures are understated. If more accurate measures of inflation are used (such as those available from shadowstats.com), the declines in real household income are larger and have been declining for a longer period. Some measures show real median annual household income below levels of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Note that these declines have occurred during an alleged six-year economic recovery from 2009 to the current time, and during a period when the labor force was shrinking due to a sustained decline in the labor force participation rate. On April 3, 2015 the US Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 93,175,000 Americans of working age are not in the work force, a historical record. Normally, an economic recovery is marked by a rise in the labor force participation rate. John Williams reports that when discouraged workers are included among the measure of the unemployed, the US unemployment rate is currently 23%, not the 5.2% reported figure.
In a recently released report, the Social Security Administration provides annual income data on an individual basis. Are you ready for this?
In 2014 38% of all American workers made less than $20,000; 51% made less than $30,000; 63% made less than $40,000; and 72% made less than $50,000.
The scarcity of jobs and the low pay are direct consequences of jobs offshoring. Under pressure from “shareholder advocates” (Wall Street) and large retailers, US manufacturing companies moved their manufacturing abroad to countries where the rock bottom price of labor results in a rise in corporate profits, executive “performance bonuses,” and stock prices.
The departure of well-paid US manufacturing jobs was soon followed by the departure of software engineering, IT, and other professional service jobs.
Incompetent economic studies by careless economists, such as Michael Porter at Harvard and Matthew Slaughter at Dartmouth, concluded that the gift of vast numbers of US high productivity, high value-added jobs to foreign countries was a great benefit to the US economy.
In articles and books I challenged this absurd conclusion, and all of the economic evidence proves that I am correct. The promised better jobs that the “New Economy” would create to replace the jobs gifted to foreigners have never appeared. Instead, the economy creates lowly-paid part-time jobs, such as waitresses, bartenders, retail clerks, and ambulatory health care services, while full-time jobs with benefits continue to shrink as a percentage of total jobs.
These part-time jobs do not provide enough income to form a household. Consequently, as a Federal Reserve study reports, “Nationally, nearly half of 25-year-olds lived with their parents in 2012-2013, up from just over 25% in 1999.”
When half of 25-year olds cannot form households, the market for houses and home furnishings collapses.
Finance is the only sector of the US economy that is growing. The financial industry’s share of GDP has risen from less than 4% in 1960 to about 8% today. As Michael Hudson has shown, finance is not a productive activity. It is a looting activity (Killing The Host).
Moreover, extraordinary financial concentration and reckless risk and debt leverage have made the financial sector a grave threat to the economy.
The absence of growth in real consumer income means that there is no growth in aggregate demand to drive the economy.
Consumer indebtedness limits the ability of consumers to expand their spending with credit. These spending limits on consumers mean that new investment has limited appeal to businesses. The economy simply cannot go anywhere, except down as businesses continue to lower their costs by substituting part-time jobs for full-time jobs and by substituting foreign for domestic workers. Government at every level is over-indebted, and quantitative easing has over-supplied the US currency.
This is not the end of the story. When manufacturing jobs depart, research, development, design, and innovation follow. An economy that doesn’t make things does not innovate. The entire economy is lost, not merely the supply chains.
The economic and social infrastructure is collapsing, including the family itself, the rule of law, and the accountability of government.
When college graduates can’t find employment because their jobs have been offshored or given to foreigners on work visas, the demand for college education declines. To become indebted only to find employment that cannot service student loans becomes a bad economic decision.
We already have the situation where college and university administrations spend 75% of the university’s budget on themselves, hiring adjuncts to teach the classes for a few thousand dollars. The demand for full time faculty with a career before them has collapsed. When the consequences of putting short-term corporate profits before jobs for Americans fully hit, the demand for university education will collapse and with it American science and technology.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was the worst thing that ever happened to the United States. The two main consequences of the Soviet collapse have been devastating. One consequence was the rise of the neoconservative hubris of US world hegemony, which has resulted in 14 years of wars that have cost $6 trillion. The other consequence was a change of mind in socialist India and communist China, large countries that responded to “the end of history” by opening their vast under-utilized labor forces to Western capital, which resulted in the American economic decline that this article describes, leaving a struggling economy to bear the enormous war debt.
It is a reasonable conclusion that a social-political-economic system so incompetently run already is a Third World country.
Plans to deploy some 4,000 NATO combat troops in countries bordering Russia were reported Thursday amid escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow over conflicting US and Russian military interventions in Syria.
The deployment would represent a qualitative escalation of the US-led alliance’s encirclement and military buildup against Russia, heightening the threat of both war in Europe and a military clash between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
Adding to the provocative character of the proposed deployment, the troops, drawn from various NATO countries, would be placed under formal NATO command, an arrangement that is put in place in the event of a NATO war against a common enemy. Such a command structure is virtually unprecedented in peacetime.
One proposal under discussion within the alliance would place troops in battalion strength—from 800 to 1,000—in Poland and the former Soviet Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. A less extensive plan would restrict the deployment to a single battalion for the region.
German Mountain Infantry training on October 26, 2015 during Operation Trident Juncture 15. Photo Credit – NATO
Washington is pushing for the more extensive deployment, according to theWall Street Journal, while “German officials in particular have expressed reservations, telling the allies in private discussions that they don’t want to treat Moscow as a permanent enemy or lock it out of Europe…”
According to the Journal, others in the US-led alliance, presumably including Washington itself, are arguing that
“a small buildup could have the unintended consequence of making a conflict with Russia more likely if mishaps or miscalculations by Mr. Putin accidentally trigger a wider clash. To avoid that, advocates say NATO should increase other deterrence efforts, such as demonstrating its ability to move even bigger numbers of troops quickly with exercises like one currently under way in Spain and Portugal.”
The plans for permanent troop deployments on Russia’s borders have emerged in the midst of Operation Trident Juncture, the largest NATO military exercise since 2002, involving 36,000 troops, more than 140 warplanes, more than 60 ships and seven submarines.
With the launching of the second phase of the exercise last week, NATO’s Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow, who is the US ambassador to the alliance, made clear that the war games were directed at intimidating Russia.
“We are very concerned about the Russian military build-up,” said Vershbow, who was US ambassador to Russia under the George W. Bush administration. He told reporters, “The increasing concentration of forces in Kaliningrad, the Black Sea and, now, in the eastern Mediterranean does pose some additional challenges.”
“In the east, Russia has illegally annexed Crimea, continues to support the separatists in eastern Ukraine; and now appears to have entered the war in Syria firmly on the side of Assad,” he added.
The exercise, which continues until November 6, is centered on demonstrating that NATO can quickly move decisive military force beyond its borders to attack its enemies. The war games are built around a scenario of NATO defending the fictional nation of “Lakuta” against an attack by a regional adversary, “Kamon.”
“Rising political instability, ethnic tension, and persisting socio-economic challenges are climaxed by a blatant invasion of one state’s territory by another,” the official NATO scenario for the exercise reads.
It is evident that the exercise is meant to reproduce a possible evolution of conditions in the former Soviet Baltic republics, all of which are ruled by right-wing, fanatically anti-Russian governments that have imposed brutal austerity measures against the working class, discriminate against large ethnic Russian populations and glorify their citizens who collaborated with the Nazis in World War II.
In September of last year, President Barack Obama traveled to Estonia and offered an unqualified commitment under Article 5 of the NATO charter to use American troops to defend the Baltic States against the supposed threat from Russia. Calling this commitment “unwavering” and “eternal,” he stressed that he was prepared to deliver “American boots on the ground.”
Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO, has sent its military to participate in the NATO war games. The escalating confrontation between the US and Russia was triggered by the February 2014 coup that ousted the Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych after it rejected a proposed European Union association agreement and sought a Russian loan bailout instead. The coup was orchestrated by Washington and Berlin and spearheaded by fascist militias. The overthrow of the government was followed by a bloody civil war, with the new US-backed regime in Kiev attempting to militarily suppress ethnic Russian rebels in the east of the country.
The latest proposals for troop deployments on Russia’s borders follow earlier decisions by NATO to establish a 40,000-strong “rapid reaction force” as well as small headquarters, known as NATO Force Integration Units, in Hungary, Slovakia, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania. These commands, consisting of about 80 personnel each, are designed to prepare for rapid deployment of NATO troops against Russia. In addition, plans were elaborated to pre-position arms and supplies including tanks and other heavy weaponry in striking distance of Russia.
In response to the reports of the new proposals for escalation of NATO’s military buildup, Moscow’s ambassador to the US-led alliance, Alexander Grushko, charged that they, as well as previous measures, were in violation of agreements reached in the 1990s in which NATO pledged not to station a substantial number of combat troops on Russia’s borders.
“From the political point of view these military activities are aimed at creating a new ‘Iron Curtain’ in Europe,” Grushko said. He added, “Our security will be safeguarded in any case, and we have a variety of choices to effectively do it.”
The seemingly deliberate intensification of tensions in Eastern Europe coincides with convening in Vienna of another session of talks on the Syrian crisis. Russia has carried out hundreds of airstrikes and provided other military assistance in an attempt to prop up the government of President Bashar al-Assad, even as Washington, which like Moscow claims to be fighting “terrorism,” continues to support Islamist militias seeking Assad’s overthrow.
The response of President Vladimir Putin’s government to the US-led imperialist offensive is both reactionary and politically bankrupt. Based on Russian nationalism and the defense of the interests of the capitalist oligarchy that enriched itself from the looting of state property with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Putin’s policy oscillates between the flexing of military power and seeking an accommodation with imperialism.
On Thursday, the US Navy acknowledged having sent four armed fighter jets to confront two Russian Tu-142 Bear aircraft that were flying near the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, which was engaged in naval exercises near the Korean peninsula. The Russian planes were reportedly flying at 500 feet and within one mile of the US warship. Attempts by a US escort ship to hail the Russian aircraft received no response.
The potential for a military confrontation between the US and Russia, whether in Eastern Europe, Syria or elsewhere, grows daily. The dangers of a conflict spiraling into a nuclear war are becoming greater today than they were at the height of the Cold War.
Ryan awakened Thursday morning one step away from succeeding John Boehner as House speaker – ousted by a palace coup. He wasn’t conservative enough for hardline Republicans.
As expected, House members elected Ryan as his successor, receiving 236 votes, a comfortable margin of victory – winning in the Republican dominated body after Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy withdrew his candidacy and Ryan bested Rep. Daniel Webster (unrelated to the 19th century statesman/politician by the same name) decisively – by a 200 – 43 margin among Republican members alone.
The position is second in line to the presidency if its incumbent dies, is incapacitated, resigns or gets removed by impeachment.
Ryan’s ascendency lurches Washington further to the right. His neocon credentials are scary. He wants more spending for wars and militarism, less for social programs. More on the latter below.
He rants about ‘keeping America strong,” supports its heavy intervention hand anywhere it wishes, serving US interests at the expense of all others.
He wants Medicare and Social Security privatized en route to ending them altogether – Medicaid, food stamps, and other social programs gutted.
He supports Americans having anything they want as long as they pay for it, mindless of unaffordability issues for half of US households, living in poverty or bordering it.
Social Security and Medicare are bedrock social programs – funded by worker/employer payroll tax deductions, federal insurance programs, not entitlements, contractually obligating Washington to pay benefits to eligible recipients.
Ryan and likeminded Republican and Democrat neocons infesting Congress want these vital programs ended – to assure unrestricted military spending as well as sustained handouts to Wall Street and other corporate favorites.
In 2011, he proposed eliminating Medicare altogether. It passed the House but not the Senate. He wants America’s wealth handed exclusively to monied interests already with too much – ordinary people left on their own out of luck, accelerating the thirdworldization process, a deplorable race to the bottom.
His ideal society is no fit place to live in, his “Path to Prosperity” returning America to 19th century harshness if implemented.
He believes everything government does, business does better, so let it operate unrestrained by regulatory controls. He represents America’s 1% at the expense of its great majority.
He’s one of them, his estimated net worth at between $4.5 and $7.4 million. He supports socialism for the rich, law of the jungle for ordinary folks.
As House speaker, he has enormous power, especially with strong neocon support. Expect him to take full advantage at the expense of millions of disadvantaged households deserving better, no matter who succeeds Obama in 2017.
America is a fascist police state, a belligerent nation waging endless wars of aggression. Every Republican and Democrat presidential aspirant supports an ideologically over-the-top agenda – risking global war for power and profit. Don’t let their rhetoric on the stump fool you.
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.”
Some 2,000 fighters of the Azov, Dnipro and Lviv volunteer battalions, deployed near the disengagement line between Kiev forces and DPR military, have gotten out of control of the Ukrainian military command, Eduard Basurin, spokesman for the Defense Ministry of DPR, said at a briefing Wednesday. A grouping of the militants belonging to these battalions has been revealed between the inhabited localities of Novgorodskoye and Troitskoye. 50 items of hardware, including tanks, infantry combat vehicles, armored personnel carriers and field artillery, have been concentrated in the same area in violation of the Minsk Agreements.
Ukraine has refused to streamline the process of crossing the disengagement line with DPR and LPR, a source close to the peace negotiating process in Minsk said. For example, there are huge lines at the disengagement line in the DPR because Ukraine and the LPR just have no crossing points for motor transport. This issue was raised in the humanitarian issues subgroup but the Kiev side has been evading the question what they have done to solve the problem.
Australia’s maritime border control allegedly paid people smugglers to turn back refugee boats headed for New Zealand. The claims made by Amnesty International also accuse Canberra of essentially colluding with a people-smuggling operation. Australian officials paid six crew members a total of US $32,000 to make sure they did not continue on to New Zealand. Instead, the crew returned to Indonesia, with 65 asylum seekers. The incident took place in May 2015.
The al-Shabaab militant group has taken 12 hostages after a military transport plane crashed in Somalia. According to the local authorities, the hostages were US citizens. The aircraft was coming from Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, carrying supplies for peacekeeping forces in Somalia. The news agency reported that Pentagon had denied the reports of US citizens aboard the aircraft. The US officials are likely sure that “moderate rebels” don’t take hostages.
A road map for the accession of India and Pakistan to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has been worked out and submitted for the current member-states’ consideration, the organization’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) said on Thursday. The SCO is a political, economic and military alliance composed of six member states, including Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is expected that the mechanism for the road map’s implementation will be discussed at the meeting of the SCO Council of Heads of Government in December in China.
The long-winded and pretentious title would have been more accurate if instead of “China’s civil-rights lawyers,” it said “US-backed agitators.” Because that is precisely who the Economist is writing about, a deep and extensive network built upon millions upon millions of dollars of funding by the US State Department for so-called “nongovernmental organizations” across China, many headquartered or primarily backed by organizations in Hong Kong (NED support for: China, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang).
This network was in part exposed during Hong Kong’s so-called “Umbrella Revolution,” which failed spectacularly after the various US-backed NGOs leading it and their sponsors were exposed.
However, despite the dishonest means by which the Economist frames their article, the content itself if understood in the proper context is very informative. In fact, the content itself directly contradicts the title.
Weiquan, or Rights Protection
The Economist first defines “weiquan,” or rights protection, and explains that the most popular and successful “civil-rights lawyers” posed as working behind this principle. However, their primary example, Pu Zhiqiang along with several others, admittedly spent most of their time attacking the Chinese government, not defending the rights of anybody. The Economist would explain:
The evidence against Mr Pu includes tweets in which he ridicules Chinese propaganda, calls China’s ethnic policies “absurd” and appears to question the legitimacy of party rule. The charges are ironic: Mr Pu made his name defending the free-speech rights of journalists and writers. He can expect to spend several years in jail, a fate already being suffered by other prominent activists such as Xu Zhiyong, a moderate advocate for legal rights, who was sentenced last year to four years in prison for disrupting public order. Gao Zhisheng, a fierce critic of the party who took on politically sensitive clients, has been repeatedly abducted, tortured and imprisoned over the last several years. He was finally released from prison in August but little has been heard of him since.
Attacking the Chinese government or “defending” those who did, is a far cry from the principles of “weiquan” which include standing up against and exposing corruption, defending victims of land grabs and other exercises in the abuse of power. One is aimed at agitation, division and the undermining of sociopolitical stability, the other is aimed at strengthening it. And while many agitators may take on cases involving the latter, they do so only to legitimize their primary focus on the former.
Throughout the Economist’s article, examples of the Chinese government giving in on legitimate grievances is noted as part of the success of many of these agitators who attached themselves to these legitimate causes. Many of these causes were already being fought for long before US-funded and backed agitators showed up, and only to help fuel their other more nefarious activities. The Economist would note:
In the end, however, the lawyers fell victim to their own success. The party became suspicious of their networks, and their rapid deployment at scenes of confrontation with officialdom, such as protests by residents enraged at the bulldozing of their houses by government-backed developers. In 2006 Luo Gan, then China’s security chief, urged that “forceful measures” be used against saboteurs of the system who operate “under the guise of weiquan”. That is when the men on the cover of Asia Weekly, already by then under intense official scrutiny, became China’s most wanted. President Xi is now finishing the job of locking them away.
China’s security chief himself in his statement regarding America’s stable of agitators accuses them of hiding behind “weiquan,” indicating that “weiquan” or rights protection in and of itself is not what Beijing has taken issue with. Beijing realizes the importance of stemming the abuse of its people’s rights by wanton corruption and abuse of power. If left unchecked, regardless of Beijing’s philosophical or ideological beliefs, such abuse will inevitably lead to instability, and more so with foreign-funded networks specifically seeking to create such conditions.
China Targets Agitators By Separating Legitimate/Illegitimate Opposition
In the end, the Economist’s article is about China shutting down networks of agitators posing as “right protectors,” not because Beijing believes protecting the rights of its people is unimportant, but specifically because of the damage to real rights advocates Washington’s networks are causing and the inevitable instability it will lead to.
When protesters bring to Beijing a specific grievance and seek a specific solution, even the Economist appears to admit Beijing is willing to consider such cases. However, when opposition brings legitimate grievances, but instead of a specific solution only seeks to undermine Beijing, the book is thrown at them.
Still, in the minds of many well-intentioned individuals, they cannot differentiate between legitimate protests and foreign-funded sedition and agitation. The network the Economist mentions is backed, referenced, their organizations and affiliates funded and supported by the US State Department, its National Endowment for Democracy and the immense networks of parallel NGOs and government agencies both in the US and in Europe that serve as their willing accomplices not only in China but all around the world.
Beijing’s best bet is to continue improving its responses to legitimate grievances and truly seeking to improve the lives of the people living under its rule, while differentiating and exposing the game agitators play. Separating agitators clearly from the many legitimate causes they use to camouflage themselves with is an essential step to channeling social tension from the streets in the form of protests, and into other directions where the actual source of the tensions can be practically dealt with.
The Economist admits these “civil-rights lawyers” have been bested, but in doing so, they admit the US’ formidable network of global agitators no longer has free reign in China.
Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
The long-winded and pretentious title would have been more accurate if instead of “China’s civil-rights lawyers,” it said “US-backed agitators.” Because that is precisely who the Economist is writing about, a deep and extensive network built upon millions upon millions of dollars of funding by the US State Department for so-called “nongovernmental organizations” across China, many headquartered or primarily backed by organizations in Hong Kong (NED support for: China, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang).
This network was in part exposed during Hong Kong’s so-called “Umbrella Revolution,” which failed spectacularly after the various US-backed NGOs leading it and their sponsors were exposed.
However, despite the dishonest means by which the Economist frames their article, the content itself if understood in the proper context is very informative. In fact, the content itself directly contradicts the title.
Weiquan, or Rights Protection
The Economist first defines “weiquan,” or rights protection, and explains that the most popular and successful “civil-rights lawyers” posed as working behind this principle. However, their primary example, Pu Zhiqiang along with several others, admittedly spent most of their time attacking the Chinese government, not defending the rights of anybody. The Economist would explain:
The evidence against Mr Pu includes tweets in which he ridicules Chinese propaganda, calls China’s ethnic policies “absurd” and appears to question the legitimacy of party rule. The charges are ironic: Mr Pu made his name defending the free-speech rights of journalists and writers. He can expect to spend several years in jail, a fate already being suffered by other prominent activists such as Xu Zhiyong, a moderate advocate for legal rights, who was sentenced last year to four years in prison for disrupting public order. Gao Zhisheng, a fierce critic of the party who took on politically sensitive clients, has been repeatedly abducted, tortured and imprisoned over the last several years. He was finally released from prison in August but little has been heard of him since.
Attacking the Chinese government or “defending” those who did, is a far cry from the principles of “weiquan” which include standing up against and exposing corruption, defending victims of land grabs and other exercises in the abuse of power. One is aimed at agitation, division and the undermining of sociopolitical stability, the other is aimed at strengthening it. And while many agitators may take on cases involving the latter, they do so only to legitimize their primary focus on the former.
Throughout the Economist’s article, examples of the Chinese government giving in on legitimate grievances is noted as part of the success of many of these agitators who attached themselves to these legitimate causes. Many of these causes were already being fought for long before US-funded and backed agitators showed up, and only to help fuel their other more nefarious activities. The Economist would note:
In the end, however, the lawyers fell victim to their own success. The party became suspicious of their networks, and their rapid deployment at scenes of confrontation with officialdom, such as protests by residents enraged at the bulldozing of their houses by government-backed developers. In 2006 Luo Gan, then China’s security chief, urged that “forceful measures” be used against saboteurs of the system who operate “under the guise of weiquan”. That is when the men on the cover of Asia Weekly, already by then under intense official scrutiny, became China’s most wanted. President Xi is now finishing the job of locking them away.
China’s security chief himself in his statement regarding America’s stable of agitators accuses them of hiding behind “weiquan,” indicating that “weiquan” or rights protection in and of itself is not what Beijing has taken issue with. Beijing realizes the importance of stemming the abuse of its people’s rights by wanton corruption and abuse of power. If left unchecked, regardless of Beijing’s philosophical or ideological beliefs, such abuse will inevitably lead to instability, and more so with foreign-funded networks specifically seeking to create such conditions.
China Targets Agitators By Separating Legitimate/Illegitimate Opposition
In the end, the Economist’s article is about China shutting down networks of agitators posing as “right protectors,” not because Beijing believes protecting the rights of its people is unimportant, but specifically because of the damage to real rights advocates Washington’s networks are causing and the inevitable instability it will lead to.
When protesters bring to Beijing a specific grievance and seek a specific solution, even the Economist appears to admit Beijing is willing to consider such cases. However, when opposition brings legitimate grievances, but instead of a specific solution only seeks to undermine Beijing, the book is thrown at them.
Still, in the minds of many well-intentioned individuals, they cannot differentiate between legitimate protests and foreign-funded sedition and agitation. The network the Economist mentions is backed, referenced, their organizations and affiliates funded and supported by the US State Department, its National Endowment for Democracy and the immense networks of parallel NGOs and government agencies both in the US and in Europe that serve as their willing accomplices not only in China but all around the world.
Beijing’s best bet is to continue improving its responses to legitimate grievances and truly seeking to improve the lives of the people living under its rule, while differentiating and exposing the game agitators play. Separating agitators clearly from the many legitimate causes they use to camouflage themselves with is an essential step to channeling social tension from the streets in the form of protests, and into other directions where the actual source of the tensions can be practically dealt with.
The Economist admits these “civil-rights lawyers” have been bested, but in doing so, they admit the US’ formidable network of global agitators no longer has free reign in China.
Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
“The Obama administration is caught between history. They want to lift the embargo, but they cannot ignore the law of the land.” – Augusto Maxwell, The Miami Herald, Oct 27, 2015
Whatever might be said about the efforts last December, and then those in July, to normalise relations between the US and Cuba, the United Nations General Assembly vote served to illustrate the cold reality. By 191 votes to 2, members voted to condemn the US blockade that has been in effect since the island did the insufferable and unthinkable in Washington’s eyes in going Communist.
Since the 1960s, the blockade has been a reminder that the bully in the hemisphere refuses to grow up, attempting to inflict damage on its smaller, upstart neighbour. (The life time of the embargo is said to have cost $121 billion.) Even after the Soviet Union went its way into fragments, and the fraud that was the Cold War dissipated, small Cuba still posed a symbolic threat. It reminds the Washington, and Florida establishment, about counter-revolution. As long as it lasts, it is also an alternative.
Ever since 1992, the UN General Assembly has favoured condemning the US embargo on Cuba. Each year, the naysayers seem to have diminished in number. Last year, the US and Israel kept usual company, while three countries noted their abstentions.
This year, rumours abounded that the US delegation might put in an abstention as a pointer to pressure Congress, a domestic gambit that is becoming a habit in American politics. Four unnamed administration officials put the feelers out in September to members of the Associated Press. They certainly got a desired result.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), got particularly hot under the collar. “To support a resolution in the UN aimed at criticising US law would not only appease the (Castro) regime, but would ignore sanctions passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton.”[1]
Cuba wanted to press home what it considered progress on the front of rapprochement between Washington and Havana. Travel restrictions have been eased. Embassies have been reopened. Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez told the General Assembly that “lifting the blockade” would “give some meaning” to the recent moves.
