Global Research

The last thing anyone wants when they buy a diamond to wear with pride and confidence as a symbol of love and commitment, is for it to be tarnished by association with bloodshed and violence.

According to Shmuel Mordechai, the Diamond Controller at Israel’s Ministry of Economics, the United States continued to be the primary market for Israeli re-exported diamonds at US$2.37 billion which accounting for 38% of the market whilst the  United Kingdom accounted for 3.7% at US$234 million, in 2014. Belgium accounted for 8.5% or US$532 million and Switzerland 6.47% at US$405 million.

‘The imperative for all businesses to respect human rights and ensure their business relationships are not contributing to adverse human rights impacts is a well-established tenet affirmed in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the UN Global Compact, and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. The fact that the diamond industry, which accounts for one third of Israel ’s manufacturing exports, is a very significant source of revenue for the regime in Israel means jewellers that sell diamonds processed in Israel help fund the commission of war crimes and suspected crimes against humanity.’

In evidence to the London Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine Israeli political economist, Shir Hever, stated:

‘Every time somebody buys a diamond that was exported from Israel some of that money ends up in the Israeli military. So the financial connection is quite clear.’

Notes

http://www.globalresearch.ca/israels­blood­diamonds-when­a­diamond­is­forever­on­your­conscience/5482602

The Trudeau family is back in the political seat of governance.  Justin Trudeau, Canada’s second youngest leader, will occupy a position his father so comprehensively dominated.

Stephen Harper was tossed out of office after having remade the conservative movement in Canada, putting forth a mix of vulgar incitements (the niqab debate; stripping citizenship; anti-terrorist platforms), neoliberal trade policies, and hammed up promises of Canadian glory.

The story of the 2015 election may well be remembered as one when Harper, after nearly ten years in power, finally lost his hold. But it should be remembered as one where the third force of Canadian politics failed to gain power.  The National Democratic Party, a party that should have come up with more heft, simply slid away in the last weeks of the campaign.

It did not seem that way at first.  Rachel Notley’s victory in Alberta in May suggested that the NDP could match it even in conservative ridings. And the party’s opposition to such police state bunk as C-51 had earned it status as a challenger.  Tom Mulcair, in other words, seemed to be doing something right.

At the voting booths, Mulcair was placed through the wringer. The flirting voters, having tantalised the party strategists, were leaving in droves.  The party that should have provided a genuine alternative to the Liberal centrist model of elitist capture was soundly crushed.

At the dissolution of parliament, the NDP had 95 seats.  At the end of Monday night, it had 40, by any stretch a catastrophic collapse of its base.  Its solid Quebec support disintegrated.  Mulcair himself barely beat off a challenge in his own riding from the Liberal contender.

An NDP strategist suggested he had not been “angry” enough.[1]  He was certainly not charming enough, not like his predecessor, Jack Layton, who managed to win support in Quebec in 2011 in dramatic fashion.  The passion was lacking; the businesslike manner was underwhelming. Harper’s legacy in Canadian politics has been so profound in the way it has trundled angry politics onto centre stage.

Instead, the brow beaten Mulcair had to suggest before a hundred supporters or so at the Palais des congrès de Montréal that “this election had to do with change, and today Canadians have turned the page on the last 10 years and have rejected fear and divisiveness.”

The Liberal triumph, in contrast, stole a march on perceived NDP softness, even if Mulcair did seem firm on such points as deficit spending.  (Like the Conservatives, the line here was the unimpeachable glory of the balanced budget.) On points such as the niqab ban, Mulcair found himself trapped between Harper’s purported majoritarian sentiment and Quebec sovereigntist Gilles Duceppe, who heartily agreed with such measures.

Commentators have hit upon strained similarities – that the country’s 15^th decade seemed much like its 10^th – 1957-1967.  Robert Wright surmised that Canadian “distemper” was not picked up by the managerial types in the form of John Diefenbaker and Lester B. Pearson.  Grey Canada had had enough by 1968, ushering in an age of Trudeaumania.  Nothing like that is in the wings on this occasion.

There is the usual chatter about reforms the Liberals might initiate.  There are mutterings about overhauling the antiquated first past the post electoral system that disenfranchises more than enfranchises – and a range of other measures that are simply unlikely to happen.

Will Trudeau wind back the militarised establishment, and Harper’s trashing of “soft power” options?  The latter made Canada a suitably aggressive deputy of US foreign policy. Or will the newly elected leader puncture the security, surveillance state, which the Liberals backed?

The Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, had Trudeau’s support, which effectively pitted the legislature against the spirit of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression have argued that parts of the C-51 legislation violate that sacred document “in a manner that is not justified in a free an democratic society.”[2]

It should be remembered that it was the Liberals who created C-11, Canada’s own variant of the Stop Piracy Online Act, a statutory creation it subsequently help pass with the Tories.  (Fittingly, much of this spirit can be found in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’s Intellectual Property chapter.)

While Trudeau promises much, the element of posturing is fundamental. In debates, he may well have been aggressive against Harperism, but in votes, he did something else.  He skipped the final vote on C-24, otherwise known as the “Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act”, the same act he so roundly condemned as creating a second-tier of citizens.   He backed, along with 29 other Liberals, Bill C-7, given the rather colourful title “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act”.

The centrist, in short, is cursed by calculated compromises that reactionaries do not need to consider.  The only ideology of relevance there is one of worn appearances that may, given a moment, vanish.  The NDP tended to be less burdened by that legacy.  When it came to the polling both, that qualifying feature did not prove enough.

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

Notes

[1] http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/mulcair-failing-to-maintain-the-momentum

[2] http://www.canadianprogressiveworld.com/2015/10/19/a-canadian-progressives-case-against-justin-trudeau-becoming-canadas-next-prime-minister/

A funny thing happened in 2012 after Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial writer at the New York Times, wrote his spectacularly false narrative telling readers that the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act had nothing to do with the crash because problem firms like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG didn’t own insured commercial banks — which would have been prohibited under the Glass Steagall Act, had it not been repealed in 1999. In fact, all three of the firms did, indeed, own banks insured by the FDIC at the time of the crash.

We figured that Sorkin had just made an error, or, well, three monster errors, so we wrote to his editor. We heard nothing. We wrote to the New York Times public editor who is supposed to uphold the integrity of the paper. Nothing. We wrote to the publisher. Nothing. To this very day, the errors remain in the Sorkin article. When the so-called paper of record allows three outrageously wrong errors to persist as fact, it doesn’t look like sloppy journalism, it looks like a conspiracy to deny the public an honest narrative.

Sorkin’s lie has since been regurgitated by two other writers at the New York Times: Paul Krugman and William Cohan. The lie has also spread to President Obama and Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, as a cover for why they won’t buck Wall Street and work to reinstate this critically needed legislation as Senators Elizabeth Warren, John McCain, Bernie Sanders and dozens of others in Congress are demanding. Marcy Kaptur’s legislation in the House of Representatives to restore the Glass-Steagall Act has 67 cosponsors.

The New York Times seems disingenuous at best and conspiratorial at worst: admitting in an editorial that it blew it big time in advocating for the repeal of Glass-Steagall while hiding in the wings as its writers are allowed to push a false narrative that the New York Times refuses to correct.

The editorial page editors wrote on July 26, 2012:

While we are on this subject, add The New York Times editorial page to the list of the converted. We forcefully advocated the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. ‘Few economic historians now find the logic behind Glass-Steagall persuasive,’  one editorial said in 1988. Another, in 1990, said that the notion that ‘banks and stocks were a dangerous mixture’ ‘makes little sense now.

“That year, we also said that the Glass-Steagall Act was one of two laws that ‘stifle commercial banks.’  The other was the McFadden-Douglas Act, which prevented banks from opening branches across the nation.

 Wall Street On Parade Read complete article 

Many around the world believe that Tony Blair did not only support the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, but did so in contravention of international law. New damning evidence in this regard suggests the net is finally closing in on him.

The unearthing of two classified US government memos, published in the UK tabloid, the Mail on Sunday, leaves no doubt that the former British prime minister committed Britain to following the US into Iraq a full year before the bombs started dropping on Baghdad in March 2003.

The first of the memos concerned was sent to US president George W Bush by his secretary of state, Colin Powell, in early April of 2002. In it Powell writes: “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 same time, as the former British PM was alleged to have committed UK forces to war alongside the US, Blair was assuring the British public that he and the American president were seeking a diplomatic solution to the question of Iraq and Saddam’s role in the region.

Powell also discusses trade issues in the first memo, specifically the controversial decision by the Bush administration to impose a tariff on EU steel imports in March 2002: “We do not expect Blair to dwell on the steel decision, although it was a bitter blow for him, as he indicated in his recent letter to you. It is clear that Britain will not fight our fight within the EU on this.”

© Chris Helgren / Reuters

This is a shocking revelation, exposing the extent to which Blair was willing to suborn UK’s trade and economic interests, along with the untold number of British jobs dependent on them, to his priority of currying favor with Washington.

Moving on to the second classified memo, prepared by the US Embassy in London for Colin Powell, we are given an insight into the determination of Blair and his allies to overcome political obstacles and opposition within his own parliamentary Labour Party over Britain’s potential participation in a US military coalition vis-à-vis Iraq.

Most shocking here is the suggestion that the US Embassy had confidential sources among Labour MPs, providing it with inside information, with their names in the document redacted to conceal their identities.

The memos have come to light in the wake of the scandal surrounding the location of classified emails on the private server of Hillary Clinton from her own time as secretary of state in the Obama administration. Currently campaigning for the Democratic Party nomination for next year’s presidential elections, Clinton was recently forced by a federal judge to release the emails, which number around 30,000.

It is thought she may have requested the memos to and from her Republican predecessor, Colin Powell, in order to review the procedures that were followed by the US State Department prior to the start of the US-UK invasion in March 2003.

Whatever her motivation for possessing them, their revelations place further pressure on Sir John Chilcot and his inquiry into Iraq, set up in 2009 and which has yet to publish its findings six years after the last witness was questioned in 2010. When Blair appeared in front of the inquiry he denied the allegation that he committed Britain to military action in Iraq along with the United States, during the aforementioned Crawford, Texas summit with George W Bush.

Tony Blair holds up Iraq inquiry report over tough criticism? (Op-Edge by John @JohnWight1) http://t.co/CsrbpLQRHI pic.twitter.com/TQKJAzrww2

— RT (@RT_com) August 18, 2015

Growing public and political disquiet over the inordinate delay in publishing the findings of the inquiry has been focused on the possibility that it is being held up by Blair, unhappy with the criticisms that have been made of his conduct and actions in the run-up to the war in Chilcot’s report, which Blair along with the other witnesses who have come in for criticism have seen in advance in order to allow them to respond. No matter, the publication of these classified US memos merely add to the growing clamor for the former British prime minister and key personnel within his government and inner circle to be investigated for war crimes and face trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

© Chris Helgren / Reuters

The fact that Blair has gone on to amass a fortune since leaving office in 2007 – through his role as adviser to various governments around the world, some with egregious human rights records; his role as a consultant to an international bank, a Saudi oil company, and as a speaker at various corporate and international business gatherings – many find especially repugnant. What these memos prove is that Tony Blair was blinded by the power of Washington, desperate to bask in its favors and prestige, determined in the process to become a political player on the international stage. Instead he has become a laughing stock, particularly in the UK, where public revulsion of him is widely felt, indeed it is now a toss-up between him and Margaret Thatcher over which is the most loathed British prime minister in the country’s recent history. What should never be lost when discussing Blair and his role when it comes to Iraq are the catastrophic consequences suffered by the Iraqi people. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were killed as a direct result of the war in 2003, with many more maimed, millions displaced, and an entire nation traumatized beyond measure. In 2015, rather than the flowering democracy promised by Blair, Bush, and their apologists, Iraq is a country mired in chaos, rife with sectarian violence, social dislocation, with Third World level poverty the norm for a people who at one time could boast of First World level education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Tony Blair’s role in destroying Iraq will follow him to his grave. However, if there is any justice in the world, it should also follow him into the dock at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

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Globalization of trade and central banking has propelled private corporations to positions of power and control never before seen in human history. Under advanced capitalism, the structural demands for a return on investment require an unending expansion of centralized capital in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The financial center of global capitalism is so highly concentrated that less than a few thousand people dominate and control $100 trillion of wealth.

The few thousand people controlling global capital amounts to less than 0.0001 percent of the world’s population. They are the transnational capitalist class (TCC), who, as the capitalist elite of the world, dominate nation-states through international trade agreements and transnational state organizations such as the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, and the International Monetary Fund.

The TCC communicates their policy requirements through global networks such as the G-7 and G-20, and various nongovernmental policy organizations such as the World Economic Forum, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberger Group. The TCC represents the interests of hundreds of thousands of millionaires and billionaires who comprise the richest people in the top 1 percent of the world’s wealth hierarchy.

The TCC are keenly aware of both their elite status and their increasing vulnerabilities to democracy movements and to unrest from below. The military empire dominated by the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) serves to protect TCC investments around the world. Wars, regime changes, and occupations performed in service of empire support investors’ access to natural resources and their speculative advantages in the market place.

When the empire is slow to perform or faced with political resistance, private security firms and private military companies (PMC) increasingly fulfill the TCC’s demands for the protections of their assets. These protection services include personal security for TCC executives and their families, protection of safe residential and work zones, tactical military advisory and training of national police and armed forces, intelligence gathering on democracy movements and opposition groups, weapons acquisitions and weapon systems management, and strike forces for military actions and assassinations.

The expanding crisis of desperate masses/refugees, alienated work forces, and environmental exhaustion means an unlimited opportunity for PMCs to engage in protections services for the global elite.

Estimates are that over $200 billion a year is spent on private security employing some fifteen million people worldwide. G4S is the largest PMC in the world with 625,000 employees spanning five continents in more than 120 countries. Nine of the largest money management firms in the world have holdings in G4S. Some of its more important contractors are the governments of the UK, the US, Israel, and Australia.  In the private sector G4S has worked with corporations such as Chrysler, Apple, and Bank of America. In Nigeria, Chevron contracts with G4S for counterinsurgency operations including fast-response mercenaries. G4S undertakes similar operations in South Sudan, and has provided surveillance equipment for checkpoints and prisons in Israel and security for Jewish settlements in Palestine.

Another private military contractor Constellis Holdings—formally Blackwater and Triple Canopy—is a leading provider of security, support, and military advisory services to the US government, foreign governments, multinational corporations, and international organizations. Constellis is managed by an all male board of directors including billionaire Red McCombs; John Ashcroft, the former attorney general; retired admiral Bobby Inman; and Jack Quinn, a leading Democratic advisor who served as chief of staff to vice president Al Gore and as counsel to President Clinton.

Hundreds of private military contractors now play an important role in TCC security in the evolving 21^st century neo-fascist corporate world. Capital will be free to travel instantly and internationally to anywhere that profits are possible, while nation-states will become little more than population containment zones with increasingly repressive labor controls. For these reasons, PMCs must be understood as a component of neoliberal imperialism that now supplements nation-states’ police powers and could eventually substitute for them.

The trend toward privatization of war is a serious threat to human rights, due process, and democratic transparency and accountability. The US/NATO military empire sets the moral standards for denial of human rights by using pilotless drones to kill civilians without regard for international law in various regions of resistance to empire. Labeling dead civilians as insurgents and terrorists, the complete lack of due process and human rights belies any standard of governmental moral legitimacy. This lack of moral legitimacy in turn sets standards for private military companies to operate with much the same malice in the shadow of the empire.

The globalization of PMC operations alongside transnational capital investment, international trade agreements, and an increasing concentration of wealth in the TCC means that the repressive practices of private security and war will inevitably come home to roost in the US, the European Union, and other first-world nations.

The 99 percent of us without wealth and private police power face the looming threat of overt repression and complete loss of human rights and legal protections. We see signs of this daily with police killings (now close to a hundred per month in the US), warrantless electronic spying, mass incarceration, random traffic checkpoints, airport security/no-fly lists, and Homeland Security compilations of databases on suspected resisters.

Each time we look past the crimes of the empire we lose a portion of our integrity of self.  Ignoring repression becomes part of continuing compromise in our daily lives leading to a moral malaise and increased feelings of helplessness. We must stand up and demand democratic transparency and the international enforcement of human rights. Unless we collectively challenge the empire, we face a world that is evolving into a new dark age of neo-feudal totalitarianism unlike any previously known.

Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and president of Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored. For a longer footnoted version of this report see:

Read the full study, as featured in Censored 2016: Media Freedom on the Line here.

http://www.projectcensored.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/C16_Ch08_Phillips_21stCenturyFascism.pdf

In a recent poll by ATIS, and before the release of the “smoking gun memo”, an astonishing 96% of people agreed that Tony Blair should stand trial for war crimes. The poll sample was taken from over 4700 votes spread over several websites, so even allowing for a very large margin of error, I think we can safely conclude that the majority of people believe Tony Blair is a war criminal and should stand trial for war crimes.

The bombshell “smoking gun” memo, straight from the Whitehouse, reveals the deal done in blood by Blair and Bush in 2002 more than a year before the Iraq war. Blair gave bush his unqualified support for the illegal war in Iraq whilst telling the British Public he was not proposing military action, as revealed in the secret email uncovered by the FBI investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private mail server when Secretary of Defence.

It is estimated by some observers, that more than 1,000,000 people died and a further 4.000,000 were displaced or injured and their homes destroyed, the majority of them civilians. Tony Blair sickeningly calls these atrocities committed in the Iraq war against mostly women and children “collateral damage”. The effects of this atrocious war is still reverberating around the Middle East which is now in complete chaos and also in Europe, where we now see a flood of millions of refugees trying to escape the turmoil and chaos of Blair actions. Blair could also be tried under his own anti terrorism laws in a British court, because, it could be argued, his actions aided and abetted the terrorists.

There is one other important point that should not be overlooked, Blair by his collusion with George Bush and the USA’s thirst for war and regime change, deliberately and knowingly sent many of our young people to their certain deaths and left many others horribly maimed for life. This makes Tony Blair complicit in the conspiracy to murder British citizens by any legal definition you care to use. When 96% of the people agree on anything, it sends a very powerful message, it’s time for Chilcot to publish his report, and its time Tony Blair faced his accusers from the dock in the Hague.

There will be no more taxpayer bailouts for the Big Wall Street banks. That much has been established by the lobbied to death Dodd-Frank banking reform (yeah, right) bill.

A recent study indicates that more than two-thirds of people who have been prescribed antidepressants are likely not suffering from depression at all. Sixty-nine percent of those taking SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) do not display the classic symptoms of major depressive disorder, which is commonly known as clinical depression, according to a report published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

SSRIs are also prescribed for other mental disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, obsessive compulsive disorder, and panic disorder, but the researchers found that 38 percent of those taking the drugs did not meet the criteria for these conditions either.

Commonly considered to have fewer side effects than other antidepressants, SSRIs are the most prescribed class of drugs for treating depression and other psychiatric disorders.

The authors of the study wrote:

Many individuals who are prescribed and use antidepressant medications may not have met criteria for mental disorders. Our data indicate that antidepressants are commonly used in the absence of clear evidence-based indications.

Between 1988 and 2008, the use of antidepressants increased almost 400 percent, with 11 percent of Americans now taking these drugs regularly.

Why are these drugs being over-prescribed?

The answer might be that temporary periods of mental stress are being misdiagnosed as clinical depression. Dr. Howard Forman, medical director of the Addiction Consultation Service at Montefiore Medical Center, is one of those who subscribe to this theory.

According to Dr. Forman:

We all experience periods of stress, periods of sadness, and periods of self-doubt. These don’t make us mentally ill, they define us as human.

He also points out that although psychotherapy might be a better way of treating these conditions, there are “roadblocks” involved, including cost, scarcity of qualified therapists, and the time demands those experts face.

The official U.S. guidelines for diagnosing clinical depression are when a “person has five or more depressive symptoms over a two week period, most of the day, nearly every day.”

Symptoms of clinical depression range from a depressed mood to thoughts of suicide. They might also include a lack of interest in normal activities, changes in weight or appetite, insomnia or too much sleep, restlessness, fatigue, guilty feelings and problems with concentration or decision-making.

Although SSRIs are considered to be safer than other antidepressants, they are not without potentially serious side effects. Studies have shown that the use of antidepressants involves an “increased risk of suicidal behaviour and thoughts in children and adolescents, particularly in the early stages of treatment.” The use of Prozac and Seroxat actually doubles the risk of suicidal behavior among young people.

Studies have also indicated an increased risk of children being born with autism when their mothers take SSRIs during pregnancy.

Considering the risks, these drugs should never be casually prescribed. However, in this climate of increased reliance on pills to solve every problem, over-prescription of medications is rampant, particularly in the U.S.

Big Pharma rakes in more than half a trillion dollars in revenues each year and spends billions advertising its products. This is most likely the real reason that antidepressants are being over-prescribed.

Drug manufacturers apply pressure and provide incentives to doctors to prescribe more pharmaceuticals than necessary. One study revealed that “drug companies have a tremendous incentive to find new conditions to treat with existing drugs, and when they can’t, they invent them.”

That’s right: the drug makers invent disorders out of thin air just so they can sell more of their products, according to an article posted by the Drug and Alcohol Testing Compliance Services (DATCS) website:

For example, the drug Sarafem is really Prozac with a different name and a different color capsule. It’s patented, approved, and promoted for the treatment of “Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder” which is defined as the sadness, irritability, tension, and moodiness that might occur prior to menstruation. Even though this drug isn’t any more effective at treating these symptoms than generic Prozac, it’s up to three times as expensive.

Another tactic is to “change the definition of existing diseases,” says the DATCS:

For example, changes to blood pressure and cholesterol level guidelines could qualify millions of new people for prescription medication literally overnight. When this happens, it’s not uncommon for the supporters of such changes to have financial ties to the drug companies that would benefit most.

These profit-motivated tactics should be recognized as what they really are: criminal behavior by a cabal of greedy predators. Enough is enough. It’s time to acknowledge and put a stop to these practices.

Notes:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk
http://www.medicaldaily.com
http://www.psychiatrist.com
http://datcs.com

The Russian-led military coalition is badly beating Washington’s proxies in Syria which is why John Kerry is calling for a “Time Out”.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for an emergency summit later in the week so that leaders from Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan could discuss ways to avoid the “total destruction” of Syria. According to Kerry, “Everybody, including the Russians and the Iranians, have said there is no military solution, so we need to make an effort to find a political solution. This is a human catastrophe that now threatens the integrity of a whole group of countries around the region,” Kerry added.

Of course, it was never a “catastrophe” when the terrorists were destroying cities and villages across the country, uprooting half the population and transforming the once-unified and secure nation into an anarchic failed state. It only became a catastrophe when Vladimir Putin synchronized the Russian bombing campaign with allied forces on the ground who started wiping out hundreds of US-backed militants and recapturing critical cities across Western corridor. Now that the Russian airforce is pounding the living daylights out of jihadi ammo dumps, weapons depots and rebel strongholds, and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is tightening their grip on Aleppo, and Hezbollah is inflicting heavy casualties on Jabhat al Nusra militants and other Al Qaida-linked vermin; Kerry’s decided it’s a catastrophe. Now that the momentum of the war has shifted in favor of Syrian president Bashar al Assad, Kerry wants a “Time out”.

Keep in mind, that Putin worked tirelessly throughout the summer months to try to bring the warring parties together (including Assad’s political opposition) to see if deal could be worked out to stabilize Syria and fight ISIS. But Washington wanted no part of any Russian-led coalition. Having exhausted all the possibilities for resolving the conflict through a broader consensus, Putin decided to get directly involved by committing the Russian airforce to lead the fight against the Sunni extremists and other anti-government forces that have been tearing the country apart and paving the way for Al Qaida-linked forces to take control of the Capital. Putin’s intervention stopped the emergence of a terrorist Caliphate in Damascus. He turned the tide in the four year-long war, and delivered a body-blow to Washington’s malign strategy Now he’s going to finish the job.

Putin is not gullible enough to fall for Kerry’s stalling tactic. He’s going to kill or capture as many of the terrorists as possible and he’s not going to let Uncle Sam get in the way.

These terrorists–over 2,000 of who are from Chechnya–pose an existential threat to Russia, as does the US plan to use Islamic extremists to advance their foreign policy objectives. Putin takes the threat seriously. He knows that if Washington’s strategy succeeds in Syria, it will be used in Iran and then again in Russia. That’s why he’s decided to dump tons of money and resources into the project. That’s why his Generals have worked out all the details and come up with a rock-solid strategy for annihilating this clatter of juvenile delinquents and for restoring Syria’s sovereign borders. And that’s why he’s not going to be waved-away by the likes of mealy-mouth John Kerry. Putin is going to see this thing through to the bitter end. He’s not going to stop for anyone or anything. Winning in Syria is a matter of national security, Russia’s national security.

Here’s Kerry again: “If Russia is there to help Assad find a way to a political solution as well as to fight Daesh (ISIS) and extremism, then there is the possibility of a very different path.”

Putin has offered solutions from the very onset, it was Washington that rejected those remedies. Putin supported the so called Geneva communique dating back to 2012. In fact, it was then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who threw a wrench in the proceedings by demanding that Assad not be part of any transitional governing body. (Note: Now Obama has caved on this demand.) Russia saw her demand as tantamount to regime change, which it was since Assad is the internationally-recognized head of state and fully entitled to be a part of any transitional government. US rejectionism sabotaged efforts for internationally-monitored “free and fair multi-party elections” and ended any chance for a speedy end to the war. Washington was more determined to get its own way (“Assad must go”) then to save the lives of tens of thousands of civilians who have died since Clinton walked away from Geneva.

And now Kerry is extending the olive branch? Now Washington pretends to care about the “total destruction” of Syria?

I’m not buying it. What Kerry cares about is his hoodlum “head-chopper” buddies that are being turned into shredded wheat by Russian Daisy Cutters. That’s what he cares about. Take a look at this from RT:

“Syrian President Bashar Assad “does not have to leave tomorrow or the next day,” the US State Department (spokesman Mark Toner) has stated. Washington allows that Assad may take part in transitional process, but can’t be part of Syria’s next government…

“… this isn’t the US dictating this. This is the feeling of many governments around the world, and frankly, the majority of the Syrian people,” Toner said.

When asked to clarify “how long” the State Department thinks the transition process could take, Toner failed to give an exact time period.

“I can’t put a timeframe on it. I can’t say two weeks, two months, six months,” he said, adding that the US is looking for “a political resolution to the conflict.”…

Toner then admitted that the US is still in the “process to start the process,” stressing that this was “an urgent issue” that “has gone on too long.” (‘Assad doesn’t have to leave tomorrow, can be part of transitional process’ – US State Department”, RT)

“A process to start the process”?? Hello?

Toner is backpeddling so fast he’s not even sure what he’s saying. Clearly, the administration is so flustered by developments on the ground in Syria, and so eager to stop the killing of US-backed jihadis, that they sent poor Toner out to talk to the media before he’d even gotten his talking points figured out. What a joke. The administration has gone from refusing to meet with a high-level Russian delegation just last week (to talk about coordinating airstrikes in Syria), to completely capitulating on their ridiculous “Assad must go” position today. That’s quite a reversal, don’t you think? I’m surprised they didn’t just run a big white Flag up over 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. while the Marine Band played Taps.

But don’t think that this latest humiliation will derail Washington’s plan for destroying Syria as a functioning, sovereign state and carving it into a million powerless statelets that pose no threat to Big Oil’s pipeline corridors, or US military bases, or Israel’s sprawling Zionist Valhalla. Because it won’t. That plan is still right on track despite Putin’s efforts to crush the militants and defend the borders. The latest iteration of the Syria dissolution strategy was articulated by Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass who said:

“….the United States and others should pursue a two-track policy. One track would channel steps to improve the balance of power on the ground in Syria. This means doing more to help the Kurds and select Sunni tribes, as well as continuing to attack the Islamic State from the air.

Relatively safe enclaves should emerge from this effort. A Syria of enclaves or cantons may be the best possible outcome for now and the foreseeable future. Neither the US nor anyone else has a vital national interest in restoring a Syrian government that controls all of the country’s territory; what is essential is to roll back the Islamic State and similar groups.

The second track is a political process in which the US and other governments remain open to Russian (and even Iranian) participation. The goal would be to ease Assad out of power and establish a successor government that, at a minimum, enjoyed the support of his Alawite base and, ideally, some Sunnis.” (Testing Putin in Syria, Richard Haass, Project Syndicate)

Topple Assad and partition the country. Destroy Syria once and for all. That is Washington’s operating strategy. It’s a plan that was first proposed by Brooking’s analyst Michael O’Hanlon who recently said:

“…a future Syria could be a confederation of several sectors: one largely Alawite (Assad’s own sect), spread along the Mediterranean coast; another Kurdish, along the north and northeast corridors near the Turkish border; a third primarily Druse, in the southwest; a fourth largely made up of Sunni Muslims; and then a central zone of intermixed groups in the country’s main population belt from Damascus to Aleppo…

Under such an arrangement, Assad would ultimately have to step down from power in Damascus… A weak central government would replace him. But most of the power, as well as most of the armed forces. would reside within the individual autonomous sectors — and belong to the various regional governments…

American and other foreign trainers would need to deploy inside Syria, where the would-be recruits actually live — and must stay, if they are to protect their families. (Syria’s one hope may be as dim as Bosnia’s once was, Michael O’ Hanlon, Reuters)

Once again, the same theme repeated: Topple Assad and partition the country. Of course, the US will have to train “would-be recruits” to police the natives and prevent the buildup of any coalition or militia that might threaten US imperial ambitions in the region. But that goes without saying. (By the way, Hillary Clinton has already thrown her support behind the O’Hanlon plan emphasizing the importance of “safe zones” that could be used to harbor Sunni militants and other enemies of the state.)

John “Wacko” McCain has been the most strident proponent of the plan to break up Syria. Here’s part of what he said on the topic:

“We must act now to defend civilian populations and our opposition partners in Syria….we must establish enclaves in Syria where civilians and the moderate opposition to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and ISIS can find greater security. These enclaves must be protected with greater American and coalition airpower and likely foreign troops on the ground. We should not rule out that U.S. forces could play a limited role in this ground contingent…

“We must back up our policy in ways that check Putin’s ambitions and shape his behavior. If Russia attacks our opposition partners, we must impose greater costs on Russia’s interests — for example, by striking significant Syrian leadership or military targets. But we should not confine our response to Syria. We must increase pressure on Russia elsewhere. We should provide defensive weapons and related assistance to Ukrainian forces so they can take a greater toll on Russian forces.” (The Reckless Guns of October, Daniel Lazare, Consortium News)

Sure, let’s Kick-off World War 3. Why not?

The man should be in a straitjacket not fulminating on the floor of the Congress.

The entire US political establishment supports the removal of Assad and the breaking up of Syria. Kerry’s sudden appeal for dialogue does not represent a fundamental change in the strategy. It’s merely an attempt to buy some time for US-backed mercenaries who are feeling the full-brunt of the Russia’s bombing campaign. Putin would be well-advised to ignore Kerry’s braying and continue to prosecute his war on terror until the job is done.

(Note: As this article was going to press, the Turkish Daily Zaman reported that:

“….the US and several European and Gulf states…have agreed to a plan under which Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad will remain in power for the next six months during a transition period….Turkey has abandoned its determination [to get rid of Assad] and has agreed on an interim period with Assad in place,” former Foreign Minister Yaşar Yakış told Today’s Zaman on Tuesday….If the Syrian people decide to continue with Assad, then there is not much Turkey can object to.” (Report: Turkey agrees to Syria political transition involving Assad, Today’s Zaman)

This story has not yet appeared in any western media. Obama’s Syrian policy has completely collapsed.

Almost daily, The Times finds new ways to disgrace itself. Instead of full and accurate reporting, it fronts for imperial lawlessness – making it complicit with high crimes of war and against humanity. 

Its administration and Pentagon press release “journalism” is misinformation and distortion.

Its latest willful deception headlines “Hospital Attack Fueled by Units New to Kunduz,” saying:

“The American airstrike against a Doctors Without Borders hospital in northern Afghanistan…was approved by American Special Operations Forces normally assigned to other parts of Asia.”

“The Afghan commandos who requested the strike had been rushed from another part of the country to help quell the Taliban attack. And the AC-130 gunship that unleashed the fire had not worked with either group before.”

“Military investigators have not yet reached any final conclusions about how the Oct. 3 attack in Kunduz occurred, but an emerging focus of investigators is how the lack of familiarity of American and Afghan forces with the area and their lack of experience in working together may have directly contributed to the series of mistaken decisions that led to the attack, American officials said.”

“They attributed those problems, in part, to the withdrawal of American forces from northern Afghanistan that has been part of the gradual drawdown of United States forces in the country.

No legitimate editor would publish this type of rubbish – willful distortion of facts, ignoring clear evidence of a premeditated war crime, horrific by any standard, authorized at the highest levels.

Fact: US warplanes knowingly and deliberately bombed what they knew was a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital – treating sick and wounded Afghans, not involved in fighting.

Fact: High-ranking US and Afghan officials in Washington and Kabul had precise coordinates of the facility – identified as a hospital, not a military outpost or refuge.

Fact: Multiple US attacks continued for over an hour – ignoring MSF’s frantic plea to stop, moments after the first strike, telling Pentagon and Afghan authorities a hospital was being hit, medical personnel and patients alone inside.

Fact: Attacking the facility was a well-planned, premeditated, willful act of mass murder – 24 victims, medical staff and patients only, some burned alive in their beds, 37 others injured.

The only medical facility available for thousands of Afghans was destroyed. They have nowhere to go for treatment, assuring many will die and suffer grievously because of Washington’s act of savagery.

The Times report mocks them, ignoring 14 years of US Afghan war crimes. Post-9/11, millions of Afghans died from war-related violence, untreated diseases, starvation, exposure to freezing cold in winter and overall deprivation – deliberate premeditated genocide, the highest of all high crimes.

An unnamed MSF nurse called what happened “absolutely terrifying.” People were screaming for help while the hospital was being destroyed, turned to rubble and set ablaze by US airstrikes.

“We tried to take a look into one of the burning buildings,” said the nurse. “I cannot describe what was inside. There are no words for how terrible it was. In the Intensive Care Unit, six patients were burning in their beds.”

“We looked for some staff that were supposed to be in the operating theater. It was awful. A patient there on the operating table, dead, in the middle of the destruction. We couldn’t find our staff.”

Wounded patients were “crying out, everywhere.” Surviving doctors had to operate on their colleagues, trying to save them. Many died.

“Some of my colleagues were in too much shock, crying and crying.” The horror was too much to bear. Doctors, nurses and other medical staff worked tirelessly for months, at times non-stop, treating patients urgently needing care.

They hadn’t been home for months. Many are now dead – murdered by US imperialism, humanity’s greatest scourge, ISIS and other takfiri terrorists pale in comparison.

“I cannot find words for this,” said the nurse. He survived. Many of his colleagues died. MSF demands a full independent investigation, conducted by the Geneva-based International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) – the only permanent body established to investigate international humanitarian law violations.

It rejects Washington, NATO and Afghan authorities investigating themselves – assuring whitewash, not truth and full disclosure of what happened.

It called on Obama and Afghan officials to permit it, a requirement for it to proceed, so far not gotten. Last week, MSF reported a US armored vehicle forced its way through the closed wrecked hospital’s gate unannounced – destroying and/or damaging evidence of the malicious attack.

MSF press officer Tim Shenk explained it, saying “(t)heir unannounced and forced entry damaged property, destroyed potential evidence and caused stress and fear for the team.”

Photographs show charred human remains, damaged or destroyed medical equipment, and a facility largely in ruins.

With or without an independent investigation, the whole world knows what happened. Washington knowingly and willfully committed a grievous war crime, mass murdering noncombatant civilians, the way all US wars are waged – without mercy, violating fundamental international law, civilian men, women and children suffering most.

The Times is complicit with Washington’s coverup – publishing Pentagon propaganda, suppressing vital truths.

A Final Comment

On July 3, 2015, MSF reported the following:

“On Wednesday 1 July at 14:07, heavily armed men from Afghan Special Forces entered the MSF hospital compound, cordoned off the facility and began shooting in the air.”

“The armed men physically assaulted three MSF staff members and entered the hospital with weapons. They then proceeded to arrest three patients.”

“Hospital staff tried their best to ensure continued medical care for the three patients, and in the process, one MSF staff member was threatened at gunpoint by two armed men.”

“After approximately one hour, the armed men released the three patients and left the hospital compound.”

“We are shocked by this incident,” MSF director of operations Dr. Bart Janssens said at the time. “Since it opened in 2011, Kunduz Trauma Centre has been a place where all patients can receive free medical and surgical care safely. This serious event puts at risk the lives of thousands of people who rely on the centre for urgent care.”

MSF called what happened “an unacceptable (serious) breach of international humanitarian law, which protects medical services from attacks” – this one carried out with full knowledge and likely authorization of US officials, running everything in Afghanistan, its puppet regime subservient to US rule.

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 first thing any thinking person learns about the Internet is not to trust everything you see there. While you can find much well-researched and reliable material, you’ll also encounter disinformation, spoofs, doctored photographs and crazy conspiracy theories. That would seem to be a basic rule of the Web – caveat emptor and be careful what you do with the information – unless you’re following a preferred neocon narrative. Then, nothing to worry about.

A devil-may-care approach to Internet-sourced material has been particularly striking when it comes to the case of the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. It has now become de rigueur on the part of the West’s mainstream news outlets to tout the dubious work of a British Internet outlet called Bellingcat, which bases its research on photographs and other stuff pulled off the Internet.

Bellingcat’s founder Eliot Higgins also has made journalistic errors that would have ended the careers of many true professionals, yet he continues to be cited and hailed by the likes of The New York Times and The Washington Post, which have historically turned up their noses about Internet-based journalism.

The secret to Higgins’s success seems to be that he reinforces what the U.S. government’s propagandists want people to believe but lack the credibility to sell. It’s a great business model, marketing yourself as a hip “citizen journalist” who just happens to advance Official Washington’s “group thinks.”

We saw similar opportunism among many wannabe media stars in 2002-03 when U.S. commentators across the political spectrum expressed certitude about Iraq’s hidden stockpiles of WMD. Even the catastrophic consequences of that falsehood did little to dent the career advancements of the Iraq-WMD promoters. There was almost no accountability, proving that there truly is safety in numbers. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Through the US Media Lens Darkly.”]

New Recruits

But there’s always room for new recruits. Blogger Higgins made his first splash by purporting to prove the accuracy of U.S. government claims about the Syrian government firing rockets carrying sarin gas that killed hundreds of civilians on Aug. 21, 2013, outside Damascus, an incident that came close to precipitating a major U.S. bombing campaign against the Syrian military.

Those of us who noted the startling lack of evidence in the Syria-sarin case – much as we had questioned the Iraq-WMD claims in 2002-03 – were brushed aside by Big Media which rushed to embrace Higgins who claimed to have proved the U.S. government’s charges. Even The New York Times clambered onboard the Higgins bandwagon.

Higgins and others mocked legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh when he cited intelligence sources indicating that the attack appeared to be a provocation staged by Sunni extremists to draw the U.S. military into the war, not an attack by the Syrian military.

Despite Hersh’s long record for breaking major stories – including the My Lai massacre from the Vietnam War, the “Family Jewels” secrets of the CIA in the 1970s, and the Abu Ghraib torture during the Iraq War – The New Yorker and The Washington Post refused to run his articles, forcing Hersh to publish in the London Review of Books.

Hersh was then treated like the crazy uncle in the attic, while Higgins – an unemployed British bureaucrat operating from his home in Leicester, England – was the new golden boy. While Higgins was applauded, Hersh was shunned.

But Hersh’s work was buttressed by the findings of top aeronautical scientists who studied the one rocket that carried sarin into the Damascus suburb of Ghouta and concluded that it could have traveled only about two kilometers, far less distance than was assumed by Official Washington’s “group think,” which had traced the firing position to about nine kilometers away at a Syrian military base near the presidential palace of Bashar al-Assad.

“It’s clear and unambiguous this munition could not have come from Syrian government-controlled areas as the White House claimed,” Theodore Postol, a professor in the Science, Technology, and Global Security Working Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told MintPress News.

Postol published “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21st, 2013” in January 2014 along with Richard Lloyd, an analyst at the military contractor Tesla Laboratories who was a United Nations weapons inspector and has to his credit two books, 40 patents and more than 75 academic papers on weapons technology.

Postol added in the MintPress interview that Higgins “has done a very nice job collecting information on a website. As far as his analysis, it’s so lacking any analytical foundation it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about.”

In the wake of the Postol-Lloyd report, The New York Times ran what amounted to a grudging retraction of its earlier claims. Yet, to this day, the Obama administration has failed to withdraw  its rush-to-judgment charges against the Syrian government or present any verifiable evidence to support them.

This unwillingness of the Obama administration to fess up has served Higgins well, in that there is still uncertainty regarding the facts of the case. After all, once a good propaganda club is forged for bludgeoning an adversary, it’s not something Official Washington lays down easily. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.“]

The MH-17 Mystery

So, Higgins and Bellingcat moved on to the mystery surrounding MH-17, where again the Obama administration rushed to a judgment, pinning the blame on the Russians and ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine who were fighting the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev.

Though again hard evidence was lacking – at least publicly – Official Washington and its many minions around the world formed a new “group think” – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was responsible for the 298 deaths.

On July 20, 2014, just three days after the MH-17 shoot-down in an article with the definitive title “U.S. official: Russia gave systems,” The Washington Post reported that an anonymous U.S. official said the U.S. government had “confirmed that Russia supplied sophisticated missile launchers to separatists in eastern Ukraine and that attempts were made to move them back across the Russian border.”

This official told the Post that there wasn’t just one Buk battery, but three. The supposed existence of these Buk systems in the rebels’ hands was central to the case blaming Putin, who indeed would have been highly irresponsible if he had delivered such powerful weapons – capable of hitting a commercial airliner flying at 33,000 feet as MH-17 was – to a ragtag rebel force of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

But there were problems with this version, including the fact that – as reflected in a “government assessment” from the Director of National Intelligence released on July 22, 2014, (or five days after the crash) – U.S. intelligence listed other weapons allegedly provided by the Russians to the ethnic Russian rebels but not a Buk anti-aircraft missile system.

In other words, two days after the Post cited a U.S. official claiming that the Russians had given the rebels the Buks, the DNI’s “government assessment” made no reference to a delivery of one, let alone three powerful Buk batteries.

And that absence of evidence came in the context of the DNI larding the report with every possible innuendo to implicate the Russians, including references to “social media” entries. But there was no mention of a Buk delivery.

The significance of this missing link is hard to overstate. At the time eastern Ukraine was the focus of extraordinary U.S. intelligence collection because of the potential for the crisis to spin out of control and start World War III. Plus, a Buk missile battery is large and difficult to conceal. The missiles themselves are 16-feet-long and are usually pulled around by truck.

U.S. spy satellites, which supposedly can let you read a license plate in Moscow, surely would have picked up these images. And, if – for some inexplicable reason – a Buk battery was missed before July 17, 2014, it would surely have been spotted on an after-action review of the satellite imagery. But the U.S. government has released nothing of the kind – not three, not two, not one.

Different Account

Instead, in the days after the MH-17 crash, I was told by a source that U.S. intelligence had spotted Buk systems in the area but they appeared to be under Ukrainian government control. The source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts said the likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile was manned by troops dressed in what looked like Ukrainian uniforms.

At that point in time, the source said CIA analysts were still not ruling out the possibility that the troops were actually eastern Ukrainian rebels in similar uniforms but the initial assessment was that the troops were Ukrainian soldiers. There also was the suggestion that the soldiers involved were undisciplined and possibly drunk, since the imagery showed what looked like beer bottles scattered around the site, the source said. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?”]

Subsequently, the source said, these analysts reviewed other intelligence data, including recorded phone intercepts, and concluded that the shoot-down was carried out by a rogue element of the Ukrainian government, working with a rabidly anti-Russian oligarch, but that senior Ukrainian leaders, such as President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, were not implicated. However, I have not been able to determine if this assessment was a dissident opinion or a consensus within U.S. intelligence circles.

Another intelligence source told me that CIA analysts did brief Dutch authorities during the preparation of the Dutch Safety Board’s report but that the U.S. information remained classified and unavailable for public release. In the Dutch report, there is no reference to U.S.-supplied information although the report reflects sensitive details about Russian-made weapons systems, secrets declassified by Moscow for the investigation.

Into this propaganda-laced controversy stepped Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat with their “citizen journalism” and Internet-based investigation. The core of their project was to scour the Internet for images purportedly of a Buk missile system rumbling through the eastern Ukrainian countryside in the days before the MH-17 crash. After finding several such images, Bellingcat insistently linked the Buk missiles to the Russians and the rebels.

Supposedly, this investigative approach is better than what we traditional journalists do in such cases, which is to find sources with vetted intelligence information and get them to share it with us, while also testing it out against verifiable facts and the views of outside experts. Our approach is far from perfect – and often requires some gutsy whistle-blowing by honest officials – but it is how many important secrets have been revealed.

A central flaw in the Internet-based approach is that it is very easy for a skilled propagandist in a government dirty-tricks office or just some clever jerk with Photoshop software to manufacture realistic-looking images or documents and palm them off either directly to gullible people or through propaganda fronts that appear as non-governmental entities but are really bought-and-paid-for conduits of disinformation.

This idea of filtering propaganda through supposedly disinterested – and thus more credible – outlets has been part of the intelligence community’s playbook for many years. I was once told by Gen. Edward Lansdale, one of the pioneers of CIA psychological operations, that his preference always was to plant propaganda in news agencies that were perceived as objective, that way people were more believing.

Lost Credibility

After the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandals of the 1970s, when the American people were suspicious of whatever they heard from the U.S. government, the Reagan administration in the 1980s organized inter-agency task forces to apply CIA-style techniques to manage the perceptions of the U.S. public about foreign events. The architect was the CIA’s top propaganda specialist, Walter Raymond Jr., who was transferred to the National Security Council staff to skirt legal prohibitions against the CIA manipulating Americans.

Raymond, who counseled his subordinates in the art of gluing black hats on U.S. adversaries and white hats on U.S. friends, recommended that U.S. propaganda be funneled through organizations that had “credibility in the political center.” Among his favorite outlets were Freedom House, a non-governmental “human rights” group that was discreetly funded by the U.S. government, and the Atlantic Council, a think tank led by former senior U.S. government officials and promoting strong NATO ties. [For more background, see “How Reagan’s Propaganda Succeeded.”]

The same process continues to this day with some of the same trusted outlets, such as Freedom House and Atlantic Council, but requiring some new fronts that have yet to be identified as propaganda conduits. Many receive discreet or backdoor funding from the U.S. government through the National Endowment for Democracy or other U.S. entities.

For instance, the U.S. Agency for International Development (along with billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Institute) funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which targets governments that have fallen into U.S. disfavor and which are then undermined by reporting that hypes alleged ties to organized crime and corruption. The USAID/Soros-funded OCCRP alsocollaborates with Bellingcat.

Higgins has become a favorite, too, of the Atlantic Council, which has partnered with him for a report about Russian involvement in the Ukraine conflict, and he wins praise from the Soros-financed Human Rights Watch, which has lobbied for U.S. military intervention against the Assad government in Syria. (Like Higgins, Human Rights Watch pushed discredited theories about where Syrian sarin-gas attack originated.)

Yet, because Higgins’s claims dovetail so neatly with U.S. government propaganda and neoconservative narratives, he is treated like an oracle by credulous journalists, the Oracle of Leicester. For instance, Australia’s “60 Minutes” dispatched a crew to Higgins’s house to get the supposed coordinates for where the so-called “Buk getaway video” was filmed – another curious scene that appeared mysteriously on the Internet.

When “60 Minutes” got to the spot near Luhansk in eastern Ukraine where Higgins sent them, the location did not match up with the video. Although there were some billboards in the video and at the site in Luhansk, they were different shapes and all the other landmarks were off, too. Still, the Australian news crew pretended that it was at the right place, using some video sleight-of-hand to snooker the viewers.

However, when I published screen grabs of the getaway video and the Luhansk location, it was clear to anyone that the scenes didn’t match up.

A screen shot of the roadway where the suspected BUK missile battery supposedly passed after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Image from Australian “60 Minutes” program)

Correspondent Michael Unsher of Australia’s “60 Minutes” claims to have found the billboard visible in a video of a BUK missile launcher after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Screen shot from Australia’s “60 Minutes”)

Yet, instead of simply admitting that they were in error, the “60 Minutes” host did a follow-up insulting me, asserting that he had gone to the place identified by Higgins and claiming that there was a utility pole in the video that looked something like a utility pole in Luhansk.

A screen shot from the so-called “getaway” video supposedly taken shortly after MH-17 was shot down showing the road that the suspected BUK anti-aircraft missile battery was taking.

A screen shot from Australia’s “60 Minutes” update supposedly showing a utility pole in the “getaway” video and matching it up with a poll in an intersection of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. However, note that the inset obscures the spot where a house appeared on the original video.

At this point, the Australian program went from committing an embarrassing error to engaging in journalistic fraud. Beyond the fact that utility poles tend to look alike, nothing else matched up and, indeed, the landmarks around the utility poles were markedly different, too. A house next to the pole in the video didn’t appear in the scene filmed by the Australian crew. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “A Reckless Stand-upper on MH-17.”]

An Enduring Aura

But Higgins’s aura was such that objective reality and logic no longer seemed to matter. That two utility poles looked somewhat alike when nothing else in a video matched up at all somehow proved you were at the right location simply because the Oracle of Leicester had sent you there.

I’ve known many excellent journalists who saw their careers ended because they were accused of minor slip-ups on difficult stories when they were clearly correct on the big picture. Think, for instance, of the harsh treatment meted out to Gary Webb on Nicaraguan Contra drug trafficking and Mary Mapes on George W. Bush’s shirking his National Guard duty. But different rules clearly apply if you make serious errors in line with U.S. propaganda. For example, think of virtually the entire mainstream news media buying into the false Iraq-WMD claims and facing almost no accountability at all.

The second set of rules apparently applies to Higgins and Bellingcat, who have the mainstream U.S. media on bended knee despite a record of journalistic misfeasance or malfeasance. In editorials about the Dutch Safety Board report last week , both The New York Times and The Washington Post hailed Bellingcat – as if they were recognizing that the old mainstream media had to rub shoulders with supposedly “new media” to have any credibility. It was a moment that would have made the CIA’s Lansdale and Raymond smile.

The Post’s neocon editorial writers, who have backed “regime change” in Iraq, Syria and other targeted countries, viewed the Dutch Safety Board report as vindicating the initial rush to judgment blaming the Russians and praised the work of Bellingcat – although the Dutch report pointedly did not say who was responsible or even where the fatal missile was launched.

“More forensic investigation will be necessary to identify precisely where the missile came from, but the safety board identified a 123-square-mile area mostly held by the separatists,” the Post wrote, although a different way of saying the same thing would be to note that the launch area identified by the report could suggest the firing by either Ukrainian forces or the rebels.

The Post did observe what has been one of my repeated complaints — that the Obama administration is withholding the U.S. intelligence evidence that Secretary of State John Kerry claimed three days after the shoot-down had identified the precise location of the launch.

Yet, the subsequent U.S. silence on that point has been the dog not barking. Why would the U.S. government, which has been trying to pin the shoot-down on the Russians, hide such crucial evidence – unless perhaps it doesn’t corroborate the desired anti-Putin propaganda theme?

Yet, the Post sought to turn this otherwise inexplicable U.S. silence into further condemnation of Putin, writing:

“A Dutch criminal investigation is underway that may identify the individuals who ordered and carried out the shootdown. We hope the prosecutors will have access to precise data scooped up by U.S. technical means at the time of the shootdown, which made clear the responsibility of Russian-backed forces.”

So, the Post sees nothing suspicious about the U.S. government’s sudden reticence after its initial loud rush-to-judgment. Note also the Post’s lack of skepticism about what these “technical means” had scooped up. Though the U.S. government has refused to release this evidence – in effect, giving those responsible for the shoot-down a 15-month head start to get away and cover their tracks – the Post simply takes the official word that the Russians are responsible.

Then comes the praise for Bellingcat:

“Already, outside investigations based on open sources and social media, such as by the citizen journalist group Bellingcat, have shown the Buk launcher was probably wheeled into Ukraine in June from the Russian 53rd Air Defense Brigade, based outside Kursk. The criminal probe should aim to determine whether Russian servicemen were operating the unit when it was fired or helping the separatists fire it.”

No Skepticism

Again, the Post shows little skepticism about this version of events, leaving only the question of whether Russian soldiers fired the missile themselves or helped the rebels fire it. But there are obvious problems with this narrative. If, indeed, the one, two or three Russian Buk batteries were rumbling around eastern Ukraine the month before the shoot-down, why did neither U.S. intelligence nor Ukrainian intelligence notice this?

And, we know from the Dutch report that the Ukrainians were insisting up until the shoot-down that the rebels had no surface-to-air missiles that could threaten commercial airliners at 33,000 feet. However, the Ukrainians did have Buk systems that they were positioning toward the east, presumably to defend against possible Russian air incursions.

On July 16, 2014, one day before MH-17 was hit, a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter-jet was shot down by what Ukrainian authorities said was an air-to-air missile, according to the Dutch report. Presumably the missile was fired by a Russian fighter patrolling the nearby border.

So, if the Ukrainians already believed that Russian warplanes were attacking along the border, it would make sense that Ukrainian air defense units would be on a hair-trigger about shooting down Russian jets entering or leaving Ukrainian airspace.

Even if you don’t want to believe what I was told about U.S. intelligence analysts suspecting that a rogue Ukrainian military operation targeted MH-17, doesn’t it make sense that an undisciplined Ukrainian anti-aircraft battery might have mistakenly identified MH-17 as a Russian military aircraft leaving Ukrainian airspace? The Ukrainians had the means and the opportunity and possibly a motive – after the shoot-down of the SU-25 just one day earlier.