It was not to be, and the result may well have been less an issue of Cuba’s behaviour than that of domestic calculation. After all, the Obama administration and Congress have been running what essentially amount to key parallel foreign policies, be they on Iran or the issue of climate change. The public blame, however, had to be placed on Havana’s unnecessary impetuousness, the western hemisphere’s grand historical upstart.
“We find it unfortunate,” claimed US senior area advisor for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Ronald Godard, “that despite our demonstrated bilateral progress the Cuban government has chosen to introduce a resolution that is nearly identical to those tabled in years past.”
Godard was insistent that the Cuban gesture was not meaningful in this regard. “If Cuba thinks this exercise will help move things forward in the direction both governments have indicated they wish, it is mistaken.”
The domestic reactions ranged from the usual anti-UN pounding, to the go steady approach which has been the Obama administration’s line. The anti-Castro brigade proved characteristically noisy in condemning alleged UN complicity. This was simple, old bluster, the hegemon’s credentials unmasked. For South Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the United Nations “once again” showed “support” for the “brutal Castro dictatorship while ignoring the plight of the people of Cuba.”[2]
In many ways, the calmly, calmly approach is more sinister. President Barack Obama has said for some time that the US Congress will eventually lift the embargo, a point that has ruffled the feathers of the hawks. At an annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly last month, the president expressed the view that “our Congress will inevitably lift an embargo that should not be in place anymore.”
Such an attitude admits to a gradual incorporation of Cuba into the US sphere of influence, a slow but certain breaking down of its institutions. This should not be surprising to those keeping watch over the global trade network that Washington is driving via such tools as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The aim of such policy is an undermining of public institutions across participant countries in favour of corporate will, accounts and vitality. Cuba will prove to be no exception, and its medical and education schemes may eventually be battered into corporatized, marketised submission. Cuban authorities, beware.
In the meantime, aspects of the embargo continue to manifest in damaging forms, usually through fines against third-country banks and financial institutions conducting US dollar transactions with Cuba. Institutions such as Credit Agricole and Sprint have fallen foul of the practice, having their services fined or delayed.[3]
Importantly, the continued pattern of voting from the US also suggests that the bully will admit to normalisation, but on his own terms. The fact that 191 states might disagree with the continued belligerence an embargo entails is beside the point. The bully still insists it has the cards, and will dictate the program accordingly.
This form of commercial incorporation and invasion takes patience, and the Obamacrats are eager to bide their time. GOP sniping and griping from the Florida wing is almost beside the point. Eventually, the dollars will come, the investments will yield fruit. Democracy will have nothing to do with it. The question will then be whether the Castro legacy survives the impositions of a US imperial one.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
While Canada slashes budgets for research, education and public broadcasting, there is one part of our economy that enjoys remarkable support from the Canadian taxpayer: the energy sector.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that energy subsidies in Canada top an incredible $34 billion each year in direct support to producers and uncollected tax on externalized costs.
These figures are found in the appendix of a major report released last year estimating global energy subsidies at almost $2 trillion. The report estimated that eliminating the subsidies would reduce global carbon emissions by 13 per cent. The stunning statistics specific to this country remain almost completely unreported in Canadian media.
Contacted by The Tyee, researchers from the IMF helpfully provided a detailed breakdown of Canadian subsidies provided to petroleum, natural gas and coal consumption. The lion’s share of the $34 billion are uncollected taxes on the externalized costs of burning transportation fuels like gasoline and diesel — about $19.4 billion in 2011. These externalized costs include impacts like traffic accidents, carbon emissions, air pollution and road congestion.
The report also referenced figures sourced from the OECD showing an additional $840 million in producer support to oil companies through a constellation of provincial and federal incentives to encourage fossil fuel extraction. This brought total petroleum subsidies in Canada in 2011 to $20.23 billion — more than 20 times the annual budget of Environment Canada.
In comparison to other countries, Canada provides more subsidies to petroleum as a proportion of government revenue than any developed nation on Earth besides the United States and Luxembourg.
Natural gas consumption also enjoys billions in subsidies in Canada. The IMF estimates that un-priced carbon emissions from burning natural gas added up to $7.3 billion per year. There’s another $440 million in producer support and $360 million in other un-taxed externalities, all of which tops $8.1 billion. This tax giveaway on natural gas alone is 44 per cent more than Canada provides in international aid every year.
What about coal? Canada consumes over 30 million tonnes per year. While we currently export over half our domestic production, the IMF study only considered externalized costs within our own country. They found that the coal industry receives $4.5 billion in annual subsides — almost all of this is un-priced carbon and sulfur dioxide emissions. This generous largesse towards the dirtiest of fuels is about four times what the CBC receives in public support every year.
Or we could spend that on…
What could Canada do with an extra $34 billion a year? Both Vancouver and Toronto are struggling with how to fund long overdue upgrades to public transportation. Subway construction comes in at about $250 million per kilometre, meaning we could build about 140 kilometres of badly-needed urban subway lines every year. Light rail transport (LRT) is about one-quarter of the cost of subways, meaning for the same money we could build about 560 kilometres of at-grade transit infrastructure.
This foregone revenue in less than two years could fully fund the Big Move transit plan for southern Ontario, providing affordable access for 80 per cent of people living from Hamilton to Oshawa. Toronto’s transit system has languished for decades. This sorely needed infrastructure would save the average household thousands in wasted time sitting in traffic, and Canada’s economy billions in reduced congestion costs.
The proposed Vancouver subway line to the University of British Columbia could be built using less than two months of the subsidies provided every day to the energy sector. Forty kilometres of rapid transit in Surrey could be had for about the same amount.
What about green energy infrastructure? Adding solar and wind capacity provides some of the best job-generation per dollar of any option available — more than seven times the employment from an equivalent investment in oil and gas extraction. Extrapolating the findings from a 2012 report on green jobs, $34 billion could create 500,000 person years of employment and install more than 150,000 megawatts of clean generating capacity. Canada currently ranks 12th in the G20 on green energy investment and has been steadily falling behind our competitors.
Canada’s infrastructure deficit of crumbling roads and outdated water and sewage treatment is pegged at $171 billion. This backlog could be wiped out in five years with the revenue we are subsidizing to the energy sector.
Of course, not all things of value can be measured by bricks and mortar. Thirty-four billion dollars each year could provide $10-a-day childcare for 5.5 million children ages 0 to 5. Canada’s child care costs are currently the highest in the OECD.
No free lunch in energy costs
For all the complaining Canadians do about fuel prices, it’s ironic to note the IMF essentially says we are undervaluing the true cost of gasoline by about $0.30 per litre. Compared to other nations, Canada enjoys some of the cheapest gas in the developed world. Fuel in Italy and Germany is almost double our price at the pump. Ever think it’s odd that bottled water at the gas station costs more than the fuel you just put in your tank?
Consider for a moment all the costs of finding and extracting crude oil, shipping it across the globe, refining it into gasoline and trucking it to your neighbourhood. Not to mention the billions spent by some countries projecting military power into volatile oil-producing parts of the world and the very human price of those interventions. Additional un-priced costs after petroleum is burned, such as climate change, traffic congestion, road accidents and air pollution make gasoline perhaps the most subsidized substance on Earth.
Every decision based on artificially low energy prices can have years of unintended consequences. If gas is cheap, people will choose to buy cars rather than take transit, clogging both our roads and emergency rooms. Transportation accidents alone cost Canada $3.7 billion each year. Every vehicle bought based on low fuel prices will produce years of carbon emissions, and every owner over the life of that vehicle will have an interest in voting for cheaper gas.
The opposite, of course, is also true. Less than half of Vancouverites in their early twenties today have chosen to get a driver’s license, down from 60 per cent 10 years ago. Better public transit and more expensive car ownership seem to be the main factors driving this remarkable demographic shift.
The IMF can hardly be accused of being a left-leaning, alarmist organization. Through this valuable research, they make the case that there is no free lunch in energy costs, and we exclude these externalized costs at our peril.
A country can be judged on what it chooses to tax and what it chooses to subsidize. And by that yardstick, this nation currently seems to care more about cheap energy than almost anything else.
Mitchell Anderson is a Vancouver based freelance writer and frequent contributor to The Tyee. He is writing a book, “The Oil Vikings: What Norway can teach the world about wise resource use”. Find his Tyee series reported from Norway here and all his pieces published by The Tyee here.
John Bordne, a resident of Blakeslee, Penn., had to keep a personal history to himself for more than five decades. Only recently has the US Air Force given him permission to tell the tale, which, if borne out as true, would constitute a terrifying addition to the lengthy and already frightening list of mistakes and malfunctions that have nearly plunged the world into nuclear war.
The story begins just after midnight, in the wee hours of October 28, 1962, at the very height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then-Air Force airman John Bordne says he began his shift full of apprehension. At the time, in response to the developing crisis over secret Soviet missile deployments in Cuba, all US strategic forces had been raised to Defense Readiness Condition 2, or DEFCON2; that is, they were prepared to move to DEFCON1 status within a matter of minutes. Once at DEFCON1, a missile could be launched within a minute of a crew being instructed to do so.
Bordne was serving at one of four secret missile launch sites on the US-occupied Japanese island of Okinawa. There were two launch control centers at each site; each was manned by seven-member crews. With the support of his crew, each launch officer was responsible for four Mace B cruise missiles mounted with Mark 28 nuclear warheads. The Mark 28 had a yield equivalent to 1.1 megatons of TNT—i.e., each of them was roughly 70 times more powerful than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bomb. All together, that’s 35.2 megatons of destructive power. With a range of 1,400 miles, the Mace B’s on Okinawa could reach the communist capital cities of Hanoi, Beijing, and Pyongyang, as well as the Soviet military facilities at Vladivostok.
Several hours after Bordne’s shift began, he says, the commanding major at the Missile Operations Center on Okinawa began a customary, mid-shift radio transmission to the four sites. After the usual time-check and weather update came the usual string of code. Normally the first portion of the string did not match the numbers the crew had. But on this occasion, the alphanumeric code matched, signaling that a special instruction was to follow. Occasionally a match was transmitted for training purposes, but on those occasions the second part of the code would not match. When the missiles’ readiness was raised to DEFCON 2, the crews had been informed that there would be no further such tests. So this time, when the first portion of the code matched, Bordne’s crew was instantly alarmed and, indeed, the second part, for the first time ever, also matched.
At this point, the launch officer of Bordne’s crew, Capt. William Bassett, had clearance, to open his pouch. If the code in the pouch matched the third part of the code that had been radioed, the captain was instructed to open an envelope in the pouch that contained targeting information and launch keys. Bordne says all the codes matched, authenticating the instruction to launch all the crew’s missiles. Since the mid-shift broadcast was transmitted by radio to all eight crews, Capt. Bassett, as the senior field officer on that shift, began exercising leadership, on the presumption that the other seven crews on Okinawa had received the order as well, Bordne proudly told me during a three-hour interview conducted in May 2015. He also allowed me to read the chapter on this incident in his unpublished memoir, and I have exchanged more than 50 emails with him to make sure I understood his account of the incident.
By Bordne’s account, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Air Force crews on Okinawa were ordered to launch 32 missiles, each carrying a large nuclear warhead. Only caution and the common sense and decisive action of the line personnel receiving those orders prevented the launches—and averted the nuclear war that most likely would have ensued.
Kyodo News has reported on this event, but only in regard to Bordne’s crew. In my opinion, Bordne’s full recollections—as they relate to the other seven crews—need to be made public at this time as well, because they provide more than enough reason for the US government to search for and release in timely fashion all documents relating to events in Okinawa during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If true, Bordne’s account would add appreciably to historical understanding, not just of the Cuban crisis, but of the role accident or miscalculation have played and continue to play in the Nuclear Age.
What Bordne contends.
Bordne was interviewed extensively last year by Masakatsu Ota, a senior writer with Kyodo News, which describes itself as the leading news agency in Japan and has a worldwide presence, with more than 40 news bureaus outside that country. In a March 2015 article, Ota laid out much of Bordne’s account and wrote that “[a]nother former US veteran who served in Okinawa also recently confirmed [Bordne’s account] on condition of anonymity.” Ota has subsequently declined to identify the unnamed veteran, because of the anonymity he’d been promised.
Ota did not report portions of Bordne’s story that are based on telephone exchanges that Bordne says he overheard between his launch officer, Capt. Basset, and the other seven launch officers. Bordne, who was in the Launch Control Center with the captain, was directly privy only to what was said at one end of the line during those conversations—unless the captain directly relayed to Bordne and the other two crew members in the Launch Control Center what another launch officers just said.
With that limitation acknowledged, here is Bordne’s account of the ensuing events of that night:
Immediately after opening his pouch and confirming that he had received orders to launch all four nuclear missiles under his command, Capt. Bassett expressed the thought that something was amiss, Bordne told me. Instructions to launch nuclear weapons were supposed to be issued only at the highest state of alert; indeed this was the main difference between DEFCON 2 and DEFCON1. Bordne recalls the captain saying, “We have not received the upgrade to DEFCON1, which is highly irregular, and we need to proceed with caution. This may be the real thing, or it is the biggest screw up we will ever experience in our lifetime.”
While the captain consulted by phone with some of the other launch officers, the crew wondered whether the DEFCON1 order had been jammed by the enemy, while the weather report and coded launch order had somehow managed to get through. And, Bordne recalls, the captain conveyed another concern coming from one of the other launch officers: A pre-emptive attack was already under way, and in the rush to respond, commanders had dispensed with the step to DEFCON1. After some hasty calculations, crew members realized that if Okinawa were the target of a preemptive strike, they ought to have felt the impact already. Every moment that went by without the sounds or tremors of an explosion made this possible explanation seem less likely.
Still, to hedge against this possibility, Capt. Bassett ordered his crew to run a final check on each of the missiles’ launch readiness. When the captain read out the target list, to the crew’s surprise, three of the four targets were not in Russia. At this point, Bordne recalls, the inter-site phone rang. It was another launch officer, reporting that his list had two non-Russian targets.Why target non-belligerent countries? It didn’t seem right.
The captain ordered that the bay doors for the non-Russian-targeted missiles remain shut. He then cracked open the door for the Russia-designated missile. In that position, it could readily be tipped open the rest of the way (even manually), or, if there were an explosion outside, the door would be slammed shut by its blast, thereby increasing the chances that the missile could ride out the attack. He got on the radio and advised all other crews to take the same measures, pending “clarification” of the mid-shift broadcast.
Bassett then called the Missile Operations Center and requested, on the pretense that the original transmission had not come through clearly, that the mid-shift report be retransmitted. The hope was that this would help those at the center to notice that the original transmission’s coded instruction had been issued in error and would use the retransmission to rectify matters. To the whole crew’s consternation, after the time-check and weather update, the coded launch instruction was repeated, unaltered. The other seven crews, of course, heard the repetition of the instruction as well.
According to Bordne’s account—which, recall, is based on hearing just one side of a phone call—the situation of one launch crew was particularly stark: All its targets were in Russia. Its launch officer, a lieutenant, did not acknowledge the authority of the senior field officer—i.e. Capt. Bassett—to override the now-repeated order of the major. The second launch officer at that site reported to Bassett that the lieutenant had ordered his crew to proceed with the launch of its missiles! Bassett immediately ordered the other launch officer, as Bordne remembers it, “to send two airmen over with weapons and shoot the [lieutenant] if he tries to launch without [either] verbal authorization from the ‘senior officer in the field’ or the upgrade to DEFCON 1 by Missile Operations Center.” About 30 yards of underground tunnel separated the two Launch Control Centers.
At this most stressful moment, Bordne says, it suddenly occurred to him that it was very peculiar such an important instruction would be tacked to the end of a weather report. It also struck him as strange that the major had methodically repeated the coded instruction without the slightest hint of stress in his voice, as if it were little more than a boring nuisance. Other crew members agreed; Bassett immediately resolved to telephone the major and say that he needed one of two things:
Raise the DEFCON level to 1, or
Issue a launch stand-down order.
Judging from what Bordne says he heard of the phone conversation, this request got a more stress-filled reaction from the major, who immediately took to the radio and read out a new coded instruction. It was an order to stand down the missiles … and, just like that, the incident was over.
To double-check that disaster had really been averted, Capt. Bassett asked for and received confirmation from the other launch officers that no missiles had been fired.
At the beginning of the crisis, Bordne says, Capt. Bassett had warned his men, “If this is a screw up and we do not launch, we get no recognition, and this never happened.” Now, at the end of it all, he said, “None of us will discuss anything that happened here tonight, and I mean anything. No discussions at the barracks, in a bar, or even here at the launch site. You do not even write home about this. Am I making myself perfectly clear on this subject?”
For more than 50 years, silence was observed.
Why the government should look for and release records.Immediately.
Now wheelchair-bound, Bordne has tried, thus far without success, to track down records related to the incident on Okinawa. He contends that an inquest was conducted and each launch officer questioned. A month or so later, Bordne says, they were called upon to participate in the court martial of the major who issued the launch orders. Bordne says Capt. Bassett, in the only breach of his own secrecy command, told his crew that the major was demoted and forced to retire at the minimum service period of 20 years, which he was on the verge of fulfilling anyway. No other actions were taken—not even commendations for the launch officers who had prevented a nuclear war.
Bassett died in May 2011. Bordne has taken to the Internet in an attempt to locate other launch crew members who may be able to help to fill in his recollections. The National Security Archives, a watchdog group based at George Washington University’s Gelman Library, has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Air Force, seeking records relating to the Okinawa incident, but such requests often do not result in a release of records for years, if ever.
I recognize that Bordne’s account is not definitively confirmed. But I find him to have been consistently truthful in the matters I could confirm. An incident of this import, I believe, should not have to rest on the testimony of one man. The Air Force and other government agencies should proactively make any records in their possession relating to this incident available in their entirety—and quickly. The public has long been presented a false picture of the dangers inherent in nuclear weapon deployment.
The entire world has a right to know the entire truth about the nuclear danger it faces.
Note from the editor of the bulletin.org
As this article was being considered for publication, Daniel Ellsberg, who was a Rand consultant to the Defense Department at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, wrote a lengthy email message to the Bulletin, at the request of Tovish. The message asserted, in part: “I feel it’s urgent to find out whether Bordne’s story and Tovish’s tentative conclusions from it are true, given the implications of its truth for present dangers, not only past history. And that can’t await the ‘normal’ current handling of a FOIA request by the National Security Archive, or the Bulletin. A congressional investigation will only take place, it appears, if the Bulletin publishes this very carefully hedged report and its call for the elaborate documentation reported to exist from an official inquest to be released from inexcusably (though very predictably) prolonged classification.”
During this same time period, Bruce Blair, a research scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, also wrote an email message to the Bulletin. This is the entirety of the message: “Aaron Tovish asked me to weigh in with you if I believe his piece should be published in the Bulletin, or for that matter any outlet. I do believe it should be, even though it has not been fully verified at this stage. It strikes me that a first-hand account from a credible source in the launch crew itself goes a long way toward establishing the plausibility of the account. It also strikes me as a plausible sequence of events, based on my knowledge of nuclear command and control procedures during the period (and later). Frankly, it’s not surprising to me either that a launch order would be inadvertently transmitted to nuclear launch crews. It’s happened a number of times to my knowledge, and probably more times than I know. It happened at the time of the 1967 Middle East war, when a carrier nuclear-aircraft crew was sent an actual attack order instead of an exercise/training nuclear order. It happened in the early 1970s when [the Strategic Air Command, Omaha] retransmitted an exercise … launch order as an actual real-world launch order. (I can vouch for this one personally since the snafu was briefed to Minuteman launch crews soon thereafter.) In both of these incidents, the code check (sealed authenticators in the first incident,and message format validation in the second) failed, unlike the incident recounted by the launch crew member in Aaron’s article. But you get the drift here. It just wasn’t that rare for these kinds of snafus to occur. One last item to reinforce the point: The closest the US came to an inadvertent strategic launch decision by the President happened in 1979, when a NORAD early warning training tape depicting a full-scale Soviet strategic strike inadvertently coursed through the actual early warning network. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was called twice in the night and told the US was under attack, and he was just picking up the phone to persuade President Carter that a full-scale response needed to be authorized right away, when a third call told him it was a false alarm.
I understand and appreciate your editorial cautiousness here. But in my view, the weight of evidence and the legacy of serious nuclear mistakes combine to justify publishing this piece. I think they tip the scales. That’s my view, for what it’s worth.”
In an email exchange with the Bulletin in September, Ota, the Kyodo News senior writer, said he has “100 percent confidence” in his story on Bordne’s account of events on Okinawa “even though there are still many missing pieces.”
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was a proposed US-backed agreement to eliminate or reduce the trade barriers among all countries in the Americas. It was an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico and the US. It was supposed to extend to all countries in the Americas – except for Cuba – from Canada to Chile and Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego. However, critics saw this as a move that, as was the case with NAFTA, would only serve to benefit the rich and powerful.
I regard Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution as the architects of the new Latin America and Caribbean. This new development is the antithesis of the US-controlled FTAA.
To appreciate the momentous changes occurring in Latin America and the Caribbean, some background information is in order.
On December 14, 1994, Hugo Chávez arrived for the first time in Havana, having recently been granted clemency from prison in Venezuela, thus freeing him for the rest of his sentence for leading a failed civic/military coup. The Cuban stop was the last in a tour of Latin America. Chávez was looking to drum up international support for the burgeoning Bolivarian movement he was now leading. As he disembarked from his commercial airline flight, he was amazed to find Cuban President Fidel Castro waiting for him outside the aircraft. This would be the first of many encounters between the two revolutionaries. According to Cuban historian Eusebio Leal, Castro saw Chávez’s potential to become a political, international and revolutionary leader at the highest levels.
Four years after the meeting with Castro, Chávez was elected for the first time as President of Venezuela, in December 1998, and sworn in on February 2, 1999.
The FTAA began with the Summit of the Americas in Miami, Florida, on December 11, 1994. However, the FTAA only came to public attention during the Quebec City Summit of the Americas, during the weekend starting Friday, April 20, 2001, a few years after the Bolivarian Revolution had won political power. In Quebec City, the FTAA meeting was targeted by massive anti-corporate and anti-globalization protests. A vocal critic of the FTAA was Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who has described it as an “annexation plan” and a “tool of imperialism” for the exploitation of Latin America. Among the 31 participating nations present, Venezuela, represented by Chávez, was the only one that opposed it.
On December 14, 2004, three years after the Quebec City meeting, the Cuba–Venezuela Agreement was established to mark the 10th anniversary of the historic first encounter between the Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro. The signed agreement was named the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).
It was later known as ALBA-TCP, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), based on the Spanish Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos. The term “Bolivarian” refers to the ideology of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century South American independence leader born in Caracas who wanted South America to unite as a single “Great Nation.” “Our America” stems from José Martí’s concept of referring to a Latin America and Caribbean owned and governed by its people rather than outside interests.
This Cuba–Venezuela Agreement, signed by Presidents Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, was aimed mainly at the exchange of petroleum and medical and educational resources between the two nations. Venezuela began to deliver about 96,000 barrels of oil per day from its state-owned oil company, PDVSA, to Cuba at very favourable prices. In exchange, Cuba sent 20,000 state-employed medical staff and thousands of teachers to Venezuela’s poorest states as well as to Caracas. The agreement also made it possible for Venezuelans to travel to Cuba for specialized medical care, free of charge.
This is what Chávez foresaw when he took a stand in Quebec City against FTAA – to build the opposite, that is, ALBA-TCP, an alliance not based on selfish interests, but on mutual cooperation and solidarity that did not include the US and Canada. Founded initially by Cuba and Venezuela on December 14, 2004, it associated with other governments that wished to consolidate regional economic integration based on a shared vision of social welfare, mutual economic aid and development, and to strengthen cooperation through mutual respect and solidarity.
It should be noted that on December 15, 2009, the de facto president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, issued an executive decree through which he decided that Honduras should leave ALBA. Honduras was a member of ALBA under the leadership of President Mel Zelaya. This was one of the reasons that the US organized a coup against Zelaya and his constitutionally elected government in 2009.
ALBA-TCP is an integration platform for the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It emphasizes solidarity, complementary relationships, justice and cooperation, which have the historical and fundamental purpose of linking the capacities and strengths of the collaborating countries. The goal is to produce the structural transformations and relations necessary for achieving the integral development that is required for the continued existence of Latin America and the Caribbean as sovereign nations that are based on social justice. Additionally, ALBA-TCP is a political, economic and social alliance that defends the independence, self-determination and identity of the peoples comprising it.
For the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, integration is an indispensable condition to development amid the increasingly large formations of regional blocs that occupy predominant positions in the world economy. The cardinal principle that governs ALBA-TCP is the widest solidarity between the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, as upheld by Bolívar, Martí, Sucre, O’Higgins and so many other national heroes. This solidarity excludes selfish nationalism or restrictive national policies that reject the objective of constructing a large homeland in Latin America and the Caribbean, bringing to reality the dreams of the heroes of the emancipating struggles.