The Dutch Safety Board report is silent, too, on the question raised by Russian officials as to why the Ukrainians had turned on their radar used to guide Buk missiles in the days before MH-17 was shot down. That allegation is neither confirmed nor denied.

Regarding Bellingcat’s reliance on Internet-based photos to support its theories, there is the additional problem of Der Spiegel’s report last October revealing that the German intelligence agency, the BND, challenged some of the images provided by the Ukrainian government as “manipulated.” According to Der Spiegel, the BND blamed the rebels for firing the fateful Buk but said the missile battery came not from the Russians but from Ukrainian government stockpiles. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Germans Clear Russia in MH-17 Case.”]

However, a European source told me that the BND’s information was not as categorical as Der Spiegel reported. And, according to the Dutch report, the Ukrainian government reported that a Buk system that the rebels captured from a Ukrainian air base was not operational, a point where the rebels are in agreement. They also say they had no working Buks.

Yet, even without the BND’s warning, great caution should be shown when using evidence deposited often anonymously on the Internet. The idea of “crowd-sourcing” these investigations also raises the possibility that a skillful disinformationist could phony up a photograph and then direct an unwitting or collaborating reporter to the image.

Though I am no expert in the art of doctoring photographs, my journalism training has taught me to approach every possible flaw in the evidence skeptically. That’s especially true when some anonymous blogger directs you to an image or article whose bona fides cannot be established.

One of the strengths of old-fashioned journalism was that you could generally count on the professional integrity of the news agencies distributing photographs. Even then, however, there have been infamous cases of misrepresentations and hoaxes. Those possibilities multiply when images of dubious provenance pop up on the Internet.

In the case of MH-17, some photo analysts have raised specific questions about the authenticity of images used by Bellingcat and others among the “Russia-did-it” true-believers. We have already seen in the case of the “Buk-getaway video” how Higgins sent a reporting team from Australia’s “60 Minutes” halfway around the world to end up at the wrong spot (but then to use video fakery to deceive the viewers).

So, the chances of getting duped must be taken into account when dealing with unverifiable sources of information, a risk that rises exponentially when there’s also the possibility of clever intelligence operatives salting the Internet with disinformation. For the likes of psy-ops innovator Lansdale and propaganda specialist Raymond, the Internet would have been a devil’s playground.

Which is one more reason why President Barack Obama should release as much of the intelligence evidence as he can that pinpoints where the fateful MH-17 missile was fired and who fired it. [For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Plays Games with MH-17 Tragedy.”]

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

Group seeks to ‘reclaim Jewish identity,’ raise a global Jewish voice to ‘challenge Israel’s destructive policies.’

A new international network of Jewish groups and individuals committed to justice in Palestine released a statement over the weekend calling for an end to the killing and an end the occupation. The network, which first met over the summer and has yet to come up with a name, currently spans 16 countries — from Brazil, to Australia, to Switzerland and South Africa — and represents 15 organizations.

An action by the American anti-occupation group If Not Now for Tisha B’Av in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, where participants read the names of Israelis and Palestinians who died in last summer’s Gaza war. (Photo by Gili Getz)

According to the preface to their statement, the group seeks to “reclaim Jewish identity not as a nationalist identity but as one that celebrates our diverse roots, traditions & communities wherever we are around the world. We believe that it is essential for there to be a global Jewish voice to challenge Israel’s destructive policies, in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. This international Jewish network aims to become that voice.”

Forty Palestinians and eight Israelis have been killed since the beginning of the month. There have been over two dozen stabbing attacks against Israelis across Israel and the West Bank, with around 100 Israelis and well over 1,000 Palestinians wounded, many of them by live fire.

In times of heightened violence, specifically against Israelis, Jewish organizations and individuals around the world tend to either show support for Israel or stay silent. It is taboo to criticize Israel when there are terror attacks against Israeli citizens, as was clear during the Second Intifada. But that is precisely when it is most necessary. To both identify as Jewish and show a deep concern for what is going on in Israel while criticizing its policies is rare, making this letter is so important.

Here are some excerpts:

According to Jordy Silverstein, a historian and writer from Melbourne who signed onto the statement, the point is to “increase the dissent in our communities.” The network, she says, “seeks to show that a Zionism based on militarism, exclusion, violence, division, murder, and lies isn’t the only way of living on that land, or of expressing ones Jewishness.”

Experts claim that Canada’s newly-elected Liberal Party government will take a softer line on issues such as the conflict in Ukraine and the fight against ISIL while making significant cuts to the defense budget.

As Saudi Arabia, backed and coordinated by the United States, continues a war of aggression against Yemen, the US has decided to sell Saudi dictator Salman bin Abdulaziz four more warships as well as munitions and other equipment valued at $11.25 billion.

Saudi Arabia is currently using US ships to block food, fuel, and medical supplies from entering Yemen, with US-manned ships “patrolling alongside”. Doctors Without Borders has reported that the blockade is “killing as many people in Yemen as the bombing”, and the Red Cross and other groups have said it is causing a humanitarian crisis, as Yemen imports almost one hundred percent of its food.

While nationalist news outlet Reuters asserts that deals like the current weapons shipment to Saudi Arabia are “carefully vetted”, independent investigative journalist Gareth Porter asked the Obama regime about the clear “illegality of resupplying further munitions to the Saudis”, and was told only that the US has asked King Abdulaziz to investigate himself regarding his war crimes.

US government sources told Reuters that “Saudi Arabia’s concerns about Iran” hastened the new weapons deal.  Sources failed to mention that among these “concerns” is that Iran’s influence might bring democratic reform to the Saudi kingdom.

Reuters quotes another anonymous US government source who says that by using the Saudis as a proxy to destabilize, starve, and spread Saudi-style despotism to Yemen through war of aggression, the US is “promoting peace and stability”.  Since the US/Saudi campaign against Yemen began, al Qaeda and ISIS have both made major gains in that country.

Obama has a history of large arms sales to the Saudis.  The “world’s largest” arms trafficker and peace prize winner secured the biggest arms sale in US history in 2010, stocking the Saudi dictator with $60 billion in lethal weaponry and equipment, and later hundreds of millions of dollars in banned cluster bombs, which the dictator has since used against Yemenis.

Robert Barsocchini focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry.  Updates on Twitter.

More than 35,000 troops are participating in NATO’s month-long Trident Juncture war games, along with some 140 warplanes and 60 warships. The militaries of 30 different capitalist governments aligned with the NATO alliance are involved.

Massive NATO drills are taking place in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The drills are designed to prepare the NATO powers for large-scale strategic warfare outside the boundaries of the NATO countries, according to NATO officials.

The main focus of the NATO drills is to prepare for comprehensive strategic warfare spanning broad stretches of the Eurasian landmass, comments from NATO officers have made clear.

“Trident Juncture 2015 will demonstrate NATO’s new increased level of ambition in joint modern warfare and will showcase a capable, forward-leading Alliance,” NATO’s command center said in a statement Tuesday.

According to NATO officials, the military drills involve an unprecedented mobilization of NATO forces, modeled on the “Federated Mission Network” system of military “interoperability” developed during the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan.

The exercises are emphasizing large-scale maneuver warfare to a degree not seen since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but will also include training in hybrid warfare.

The drills aim to mobilize NATO’s leading combat elements, including the NATO Response Force (NRF) and the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), for a “changed security environment” and “challenges from the South and the East,” according to NATO statements. The Western powers are preparing their militaries for a further destabilization of Europe’s political order and for new wars and interventions along Russia’s eastern frontier and in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

During remarks opening the drills, NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow vowed that the drills would “demonstrate NATO’s ability to move quickly and decisively beyond our borders.”

At a news conference, Vershbow denied that the fictitious aggressor in the Trident Juncture scenario was Russia. But then, effectively confirming this proposition, he added, “That is not to say that some of the challenges we are addressing and testing our forces for are not analogous to the challenges we would face were we to have a conflict with Russia.”

He cited both the large Russian naval base at Kaliningrad, an enclave of Russian territory wedged in between Lithuania and Poland, and the recent deployment of Russian warplanes to Syria, on the southern flank of NATO member Turkey, as developments that NATO planners had to take into account.

During the news conference, an antiwar protester unfurled a banner demanding an explanation of the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan, a war crime committed by US military forces with the backing of their NATO partners in that country. There were other antiwar protests in Trapani, Sicily, where the Trident Juncture headquarters was established.

Trident Juncture “sends a very clear message to any potential aggressor,” NATO’s commander, American General Philip Breedlove, said. “Any attempt to violate the sovereignty of one NATO nation will result in the decisive military engagement of all NATO nations.”

Breedlove was echoing the pledge made by President Obama during his last trip to the region: the full power of the 30-nation alliance, including its nuclear armaments, would be mobilized for the defense of any member nation, including the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which have perpetual tensions with Russia because of the large Russian-speaking minority in each country, which is either persecuted or openly disenfranchised.

The Trident drills are part of the general military escalation against Russia carried out by the US and NATO powers since the toppling of the pro-Russian regime of President Viktor Yanukovych by the February 2014 US-backed and fascist-led coup d’etat. The intervening period has seen the steady expansion of the NATO Response Force and the pre-positioning of NATO forces on high alert to deploy to the Russian border within a matter of hours.

At a military conference in Brussels in early October, NATO defense officials seized on accusations of airspace violations by a pair of Russian jets to carry out a further military escalation against Moscow, agreeing to expand the NATO Response Force to 40,000 troops and to deploy new teams of NATO military specialists to Central and Eastern Europe. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proclaimed during the conference that the alliance is “implementing the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.”

On Sunday, US General Dennis Via said that the Pentagon is preparing to ship another round of pre-positioned weapons packages known as “activity sets” to Europe.

The Trident drills are also serving to prepare NATO forces for operations along the southern flank of Europe. Faced with the surging tide of refugees crossing the Mediterranean in flight from the catastrophes produced by the US-NATO wars in Libya and Afghanistan, the US occupation of Iraq, and the US-backed Islamist campaign against the government of Syria, which have killed hundreds of thousands and left entire societies in ruins, the NATO powers are mobilizing their military might to beat back the tidal wave of human beings produced by their own criminal war policies.

The intensity of the NATO war games is an expression of the fact that a general war in Europe is now viewed as possible, even likely, by leading factions of the Western militaries. Comments from a French military officer featured in a NATO promotional video for Trident Juncture illustrated the militarist mentality that prevails within the imperialist officer corps.

Comparing the historic war preparations to sports practice, the NATO officer said: “Let me take the analogy of a football team. They’re all super, they have strikers, they have goal keepers, but they have to form a team.” He added, “Now when they come together, they need training to win next Sunday’s match.”

The war fever of the imperialists must be taken as a grave warning to the international working class. Unthinkable scenarios are being discussed in ruling circles, which involve the unleashing of full-scale war between the two major nuclear-armed forces on the planet, NATO and Russia.

The truth about the September 11, 2001 terror attacks would not only destabilize the American political system but it would also take down the US as a global empire, an American scholar says.

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a founding member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11, made the remarks during an interview with Press TV on Tuesday, while commenting on the ongoing feud between Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Jeb Bush over the 9/11 attacks.

On Friday, Trump blamed George W. Bush for the September 11, 2001 attacks. On Sunday, Trump said that if he had been president in 2001, his immigration policy would have kept al-Qaeda terrorists from attacking the US.

In response, Bush said his brother, former President George W. Bush, is not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. “Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you would hope a president would do.”

“He united the country,” Bush told CNN. “He organized our country, and he kept us safe. And there’s no denying that. The great majority of Americans believe that.”

Dr. Barrett said everyone in the United States believes that George W. Bush deserves blame for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“Ever since 9/11, many Americans, between one-third in some polls who say that the US government under Bush perpetrated the 9/11 attacks or intentionally let them happen in order to trigger war in the Middle East, and up to 90 percent of Americans in other polls, who say that they don’t really believe or fully believe the official story of 9/11, this issue has been a smoldering barrel of political dynamite,”

he said. “And now it’s smoldering a little bit harder, and it might just go off.”

“According to Jeb Bush, the brother of George Bush, Jeb being the apparent favorite candidate to win the Republican nomination for president, at least until Trump emerged, Jeb is now on the defensive, arguing that his brother George W. Bush was not responsible and there’s no blame for the 9/11 attacks,”

he added.

“Of course, this is an issue that Jeb cannot possibly be a win on, because no matter how you analyze the 9/11 attacks, whether you’ve done the full investigation using alternative sources, such as the magisterial work of Dr. David Ray Griffin, to learn that in fact the 9/11 attacks were not a surprise attack by a foreign enemy, they were in fact an inside job, a spectacular public relations stunt designed to create a neoconservative policy coup d’etat and launch a series of wars that would primarily benefit Israel. But whether you’ve done the search and figure that out or not, you have to admit that Bush was clearly responsible for 9/11 even if he was not actively complicit in this coup d’etat,”

Dr. Barrett noted.

“And even if you refuse to admit that it was a coup d’etat, it’s obvious that Bush should be blamed for what happened,” he stated.

The September, 11, 2001 attacks, also known as the 9/11 attacks, were a series of strikes in the US which killed nearly 3,000 people and caused about $10 billion worth of property and infrastructure damage.

US officials assert that the attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists but many experts have raised questions about the official account.

They believe that rogue elements within the US government, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, orchestrated or at least encouraged the 9/11 attacks in order to accelerate the US war machine and advance the Zionist agenda.

 “In August of 2001, George W. Bush received the president’s daily briefing from the CIA, and it was headlined, ‘Bin Laden determined to attack the United States’. Bush whipped his neck around and angrily screamed, ‘Well, you’ve covered your ass now,’”

Dr. Barrett said.

“Of course, the ungenerous interpretation of this is that Bush knew full well that plans were proceeding apace for the big public relations event in September, and he did not appreciate the CIA briefer covering his posterior while passing the buck up to the president,”

he added.

 “The other interpretation would be that Bush is just such a complete fool and idiot that his outburst had no real meaning, and he should be blamed for 9/11 not as a complicit perpetrator, or someone who intentionally knew it was coming and let it happen, but rather someone whose incompetence was so overwhelming that somehow he caused the entire military defense system of the United States to have an unprecedented collapse,”

he continued.

The American scholar went on to say that “the bottom line here is that it’s obvious to everyone in the United States that George W. Bush deserves blame for 9/11.

“The only question is whether because he was insanely incompetent and somehow magically projected his grotesque incompetence on the rest of the government and then saw everyone who was incompetent get promoted or was it something much, much worse. But the reality is it was much, much worse,”

he emphasized.

“And if this political dynamite bomb goes off, it’s not just going to take out the Bush family, which has been the most corrupt organized crime family in America running the drug dealings at the CIA, among other things, but it’s going to take down the whole political system as we know it today, and possibly going to take down the US as a global empire,”

he observed.

“That’s one reason everybody in the US here is afraid to open up this can of worms, but that actually would be a very good thing; nothing better could possibly happen to the planet than for this can of worms to get opened, and for the US empire to be taken down, and for something more in line with the ideals of America’s founding fathers to rise up out of the ashes,”

Dr. Barrett concluded.

Times articles, commentaries and editorials feature all propaganda all the time, managed news misinformation and Big Lies, suppressing hard truths on issues mattering most – especially on war and peace.

It notoriously supports US imperial lawlessness, in lockstep with every war of aggression Washington wages, perpetuating the myth about humanitarian intervention – in Syria and Iraq claiming its air campaign aims to defeat ISIS and other terrorist elements.

Its latest article headlines “US and Iraqi Forces Take Offensive Against ISIS on Several Fronts,” saying “increased American air power” is aiding Iraqi forces put “pressure on the jihadists on multiple fronts.”

The usual unnamed source is one or more US officials, devoid of credibility. Since US warplanes began bombing Iraq in June 2014, then Syria in September last year, allegedly targeting ISIS, their forces made extensive gains in both countries, controlling more territory with greater numbers of heavily armed fighters.

In three weeks of Russia’s Syrian campaign, ISIS elements are being systematically routed, their weapons, munitions, above-and-below-ground facilities, command and control centers, and will to fight significantly degraded and destroyed.

How is this possible? Are US pilots inept? Are they poorly trained? Is US technology deficient? Is the Pentagon unable to locate ISIS targets to destroy them – what Russia’s campaign does effectively!

Putin’s righteous mission is defeating terrorism. He says what me means and means what he says, explaining ISIS and likeminded elements are “recruiting militants and continue doing so in many countries, unfortunately including Russia and CIS countries.”

He knows Washington’s dirty hands are involved, using imported death squads earlier in Libya, currently in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, intending to send them to Russia and Central Asia – to instigate violence, instability and turmoil like in all US direct and proxy war theaters.

Putin wisely intends defeating the threat at its source – quashing US plans, undermining its imperial agenda, challenging Washington for the first time in memory, making it very clear he won’t tolerate doing to Russia and CIS allies what it’s done throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and  elsewhere.

He changed the dynamic decisively – in full compliance with international law, unlike illegal US operations. “Russia is ready to adequately and effectively respond to the terrorist threat and any other challenges,” wherever they threaten its national security, he said.

“It is crucially important to bring to light the links of the Russian-based militants with the international terror groups and their patrons” – meaning, of course, Washington and its rogue allies.

Russian operations in Syria since September destroyed over 500 ISIS targets, severely hampering their ability to fight, enabling Syrian ground forces to achieve significant gains, liberating one village after another.

US airstrikes in Syria and Iraq (after over a year of operations in both countries) destroyed zero ISIS targets. Again, it deserves asking: How is this possible?

Because US warplanes target Syrian and Iraqi infrastructure, not ISIS, supporting its fighters on the ground, aiding their aggression and atrocities in both countries, using them as proxy foot soldiers – what the New York Times and other media scoundrels never explain, suppressing this vital hard truth, perpetuating the myth about Washington’s war on ISIS.

“Progress has been slow despite increased supporting fire from American air operations,” said The Times, “according to the Pentagon,” a notorious lying machine like The Times.

“Progress” is the way US officials want it, aiding ISIS, systematically destroying Iraqi and Syrian infrastructure -including an Aleppo power station days earlier, causing a major blackout, what US media never report, claiming only ISIS targets are hit, repeating official Big Lies, willfully deceiving the public.

The self-styled “newspaper of record” is a national disgrace. The same holds for all other major Western media sources – a collective lying machine.

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.

Image: An aerial view shows No. 4 (front L), No. 3 (front R), No. 2 (rear L) and No. 1 reactor buildings at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama nuclear power plant in Takahama town, Fukui prefecture, in this photo taken by Kyodo November 27, 2014. © Kyodo / Reuters

In the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power meltdown following the tsunami of March 11, 2011, the international community has totally failed in keeping the public properly informed and protected from the fallout.

Canada’s Liberals Sweep to Power on Phony Anti-austerity Vow

World Bank Report Challenges Notions of Declining Poverty in Africa

By Abayomi Azikiwe, October 20 2015

Despite the reports for the last several years that significant declines in poverty have taken place in sub-Saharan Africa, a recently-released World Bank study indicates that despite “growth” the actual number of people living in poverty on the continent has increased by 100 million over the last fifteen years.

Jerusalem Chaos Is a Warning of Things to Come

By Jonathan Cook, October 20 2015

Among Palestinians and Israelis, the recent upsurge in violence has been variously described as the children’s, lone-wolf, Jerusalem and smartphone intifadas. Each describes a distinguishing feature of this round of clashes.

‘Caught on Camera’: Extrajudicial Killings of Palestinians

By Annie Robbins, October 20 2015

A new report summarizing Israel’s Arbitrary Killings and its System of Structural Violence was released by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor at a press conference in Geneva on Friday. The release included the following video, “Caught on Camera: Israel’s extrajudicial killings,” illustrating the killings of Palestinian civilians involved in political protests during the last two weeks.

An agreement between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and several coal sector firms has resulted in the end of a strike involving thousands of employees which lasted over a week.

Mining companies including Anglo, Glencore and Exxaro Resources Ltd. presented a revised two-year deal on Oct. 9.

Further changes to the deal were made on October 12. The agreement is for an extra 750 rand ($56) to 1,000 rand monthly, and will be paid retroactively to June. All workers returned to their jobs on Wednesday October 14.

NUM, which represents 72 percent of the 17,000 employees covered by the wage deal, had been demanding increases of as much as 14 percent for its members.

The bosses and unions began conciliation talks after reaching a deadlock in negotiations in August. The strike was the first related to wage negotiations in the coal sector since 2011.

Financial Crisis in South Africa Linked to Decline in Mining

Several factors have contributed to the current downturn in the overall economy in South Africa one of which is the problems that have developed over the last two decades in the mining industry. The mining of gold, diamonds, coal, iron ore and platinum turned the racial capitalist state into the largest industrial center on the African continent.

Other industries such as manufacturing would have never reached significant levels without labor intensive mining. Nonetheless, with the organization of the majority African mineworkers during the 1980s leading to the founding of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which became a key ally of the African National Congress (ANC) even under the former apartheid system, shifted the character of the relationship between labor and capital. The NUM demanded higher wages from mine owners and were in a position to shut down production as was done in major work stoppages during the 1980s.

The struggle for better wages and working conditions were firmly linked to the demand for an end to legalized racism and colonialism. Since the ANC took power in South Africa in 1994, there has been tremendous downsizing in the South African mining industry.

Many gold mines have been closed and production dominance shifted to other geo-political regions in Africa, China, Australia, the United States, Canada and Latin America. Prior to the first decade of the 21^st century, South Africa was the largest producer of gold internationally. This situation has changed dramatically over the last decade.

Technologies within the South African mining industry are becoming more mechanized due to what owners say are rising costs of production. The militancy of mineworkers over the last three decades has placed pressure on the owners who are always seeking to increase their profit margins.

A recent article written by Declan Vogt of the University of Witwatersrand School of Mining Engineering says that “Our deep level gold and platinum mines are in trouble. At today’s prices, most are not profitable. There are many explanations for the high cost: mines are getting deeper, infrastructure is old, and energy and labor costs exceed inflation. Given that we have little control over the price of the commodities, the only solution is improved productivity. (Mineweb.com, Oct. 18)

This same article goes on to note “In many other industries, technology has enabled huge strides in productivity. Even in South Africa, almost all underground coal mining is now mechanized.”

Consequently, other methods of reducing labor costs, namely massive layoffs, increased workloads and the cutting of real wages are currently underway in South Africa. Even in the platinum sector, which mines the overwhelming majority of the strategic metal globally, there have been over 10,000 layoffs in the last two years.

Since the unrest at Marikana in the Northwest Province during 2012, the platinum sector has experienced major changes. Owners have threatened to retrench up to 35,000 workers while the ANC government has pressured the capitalists not to engage in deeper job cuts.

Monique Mathys, an economist at the South African Chamber of Mines said “Work stoppages, which reduce mining volumes, reduce profitability. Reduced profitability results in companies needing to restructure, and to look at modernization options that improve profitability and ensure sustainability of the operations.” (Financial Times, May 25, 2015)

Workers Pay for Ownership Decisions

However, the mining firms have reaped billions in profits from the exploitation of African labor over the last century-and-a-half. A leading firm in the industry, Anglo American PLC, was initially formed by German émigré to London and South Africa, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, along with the U.S. bank J.P. Morgan & Co. Capital was raised from British and U.S. sources, and therefore naming the firm as such.

Today when workers are demanding a greater return on the productivity of their labor, the owners are seeking ways to undermine their rights to a decent wage and overall living standard. Without the militant organizing and activism of the South African working class, the ANC would not have been able to gain a majority within the non-racial government which took over in 1994 and therefore cannot ignore the plight of union members in the struggle against the bosses.

Ngoako Ramatlhodi, South Africa’s mines minister, said in May 2015 that the ANC government was “alarmed at the rate at which retrenchments have been taking place in the industry”. (Financial Times, May 25, 2015)

Nonetheless, the government is not willing to take control of the mining industry, nationalizing it under workers’ control as a means to halt the retrenchments and redirect the production of minerals based upon the interests of the laboring class. Such a series of measures would prove popular among the masses but would prompt a response less than positive among the mine owners, international financial institutions and western governments.

Nevertheless in spite of these dramatic changes, South Africa is still ranked as the fifth largest gold producer. But the sector has been consistently shedding jobs since the 1990s. Over the last two decades the number of people employed across the mining industry in general has declined precipitously from about 800,000 to below 500,000.

At the end of the final quarter of 2014, gold mines employed about 119,100 people, down from 142,000 in 2012. Platinum sites had 188,400 jobs in 2014, a decrease from a high of nearly 199,200 in 2012, according to the Chamber of Mines’ statistics. The Iron ore sector employed 21,800 people in 2014, a decrease from 23,400 in 2012.

In the platinum sector much blame can also be apportioned to the owners who over-produced during the commodities super cycle in the 2000s, and consequently have been faced with ongoing weak prices and rising costs. As in the capitalist system around the world, it is the workers that must bear the brunt of mistakes made by the owners and their executives.

The reduction in commodity prices has resulted in a myriad of financial problems internationally, particularly in the so-called “emerging economies.” Western capitalist states in Europe and North America are concerned by the increasing independent efforts of states such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) which has proposed the formation of an alternative global lending institution that could challenge the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Imperialist spending on defense and the continuing bailout of the banks based in the advanced capitalist states also drains resources that could be reinvested into infra-structural projects aimed at re-building the cities, improving public services, social services, scientific research and quality education. However, it will take a movement of the working class, farmers and the nationally oppressed to reverse the current course of economic policy which places the growth in profits as the primary aim of the ruling class.

Western civilization is in collapse. Every public and private institution in every western country, with the sole exception of Iceland, is corrupt. Government at every level is corrupt. The courts and judicial systems are corrupt. Justice is nonexistent. The financial systems are corrupt. The media is corrupt. The corrupt corporations continue to maximize their profits by destroying the environment and by replacing domestic workers with foreign ones. The income and wealth continues to gravitate to the One Percent.

Even sports, which once consisted of games played for fun, are corrupt. Participants in every competitive sport have to be drug tested, whether a skier, a bobsledder, a football, baseball, basketball, or hockey player, a boxer, a bicyclist, a distance runner, a sprinter, a high jumper, a pole vaulter, or whatever. Sports were corrupted by money. The rewards for success are so high that people sacrifice their personal integrity and cheat in order to obtain the money, just as government officials and regulators betray their constituencies in order to be rewarded by special interests who profit at the expense of society.

But not all corruption is financial or money-motivated. Spiritual corruption is even more dangerous as it erodes the character of people. Once people’s concerns do not go beyond themselves and their own feelings, a culture is dead. There has always been betrayal between husbands and wives, but not on the mass scale of today when vows play second fiddle to one’s personal desires. Another way of saying this is that keeping one’s vow or one’s word is no longer an important desire or contributor to self-esteem.