ALBA does not harbour commercial criteria or selfish interests related to business profits or national benefit to the detriment of other peoples. It seeks to rely on a wide Latin American vision that recognizes the fact that it is impossible for the countries to develop and be really independent in isolation. And one that aspires to seeing, as Bolívar stated, “the biggest nation of the world emerge in America, not less for its extension and wealth, but for its freedom and glory,” and what Martí would conceive as “Our America,” to separate it from the other America, which is expansionist and thus driven by imperial appetites. ALBA-TCP also has had as a goal to develop and widen regional integration even further, while the US-backed FTAA has been fizzling out.
What happened to the FTAA?
The last Summit was held at Mar del Plata, Argentina, in November 2005, but no agreement on FTAA was reached. Of the 34 countries present at the negotiations, 26 pledged to meet again in 2006 to resume negotiations, but no such meeting took place. The failure of the Mar del Plata Summit to establish a comprehensive FTAA agenda signalled the end of the US-backed FTAA. At the same time a very wide people’s mobilization from all over the continent rejected the FTAA in the very headquarters where this Summit took place, in the soccer stadium of Mar del Plata. The Summit thus occurred in the face of thousands of people who had demonstrated throughout the city. Chávez delivered a historic speech where he declared: “To hell with the FTAA!”
Let us briefly look at some of ALBA’s accomplishments regarding wider integration and programs. I provide only three examples even though there are many more.
Petrocaribe
Petrocaribe was established in 2005 and based on earlier agreements between ALBA founders Cuba and Venezuela. It looks to sell oil under a concessionary financial agreement to 14 member nations located in the Caribbean. This initiative provides the Caribbean nations with important hydrocarbon resources, which many do not possess in their territories.
teleSUR
Launched in 2005, teleSUR is a media conglomerate that provides news and current affairs broadcasts throughout the ALBA bloc. The program is founded on an Internet-based television channel and is a cooperative effort between the governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Note that Argentina and Uruguay are not ALBA members. While not yet a TV broadcast, teleSUR in English has recently been created as a website. I consider teleSUR to be the most important alternative to the media war carried out by the US conglomerates. I encourage you to follow and support this media initiative at www.telesurtv.net and www.telesurtv.net/english.
CELAC
ALBA countries were instrumental in the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC, based on the Spanish Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños). CELAC is a regional bloc of Latin American and Caribbean states conceived on February 23, 2010, at the Rio Group–Caribbean Community Unity Summit, and created on December 3, 2011, in Caracas, Venezuela, with the signature of the Declaration of Caracas. It consists of 33 sovereign countries representing roughly 600 million people. Due to the focus of the organization on Latin American and Caribbean countries, other countries and territories in the Americas, namely Canada and the US, were not included. CELAC is an example of a decade-long push for deeper integration within Latin America and the Caribbean. CELAC is being created to deepen Latin American and Caribbean integration and to reduce the previously domineering influence of the US on the internal affairs and economics of Latin America. It is also seen as an alternative to the Organization of American States (OAS), the regional body organized largely by Washington in 1948. CELAC is developing its ties with other countries such as China and Russia, thus contributing significantly to the transformation of a unipolar world led by the US toward a multipolar world. The Bolivarian Revolution and Hugo Chávez have their imprint on this major international development.
In addition to the three points just mentioned, what have been the practical implications of ALBA?
The derailment of FTAA is representative of two broader trends, which ALBA has strengthened: helping to secure a post-neoliberal Latin America and lessening the grip of US imperialism in favour of independence and self-determination.
The economic model that ALBA is institutionalizing differs from orthodox neoliberalism in significant ways. For example, the state is being brought “back in” as an economic actor in order to restrict untrammelled market forces.
Whereas the neoliberal economic framework was often treated as “one-size-fits-all,” ALBA acknowledges the diversity of its members and emphasizes that a differentiated approach must be taken. Neither the universal removal of protective barriers, tariffs and subsidies, nor the compulsory adherence to ALBA programs, is a condition for ALBA membership.
ALBA has provided support for peoples and governments who have demanded the removal of US military bases and the cessation of US military-policing operations. Such is the case with the removal of US troops from the Manta military base in Ecuador and the expulsion of US-backed anti-drug enforcement personnel in Bolivia.
ALBA has fostered an expansion in trade between its members, which allows for greater self-sufficiency and lessens the long-standing dependency of these countries on the US market. This intra-ALBA trade has also been complemented by a diversification of the external trading partners of the ALBA countries.
Through the creation of the Bank of ALBA and a new regional currency – the SUCRE – ALBA is providing an alternative to the traditional reliance that Latin America has had upon the pro-status quo international financial institutions that many deem to be under the effective control of the US and Europe.
In terms of education, Mission Robinson, a literacy program based primarily on the positive experiences of Cuba, has been extremely successful. It is estimated to have reached over 3.8 million people, and has played a large role in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua achieving literacy rates that classify them, according to UNESCO standards, as illiteracy-free countries.
In my view, one of the key features of ALBA is solidarity and opposition to US interference.
Let us take the example of Venezuela. The ALBA-TCP issued a Special Communiqué after meeting in Caracas on September 14, 2015 entitled “In Defense of Venezuela’s Sovereignty and Independence.” I quote it here in full:
“The countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America – Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) express their firmest defense of the principles of independence, self-determination of peoples, sovereignty and sovereign equality of States that enable harmonious relations among the countries in the international community.
The ALBA-TCP countries cannot accept interference in the internal affairs of a state by another state. Thus, they express their concern regarding opinions on the judicial decisions taken in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, by the appropriate authority and within the framework of its sovereign jurisdiction, to punish terrorist acts and effectively protect the human rights of victims.
Some countries have spoken out about this fact revealing the double standard that violates the international legal order and favors political conditions to overthrow constitutional governments in an attempt to plunder strategic natural resources. These high-sounding statements attempt to hide serious violations of human rights in their own territories and prevent the deepening of the democratic processes that the ALBA countries have been developing in exercise of their right to self-determination.
The ALBA-TCP countries warn against the smear campaign, slanders and aggressions against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and commit to remain alert vis-à-vis the threats to its peace, independence and sovereignty.
Caracas, September 14, 2015.”
This shows the importance of supporting Venezuela today. The goal of US imperialism is to smash the Bolivarian Revolution now led by the constitutionally elected President Nicolás Maduro in order to bring down other progressive governments, especially those that are members of ALBA. While focusing primarily on Venezuela and President Maduro, the US has also been very active recently in attempting to destabilize the constitutionally elected governments in Ecuador and Bolivia, led respectively by Rafael Correa and Evo Morales.
To stand in support of Venezuela and the ALBA countries today is to be on the side of sovereignty, self-determination and social justice, not only of the ALBA members, but also of all of Latin America and the Caribbean as the most promising region in the world for the future of mankind.
Thank you very much.
* Remarks by Arnold August at the First Gathering of Solidarity of Our America, Organized by the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Canada, Ottawa, September 26, 2015
Arnold August, a Canadian journalist and lecturer, is the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections and, more recently, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion. Cuba’s neighbours under consideration are the US, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Arnold can be followed on Twitter @Arnold_August.
Its latest Big Lie headlined “How 4 Federal Lawyers Paved the Way to Kill Osama bin Laden” – failing to explain how killing a dead man is impossible. Resurrection wasn’t one of his skills, or anyone else’s.
It claimed “four administration lawyers developed rationales intend(ing) to overcome any legal obstacles” to killing, not capturing, him.
The New York Times ignored its own July 11, 2002 account, headlined “The Death of bin Ladenism,” saying:
Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December (2001 of natural causes) and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, echoed the information. The remnants of Osama’s gang, however, have mostly stayed silent, either to keep Osama’s ghost alive or because they have no means of communication.
Prophetically, The Times said “bin Laden’s ghost may linger on – perhaps because Washington and Islamabad will find it useful…But the truth is that Osama bin Laden is dead.”
Ignoring its own earlier reporting is longstanding Times practice. Serving imperial interests take precedence. Its May 1, 2011 report contradicted its July 2002 one, headlining “Bin Laden Is Dead, Obama Says.”
An accurate headline would have debunked his phony claim. No one dies twice. Dead men don’t return for a second time around.
Instead of truth and full disclosure, The Times reported the myth about bin Ladin “killed in a firefight with United States forces in Pakistan…”
Its source: Obama, a notorious serial liar, Times earlier reporting on bin Laden’s death proving his Big Lie.
Instead, it called bin Laden’s “demise…a defining moment in the American-led fight against terrorism, a symbolic stroke affirming the relentlessness of the pursuit of those who attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.”
It perpetuated a second myth: that ill and dying bin Laden from a cave in Afghanistan, or Pakistan hospital where he was being treated, somehow managed to outwit the entire US intelligence establishment on that fateful day – ignoring what really happened, history’s greatest ever false flag, the mother of all Big Lies concealing it.
David Ray Griffin’s book, titled “Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive” is the seminal work about him, presenting “objective evidence and testimonies.”
It explained CIA monitored messages between him and his associates abruptly ceased after December 13, 2001. On December 26, 2001, a leading Pakistani newspaper reported his death, citing a prominent Taliban official attending his funeral – witnessing his dead body before it was laid to rest.
He was terminally ill with kidney disease and other ailments. On September 10, 2001 (one day before 9/11), CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported his admittance to a Rawalpindi, Pakistan hospital. He had nothing to do with 9/11.
In a late September 2001 interview with Pakistan’s Ummat newspaper, he categorically denied involvement in what happened on that fateful day. Fabricated claims otherwise persist – Big Lies suppressing hard truths.
Evidence Griffin presented showed “people in a position to know” said bin Laden died in December 2001 of natural causes – including then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani ISI intelligence, then US-installed Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and former FBI assistant counterterrorism head Dale Watson.
Griffin explained claims about “bin Laden’s continued existence (weren’t) backed up by evidence.” Perpetuating the myth about him remaining alive until US special forces allegedly killed him in May 2011 remains one of the many Big Lies of our time – The Times featuring it in its October 28 article, ignoring its own earlier confirmed report about his death.
It repeated a story gotten from unnamed US sources, claiming administration lawyers “worked in intense secrecy,” even keeping then Attorney General Eric Holder out of the loop.
Saying “(t)hey did their own research, wrote memos on highly secure laptops and traded drafts hand-delivered by (so-called) trusted couriers.” An unnamed US officials claimed “clear and ample authority for the use of lethal force under US and international law.”
No such authority exists to assassinate anyone extrajudicially for any reason. Doing so is murder. Bin Laden’s ghost was kept alive to pursue America’s war on terror.
So-called Enemy Number One was used to stoke fear to justify the unjustifiable – naked aggression against one country after another, continuing today, nearly 14 years after bin Laden’s real death. Obama did not kill him!!
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Sir John Chilcot has told Prime Minister David Cameron that the long-delayed, highly controversial report into the legality of the Iraq War will certainly be published in June or July 2016.
In an official letter to Cameron, Chilcot said the text of the report would be completed by April 18, 2016, at which point“national security” checking of the content will commence.
Chilcot said that given the sheer size of the document, which he says will run to more than 2 million words, the intervening time will be required to check the text before printing and publication. In his correspondence, Chilcot tells Cameron that the process of ‘national security’ is distinct from the process of declassification.
It concerns the preparation of material to avoid endangering Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – in effect, the right to life – and to ensure the nation’s security as a whole is not breached by anything made public.
Blair’s office released a statement claiming the former-Prime Minister had always been keen to see the report published as soon it “properly” could be. The statement claimed that delays over the report had not been due to the nature of past correspondences between himself and former-President Bush or because he had contested findings. “It is our understanding that other witnesses also received information very late in the process, so any suggestion that witnesses have been the cause of the delay is categorically incorrect and this has again been stated clearly and publicly by Sir John,” the statement reads.
Statement on the announcement of the Chilcot Inquiry’s timetable for publication of their report: https://t.co/SVBRSDeJVT
MPs and campaigners blasted the news of further delay to publication.
Former SNP leader Alex Salmond MP told RT: “The delay’s quite disgraceful. Let’s think of it from the perspective of the families of 179 British service men and women who died, who lost their lives in the conflict.
This is another 7 months, which means it will be 7 years. 7 years! Longer than the First World War between the start of this inquiry and its reporting and a full 13 years after the onset of the conflict.
“We really need an explanation and the families need an explanation of the reasons for the delay,” he added.
The Stop the War coalition, which organized a million-strong march against the war in 2003, blasted what they called the “never-ending farce of the Chilcot report.”
“News that the Chilcot report on the Iraq war will not come out until the middle of next year piles insult onto the injury already suffered by the Iraqi people, the families of those British servicemen and women killed in Iraq, and the millions who argued at the time that the war was wrong,” the coalition said in a statement.
In mid-October it was revealed that, contrary to his claims at the time, former-Prime Minister Tony Blair had committed the UK to joining the US invasion of Iraq a year before it began.
The memo was obtained by the Daily Mail as part of the batch of emails from the private server of former US State Secretary Hillary Clinton, which US courts have forced her to disclose.
Among the leaked papers is one written in March 2002 by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell to then-President George W. Bush, in which he said: “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary … He is convinced on two points: the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success.”
At the time Blair was quoted by the British media as saying: “This is a matter for considering all the options.”
“We’re not proposing military action at this point in time.”
Following the release of the memo, Blair appeared to apologize for some parts of his involvement in the Iraq War and concede that the 2003 invasion and occupation led to the rise of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). Reg Keys, whose son Tom was killed in Iraq in 2003, dismissed former Blair’s apology aired on CNN as an attempt to shift the blame and spin the long-overdue Chilcot Inquiry report into the war. He told the Telegraph he felt Blair’s apparent apology was a political move, and not a heartfelt one.
I feel that he’s obviously pre-empting the Iraq inquiry’s findings. It’s finger-pointing. He’s blaming intelligence chiefs for giving him the wrong intelligence. He’s not [apologizing] for toppling Saddam.
David Cameron has told Sir John Chilcot that he is “disappointed” report won’t be published until next summer pic.twitter.com/b1k3xZ6Q84
“What about [apologizing] for the unnecessary loss of life? The reason we went to war was weapons of mass destruction, not to topple Saddam,” Keys added. “I feel revulsion. This man [Blair] certainly got it wrong.” Despite widespread opposition to the Iraq War, Blair is not without his defenders. Michael Gapes MP, one of most hard-core Blair loyalists in the Labour Party, questioned whether the report should be published at all, tweeting “the hysterical Blair haters have decided already” and that “most journalists and commentators have made up their minds already so won’t bother to read it in any case.”
Why is John Kerry so eager to convene an emergency summit on Syria now when the war has been dragging on for four and a half years?
Is he worried that Russia’s air campaign is wiping out too many US-backed jihadis and sabotaging Washington’s plan to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad?
You bet, he is. No one who’s been following events in Syria for the last three weeks should have any doubt about what’s really going on. Russia has been methodically wiping out Washington’s mercenaries on the ground while recapturing large swathes of land that had been lost to the terrorists. That, in turn, has strengthened Assad’s position in Damascus and left the administration’s policy in tatters. And that’s why Kerry wants another meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pronto even though the two diplomats met less than a week ago. The Secretary of State is hoping to cobble together some kind of makeshift deal that will stop the killing and salvage what’s left of Uncle Sam’s threadbare Syrian project.
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Iran had been invited to the confab which will be held in Vienna on Thursday. The announcement is bound to be ferociously criticized on Capital Hill, but it just shows to what extent Russia is currently setting the agenda. It was Lavrov who insisted that Iran be invited, and it was Kerry who reluctantly capitulated. Moscow is now in the drivers seat.
And don’t be surprised if the summit produces some pretty shocking results too, like a dramatic 180 on Washington’s “Assad must go” demand. As Putin has pointed out many times before, Assad’s not going anywhere. He’s going to be a part of Syria’s “transitional governing body” when the Obama team finally agrees to the Geneva Communique which is the political track that will eventually end the fighting, restore security, and allow millions of refugees to return to their homes.
The reason the administration is going to agree to allow Assad to stay, is because if they don’t, the Russian Airforce is going to continue to blow US-backed mercenaries to smithereens. So, you see, Obama really has no choice in the matter. Putin has put a gun to his head and made him an offer he can’t refuse.
That doesn’t mean the war is going to be a cakewalk for Russia or its allies. It won’t be. In fact, there have already been some major setbacks, like the fact that ISIS just seized a critical section the Aleppo-Khanasser highway, cutting off the government’s supply-lines to Aleppo. This is a serious problem, but it is not a problem that can’t be overcome nor is it a problem that will effect the outcome of the war. It’s just one of the obstacles that has to be dealt with and surpassed. Taking a broader view, the outlook is much more encouraging for the Russian-led coalition which continues to cut off supply-lines, blow up ammo dumps and fuel depots, and rapidly eviscerate the ability of the enemy to wage war. So, while the war is certainly not a walk in the park, there’s no doubt about who’s going to win.
And that might explain why the US decided to bomb Aleppo’s main power plant last week plunging the entire city into darkness; because Obama wants to “rubblize” everything on his way out. Keep in mind, that the local water treatment plants require electrical power, so by blowing up the plant, Obama has condemned tens of thousands of civilians to cholera and other water-born diseases. Apparently, our hospital-nuking president isn’t bothered by such trivial matters as killing women and children. Now check this out from the Daily Star:
U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq and Syria carried out a large-scale attack on Syria’s Omar oil field as part of its mission to target ISIS’s ability to generate money, a coalition spokesman said Thursday.
Operations officer Maj. Michael Filanowski told journalists in Baghdad that airstrikes late Wednesday struck ISIS-controlled oil refineries, command and control centers and transportation nodes in the Omar oil field near the town of Deir el-Zour. Coalition spokesman Col. Steven Warren said the attack hit 26 targets, making it one of the largest set of strikes since launching the air campaign last year.
The refinery generates between $1.7 and $5.1 million per month for ISIS.
“It was very specific targets that would result in long-term incapacitation of their ability to sell oil, to get it out of the ground and transport it,” Filanowski said.
ISIS seized a number of oil refineries and other infrastructure in Iraq and Syria as it sought to generate revenue to build a self-sufficient state. (“US-led forces strike ISIS-controlled oil field in Syria“, Daily Star)
Isn’t it amazing how– after a year of combing the dessert looking for ISIS targets– the USAF finally figures out where the goddamn oil refineries are? No wonder the western media chose to ignore this story. One can only conclude that Obama never had any intention of cutting off ISIS’s main funding stream (oil sales). What he really wanted was for the terrorist group to flourish provided it helped Washington achieve its strategic goals. Putin even pointed this out in a recent interview. He said:
The mercenaries occupy the oil fields in Iraq and Syria. They start extracting the oil-and this oil is purchased by somebody. Where are the sanctions on the parties purchasing this oil?
Do you believe the US does not know who is buying it?
Is it not their allies that are buying the oil from ISIS?
Do you not think that US has the power to influence their allies? Or is the point that they don’t wish to influence them?
Putin was never taken in by the whole ISIS oil charade. He knew it was a farce from the get-go, ever since Financial Times published their thoroughly laughable article on the topic which claimed that ISIS had its own group of “headhunters” offering “competitive salaries” to engineers with the “requisite experience” and encouraged “prospective employees to apply to its human resources department.”
The ISIS “human resources department”?? Have you ever read anything more ridiculous in your life? (Read the whole story here.)
In an interview with NPR, FT fantasist Erika Solomon (who wrote the article) explained why the US could not bomb the oil fields or refineries. Here’s what she said:
What ISIS has done is managed to corner control of the extraction process, which is smart because they can’t get bombed there. It would cause a natural disaster. So they extract the oil, and then they immediately sell it to local traders – any average person who can buy a truck that they can fill with a tank of oil.
Well, that sure didn’t stop Maj. Michael Filanowski, now did it? He seems to have blown up those ISIS refineries without batting an eye, which just proves that Solomon’s “natural disaster” fairytale is pure bunkum.
But if it was all baloney, then why did the USAF decide to hit the targets now? What changed?
Here’s a clue from an article that popped up on RT just one day before the attacks:
“Russia’s airplanes cut off routes used by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) to deliver supplies to Syria from Iraq by bombing a bridge over the Euphrates River, the Russian General Staff said
The bridge over the Euphrates River near [the Syrian city of] Deir ez-Zor was a key point of the logistics chain [of IS]. Today Russian pilots carried out a surgical strike against the object,” the deputy chief of the General Staff of Russia, Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov, said on Thursday during a news briefing, adding that the terrorist group’s armament and ammunition delivery route had been cut off.
(“Russian Air Force cuts off ISIS supply lines by bombing bridge over Euphrates“, RT)
There it is: The Russians blow up a critical bridge over the Euphrates making oil transport impossible, and the next thing you know, BAM, the US goes into scorched earth-mode leveling everything in sight. Coincidence?
Not bloody likely. The whole incident suggests the mighty CIA is rolling up its pet project in Syria and headed for the exits. (It’s worth noting that ISIS has never been a self sustaining corporate franchise netting over a million bucks a day on oil receipts as western propaganda would have one believe. That’s all part of the public relations coverup used to conceal the fact that the Gulf allies and probably CIA black ops are funding these homicidal maniacs.)
In any event, the Russian intervention is forcing Washington to rethink its Syria policy. While Kerry is bending over backwards to end the fighting, Obama is busy tweaking the policy in a way that appeases his critics on the right without provoking a confrontation with Moscow. It’s a real tight-wire act, but the White House PR team thinks they can pull it off. Check this out from NBC News:
“Defense Secretary Ash Carter today revealed that the U.S. will openly begin “direct action on the ground” against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria.
In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee on Tuesday, Carter said “we won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL…or conducting such mission directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground.” (“Sec. Carter: U.S. to Begin ‘Direct Action on the Ground’ in Iraq, Syria“, NBC News)
This sounds a lot worse than it is. The truth is, Obama has no stomach for the type of escalation the hawks (like Hillary Clinton and John McCain ) are demanding. There aren’t going to be any “safe zones” or “no-fly zones” or any other provocations which would risk a bloody conflagration with Moscow. What Obama is looking for is the best face-saving strategy available that will allow him to retreat without incurring the wrath of the Washington warmongers. It’s a tall order, but Sec-Def Ash Carter has come up with a plan that might just do-the-trick. This is from The Hill:
Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Tuesday described new ways the U.S. military plans to increase pressure on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, after months of criticism that the administration is not doing enough to defeat the terrorist group.
“The changes we’re pursuing can be described by what I call the ‘three R’s’ — Raqqa, Ramadi and Raids,” Carter testified the Senate Armed Services Committee.
First, Carter said the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS plans to support moderate Syrian forces to go after Raqqa — the terrorist group’s stronghold and administration capital.
The secretary also said he hopes to pursue a new way of equipping the Syrian Arab Coalition, which consists of about a dozen groups.
“While the old approach was to train and equip completely new forces outside of Syria before sending them into the fight, the new approach is to work with vetted leaders of groups that are already fighting ISIL, and provide equipment and some training to them and support their operations with airpower,” he said.
He also said the coalition expects to intensify its air campaign with additional U.S. and coalition aircraft, and to target ISIS with a higher and heavier rate of strikes.
“This will include more strikes against ISIL high-value targets as our intelligence improves, and also its oil enterprise, which is a critical pillar of ISIL’s financial infrastructure,” Carter said, using a different acronym for ISIS.” (“Pentagon chief unveils new plan for ISIS fight“, The Hill)
See anything new here? It’s a big nothingburger, right?
They’re going to kill more “high-value targets”?
Big whoop. That’s always been the gameplan, hasn’t it? Of course, it has.
What this shows is that Obama is just running out the clock hoping he can keep this mess on the back-burner until he’s out of office and working out the terms of his first big book deal. The last thing he wants is to get embroiled in a spitting match with the Kremlin his final year in office.
Unfortunately, the problem Obama is going to encounter is that Putin can’t simply turn off the war machine with the flip of a switch. It took Moscow a long time to decide to intervene in Syria, just like it took a long time to marshal the forces that would be deployed, build the coalition and draft the battleplan. The Russians don’t take war lightly, so now that they’ve put the ball into motion they’re not going to stop until the job is done and the bulk of the terrorists have been exterminated. That means there’s not going to be a ceasefire in the immediate future. Putin needs to demonstrate that once Moscow commits its forces, it will persevere until it achieves victory. That victory could come in the form of “liberating Aleppo” and a subsequent sealing off of the Turkish-Syria border or he might have some other goal in mind. But it’s a matter of credibility as much as anything. If Putin pulls back, hesitates or shows even the slightest lack of resolve, Washington will see it as a sign of weakness and try to exploit it. So Putin has no choice but to see this thing through to the bitter end. At the very least, he needs to prove to Washington that when Russia gets involved, Russia wins.
According to American experts citing certain Syrian humanitarian groups, the Islamic State in recent days has achieved several significant successes in the South Aleppo province and has infiltrated and established control over several districts of the strategically important town of al Safira.
As a result of the offensive the ISIS was able to capture about 10 checkpoints on the strategically important highway from Hama via Salmiya, Inshriach and Hanser to Aleppo. This forced government forces to suspend its offensive on other fronts, especially in Aleppo, and to redeploy its forces to unblock the strategic highway to resume the logistical support for the Syrian army. Although ISIS successes are being exaggerated by the so-called “humanitarian analysts”, it is a fact that there is heavy fighting in the South Aleppo province.
In addition, about 1,500 Hezbollah fighters and about 2,000 Iranians from the IRGC are fighting right now near Aleppo. According to the information received, the government forces and the allies had unblocked the highway Hama-Aleppo and recapture al Safira.
However, the question arises as to why and how the Islamic State had got the ability to concentrate sizable fresh and well-armed forces in Aleppo province. The answer can be obtained from a brief analysis of the US actions in Syria and Iraq over the past 10 days.
It is already clear that the US commanders are sabotaging the advance of the Kurds in Raqqa.
The intensity of the pro-US coalition air force combat missions has been reduced substantially (by an order of magnitude).
Until now the U.S. regional command has not deployed its FAC ( forward air controller) teams and commandos into Kurds forward combat forces and with the Iraqi army. The number of the US military advisers is bitterly inadequate and, for all intents and purposes, their mission largely consists of containing Kurdish forces activity and playing political games.
Last week, information appeared about the growing number of cases of US-supplied weapons and ammunition being seized by the ISIS.
These factors combined with the complete lack of the Kurdish and Iraqi forces initiative in Anbar province allows the Islamic State to maneuver freely, transferring reinforcements from Iraq to Syria.
Today, Syria is the main strategically important front. ISIS’ existence directly depends on it. If smuggled oil exports through Syria to Turkey stop, ISIS will lose the foundation of combat potential, in both human and material terms.
According to independent military experts, the current United States course aims at containing Syrian government forces successes at any price. Pentagon believes that the failure of the Syrian army can trigger the transfer to Syria Russian land forces and the beginning of a protracted and costly ground operation.
When was the last time a politician came across like the lone voice of principle railing against the dangers of an imperial presidency? That’s what it looked in Spring 2011 when Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian running for the Republican presidential nomination, wrote candidly about the War Powers Resolution, the Patriot Act and mission creep after 9/11. The column was called “Enabling a Future American Dictator.” At times he sounded a lot like Bernie Sanders.
In the column Paul noted that the 60-day deadline for getting congressional approval of the current military action in Libya under the 1973 War Powers Resolution had passed without notice. Predictably, he chided President Obama for not seeking a congressional OK and wondered whether he ever would. Forget Paul’s party for a moment. Wasn’t he on to something?
The Constitution, specifically Article 1 Section 8, clearly states that the power to declare war rests with the legislative branch. The original idea was to prevent the president from exerting the powers of a king. But presidents have been manipulating and ignoring such constitutional limitations for more than a century. Given the expansive nature of the federal government, Paul warned that “it would be incredibly naïve to think a dictator could not or would not wrest power in this country” at some point in the future. A bit of negative extrapolation there, but still, many people across the political spectrum do worry that it could indeed happen here.
It’s the kind of argument you expect to hear from Sanders. Actually, the two lawmakers did sometimes join forces when Bernie was a Congressman. Later, the godfather of the Tea Party movement and the junior Senator from the People’s Republic of Vermont teamed up to propose military budget cuts and push for a more thorough audit of the Federal Reserve.
Were these just isolated moments of Left and Right collaboration? Or could a movement that attracts both progressives and libertarians actually develop?
Paul also pointed to the Defense Authorization bill. It “explicitly extends the president’s war powers to just about anybody,” he claimed. The problem — Section 1034, which asserted that the US is at war with the “associated forces” of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Bringing in civil liberties, Paul asked how hard it would be “for someone in the government to target a political enemy and connect them to al Qaeda, however tenuously, and have them declared an associated force?” It’s an argument that Left-leaning activists should find relevant.
His forecast was that even if we assume the people in charge at the moment are completely trustworthy – a major assumption – the future is far from certain. “Today’s best intentions create loopholes and opportunities for tomorrow’s tyrants,” Paul warned. Given the current crop of potential national leaders, it’s hard to disagree.
While a Texas Republican may not be the best messenger for a new alliance, Paul did have a following, based largely on his strict libertarianism and 2008 presidential run. Then the financial crisis seemed to spark something new: the potential for a convergence between progressives, liberals and traditional libertarians. In January 2011 Ralph Nader called the prospect of such an alliance the nation’s “most exciting new political dynamic.” Another element was generational change. Sparked by the excesses of elites and the wealthy few, a resistance movement fueled by youthful energy – an American Spring? – began to show the potential to catch fire and break down political boundaries. Among the issues that framed its agenda were intervention and military spending, individual freedom, and financial reform.
One of the unifying themes is the desire to limit, and whenever possible reverse the influence of centralized wealth and power. Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, has frequently expressed this perspective, forging alliances that cross party lines to challenge corporate secrecy and the powers of international financial institutions.
Much of Sanders’ early legislative success came through forging deals with ideological opposites. An amendment to bar spending in support of defense contractor mergers, for example, was pushed through with the aid of Chris Smith, a prominent opponent of abortion. John Kasich (now Ohio governor and GOP candidate), whose views on welfare, the minimum wage and foreign policy as a congressman could hardly be more divergent from Sanders’, helped him phase out risk insurance for foreign investments. And a “left-right coalition” he helped to create derailed the “fast track” legislation on international agreements pushed by Bill Clinton.
The impact of the strategy was clearly felt in May 2010 when Sanders’ campaign to bring transparency to the Federal Reserve resulted in a 96-0 Senate vote on his amendment to audit the Fed and conduct a General Accounting Office audit of possible conflicts of interest in loans to unknown banks.
Here is Sanders’ overall view in a nutshell: International financial groups protect the interests of speculators and banks at the expense of the poor and working people – not to mention the environment – behind a veil of secrecy. Meanwhile, governments have been reduced to the status of figureheads under international management, both major political parties kowtow to big money flaks, and media myopia fuels public ignorance. Many libertarians, even a good number of Tea Party people, agree.
But how do you mobilize and unite people across traditional cultural and political lines? A key may be found in sovereignty and nullification campaigns. Diverse as these efforts are, most rest on the proposition that the states and sovereign individuals created the national government. Therefore, they have the right to at least challenge the constitutionality of federal laws, and potentially even decline to enforce them. Though this may sound more conservative than not, liberals and leftists do also adopt such a stance at times.
The unifying idea goes something like this: In the face of oppression (however you define it) withdrawal of consent can make all the difference. When people refuse their cooperation, withhold their help, and maintain their position, they deny their opponent the support that oppressive, hierarchical systems need. Gene Sharp, author of Social Power and Political Freedom, once observed, “If they do this in sufficient numbers for long enough, that government or hierarchical system will no longer have power.”
Centuries back, the tactic was used when American colonists nullified laws imposed by the British. Since then states have used it to limit federal actions, from the Fugitive Slave Act to unpopular tariffs. Before 1800, support for nullification emerged in reaction to the Sedition Act, which prompted the Kentucky Resolve of 1798, written by Thomas Jefferson, and the almost identical Virginia Resolve penned by James Madison. In Section One of his version, Jefferson wrote:
Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force . . . .
That the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common Judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well as of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.
In plain English, this means that federal authority isn’t unlimited, and if it goes too far government actions need not be obeyed. In essence, Jefferson suggested that the federal government isn’t the “final judge” of its own powers, and therefore various states have a right to decide how to handle any federal overreach. Madison’s Virginia version declared that in the case of a deliberate and dangerous abuse of power, states not only had a right to object, they were “duty bound” to stop the “progress of the evil” and maintain their “authorities, rights and liberties.”
After Jefferson enacted a trade embargo as president in response to British maritime theft and the kidnapping of sailors, state legislatures nullified the law using his own words and arguments. On February 5, 1809, the Massachusetts legislature declared that the embargo was “not legally binding on the citizens of the state” and denounced it as “unjust, oppressive, and unconstitutional.” Eventually, every New England state, as well as Delaware, voted to nullify the embargo act.
Moral for Jefferson: Be careful what you resolve.
Two centuries later, in August 2010, the Missouri legislature used similar logic to reject the health care mandate in the Democrat’s health care reform, followed by a flood of legal challenges from state officials. In recent years, several states have also either passed or proposed legislation or constitutional amendments designed to nullify federal laws in the areas ranging from firearms to medical marijuana.
The Tea Party movement, set in motion in 2009 by widespread disapproval of the federal government’s bailout of financial institutions, initially swelled into a tidal wave of anti-big-government sentiment that helped the Republican Party regain control of the US House in 2010. Supporters said the movement marked a return to core values. Critics called it reactionary and possibly racist.
It is certainly funded in part by wealthy interests who see its angry members as tools to advance their own deregulation, limited government agenda. And yet, the Tea Party phenomenon is also a loose and relatively diverse association that includes fiscal conservatives, Christian fundamentalists, secular libertarians and more. A March 2010 poll estimated 37 percent support for its basic economic agenda, although that may have been its high water mark. The main take away is that it encompasses a variety of impulses, from orthodox libertarianism and neo-isolationism to populist anger directed at elites, deficit spending and perceived threats to US interests.
Some have written off the recent anti-federal government rebellion as a Republican ploy. But there have certainly been Left-wing crusades against federal abuse of power in the past, and liberal nullification campaigns to decriminalize marijuana and bring National Guard units home from wars overseas.
Will most Tea Party people join forces with progressives? Not likely. The main obstacle is several generations of cultural war, passionate and sometimes violent disagreement over racism, abortion, immigration, entitlements and climate change, among other things. In fact, progressives and Tea Party people can sometimes perceive different “realities.” Since 2008 many on one side have decided that Obama is a socialist, maybe even a Muslim Manchurian Candidate. On the other side, many say he is at best a sell out, and in some ways has doubled down on the mistakes and abuses of the previous administration. One group says climate change is a hoax or at least exaggerated, and the government should institute literacy tests for voting. The other sees ecological (or economic) catastrophe around the corner, thinks guns should be carefully controlled, and sometimes even argues that states ought to seize public resources as “trustees” of the commons.
At the same time, however, there’s enough common ground to attract people from across the conventional divide. Don’t both libertarians and progressives believe that the size and reach of the US military should be limited? Don’t both think that civil liberties are being eroded by executive orders and legislative overreach? Beyond that, they also agree, perhaps more than either has yet acknowledged, about the greed and dysfunction of big institutions, and the need for more transparency and oversight. In this regard, Sanders has pointed the way. At times libertarian voices are even bolder than progressive counterparts, especially those who say that the War on Drugs should end and most if not all drugs should be legalized. But Sanders is gradually embracing this campaign.
If that’s not convincing, ask yourself what could happen without some attempt to create a progressive-libertarian connection. Most libertarians, Tea Party members and others dissatisfied with the status quo will be actively wooed by conservative demagogues. Many will be sidetracked into grievance and resentment. Where else will they have to go? Still, it remains to be seen whether the issues on which there isn’t much common ground – and these should not be underestimated – will make it impossible to create or sustain some solidarity.
On the other hand, if a multi-issue alliance could bring people together across the usual ideological barriers around galvanizing issues, how about these: end corporate welfare, bring the troops home, new economic priorities, roll back repressive legislation, and full financial transparency.
Such a list is probably incomplete, and for some, may not go far enough. Fair enough. But it does potentially bridge some of the divisions that keep many people fighting among themselves while realigning conventional politics. In the long run, a Progressive-Libertarian movement probably wouldn’t last. But before it faded – if people overcame some traditional divisions, if the debate really changed and some new thinking took hold – wouldn’t the moment be exciting?
Greg Guma is the author of The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. This is adapted from his original radio broadcast on The Howie Rose Show, Friday, June 3, 2011, on WOMM (105.9-FM/LP – The Radiator) in Burlington.
In it, Oliver Stone and his collaborators focus on the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration.
The Film presents how many American lives were lost as well as the torture incidents that American soldiers were involved in.
As for the conspiracies involved, it also presents the personal motive of Bush was more of a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein rather than catching the terrorists who were guilty of the September 11 attacks in New York.
Added to that, it also tries to portray how the Bush administration attempted to manipulate the terror warnings to the Americans to fulfill their political motives.
The readers of my weekly Duty to Warn columns know that I often write about some of the concerns that I have regarding the once honorable medical profession that I called my own for 40 years.
Actually, my major concerns haven’t been solely about physicians, but about the for-profit systems that have arisen since I was a medical student. Most of the med school friends that I knew seemed to be serious about their desire to do good in the world. I sincerely believed that most of us took seriously the Hippocratic Oath (“first do no harm”) that we all swore to adhere to when we got our medical degrees.
I was naively grateful to Eli Lilly and Company when the company gave us reflex hammers, stethoscopes and a doctor’s bag during our second-year clinical rotations. I still have them and, although the rubbery parts are getting pretty brittle now, the chrome plating is still shiny.
The reputation of Lilly since the 1960s, however, has been increasingly grimy on the ethical inside but somehow still somewhat shiny when it comes to corporate profits.
Ever since 1989, there have been thousands of lawsuits (originating in every state of the union) that have been brought against Lilly just from its block buster (so-called “antidepressant” drug Prozac. Prozac received FDA approval for marketing in 1987 and it didn’t take long for surprised psychiatrists all over the world to start seeing dramatic increases in suicide attempts and suicidal thinking among the patients that they had naively recommended taking the new drug. One set of Prozac class action suits settled for $1.5 billion.
To mention another example of Lilly’s dangerous drugs, in 2007 Lilly settled a class action lawsuit with 18,000 drug-injured patients because it had misrepresented the serious (and sometimes lethal) adverse effects of its next block buster drug, the major tranquilizer (aka “antipsychotic” drug) Zyprexa. The suit cost them a half a billion dollars, which is actually chump change for Big Pharma corporations like Lilly. More Zyprexa civil and criminal lawsuits are yet to come over the obesity, diabetes and heart problems that are caused by the drug. Lilly never took either drug off the market.
I could go on for a long time, but it needs to be mentioned that currently there are hundreds, if not thousands, of lawsuits against Lilly because, in their product labeling, they mis-represented the incidence of what has come to be known as the Cymbalta Withdrawal Syndrome. Lilly claimed a 1% incidence of withdrawal symptoms whereas other studies found significant withdrawal symptoms in 40% – 50% of long-term Cymbalta users.
Beware of Salespersons Who Come to Your Clinic Bearing Gifts
I could go on and on with other data detailing Big Pharma’s malfeasance. Those three Lilly drugs mentioned were easy targets because a number of my patients had been harmed or hooked on them. But Lilly is not – sadly – atypical when it comes to lawsuits and legal damages. The large numbers mask the immensity of the suffering that isn’t outlined. I saw the damages first hand, but none of my patients ever found a lawyer who was willing to take their cases.
For most of my career, I am proud to say that I have been suspicious of drug reps that came bearing gifts. I did listen to them and also ate an occasional lobster and steak dinner while enduring a short lecture from some drug company-affiliated academic physician who had been paid thousands of dollars (on an all-expenses paid tour) just to give a brief talk about a specific disorder or drug. It wasn’t hard to figure out what was the real message.
These same drug reps would often show up at my clinic, “generously” bringing free pens, pizzas and post-it notes. Before they left, they would stock the drug sample room with colorful pills in little boxes that were to be given out free to my unaware (and often naively grateful) patients, thus saving them a little money at the start of their “treatment”, but with the high likelihood of their becoming dependent on the new, very expensive and potentially addictive drug, which would eventually cost her or her insurance company a ton of money.
Little did I realize how cunning were the intentions of the pseudo-magnanimous Eli Lilly and Company (and all the other Big Pharma companies) that were obviously, in retrospect, trying to buy my loyalty so early in my career.
Because I spent the last decade of my career providing holistic, non-drug, mental health care to patients (who sometimes identified themselves as “psychiatric survivors”), I became increasingly aware of the dark side of the psycho-pharmaceutical industry.
In taking careful, time-consuming histories from my patients (who knew they were being sickened by their drugs), I learned that most of what had been previously diagnosed as a permanent “chronic mental illness” (of unknown cause but still “needing life-long medication”) was in fact just a temporary affliction that needed good counseling and a brain-healthy diet and not brain-altering, potentially addicting medications.
I also learned that much of what had been wrongly diagnosed as a new mental illness diagnosis, a “worsening” or “relapse” after psychotropic drugs had been prematurely prescribed or whose dosing had suddenly changed were in fact adverse effects of the unnecessary drugs that had been prescribed in a trial-and-error fashion, in too large a dose, for too long a duration, in unapproved, untested combinations or causing a dangerous drug-withdrawal syndrome.
Rather than suffering from mental illnesses “of unknown cause: virtually every one of my patients were actually suffering from identifiable emotional stresses “of known cause” (and therefore preventable and more easily treatable).
My patients were actually undiagnosed victims of psychological trauma in childhood or adolescence, domestic abuse or the military, so I did a lot of teaching about the reality of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and how easy it is for health caregivers to make erroneous diagnoses of “mental illnesses of unknown etiology” if not enough time is taken in the initial interview. I also taught my patients and their concerned families about the physiology of the brain, the mechanisms of action of the various drugs and the molecular structures of the drugs that were sickening them.
But the most time-consuming and difficult part of my practice was the process of helping them slowly taper down and hopefully eventually get off of their offending brain-altering medications. Success at drug withdrawal is difficult to predict because psychiatric drug-afflicted patients may have been on their medications for years or decades, in bewildering numbers of cocktail combinations (none FDA-approved or even tested for safety in the rat labs), and at various, potentially brain-damaging dosages. And most of my patients had become dependent/addicted to the offending drugs, so adverse withdrawal effects were often confusing but very common.
My purpose here is not to try to outline the multitude of ways that patients can be helped to get off of their psych drugs, because each case was entirely different from one another and therefore each case had to be individualized. Any attempt to generalize getting through drug withdrawal syndromes is impossible, because there are so many variables that have to be evaluated.
Among the many variables that need to be considered are age, gender, intrauterine (maternal) drug, alcohol or vaccine exposures, breast-feeding (or not), infant or childhood vaccine-induced neurological damage, history of family-rearing traumas that would include neglect or sexual, physical, emotional and spiritual traumas, physical health, prior and current drug use (illicit and prescription), past or current nutritional deficiencies, past or present toxic food ingestion, exposure to environmental toxins (pollutants in air, water, soil or food), history of head trauma, history of adolescent vaccine-induced brain damage, etc.
Therefore it is impossible to describe how any given psychotropic drug-wounded, possibly addicted and/or mis-diagnosed psychiatric patient can be helped to reverse the damage, but I do feel it is my duty to warn as many people as I can so that they can become aware that there are alternatives to psychotropic drugs or electroshock.
In summary, the major themes that I have dealt with in some of my columns have included: 1) the known dangers of the synthetic drugs that are commonly prescribed for often temporary (not permanent) emotional problems; 2) the serious, often life-threatening withdrawal syndromes that can result when these drugs are stopped or tapered down (thus indicating that the drugs were addictive); 3) information about brain nutrient therapy for brain-malnourished folks who may actually be neurologically-impaired and not simply mentally-impaired; 4) safer, non-toxic, non-drug alternative approaches to mental ill health; 5) information about the reality of combat and non-combat-induced psychological traumas (PTSD) as causative factors in mental ill health; and 6) the large variety of aspects of PTSD that have been mis-diagnosed as “mental illnesses of unknown origin”.
My experience dealing with psychiatric survivors is rather unique. My writings were informed by my clinical experience at a mental institution full of drugged-up patients and as an independent holistic health care practitioner with over a thousand patients who had mental ill health issues.
I’m also just one of a number of black-listed whistle-blowers world-wide who have been “crying in the wilderness”, with no money from Big Pharma sugar daddies who so arrange the mainstream media appearances of a host of well-paid, pro-drug, academic psychiatrists. There are no industry lobbyists or corporations that are interested in helping us whistle-blowers to refute – with good science to back up the message – the propaganda coming from the mega-corporations that are in the drug game primarily for their next quarter’s profit report and shareholder value, not to mention the reputation of their highly paid lobbyists, their ad agencies, their spokespersons and their spin doctors.
American corporations have no legally enforceable obligation to work for the benefit of the patients who will be taking sub-lethal doses of their potentially very toxic products every day for the rest of their lives. And American vaccine makers are legally immune from prosecution for injury or death from their potentially neurotoxic vaccines; and brain damage from Big Pharma’s psych drugs are hard to prove in court, especially with the power of the company’s million dollar legal teams.
“The further a society (or an industry?) drifts from the truth, the more it will hatethose that speak it.”
As mentioned above, I took the Hippocratic Oath the day I received my medical degree, as did the honorable psychiatrist/authors Peter Breggin, Loren Mosher, Joseph Glenmullen, David Healy, Grace Jackson and any number of other courageous and altruistic whistle-blowing physicians who have regarded it as their sacred duty to warn unsuspecting others about the hidden dangers of synthetic prescription drugs that are contaminating the brains and bodies of hundreds of millions of unsuspecting humans. Courageous psychiatrists like those mentioned above also took their oath seriously, even though they were all risking the wrath of their employers and many of the members of their own profession. Each of these psychiatrists had their careers threatened for rocking the boat. It seemed that none of their good deeds went unpunished.
George Orwell understood the whistleblower’s dilemma well when he said: “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”And that is where the concept of cognitive dissonance comes in, being willfully blind or ignorant when being confronted by new truths.
Considering the authors mentioned above and Orwell’s profound truth, I have been in good company.
DISCLAIMER: Readers who are interested in reducing their psych drug use should consult their prescribing physician and not suddenly stop them. Stopping drugs suddenly can be more dangerous than starting them. They should consult a physician knowledgeable in neuroscience, brain nutrition and with experience in helping people safely discontinue psychiatric medications.
For elaboration of some of the statements above, please search my video interviews on YouTube at: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=YouTube+Gary+Kohls or read some of my pertinent past columns at the Duluth Reader website at: (http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn).
Israel’s war on Palestine is a clear example of extrajudicial brutality, trampling on fundamental human rights, attacking defenseless people unaccountably, getting away with mass murder and other atrocities.
Under international law, hospitals are safe zones, protected spaces, off limits for military and police attacks and invasions.
The 19th century Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick (incorporated into the 1949 Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols) mandates caring for them along with medical personnel and chaplains, without any distinction as to nationality.
Israel systematically breaches all international laws with impunity, operating like America, observing its own rules alone, no matter how lawless.
Hospitals are fair game for assaults and invasions. One or more US warplanes bombing the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Kunduz, Afghanistan medical facility weeks earlier, turning much of it to rubble, killing and injuring medical staff and patients is Exhibit A.
Heavily armed Israeli soldiers and undercover agents storm Palestinian hospitals often – endangering staff, terrorizing and arresting patients, seizing records for names of others to abduct.
Human rights workers denounce the practice. So does Palestinian Health Minister Dr. Jawad Awwad, explaining “(i)nternational law prohibits attacking hospitals and abducting patients. It also calls for enabling medical crews to act freely and safely, to perform their humanitarian mission.”
Jerusalem’s Al-Makassed Islamic Charitable Hospital is a frequent target, the latest incursion coming on Wednesday after a Tuesday assault.
Each time, heavily armed soldiers surrounded the hospital, blocking anyone from entering or exiting, then storming the facility – where they don’t belong for any reason.
Hospital head Dr. Rafiq al-Husseini said staff were ordered to hand over patients’ records, including reasons for admittance. Israel wants information on inpatients and other released. Frequent arrests follow, including abducting the sick and wounded from hospital beds, a gross international law violation.
Husseini said “(w)e have no legal responsibility to inform the occupation army and the police about anything we do in this charitable hospital. Our medical teams are here to help the patients, the wounded, and any person who needs our services.”
“The Israeli military has invaded our hospital two days in a row. Yesterday they even interrogated one of our doctors at a police station in Jabal al-Mokabber in Jerusalem. Today they invaded the hospital again and confiscated a computer that runs our surveillance system.”
The facility is a frequent Israeli military target, Husseini explained. Repeated violations constitute a grave breach of international law, he stressed. His call for international community help won’t be answered.
He expects continued incursions, along with threats and intimidation of medical staff and patients. Names of emergency care unit doctors and nurses were collected. Expect grueling interrogations to follow.
An earlier October incident involved Israeli undercover agents invading the Nablus area Specialized Arab Hospital. Medical director Samir al-Khayyat said they were disguised as Palestinians accompanying a patient.
They kidnapped Karam al-Masri from his bed at gunpoint. They disabled most, but not all security cameras. Video footage of their assault was posted online, showing about a dozen agents intruding through various hospital areas, some holding handguns.
Masri was being treated for workplace related injuries. Israel issued a gag order, concealing information about him, preventing any leaking out from being revealed.
Atrocities committed by its security forces continue daily. Palestinian deaths, injuries and arrests keep mounting. Unaccountable brutality is longstanding Israeli practice.
On Wednesday alone, over 70 Palestinians were kidnapped, including university students and children. Since October 1, eight Israelis died so far – only two from stabbing attacks, destroying the myth about knife-wielding Arab assailants, the same phony excuse Israeli authorities give every time as justification for murdering at least 65 Palestinians in cold blood over the past four weeks, more than two daily on average.
Occasional video evidence destroys their claims, revealing willful security force assassinations of unarmed youths, children and women.