Consider something as ordinary as sexual relations between the genders. Sexual intercourse is one of the most common activities in which people engage. Yet there are those who go up the wall when the subject is mentioned. The prudery is silly, because the sexual relationship between a man and a woman is the foundation of society. Civilizations have protected the relationship in marriage, the basis for procreation and enculturation that perpetuates the society. What we see today is a growing separation of the sexual relationship from its social purpose and the loss of parental control over children to the state and outside forces. Indoctrination replaces enculturation.

It is dangerous for a society to neglect erosion in its basis. The subject is too large for a column. This article deals only with the disassociation of the romantic element, with its implication of love and commitment, from sex. An article in Cosmopolitan, a women’s magazine, testifies to female liberation from love and commitment by casual sex:

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a47604/best-things-about-having-a-vacation-boyfriend/

I remember when sex was romantic. Apparently those days are gone. Today sex is about two people (or more) getting each other off. Sex has been reduced to an orgasmic act. The Ashley Madison website, where wives and husbands sign up for extramarital sex with strangers, testifies to the purely orgasmic character of sex today.

Another article in Cosmopolitan explains sex as “fun. If it weren’t we would never bother leaving the house to meet new people to have sex with and we’d all just masturbate instead.”

Years ago in a waiting room I picked up a copy of Cosmopolitan. The cover story was “How to get your man hard and keep him coming back for more.” At least it was normal sex, if denatured. But we have moved on. The October 9 digital issue of Cosmopolitan has an article by a “former escort and current dominatrix who specializes in balloon fetish play.” She calls herself “an adult play facilitator” and “the type of work I do is much broader than just BDSM or fetishistic type stuff. I specialize in helping people to open this part of their sexual selves, and be playful and creative.” She puts them inside giant balloons. Balloons are “erotic and playful” and “a very friendly catalyst.”

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a47457/i-put-people-into-balloons-as-a-sexual-fetish/

Playboy magazine has announced that it is ceasing publication of photos of nude women. The ubiquity of pornography has destroyed the thrill and excitment of the female body and made such images “passé.”

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/13/playboy-magazine-to-stop-publishing-pictures-of-naked-women Men are being desensitized, and the female body is losing arousal power. Perhaps this explains why there is a demand for a dominatrix to put couples inside giant baloons as a method of stimulating sexual arousal. The role of the imagination in stimulating male arousal is apparently a thing of the past. Men have seen too many images of women engaged in sexual activity.

Women experience “the gift of orgasm” more readily through clitoral stimulation than penetration. To faciliate oral sex, women have abandoned pubic hair. They look like little girls with big boobs. Perhaps this “innocent” look has contributed to the perverted sexual interest in child porn and child sex trafficking.

Feminism taught women promiscuity so that no man wants to marry them, because so many of the wedding guests have already slept with the bride.

Promiscuity brought female empowerment. The woman can be on top and set the pace, while the man restrains himself by thinking about distracting subjects. If he can last long enough, she can get off and think he is a fantastic lover.

The emotional side of sex with its components of love and commitment, if still present, is in the background. Sex is about pleasurable physical feelings, which is why we leave “the house to met new people to have sex with.” This is a bigger change than people realize. The young don’t even know what has been lost. Today a girlfriend is a convenience. You don’t have to go to a brothel.

People still get married, but the percentage is declining for economic and divorce court reasons and because of the availability of sex outside marriage. Moreover, in the marital bedroom there is no dominatrix with a giant balloon to help to get you off. Today the people most interested in marriage are homosexuals, lesbians, and transgendered. Marriage is a way of legitimizing themselves and what would once have been called perverted sexual preferences.

Economic adversity has brought older women increasing competition from younger women, who advertise their availability to older men who have the financial resources to help them with college tuition, student loan debt, car payments, utility bills and apartment rents. Perhaps it is this development that has led to the websites where older women advertise that all they want is one night stands. Younger women move away from young men because the men have no financial resources. Perhaps this is the reason for the enormous amount of youthful male homosexuality, a sexual preference that in my day was either very well hidden or as rare as a unicorn.

If the point is simply to get off, it doesn’t matter who or what you do it with. A robotic sex doll has been created that talks dirty, has simulated female genitals, and is programed with sexual movements. A male sex robot can’t be far behind.

Perhaps Americans will cease procreating, which might save the planet and its remaining animal and plant life from habitat destruction.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/extinction-of-animal-life-on-planet-earth-exceptional-loss-of-biodiversity/5481544

Who’s to say the world wouldn’t be a better place without us.

 We are waging war on terrorism even as we embody terrorism. No wonder we seem sometimes to be at war with ourselves, and have been for most of the 21st century….. No American under 12 has Lived in a Country at Peace…whatever the U.S. government knows, or thinks it knows, is not widely shared with most of its citizens….. The American Enemies List Is Decided Anonymously and Secretly. William Boardman (“America a country at war with an Illusion”).

Wars and societal conflicts do not end with political statements. The mankind is fraught with painful experiences of the unwanted Two World Wars. The perpetrators escape the consequences pushing humanity into unthinkable disasters generations after generations. A war of words and conveniently arrived erotic hypothesis of the few sadistic warlords on complex global issues are draining out the positive energies, time and opportunities for peaceful dialogue towards conflict prevention and conflict management.

If Israel and the PLO had moral and intellectual capacity to talk and reconcile, the killings and stabbing of innocents could have been averted by ending the occupation and coming to terms with the two state solution. While Israelis and Palestinians live in open prisons of mutual fear and hatred, their leaders compete for numbers in opinions polls and are unable to provide proactive leadership role for conflict resolution. Likewise, the sectarian conflicts inSyriaandIraqrequire moral and intellectual foresights and creative strategies to strike peaceful conclusion. Ironically,America,Russia and a few West Europeans are competing in bombing the civilians and causing unthinkable losses of life and destruction of human infrastructures across the Arab world.

Is the UN just a Spectator?

Under the UN Charter, the member states are prohibited to intervene in the internal affairs of another member state. The hard lessons learned from the 2^nd WW are flagrantly ignored by the leading superpowers. None of the leading aggressors care about the UN principles and obligations to support global security and peace.Russia and theUS and other hired allies are bombingSyria andIraq and other areas of the Arabian heartland. The displacement of people and forcible expulsion of civilian population is reminiscent of the Palestinian expulsion in 1948. The continuous bombing ofSyria andIraq is destroying the environment and the productive earth for ever.

Do the Superpowers care about human life and sustainability of futuristic generations? The ISIL excuse is self- deceptive and on paper only. At issue is the extension of military operations to safeguard the Bashar Al- Assad dictatorship inSyria and to further disintegrate the Arab states adjoining Syria and Iraq.

What should have been alarming to the UN Security Council is not even discussed in the current sessions. Ostensibly, UNO is powerless without the participation of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Ironically, how irrational is the systematic built-in inequality whereby the UN Charter calls for equality of all the member states. Large scale forcible displacement of refugees and unprotection of civilian population, sectarian warmongering and daily aerial bombings ofSyria andIraq draw no challenge from the UN leadership – the body responsible for global peace and security.

Why the UN Security Council cannot intervene and stop the emerging bloodbath between Israel and Palestine? The UN is obliged to workout two states solution betweenIsrael andPalestine. The call is urgent to have peacemakers on the ground to restore normalization of human affairs when animosity is inflicting inhuman policies and behaviors. What if the US and Britain come out of the political cynicism and make a genuine call to end the occupation and arrange the two states co-existence? Has the UNO been a futile experiment in modern history? Has the UNO been just a window dressing to deceive and destroy the mankind all over the world? Is it the right time to plan and initiate another international organization made up of the citizens of the globe and responsible to the people of the globe rather than hypothetical phenomenon of the states?

Warriors are Competing to Inflict Maximum Deaths and Destruction on the Arab People and Habitats

Across America and the EU political and economic powerhouses, common citizens were led to believe that America and EU as one powerful group of influential agents possessing unchallenging strength in global power and intelligence hub, not necessarily marginalized by Russia or any other countries in the world. IfRussiawould dare to challenge the American-EU strategic psyche, the invincible armies would rush to challenge the Russian might and interference. Courageously, President Putin has marched into Syria and Iraq to counteract theUSpolicies and operations.

If this is not humiliating to theUS and the EU military stance, what else could be defined as an insult to common sense? Could President Obama and the Europeans accept Putin as winner before losing the face in a politically sensitive global culture? If this is not shameful, how else could they lead when they are victims of their own obsession and a failure on the competing war front? It was widely held that after the collapse of the former USSR, American would not tolerate any rising challenge to its principal objective of strategic hegemony all over the globe.

How much more America and its allies could lose once Russia achieves its policy aims in just few weeks comparing to what theUSand coalition could not attain in five years. One obvious outcome is clear that Western strategic interests are not at risk as long as deaths and destruction are inflicted on the Arab people and their habitats. This is what facilitates the meeting of minds to which the Arab leaders could never understand. They are willfully an object of annihilation sooner than later. Global politics is fast becoming a chronic sickness embracing heinous crimes and political wickedness to conduct international affairs.

Felicity Arbuthnot (“Syria: Russian Intervention Exposes Coalition Lies.” Global Research: 10/7/2015), is an award winning international journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in theGreatCity series for World Almanac books, and she provides a descriptive imagery of the prevalent realities:

A mirror image of Basra, Iraq, exactly ten years ago, September 2005, when British Special Forces, dressed in Arab clothing, were arrested by Iraqi police in an explosive laden car. Had the car detonated, “Iraqi insurgents” would, of course, have been blamed. The British military demolished the police station in order to free the would-be bombers.  How many were not caught and “insurgency” for which Iraqis were blamed, killed, tortured, was actually “made in Britain” and the US, as Syria now?……. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is anything but selective about the head chopping, culture erasing monsters besieging Syria – CIA trained or not – stating last week: “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?  Syria, from lies, to heartbreak, to cultural destruction has become a microcosm of the demented, ridiculous “war on terror.” The lies and subterfuge to justify the horror have become more desperate but only the most obtuse can avoid noticing that terrorists R US.

How to Rethink of Wars and Stop Insanity against the Mankind?

To dispel pride and prejudice, the global community prefers a new approach to tackle the current political problems. When facts of life warrant a change, concerned intelligent leaders must find navigational change. The Arab leaders are victims of their own authoritarian obsession enhanced by militarization of the region and being puppets to the Western policy aims. Their political incapacity is joined by complacency, and the outcome is the worst combination of loss of human life, foreign aggression and destruction of the environment. This has impact on degeneration and failure to resolve the Palestineconflict with Israel.  The oil-generated economic prosperity was used by the West to destroy the inner consciousness, moral and intellectual heritage of the Arab people.

Their egoistic instinct facilitated foreign interventions to undermine the societal peace and sectarian harmony. Sigmund Freud (Civilization and its Discontents, 1930) noted it correctly:

“the inclination to aggression is an original self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man, and that it constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.”

The aggression of wars goes on unabated across the Arab Middle East. Those claiming to be concerned with hydrocarbon emissions and greenhouse effects on the planet must realize that they are committing heinous crimes against the humanity by bombing and using chemical weapons inSyria andIraq. The need is urgent to establish a new global organization of the people, by the people and for the people. Such an effort should be a rational approach to replace the UNO debating club. This should provide hope and optimism to the present and future generations to imply means and strategies befitting to the aspirations of the global humanity. All wars have ripple effects for the mankind.

There is growing trend of “Big Thinking” in American politics and policies. Throughout its evolving history of over two centuries, theUS government has been continuously engaged in more than 220 wars. What a tragedy and loss to human thinking, intellect and values – Immanuel Kant, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Shakespeare and Bertrand Russell and their souls put to tormenting torture – the treatment they did not deserve from George Bush, Barrack Obama, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair and Rumsfeld and so many others full of embittered conscious and cancerous ego to annihilate the mankind.

Confronting the major paradoxes of history as Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History), described warriors as dreamers devoid of moral and intellectual imagination… when they come close to stagnation they jump to irrational outbursts and conclusions about the facts of life. Wrong people, glued to wrong thinking, do the wrong things without any rational sense of time, people’s interest and history. If the human nature is in part wicked and in part foolish, how can human beings be prevented from suffering of the result of their own wickedness and folly?”

Robert Briffault (The Making of Humanity, London, 1918), Professor at Cambridge University, the 20th century proactive scholar offers a rational context to the sadistic warriors of the 21^st century:

The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against

it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in

their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Academic Publishing Germany, May 2012.

Note: This article was originally published in 2014.

The following infographic shows us how profitable the US prison industry is. “Between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion” dollars. As reported in The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?, inmates, mostly Blacks and Hispanics, are also being exploited by various industries:

“For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold

They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.”

Privatization of the US Prison System. An Infographic from ArrestRecords.com

Numerosos  movimientos han sido creados para impulsar estas revueltas: Otpor (“Resistencia”) en Serbia, Kmara En Georgia, Pora (“Ya es hora”) en Ucrania y Kelkel ((“¡Basta!”) “Renacimiento”) en Kirguistán. El primero de ellos, Otpor,  provocó la caída del régimen serbio de Slobodan Milosevic. Después de este éxito, Popovic (uno de los fundadores de Otpor) ha creado CANVAS  con la ayuda de activistas del movimiento serbio, que ha asistido, asesorado y capacitado a todos los otros movimientos posteriores. CANVAS entrenó a disidentes en todo el mundo, particularmente en el mundo árabe, en la aplicación de la resistencia individual no violenta, la ideología teorizada por el filósofo y politólogo estadounidense Gene Sharp, cuyo libro “De la Dictadura a la Democracia ” fue la base para todas las revoluciones de colores y” primaveras” árabes.

En 2011, en plena efervescencia sobre la plaza Tahrir, fue entrevistado Srdja Popovic sobre actividades de formación de revolucionarios en el centro CANVAS (Centro para estrategias de aplicación no violenta) que él dirigía en Belgrado. Se apresuró a contestar, con un toque de orgullo: “Trabajamos con 37 países. Después de la revolución de Serbia, teníamos cinco años de éxito: “Georgia, Ucrania, Líbano y Maldivas. En su prisa, se había olvidado de mencionar el quinto país: Kirguistán. No se priva de agregar: “Y ahora, Egipto, Túnez y la lista crecerá. No tenemos idea del número de países en los que se utilizó el puño de Otpor, probablemente una docena … “[1]. Esta declaración no es trivial. Expresa la relación obvia entre las diversas revoluciones de colores y protestas que azotaron el Medio Oriente, la mal llamada “primavera” árabe.

Documental: The Business Revolución
(La Declaración de Srdja Popovic es a las 4:20)

Las revoluciones de colores

Estas revoluciones, que deben su nombre a los colores con que fueron bautizados (rosa, naranja, tulipán, etc.) son las revueltas que sacudieron algunos países del Este o de las ex repúblicas soviéticas a principios del siglo 21. Este es el caso de Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ucrania (2004) y Kirguistán (2005).

Varios movimientos se han creado para impulsar estas revueltas: Otpor (“Resistencia”) en Serbia, Kmara En Georgia, Pora (“Ya es hora”) en Ucrania y Kelkel ((“¡Basta!”) “Renacimiento”) en Kirguistán. El primero de ellos, Otpor, es la que provocó la caída del régimen serbio de Slobodan Milosevic. Después de este éxito, Popovic (uno de los fundadores de Otpor) ha creado CANVAS con la ayuda de activistas del movimiento serbio. Según lo indicado por Popovic, el centro ha asistido, asesorado y capacitado a todos los demás movimientos posteriores. CANVAS entrenó en disidentes en todo el mundo, particularmente en el mundo árabe, en la aplicación de la resistencia individual no violenta, la ideología teorizada por el filósofo y politólogo estadounidense Gene Sharp, cuyo libro “De la Dictadura a la Democracia “(De la dictadura a la democracia) fue la base para todas las revoluciones de colores y “primaveras” árabes [2].

CANVAS, así como los diversos movimientos disidentes en los países del Este o ex repúblicas soviéticas se han beneficiado de la ayuda de muchas organizaciones estadounidenses de “exportación” de la democracia, como la USAID (Agencia de los Estados Unidos para el Desarrollo Internacional) la NED(National Endowment for Democracy), IRI (Instituto Republicano Internacional), el NDI (Instituto Nacional Demócrata para Asuntos Internacionales), Freedom House y OSI (Open Society Institute). Estas organizaciones son financiadas tanto por el presupuesto de Estados Unidos como por capital privado. Por ejemplo, la NED es financiado por un presupuesto aprobado por el Congreso y los fondos son gestionados por un consejo de administración con la representación del Partido Republicano, el Partido Demócrata, la Cámara de Comercio de los Estados Unidos y la Unión Federación Americana del Trabajo-Congreso de Organizaciones Industriales (AFL-CIO), mientras que OSI es parte de la Fundación Soros, el nombre de su fundador, George Soros, el multimillonario estadounidense, ilustre especulador financiero. [3]

Se ha demostrado que estas mismas agencias asisten y entrenan redes de disidentes árabes involucrados en la famosa “primavera” que se extendió por sus países. [4] También encontramos las “huellas” de estos organismos en los acontecimientos en Teherán (la Revolución Verde – 2009) [5], el euromaidán (Ucrania – 2013/2014) [6] y, algo más recientemente, Hong Kong ( revolución paraguas – 2014) [7].

La Revolución de los Cedros

Según algunos, el mayor exito de CANVAS en la región MENA (Oriente Medio y Norte de África) es sin duda el Líbano (Revolución de los Cedros – 2005) y su mayor fracaso, Irán [8]. Esta es la razón por la cual Popovic había mencionado con orgullo el Líbano como un trofeo en su panel de trofeos de caza “revolucionario” y “ni mu” ninguna palabra sobre Irán.

La Revolución de los Cedros fue el preludio de la “primavera” árabe y así el primer país árabe en conocer esta estación fue el Líbano. Esta serie de eventos orquestado muy bien a principios de 2005 alegando, entre otras cosas, la retirada de las tropas sirias tras el asesinato, el 14 de febrero de 2005, del primer ministro libanés, en ese momento, Rafiq Hariri.

Sin embargo, Sharmine Narwani explica en un artículo detallado sobre el tema, que esta “revolución” había sido planeado alrededor de un año antes de la muerte de Hariri. La decisión incluye un núcleo de la célula de activistas formados por un trío de amigos: Eli Khoury, un experto en comunicación y marketing de Quantum y Saatchi & Saatchi, Samir Kassir, ensayista que encabezó el Movimiento de Izquierda Democrática (MGD) formado en septiembre de 2004 y el periodista Samir Franyieh. [9]

Añádase a esto los nombres de otros activistas que han jugado un papel importante: Nora Jumblatt (la esposa del líder druso, Walid Jumblatt), Asma Andraous (miembros 05AMAM del grupo, creado después del 14 de febrero de 2005), Gebran Tueni (en el tiempo, director del diario An-Nahar) y Michel Elefteriades (músico, productor y empresario griego-libanesa).

Eli Khoury	Samir Kassir	Samir Frangieh
Nora Joumblatt	Asma Andraous	Michel Elefteriades

A menudo se ha mencionado la estrecha relación entre los activistas de la Revolución del Cedro y organizaciones estadounidenses que promueven la democracia.

De hecho, el New York Post informó (en 2005) que, según fuentes de inteligencia estadounidenses, la CIA y otros servicios de inteligencia europeos han proporcionado dinero y apoyo logístico a los organizadores de las protestas anti-sirias para aumentar la presión sobre el presidente sirio Bashar al-Assad y obligarlo a abandonar el Líbano por completo. Según estas fuentes, este programa secreto fue similar a los que la CIA había configurado previamente para ayudar a los movimientos pro-democráticos en Georgia y Ucrania y también ha dado lugar a impresionantes manifestaciones pacíficas. [10]

Algunos activistas, como Bassem Chit (murió en 2014), admitió haber sido contactado por Freedom House para  “financiar grupos de jóvenes para ayudar al proceso de democratización”. Según Bassem Chit, Jeffrey Feltman, el embajador de Estados Unidos en el momento, invitó a varios líderes del movimiento anti-sirio a cenas durante la Revolución de los Cedros. También dice que la Embajada de Estados Unidos participó directamente en el fomento de las protestas anti-sirias. [11]

Sharmine Narwani dice en su artículo antes citado que Gebran Tueni estaba en contacto con Frances Abouzeid, Directora de Freedom House en Amman (Jordania). Fue en su consejo de que Tueni trajo los instructores de CANVAS a Beirut. Es importante señalar que Freedom House es el principal financiador de la academia serbia.

Los serbios de CANVAS han formado a los activistas libaneses utilizando los locales del periódico An-Nahar. Ivan Marovic, el cofundador de CANVAS, había asegurado él mismo cursos de formación en la resistencia no violenta.

Michel Elefteriades se reunió con  Ivan Marovic y sus colegas antes del 14 de marzo de 2005: “Gebran Tueni me llamó y me dijo que debería darle una mano a un grupo de serbios que vino a ayudarnos. Tenían aire super-profesional en comparación con lo que querían hacer. Pude ver su influencia en todo lo que estaba sucediendo. Eran especialistas de revoluciones de color”. Y agregó: “Entonces empezaron a decirnos qué hacer o no. Lo acompañé a las reuniones con los medios de comunicación – nada más que medios internacionales – y estaban coordinando cosas con ellos. Todos se conocían muy bien entre sí […]. Nos dieron una lista de slogans que iban a ser transmitidos por la televisión occidental. Nos dijeron, para nosotros y para los periodistas occidentales, dónde colocar las banderas, cuando ondean en el aire, e incluso el tamaño que deben tener. Por ejemplo, le preguntaron los periodistas, para prevenir los desajustes, los  horarios en que iban a pasar, y luego nos dijeron que había que ajustar nuestros relojes y  blandir nuestras pancartas justo a las 15.05 horas, en función del  momento en que  los canales de televisión retransmitían en directo desde Beirut.  Fue una puesta en escena total »[12].

Por su parte, Asma Andraous dice que “todas las organizaciones de Estados Unidos para la democracia estaban allí. Enseñaron a los jóvenes a participar, cómo mantener ocupados a los activistas, estaban muy entusiasmados “[13].

Algunos activistas informan alejarse o han mantenido su distancia con las agencias de Estados Unidos o de promoción a favor de la democracia estadounidense. Este es el caso de Michel Elefteriades que se negó a seguir trabajando con instructores Lienzo Bassem Chit o que han disminuido las generosas ofertas de Freedom House. Otros han tratado de minimizar el papel de estas agencias o fingir que intervino tardíamente [14].

Sin embargo, el modus operandi de la Revolución de los Cedros sigue meticulosamente el procedimiento de revoluciones de colores orquestado por CANVAS. Entre los 199 métodos de las acciones no violentas que figuran en el manual de la CANVAS (distribuido gratuitamente en Internet) incluyen, por ejemplo, lo que es N ° 33: “La confraternización con el enemigo”, que analiza campo a través de la distribución de flores a la policía (generalmente a través de las chicas jóvenes y bonitas). [15] Este método se encuentra en todas las revoluciones de colores en los países árabes “printanisés” y en Hong Kong las calles durante la revolución [16] de los paraguas.

Chica de entrega flores a las fuerzas del orden libanesas (febrero de 2005)

Serbia (2000)	Ucraina (2004)
Tunisia (2011)	Egytto (2011)

Ofrecimiento de flores a la policía, de acuerdo al método de acción no violenta nº 33 de CANVAS

Por otra parte, Aleksandar Maric, ex activista de Otpor e instructor de CANVAS no ha dicho que su organización había establecido contactos con los disidentes libaneses y ello antes de la Revolución de los Cedros [17 ]? Esta precisión tiene el mérito de corroborar las declaraciones de Sharmine Narwani sobre la planificación de la “revolución” antes del asesinato de Hariri.

Además, todo el mundo se han dado cuenta de que el “Movimiento del 14 de marzo” coalición de fuerzas que se oponen a Siria creado tras el asesinato del primer ministro libanés, elegido como el logotipo de Otpor puño ligeramente modificado por la adición de una rama verde.

Recordemos que el puño de Otpor fue ampliamente utilizado durante las diversas revoluciones de colores y protestas que acompañaron a la “primavera” árabe [18].

Logo del movimiento “14 de Marzo” libanes

Algunos ejemplos de uso del puño cerrado de Otpor de Serbia (Otpor), Egipto (Movimiento del 6 de abril) , Georgia (Kmara)

Es curioso que la “Revolución del Cedro” no es el nombre que se utilizó originalmente por activistas libaneses. Los manifestantes habían optado por la “Intifada de la independencia”, “Intifada del Cedro”, “La primavera libanesa” y “Primavera del Cedro”.
Michel Elefteriades dijo que la palabra “intifada”, que alude a los levantamientos palestinos, no agradó a los especialistas de CANVAS: “Desde el primer día, me dijeron que no hay que llamar a nuestro movimiento ‘intifada Cedar “porque no nos gusta la palabra intifada en Occidente. Dijeron que la opinión árabe no era importante, lo que importaba era la opinión occidental. Así que le dijeron a los periodistas a no utilizar la palabra intifada “[19].

De hecho, el término “Revolución del Cedro” era más agradable a los oídos de la administración Bush. Según el periodista Jefferson Morley del Washington Post, este nombre fue inventado por Paula J. Dobriansky, la subsecretaria de Estado para Democracia y Asuntos internacionales (desde 2001 hasta 2009), bajo el gobierno de Bush hijo. Promocionando la política exterior del presidente Bush durante una conferencia de prensa 28 de febrero 2005, dijo: “En el Líbano, vemos creciente impulso para una Revolución de los Cedros unificación de los ciudadanos de ese país a la causa de verdadera democracia y la libertad de la influencia extranjera. Signos esperanzadores abarcan todo el mundo y no debe haber ninguna duda de que los próximos años van a ser muy bueno para la causa de la libertad “. [20]

Esta similitud entre la evaluación de CANVAS  y la de la administración de Estados Unidos demuestra (una vez más) un consenso claro de como el centro de formación de Serbia está financiado principalmente por organizaciones estadounidenses de “exportación” de la democracia en especialmente Freedom House, el IRI y OSI [21].

Cabe señalar que Paula J. Dobriansky, no sólo es un miembro de Freedom House CA sino también titular de la Cátedra Nacional de Seguridad en los EE.UU. Academia Naval. Ella también es miembro fundador del think tank neoconservador (neocon) “Proyecto para el Nuevo Siglo Americano” (PNAC), que tuvo una considerable influencia en el gobierno de Bush hijo. Su nombre es uno de los 75 firmantes de una carta enviada en agosto de 2013 para el presidente Obama, instándolo a atacar a la Siria de “Bashar” e instándole a “responder con decisión al imponer medidas que tengan efectos significativos sobre el régimen de Assad “[22].

Nos encontramos con el nombre de Eli Khoury en la lista de invitados a una conferencia internacional sobre “Democracia y Seguridad”, celebrado en Praga (República Checa), el 5 y 6 de junio de 2007. Este encuentro reunió a muchos celebridades en los campos de la disidencia, el espionaje, la política y la esfera académica. Citamos al el ex presidente checo Vaclav Havel, ex Primer Ministro de España, José María Aznar, el senador estadounidense Joseph Lieberman, el ex director de Freedom House, Peter Ackerman, la cara de la Revolución Naranja, y el ex primer ministro de Ucrania, Yulia Tymoshenko, o el ‘neocon’ Joshua Muravchik, también miembro del PNAC. [23] En esta conferencia, Khoury también ha contactado al  activista egipcio Saad Eddin Ibrahim, el disidente soviético (hoy Israelí), sionista y anticomunista Natan Sharansky y al opositor ruso Garri Kasparov.

Paula J. Dobriansky	Joshua Muravchik

Saad Eddin Ibrahim es el fundador de la “Ibn Jaldún Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo,” ONG generosamente financiadas por la NED. Honrado por Freedom House, un ex profesor de la Universidad Americana de El Cairo ha sido miembro del consejo asesor del “Proyecto Democracia sobre Oriente Medio” (Pomed), una organización estadounidense que trabaja con Freedom House y está apoyado financieramente por NED. [24]

Pero lo que llama la atención en esta lista es el gran número de participantes prominentes de Israel cuyo embajador de este estado en la República Checa Arie Arazi y su homóloga Checa Zantovsky Michael, jefe de Asuntos Económicos de la Embajada de Israel en los Estados Unidos, Ron Dermer y muchos académicos israelíes.

Sin embargo, lo más destacado de la conferencia fue, sin duda, la presencia del presidente Bush, quien aprovechó la oportunidad para hacer un discurso sobre la libertad, la democracia, la disidencia y el activismo político. [25]

Discurso del Presidente Bush (Czernin Palace, Praga, 5 de junio de 2007)

La conferencia fue organizada por el “Instituto de Estudios de Seguridad de Praga” (PSSI) y “Instituto Adelson de Estudios Estratégicos”. [26] Financiada, entre otros, por la OSI, la PSSI cuenta en su Consejo Asesor con James Woolsey, ex director de la CIA (y ex presidente de Freedom House CA) y Madeleine Albright, la secretaria de Estado y, dicho sea de paso, 64a Presidente CA del NDI [27].

El “Instituto Adelson de Estudios Estratégicos” es un instituto de investigación establecido por una generosa donación de la “Fundación Adelson Family” (Miriam y Sheldon G. Adelson). Es dedicado “a la exploración de los desafíos globales que Israel y la cara Oeste” y el estudio de temas tales como los relacionados con el avance de la libertad y la democracia en el Medio Oriente [28 ]. Cabe mencionar que Sheldon G. Adelson es un multimillonario origen judío ucraniano Americana (como Natan Sharansky). Considerado uno de los mayores clientes del Estado de Israel, que financia, con millones de dólares, a los Judios para viajar a Israel con el fin de fortalecer los lazos entre Israel y la Diáspora. [29]

De hecho, la misión principal de su fundación lleva a cabo en una sola línea:. “Fortalecimiento del Estado de Israel y el pueblo judío” [30] Según el periodista Nathan Guttman, la ideología de Sheldon Adelson G. es una mezcla de apoyo al primer ministro de Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, simpatía por el movimiento de los colonos y la hostilidad a la Autoridad Palestina. [31]

El millonario sionista Sheldon G. Adelson y su “gran ” amigo Benjamin Netanyahu (Jerusalén , 12 agosto 2007)

¿Cómo es que Eli Khoury se encuentra en una conferencia tan prestigiosa, que reúne a presidentes, primeros ministros, embajadores, halcones “neoconservadores” ilustres disidentes y un club selecto de funcionarios israelíes? ¿Podría ser para darle las gracias por su papel proactivo en la revolución de cedro?

De hecho, Eli Khoury no es un extraño a la administración estadounidense. Un cable de Wikileaks “06Beirut1544_a” nos dice que alrededor de un año antes de esta conferencia, fue invitado a una cena ofrecida por el embajador de Estados Unidos con motivo de la visita de Kristen Silverberg, secretario de Estado adjunto para organizaciones internacionales. Jeffrey Feltman identifica Khoury como CEO de Saatchi & Saatchi (empresa de publicidad) y se describe como “una publicidad de estratega y experto creativa” que han contribuido a la “marca” de la Revolución de los Cedros. [32] En realidad, el papel de esta empresa era tan importante, que algunos no dudan en llamar la Revolución del Cedro de la “revolución Saatchi” [33], o incluso, teniendo en cuenta la participación de las organizaciones estadounidenses “revolución patrocinado por la USAID y Saatchi & Saatchi “. [34]

Y eso no es todo. Eli Khoury es co-fundador de la “Fundación Líbano Renacimiento” (LRF), una organización no gubernamental fundada en Washington en 2007, que se define como “una organización educativa independiente, no gubernamental y no-sectaria cuyos fundadores han participado a través de sus propias actividades profesionales en la promoción de la práctica de la no violencia y el activismo democrático “. [35] Encontramos así, en esta descripción, los claros términos de los “profetas” de las revoluciones de color, Srdja Popovic y Gene Sharp.

Esta fundación es una “organización que recibe una parte sustancial de su apoyo de una unidad gubernamental [estadounidense] o el público en general”. [36] ] Después de los fondos del gobierno de Estados Unidos esencialmente recibidas, las finanzas, a su vez, diferentes programas u organizaciones ubicadas en el Líbano. Los ejemplos incluyen el “Centro Sostenible democracia” libanesa ONG que fue financiado (entre otros) por la USAID y la NED (2003 y 2005)[37], o la ONG MARCH, que también recibe directa o indirectamente subvenciones de varias organizaciones pro-democracia americanas (NED, USAID, etc.). se darán más detalles de ambas ONGs libanesas en la siguiente sección.

De acuerdo con su declaración de impuestos de 2013 [38], LRF ha financiado la “Defensa libanés y Aviso Legal Center” (LALAC), una agencia de lucha contra la corrupción, que también recibe fondos del “Centro Internacional para la Empresa Privada” (CIPE) [39], uno de los cuatro satélites de la NED. [40] Tenga en cuenta que el centro es una iniciativa de LALAC “libanesa Asociación Transparencia” (LTA), una ONG libanesa fundada en 1999 y subvencionada por el CIPE, el NDI, MEPI y OSI [41]. MEPI (Iniciativa de Asociación del Medio Oriente) es un programa que depende directamente del Departamento de Estado de Estados Unidos, a través de la Oficina de Asuntos del Cercano Oriente. [42]

Por último, es importante mencionar que Samir Kassir y Gebran Tueni, lamentablemente, no han tenido la oportunidad de asistir a la cena el embajador Feltman, ni a la conferencia internacional sobre “Democracia y Seguridad”: fueron asesinados respectivamente el 2 de junio de 2005 y 12 de diciembre del 2005.

Beirut y la “Liga Árabe del Net”

Al igual que en el caso de Ucrania después de la Revolución Naranja [43], las organizaciones de los Estados Unidos de exportación de  la democracia  no han dejado Líbano después de la Revolución de los Cedros, por el contrario. Informes NED muestran que entre 2005 y 2014, esta organización ha distribuido más de $ 7 millones a las ONG libanesas. Entre 2005 y 2012, el NDI ha recibido por su cuenta más de $ 2 millones para financiar sus operaciones en el Líbano.

Formación y conexión en red de ciberactivistas árabes llevaron a la creación de lo que el periodista francés Pierre Boisselet nombrada la “Liga Árabe la Red” [44]. Se celebraron numerosas reuniones entre blogueros árabes activistas antes y después de la “primavera” árabe. Los dos primeros “Encuentro de Bloggers Árabes” tuvo lugar en Beirut. La primera (del 22 al 24 agosto de 2008) reunió a 29 bloggers de nueve países árabes (Líbano, Egipto, Túnez, Marruecos, Arabia Saudita, Bahrein, Palestina, Irak y Siria). [45] En la segunda reunión, que se celebraba del 8 al 12 de diciembre de 2009 el número de ciber-árabes superó 60 [46]. Se conocieron allí las “estrellas” de la Red Árabe: los tunecinos Sami Ben Gharbia, Delgado Ammamou y Lina Ben Mhenni, los egipcios Alaa Abdelfattah y Wael Abbas, el mauritano Nasser Weddady, el bahreiní Ali Abdulemam, el marroquí Hisham Almiraat (alias Khribchi), de Sudán, Amir Ahmad Nasr, el sirio Razan Ghazzaoui, etc. [47].

Slim Amamou y Lina Ben Mhenni ( 3er Encuentro de Bloggers Árabes , Túnez 2011)

Razan Ghazzaoui y Alaa Abdelfattah Ali Abdulemam (Budapest 2008 )

Sami Ben Gharbia	Alaa Abdelfattah	Wael Abbas
Ali Abdulemam	Hisham AlMiraat	Amir Ahmad Nasr

Razan Ghazzaoui y Nasser Weddady

Aunque las dos reuniones fueron organizadas por la “Heinrich Böll Stiftung” [48] el OSI de Soros cofinanció la segunda. [49] Tenga en cuenta la participación interesante en talleres de capacitación de los “shows” Jacob Appelbaum en la segunda edición (2009). Su presentación se ocupó de derivación, la seguridad y el anonimato en línea. [50] Para los no iniciados, Jacob Appelbaum es un “hacktivista” que representa la cara pública de la compañía estadounidense que desarrolla software digital que permite la navegación anónima en Internet, lo que facilita la acción de eludir la vigilancia estatal y la censura. Appelbaum viajó durante todo el año para reunirse con los disidentes de todo el mundo y mostrarles cómo utilizar el producto digital gratuito. Para tener una idea del uso del programa digital, usted debe saber que ha sido descargado más de 36 millones de veces solamente durante el año 2010[51].

Jacob Appelbaum (3er Encuentro de Bloggers Árabes, Túnez 2011)

La revolución de las”basuras”

La serie de eventos que tuvieron lugar en el Líbano en el verano de 2015 fue llamada “crisis de la basura” por algunos, la revolución “basura” o “basura” por otros. Se desencadenó después de un problema y la gestión de la basura recogida, pero las exigencias de los manifestantes pronto se convirtió en un desafío para el gobierno y la corrupción exponer y fracaso del Estado.

Manifestantes del movimiento “apestas!” preparan pancartas (Beirut 29 de agosto de 2015) Tenga en cuenta que Gandhi fue también el “mentor” de activistas de Otpor e inspirador de Gene Sharp

El grupo ciudadano creado a raíz de estos acontecimientos fue bautizado como “Tú apestas!” (Tal3at Rihatkom en árabe). Este nombre corto y potente coincide a la perfección con los métodos recomendados por CANVAS. Es en la misma línea que el “Otpor” Serbio (Resistencia), el “Kmara” georgiana (¡Basta!) O “Pora” de Ucrania (Es tiempo).

Entre las mayoría de los líderes de alto perfil del movimiento de protesta se incluyen Imad Bazzi, Marwan Maalouf, Assaad Thebian y Lucien Bourjeilly.

Imad Bazzi es un ciberactivista libanesa muy involucrado en la blogosfera árabe. Según el investigador Nicolas Dot-Pouillard, Bazzi estaba cerca activistas de Otpor y un firme partidario de la retirada siria en 2005 [52]. También forman parte de la “Liga Árabe la Red”, que reconoce haber trabajado en estrecha colaboración con los disidentes sirios. “Es normal que alguien quiere ayudar a Siria a alguien en Egipto, Túnez y alguien quiere ayudar a alguien en Yemen”, dijo. “Compartimos los mismos problemas que todos sufrimos corrupción local, la ausencia del imperio de la ley y la falta de democracia”. [53]

Bazzi ha participado en varias conferencias dedicadas al hacktivismo. En uno de ellos (2010), que bordeó los activistas egipcios cibernéticos del “Movimiento 06 de abril”, que jugó un papel innegable en la caída del presidente Mubarak (Bassem Samir, Israa Abdel Fattah, ..) y cuyo actividades fueron financiadas por muchas organizaciones estadounidenses que promueven la democracia. [54] La conferencia fue co-patrocinado por Google y Freedom House. [55]

En 2011, la Universidad Americana de Beirut organizó la conferencia anual 16 de la “Asociación Árabe-estadounidense de Educadores de Comunicación” (AUSACE). [56] En este encuentro, financiado por Soros OSI, Imad Bazzi fue emparejado con Sami Ben Gharbia en el mismo panel. Recordemos que Sami Ben Gharbia, co-fundador del sitio Nawaat, es un ciberactivista tunecina líder que estaba muy involucrado en el “printanisation” de Túnez. [57]

Imad Bazzi también tomó nota era “programa Fellow” Freedom House [58] y gerente del proyecto del “Centro para la Democracia Sostenible” se mencionó anteriormente. [59]

El 5 de septiembre de 2011, pocos meses después de la caída de Mubarak, Bazzi fue arrestado por la policía egipcia en el aeropuerto de El Cairo. Dijo que la fundación “Maharat” (una ONG libanesa financiado por la NED que hace campaña por los derechos de los periodistas [60]) que fue allí a trabajar como consultor para una institución. Estuvo recluido durante más de diez horas fue interrogado sobre su relación con los ciberactivistas egipcios como Wael Abbas. Posteriormente fue deportado a Beirut. [61]

Para completar el cuadro, tenga en cuenta Imad Bazzi es miembro del foro “fikra”, un foro creado por el lobby de Estados Unidos a favor de Israel. Entre los participantes, hay muchos activistas en línea árabes, Bassem Samir, Israa Abdel Fattah y Saad Eddin Ibrahim y disidentes Radwan Ziadeh y sirios Ausama Monajed (antiguos miembros del Consejo Nacional Sirio – NSC). No hace falta decir que todos estos “colaboradores” son financiados por agencias de Estados Unidos a la democracia “exportación”. [62]. También incluye los nombres de los halcones “neoconservadores” como Joshua Muravchik (viejos colegas Paula J. Dobriansky) e incluso que los del Dr. Josef Olmert, hermano del ex primer ministro israelí, Ehud Olmert. [63]

1- Bassem Samir ; 2- Sherif Mansour ( Freedom House ) ; 3- Saad Eddin Ibrahim ; 4- Dalia Ziada ( egipcia ciber-activista, miembro de Fikra ) ; 5- Israa Abdel Fattah

Marwan Maalouf es un líder del movimiento “Tú apestas! “. Según varios observadores, participó en 2005 a las manifestaciones de la Revolución de los Cedros en un movimiento estudiantil [64]. A partir de entonces, su carrera ha estado llena de activismo “hecho en EE.UU.”.

De hecho, de 2008 a 2011, fue director del programa de Freedom House en Washington, responsable de la región MENA, en particular de Siria, Túnez y Argelia. Luego se trasladó a Túnez (2012 hasta 2013) para dirigir el “Instituto para la Guerra y la Paz” (IWPR). [65] Este instituto, que “apoya a los periodistas locales, periodistas ciudadanos y activistas de la sociedad civil” y que contribuye “a la paz y el buen gobierno mediante el fortalecimiento de la capacidad de los medios de comunicación y la sociedad civil para hablar” [66] es financiado por varias organizaciones, entre ellas la NED, la USAID y el Departamento de Estado (a través de la Embajada de Estados Unidos en Túnez y el programa MEPI) [67].

Marwan Maalouf, tras ser dispersado junto a sus seguidores después de intentar asaltar la sede del Ministerio de Medio Ambiente ( Beirut , 01 de septiembre 2015 )

Marwan Maalouf co-fundó el instituto de investigación ” Menapolis ” especializado en la gestión pública y el desarrollo en la región MENA . Entre sus “expertos ” figura el nombre de Imad Bazzi y entre sus clientes se encuentran (por supuesto) IWPR , Freedom House y la MEPI . [68]

Según Martin Armstrong , periodista británico con sede en Beirut , Assaad Thebian es co-fundador y portavoz del movimiento “Tú apestas ! ” Y el principal organizador de los acontecimientos actuales. [69]

Assaad Thebian (Beirut, 28 Agosto, 2015)

El perfil “LinkedIn” de Assaad Thebian muestra que es parte del grupo (privado) “ex” MEPI (Capítulo Líbano) [70]. En la descripción de este grupo, se lee: “MEPI, un programa del Departamento de Estado [de Estados Unidos], está activa en toda la región. La red de ex alumnos incluye más de 128 participantes en los programas de MEPI. La red proporciona una vía para que los alumnos continúen sus esfuerzos para fortalecer la sociedad libanesa. MEPI se centra en cuatro áreas distintas o “pilares”: la democracia, la educación, la economía y el empoderamiento de las mujeres. El capítulo libanés de la red de antiguos alumnos incluye a personas de diversos orígenes que participaron en una serie de programas en las cuatro áreas. […] Con el lanzamiento del capítulo libanés de la red de antiguos alumnos, diferentes habilidades que los individuos han adquirido pueden ser utilizados para la participación continua en el Líbano “. [71]
El 29 de enero de 2014, la asociación libanesa de “ex” MEPI ha organizado un evento en Beirut, en la presencia del embajador de EEUU en Líbano, David Hale. Fue con motivo del décimo aniversario de MEPI, a “honrar logros sobresalientes” del “viejo” capítulo libanés. Obviamente Thebian Assaad era parte del grupo. [72] Como tal, un trofeo en el escritorio, habló para lanzar algunas flechas al gobierno libanés, entre los aplausos del señor Hale. [73] Un preludio de la revolución “basura”?

Discurso Assaad Thebian en el décimo aniversario de la MEPI
(El Real Dbayeh, Beirut, 29 de Enero, 2014)

Desde 2011 hasta hoy, Thebian trabaja como consultor en medios digitales y de comunicación. Sus clientes incluyen numerosas organizaciones no gubernamentales como la “Asociación Libanesa para la Democracia Electoral” (LADE) y “Campaña Civil por la Reforma Electoral” (CCER). [74] Una breve mirada al sitio NDI permite ver que esta organización para “exportar” la democracia tiene una asociación de 17 años con LADE y trabaja en estrecha colaboración con la CCER. [75]

A diferencia de otros líderes del movimiento “Tú apestas! “Lucien Bourjeily es un hombre de arte. El escritor y director, que fue elegido en 2012 por CNN como uno de los 8 más importantes figuras de la cultura del Líbano. [76]

En 2013, desafió al gobierno libanés con una obra que critica duramente la censura estatal. La pieza titulada “Aw Ma Bto2ta3 Bto2ta3” (literalmente, “se corta o sin cortes?”) Se le prohibió la exhibición pública por la oficina de la censura, lo que le valió inmensa publicidad. En 2014, Bourjeily todavía tenía problemas con las autoridades libanesas por una historia de renovación de pasaporte, incidente que agitó la blogosfera. [77]

Lucien Bourjeilly después de conseguir su pasaporte libanés (23 de mayo de 2014)

La obra de teatro en cuestión fue producido por la ONG “MARCH” (mencionado anteriormente en relación con Eli Khoury), cuya misión es “educar, motivar y capacitar a los ciudadanos para reconocer y luchar por sus derechos civiles básicos, llevando a una sociedad libanesa abierta y tolerante con el fin de promover la diversidad y la igualdad y lograr una verdadera reconciliación entre las diferentes comunidades “. Esta organización es financiada conjuntamente por la NED [78], la USAID y Maharat SKeyes Medios. [79]

El informe anual 2014 de la NED se refiere claramente a cual es el objetivo de MARCH “montar una producción de” Aw Ma Bto2ta3 Bto2ta3 “y documentar los esfuerzos para obtener la aprobación de una parte vis-à-vis de la censura” [80]. Misión cumplida:. La prohibición de la pieza fue levantada el 25 de septiembre 2014 y la noticia fue muy difundido [81]

SKeyes es el acrónimo estilizado de “Samir Kassir Eyes” (Los ojos de Samir Kassir, el líder de la Revolución de los Cedros). Este centro fue fundado en Beirut en noviembre de 2007, tras el asesinato de Samir Kassir. De acuerdo con lo que se menciona en su página web “, el centro tiene como objetivo la vigilancia de las violaciones de la libertad de prensa y la cultura; también busca defender los derechos de los periodistas e intelectuales, así como su libertad de expresión “. [82] Muchos documentos muestran que SKeyes está financiado por la NED y el NDI. [83] Además, antes de ser Director Ejecutivo SKeyes (desde 2011), el Sr. Ayman Mhanna había trabajado en NDI como Oficial Superior de Programa (2007-2011). [84]

Un pequeño inciso: Lucien e Imad Bazzi Bourjeily son ambos miembros de la Junta Asesora de MARCH [85].

Los activistas que se han discutido anteriormente son parte de las figuras de los medios de la revolución “basura”, pero la lista está lejos de ser exhaustiva. Sin embargo, el disidente que hizo la conexión entre la Revolución del Cedro y la “basura” es, sin duda Michel Elefteriades, una especie de “eslabón perdido” de la revolución de color del Líbano. Una década más tarde, quien asistió a los especialistas de la resistencia no violenta CANVAS-back al centro del escenario de la protesta popular.

Y el uso de la lengua “profana” de ingenua apariencia, explicando la revolución “basura”: “Es una especie de revolución popular, una mezcla de muchos movimientos – cierta anarquía en el sentido filosófico adecuado como negativa de la centralización del poder – es realmente un movimiento popular, así que no creo que vaya a parar “, dijo.

Y se contradice un poco más adelante: “Hay intelectuales y líderes de opinión que vigilan (las protestas). Estamos allí para vigilar si no hay un infiltrado o un hacker que dirigen los acontecimientos en otra dirección “. [86]

En el impulso de la revolución “basura” Michel Elefteriades fundó “El Harakat Girfanine” (movimiento de protesta) [87]. La prueba de que no ha olvidado las lecciones de la CANVAS. De hecho, el logotipo de este movimiento no es otro que el puño de Otpor y su nombre es similar a la de los disidentes sudaneses “Girifna” (que asco) [88].

Michel Elefteriades con su “Movimiento disgustado”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o6Rxc_JZKg

Video ” Promocional movimiento disidente de Sudán ” Girifna “

Inspirado visiblemente que se dio cuenta de un par de años antes, los activistas de Otpor de Serbia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GseXFpKfA0

Aunque las múltiples demandas del movimiento “Apestas!” Expresan una verdadera exasperación de la población libanesa, debemos enfrentar el hecho de que la relación inextricable entre los líderes de la revolución “basura” y las diversas organizaciones estadounidenses de “exportación” de la democracia no son inocuos. Estos son el resultado de un trabajo en profundidad de connivencia latente que precedió a la Revolución de los Cedros, que ha continuado hasta nuestros días y que sin duda continuará en el futuro. Al igual que en otros países árabes, la situación socio-política en el Líbano es una tierra tan fértil para cualquier pequeña semilla de disputa puede generar un caos indescriptible. La “primavera” árabe es el ejemplo perfecto.

Sobre todo porque el Líbano es un país clave en la ecuación de Oriente Medio por su proximidad a Israel, su relación geopolítica con el derramamiento de sangre Siria y la presencia de un irritante importante para los occidentales: Hezbolá.

Por último, es interesante hacer un paralelo entre el Líbano y Ucrania. En unos diez años de diferencia, estos dos países han sido testigos de dos revoluciones “infiltradas”; sus poblaciones no muestran uniformidad de la nacional (étnicas, lingüísticas o de culto); están geográficamente cerca de los países de gran importancia política para Occidente (Israel / Siria en un lado y Rusia por el otro) para que puedan ser utilizados como caballos de Troya para el logro de los objetivos geoestratégicos.

La revolución naranja (2004) y del cedro (2005) estuvieron entre los mayores éxitos de CANVAS. La implicación planificada de violentos grupos neonazis en el euromaidán (2013-2014) ha engendrado dramáticos cambios en Ucrania.

En el Líbano, vapores coloreados exhalan de las montañas de basuras que ensucian las calles. Y surge la pregunta: ¿quien va a “parir” la revolución “basura”?

Ahmed Bensaada, Montréal, Canada
http://www.ahmedbensaada.com/

Texto en francês :

Liban 2005-2015 : d’une « révolution » colorée à l’autre

 Fuentes:

http://www.ahmedbensaada.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=323:liban-2005-2015-dune-l-revolution-r-coloree-a-une-autre&catid=46:qprintemps-arabeq&Itemid=119

Traducción Purificación G. de la Blanca. Correción IPV

NOTAS: en la versión original del texto

Despite the reports for the last several years that significant declines in poverty have taken place in sub-Saharan Africa, a recently-released World Bank study indicates that despite “growth” the actual number of people living in poverty on the continent has increased by 100 million over the last fifteen years.

In an attempt to reiterate and reinforce the view related to poverty decline in Africa, other figures are presented indicating that the proportion of people living in severe economic deprivation has declined, although with rising populations those who are in distress numerically are in fact increasing.

The World Bank presented this report on “End Poverty Day” in Ghana, the first country south of the Sahara which gained its national independence from Britain in 1957. In the recent period Ghana is often championed by many western financial publications as a “success story” within the broader effort to ameliorate poverty and underdevelopment in Africa.

In a press release issued by the World Bank announcing the study entitled “Poverty in a Rising Africa”, it says

“The report finds that progress in ending poverty in all its forms has varied greatly across countries and population groups, with the levels of achievement remaining challengingly low. Africa posted the slowest rate of poverty reduction of all major developing regions, with the share of people living in extreme poverty (less than US$1.90 a day) declining only slightly, from 56% in 1990 to 43% in 2012. But since 2012, extreme poverty fell to a projected 35 percent in 2015 in the region, based on the World Bank’s new poverty line of $1.90 a day. Globally, according to Bank estimates released earlier this month, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty will likely fall to under 10 percent for the first time, to 9.6 percent this year.” (Oct. 16)

These figures related to the percentage of Africans living in poverty are plagued by conjecture due to the lack of credible measurement tools and moreover the acquisition of reliable data on these subjects. In rural areas the number of people living without adequate supplies of water, fuel, food and communications technology often go overlooked.

The report itself acknowledges this fact by saying “Gauging Africa’s human well-being remains tremendously difficult. The report shows that in 2012, just 25 of the region’s 48 countries had conducted at least two household surveys over the past decade to track poverty. The authors urge action across Africa in improving the availability and access to regular and reliable data on income poverty and other dimensions of well-being. They also stress that national support for adhering to methodological and operational standards is essential.”

How is Growth and Development Measured in Africa?

This World Bank report reveals the contradictions between foreign direct investment (FDI) growth and the actual levels of incomes, quality of life improvements and socio-economic development. Setting a $1.90 level for assessing whether individuals and households are living below an extreme poverty level is problematic.

Many of the advances made in Africa take into consideration the availability of mobile phones and other consumer goods. These goods have enhanced the standard of living in many states by facilitating communications and therefore economic, political and social interactions. Nonetheless, these products come at a price whether they are manufactured outside the country, as is the case more often than not, or domestically.

Consequently, the cost of living is also going up and with that the need to spend the rising household income that is generated through increased production and trade. Recent strikes in Ghana among private, public and educational workers have largely centered on the decline in the value of the cedi (national currency) requiring larger amounts of money to cover expenses.

In Nigeria, which was proclaimed in 2014 by the western-based financial publications as having the largest economy in Africa, many of the strikes as well involve workers who are more skilled and have higher incomes. Work stoppages in the medical, educational and oil sectors and industries demand not only higher wages and better conditions of employment, but that employees actually receive their salaries on a regular basis.