The struggle for Palestinian liberation continues, courageous youths in the vanguard, risking death for freedom.
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 Russian Defense Ministry has urged NATO and Saudi Arabia to explain accusations that Russian airstrikes had allegedly targeted hospitals in Syria, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Tuesday.
“We have summoned the US, UK, French, German, Italian, Saudi Arabian, Turkish and NATO military attaches today asked to give a formal explanation of these statements or to refute them. This especially concerns a number of outrageous allegations in the English-speaking media about alleged airstrikes on hospitals,” Antonov said.
According to him, information attacks on the Russian Aerospace Forces’ actions in Syria have intensified in a number of Western media outlets.
“We are being accused not only of launching airstrikes on ‘moderate opposition’, but also on civilian targets like hospitals, as well as mosques and schools. As a result, civilians are allegedly killed, according to Western media reports,” Antonov added.
#Antonov: We’re accused of performing strikes at objects like hospitals, mosques and schools. As by Western media civilians are being killed
He expressed regret that “some officials and politicians of a number of foreign states make similar statements [on civilian deaths in Russian airstrikes in Syria].”
Antonov cited statements made by US State Secretary John Kerry, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon and French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian as examples.The Russian Defense Ministry is “closely monitoring and analyzing these statements,” he added. According to him, Russia is bringing Russian and international communities to the notice about the Russian aviation’s actions in Syria on a daily basis.
“If our partners have some additional information, we have long called on them to share it with us.”
He added that if no evidence on civilian deaths in Russian airstrikes in Syria was provided in a few days, Moscow would come to a conclusion that the claims were part of the information warfare against Russia.
“But if there is no evidence [of civilian casualties in Syria] or official refutal, we will consider that these anti-Russian media hoaxes are part of the information war against Russia.”
#Antonov: If there is no evidence or official refutation, we would estimate this stovepiping as a part of information warfare against Russia
“In every case when the information is confirmed about destroyed hospitals, mosques and schools, as well as the deaths of civilians as a result of the Russian Air Force’s actions we will conduct a thorough investigation, of which Western media… will be informed.”
China and Russia are still behind the U.S. militarily. But they are both showing surprising breakthroughs that – sometime down the road in the future – could threaten U.S. hegemony.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Wednesday warned Russia and China are quickly closing the military technology gap with the U.S. as inconsistent military budgets and slower innovation threaten America’s lead in the military world.
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“It’s evident that nations like Russia and China have been pursuing military modernization programs to close the technology gap with the United States,” he continued. “They’re developing platforms designed to thwart our traditional advantages of power projection and freedom of movement. They’re developing and fielding new and advanced aircraft and ballistic, cruise, anti-ship and anti-air missiles that are longer-range and more accurate.”
The generals say aren’t helpful and don’t even want
Redundant personnel, programs and systems which don’t increase our war-fighting capacity
Equipment which is built and then immediately mothballed before it is ever used
Money is being thrown away on ridiculous things like a Homeland Security seminar called “Did Jesus Die for Klingons Too?” and mansions and personal chefs for generals
Indeed – as many lottery winners and star athletes will tell you – it’s easy to piss away even huge sums of money over a couple of years’ time without discipline.
Well, here’s some indication: $8.5 trillion dollars in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 … has never been accounted for.
2. Fighting the Wrong Wars. A closely-related issue is that the war-fighting assets are being squandered, spread thin and distracted by fighting wars which decrease our national security.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the most expensive in U.S. history, costing between between $4 trillion and $6 trillion dollars.
And we spent additional boatloads of money carrying out regime change in Libya, Syria and elsewhere.
Indeed, the majority of our defense spending is – literally – making us less secure because we’re spending money to fight the wrong wars:
We’re overthrowing the moderates who help insure stability
We’re arming and supporting brutal dictators … which is one of the main reasons that terrorists want to attack the U.S.
We’ve fought a series of wars for petrochemicals, instead of security
We expend huge sums of money on mass surveillance … but top security experts agree that mass surveillance makes us MOREvulnerable to terrorists (we’re targeting the wrong guys)
3. Never-Ending War Destroys the Economy. We’re in the longest continuous period of war in U.S. history. The Afghanistan War has been going on for 14 years … as long as the Civil War (4 years,), WW1 (4 years) and WW2 (6 years) COMBINED.
Wars which drag on are horrible for our economy. A weak economy – in turn – makes it more difficult to sustain a leadership role in defense in the long-run.
And Americans are sick and tired of war. If our national security was actually threatened, it might be hard for the government to rouse our commitment and motivation.
4. More Bang for the Buck. China has the world’s largest economy when measured by “purchasing power parity” … meaning how much Chinese can buy in their their local currency in their local economy. And see this.
Therefore, China can buy locally-produced military parts and services morecheaply than the U.S. can.
The lowest-paid U.S. soldiers earn about $18,000 a year. In comparison, in 2009, an equivalent Chinese soldier was paid about a ninth as much. In other words, in 2009, you could hire about nine Chinese soldiers for the cost of one U.S. soldier.
Even that figure doesn’t account for health care and veterans’ benefits. These are much higher in the U.S. than in China, though precise figures are hard to obtain. This is due to higher U.S. prices for health care, to higher prices in general, and because the U.S. is more generous than China in terms of what it pays its soldiers. Salaries and benefits, combined, account for a significant percentage of military expenditure.
But labor costs aren’t the only thing that is cheaper in China. Notice that China’s gross domestic product at market exchange rates is only two-thirds of its GDP at purchasing power parity. This means that, as a developing country, China simply pays lower prices for a lot of things. Some military inputs — oil, for example, or copper — will be bought on world markets, and PPP won’t matter. For others, like complicated machinery, costs are pretty similar. But other things — food or domestically manufactured products — will be much cheaper for the U.S.’s developing rivals than for the U.S.
Those who follow global security issues have known about this issue for a long time. But somehow, this fact hasn’t penetrated the consciousness of pundits or made its way into pretty, tweet-able graphs.
5. Theft. The U.S. Naval Institute, Fiscal Times and others document that the Chinese have greatly accelerated their weapons development timeline by spying on the West and shamelessly copying our military inventions and designs.
If the NSA and other spying agencies had used their resources to stop foreign governments from stealing our crown jewels – instead of using them to gain petty advantages for a handful of knuckleheads – we’d be a lot better off today.
6. Geography. Russia is almost twice the size of the U.S. Russia and China together are so massive – forming such a giant swath of land-based territory, so much closer to the Middle East than America is – that it gives their militaries an advantage.
The U.S., situated in the peaceful, relatively unpopulated Western Hemisphere, is very far away from the location of any foreseeable conflict. China isn’t going to invade Colorado (sorry, “Red Dawn” fans!), but it might invade Taiwan or India. Simply getting our forces to the other side of the world would require enormous up-front expenditures.
The National Interest notes:
“Defeating China in these scenarios [Taiwan and South China Sea] could nonetheless be difficult and costly for the United States’ primarily as a result of the geographic advantages that China enjoys, as well as specific systems capabilities.”
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A recent RAND report, “The US China Military Scorecard,” … argues that China is catching up to the U.S., is becoming more assertive and confident, and has geography on its side.
And Russia’s proximity to Ukraine, the Baltics and other neighboring countries gives it a huge advantage.
Postscript: Sadly, because we’ve squandered our resources, war games show that the U.S. is no longer invincible.
Sitting in Committee room G in the Houses of Parliament on 23rd October from 6 to 7 .30 pm was a sobering affair. While hosted by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues and chaired by Lord Alderdice, the event’s speaker was Professor Padraig O’Malley who had recently published The Two State Delusion which the New York Times described as both “impressive and frustrating”. It is indeed impressive in its observations.
Clear that Israel’s occupation is brutal, O’Malley recounted that according to various sources “Israel has cut down more than 800,000 Palestinian olive trees since 1967”, which, O’Malley observes, is “the equivalent of razing all of the 24,000 trees in New York City’s Central Park 33 times.”
Israel has cut down many succeeding generations of Palestinians in limited but full bloom of their occupied lives and others with their tiny feet already preoccupied with death and suffering.
The topic for discussion was the possibility of a two state solution, though probably not a possibility; or, an Israeli controlled one state solution though probably not a possibility either. The so-called; peace process between two ‘warring’ neighbours (one side with many stones, the other with one of the most sophisticated militaries in the 21st century its weapons routinely tested on the Palestinian population) namely Israel-Palestine, has been in ill health since 1948 and is now in a deep coma.
The underwhelming analysis of the speaker was that the “tit-for tat” invidious deeds perpetrated by both sides lately were unhelpful and the mental health of both populations, particularly Israel was deteriorating. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the rise, the historical anxiety of the Israeli population not for us to comprehend.
The West Bank is ailing, Gaza completely reliant on the UN and NGOs for aid has effectively no income and the life line of tunnels now flooded by the unenlightened Egyptian regime means this open air prison is in a desperate state. Pledges of monies from various donors have not materialised and it would take a generation to rebuild Gaza even if the pledges were expedited.
Hamas democratically elected would never be recognised by Israel and now that Isis has allegedly infiltrated the Gaza Strip another invasion of Gaza by Israel’s IDF is on the cards which would reduce Gaza to rubble: rubble on top of rubble then. One was reminded of the great Roman historian Tacitus’ statement when describing the Roman Empire “Brigands of the world, they create desolation and call it peace.” The desolation of the Gaza Strip is almost total, the deteriorating mental health of both citizens in Gaza and the West Bank negatively shaped by the Israeli occupation because of their morphology of violence.
As evidenced by the World Health organization (WHO) Report of 22 March to 1 April 2015: “scientific literature is unequivocal on the negative effects of adversity (e.g. trauma, loss, severe life stressors) on mental health and mental disorder (Dohrenwend, B.P. 1998; Kessler et al. 2010). The facets of the occupation … involve a sense of unpredictability and uncontrollability in daily life that have been shown to have a detrimental impact on mental health (Gallagher et al. 2014). Palestinians report experience of chronic humiliation during the occupation (Giacaman et al. 2007), with humiliation being shown to be associated with health (Giacaman et al. 2007) and mental health complaints (Kendleret al. 2003).” Professor O’Malley reiterated this point of the intolerable and continuing humiliation as a matter of policy by Israel was clearly associated with mental health issues of many Palestinians, along with I would add with co-morbid physical complaints.
A considerable Hamas presence in the West Bank would not be tolerated by Israel we were told because if missiles were to find a snug bunker there, the Israeli defence system “Iron Dome” would be ineffective in intercepting missiles launched from such short range. I was fast developing PTSD symptoms listening to this stuff. Facts on the ground (meaning illegal settlement building) were, though I repeat illegal in occupied Palestine, to stay and the corpus-separatum that is Jerusalem would remain Israel’s capital even though the international community has its embassies and diplomatic corps in Tel Aviv the only internationally recognised capital of Israel. Hamas does have a small presence in the West Bank and seeks, according to credible sources, to aid West Bank inhabitants with medical supplies and other scarce resources.
Leadership on both sides has been reduced to (a requisite for national tempers and international consumption and condemnation) name calling, and politicking, on one beleaguered side, by the autocratic Abbas whose presidential mandate long expired and on the illegal occupying side the land-grabbing Netanyahu. The difference between the two is, one has subjugated and expanded the Jewish state at the cost of incalculable human suffering and loss, the other has been complicit in overseeing the dwindling territory of historical Palestine, human rights abuses and the complete loss of faith in the Palestinian Authority (PA) by the people and particularly the young of the West Bank.
The name professor O’Malley cited as a possible future Palestinian leader is the influential Marwan Barghouti. Marwan Hasib Ibrahim Barghouti the prominent Palestinian political figure, recognised by many as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela was controversially convicted and imprisoned for murder by an Israeli court having been regarded as the leader behind the first and second intifada after becoming disillusioned with the now mythological peace process. He was arrested by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in 2002 in Ramallah. In truth Barghouti would find himself between a rock and a hard place if he were ever allowed to leave prison, when according to the NYT he told Al-Monitor that “if the two-state solution fails, the substitute will not be a bi-national one-state solution, but a persistent conflict that extends based on an existential crisis – one that does not know any middle ground.”
Indeed O’Malley postulated that with the Israeli created “facts on the ground” it would probably take a regional war drawing the super powers in to direct confrontation that would, could, bring both sides to their senses and create conditions for a lasting peace. Lord Alderdice sadly suggested the geo-political conflict had begun in 2014. This can only worsen an already precarious existence for Palestinians. We were all aware that for the failed states, such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, the implosion was underway and a sea of human suffering was arriving on the shores of Europe if they were able to make such a journey fraught with numerous dangers.
So Let me be clear here, at least are facts from history not Israeli manipulated facts-on the ground. The 1948 Nakba saw the Israeli illegal land-grab where over 400 villages were overrun or disembowelled and 85% of the Palestinian population an estimated 750,000 became refugees as the establishment of an “Israeli homeland” later to become the declared Jewish (apartheid) State was procured by violence that continues to this day.
Jerusalem which according to the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine “was [and remains] a corpus separatum (separated body)” would because of its holy sites come under UN General Assembly Resolution 181 providing in part that “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem … shall come into existence in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the armed forces of the mandatory Power has been completed but in any case not later than 1 October 1948″. This failed due to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Resolution 194 was to establish a “Conciliation Commission” to be inclusive of Resolution 181. This failed. Further elaborations were to come but an Israeli fait accompli was to seal Palestinians’ fate when Ben-Gurion’s “Jewish Jerusalem” was to be seen as inseparable from the now State of Israel and corpus separatum untenable along with Resolution 181. Israel had shown its clenched fist and was not to extend with any sincerity a hand of peace to the Palestinians then or now.
Because of the above and international community connivance and negligence, Palestinians have endured decades of persecution and an illegal occupation that has seen (to bring us up to date) during the right wing tenure of Netanyahu Benjamin an increase of illegal settlements numbering in the region of 100,000. The religiously fanatical, mostly armed occupants, routinely harass or murder their unsettled, upturned, Caterpillar bulldozed Palestinian neighbours and are encouraged to-do so by the right wing religiously fanatical Israelis.
One state or two who knows? But we of conscience must continue in our protestations over the brutal treatment of Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.
We must in observing the truth recognise that we also stand in protective governance of our own senses and the moral, ethical, lawful actions that inform the world of the presence of justice, if only in our hearts and minds so by this virtue and in humility speak for those muted by horrific violence and persecution. A violent history as that of Israel cannot be consigned as past, as these unjust antecedents fester and metastasize into a nexus newly formed brigands. Willing to be obviated of criminality and expiated from sin whilst perpetrating some of the worst crimes against a defenceless people is not to be tolerated.
I finish with a quote by Howard Zinn from A peoples History of the United States 1492-present: “I don’t want to invent victories for peoples movement. But to think history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat.”
Clive Hambidge is Human Development Director at Facilitate Global. Clive can be contacted by email: [email protected]
“All of the available evidence points to Australian officials having committed a transnational crime by, in effect, directing a people-smuggling operation, paying a boat crew and then instructing them on exactly what to do and where to land in Indonesia.” – Anna Shea, refugee researcher at Amnesty International, Oct 28, 2015
It surfaced back in June as a nasty reminder about how Canberra’s officials have been disposed to the issue known as the “refugee problem”. It came in the form of a refusal on the part of then Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, to rule out a policy whereby people smugglers would be paid to “turn back boats”. In his own typically chosen words, he was determined that such vessels be turned back “by hook or by crook”. Anything, in other words, would go.
Nothing can get away from the fact that markets to move people find form when regulations restricting movement exist. As borders tighten, the market for people smugglers improves. A huge industry, in fact, has grown up around the premise. The paradox of such a market is that each tougher regulation, each razor fence, and each restriction, is met by new options, new routes, and new promises of plenty. Call those who traffic or facilitate the movement of migrants people smugglers or traffickers – they are, in all senses of the term, fulfilling an entrepreneurial wish at the behest of a broader desire.
Breaking the business model, as the Canberra political establishment terms it, has been central to its approach to turning back asylum seeker boats, and generally dissuading individuals from arriving in Australia by sea. Penalties for such facilitators are repeatedly promised, and the Australian court system has found prosecuting those in the lower rungs of the system. (The big fish, of course, never get caught.)
The general approach behind pushing back such vessels, however, is not only questionable in its rationale. It has proven to be fundamentally discredited in practice. The refugee industry seems to corrupt all who engage it, and not even sanctimonious officers charged with the cause of protecting borders are exempt. Australian tax payers, it would seem, are also footing the bill for the people smugglers. The consequence of this is not to break any business model so much as to enhance it.
This grotesque realisation has been given credibility by Amnesty International, whose latest examination suggests that Australia’s “maritime border control operations now resemble a lawless venture with evidence of criminal activity, pay-offs to boat crews and abusive treatment of women, men and children seeking asylum.”[1]
By hook or by crook is one of those grizzly confirmations.[2] In May 2015, Australian officials engaged in the highly secretive Operation Sovereign Borders, paid six crew who had been responsible for taking 65 people from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar seeking asylum in New Zealand. The boat had been intercepted both on May 17 and May 22, the first time to issue the standard government line that the passengers could never be processed on Australian soil; the second to facilitate relocation, during which time the passenger were detained.
On May 31, the transactions took place. The amount that was paid amounted to $US32,000 to change course and direct them to Indonesia instead. Indonesian authorities, who eventually apprehended the smugglers in question, confirmed the amount.
Witness testimonies and video footage suggest that Australian officials effectively placed asylum seekers in danger by removing them from the vessel and placing them on boats with insufficient fuel. The original carrying vessel, contrary to Australian reports, was not in distress. (Remember: Operation Sovereign Borders, so goes the official line, is ostensibly in place to save lives.)
Furthermore, the evidence suggests that those same officials offered advice tantamount to running the transfer operation, providing the smuggling crew with instructions on getting to Rote Island in Indonesia with a complement of landing sites marked on rudimentary maps.
In July 2015, another incident of possible payment to people smugglers by Australian officials took place. This incident is even more dire given its virtual absence from media coverage. Amnesty International was told by the passengers that the boat was intercepted by the Australian Navy and Border Force on July 25 and placed on a new vessel on August 1.
The report draws attention to an assortment of internationals instruments those enforcing Operation Sovereign Borders have breached. The most obvious ones stem from the Refugee Convention, notably in terms of the right to have claims to asylum processed, irrespective of the mode of arrival, and the salient principle of non-refoulement.
There are, however, two other documents that have been brazenly ignored. These are the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which outlines signatory obligations to cooperate in preventing and combating transnational organised crime, and the Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air.
In the Smuggling Protocol, signatories undertake to criminalise the smuggling of migrants. The action of the Australian authorities certainly comes within the definition of smuggling, deemed “the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a State Party of which the person is not a national or permanent resident.” The smuggling crew members certainly attest to that, with their reward of $32,000.
The business of refugees is business. Human rights tend to be unnecessary intrusions, distinguishing living subjects from the business model people smugglers and Australian policy makers have seemingly nurtured. This “evil trade”, as Abbott liked to call it, continues to reap rich rewards.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
The end of the Cold War was welcomed as a new era of peace and security in which swords would be transformed into plows, former enemies into friends, and the world would witness a new dawn of universal love, peace and happiness.
Of course, none of that happened. What happened is that the Anglo-Zionist Empire convinced itself that it had “won the Cold War” and that it now was in charge. Of the entire planet, no less. And why not? It had built anywhere between 700 to 1000 military bases (depending on your definition of “base”) worldwide and it had split up the entire globe into several areas of exclusive responsibility named “commands”. The last time any power had mustered the megalomania needed to distribute various parts of the planet to to different commands was the Papacy in 1494 with its (in)famous “Treaty of Tordesillas”.
And to make that point abundantly clear, the Empire decided to make an example and unleashed its power against tiny Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia, a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement was viciously attacked and dismembered, creating an immense wave of refugees, mostly Serbs, which the democratic and civilized world chose to ignore. Furthermore, the Empire unleashed yet another war, this time in Russia, which pitched the semi-comatose Eltsin regime against what would later become a key part of al-Qaeda, ISIS and Daesh: the Wahabis in Chechnia. Again, many hundreds of thousands of “invisible refugees” resulted from that war too, but they were also largely ignored by the democratic and civilized world, especially the ethnic Russians. It took Russia a full decade to finally crush this Wahabi-Takfiri insurgency but, eventually, Russia prevailed. And by that time, the AngloZionists had turned their attention elsewhere: the US and Israeli “deep states” jointly planned and executed the 9/11 false flag operation which gave them the perfect excuse to declare a “global war on terror” which basically gave the AngloZionists a worldwide “license to kill” à la 007, except that in this case the target was not a person, but entire countries.
We all know what followed: Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines, Somalia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Mali, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, the Ukraine – everywhere the US was at war, whether officially or covertly. The spectrum ranged from an (attempted) complete invasion of a country (Afghanistan) to the support of various terrorist groups (Iran, Syria) to the full financing and management of a Nazi regime (the Ukraine). The US also gave full support to the Wahabis in their long crusade against the Shia (KSA, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Iran). What all these wars had in common is that they were all completely illegal – the US and any ad hoc “coalition of the willing” became an acceptable substitute for the UN Security Council.
Here again it is important to remind everybody – especially those Muslims who rejoiced at the bombing of the Serbs – that this all began with the completely illegal destruction of Yugoslavia followed by an even more illegal bombing of Serbia.
Of course, the Empire also suffered from a few humiliating defeats: in 2006 Hezbollah inflicted on Israel what might well be one of the most humiliating military defeats in modern history while in 2008 a tiny force of truly heroic Ossetian fighters backed by a comparatively small Russian military contingent (only a small part of the Russian military was involved) made mincemeat of the the US-trained and US-funded Georgian military: the war was over in 4 days. Still, by and large, the first decade of the 21st century saw a triumph of the law of the jungle over international law and a full vindication of the age old principle of “might makes right”.
Logically, these were also the years when the US diplomacy basically ceased to exist. The sole function of US diplomats remained the delivery of ultimatums “comply or else…” and the Empire simply stopped negotiating about anything. Seasoned and sophisticated diplomats like James Baker were replaced either by psychopaths like Madelaine Albright, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, or by mediocre non-entities like John Kerry and Susan Rice. After all, how sophisticated must one be to threaten, bully and deliver ultimatums? Things got so bad that the Russians openly complained about the “lack of professionalism” of their US counterparts.
As for the poor Russians with their pathetic insistence that the norms of international law must be observed, they looked hopelessly passé. I won’t even mention the European politicians here. They were best characterized by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who called them “great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies‘.
But then, something changed. Dramatically.
The failure of force
Suddenly everything went south. Every single US victory somehow turned into a defeat: from Afghanistan to Libya, every US ‘success’ had somehow morphed itself into a situation where the best option, if not the only one left, was to “declare victory and leave”. This begs the obvious question “what happened?”.
The first obvious conclusion is that the US forces and their so-called “allies” have very little staying power. While they are reasonably skilled at invading a country, they then rapidly lose control of most of it. It is one thing to invade a country, but quite another to administer it, nevermind rebuilt it. It turns out that US-led “coalitions of the willing” were unable to get anything done.
Second, it became obvious that the enemy which was supposedly defeated had really only gone into hiding and was waiting for a better time to come back with a vengeance. Iraq is the perfect example of that: far form being really “defeated”, the Iraqi Army (wisely) chose to disband itself and come back in the shape of a formidable Sunni insurrection which itself gradually morphed into ISIS. But Iraq was not an isolated case. The same happened pretty much everywhere.
There are those who will object and that that the US does not care if it controls a country or if it destroys it, as long as the other guy does not get to “win”. I disagree. Yes, the US will always prefer the destruction of a country to an outright victory of the other side, but this does not mean that the US does not prefer to control a country if possible. In other words, when a country sinks into chaos and violence this is not a US victory, but most definitely a US loss.
What the US missed is that diplomacy makes the use of force much more effective. First, careful diplomacy makes it possible to build a wide coalition of countries willing to support collective action. Second, diplomacy also makes it possible to reduce the number of countries which openly oppose collective action. Does anybody remember that Syria actually sent forces to support US troops against Saddam Hussein in Desert Storm? Sure, they did not make a big difference, but their presence gave the US the peace of mind that Syria would at least not overtly oppose the US policy. By getting the Syrians to support Desert Storm, James Backer made it very hard for the Iraqis to argue that this was an anti-Arab, anti-Muslim or even an anti-Baathist coalition and he made Saddam Hussein look completely isolated (even when the Iraqis began shooting missiles at Israel). Second, diplomacy makes it possible to reduce the overall amount of force used because “instant overkill” is not needed to show the enemy that you really mean business. Third, diplomacy is the necessary tool to achieve legitimacy and legitimacy is crucial when engaged in a long, protracted, conflict. Finally, the consensus which emerges from a successful diplomatic effort prevents the rapid erosion of the public support for a military effort. But all these factors were ignored by the USA in the GWOT (Global War on Terror) and the “Arab Spring” revolutions which now have come to a screeching halt.