In various state governments in Nigeria, public sector workers have gone months without salaries. This has also been a major issue in Ghana as well among junior physicians and educators.

Most importantly the distribution of national wealth is an important factor in determining actual development. Africa has produced billionaires in Nigeria, South Africa and other states. However, the existence of abject poverty remains. Class structures inherited from colonialism have not been eliminated where those who are in a position to benefit from the continuing integration of Africa into the world capitalist and imperialist system stand to advance their social positions within society.

In Nigeria and South Africa, the largest and most advanced states on the continent, both labor unions and community organizations have demanded that the mining and other extractive multi-national corporations re-invest in the environmental and social well-being of the areas where they derive their wealth. Although the workers may earn more than people living and confined to the rural areas, if resources are not re-invested into creating schools, improving education, cleaning up chemical and industrial waste along with constructing roads and healthcare facilities, it is not possible to define such a set of circumstances as genuine development.

Wealth Must Be Equitably Distributed to Foster Development

The issues of wealth distribution and relations of production must be addressed before there is real qualitative development in Africa and other geo-political regions internationally. Of course the World Bank cannot address these issues due to the inherent class bias of its approach to economic growth.

Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were founded by the United States capitalist class at the conclusion of World War II in order to facilitate its dominant positions within the imperialist world. In the earlier phase, tremendous resources were poured into Western Europe to rebuild industry and infrastructure destroyed during 1939-1945.

However, after the emergence of independent African states during the 1950s and 1960s, the IMF-World Bank officials came in to restructure the post-colonial political economy emphasizing a neo-liberal approach to development by shrinking the size of the public sectors and lowering the value of currencies. Rather than establish import-substitution industries, a path to growth was engineered to emphasize western foreign investment.

With the fluctuations of energy and commodity prices such a set of international relations leaves the post-colonial states dependent upon the strength of the economies within the former colonial and still existing imperialist countries. This vulnerability of the oppressed nations largely located within Africa, the Asia-Pacific and Latin America, stifles and even obliterates the capacity to engage in long-term planning for the benefit of the broad populations within these states.

These constraints placed on making major advancements in agricultural, industrial, educational and social service industries and sectors requires alternative approaches. Socialist economic planning would necessitate the channeling of earnings from worker productivity and trade into these aspects of the economy that could reproduce the outcomes that are most desired.

Internal conflict is cited in the World Bank report as a major factor in preventing economic growth. However, the imperialist destabilization of Africa through military operations and covert activity cannot be acknowledged by the World Bank since it would directly challenge the foreign policy imperatives of the ruling classes within North America and Western Europe.

Among Palestinians and Israelis, the recent upsurge in violence has been variously described as the children’s, lone-wolf, Jerusalem and smartphone intifadas. Each describes a distinguishing feature of this round of clashes.

The steady erosion of Fatah and Hamas’ authority during the post-Oslo years, as the Palestinian factions proved incapable of protecting their people from the structural violence of the occupation, has driven Palestine’s orphaned children to the streets, armed with stones.

The growing hopelessness and sense of abandonment have led a few so-called “lone wolves” to vent their fury on Israelis with improvised weapons such as knives, screwdrivers and cars. These attacks have attracted the most publicity, becoming the equivalent of the second intifada’s suicide bomber. But they serve chiefly as a barometer of Palestinian despair.

Jerusalem is the centre of events, with the Palestinians’ only unifying symbol, Al Aqsa mosque, at its heart. For Palestinians, the incremental takeover of the compound – and the West’s indifference – is like watching the mass dispossession of 1948 play out again in slow motion.

In addition, Jerusalem is the main fault line. Israel’s illegal annexation of the city has left Palestinians there in an extreme form of isolation – indefinitely stateless and supremely vulnerable.

And finally, the smartphone camera has allowed Palestinians to document their suffering and witness unmediated their compatriots’ personal acts of resistance and self-sacrifice.

Futile knife attacks may appal outsiders, but for many Palestinians they are the moment when an individual briefly reclaims his or her agency and fights back on behalf of a collectively subjugated and humiliated people.

The need for so many different labels for these events reveals another important facet of the current Palestinian struggle: its disorganised nature.

Israel has almost completed the division and enclosure of Palestinians into disconnected enclaves. As they hear the sound of the prison doors closing, Palestinian youths are lashing out at the guards closest to hand.

Because the divisions between Palestinian populations have become so entrenched geographically, and their leaders politically, it is hard for Palestinians to find any unifying vision or organising principle. Do they fight first against their occupiers or their spent leadership?

But the lack of planning and discipline has exposed Israel’s own limitations too.

Israel has little but stopgap measures to defend against the protests. Its intelligence agencies cannot predict the lone wolf, its guns cannot deter the knife, its military might cannot subdue the craving for justice and dignity.

Strangely, in the face of all this, there are signs of a parallel breakdown of order and leadership on the Israeli side.

Lynch mobs of Jews patrol Jerusalem and Israeli cities, calling out “Death to the Arabs!” A jittery soldier causes pandemonium by firing his rifle in a train carriage after a bogus terror alert. An Israeli Jew stabs another because he looks “Arab”.

Meanwhile, politicians and police commanders stoke the fear. They call for citizens to take the law into their own hands. Palestinian workers are banned from Jewish towns. Israeli supermarkets remove knives from shelves, while 8,000 Israelis queue up for guns in the first 24 hours after permit rules are eased.

Some of this reflects a hysteria, a heightened sense of victimhood among Israelis, fuelled by the knife attack videos. But the mood dates to before the current upheavals.

It is also a sign of the gradual leaching of the settler’s lawlessness into the mainstream. A popular slogan from the past weeks is: “The army’s hands are tied.” Israeli civilians presumably believe they must take up arms instead.

After six uninterrupted years of the extreme right in power, Israelis don’t blame their government’s policy of relentless force for the backlash. They demand yet more force against the Palestinians.

Polls show Avigdor Lieberman, the former Moldovan bouncer who became the hard man of the Israeli right, is most favoured to lead the nation out of the crisis.

Solutions are being applied most savagely in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians are being locked even more tightly into neighbourhood ghettoes. Israel’s “eternal, unified capital” is being carved up by roadblocks. Palestinian residents are made to endure daily searches and insults that will sow the seeds of yet more fury and resistance.

As Israel tries to slam shut the door of one prison cell in Jerusalem, the inmates threaten to break open the door of another, in Gaza. Israel’s leadership has watched uneasily the repeated breaches of Gaza’s fence over the past week by youths enraged by their own misery and what they see happening in the other prison wings.

The current unrest may recede, but more waves of protest of ever greater intensity are surely not far behind.

Jafar Farah, a Palestinian leader in Israel, has warned of it heading slowly from a national conflict into a civil war, one defined by the kind of debased one-state solution Israel is imposing.

The chaotic violence of the past weeks looks like a warning from the future – a future Israel is hurtling towards.

Image: Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor press conference in Geneva. October 16,2015

A new report summarizing Israel’s Arbitrary Killings and its System of Structural Violence was released by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor at a press conference in Geneva on Friday. The release included the following video, “Caught on Camera: Israel’s extrajudicial killings,” illustrating the killings of Palestinian civilians involved in political protests during the last two weeks.

The report follows Euro-Med Monitor‘s October 10th Call on International Community to hault Israel’s extrajudicial executions.

Euro-Med Monitor Press Release: ISRAELI BRUTALITIES CAUGHT ON CAMERA:

While the Israeli government has to date escaped serious accountability for repeated human rights violations, “citizen journalism”—in which excessive acts of force are caught on camera—now is making it more difficult for the acts to be obscured or brushed aside, says the report.

“Thanks to the courageous acts of activists, family members and bystanders, Euro-Med has collected video footage and eyewitness testimonies documenting numerous, egregious abuses by Israeli soldiers during the last few weeks, which we believe is only the tip of the iceberg,” says Daniela Dönges. “In our report, we name eight of them, because they are not just numbers. They are human beings with stories that must be told.”

The eight cases called out in the report are:

•          Thirteen-year-old Ahmed Manasra, who was run over by a car and beaten with sticks and metal pipes, then deprived of any medical care for 25 minutes. The Israelis claimed he tried to attack their soldiers, but video recordings show otherwise. Instead, he is seen lying on the ground, bleeding and calling for help.
•          Sixteen-year-old Marah Bakri also was accused of trying to stab an Israeli soldier, but widely circulated photos calls that claim into serious question. In one, nine soldiers pointing guns surround the young girl, covered in blood on the ground. The authorities refused to produce its evidence of a crime.
•          Israa Abed, 29, is another alleged knife-wielding attacker. Surveillance video footage shows only a terrified young woman who panicked when ordered to remove her hijab, a sign of her religion. She refused, but threw up her hands. Abed was shot by four bullets.
•          Fadi Samir Mustafa Alloun, 19, another accused stabber, was actually chased by a group of enraged Israeli settlers. The police came to protect the settlers, not Fadi. Video recordings shared on Israeli websites show the settlers before the police shot him.
•          Hadil Alhashlamoun, 18, was passing through a checkpoint when she set off a metal detector alarm. There are conflicting witness accounts regarding whether the girl had a knife, but photographic evidence and eyewitness testimony is clear that she posed no risk. While she was lying on the ground, two soldiers shot bullets into both knees, her right thigh, her pelvis, her abdomen, both forearms and her chest.
•          Twenty-five-year-old Muhammed Bassam Amsha, also was passing through a checkpoint when he was killed. Soldiers claimed they had photos showing the young man had a knife, but refused to produce them.
•          Tha’er Abughazaleh,19, did indeed stab a soldier in rage and frustration. But instead of then running away from police, leading them to shoot, photographic evidence suggest he was unnecessarily shot point blank in the head.
•          Falah Hamdi Zamel Abumaria, 53, was shot and killed in his home when the Israeli military came to seize his son. Despite the official story that the Israelis were attaced by the older man, eyewitnesses tell the truth, that Abumaria was trying to defend his son—with a pottery vase. For that, he was shot three times in the chest.

“No thinking person with a heart can hear this list and not feel horrified and aghast,” says Dönges. “Yet up until now, Israel has escaped any kind of serious accounting beyond some talk. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor calls on the Israeli authorities to conduct a transparent investigation into these thinly veiled outright murders. However, because we lack any confidence they will do so, we also call on the UN special rapporteurs for extra-judicial killings and the Palestinian territories to visit the region to do their own investigation.”

Full report here (pdf).

Thanks to Susan Abulhawa

There was a time in America — and not so long ago — when there was no “grid,” at least for those who lived outside of urban centers. To live self-sufficiently in rural areas was the rule, rather than the exception.

People knew how to survive without electricity, running water, sewage systems or any other services provided by municipalities or power companies. They used wood for heat and kerosene for light; they dug wells, built outhouses, raised cows and chickens, grew their own food.

That style of living may seem far in the past for most of us, but a growing number of people have realized that off-the-grid living may not only represent a happier and healthier existence — it may also be the key to survival when disaster strikes.

The idea of off-grid living, however, seems a threat to some people. Power companies and others who have a vested interest in keeping folks dependent and plugged in are doing their best to make it difficult, if not impossible, to return to a self-reliant way of life.

In fact, in many places, off-grid living has been all but criminalized. Take, for instance, Costilla County, Colorado, one of the least populated counties in the state and an area where hundreds of people have been purchasing land and attempting to successfully live off-grid. Off-grid homesteaders are facing harassment from county authorities who make things difficult for anyone who dares to pursue a self-reliant lifestyle.

The situation there has become so tense that there have recently been confrontations between authorities and off-grid landowners as the county attempts to essentially criminalize their lifestyle.

The county is now proposing new land use regulations that will require electricity, water and sewer systems to be installed before landowners can obtain a building permit.

Should it be illegal to camp on your own property?

Already, the county has passed rules that require permits for those who want to camp on their land while building their homes, and lately it has refused to issue camping permits as well, effectively making it illegal for people to live on their own property.

County officials and some of the established residents claim that problems are being caused by the new residents, who came to the area seeking cheap land and the chance to do exactly what the county is now doing its best to prevent: living simply off-grid.

Indicative of the attitude of the local authorities, Costilla County’s land-use administrator, Matthew Valdez, said:

“A lot of time we find families living in run-down sheds or in RVs, or some actually in tents. We tell them they cannot live in these conditions.”

Should it be the job of county authorities to tell people whether they can live in a shed, tent or RV while they build permanent homes? Should people be forced to obtain permits to camp on their own land?

The issues being faced by the Costilla County off-grid residents are not unique to the area. Throughout the country, state and local regulations are making life difficult for those who choose to live in a self-sufficient manner.

While many bemoan the fact that America is no longer the nation it once was, the authorities are preventing people from returning to the kind of lifestyles that made this country great in the first place.

Are we willing to let our elected officials on the local, state and national level dictate our way of life? Is this what is called freedom?

It’s time to let the authorities know that traditional American values include being able to live in a self-reliant fashion. We are not owned by the power companies or the powers that be.

We must never let them forget that fact.

Notes:

GovernmentSlaves.info

ColoradoPublicRadio.org

Police in Chicago kidnapped and imprisoned more than 7,000 people between 2004 and 2015 at the secret interrogation warehouse now known publicly as Homan Square, according to new reporting by the Guardian.

Nearly 6,000 of the disappeared were black, which is proportionately more than double the city’s black population and 82.2 percent of the 7,185 total individuals sent to the facility. An additional 11.8 percent were Hispanic and 5.5 percent were white.

Only 68 people—less than one percent—held at the ‘domestic black site’ were allowed access to lawyers or to tell others where they were. As Common Dreams previously reported, the imprisonments and interrogations at Homan Square happened off the books, without detainees’ names being entered into official law enforcement databases, which would have made them easier to find.

“The reality is, no one knows where that person is at Homan Square,” University of Chicago Law School professor Craig Futterman said. “They’re disappeared at that point.”

The latest disclosures in the Guardian‘s series on the site, the result of an ongoing transparency lawsuit and investigation, reveal that police officers kept detainees at Homan Square for hours and even days and pressured them to become informants as part of the department’s anti-gang operations.

Spencer Ackerman reports:

The police portrayals contrast sharply with those of Homan Square detainees and their lawyers, who insist that “if this could happen to someone, it could happen to anyone”. A 30-year-old man named Jose, for example, was one of the few detainees with an attorney present when he surrendered to police. He said officers at the warehouse questioned him even after his lawyer specifically told them he would not speak.

“The Fillmore and Homan boys,” Jose said, referring to police and the facility’s cross streets, “don’t play by the rules.”

“Not much shakes me in this business—baby murder, sex assault, I’ve done it all,” one attorney, David Gaeger, told the Guardian. “That place was and is scary. It’s a scary place. There’s nothing about it that resembles a police station. It comes from a Bond movie or something.” Gaeger’s client was sent to Homan Square in 2011 for a marijuana arrest.

In fact, the majority of those sent to the facility were arrested for drug charges, rather than violent crime.

Many others were never even charged.

Meanwhile, police accounts have varied widely from those of the disappeared. In many cases, officers stated that detainees were given access to attorneys when they were not, or the visits proved too short to be useful. One woman, identified as Chevoughn, said she was kept for eight to ten hours at Homan Square over theft allegations, where she was questioned in a “cage” and denied access to a lawyer until she went to central booking after her kidnapping.

Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin and U.S. Representative Danny Davis in Marchdemanded that the Department of Justice investigate the activities that took place at Homan Square.

The Liberal Party, which has long been Canadian big business’s preferred party of national government, will be returning to power for the first time in a decade after winning a sweeping victory in yesterday’s federal election.

Little more than four years after suffering their worst ever electoral defeat, the Liberals polled about 40 percent of the popular vote, more than double their vote-share in 2011. This was enough to catapult them from a distant third-place to a parliamentary majority of a dozen or more seats in the 338-seat House of Commons.

Final seat and popular vote figures were not available at the time of writing. But under Justin Trudeau, the son of former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the Liberals made major gains in virtually all parts of the country, including the Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia.

Yesterday’s vote was a massive repudiation of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his decade-old Conservative government. The Conservatives lost more than 60 seats, with many cabinet ministers, including Finance Minister Joe Oliver, going down to personal defeat.

Harper announced he was stepping aside as Conservative leader even before giving his concession speech.

The Liberals were the entirely undeserved beneficiaries of mass opposition to the Conservative government, which imposed sweeping austerity measures, further integrated Canada into the military-strategic offensives of US imperialism, and attacked democratic and workers’ rights.

The Liberals’ ability to portray themselves as the agents of “real” and “progressive” change was entirely due to the right-wing politics of the trade unions and the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP).

For years the unions and NDP have been working for the replacement of Harper by a “progressive” government in which the Liberals would play a leading role.

Since last fall, the unions have been spearheading an “Anybody but Harper” campaign, pouring millions of dollars into third-party anti-Conservative ad and protest campaigns.

Furthermore, the NDP, in the hope of convincing big business that it should be entrusted with the reins of power, mounted a “Harper lite” election campaign. This included pledging four years of balanced budgets, no increases in the taxes of the rich and super-rich, further corporate tax cuts, and increased military spending.

As the result of the combined efforts of the unions and NDP, the Liberals were able to pass themselves off as opponents of austerity. This from the party that when it last formed Canada’s government implemented the largest social spending cuts in Canadian history and handed tens of billions in savings to big business and the financial elite through massive corporate, capital-gains and personal-income tax cuts.

The NDP fittingly suffered an electoral debacle. The official opposition in the last parliament, the NDP was the frontrunner when the election campaign began 11 weeks ago. But its pro-austerity stance, coupled with its promotion, along with the unions, of the Liberals as a fellow “progressive” party and prospective coalition partner, led large numbers of working people to rally round the Liberals.

The NDP’s parliamentary representation was more than halved to about 40 seats. Its share of the popular vote shrunk by more than a third to less than 20 percent.

NDP losses were especially large in Quebec. There the NDP lost seats not only to the Liberals, but also to the Conservatives and the pro-Quebec independence Bloc Quebecois (BQ), whose sister party at the provincial level, the Parti Quebecois, has long enjoyed the support of the union bureaucracy. During the election campaign, the Conservatives and BQ effectively worked in tandem. They made joint reactionary and Islamophobic appeals, demanding that restrictions be imposed on the wearing of the niqab and championing Canada’s role in the latest US war in the Middle East.

Trudeau and his Liberals will use their majority to enforce the dictates of the capitalist elite. Under conditions of a deepening economic crisis in Canada, driven by the sharp fall in oil and commodity prices and anemic growth internationally, as well as mounting tensions between the major powers, the Liberal government will be called upon to step up the assault on workers’ rights at home and to more aggressively assert Canadian imperialism’s predatory interests abroad. This will include adoption of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, a central component of the United States’ drive to strategically isolate and militarily encircle China.

During the course of the campaign, it became clear that important sections of the ruling class were rallying round the Liberals. Endorsements for a Trudeau government came from La Presse, Canada’s most important French-language daily, and even from Conrad Black, the founder of the neo-conservativeNational Post and a key backer of the 2004 fusing of Harper’s Canadian Alliance with the remnants of the Progressive Conservative Party.

The ruling elites calculate that after nine years of Conservative rule, the installation of an ostensibly “progressive” government will better enable them to continue to ruthlessly enforce their interests while keeping a lid on mounting social anger.

Moreover, they know full well that the Liberals have a very long record of making “progressive appeals during election campaigns, only to impose the policy prescriptions of their avowedly more right-wing opponents when they take office. In 1993, the Liberals swept to power under Jean Chretien after nine years of Progressive Conservative rule. Chretien ran a “progressive” campaign, pledging to end the Conservatives’ “fixation” on the deficit so as to focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs” and to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). His government went on to spearhead the dismantling of public services and unemployment insurance, making savage cuts that are still held up by the IMF as an austerity model for governments around the world.

This time around, the Liberals are committed to upholding Bill C-51, the police state law the Conservatives adopted with Liberal support last spring. It gives the national security apparatus unlimited access to all government information on individual Canadians, enhances their powers of “preventive” detention, and empowers the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to break virtually any law when “disrupting” vaguely defined threats to national and economic security.

Trudeau has vowed to increase the number of Canadian Special Forces deployed to Iraq to train local proxy troops to combat ISIS within the framework of the US-led war coalition. He has also pledged to strengthen Ottawa’s relationship with Washington and to hike military spending, so as to better equip the Canadian Armed Forces to intervene alongside the US military around the globe.

As for the Liberals’ much vaunted promise to oppose austerity, their own financial plan calls for them to find $6 billion per year in annual savings by their fourth year in government.

“If for eight years this group has flouted other equally precious rules of the democratic game, aren’t we rash to assume that this same group will see a transparent, fair election as sacrosanct?…History and current events around the world – Nigeria, Turkey, Ukraine, the Phillipines – show many examples of leaders in weak or weakening democracies who were able to “coordinate” the civil bureaucracy with their cronies; they then tamper with the vote, and sully the outcome of elections.” -Naomi Wolf, from The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot [1]

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As this entry is being written, Canadians are on their way to the polls to register their choice to lead their country. 

The current standing in the polls suggests that the Opposition Liberal Party under fledgling leader Justin Trudeau is poised to take power. [2]

 However, polls have been known to be inaccurate. More to the point, polls do not account for the possibility of voters not making it to the polling station. Or other forms of electoral interference.

 On the morning of October 19, Canada’s Election Day, reports are coming in of pre-marked ballots, delays and some confusion. [3]

During the advance polling period two weekends previous, several pre-marked ballots appeared with marks appearing next to the names of Conservative and Green Party candidates. When brought to the attention of Elections Canada, the ballots were listed as ‘spoiled’ and discarded.  

If Canadians had chosen to vote with these ballots, would their vote have been discarded? 

Elections Canada is on record as saying these marked ballots were a result of  ‘printing errors’ and that no malfeasance was intended. But should Canadians receiving these ballots use them to vote with, will their ballots be discarded as ‘spoiled’? 

Could these flawed ballots turn out to be the ‘hanging chads‘ of the 2015 Canadian election campaign?  

This is all supposition at this point, but notable in light of documented electoral interference in previous election campaigns. 

Michael Keefer is an Emeritus Professor of Literary Studies from the University of Guelph. He has been researching and analyzing electoral interference in the 2011 Canadian Federal election and in a multi-part essay posted at Rabble.ca, he establishes that between telephone fraud and under-investigation by Elections Canada and the RCMP, a State Crime Against Democracy may well have taken place. Professor Keefer joined us in the second half hour to elaborate on what he has uncovered and implications for the state of democracy in Canada. 

A further concern with regard to the integrity of Canadian elections is the phenomenon of candidate ejection. A number of candidates have been ejected on the heels of problematic past statements emerging at late stages of the campaign. This is what happened to journalist, and columnist Lesley Hughes when she ran as a candidate in the 2008 election. She is the author of an upcoming memoir, The Naked Canadian: A Dead Candidate’s Report. In the first half hour of the program, Lesley Hughes shares her thoughts about how these candidate dismissals, in conjunction with the amplifying power of social media can ultimately serve to subvert democracy.

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

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CFUV 101. 9 FM in Victoria. Airing Sundays from 7-8am PT.

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

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

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

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the  North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Notes: 

1. Naomi Wolf, 2007; p. 143, The End of America:Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot; Chelsea Green Publishing Company
2. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-polls-oct18-1.3276755?cmp=rss
3. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/problems-at-the-polls-make-some-winnipeggers-walk-away-1.3277874

Mislead: “to give false or misleading information to” (Collins Dictionary.)

In what The Mail on Sunday (1) has described as a “bombshell White House memo”, leaked classified correspondence from then Secretary of State General Colin Powell to President George W. Bush, of 28^th March 2002, alleges that Tony Blair had done what the newspaper calls “a deal in blood” with Bush to support him, come what may, in the attack on Iraq – a full year before the invasion.

Blair at the time was claiming to be seeking a diplomatic solution in the Iraq crisis. “We’re not proposing military action”, he told the public, as he prepared: “to act as spin doctor for Bush”, states the Mail which also reveals Powell’s affirmation that: “the UK will follow our lead.”

Blair continued to claim to have made no decision regarding military action for most of 2002, a diplomatic solution was being be pursued he stated. Since there was no US or UK Embassy in Baghdad and UK Ministers and their US counterparts refused to travel there or engage with the Iraqi government, his assertions never rang even vaguely true. Powell’s memo proves the lie. Headed: “Memorandum to the President; Subject: Your Meeting with United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair, April 5-7, 2002, Crawford, Texas”, he states:

“Blair continues to stand by you and the US as we move forward on the war on terrorism and on Iraq. He will present to you the strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause.”

The paragraph confirms Blair’s integral part in the planning and all round strategy of the illegal invasion, whilst telling both Parliament and the public something quite else.

It should also be noted that whilst the line to Parliament and the public had been to tie Saddam’s government to the events of 11^th September 2001, in the Powell, Bush, Blair circle they seems to be entirely separated, note: “the war on terrorism and on Iraq.” No mention of their numerous public allegations of Iraq and international terrorism being inter-linked.

Powell confirms: “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military actions be necessary.”

Pointing out that Blair was not quite unfettered in his entirely illegal plans, Powell writes: “Aside from his foreign and defence secretaries (sic – no capital letters) however, Blair’s Cabinet shows signs of division, and the Labour Party and the British public are unconvinced that military action is warranted now.”

However: “Blair may suggest ideas on how to make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace” and how to handle demands for any action to be sanctioned by the UN Security Council.” Thus there was full awareness by the Bush and Blair regimes of the lawlessness of attacking a sovereign nation posing them no threat, and whose “sovereignty and territorial integrity” was guaranteed by the UN.

Also notable is that so keen was Tony Blair to ally George W. Bush in invasion plotting that he left the UK during the ten days national mourning for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The longest living member of the Royal family had died on 30^th March 2002. Queues lined to pay their last respects as she lay in state in Westminster Abbey, the Monarchy grieved and Her Majesty’s Prime Minister, Blair, boarded a ‘plane to the US.

In September that year Blair claimed that Saddam Hussein’s government could release weapons of mass destruction on the West “within forty five minutes”, which Colin Powell used in his Iraq war speech to the UN the following February.

Blair would also: “demonstrate that we have thought through ‘the day after’ “, states the communication. Not only had “the day after” not been “thought through”, but the weeks, months, years as Iraq continues to implode and Iraqis continue to die in their uncounted thousands. Even Iraq Body Count – whose estimates of Iraqi deaths are so sanguine and understated that they are used by the US and UK governments – released a Report early this year (2) stating Iraqi deaths from violence are doubling year on year.

Blair, wrote Powell: “ … is sharply criticized by the media for being too pro-US, too arrogant and ‘presidential’ (not a compliment in the British context) and too inattentive on issues of concern to voters.”

“Blair knows he may have to pay a political price for supporting us on Iraq and want to minimize it. Nonetheless he will stick with us on the big issues. His voters will look for signs that Britain and America are truly equal partners in the special relationship.”

Powell had not been paying attention. The majority of British voters wanted no “equal partnership” and nothing to do with the Iraq assault or general US global belligerence.