A diplomatic triumph for Russia
This week saw a true diplomatic triumph for Russia culminating in Friday’s multilateral negotiations in Vienna which brought together the foreign ministers of Russia, the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The fact that this meeting took place right after Assad’s visit to Moscow clearly indicates that the sponsors of Daesh and al-Qaeda are now forced to negotiate on Moscow’s terms. How did that happen?
As I have been mantrically repeating it since the Russian operation in Syria began, the Russian military force actually sent to Syria is very small. Yes, it is a very effective one, but it is still very small. In fact, the members of the Russian Duma have announced that the costs of the entire operation will probably fit in the normal Russian Defense budget which has monies allocated for “training”. However, what the Russian have achieved with this small intervention is rather amazing, not only in military terms, but especially in political terms.
Not only has the Empire (very reluctantly) had to accept that Assad would have to stay in power for the foreseeable future, but Russia is now gradually but inexorably building up a real regional coalition which is willing to fight Daesh on the same side as the Syrian government forces. Even before the Russian operation began, Russia had the support of Syria, Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. There are also strong signs that the Kurds are basically also willing to work with Russia and Assad. On Friday it was announced that Jordan would also coordinate some as of yet unspecified military actions with Russia and that a special coordination center will be set up in Amman.
There are also very strong rumors that Egypt will also join the Russian-lead coalition. There are also signs that Russia and Israel are also, if not working together, at least not working against each other: the Russian and Israelis have created a special line to directly talk to each other on a military level. The bottom line is this: regardless of the sincerity of the different parties, everybody in the region now feels a strong pressure to at least not look opposed to the Russian effort. That, by itself, is a huge triumph for Russian diplomacy.
Putin’s secret weapon: the truth
The current situation is, of course, totally unacceptable for the Global Hegemon: not only has the US-lead coalition of 62 countries managed to conduct 22,000 strikes with nothing to show for it, but the comparatively smaller Russian coalition has managed to completely displace the Empire and negate all its plans. And the most formidable weapon used by Putin in his proxy war with the USA was not even a military one, but simply speaking the truth.
Both at his UN speech and, this week, at his speech at the Valdai Conference Putin has done what no other world leader before has ever dared doing: he openly call the US regime incompetent, irresponsible, lying, hypocritical and terminally arrogant. That kind of public “dissing” has had a huge impact worldwide because by the time Putin said these words more or less everybody knew that this was absolutely true.
The US does treat all its allies as “vassals” (see Valdai speech) and the US is the prime culprit for all the terrible crises the world now has to face (see UN speech). What Putin did is basically say “the Emperor is naked”. In comparison, Obama’s lame speech was comically pathetic. What we are witnessing now is an amazing turn around. After decades marked by the “might makes right” principle advocated by the USA, suddenly we are in a situation where no amount of military might is of any use to a beleaguered President Obama: what use are 12 aircraft carriers when you personally look like a clown?
After 1991 it appeared that the only superpower left was so powerful and unstoppable that it did not need to bother itself with such minor things like diplomacy or respect for international law. Uncle Sam felt like he was the sole ruler, the Planetary Hegemon. China was just a “big Walmart”, Russia a “gas station” and Europe an obedient poodle (the latter is, alas, quite true). The myth of US invincibility was just that, of course, a myth: since WWII the USA has not won a single real war (Grenada or Panama do not qualify). In fact, the US military fared even much worse in Afghanistan that the under-trained, under-equipped, under-fed and under-financed Soviet 40th Army which, at least, kept all the major cities and main roads under Soviet control and which did some meaningful development of the civilian infrastructure of the country (which the US is still using in 2015). Nevertheless, the myth of US invincibility only really came crashing down when Russia put a stop to it in 2013 by preventing a US assault on Syria by a mix of diplomatic and military means. Uncle Sam was livid, but could do nothing about besides triggering a coup in Kiev and an economic war against Russia, neither of which have succeeded in their goals.
As for Putin, instead of being deterred by all the US efforts, he invited Assad to Moscow.
Assad’s Moscow visit as yet another indicator of US impotence
This week’s visit by Assad was nothing short of extraordinary. Not only did the Russian succeed in getting Assad out of Syria and to Moscow and then back without the bloated US intelligence community noticing anything, but unlike most heads of state, Assad spoke face to face to some of the most powerful men in Russia.
First, Assad met with Putin, Lavrov and Shoigu. They spoke for a total of three hours (which, by itself, is quite remarkable). They were later joined by Medvedev for a private dinner. Guess who else joined them? Mikhail Fradkov, Head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, and Nikolai Patrushev, Head of the Russian Security Council:
Normally, heads of state do not meet personally with men like Fradkov or Patrushev and, instead, they send their own experts. In this case, however, the topic discussed was important enough to 1) get Assad personally to the Kremlin and 2) get all the top players in the Kremlin around the same table for a personal discussion with Assad.
Obviously, not a word came out from this meeting, but there are two main theories circulating out there about what was discussed.
The first theory says that Assad was told in no unclear terms that his days were numbered and that he would have to leave.
The second one says the exact opposite: that Assad was brought in to signal to him, and the US, that he had the full support of Russia.
I don’t believe that either one of these is correct, but the second one is, I think, probably closer to the truth. After all, if the goal was to tell Assad that he had to go, a simple phone call would have been enough, really. Maybe a visit by Lavrov. As for “backing Assad”, that would go in direct contradiction with what the Russians have been saying all along: they are not backing “Assad” as a person, although they do recognize him as the sole legitimate President of Syria, but they are backing the right of the Syrian people to be the only ones to decide who should be in power in Syria. And that, by the way, is something that Assad himself has also agreed to (according to Putin). Likewise, Assad has also agreed to work with any non-Daesh opposition forces willing to fight against Daesh alongside the Syrian military (again, according to Putin).
No, while I believe that the meeting between Assad and Putin was, at least in part, a message to the USA and the others so-called “friends of Syria”, indicating that their “Assad must go” plan had failed, I believe that the main purpose of the behind-closed-doors meeting with all the top leaders of Russia was something else: my guess is that what was discussed was a major and long term alliance between Russia and Syria which would formally revive the kind of alliance Syria had with the Soviet Union in the past. While I can only speculate about the exact terms of such an alliance, it is my guess that this plan, probably coordinated with Iran has two major aspects:
a) military component: Daesh must be crushed.
b) political component: Syria will not be allowed to fall under US control.
Considering that the Russian military operation is assumed by most Russian experts to be scheduled to last about 3 months, we are dealing here with separate, middle to long term, plan which will require the Syrian armed forces to be rebuilt while Russia, Iran and Iraq jointly coordinate the struggle against Daesh. And, indeed, it was announced on Friday that Iraq had authorized the Russian military to strike at Daesh inside the Iraqi territory. It sure looks like the Russian operation has acted as a catalyst for a region paralyzed by US hypocrisy and incompetence and that the days of Daesh are numbered
Too early to celebrate, but a watershed moment nonetheless
Still, it is way too early to celebrate. The Russians cannot do it all by themselves, and it will be incumbent upon the Syrians and their allies to fight Daesh, one small town at a time. Only boots on the ground will really liberate Syria from Daesh and only true Islam will be able to defeat the Takfiri ideology. This will take a time.
Furthermore, it would be irresponsible to underestimate the Empire’s determination and ability to prevent Russia from looking like “the winner” – that is something which the US imperial ego, raised in centuries of imperial hubris and ignorance, will never be able to cope with. After all, how can the “indispensable nation” accept that the world does not need it at all and that others can even openly oppose and prevail? We can expect the US to use all its (still huge) power to try to thwart and sabotage every Russian or Syrian initiative.
Still, the recent events are the mark that the era of “might makes right” has come to an end and that the notion that the US is an “indispensable nation” or world hegemon has now lost any credibility. After decades in the dark, international diplomacy and the international law are finally becoming relevant again. It is my hope that this is the beginning of a process which will see the USA undergo the same evolution as so many other countries (including Russia) have undergone in the past: from being an empire to becoming a “normal country” again. Alas, when I look at the 2016 Presidential race I get the feeling that this will still be a very long process.
Rwanda has never, since its independence from Belgium, experienced peaceful transfer of power from one “elected” president to another. Each president that grabs power declares himself the only Rwandan capable of ruling. Each regime comes in power because they want to remove the dictator from power and hand the mantle of state power to ” the people.” Change from one regime to another has always been bloody in Rwanda.
In 1994 General Paul Kagame defeated General Habyarimana after a bloody four year civil war. General Habyarimana had made himself ” the father of the nation” and an irreplaceable president of Rwanda. General Kagame and his RPF/A waged the 1990-1994 war because General Habyarimana had closed all the possible venues for peaceful transfer of power. General Kagame and his RPF/A sounded determined to hand power over to ” the people” after the war. Over a million Rwandans perished during the war.
General Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party: More of the same
After the war and massacres that brought Gen Kagame and his RPF/A into power, Gen Kagame’s diagnosis of Rwanda’s problem was ” bad political leadership and clinging on to power. To address this problem, Gen Kagame and his RPF/A wrote the 2003 Rwanda Constitution. Article 101 of the 2003 Constitution provides, inter alia , ” no person shall be president for more than two terms”. Each term is 7 years under the 2003 Constitution of Rwanda.
Gen Kagame’s second and last term under the 2003 constitution of Rwanda is due to expire in 2017. General Kagame claims that no Rwandan is capable of leading the country and ” the people” need him to consolidate his “achievements”.
Constitutional amendment to keep General Kagame in office:
In a bid to legitimize his broad scheme to cling to power, Paul Kagame deployed his brutal security apparatus, at all levels of his administration, to compel ” the people” to petition Parliament to change the law regarding term limits. Millions of Rwandans, including those who cannot read and/or write, “wrote” to Parliament ” begging” for a constitutional amendment. The General then instituted a ” constitutional review commission” which ” consulted” the people before Parliament passed the constitutional review proposal on October 28th, 2015.
The new law of the jungle:
Parliament approved various amendments including Article 167 which provides that: Considering the citizen petitions preceeding [preceding] the coming into force of this revised Constitution that were informed by the nation-building achievements and creation of a sustainable development foundation, the President of the Republic completing the term of office referred to in Paragraph One of this Article may be re-elected for a seven (7) years term of office. The President of the Republic who has completed the term of office of seven (7) years referred to in [ …] this Article may be re-elected as provided for by Article 101 of this Constitution.
Article 168: Senators Senators in office at the time of commencement. Article 167 comes under a Section termed ” Transitional Provisions”.
Article 101 provides that ” The President of the Republic is elected for a term of office of five (5) years. He/she may be re-elected only once.”
A most unusual law:
Article 167 read together with Article 101 has many implications.
First, the “amendment ” has created an exception for the current president and military commander of Rwanda. Article 101 will be shelved until after seven years – the exceptional term created for him after 2017 – when Kagame will start running for a five year term, renewable only once, giving Kagame a chance to rule for 17 years after 2017. This is confirmation that “some animals are more equal than others ” in this Animal Farm, thereby rendering the constitutional principle of equality before the law null and void.
Second, the law does not mention whether or not, if Kagame died or otherwise becomes incapacitated after 2017 but before 2024, Article 101 would come into force immediately. In any case, a constitutional provision ( the proposed Article 101) that shall not come into force until after 7 years is a most unusual law.
Third, the amendment creates ” transitional provisions” in a constitution without a provisional government. “Transitional provisions” without a transitional government prove that what Kagame’s junta has completed is a constitutional coup, not an “amendment to the constitution,” as they call it.
Charles Kambanda is a Rwandan American attorney, a former law professor at the National University of Rwanda, and an apostate member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, now living in exile in New York City.
A major new study coordinated by World Health Organization’s cancer division – the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – finds that even low-level radiation increases the risk of cancer, if exposure occurs over time.
New results from a study coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer agency of the World Health Organization, show that protracted exposure to low doses of ionizing radiation increases the risk of death from solid cancers. The results, published today in The BMJ [the prestigious British Medical Journal], are based on the most powerful study to date and provide direct evidence about cancer risks after protracted exposures to low-dose ionizing radiation.
“The present study demonstrates a significant association between increasing radiation dose and risk of all solid cancers,” says IARC researcher Dr Ausrele Kesminiene, a study co-author. “No matter whether people are exposed to protracted low doses or to high and acute doses, the observed association between dose and solid cancer risk is similar per unit of radiation dose.”
***
A collaboration among international partners, evaluated the exposures of more than 300 000 nuclearworkers in France, the United Kingdom, and the USA over a period of time between 1943 and 2005.
The scientists involved in the study come from government agencies such as the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Public Health England Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, as well as universities including the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Drexel University.
The study confirms – once again – what we’ve been saying for years.
For example, a major 2012 scientific study proves that low-level radiation can cause huge health problems. Science Daily reports:
Even the very lowest levels of radiation are harmful to life, scientists have concluded in the Cambridge Philosophical Society’s journal Biological Reviews. Reporting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over the past 40 years, researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Paris-Sud found that variation in low-level, natural background radiation was found to have small, but highly statistically significant, negative effects on DNA as well as several measures of health.
The review is a meta-analysis of studies of locations around the globe …. “Pooling across multiple studies, in multiple areas, and in a rigorous statistical manner provides a tool to really get at these questions about low-level radiation.”
Mousseau and co-author Anders Møller of the University of Paris-Sud combed the scientific literature, examining more than 5,000 papers involving natural background radiation that were narrowed to 46 for quantitative comparison. The selected studies all examined both a control group and a more highly irradiated population and quantified the size of the radiation levels for each. Each paper also reported test statistics that allowed direct comparison between the studies.
The organisms studied included plants and animals, but had a large preponderance of human subjects. Each study examined one or more possible effects of radiation, such as DNA damage measured in the lab, prevalence of a disease such as Down’s Syndrome, or the sex ratio produced in offspring. For each effect, a statistical algorithm was used to generate a single value, the effect size, which could be compared across all the studies.
The scientists reported significant negative effects in a range of categories, including immunology, physiology, mutation and disease occurrence. The frequency of negative effects was beyond that of random chance.
***
“When you do the meta-analysis, you do see significant negative effects.”
“It also provides evidence that there is no threshold below which there are no effects of radiation,” he added. “A theory that has been batted around a lot over the last couple of decades is the idea that is there a threshold of exposure below which there are no negative consequences. These data provide fairly strong evidence that there is no threshold — radiation effects are measurable as far down as you can go, given the statistical power you have at hand.”
Mousseau hopes their results, which are consistent with the “linear-no-threshold” model for radiation effects, will better inform the debate about exposure risks. “With the levels of contamination that we have seen as a result of nuclear power plants, especially in the past, and even as a result of Chernobyl and Fukushima and related accidents, there’s an attempt in the industry to downplay the doses that the populations are getting, because maybe it’s only one or two times beyond what is thought to be the natural background level,” he said. “But they’re assuming the natural background levels are fine.”
“And the truth is, if we see effects at these low levels, then we have to be thinking differently about how we develop regulations for exposures, and especially intentional exposures to populations, like the emissions from nuclear power plants, medical procedures, and even some x-ray machines at airports.”
According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation. Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual’s risk for the development of cancer.
“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Jeff Patterson, DO, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.”
“Consuming food containing radionuclides is particularly dangerous. If an individual ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, it continues to irradiate the body as long as it remains radioactive and stays in the body,”said Alan H. Lockwood, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
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Radiation can be concentrated many times in the food chain and any consumption adds to the cumulative risk of cancer and other diseases.
The National Council on Radiation Protection says, “… every increment of radiation exposure produces an incremental increase in the risk of cancer.” The Environmental Protection Agency says, “… any exposure to radiation poses some risk, i.e. there is no level below which we can say an exposure poses no risk.” The Department of Energy says about “low levels of radiation” that “… the major effect is a very slight increase in cancer risk.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says, “any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer … any increase in dose, no matter how small, results in an incremental increase in risk.” The National Academy of Sciences, in its “Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII,” says, “… it is unlikely that a threshold exists for the induction of cancers ….”
Protracted exposure to low-level radiation is associated with a significant increase in the risk of leukemia, according to a long-term study published Thursday in a U.S. research journal.
The study released in the monthly Environmental Health Perspectives was based on a 20-year survey of around 110,000 workers who engaged in cleanup work related to the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986.
Scientists from the University of California, San Francisco, the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the National Research Center for Radiation Medicine in Ukraine were among those who participated in the research.
The top U.S. government radiation experts – like Karl Morgan, John Goffman and Arthur Tamplin – and scientific luminaries such as Ernest Sternglass and Alice Stewart, concluded that low level radiation can cause serious health effects.
A military briefing written by the U.S. Army for commanders in Iraq states:
Hazards from low level radiation are long-term, not acute effects… Every exposure increases risk of cancer.
(Military briefings for commanders often contain less propaganda than literature aimed at civilians, as the commanders have to know the basic facts to be able to assess risk to their soldiers.)
The briefing states that doses are cumulative, citing the following military studies and reports:
ACE Directive 80-63, ACE Policy for Defensive Measures against Low Level Radiological Hazards during Military Operations, 2 AUG 96
AR 11-9, The Army Radiation Program, 28 MAY 99
FM 4-02.283, Treatment of Nuclear and Radiological Casualties, 20 DEC 01
JP 3-11, Joint Doctrine for Operations in NBC Environments, 11 JUL 00
NATO STANAG 2473, Command Guidance on Low Level Radiation Exposure in Military Operations, 3 MAY 00
USACHPPM TG 244, The NBC Battle Book, AUG 02
Many studies have shown that repeated exposures to low levels of ionizing radiation from CT scans and x-rays can cause cancer. See this, this, this. this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
Cumulative impacts of chronic irradiation in low doses are … important for the comprehension, assessment and prognosis of the late effects of irradiation on human beings ….
The New York Times’ Matthew Wald reported in 2012:
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists[’] May-June issue carries seven articles and an editorial on the subject of low-dose radiation, a problem that has thus far defied scientific consensus but has assumed renewed importance since the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan in March 2011.
***
This month a guest editor, Jan Beyea [who received a PhD in nuclear physics from Columbia and has served on a number of committees at the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science] and worked on epidemiological studies at Three Mile Island, takes a hard look at the power industry.
The bulletin’s Web site is generally subscription-only, but this issue can be read at no charge.
Dr. Beyea challenges a concept adopted by American safety regulators about small doses of radiation. The prevailing theory is that the relationship between dose and effect is linear – that is, that if a big dose is bad for you, half that dose is half that bad, and a quarter of that dose is one-quarter as bad, and a millionth of that dose is one-millionth as bad, with no level being harmless.
The idea is known as the “linear no-threshold hypothesis,’’ and while most scientists say there is no way to measure its validity at the lower end, applying it constitutes a conservative approach to public safety.
Some radiation professionals disagree, arguing that there is no reason to protect against supposed effects that cannot be measured. But Dr. Beyea contends that small doses could actually be disproportionately worse.
Radiation experts have formed a consensus that if a given dose of radiation delivered over a short period poses a given hazard, that hazard will be smaller if the dose is spread out. To use an imprecise analogy, if swallowing an entire bottle of aspirin at one sitting could kill you, consuming it over a few days might merely make you sick.
In radiation studies, this is called a dose rate effectiveness factor. Generally, a spread-out dose is judged to be half as harmful as a dose given all at once.
***
Dr. Beyea, however, proposes that doses spread out over time might be more dangerous than doses given all at once. [Background] He suggests two reasons: first, some effects may result from genetic damage that manifests itself only after several generations of cells have been exposed, and, second, a “bystander effect,” in which a cell absorbs radiation and seems unhurt but communicates damage to a neighboring cell, which can lead to cancer.
One problem in the radiation field is that little of the data on hand addresses the problem of protracted exposure. Most of the health data used to estimate the health effects of radiation exposure comes from survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of 1945. That was mostly a one-time exposure.
Scientists who say that this data leads to the underestimation of radiation risks cite another problem: it does not include some people who died from radiation exposure immediately after the bombings. The notion here is that the people studied in ensuing decades to learn about the dose effect may have been stronger and healthier, which could have played a role in their survival.
Still, the idea that the bomb survivor data is biased, or that stretched-out doses are more dangerous than instant ones, is a minority position among radiation scientists.
Three recent epidemiologic studies suggest that the risk from protracted exposure is no lower, and in fact may be higher, than from single exposures.
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Conventional wisdom was upset in 2005, when an international study, which focused on a large population of exposed nuclear workers, presented results that shocked the radiation protection community—and foreshadowed a sequence of research results over the following years.
***
It all started when epidemiologist Elaine Cardis and 46 colleagues surveyed some 400,000 nuclear workers from 15 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia—workers who had experienced chronic exposures, with doses measured on radiation badges (Cardis et al., 2005).
***
This study revealed a higher incidence for protracted exposure than found in the atomic-bomb data, representing a dramatic contradiction to expectations based on expert opinion.
***
A second major occupational study appeared a few years later, delivering another blow to the theory that protracted doses were not so bad. This 2009 report looked at 175,000 radiation workers in the United Kingdom ….
After the UK update was published, scientists combined results from 12 post-2002 occupational studies, including the two mentioned above, concluding that protracted radiation was 20 percent more effective in increasing cancer rates than acute exposures (Jacob et al., 2009). The study’s authors saw this result as a challenge to the cancer-risk values currently assumed for occupational radiation exposures. That is, they wrote that the radiation risk values used for workers should be increased over the atomic-bomb-derived values, not lowered by a factor of two or more.
***
In 2007, one study—the first of its size—looked at low-dose radiation risk in a large, chronically exposed civilian population; among the epidemiological community, this data set is known as the “Techa River cohort.” From 1949 to 1956 in the Soviet Union, while the Mayak weapons complex dumped some 76 million cubic meters of radioactive waste water into the river, approximately 30,000 of the off-site population—from some 40 villages along the river—were exposed to chronic releases of radiation; residual contamination on riverbanks still produced doses for years after 1956.
***
Here was a study of citizens exposed to radiation much like that which would be experienced following a reactor accident. About 17,000 members of the cohort have been studied in an international effort (Krestinina et al., 2007), largely funded by the US Energy Department; and to many in the department, this study was meant to definitively prove that protracted exposures were low in risk. The results were unexpected. The slope of the LNT fit turned out to be higher than predicted by the atomic-bomb data, providing additional evidence that protracted exposure does not reduce risk.
***
In a 2012 study on atomic-bomb survivor mortality data (Ozasa et al., 2012), low-dose analysis revealed unexpectedly strong evidence for the applicability of the supralinear theory. From 1950 to 2003, more than 80,000 people studied revealed high risks per unit dose in the low-dose range, from 0.01 to 0.1 Sv.
A major 2012 study of atomic bomb data by the official joint U.S.-Japanese government study of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors found that low dose radiation causes cancer and genetic damage:
The most comprehensive study of nuclear workers by the IARC, involving 600,000 workers exposed to an average cumulative dose of 19mSv, showed a cancer risk consistent with that of the A-bomb survivors.
Children are much more vulnerable to radiation than adults. American physician Brian Moench writes:
The idea that a threshold exists or there is a safe level of radiation for human exposure began unraveling in the 1950s when research showed one pelvic x-ray in a pregnant woman could double the rate of childhood leukemia in an exposed baby. Furthermore, the risk was ten times higher if it occurred in the first three months of pregnancy than near the end. This became the stepping-stone to the understanding that the timing of exposure was even more critical than the dose. The earlier in embryonic development it occurred, the greater the risk.
A new medical concept has emerged, increasingly supported by the latest research, called “fetal origins of disease,” that centers on the evidence that a multitude of chronic diseases, including cancer, often have their origins in the first few weeks after conception by environmental insults disturbing normal embryonic development. It is now established medical advice that pregnant women should avoid any exposure to x-rays, medicines or chemicals when not absolutely necessary, no matter how small the dose, especially in the first three months.
“Epigenetics” is a term integral to fetal origins of disease, referring to chemical attachments to genes that turn them on or off inappropriately and have impacts functionally similar to broken genetic bonds. Epigenetic changes can be caused by unimaginably small doses – parts per trillion – be it chemicals, air pollution, cigarette smoke or radiation. Furthermore, these epigenetic changes can occur within minutes after exposure and may be passed on to subsequent generations.
The Endocrine Society, 14,000 researchers and medical specialists in more than 100 countries, warned that “even infinitesimally low levels of exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, indeed, any level of exposure at all, may cause endocrine or reproductive abnormalities, particularly if exposure occurs during a critical developmental window. Surprisingly, low doses may even exert more potent effects than higher doses.” If hormone-mimicking chemicals at any level are not safe for a fetus, then the concept is likely to be equally true of the even more intensely toxic radioactive elements drifting over from Japan, some of which may also act as endocrine disruptors.
Many epidemiologic studies show that extremely low doses of radiation increase the incidence of childhood cancers, low birth-weight babies, premature births, infant mortality, birth defects and even diminished intelligence. Just two abdominal x-rays delivered to a male can slightly increase the chance of his future children developing leukemia. By damaging proteins anywhere in a living cell, radiation can accelerate the aging process and diminish the function of any organ. Cells can repair themselves, but the rapidly growing cells in a fetus may divide before repair can occur, negating the body’s defense mechanism and replicating the damage.