After George W. Bush left office and Barack Obama was elected with such (now dashed) hopes, numerous Americans living in the UK interviewed in the media repeated similar phrases, that they had tried to keep silent on public transport and in public places, ashamed of their American accent, so strong was the anti-American feeling over the treatment of and further threats to Iraq.

Today’s revelations have not come at a good time for Blair, scrutiny of whose hands in Iraq’s tragedy has only grown over the years. Currently circulating is a petition to Britain’s Parliament demanding his impeachment (3) and a poll asking: “Should Tony Blair Stand Trial for War Crimes?” (4) the affirmative in the latter ranges between 95 and 96%.

Further, it seems Mr Blair also was not entirely truthful with the £10 million, six year long Chilcot Inquiry in to the Iraq invasion – publication still awaited. (5) Sir John Chilcot has given varying reasons for the delay, including 2002 correspondence between Bush and Blair which has been withheld from the Inquiry. It will not be published for another year. He surely has now all he needs to know. Also according the Mail on Sunday:

“During his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry in January 2010, Blair denied that he had struck a secret deal with Bush at Crawford to overthrow Saddam. Blair said the two men had agreed on the need to confront the Iraqi dictator, but insisted they did not get into ‘specifics’.”

In the real world, was he not a long time associate of Blair, that should surely get Sir John going. British MP David Davis, a former Shadow Home Secretary is clearly stunned at the memo, writing (6):

“This is one of the most astonishing documents I have ever read.“It proves in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a front man for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet.“He was happy to launder George Bush’s policy on Iraq and sub-contract British foreign policy to another country without having the remotest ability to have any real influence over it.”

He adds:

“Judging from this memorandum, Blair signed up for the Iraq War even before the Americans themselves did. It beggars belief.“Blair was telling MPs and voters back home that he was still pursuing a diplomatic solution while Colin Powell was telling President Bush: ‘Don’t worry, George, Tony is signed up for the war come what may – he’ll handle the PR for you, just make him look big in return.’ “

Further:

“What is truly shocking is the casualness of it all, such as the reference in the memo to ‘the day after’ – meaning the day after Saddam would be toppled.”

Davis concludes by linking the terrorism scourging Iraq and the Middle East directly to the actions in which Blair had such an integral part:

“We saw the catastrophic so-called ‘de-Baathification’ of Iraq, with the country’s entire civil and military structure dismantled, leading to years of bloodshed and chaos. It has infected surrounding countries to this day and created the vacuum into which Islamic State has stepped.“This may well be the Iraq ‘smoking gun’ we have all been looking for.”

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair’s final untruths before the invasion were an address to Parliament on 18^th March 2003. They included:

“And now the world has to learn the lesson all over again that weakness in the face of a threat from a tyrant, is the surest way not to peace but to war.”And: “The real problem is that, underneath, people dispute that Iraq is a threat; dispute the link between terrorism and WMD; dispute the whole basis of our assertion that the two together constitute a fundamental assault on our way of life.”Should the UK not enjoin the attack: “And then, when the threat returns from Iraq or elsewhere, who will believe us? What price our credibility …”“To retreat now, I believe, would put at hazard all that we hold dearest … stifle the first steps of progress in the Middle East …”“This is the time for (Parliament) not just this government or indeed this Prime Minister, but for this House to give a lead, to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing.”

How wrong, devious and duplicitous can one man be? For how long can he now avoid justice?

Having read the above, ask yourself the question is Tony Blair a War Criminal?  Click image below to sign petition

British Citizens and British Residents can sign the petition (click the above image)

Notes:
1. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3277402/Smoking-gun-emails-reveal-Blair-s-deal-blood-George-Bush-Iraq-war-forged-YEAR-invasion-started.html

2. https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2014/

3. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/108495

4. http://atrueindependentscotland.com/poll-should-tony-blair-stand-trial-for-war-crimes/

5. http://www.globalresearch.ca/iraq-chilcot-inquiry-complete-whitewash-of-the-tony-blair-regime-ongoing-criminality-of-her-majestys-government/5469712

6. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3277403/DAVID-DAVIS-stunning-memo-proves-Blair-signed-Iraq-Americans.html

More than 34,000 pesticides derived from about 600 basic ingredients are currently registered for use in the United States by the EPA. Industrial agriculture (meaning about 75% of all land used in the U.S. to grow food or raise animals) relies on these chemicals to grow food. Where, exactly has this gotten us? [1]

Billions of pounds of pesticides and herbicides used has resulted in:

• Pesticide exposure causes farm-workers to suffer more chemical-related injuries and illnesses than other work-forces. This has led farmers to suffer from organ damage and cancer, leading to numerous lawsuits against biotechnology and pesticide-creating companies like Monsanto.

• About 95% of the country relies on groundwater for drinking water, yet it is often contaminated by pesticides, especially in agricultural areas.

• Pesticide ‘drift’ is common now. This means that in places like California, you can’t take a deep breathe without inhaling pesticide chemicals.
• More babies are being born with preventable birth defects due to pesticide exposure.

• UC Berkeley has found that children are being exposed to pesticides even before they eat their first apple or munch on their first carrot. That’s because the chemicals are so prevalently used, they show up in breast milk of mothers.

• General population illnesses are on the rise, including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and several types of cancer. Their connection to pesticide exposure becomes more evident with every new study conducted.

• Most of our food is laced with pesticide residues that cannot be washed off. Only organically-grown food is free from this concern.

• Genetically engineered crops developed and marketed to withstand copious herbicide and pesticide spraying are causing millions of acres of super weeds to grow, as well as causing super bugs which are resistant to the very chemicals which were created to destroy them.

• Pollinating insects which help to make sure we have a tremendous variety of foods have been absolutely decimated by chemical herbicides and pesticides. Bees, butterflies, and other pollinating insects are dying at an unprecedented rate.

• Even our ocean life is being contaminated by pesticide run off. Fish, crab, seals, and even micro-algae have been affected by the amount of chemicals we use to ‘grow food.’

• Agricultural practices that rely on this type of chemical addiction are stripping the soil of nutrients with remarkable implications. They are devastating the nutritional value of crops, making dramatic changes at an alarming rate — in less than a lifetime, to be specific. As an example, there has been a 41.1 to 100% decrease in vitamin A in 6 foods: apple, banana, broccoli, onion, potato, and tomato. Of them, both onion and potato saw a 100% loss of vitamin A in a 48-year span from, 1951-1999.

Despite these myriad concerns, the US Environmental Protection Agency gives the green light to a new concoction of health-harming chemicals used by Big Ag companies seemingly every month.

If 34,000 registered pesticides haven’t been enough to grow food for the world, certainly, new and more dangerous combinations of these chemicals will not magically solve the problem. Is it any wonder people are turning to organic farming practices and demanding organic, pesticide-free food?

Notes:

[1] McDaniel.edu

En Quebec, Canadá, más de 10 mil personas salieron a las calles en el marco de la Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres.

La Cuarta Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres se realizó en la ciudad de Trois-Rivières, en Quebec. Miles de personas se movilizaron contra las políticas de austeridad, la destrucción medioambiental, la militarización y en favor de los derechos de los pueblos indígenas.

Una acción simbólica se realizó para denunciar los más de 1180 casos de mujeres indígenas asesinadas y desaparecidas en los últimos 30 años en Canadá. Una Comisión Nacional de Investigación sobre estos casos fue exigida una vez más al Gobierno federal.

Los manifestantes condenaron también los importantes recortes aplicados por el actual Gobierno quebequense en los programas sociales y empleos de la función pública que afectan directamente a las mujeres.

Esta iniciativa creada en el año 2000 por la Federación de Mujeres de Quebec, tiene como objetivo principal eliminar la desigualdad de género.

Jorge Zegarra, Montreal.

It is critical to vote Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his ruling Conservative Party out of office on Monday. Canada is in a crisis of epic proportions and if Canadians don’t take action soon, the damage could soon be irreversible.

Harper has become a triple threat to social peace and well-being in Canada which threatens the collective futures of Canadians and Indigenous peoples alike. In the name of empire building and his desire to become an economic powerhouse, Harper’s plan has focused almost exclusively on the extraction and sale of natural resources backed up by an aggressive law and order agenda to quell dissent. The results have been disastrous. Indigenous peoples, the environment and basic human rights and freedoms have all been sacrificed on the altar of economic growth.

Canada has lost its way. Canada is not a country made up of two founding Nations (English and French). Canada is a territory made up of many Indigenous Nations upon whose original sovereignty the state of Canada is entirely dependent. But equally as important is the fact that this territory is an eco-system upon which all human, animal, and plant life depends. Climate change, brought about by human activity concentrated in industrialized countries like Canada, represents the single greatest threat to both Canada and the planet. Our collective futures depend on how our leaders address this global crisis, yet Canadians have been distracted by a great deal of propaganda and misinformation making them believe all is well. The result has been a clear path for corporate-sponsored political parties and politicians to pursue their aggressive wealth accumulation agenda, which has benefitted primarily politicians and corporations at the expense of our future.

The multiple, overlapping crises in Indigenous Nations, the environment and the rapid decline of human rights and freedoms have been largely absent from the election debates. Harper’s Conservatives have been able to distract Canadians from these critical issues with red herrings like the niqab. Harper has everyone, including his political opponents, tricked into talking about whether or not a Muslim woman should be able to wear a niqab at a citizenship ceremony; instead of the thousands of Indigenous women and girls that have been murdered or gone missing in Canada. His party has the media focused on the alleged corruption of Indigenous leaders to distract from federal and United Nations reports that condemn the federal government for forcing First Nations to live in fourth world conditions without basics like clean water. While Harper’s party stacks up the largest number of political and criminal scandals in Canadian history, he distracts Canadians with threats of terrorism from Muslims and “rogue” First Nation leaders who are “threats to national security.”

It’s long past time to cut through the distraction and noise. Canada is killing our people and if we do not act now, more people will die. Since 1980, more than 1,200 Indigenous women and little girls have gone murdered and missing. Despite being only 4 percent of the Canadian population, Indigenous children make up 50 percent of all kids in foster care. Indigenous peoples are incarcerated at rates 10 times higher than the Canadian population. Under Harper’s regime, in the last decade the Indigenous federal inmate population has increased by 56 percent. Indigenous peoples live anywhere from 7 to 20 years less than Canadians. Many First Nations live without clean water and sanitation, access to adequate health care and education, and/or live in overcrowded housing or are homeless in the cities. The United Nations has called this “abysmal poverty” a crisis requiring Canada’s immediate action. In fact, they have said there is no greater issue facing Canada today than its continued human rights violations against Indigenous peoples.

Canada’s treatment of the environment is not much better. The single greatest environmental disaster in Canada has been Stephen Harper. In the last decade, he killed the Kyoto Accord, which was an important international agreement to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change. He enacted Bill C-38, which essentially gutted environmental assessments and empowered Cabinet to overrule any decisions. With Bill C-45, he left most of our lakes and rivers unprotected for the express purpose of removing red tape for industry. As a result, the tar sands pollute the rivers, cause rare cancers in local First Nations and is the fastest growing source of emissions in Canada. The ice is melting in the arctic causing starving polar bears, fish stocks could disappear in the next 35 years, bee colonies have been reduced by 30 percent (and 70 percent of world’s food depends on bee pollination) and most of the cutting done in our forests is still clear-cutting killing fish habitat and reducing our ability to breath clean air.

But none of this could be happening either to Indigenous peoples or the environment unless Harper had, at the same time, not introduced a rigid law and order regime meant to not only silence dissent, but criminalize dissent as an act of terror. Bill C-10 includes mandatory minimum sentences, which run counter to the Gladue decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which instructed courts to find alternatives to incarceration for Indigenous peoples. Harper’s plan to build more jails seemed to contemplate increases in incarceration rates and sent a chill throughout Canada. The RCMP and/or their local provincial police forces were called out every time Indigenous peoples staged peaceful rallies to protect their lands and waters from environmental destruction. This heavy-handed intimidation tactic was supplemented by the extensive and some argue, illegal surveillance of Indigenous peoples, environmentalists, student protestors, and civil society groups. Harper’s greatest fear – that Canadians and Indigenous peoples would come together and stand up for our collective futures – materialized in the Idle No More movement. Far from being the violent, nightmare scenario his advisors had predicted, Idle No More showed Harper that we care about well-being and justice for First Nations, the health of the environment and the protection of basic democratic rights and freedoms. Ironically, it was because of this peaceful social movement that Harper enacted Bill C-51 to criminalize dissent and make it an act of terror to interfere with infrastructure, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the economy.

The fact that these issues were largely absent from the election debates show how disconnected political parties are from Canadians and First Nations. It doesn’t bode well for whichever party is elected on Monday. However, it is clear that irreversible damage will be done to Indigenous peoples, the environment and basic democratic rights and freedoms if Harper is not finally removed from office. It is therefore extremely important for Canadians to vote and get rid of the most destructive, aggressive and blatantly racist government this country has seen in recent years.

But the work doesn’t stop there.

Canadians have been educated to believe that their civic duty lies entirely in voting. In fact, voting is the very least effort a citizen can make. A democratic government is supposed to be a government of the people. It’s time the people took their power back and fixed Canada. The most important date in Canada’s future is not Oct. 19, but October 20 and the days that follow. Will Canadians stand beside First Nations and demand justice for our people? Will Canadians demand that environmental laws, processes, and protections be restored and enhanced with the assistance of scientists who are no longer muzzled? Will Canadians stand up for their own Charter of Rights and Freedoms and demand that basic democratic rights and liberties be restored?

We don’t need new solutions – the original Nation to Nation relationship envisioned a multi-national territory that would be shared by all – both the benefits and the obligations to protect it. This original treaty vision based on mutual respect, benefit, and protection could help refocus our priorities and shift our time, energy and resources to addressing the crises facing the plants, animals, and people who share this territory.

We have an obligation to honor the sacrifices of our ancestors and protect our future generations by acting in this generation before it’s too late.

Dr. Pamela D. Palmater is a Mi’kmaw lawyer and member of the Eel River Bar First Nation in New Brunswick. She teaches Indigenous law, politics and governance at Ryerson University and heads their Centre for Indigenous Governance.

Why is the economy still in the doldrums after 6 years of zero rates and three rounds of Quantitative Easing?

It’s because consumers aren’t consuming and there’s too much debt. You see, despite the Fed’s wacko theories about pumping liquidity into the financial system to make investors feel wealthier, people actually have to buy things to generate growth. And the truth is, consumers have reduced their spending because wages are flat, incomes are falling and many of them are still hanging on by the skin of their teeth.  So consumption has been unusually weak. Economist Stephen Roach made a good point in an article at Project Syndicate. He said, “In the 22 quarters since early 2008, real personal-consumption expenditure, which accounts for about 70% of US GDP, has grown at an average annual rate of just 1.1%, easily the weakest period of consumer demand in the post-World War II era.” (It’s also a) “massive slowdown from the pre-crisis pace of 3.6% annual real consumption growth from 1996 to 2007.” (“Occupy QE“, Stephen S. Roach, Project Syndicate)

So how is the economy supposed to grow if people aren’t buying things?

It can’t.

Now according to the Fed, the best way to fix the problem is to make money cheaper (so more people borrow and spend) and to pump $4 trillion in liquidity into the financial system so stock prices soar. The point of this crazy experiment is to further enrich big time speculators so they spend more money and, thus, rev up the economy. It’s called the “wealth effect” and the Fed actually believes this trickle down nonsense will work if given enough time. But, the fact is,  QE hasn’t worked, doesn’t work, and won’t work. Because it doesn’t address the fundamental problem: How to get more money to the people who will spend it and grow the economy. That’s the issue.

Zero rates can help because they lower the cost of borrowing. But lower rates don’t work if there’s no demand for funds, that is, if no one is borrowing.  And what economists have found out is that, after a major financial crash, where households have seen much of their wealth vanish overnight, people are not as eager to borrow as they were before. This is easy to understand. If you’re in a hole, you stop digging.  The average Joe can’t operate like a Wall Street banker who thinks, “I’ll just keep borrowing until I get out of debt.” No. Ordinary working people can’t do that. They have to reduce their spending until they get their heads above water again.

This is why the credit expansion has been so weak since the recession ended in 2009. Yes, there have been exceptions, like subprime auto loans and student loans which have skyrocketed in the last few years, (and many of which are headed for default) but as a whole the demand for credit has remained weak.

Once again, this is entirely predictable. When people find themselves deep in the red, (like after a financial meltdown) they don’t borrow as much.  It’s that simple. So it doesn’t matter if rates are low or not, the demand for credit is going to remain weak until household balance sheets are repaired and consumers feel comfortable borrowing again.

So if low rates don’t lead to a credit expansion, then what good are they?

Not much good at all, in fact, they’re extremely damaging. Time and time again we’ve seen how low rates encourage all kinds of risky behavior, because when money is cheap and easily available, it fuels massive speculation that creates asset bubbles. For example,  the stock buyback craze is entirely attributable to the Fed’s zero rates, and it’s precipitated a huge bubble in stock prices. Get a load of this from Zero Hedge:

“In 2014, the constituents of the S&P 500 on a net basis bought back ~$430Bn worth of common stock and spent a further ~$375Bn on dividend payouts. The total capital returned to shareholders was only slightly less than the annual earnings reported. On the fixed income front, the investment grade corporate bond market saw a record $577Bn of net issuance in 2014. While the equity and bond universes don’t overlap 100%, we think these numbers convey a simple yet important story. US corporations have essentially been issuing record levels of debt and using a significant chunk of their earnings and cash reserves to buy back record levels of common stock.”  (“Buyback Bonanza, Margin Madness Behind US Equity Rally”, Zero Hedge)

What does this mean in English? It means the giant corporations aren’t even thinking about the future of their companies any more. They’re not building more capacity or hiring more workers or expanding R&D. They’re taking every dime they can get their greasy mitts on and goosing stock prices so they can stuff their pockets full of cabbage and walk away like King Charlie. This is the effect of low rates. This is what happens when speculators get hold of cheap money. It throws the whole system out-of-whack.

Consider this:  If the Fed sets rates at zero, and the rate of inflation is 1.5 percent; then for every dollar the Fed lends out, they get $.98 cents back in return. Does that sound like a good deal to you, dear reader?

Zero rates mean that the Fed is subsiding bubblemaking and inducing speculators to take risks that are inherently destructive to the system. This isn’t a reasonable way to spur growth or stimulate the economy. It’s the well-worn path to financial crisis.

Keep in mind, the Fed’s policies come at a high price too. As we said earlier, the Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned to over $4 trillion dollars. So ask yourself this: How do the service payments on that $4 trillion debt impact economic growth?

Obviously, the service payments drain resources away from the real economy. Let’s use an example: Joe Blow decides he doesn’t want to live in his ramshackle $500 per month basement hovel on Capital Hill anymore, so he moves to a beautiful two bedroom apartment in Madison Park overlooking Lake Washington for a whopping $2,200 per month. So, now Mr. Blow has $1,700 less per month to spend on nights-on-the-town or exotic LARPing adventures in Port Orchard with his computer-geek friends. What impact will Joe’s new arrangement have on the economy?

It will hurt the economy because less spending means less growth. And that same rule applies to the corporations that borrowed money to repurchase their own shares. The billions in debt servicing will be diverted away from the real economy where it would have done some good.  This is why the big Wall Street banks should have been euthanized following the Crash of ’08, so their debts could have been wiped out instead of transferred to the Fed’s balance sheet where they are a constant drag on growth.

The global economy faces so many headwinds at present that it’s hard to know where to begin. China’s real estate bubble has popped, capital flight has put emerging markets into a nosedive, commodities prices have plunged triggering fears of  deflation, the economic data is increasingly bleak, and the Fed’s plan to “normalize” rates has sent stocks gyrating like never before.

Even so,  economic policy should focus on the things that increase growth, boost demand and lead to a more evenly-shared prosperity.  Full employment and solid wages gains should be on top of the list. Those are the foundation blocks for a strong economy that can withstand the ups-and-downs of an erratic business cycle or the periodic battering of financial crises.

We tried QE, now let’s try higher wages.

General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, flew to Tel Aviv Sunday to discuss a 10-year military aid package worth some $3.7 billion a year. The pledge of increased American military support came in the midst of an increasingly brutal Israeli crackdown on Palestinians within both the occupied territories and Israel itself.

In his first overseas visit since assuming the post of joint chiefs chairman at the beginning of October, Dunford sought to play down the frosty relations in recent months between the Obama administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Underscoring Washington’s support for the Israeli regime and its repression of the Palestinian masses, he said that “the military-to-military relationship had remained strong,” adding, “The challenges that we face, we face together.”

The Obama administration announced it would step up US military aid to Israel following the signing of the nuclear deal with Iran over the bitter opposition of Netanyahu, who directly campaigned for the US Congress to block implementation of the agreement.

US and Israeli officials have indicated that the size of the military package could well rise above $3.7 billion per year. Tel Aviv is pushing for more aid, claiming that Iran is likely to use sanctions relief to finance forces hostile to Israel, a reference to Iran’s support for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon is due to follow up Dunford’s visit with talks in Washington later this month, and Netanyahu will meet with President Barack Obama in the White House on November 9.

Dunford’s visit coincided with the launching of a joint US-Israeli air force drill in the southern Negev, set to last two weeks. The exercise, known as “Blue Flag,” is held twice a year and simulates a large-scale multinational air operation.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also arrived in Israel for a three-day “solidarity mission at a difficult time.” The Democratic politician, who presents himself as a left-leaning “progressive,” wasted no time in lining up behind the Israeli government. He said Palestinian attacks on Israelis “must end” and called them “unconscionable and unacceptable” acts of violence. De Blasio is not scheduled to meet any Palestinian leaders. It is his first visit to Israel as mayor of New York.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is to meet Netanyahu in Germany before going on to a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah in a bid to restore calm. Netanyahu had been due to visit Berlin on October 8 for an annual joint cabinet meeting and talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, but postponed the trip due to the violent clashes between Palestinians, Israeli security forces and Jewish settlers.

Kerry has been at pains not to blame Israel or the Palestinians for the recent wave of violence, saying, “I am not going to point fingers [at the culprits] from afar.” His public caution reflects concerns within the Obama administration that the escalating violence could ignite protests throughout the Arab world, potentially disrupting Israel’s relations with its Arab and Muslim neighbours, with whom it has been covertly working in support of the US-backed war to topple the Assad regime.

Recent incidences of individual attacks by Palestinians on Israelis, mainly in East Jerusalem, are the outcome of relentless repression on the part of Israeli authorities combined with pervasive poverty and unemployment. Three quarters of the population in Arab East Jerusalem live below the official Israeli poverty line. Protests in the enclave have increased sharply since Jewish extremists kidnapped 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir from the Shuafat neighbourhood, poured gasoline down his throat and set him afire. That atrocity occurred just days before Israel launched a 49-day war that killed over 2,300 Gazans and wounded another 10,900, mainly civilians.

Last week, Israel denounced a Palestinian call at the United Nations for an international force to protect Palestinian worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, also known as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s Old City. The al-Aqsa mosque has been at the centre of the escalating violence, amid fears that the government plans to open the site to Jewish prayer in contravention of the 1994 Peace Treaty with Jordan, which retains ultimate control over religious affairs at the compound.

The new Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told reporters on Friday, “Israel will not agree to any international presence on the Temple Mount. … Any such intervention would violate the decades-long status quo.”

Yesterday, Netanyahu rejected a French proposal for international observers at the mosque. He said, “Israel cannot accept the French draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council,” adding, “It doesn’t mention Palestinian incitement; it doesn’t mention Palestinian terrorism; and it calls for the internationalisation of the Temple Mount.”

Jordan, Washington’s client, has also opposed the deployment of an international force. Its ambassador to the UN, Dina Kawar, said she was not pushing for an international force, although she called for Israeli security forces to stay away from al-Aqsa.

Over the weekend, Israeli security forces shot and killed at least five more Palestinians. This brings to at least 56 the number of Palestinians killed by security forces this month, including 18 alleged assailants who were shot on the spot. Most of the victims were killed in clashes in the West Bank or along the Gaza border. A pregnant woman and her 2-year-old daughter were killed by Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

In the southern city of Beersheba, an assailant shot and killed an Israeli soldier, took his gun, and shot and wounded 10 others, including four police officers, at the central bus station. Israeli police said they killed one attacker who they thought was a Palestinian and critically wounded another, who is now believed not to be a second attacker, but an Eritrean migrant. This brings the total number of Israelis killed in attacks by lone Palestinians to eight this month.

Last week, nine Israeli human rights organisations issued a statement, based on videos and photographs taken on bystanders’ cameras, challenging the accuracy of Israeli accounts of the shootings and killings by security forces. The organisations said the videos provided clear evidence that police were carrying out a “quick to shoot to kill” policy, rather than arresting Palestinians in Jerusalem and Israel they suspected of attacking Israeli Jews. They also noted that the Palestinians had been shot despite posing no physical threat to security forces.

Adalah, a legal centre for Israeli Palestinians, and Addameer, a Palestinian NGO defending prisoners’ rights, say Israeli officials are blocking any investigation of one of the filmed shootings—of Fadi Alloun on October 4. Videos show a police officer shooting the 19-year-old Alloun even though he posed no threat. Alloun had been chased by a mob of Israeli Jews accusing him of a stabbing that had occurred earlier and demanding his execution.

The government has authorised the use of live ammunition against Palestinians who throw stones in Israel and East Jerusalem, thereby bringing the practice of extra-judicial executions from the West Bank to Israel itself. While the Palestinians in the West Bank live under military rule, Palestinians in Israel, including East Jerusalem, which Israel illegally annexed after the 1967 war, are subject to civil law.

On Saturday night, some 1,500 Jewish and Palestinian Israelis rallied in Jerusalem to call for an end to the weeks of violence and a resumption of negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Meretz party leader and legislator Zahava Gal-On called on Netanyahu to accept the French proposal to deploy international observers to the Temple Mount. In Beersheba, some 150 Palestinian and Jewish activists formed a human chain in support of peace.

Democrats have no new ideas for peace other than more war. 

None of the Democratic candidates in the October 13 debate had anything very useful to say about ending the carnage in Syria and the rest of the Middle East. The most belligerent was Hillary Clinton, wanting to stand up to Vladimir Putin’s “bullying” and establish a no-fly zone over Syria. The rest wanted more restraint on continued military action, and everyone vaguely supported “diplomacy,” with no suggestion how to get there. Additionally, Jim Webb called for confronting China over the South China Sea (the suggestion was ignored).

Bernie Sanders called the Syrian situation a “quagmire in a quagmire” and left it at that. Unfortunately, that was the most detailed analysis from any of the candidates, none of whom demonstrated any willingness to think outside the box, or even to admit they were all thinking within a very old box that had served no one well. After decades of disastrous American bloodletting in the Middle East, the best the Democrats can offer is to maybe slow it down a little.

Certainly that’s better than Republicans, who are all gung-ho to watch the arms and legs fly and figure out whose body parts are whose later. The expansion of Russian military action in northwestern Syria has pushed Republican jingoism to the frothing stage, as if another war to end war is a mistake we need to make again.