Comforting statements about the safety of low radiation are not even accurate for adults. Small increases in risk per individual have immense consequences in the aggregate. When low risk is accepted for billions of people, there will still be millions of victims. New research on risks of x-rays illustrate the point.
Radiation from CT coronary scans is considered low, but, statistically, it causes cancer in one of every 270 40-year-old women who receive the scan. Twenty year olds will have double that rate. Annually, 29,000 cancers are caused by the 70 million CT scans done in the US. Common, low-dose dental x-rays more than double the rate of thyroid cancer. Those exposed to repeated dental x-rays have an even higher risk of thyroid cancer.
Most “Background Radiation” Didn’t Exist Before Nuclear Weapons Testing and Nuclear Reactors
Uninformed commenters (and some industry flacks) claim that we get a higher exposure from background radiation (when we fly, for example) or x-rays then we get from nuclear accidents.
Wikipedia provides some details on the distribution of cesium-137 due to human activities:
Small amounts of caesium-134 and caesium-137 were released into the environment during nearly all nuclear weapon tests and some nuclear accidents, most notably the Chernobyl disaster.
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Caesium-137 is unique in that it is totally anthropogenic. Unlike most other radioisotopes, caesium-137 is not produced from its non-radioactive isotope, but from uranium. It did not occur in nature before nuclear weapons testing began. By observing the characteristic gamma rays emitted by this isotope, it is possible to determine whether the contents of a given sealed container were made before or after the advent of atomic bomb explosions. This procedure has been used by researchers to check the authenticity of certain rare wines, most notably the purported “Jefferson bottles”.
Cesium-133 is the only naturally occurring isotope and is non-radioactive; all other isotopes, including cesium-137, are produced by human activity.
Similarly, iodine-131 is not a naturally occurring isotope. As the Encyclopedia Britannica notes:
The only naturally occurring isotope of iodine is stable iodine-127. An exceptionally useful radioactive isotope is iodine-131…
(Fukushima has spewed much more radioactive cesium and iodine than Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive cesium released by Fukushima was some 20-30 times higher than initially admitted. Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day. And the cesium levels hitting the west coast of North America will keep increasing for several years … rising to some 80% as much Fukushima radiation as Japan by 2016. Fukushima is spewing more and more radiation into the environment, and the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl.)
As such, the concept of “background radiation” is largely a misnomer. Most of the radiation we encounter today – especially the most dangerous types – did not even exist in nature before we built nuclear weapons and reactors.
Nuclear Apologists Are Going Bananas
Nuclear apologists pretend that people are exposed to more radiation from bananas than from Fukushima.
But unlike low-levels of radioactive potassium found in bananas – which our bodies have adapted to over many years – cesium-137 and iodine 131 are brand new, extremely dangerous substances.
The human body is born with potassium-40 [the type of radiation found in bananas] in its tissues and it is the most common radionuclide in human tissues and in food. We evolved in the presence of potassium-40 and our bodies have well–developed repair mechanisms to respond to its effects. The concentration of potassium-40 in the human body is constantand not affected by concentrations in the environment.
The amount of potassium (and therefore of 40K) in the human body is fairly constant because of homeostatsis, so that any excess absorbed from food is quickly compensated by the elimination of an equal amount.
It follows that the additional radiation exposure due to eating a banana lasts only for a few hours after ingestion, namely the time it takes for the normal potassium contents of the body to be restored by the kidneys.
A lot of things you might not suspect of being radioactive are, including Brazil nuts, and your own body. And this fact is sometimes used to downplay the impact of exposure to radiation via medical treatments or accidental intake.
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I contacted Geoff Meggitt—a retired health physicist, and former editor of the Journal of Radiological Protection—to find out more.
Meggitt worked for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and its later commercial offshoots for 25 years. He says there’s an enormous variation in the risks associated with swallowing the same amount of different radioactive materials—and even some difference between the same dose, of the same material, but in different chemical forms.
It all depends on two factors:
1) The physical characteristics of the radioactivity—i.e, What’s its half-life? Is the radiation emitted alpha, beta or gamma?
2) The way the the radioactivity travels around and is taken up by the body—i.e., How much is absorbed by the blood stream? What tissues does this specific isotope tend to accumulate in?
The Potassium-40 in bananas is a particularly poor model isotope to use, Meggitt says, because the potassium content of our bodies seems to be under homeostatic control. When you eat a banana, your body’s level of Potassium-40 doesn’t increase. You just get rid of some excess Potassium-40. The net dose of a banana is zero.
And that’s the difference between a useful educational tool and propaganda. (And I say this as somebody who is emphatically not against nuclear energy.) Bananas aren’t really going to give anyone “a more realistic assessment of actual risk”, they’re just going to further distort the picture.
Mixing Apples (External) and Oranges (Internal)
Moreover, radioactive particles which end up inside of our lungs or gastrointestinal track, as opposed to radiation which comes to us from outside of our skin are much more dangerous than general exposures to radiation.
The National Research Council’s Committee to Assess the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program explains:
Radioactivity generates radiation by emitting particles. Radioactive materials outside the the body are called external emitters, and radioactive materials located within the body are called internal emitters.
Internal emitters are much more dangerous than external emitters. Specifically, one is only exposed to radiation as long as he or she is near the external emitter.
For example, when you get an x-ray, an external emitter is turned on for an instant, and then switched back off.
But internal emitters steadily and continuously emit radiation for as long as the particle remains radioactive, or until the person dies – whichever occurs first. As such, they are much more dangerous.
As the head of a Tokyo-area medical clinic – Dr. Junro Fuse, Internist and head of Kosugi Medical Clinic – said:
Risk from internal exposure is 200-600 times greater than risk from external exposure.
By way of analogy, external emitters are like dodgeballs being thrown at you. If you get hit, it might hurt. But it’s unlikely you’ll get hit again in the same spot.
Internal emitters – on the other hand – are like a black belt martial artist moving in really close and hammering you again and again and again in the exact same spot. That can do real damage.
There are few natural high-dose internal emitters. Bananas, brazil nuts and some other foods contain radioactive potassium-40, but in extremely low doses. But – as explained above – our bodies have adapted to handle this type of radiation.
True, some parts of the country are at higher risk of exposure to naturally-occurring radium than others.
But the cesium which was scattered all over the place by above-ground nuclear tests and the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents has a much longer half life, and can easily contaminate food and water supplies. As the New York Times notes:
Over the long term, the big threat to human health is cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years.
At that rate of disintegration, John Emsley wrote in “Nature’s Building Blocks” (Oxford, 2001), “it takes over 200 years to reduce it to 1 percent of its former level.”
It is cesium-137 that still contaminates much of the land in Ukraine around the Chernobyl reactor.
***
Cesium-137 mixes easily with water and is chemically similar to potassium. It thus mimics how potassium gets metabolized in the body and can enter through many foods, including milk.
As the EPA notes in a discussion entitled ” What can I do to protect myself and my family from cesium-137?”:
Cesium-137 that is dispersed in the environment, like that from atmospheric testing, is impossible to avoid.
Radioactive iodine can also become a potent internal emitter. As the Times notes:
Iodine-131 has a half-life of eight days and is quite dangerous to human health. If absorbed through contaminated food, especially milk and milk products, it will accumulate in the thyroid and cause cancer.
The bottom line is that there is some naturally-occurring background radiation, which can – at times – pose a health hazard (especially in parts of the country with high levels of radioactive radon or radium).
But cesium-137 and radioactive iodine – the two main radioactive substances being spewed by the leaking Japanese nuclear plants – are not naturally-occurring substances, and can become powerful internal emitters which can cause tremendous damage to the health of people who are unfortunate enough to breathe in even a particle of the substances, or ingest them in food or water.
Unlike low-levels of radioactive potassium found in bananas – which our bodies have adapted to over many years – cesium-137 and iodine 131 are brand new, extremely dangerous substances.
And unlike naturally-occurring internal emitters like radon and radium – whose distribution is largely concentrated in certain areas of the country – radioactive cesium and iodine, as well as strontium and other dangerous radionuclides, are being distributed globally through weapons testing and nuclear accidents.
Cumulative and Synergistic Damage
As noted above, a military briefing written by the U.S. Army for commanders in Iraq points out:
Hazards from low level radiation are long-term, not acute effects… Every exposure increases risk of cancer.
In other words, doses are cumulative: the more times someone is exposed, the greater the potential damage.
In addition, exposure to different radioactive particles may increase the damage. Specifically, the International Commission on Radiological Protection notes:
It has been shown that in some cases a synergistic effect results when several organs of the body are irradiated simultaneously.
(“Synergistic” means that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.)
The Pentagon together with NATO, Turkey and Israel, et al, have routinely dispatched their military advisers, special forces and intelligence operatives to the Syrian war theater. These foreign forces have operated within rebel ranks from the outset of the war on Syria in March 2011.
Israel’s descent into self-imposed ghettoisation is political, cultural and academic and not, of course, religious for the bulk of Israelis are secular and the majority of religious Jewry are not Israeli: have no wish to be so and do not support Netanyahu’s right wing, extremist agenda.
The official Israeli story about Israa Abed – the Nazareth woman who was shot six times on Oct 9 by Israeli security forces as she stood motionless in a bus station – has changed so many times, it’s difficult to know what to believe any more. By a small miracle she survived the shooting.
Honest observers know longstanding Israeli occupation harshness is the root cause of current violence – instigated by Israel, responded to courageously by Palestinians, largely youths and children, putting their lives on the line for freedom, deserving universal support in their struggle against pure evil.
“[…] it appears that global society is paralyzed in a collective hypnosis – rejecting universal social interests, thus rejecting reason, to instead fall in line with the position of the powerful minority that has seized control, a minority that systematically favours corporate interests.” ~ Cory Morningstar
At the State Department’s daily briefing today, Spokesman John Kirby conceded that the Syrian government led by President Assad may have a role to play in a “political transition” of the country.
The apparent shift was in response to a reporter who pointed out that Assad is not opposed by the entire population of Syria:
…the Assad regime definitely represents a certain constituency in Syria. The minorities, Christians, even a portion of the Sunnis look at the Syrian regime as their representative, in particular at Bashar al-Assad. Why should Bashar al-Assad be complex nixed out of the process, considering that he controls the larger portion on the ground, proudly asserting themselves as the major power in that conflict on the ground? Why should Assad be nixed out of the process?
State Spokesman Kirby replied:
Nobody said that there wouldn’t be a role for Assad or for the institution of his – institutions of his government in the transition.
It appears to be a slight step back from the previous position that no talks could be held on Syria’s future until Assad is out of power. However, this “shift” is more cosmetic than substantive, as Kirby reiterated that, “nothing’s changed about our position on Bashar al-Assad.”
In fact, a “role in the political transition” is just another way of saying “Assad must go.” It means that even as the facts have changed considerably on the ground, the initial US position — a position that led to US support of jihadist mercenaries to overthrow the Syrian government — has not changed.
Kirby was asked again by a reporter, “[Assad] can’t have a long-term leadership role in Syria?”
He repeated: “That is correct.”
Kirby was then reminded by a reporter that the US government is not the sole decider on what happens to Syria:
But you’re not a mediator in this process. You’re one of the countries that has views.
A point that Kirby conceded, but added:
…many of our European allies have taken very much the same position that we have taken. So it’s not like everybody involved has got widely different views here, but there are some different opinions and perspectives on what a successful transition means and what that looks like.
We’re all on the same page, in other words. But are we?
What is a “political transition”? Is it an election where all sides are allowed to compete freely for the vote of the people? Neither the State Department nor the Washington press corps seem able to stomach that possibility.
One reporter asked Kirby:
…what if there is – through some hideous circumstances, you have completely transparent elections and so on, and Assad is elected? What happens then?
Kirby refused to even entertain that possibility:
That’s a great hypothetical that I’m not going to engage in.
Kirby reiterated the US view that the future of Syria should be decided by a country 6,000 miles away. A view that somehow the United States knows what is better for the Syrian people than the Syrians themselves:
This is about coming together to try to reach a consensus view on what an effective political transition can look like in Syria. … The Syrian people deserve a country that they can call home and they can be safe and secure and stable and have a prosperous future. It needs to be unified; it needs to be whole; it needs to be pluralistic.
Kirby’s language toward accepting negotiation with Iran was similarly truculent: Iran can only be “constructive” if it drops its support for the Syrian government and accepts the Saudi-US-Turk regime change project in Syria.
The US is in denial about Syria. Its hope is that Russia and Iran will, after expending considerable financial and political capital to radically change the realities on the ground in Syria, come around to Washington’s view that Assad must go and a new government made up of the opposition must be installed. Perhaps a caretaker government that can organize “elections” like we have seen in post-coup Ukraine, where the parties out of favor in Washington are simply outlawed and not allowed to compete. Stranger things have happened, but it would be a blunder on par with Russia’s vote in favor of a UN Security Council resolution authorizing no-fly zones over Libya. Russian president Putin made the point that Syria’s political future should be decided by Syrians alone. It is a position based on the concept of state sovereignty that the US so closely guards in itself but discounts in others.
Once again, the United States and Israel voted against the motion to end economic sanctions. The United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of lifting the blockade against Cuba Tuesday, with only the U.S. and Israel voting against.
The initiative has been backed by the majority of members for the last 23 years.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented a report that concludes that the economic sanctions, which have caused some US$833.8 billion in damage to the Caribbean island, should be lifted.
Moments before the vote took place, the U.S. representative to the U.N. declared that his country would vote against lifting the sanctions, saying that it was unfortunate that Cuba had presented a motion that was “almost identical” to the one the year before.
His speech followed that of Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, who demanded that the U.S. end the “flagrant, massive and systematic violation of human rights of all Cubans” by terminating the half-century financial and economic blockade.
Rodriguez pointed out the company Electra refused to supply Cuban hospitals with cancer drugs.
“The embargo is a flagrant, massive and systematic violation of human rights of all Cubans,” he said. “It is contrary to international law … It has been descirbed as an act of genocide.”
“We hope that U.S. moves forward form a cruel and unjust policy anchored in the past and adopts a policy based on the feelings of its own citizens,” he added.
Iran’s U.N. representative of the Non-Aligned Movement spoke first in support of lifting the blockade. He listed the ways the sanctions had harmed the people of Cuba and the development of the country.
“It affects all crucial sectors of society, such as public health … banking and tourism. It denies cuba aid,” he told the assembly. “The embargo is also the main obstacle to broader access to the internet and the exchange of ideas.”
“The continuation of the emabargo is unjustifiable, and counters Cuba’s effort to achieve sustaibable debvelopment,” he added.
Echoing the theme, Ecuador’s NAM representative at the U.N. called on the United States to cease voting against the movement, “contrary to the will of the international community.”
The G77: The US has caused damages equal to 191 billion dollars against Cuba. We (G77) will support the resolution. https://t.co/X311QdJUvr
U.N. Representatives from the Caribbean Community and Common Market and the South American regional bloc Mercosur both congratulated the United States and Cuba for re-establishing relations, but also called on the United States to lift the blockade against Cuba.
“The time has come to put an end to this unilateral embargo,” said the Paraguayan representative, speaking on behalf of Mercosur.
For the last three years, 188 of the 193 members have voted in favor of Cuba, with the United States and Israel being persistent exceptions. The decision must be unanimous in order for the measure to be passed.
The resolution is named the “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” It expresses concern over the interntional legality of the U.S. economic and financial siege of the Caribbean island.
U.S. President Barack Obama said in July that the blockade had failed. Since then, he has often hinted that it would soon be lifted. But despite beginning a path to normalize bilateral dealings, including lifting some travel and trade bans bans to the island, the sanctions continue, as a change of policy would have to be passed by Congress.
Cuban President Raul Castro has reiterated that in order for full relations to be re-established, the United States must meet four conditions: to leave Guantanamo detention camp; end the blockade; end the “wet-foot-dry-foot” law encouraging Cubans to pursue residency in the U.S.; and end anti-government radio and television transmissions into the island.
Lifting of the half-century blockade would represent a historic moment for Cubans, 77 percent of whom were born under the harsh economic conditions.
China’s plans for 400 nuclear reactors threaten global catastrophe, writes Oliver Tickell. In the normal way of things we could expect major accidents every few years, but with 300 reactors along China’s seismically active coast, a major tsunami would be a Fukushima on steroids – wiping out much of China and contaminating the whole planet.
“China shows the way to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap.” That was the bullish headline in a Forbes magazine article last week.
It went on to praise the scale of the planned nuclear investment in China’s new Five-Year Plan that runs from 2016 to 2020. Under the plan the government is to invest over US$100 billion to build seven new reactors a year until 2030.
“By 2050”, James Conca wrote for Forbes, “nuclear power should exceed 350 GW in that country, include about 400 new nuclear reactors, and have resulted in over a trillion dollars in nuclear investment.”
Now Conca is pretty enthusiastic about this. But the reality is a potential nuclear nightmare in the making. Experience to date shows that we should, on average, expect a major nuclear accident to take place for every 3,000 to 4,000 years of reactor operation. And with over 400 reactors running at once, it doesn’t take long to clock up those 3,000 years.
In fact, you could reasonably expect a major Chernobyl or Fukushima level accident every seven to ten years – in China alone, if it pursues nuclear build on that scale.
Just how safe is China anyway
Now if China had a fantastic record of safety in its construction and other industries, maybe the odds shoold be made a bit longer. Swiss-style reactors might come in at only one big foulup every 10,000 years, for example.
But that’s not China. This August past we had the massive fire and multiple explosions at the Port of Tianjin, that killed almost 200 people and devastated several square kilometres of the industrial zone.
It later transpired that over 7,000 tonnes of hazardous chemicals were stored there, among them sodium cyanide, calcium carbide and ammonium and potassium nitrate, many of them kept in breach of regulations. The owners had links to the highest echelons of the Chinese state – something that may have ensured very light touch regulation.
China has also experienced some recent high speed train crashes, the worst in July 2011. Two bullet trains collided head-on on a viaductin Wenzhou, Zhejiang province owing to faulty signalling, killing 40 people. The accident was blamed by the Chinese government itself on “design flaws and sloppy management”, according to the BBC.
If anything we should expect China’s nuclear industry to be rather less safe that the western average, especially given the cacophony of new reactor designs and variations thereof under construction simultaneously at multiple sites with absolutely no history of operation – safe or otherwise.
Another factor is the secrecy that surrounds nuclear contruction and operation in China. These matters simply are not reported on other than in glowing terms in the official press. And secrecy is all too often a cover for poor practice and cut corners.
So in fact there’s a good case for thinking that Chinese reactors might pop, not one in every 3,000 to 4,000 years of operation, but rather more often. Every 2,000 years perhaps? At that rate we could expect a couple of major nuclear catastrophes every decade.
Cheap? Some scepticism is in order
Where Forbes celebrates the wonderfully low cost of Chinese nuclear power we must also be a little sceptical. for example, “Six Chinese-designed 1000 MW reactors at Yangjiang will be a huge nuclear power base for China General Nuclear, and will cost only US$11.5 billion for over 6000 MWe, a third of the cost in western countries.”
Or at Changjang Unit 1, on Hainan Island,
“The total cost of this first pair of Chinese-designed 600 MW units is only about US$3.15 billion.” While at Fangchenggang, “Six reactors are planned at this site at a total cost of about US$12 billion … It seems as though 5 years and about $2 billion per reactor has become routine for China.”
How do we know what these reactors really cost? The fact is, we don’t. With China’s nuclear corporations under the control of various organs of state including the Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, official statistics and accounts can simply not be relied upon.
Nuclear construction in China must be cheaper than in the US and Europe due to lower labour costs. But if it really is that much cheaper it can only be at a huge safety penalty.
Take the construction problems and delays at the two current EPR sites in Europe at Flamanville, France, and Olkiluoto, Finland, both now running about three times over original cost estimates. Many of the delays have been caused by safety failures. Over, for example, the flawed metallurgy of the Flamanville reactor vessel and concerns over the reliability of key valves in the cooling system.
Now of course, if you simple ignore such problems and press ahead with construction to meet the targets set down a five-year plan, construction is a whole lot quicker and cheaper. But the chances of reactors popping in years to come is also considerably greater.
Tsunami risk – not if but when
It’s also instructive to look at the map of nuclear reactors scheduled for completion in the next decade provided by Forbes. The great bulk of them – 77 reactors in all – are built along China’s east and south coasts, for two reasons: that’s where the demand is, and that’s where the cooling water is readily available, from the sea.
But of course that’s just the ones due to be completed in the next decade. If the full plan for 400 reactors by 2050 is fulfilled, probably some 300 of them would be sea-facing.
There are, of course, nuclear hazards to inland reactors from flooding on the Yellow and Yangtse rivers and tributaries. But a much greater danger arises from the sea. China’s south and east coasts face out to seismically active waters. And as the Japanese discovered at Fukushima, nuclear power, earthquakes and tsunamis make a dangerous combination.
Interest in the danger of tsunamis on China’s south and east coast was stimulated by the two Hengchun Earthquakes off Taiwan in December 2006, which damaged buildings and disrupted communications by severing undersea cables.
One recent study put the risk of a powerful tsunami greater than 2m in height striking Hong Kong or Macau at about 10% over the coming century, mainly due to seismic activity in the Manila Trench. But head further north and east and the chances go up significantly to 13.34% at Shantou in Guangdong province.
And it may be more than that, the authors note: “This probability estimate may increase with a recent rise in the earthquake activities, which started with the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, because the Taiwan region has a earthquake cycle time of around 80-100 years.”
What is certain is that the tsunami hazard is real and substantial. Literature of historical seismic records of this region is “abundant”, the authors write. The northern Manila Trench near Taiwan is “is likely to have avery large earthquake in the future. In addition the regionis a volcanic belt. If volcano and earthquake occur in concert, a much larger tsunami disaster would develop.
“Although the southern part of the Manila Trench is far away from the coast of China, the local historical records of this region have many tsunami earthquakes up to the magnitude of around 8.0. Since the oceanic portion of the South China Sea is mostly deep, tsunamic waves generated in the Manila Trench region can reach the coast of China with little loss in energy.
“The wave energy can then be released in the shallow water region, and can impose a tremendous tsunami hazard to the coastal regions.”
The world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe
I have done no study of the tsunami vulnerability of all the 300 nuclear reactors that could end up being built along China’s east and south coasts. But at least one – the CANDU reactor shown in the photo (above right) at Qinshan, where seven reactors are currently operational, looks vulnerable in the extreme.
And the consequences of a really big earthquake and tsunami hitting China’s coastal array of 300 nuclear reactors would be catastrophic. Many dozens of reactors could be struck down, each doing their own ‘Fukushima’.
This would not just bring massive radioactive contamination to China’s most developed, prosperous, productive and populated regions, but spread around the world in air and sea currents to make the world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe.
The only good news in all this is that nuclear construction in China is not proceeding anything like as fast as Forbes magazine claims. Most of the more modern ‘Generation III’ reactors are well behind in their completion times, echoing the European experience with the failed EPR design.
We can only hope that construction difficulties persist and abound – and that China’s rulers realise that investments in solar, wind and other renewables are a quicker, surer, safer way to bring power to the masses – and one that poses no existential threat to their country, and the world.
China’s plans for 400 nuclear reactors threaten global catastrophe, writes Oliver Tickell. In the normal way of things we could expect major accidents every few years, but with 300 reactors along China’s seismically active coast, a major tsunami would be a Fukushima on steroids – wiping out much of China and contaminating the whole planet.
“China shows the way to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap.” That was the bullish headline in a Forbes magazine article last week.
It went on to praise the scale of the planned nuclear investment in China’s new Five-Year Plan that runs from 2016 to 2020. Under the plan the government is to invest over US$100 billion to build seven new reactors a year until 2030.
“By 2050”, James Conca wrote for Forbes, “nuclear power should exceed 350 GW in that country, include about 400 new nuclear reactors, and have resulted in over a trillion dollars in nuclear investment.”
Now Conca is pretty enthusiastic about this. But the reality is a potential nuclear nightmare in the making. Experience to date shows that we should, on average, expect a major nuclear accident to take place for every 3,000 to 4,000 years of reactor operation. And with over 400 reactors running at once, it doesn’t take long to clock up those 3,000 years.
In fact, you could reasonably expect a major Chernobyl or Fukushima level accident every seven to ten years – in China alone, if it pursues nuclear build on that scale.
Just how safe is China anyway
Now if China had a fantastic record of safety in its construction and other industries, maybe the odds shoold be made a bit longer. Swiss-style reactors might come in at only one big foulup every 10,000 years, for example.
But that’s not China. This August past we had the massive fire and multiple explosions at the Port of Tianjin, that killed almost 200 people and devastated several square kilometres of the industrial zone.
It later transpired that over 7,000 tonnes of hazardous chemicals were stored there, among them sodium cyanide, calcium carbide and ammonium and potassium nitrate, many of them kept in breach of regulations. The owners had links to the highest echelons of the Chinese state – something that may have ensured very light touch regulation.
China has also experienced some recent high speed train crashes, the worst in July 2011. Two bullet trains collided head-on on a viaductin Wenzhou, Zhejiang province owing to faulty signalling, killing 40 people. The accident was blamed by the Chinese government itself on “design flaws and sloppy management”, according to the BBC.
If anything we should expect China’s nuclear industry to be rather less safe that the western average, especially given the cacophony of new reactor designs and variations thereof under construction simultaneously at multiple sites with absolutely no history of operation – safe or otherwise.
Another factor is the secrecy that surrounds nuclear contruction and operation in China. These matters simply are not reported on other than in glowing terms in the official press. And secrecy is all too often a cover for poor practice and cut corners.
So in fact there’s a good case for thinking that Chinese reactors might pop, not one in every 3,000 to 4,000 years of operation, but rather more often. Every 2,000 years perhaps? At that rate we could expect a couple of major nuclear catastrophes every decade.
Cheap? Some scepticism is in order
Where Forbes celebrates the wonderfully low cost of Chinese nuclear power we must also be a little sceptical. for example, “Six Chinese-designed 1000 MW reactors at Yangjiang will be a huge nuclear power base for China General Nuclear, and will cost only US$11.5 billion for over 6000 MWe, a third of the cost in western countries.”
Or at Changjang Unit 1, on Hainan Island,
“The total cost of this first pair of Chinese-designed 600 MW units is only about US$3.15 billion.” While at Fangchenggang, “Six reactors are planned at this site at a total cost of about US$12 billion … It seems as though 5 years and about $2 billion per reactor has become routine for China.”
How do we know what these reactors really cost? The fact is, we don’t. With China’s nuclear corporations under the control of various organs of state including the Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, official statistics and accounts can simply not be relied upon.
Nuclear construction in China must be cheaper than in the US and Europe due to lower labour costs. But if it really is that much cheaper it can only be at a huge safety penalty.
Take the construction problems and delays at the two current EPR sites in Europe at Flamanville, France, and Olkiluoto, Finland, both now running about three times over original cost estimates. Many of the delays have been caused by safety failures. Over, for example, the flawed metallurgy of the Flamanville reactor vessel and concerns over the reliability of key valves in the cooling system.
Now of course, if you simple ignore such problems and press ahead with construction to meet the targets set down a five-year plan, construction is a whole lot quicker and cheaper. But the chances of reactors popping in years to come is also considerably greater.
Tsunami risk – not if but when
It’s also instructive to look at the map of nuclear reactors scheduled for completion in the next decade provided by Forbes. The great bulk of them – 77 reactors in all – are built along China’s east and south coasts, for two reasons: that’s where the demand is, and that’s where the cooling water is readily available, from the sea.
But of course that’s just the ones due to be completed in the next decade. If the full plan for 400 reactors by 2050 is fulfilled, probably some 300 of them would be sea-facing.
There are, of course, nuclear hazards to inland reactors from flooding on the Yellow and Yangtse rivers and tributaries. But a much greater danger arises from the sea. China’s south and east coasts face out to seismically active waters. And as the Japanese discovered at Fukushima, nuclear power, earthquakes and tsunamis make a dangerous combination.
Interest in the danger of tsunamis on China’s south and east coast was stimulated by the two Hengchun Earthquakes off Taiwan in December 2006, which damaged buildings and disrupted communications by severing undersea cables.
One recent study put the risk of a powerful tsunami greater than 2m in height striking Hong Kong or Macau at about 10% over the coming century, mainly due to seismic activity in the Manila Trench. But head further north and east and the chances go up significantly to 13.34% at Shantou in Guangdong province.
And it may be more than that, the authors note: “This probability estimate may increase with a recent rise in the earthquake activities, which started with the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, because the Taiwan region has a earthquake cycle time of around 80-100 years.”
What is certain is that the tsunami hazard is real and substantial. Literature of historical seismic records of this region is “abundant”, the authors write. The northern Manila Trench near Taiwan is “is likely to have avery large earthquake in the future. In addition the regionis a volcanic belt. If volcano and earthquake occur in concert, a much larger tsunami disaster would develop.
“Although the southern part of the Manila Trench is far away from the coast of China, the local historical records of this region have many tsunami earthquakes up to the magnitude of around 8.0. Since the oceanic portion of the South China Sea is mostly deep, tsunamic waves generated in the Manila Trench region can reach the coast of China with little loss in energy.
“The wave energy can then be released in the shallow water region, and can impose a tremendous tsunami hazard to the coastal regions.”
The world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe
I have done no study of the tsunami vulnerability of all the 300 nuclear reactors that could end up being built along China’s east and south coasts. But at least one – the CANDU reactor shown in the photo (above right) at Qinshan, where seven reactors are currently operational, looks vulnerable in the extreme.
And the consequences of a really big earthquake and tsunami hitting China’s coastal array of 300 nuclear reactors would be catastrophic. Many dozens of reactors could be struck down, each doing their own ‘Fukushima’.
This would not just bring massive radioactive contamination to China’s most developed, prosperous, productive and populated regions, but spread around the world in air and sea currents to make the world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe.
The only good news in all this is that nuclear construction in China is not proceeding anything like as fast as Forbes magazine claims. Most of the more modern ‘Generation III’ reactors are well behind in their completion times, echoing the European experience with the failed EPR design.
We can only hope that construction difficulties persist and abound – and that China’s rulers realise that investments in solar, wind and other renewables are a quicker, surer, safer way to bring power to the masses – and one that poses no existential threat to their country, and the world.
In a blatant attempt to silence opposition media in the run-up to Sunday’s general election, Turkish police stormed the headquarters of the Koza-Ipek corporation and took its broadcasts off the air, allowing them to resume only after the media company was under government control.
Early yesterday morning, police fired water cannon and tear gas at employees and supporters of the media firm and smashed their way into the building, interrupting the broadcasts of Kanaltürk TV, Bugün TV, and other Koza-Ipek outlets. Employees barricaded themselves inside the building and continued broadcasting for some 10 hours as police tried to shut them down.
“Dear viewers, do not be surprised if you see police in our studio in the coming minutes,” said a Bugün TV anchor as he described the police attack on the station. Ultimately, however, police cut the TV cables. Kanaltürk then broadcast the text, “Our broadcast has been shut down.”
At least two reporters were hospitalized after the police assault, including one with internal injuries and another with a broken leg.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which is fighting for its survival in Sunday’s elections, made no secret that it was seeking to intimidate and silence opposition media.
Speaking to the pro-government A Haber channel, AKP legislator Aydin Ünal declared:
“After November 1, we will hold them accountable. The Sözcünewspaper insults us every day. There is a lot of pressure on Turkey. If we say something, the world accuses us of interfering with the press, so we’re not in a comfortable position now, but after November 1, we will settle up with all of them.”
The police storming of Koza-Ipek comes as the Turkish elections descend into violence. For the first time since 2002, the AKP failed to assemble a governing coalition after the June elections, forcing new elections just as the AKP’s shaky “peace process” with the Kurdish minority disintegrated into a civil war, driven by Washington’s proxy war in neighboring Syria.
The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (HDP) is on the verge of obtaining over 10 percent of the vote and entering parliament. This has made it a target of repeated attacks. A June 5 bombing hit an HDP rally in Diyarbakır, killing four; a mob attack in September destroyed the HDP headquarters in Ankara as police stood by; and a bomb attack hit an HDP-led rally in Ankara on October 9, claiming 128 lives.
While Turkish officials have blamed the attacks on Islamic State (IS) terrorists fighting Kurdish militias across the border in Syria, growing numbers of Turks accuse the AKP of working in league with IS to crush the HDP so as to hold onto power.
Koza-Ipek became a key AKP target after emerging as the main outlet in the election campaign for opposition parties such as the HDP, the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Turkish police raided it in September after the Bugün newspaper ran a front-page story on AKP assistance to Islamic State (IS) militias in Syria.
With the AKP’s chances of obtaining a parliamentary majority on Sunday appearing ever slimmer, the government moved to shut down Koza-Ipek outright. On October 26, the Ankara prosecutor accused Koza-Ipek of being “involved in the activities of the Fethullahist terror organization,” referring to the Hizmet network of US-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gülen. The courts named pro-AKP “trustees” to oversee the media firm’s activities. The police handed over control of Koza-Ipek to the trustees yesterday after storming the building.
Turkish opposition politicians joined US and European officials in criticizing the police raid. HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtas said, “This is ‘AKP Turkey.’ It is not an acceptable practice. At first it seems like oppression of a media outlet, but, in fact, it targets the entire society.”
Several CHP legislators visited Koza-Ipek headquarters in support, with Baris Yarkadas declaring: “Today is a shameful day. Everyone who made this decision and those who implemented it will have to answer for their crimes.”
US State Department spokesman John Kirby called on Turkey to “uphold universal democratic values… including due process, freedom of expression and assembly, and, of course, access to media and information.”
The European Union (EU), through spokeswoman Catherine Ray, called for “the rule of law and media freedom” in Turkey.
The criticisms by the US and the EU of their AKP ally reek of hypocrisy. The major factor in the AKP’s attempt to erect a presidential dictatorship around Erdogan is the intense international crisis caused by its own disastrous policies of war and austerity.
Economically, Turkish capitalism is reeling from the collapse of its main export markets in Europe under the weight of EU austerity measures.
And despite the bloodthirstiness of its policies, the AKP has proven incapable of adapting to the twists and turns of Washington’s incoherent Syria policy. The AKP played a key role in arming Islamist militias against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but it was taken aback when the US turned against IS in the summer of 2013, after IS attacked the US puppet regime in Iraq.
This sudden shift provoked a deep crisis in Turkey. The AKP launched a large-scale purge in the media and political establishment, ostensibly aimed at the Gülen movement, which it accused of trying to carry out a US-backed overthrow of Erdogan.
The AKP became terrified when Washington began relying on Kurdish militias to fight IS in Iraq, fearing that Kurdish forces might place territorial demands on majority-Kurdish areas of Turkey.
In July, Ankara seemed to obtain a green light from Washington for war on the Kurds in the form of a plan for Turkey to invade northern Syria to prevent the Kurds from seizing the area. At this point, a bombing in the Turkish city of Suruç targeting people preparing to fight with Kurdish forces in Iraq claimed 28 lives and wounded over 100. Ankara blamed the bombing on IS, but large sections of the Turkish population blamed it on the Erdogan government.
Washington seems to have walked away from the plan for a Turkish invasion of Syria, however, after this threat of escalation prompted a Russian military intervention in Syria. This month, the US has announced plans to again rely on arming the Kurds as shock troops in the US war for regime-change against Assad.
With Syria engulfed in civil war and millions of refugees fleeing to Turkey and Europe, Turkey itself is descending into civil war. There is growing concern in the European bourgeoisie that such a conflict could spread uncontrollably, including into Europe, and force even larger numbers of refugees to flee the Middle East.
“Pushing Turkey towards a Turk-Kurdish civil war, as [Erdogan] is doing, means pushing the country towards catastrophe,” political scientist Michel Naufal told L’Orient Le Jour, adding: “If he resumes the process of peace and reconciliation with Kurdish society, the internal situation can, probably, be stabilized.”
Bay-Ram Balchi of France’s International Research Center told RTL television, “I do not want to start crisis-mongering, but it would really be better for us if Turkey did not transform into a second Syria. Then we in Europe would have both Syrian and Turkish migrants.”
Israel’s descent into self-imposed ghettoisation is political, cultural and academic and not, of course, religious for the bulk of Israelis are secular and the majority of religious Jewry are not Israeli: have no wish to be so and do not support Netanyahu’s right wing, extremist agenda.
Netanyahu’s Likud Zionism is a political dogma inherited from his father who for many years was the right-hand of a former Russian by the name of Vladimir Zhabotinsky, the founder of the Betar Movement and commander of the miltant Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL) underground organisation of the 1940s that bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 mainly British personnel, in an effort to end Britain’s Mandate over Palestine. Today’s Likud Party is, of course, the direct descendent of that Irgun Movement.
Likud’s brand of Zionism is anathema not only to most Jews in the Diaspora but also to the majority of Israelis. Netanyahu himself is a minority politician who polled only one third of the vote in the last election but who now heads an unstable coalition. It is this coalition that is determined to turn the Israeli state into an indigenous-Arab-free, Zionist fortress isolated from political and democratic reality.
The consensus, however, is that this current, right wing administration will eventually be replaced by a moderate, centrist one willing and anxious to collaborate with the international democratic community to establish a free, independent, Palestinian state and an end to illegal settlements and land-grabs. That time cannot come soon enough but in the interim the world will have to withstand the ghetto mentality of Israel’s current political incumbent and his influence over the US congress who continue to supply him with the bombs and killing machines that enables him to stay in power.
The Russian Air Force struck terrorists’ positions in Daraa province for the first time in the past month. Russia’s fighter jets hit the terrorists’ positions in the strategic hilltops of Tal al-Harra and Tal Antar near Deir al-Adas. Then the SAA carried out attacks on the strategic hilltop of Tal al-Alaqiya and managed to fully destroy the terrorists’ positions in the sector. Also, the Russian airstrikes targeted the ISIS and al-Nusra positions in the Golan Heights in Quneitra province.
Russian fighter jets destroyed a number of the positions of the terrorist groups in the Aleppo province. The airstrikes hit positions of al-Nusra and ISIS in the vicinity of Khanasser-Ithriyah road in the Southern parts of the city of Aleppo.
Earlier SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence reported that the ISIS militants seized territory which is vital to the Syrian government’s logistical lines. So far, ISIS has taken control of approximately 10 Syrian checkpoints along the supply line running from Hama through Salamiyeh, Ithriyah and Khanaser to Aleppo. The Syrian forces have temporarily halted part of their offensive operations in Aleppo province as they scramble to secure the threatened corridor.
On Tuesday morning, ISIS launched a large-scale offensive at the Syrian government stronghold, Al-Safira. According to reports, ISIS began their assault at the northern district of the town where they captured several building blocks. The clashes have been continuing. Militants moved their forces from Tal ‘Arn and Al-‘Aziziyah for this advance.
If ISIS captures Al-Safira, they will cut supplies off from the large number of Syrian troops in Aleppo province and take control of the large army bases surrounding the city.
On Tuesday, the SAA and the Lebanese Hezbollah took control of the city of Jisr al-Shughour and its surrounding mountainous areas in the province of Idlib. Jisr al-Shughour has a strategic importance because it links Syria’s coastal towns as well as the Idlib and Aleppo provinces. It has a population of over 150,000 people.
Iraqi security sources stated that the US-led coalition’s airstrikes killed 22 army and volunteer servicemen on Tuesday. The coalition warplanes targeted the Iraqi forces’ positions after they advanced the al-Jama and al-Davajen bridges near the city of Ramadi.
Separate roadside bombings in an area of the capital Baghdad left two people dead on Tuesday. Two Iraqi servicemen were also killed when a bomb inside a truck went off at a gathering of security forces near the city of Samarra.
The Iraqi Parliament may begin discussions to request Russia’s help in providing military aid in the fight against ISIS at the end of this week, Mowaffak Rubaie, lawmaker from the Shiite coalition said on Tuesday. Last week, Russian parliamentary speaker Valentina Matvienko said that Moscow would consider Baghdad’s request to provide military assistance in the fight against terrorism should it be made.
Over the past eighteen months two of the world’s largest automakers have been found responsible for deadly conspiracies. But, recent revelations can’t compete with the industry’s previous scandals.
Last month Volkswagen was caught rigging millions of its cars emissions testing systems to meet regulatory standards. The German company programmed its turbocharged direct injection diesel engines to activate emissions controls during laboratory testing while in real-world driving the vehicles produced up to 40 times more nitrogen oxide (NOx). Hundreds, probably thousands, of people will be afflicted with asthma, lung disease and other ailments as a result.
The Volkswagen scandal follows on the heels of General Motors’ efforts to hide ignition and airbag defects in millions of its vehicles. The faulty ignition switches cause the vehicle to lose power and its airbag to fail during accidents. GM accepts that at least 124 people died as a result of a glitch company officials knew about for years.
In a much bigger scandal, a half century ago information surfaced implicating auto companies in a conspiracy to keep the population in a toxic haze. The “smog conspiracy” was revealed in 1968 when the US Department of Justice filed an anti-trust case against the Big Three. They were accused of colluding to withhold the installation of catalytic converters and other technologies to reduce pollution. “Beginning at least as early as 1953, and continuing thereafter,” alleged the Department of Justice, “the defendants and co-conspirators have been engaged in a combination and conspiracy in unreasonable restraint of the aforesaid interstate trade and commerce in motor vehicle air pollution control equipment.”
In the early 1950s smog became increasingly common. Los Angeles (the car capital of the world) became the centre of the pollution debate. In a bid to quell mounting criticism of car generated air pollution, GM, Ford, Chrysler and the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) agreed in 1953 to collectively research pollution-reducing technologies. The automotive manufacturers claimed their alliance was driven by a concern for public health. It was not. As time passed evidence emerged that the Big Three had in fact united to block the installment of anti-pollution devices. Their agreement stipulated they would wait for unanimous agreement to move forward on smog-busting technologies. In Taken for a Ride, Jack Doyle writes that “the automobile manufacturers, through AMA, conspired not to compete in research, development, manufacture and installation of [pollution] control devices and collectively did all in their power to delay such research, development, manufacturing and installation.” The public had been hoodwinked.
But the biggest automotive scandal was much worse than the smog alliance. It was a conspiracy that changed the face of urban landscapes across North America. In 1922, Alfred P. Sloan, head of General Motors, created a working group charged with undermining and replacing the electric trolley. The group’s first act was to launch a bus line that arrived a minute before the streetcar and followed the same route. The trolley line soon shutdown. At the time, there were hundreds of trolley lines in Los Angeles so it was not particularly noteworthy when one shut down. But it was a harbinger of things to come.
In the early 1920s the streetcar industry was booming. There were 1,200 tramway and inter urban train companies with 29,000 miles of track. In the best years they topped 15 billion riders. Over a thousand miles of trolley track criss-crossed the Los Angeles area alone, carrying most people to work. The streetcar dominated the transit scene, but the competition was gaining strength. The number of cars on the road reached 20 million in the1920s. While pressure from the automobile mounted, the trolley remained the major form of urban transportation.
During this crucial period in transit history, GM was intent on eliminating the competition. As one of the biggest companies in the world, GM offered municipal politicians free Cadillacs to vote the company’s way and insisted that railway companies shipping their cars aid their campaign. They also pressured banks in small communities to starve local trolley companies of finance and then made credit available to streetcar companies that replaced their tracks with GM buses. In 1932, GM established United Cities Motor Transportation (UCMT) to buy electric streetcar companies in urban areas and convert them into bus operations. After purchasing streetcar systems, UCMT ripped up their tracks and tore down the overhead wires. Once the conversion was complete, UCMT resold the new bus systems, on condition they were not reconverted to streetcars. New owners signed contracts with UMCT, stipulating that “new equipment using any fuel or means of propulsion other than gas” could not be used. The contracts also required that GM be the source of all new buses.
In the relative obscurity of Galesburg Illinois, UCMT made its first urban takeover in 1933.23 Moving swiftly, it had already dismantled trolley systems in three urban centres before being censured by the American Transit Association. After its 1935 censure, GM dissolved UCMT. It was not long, however, before its anti-trolley activities were revived and redoubled.
GM and its co-conspirators developed a network of front organizations. In 1936, GM joined with Greyhound to form National City Lines; in 1938 they collaborated with Standard Oil of California to create Pacific City Lines; in 1939 Phillips Petroleum and Mack Truck joined National City Lines. American City Lines was created in 1943 to focus on the biggest cities.
GM’s conversion strategy ran into a major obstacle in many big cities. In the larger urban areas trolley lines were often owned by electricity companies that made money from selling the energy to power the rails. The electrical companies benefited from a tax provision allowing them to absorb trolley deficits through lower taxes paid by the parent company. Frustrated by this trolley-electricity ownership arrangement, in the early 1930s GM produced a number of dossiers for Congress highlighting the loss in tax revenues that resulted. GM’s strategy was successful.
The 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act made it extremely difficult for energy companies to own trolley lines. Companies that had previously refused GM’s advances began to sell. Eighteen months later, GM scooped up 90 miles of tramway in Manhattan. After successfully converting New York’s trolley system, GM and its cronies moved on to Tulsa, Philadelphia, Montgomery, Cedar Rapids, El Paso, Baltimore, Chicago and LA. When all was said and done a hundred electric transit systems in 45 cities were ripped up, converted and resold.
By the mid-50s nearly 90 percent of the US electric streetcar structure was gone.
GM’s apologists deny any conspiracy took place. Some even claim GM invigorated public transit. Yet, the facts are overwhelming. As Edwin Black points out in Internal Combustion, GM and company were condemned by the Department of Justice, Senate and courts (from the lowest district venue to the Supreme Court) for anti-trust practices that were part of this nationwide conspiracy. In a section of the 1947 indictment labeled “THE CONSPIRACY,” prosecutors and the grand jury jointly declared: “Beginning on or about January 1, 1937, the exact date being to the Grand Jury unknown, and continuing to and including the date of the return of this Indictment, the defendants, together with other persons to the Grand Jury unknown, have knowingly and continuously engaged in a wrongful and unlawful combination and conspiracy to acquire or otherwise secure control of or acquire a substantial financial interest in a substantial part of the companies which provide local transportation service in the various cities, towns and counties of several states of the United States, and to eliminate and exclude all competition in the sale of motorbuses, petroleum products, tires and tubes to the local transportation companies owned or controlled by or in which National City Lines … had a substantial financial interest.”
The verdict was guilty. Yet the punishment for conspiring to destroy a mode of mass transit amounted to a fine of five thousand dollars. Not much of a disincentive for a company worth billions of dollars. And just after its 1947 conviction, National City Lines revived its anti-trolley activities.
The only legitimate dispute is the extent to which GM’s motivation was to promote private auto use or simply to increase the number of gasoline-powered buses, which GM sold. Some believe GM pushed buses to spur future personal automobile sales. Others think differently. “The conspiracy against mass transit,” argues Edwin Black, “was first and foremost a conspiracy to convert cities from electric [streetcars] to petroleum [bus] systems.”
Honest observers know longstanding Israeli occupation harshness is the root cause of current violence – instigated by Israel, responded to courageously by Palestinians, largely youths and children, putting their lives on the line for freedom, deserving universal support in their struggle against pure evil.
Not according to Times Jerusalem correspondent Jodi Rudoren, discussing what she calls “dueling narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
One honest one alone exists. Times correspondents, columnists, contributors and editors don’t explain it – one-sidedly supporting outrageous Israeli claims, Big Lies, calling Palestinians knife-wielding terrorists, ignoring their longstanding persecution at the hands of a ruthless occupier.
Rudoren’s attempt to portray ongoing violence in terms of two sides with opposing views fell flat – willfully suppressing hard truths, substituting disgraceful misinformation, giving credence to Israeli Big Lies.
Nowhere in her article, or any she writes, is an explanation of decades of oppressive occupation, Palestinians denied fundamental human and civil rights guaranteed under international law, Washington’s full support for Israeli high crimes, both nations partnering in each other’s viciousness.
She doesn’t discuss longstanding Israeli military raids into Palestinian communities, mostly pre-dawn, homes broken into violently, ransacked, families terrorized, children traumatized, arrests made for political reasons only.
Nor Palestinian land stolen, their homes bulldozed for wanting to live free or no reason at all – to facilitate exclusive Jewish development, no Arabs allowed, not on Occupied Palestinian land Israel wants or in its own Jews-only communities.
Mass arrests, detentions, and grueling interrogations amounting to torture and other forms of abuse aren’t discussed – nor an entire population collectively punished for not being Jews.
Israel is a belligerent, racist, apartheid state worse than South Africa – doing to Arabs what Hitler did to Jews. Nothing on Times pages explains it, instead one-sided support for Israeli high crimes, calling them self-defense.
Children and youths armed with stones, their bare hands and immense courage, threatening one of the world’s most powerful military forces? The self-styled newspaper of record is a lying machine – on the wrong side of virtually every issue that matters, supporting might over right.
Israel’s war on Palestinians rages – Tuesday into Wednesday another five Palestinians murdered in cold blood, the toll now at least 66, certain to rise from seriously wounded victims likely to die, plus more fatalities from continued daily carnage.
The story Times and other media ignore is raging Israeli state terror against an entire Palestinian population – including dozens murdered, hundreds kidnapped, either disappeared or imprisoned, thousands injured, and millions terrified about what’s next.
On October 28, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) representative Hanne Sorine Sorensen commented on how “life will never be the same for children wounded during” Israel’s 2014 summer aggression on Gaza.
They’ll never again live normal lives – crippled, wheelchair-bound, copying with shattered bodies, traumatized by Israeli ruthlessness.
The same scenario is now playing out throughout Occupied Palestine – short of tanks, artillery and F-16s so far involved, maybe coming, Israel holding nothing back to brutalize an entire population, unrestrained in its ruthlessness.
Palestinians are dying daily, many others seriously wounded. A handful of Israelis died – for Western officials and media scoundrels the only ones that matter.
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.
Nuclear apologists pretend that people are exposed to more radiation from bananas than from Fukushima.