Republican senators don’t quite have the honesty to say they’re calling for war with Russia over Syria, they just complain that President Obama isn’t doing anything to stop President Putin, as if there were some way to accomplish that short of military confrontation up to and including all-out war. John McCain may be a former presidential nominee and Bob Corker may be the current chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, but by berating the president for not leading the US into war against the Russians in Syria, they demonstrate once again, if demonstration were needed, that they are not serious people with the best interests of the country or the world among their priorities.

What use is a debate that avoids details and consequences?

Cautious only by comparison, Clinton’s call for a no-fly zone is just a euphemistic way of calling for going head-to-head with the Russians. Unless Clinton somehow imagines the Russians will stop flying, and will also persuade their Syrian ally to stop flying, how does Clinton expect to enforce a no-fly zone without US planes and missiles shooting down Russian and Syrian warplanes? A no-fly zone sounds bland enough, but on reflection it is clearly a stupid, ill-defined, unachievable tactic designed to give the impression of sophisticated toughness where there is none. It is a sad measure of the quality of American presidential debates that there was no follow-up question from the moderator or any candidate as to how a no-fly-zone could be achieved, how long it would take to put in place, how long it would last, how much it would cost, or what risks it entailed.

Publicly at least, the leadership consensus in the US these days among Republicans, Democrats, Congress and the White House is that the US “has to do something” about Syria and the Middle East. What with overthrowing governments and supporting dictatorships from Iran to Libya, what with nurturing the mujahedeen in Afghanistan to bait the Russians, has the US not already done enough? Or way, way too much?

When people insist that the US “has to do something,” the first question from others, from the media, from the self-replicating governing intelligentsia, from almost everyone — the first question is the wrong question, because the first question is usually, “What?” “What,” they ask, reflexively, without stopping to reflect: “What should we do?”

“What should we do now in the Middle East?” is the wrong question

The right question is “Why?” Why should we do anything? What is there about the past 65 years to persuade anyone that the US has played a positive, peaceful role in any of the countries we have devastated? The time is long past when we might have first done no harm. Not that widespread destruction of ancient cultures is all our fault. It’s not. The US was a late arrival to supporting carnage and corruption in the Middle East, but the US has done more than its share to destroy the possibility of human happiness in too many places to be held blameless ever. We know what doesn’t work, measured clearly by the millions of people displaced, disabled, or dead.

And then there’s Tunisia.

Tunisia, despite having many of the same handicaps as other Middle East countries, has somehow managed to survive its inherent cultural and political tensions with a collaborative effort that won the Nobel Prize for Peace this year. Suffice it to say that the Nobel Committee’s award to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet honors a phenomenon unlike any in the US for decades. The Arab Spring that started in Tunisia in 2010 spread to many other countries, as the Nobel Committee noted, but:

“In many of these countries, the struggle for democracy and fundamental rights has come to a standstill or suffered setbacks. Tunisia, however, has seen a democratic transition based on a vibrant civil society with demands for respect for basic human rights.

“An essential factor for the culmination of the revolution in Tunisia in peaceful, democratic elections last autumn was the effort made by the Quartet to support the work of the constituent assembly and to secure approval of the constitutional process among the Tunisian population at large…. The broad-based national dialogue that the Quartet succeeded in establishing countered the spread of violence in Tunisia and its function is therefore comparable to that of the peace congresses to which Alfred Nobel refers in his will.”

Tunisians achieved this without significant help or interference from the US. The single national success story in the region came about without meaningful involvement by the so-called (by itself) “essential, exceptional, indispensible” nation. Everywhere else that the US has engaged in the Middle East mayhem is the norm. Where the US was absent, in Tunisia, there is, for the present, a maturing, peaceful democracy.

Can you say it’s an option to do nothing? Always! First, do no harm.

Here’s the thing about US policy in Syria: having failed to find the imaginary “moderate opposition” to support, now the US is metaphorically reduced to choosing between supporting either the Kurds or the tooth fairy. Neither option promises any better results than previous efforts since 2011. And supporting the tooth fairy would at least allow the US to avoid the contradictions inherent in supporting the Kurds, who are the enemy of US NATO ally Turkey, which has once again been bombing Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and maybe Iraq and Iran for months now.

When bombs went off in Ankara October 10, killing and wounding hundreds of people, the victims were mostly Kurdish peace activists. Who carried out the bombings? Not yet known. Who benefitted from the bombings? The Turkish government benefitted from blowing up political opponents. The Islamic State (ISIS) benefitted from blowing up military enemies who are the most effective fighters against ISIS. The Kurds, who control a large swath of northwestern Syria along the southern Turkish border, have been driving ISIS slowly southward.

ISIS and other jihadi groups benefit from years of support from other supposed US allies like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. These Sunni states find it in their interest to maintain a steady flow of money and arms to jihadi elements of all sorts in a proxy struggle against the Shiite elements associated with Iran as well as the Alawites who make up the core of support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

For no apparent rational reason, US policy in the region in the past few years has come down to a single, largely unexamined goal: Assad must go. That’s it. The US doesn’t even have the remotest idea of any kind of successor government, or even if any would be possible, short of a US occupation, which no one in the governing consensus is calling for. For a president who once wisely articulated a foreign policy principle of “don’t do stupid things,” it’s hard to imagine the US finding itself in a more stupid position than having a non-negotiable goal that it knows is unachievable by any means it is willing to employ.

What harm would come from US military de-escalation?

Militarily the US has been in a quagmire in Afghanistan since 2001, a quagmire in Iraq since 2003, and a quagmire in Syria since 2011. The conventional wisdom articulated by President Obama and others on down is that there is no military solution to Syria or anywhere else. That said, no one in authority proposes anything but more military measures.

Bernie Sanders doesn’t recommend any policy that follows the logic of his own observation that Syria in the Middle East is a “quagmire in a quagmire.” Why? No one disputed this characterization. And no one embraced it. The five Democrats gave the impression other leaders give, that they really don’t want to think about a problem to which there may be no active solution. Why take a stand when there’s no place to put your feet? When you have no good alternatives, why choose any of them?

Sanders called, as he has before, for an Arab coalition to take the lead in Syria and the Middle East generally. An American president can’t make that happen, an American president can only wait for that to happen. Meanwhile the US can stop bombing people, the US can disengage from the Saudis’ criminal war in Yemen, and the US can focus on the multilateral negotiations all the Democratic candidates said they support.

The best thing to do when you’re in a quagmire is to get out of the quagmire. Leave it to the Turks, the Saudis, the Russians, the Israelis, and all the other people who lack the courage and the wisdom to act like Tunisians.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

The frontline in Europe’s refugee movement is shifting.  In some cases, there is more of the same: the Hungarian approach entailing closures, followed by a brief easing and more closures. Closing the border with Croatia saw an inevitable movement towards Slovenia, whose government has now announced restrictions of 2,500 people a day.

Now, the next stage of the refugee problem is coming to the fore: their use as bargaining chips on the European political stage.  While Germany cannot be blamed for trying to find some measure of easing the enormous numbers even as other states fudge their obligations, the “keep them away” approach had to come sooner or later. In the absence of any unified policy on refugees in Europe, it is each country to its selfish own.

Even German authorities are hardening in their approach, though it is not a stance favoured by the Merkel government.  Police union chief Rainer Wendt expressed his rather forward views in the Welt am Sonntag that Germany should get busy building a fence along its border with Austria.  “I we close borders this way, Austria will also close its borders with Slovenia, and that’s exactly the effect we need.” State solidarity, in other words, in the face of refugee desperation.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approach may well have resisted an approach closing borders – so far. Instead, in the face of considerable disquiet within her own ranks, she has hit upon another approach: keeping the problem closer to the source by bribing Turkey.

This, it would seem, is Ankara’s moment: a key figure in the European security stakes; an eager participant in talks gaining accession to the European Union; and a meddler in the Syrian conflict keen in removing the Assad regime.

Merkel’s suggestion is that Turkey’s integration into the EU can be speeded up, using refugee management as a bargaining chip.  “How can we organise the accession process more dynamically?” she posed at a press conference in Istanbul.  “Germany is ready to open chapter 17 this year, and to make preparations for [chapters] 23 and 24.  We can talk about the details.”

Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is certainly keen on driving a hard bargain on this one, pressing for a resolution to the Syrian conflict even as EU talks are set to take place. On Sunday, he stressed the urgency of the talks, given another round of potential refugees stemming from Aleppo.  “It is our priority that steps will be taken to prevent an increase of refugees from Aleppo due to the offensive [there] by Iranian militia, Isis and Russian attacks.”  So far, Ankara’s insistence on a northern Syrian “safe zone” has not gotten serious traction.

There are other sweeteners layering the offer.  These, for Turkey, had to come, after the initial rejection coming from its foreign minister, Feridun Sinirlioğlu.  On Friday, the words were uncompromising on the scope and value of what was offered.  “There is a financial package proposed by the EU and we told them it is unacceptable.”[1]

The tune changed over the weekend, both in terms of the amount offered, and in various other structural adjustments to Turkey’s engagement with Europe.  Germany would be insisting on pushing for visa-free travel for Turkish nationals, bringing the timetable forward by a year to July 2016.  This argument on mobility is hardly surprising, given Turkey’s own efforts to reform its immigration system to bring it more into line with EU standards.

This has, according to the Migration Policy Institute, “limited Turkish authorities’ capacity to manage the Syrian inflows, and, as a result, management of the crisis was left largely in the hands of national organisations working on the ground, in camps, without larger policy guidance.”[2]

As Merkel revealed over the weekend,

“A working group between Turkey and Germany is carrying out talks on these matters and this group will convene again in the coming days.  We can facilitate some of these matters by holding bilateral talks.”[3]

The message from Ankara: expect us to keep refugees in tow, and maintain the current population – but at a substantial price.  Turkey has its own staggering refugee presence, with more than 2 million Syrian refugees costing in the order of $7.5bn since the crisis unfolded.  Much of this accrued because of a gamble, that the conflict in Syria would have been resolved over a matter of a few years.  Now, with its prolongation, the German offer here will entail $3.4 bn to assist footing the bill to keep the refugees put.

Andrew Garner, whose research portfolio at Amnesty International comprises Turkey, finds the whole talks unpalatable. “Talks between the EU and Turkey on ‘migration management’ risk putting the rights of refugees a distant second behind border control measures designed to prevent refugees from reaching the EU.”

The picture here remains, as it has been from the start, not one of rights but infringements, not one of duties to assist within international law covenants, but sovereign obligations to protect states from being swamped. And wealthy states bribing not so wealthy ones has become a stock-standard response that reduces refugee problems to matters of financial distribution and bean counting.

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

Notes

A vote on divestment taking place today [March 15] at Montreal’s McGill University has attracted national attention in Canada after Liberal Party leader and would-be prime minister Justin Trudeau attacked student organizers and questioned their right to free speech.

The BDS movement, like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses. As a @McGillU alum, I’m disappointed. #EnoughIsEnough

— Justin Trudeau, MP (@JustinTrudeau) March 13, 2015

Trudeau added the hashtag “#EnoughIsEnough” in his tweet, signaling support for asimilarly headlined Montreal Gazette op-ed which alleges that the divestment resolution would “marginalize Jewish students.”

Campaigners for the campus vote are hitting back in defense of their freedom of conscience and expression.

“Freedom of speech is a core Canadian value that has been enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and perhaps much to politicians’ dismay, that does not only mean the protection of popular speech,” Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill (SPHR McGill) said in a statement emailed to The Electronic Intifada. “Once again, Israel is being singled out with unconditional support from government officials.”

“The only way that we will be able to remove the intentional suppression of discussion around Palestine that scares spineless politicians such as Trudeau and others is to refuse to be sidelined by their attempts to harass students at one of Canada’s foremost universities,” the statement adds.

Rex Brynen, a professor of political science at McGill, also responded that he is “disappointed” that Trudeau “apparently opposes free speech rights of Canadian students.”

The Liberal Party has governed Canada for much of its history, but lost power to the Conservative Party in 2006. In 2011, the Liberals suffered their worst defeat in decades, collapsing to just 34 seats in Canada’s 308-seat House of Commons.

The party has pinned its hopes on Trudeau to lead it back into government at national elections in October.

Trudeau’s most significant achievement to date is being the son of Canada’s legendary late prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

While no one accuses Trudeau of having his father’s political acumen, charisma or wit, supporters hope that name recognition and nostalgia will carry the Liberals to victory.

SPHR McGill asks: “why would Justin Trudeau even bat an eye at campus politics? Because the work we are doing is impactful enough to scare privileged authoritarian centrists who cater to a demographic not fully representative of Canadian citizens.”

Outside backing

The student organizers also charge that opponents of the divestment resolution have failed to win support on campus and have thus turned to the “voices of external mayors and government officials to interfere with campus politics.”

On its Facebook page, the “No” campaign – urging students to vote against divestment – boasts of support from Trudeau, the mayors of two Quebec towns, and from Montreal member of parliament Irwin Cotler.

The SPHR McGill resolution – similar to many others that have been put before student bodies in North America – calls on the university to “divest and refrain from investing in companies that pose social injury by contributing to the continuation and profitability of the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.”

Backing BDS crackdown

With his intervention, Trudeau has effectively lent his support to the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper which recently signed agreements with Israel to repress the BDS movement.

In fairness, Trudeau is not the first Liberal Party leader to attack Palestine solidarity activism on campus for political opportunism and expediency.

In 2010, then Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff issued a statement calling on Canadians “to join with us in condemning Israeli Apartheid Week.”

But as critics noted, Ignatieff was engaging in the ultimate hypocrisy.

A few years earlier Ignatieff had written in The Guardian about a helicopter tour he had taken over Palestine.

“When I looked down at the West Bank, at the settlements like Crusader forts occupying the high ground, at the Israeli security cordon along the Jordan river closing off the Palestinian lands from Jordan,” Ignatieff wrote, “I knew I was not looking down at a state or the beginnings of one, but at a Bantustan, one of those pseudo-states created in the dying years of apartheid to keep the African population under control.”

SPHR McGill notes that “McGill took a stand and divested from South African apartheid in 1986 against the will of those in positions similar to that of Trudeau’s. This motion is no different.”

This post will be updated with the results of the vote, which is underway.

Voting underway for whether to vote by secret ballot, due to some students feeling uncomfortable voting openly pic.twitter.com/Ayxxt1rR6o — SPHR_McGill (@Sphr_McGill) March 15, 2015

Update The divestment motion was defeated by a vote of 276-212.

212 for, 276 against. Very close margin. This is an uphill battle, thank you to all who came out. Definitely more to come. — SPHR_McGill (@Sphr_McGill) March 15, 2015

Soooo proud of the @Sphr_McGill #divestment committee! The motion may not have passed this time around but you made a crucial impact #ssmuGA — Marina (@emmcupido) March 15, 2015

Full statement from SPHR McGill

We are unfortunately not surprised to see that leaders in our government have spoken out against the right of free speech that their “liberal” rhetoric advocates for. Freedom of speech is a core Canadian value that has been enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and perhaps much to politicians’ dismay, that does not only mean the protection of popular speech.

As a pro-Palestinian student group in Canada, it seems that our voices do not matter, even if we are advocating against injustices and violations of human rights that have already been condemned internationally.

Once again, Israel is being singled out with unconditional support from government officials. So why would Justin Trudeau even bat an eye at campus politics? Because the work we are doing is impactful enough to scare privileged authoritarian centrists who cater to a demographic not fully representative of Canadian citizens. And while we put in relentless effort to network with students and student groups by advocating inalienable human rights and speaking out against oppression and apartheid, the opposition has failed to win over students and has privileged the voices of external mayors and government officials to interfere with campus politics. This motion was drafted by a grassroots student organization with integrity and perseverance in dorm rooms and cafes, and will not be silenced by the opposition’s external endorsements and endowments. We will stand up for what is right. McGill took a stand and divested from South African apartheid in 1986 against the will of those in positions similar to that of Trudeau’s. This motion is no different.

The only way that we will be able to remove the intentional suppression of discussion around Palestine that scares spineless politicians such as Trudeau and others is to refuse to be sidelined by their attempts to harass students at one of Canada’s foremost universities.

Revealed by the British media are the details “of the ‘deal in blood’ forged between George W. Bush and Tony Blair over the Iraq War.” 

The meetings took place in  Crawford, Texas a year prior to the onslaught of the US-UK led invasion of Iraq. According to the Daily Mail:

The damning memo, from secretary of state Colin Powell to president George Bush, was written on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s famous summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas.

The Powell document, headed ‘Secret… Memorandum for the President’, lifts the lid on how Blair and Bush secretly plotted the war behind closed doors at Crawford. 

In it, Powell tells Bush that Blair ‘will be with us’ on military action. Powell assures the president: ‘The UK will follow our lead’.

The classified document also discloses that Blair agreed to act as a glorified spin doctor for the president by presenting ‘public affairs lines’ to convince a skeptical public that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction – when none existed.

In return, the president would flatter Blair’s ego and give the impression that Britain was not America’s poodle but an equal partner in the ‘special relationship’. (Mail on Sunday, October 18, 2015)

The leaked documents reveal unequivocally  that Tony Blair had agreed to waging war on Iraq, one year before the invasion of March 2003:

The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started.

It flies in the face of the UK Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ – in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals. 

The disclosure is certain to lead for calls for Sir John Chilcot to reopen his inquiry into the Iraq War if, as is believed, he has not seen the Powell memo.

A second explosive memo from the same cache also reveals how Bush used ‘spies’ in the Labour Party to help him to manipulate British public opinion in favor of the war.

The documents, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal. (Mail on Sunday, October 18, 2015)

To read the Mail on Sunday article  click here 

On 16 July 1964, at the San Francisco Republican Convention—where Ms Clinton began her career of political opportunism—Senator Barry Goldwater accepted his nomination for the presidency by declaring:

I would remind you that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.[1]

This was his defence of the political faction who defended him against “moderate” Republicans—like Nelson Rockefeller—so that Goldwater – Miller could be a “choice, not an echo” in the campaign against Kennedy successor Lyndon Johnson. Goldwater lost and “moderation” won. Instead of atomic bombs, the US dropped conventional explosives on Indochina for the next ten years.

Across the sea in one of the temples of the Anglo-American elite, the Oxford Union, this very claim was being defended by among others Scottish Nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid and Malcolm X—though certainly not in the manner of Goldwater. Malcolm chose an example that is as current today as it was 51 years ago:

But most people usually think [laughs to himself], in terms of extremism, as something that is relative, related to someone they know or something that they’ve heard of, I don’t think they look upon extremism by itself, or all alone. They apply it to something. A good example – and one of the reasons that this can’t be too well understood today – many people who have been in positions of power in the past don’t realize that the power, the centres of power, are changing. When you’re in a position of power for a long time you get used to using your yardstick, and you take it for granted that because you’ve forced your yardstick on others, that everyone is still using the same yardstick. So that your definition of extremism usually applies to everyone, but nowadays times are changing, and the centre of power is changing. People in the past who weren’t in a position to have a yardstick or use a yardstick of their own are using their own yardstick now. You use one and they use another. In the past when the oppressor had one stick and the oppressed used that same stick, today the oppressed are sort of shaking the shackles and getting yardsticks of their own, so when they say extremism they don’t mean what you do, and when you say extremism you don’t mean what they do. There are entirely two different meanings. And when this is understood I think you can better understand why those who are using methods of extremism are being driven to them.

A good example is the Congo. When the people who are in power want to, again, create an image to justify something that’s bad, they use the press. And they’ll use the press to create a humanitarian image, for a devil, or a devil image for a humanitarian. They’ll take a person who’s a victim of the crime, and make it appear he’s the criminal, and they’ll take the criminal and make it appear that he’s the victim of the crime. And the Congo situation is one of the best examples that I can cite right now to point this out. The Congo situation is a nasty example of how a country because it is in power, can take its press and make the world accept something that’s absolutely criminal. They take pilots that they say are American trained, and this automatically lends respectability to them [laughter], and then they will call them anti-Castro Cubans, and that’s supposed to add to their respectability [laughter], and eliminate that fact that they’re dropping bombs on villages where they have no defence whatsoever against such planes, blowing to bits black women, Congolese women, Congolese children, Congolese babies, this is extremism, but it is never referred to as extremism because it is endorsed by the west, it is financed by America, it’s made respectable by America, and that kind of extremism is never labelled as extremism. Because it’s not extremism in defence of liberty, and if it is extremism in defence of liberty as this type just pointed out, it is extremism in defence of liberty for the wrong type of people [applause].

I am not advocating that kind of extremism, that’s cold-blooded murder. But the press is used to make that cold-blooded murder appear as an act of humanitarianism. They take it one step farther and get a man named Tshombe, who is a murderer, they refer to him as the premier, or prime minister of the Congo, to lend respectability to him, he’s actually the murderer of the rightful Prime Minister of the Congo, they never mention this [applause].

I’m not for extremism in defence of that kind of liberty, or that kind of activity. They take this man, who’s a murderer, and the world recognizes him as a murderer, but they make him the prime minister, he becomes a paid murderer, a paid killer, who is propped up by American dollars. And to show the degree to which he is a paid killer the first thing he does is go to South Africa and hire more killers and bring them into the Congo. They give them the glorious name of mercenary, which means a hired killer, not someone that is killing for some kind of patriotism or some kind of ideal, but a man who is a paid killer, a hired killer. And one of the leaders of them is right from this country here, and he’s glorified as a soldier of fortune when he’s shooting down little black women, and black babies, and black children. I’m not for that kind of extremism, I’m for the kind of extremism that those who are being destroyed by those bombs and destroyed by those hired killers, are able to put forth to thwart it. They will risk their lives at any cost; they will sacrifice their lives at any cost, against that kind of criminal activity. I am for the kind of extremism that the freedom fighters in the Stanleyville regime are able to display against these hired killers, who are actually using some of my tax dollars which I have to pay up in the United States, to finance that operation over there. We’re not for that kind of extremism. [2]

Almost nobody in Europe or the United States, let alone their propaganda (advertising) instruments, is discussing the unending slaughter in the Congo today. Yet for a score and six years the defence of the Empire has meant persuading “whites” that any deviation from the corporate imperial form conceived in 1949 and consummated in 1989 is extremism per se. Such omnipresent extremism has served to maintain the illusion that its supposed opposite, the status quo, is moderation incarnate.

Hence in every US election what I have previously called orthodox and reform liberals have insisted that they are opposed to anything that could be called extreme while fanatically defending the mythical moderate or middle.[3] The epitome of this fanatical moderation is the absurd definition of the majority of America’s population as “middle class”. In fact just a primitive survey of the distribution of income and assets in the US, especially since the 1970s, reveals that the term “middle class” is an ideological fiction, albeit in a hermetically sealed environment such as the USA a very persuasive one.

In this “middle class” managed by an ideology of fanatical moderation, the vast majority of the racially dominant caste finds both reassurance and perpetual anxiety. This moderation is best exhibited in a passion for euphemism and an uncritical adoption of regime (corporate) jargon. This language is inherently pretentious since it is consumed and regurgitated in an environment of almost total ignorance of the regime’s power structure or the exercise of US power in the world.

Some fifty years after Malcolm X defended “extremism in the cause of liberty, for human beings”, we are witnessing, albeit from safe havens in Europe and North America, what must fairly be called the resurrection of the extremist moderation that resulted in the murder of Patrice Lumumba and the permanent destruction of the Congo. That moderation is the smug acceptance of the destruction of the very last remains of anti-colonialism, which it was then—as now—the mission of the US Empire to crush. Fifty years ago, mercenaries from the white settler regime in South Africa together with anti-Castro mercenaries trained by the US combined with the collusion of a US-dominated United Nations force and Belgian colonial troops were deployed to destroy the Republic of the Congo and deliver it to the administration of a paid agent of the principal instrument of US foreign policy, the CIA. After the destruction of Yugoslavia and the destruction of Libya by the very same means, we are forced to watch the demolition of Syria. This war against an Arab state, against a socialist state, is not a moderate war. It is not a new war. It is the continuation of a persistent war the origins of which are identical to those which led the United States and its vassals to crush Congolese independence.

What is the difference between 1964 and 2015? In 1961 after betrayal by Belgium, betrayal by the US, collaboration in that betrayal by the United Nations, Patrice Lumumba called reluctantly and at great risk to his country’s reputation in the world, the Soviet Union for assistance in defending his country from those mercenaries—from those hired murderers armed by the West. Africa was far away and the Soviet Union was still struggling to rebuild what the West had destroyed in World War II, overtly with the Wehrmacht and covertly with continuous aid by US corporations. The Soviet Union was unable to support Lumumba.

Two weeks ago, Russia, far closer to Syria and after a strenuous recovery from the brigandry of the US-instigated Yeltsin regime, after exhausting all available diplomatic means, accepted the request of the government of Syria to assist it in defending the country’s people and their sovereignty from the massed mercenary armies armed and supported by an apartheid regime to the South and the governments of the former colonial masters of the region. Russia has done for Syria what the Soviet Union was unable to do for Lumumba’s Congo.

What is the same? While ostensibly deploring the racist settler-colonial regime (although rarely ever criticised with such uncompromising vocabulary), the combined forces of the world’s greatest mercenary state and its equally mercenary mass media corporations, have been waging and continue to wage war against independent people organised in their own sovereign country. Then as now, that great mercenary state—and by mercenary I mean a state whose very roots have been nurtured by the blood of slaves and indigenous peoples shed by the hands of people who wittingly or unwittingly bought their supposed freedoms with that slavery and bloodshed—aims to conquer the Middle East as they conquered Africa. We should make no mistake. That state, which like the European states from which it was born, claiming a Christian heritage also claims that peculiarly Christian legacy inherited from the Crusaders who terrorised the region a millennia ago.

Now that Russia has entered the battlefield, we find the voices of moderation from throughout that empire demanding, pleading for Russia to withhold its support to the Syrian state. With what reason one may ask? The arguments can be found in many shades and hues. After Russia’s president Vladimir Putin announced to the United Nations convened in general assembly that the so-called “war against terror” declared unilaterally after events one September was not being fought in any earnest in the Middle East except by the government of Syria, led by President Assad, there was no response from the crusaders in Washington or London. Shortly thereafter Mr Putin announced that his government would send to Syria the support it requested and to which it was obliged by treaty dating from 1956. Yet before any military action had taken place, the mercenary media of the West announced that Russia had bombed “moderate” opponents of the Syrian government, trained and funded by the United States. Even the absurdity of this allegation, which rapidly saturated all the public media outlets, caused no embarrassment among “moderates” in the West.

When within a week it was reported that Russian bombardment and Syrian army action had forced the retreat of thousands of those mercenaries, the only reply was that Russia was bombing the “wrong” terrorists—the terrorists trained and funded by the United States. Yet when the Russian foreign minister offered to consider actions that might ameliorate that damage—without admitting the validity of such a distinction—the US regime was unable or unwilling to identify such “wrong” or “moderate” terrorists. A reasonable observer must conclude either that the US regime itself makes no distinction or that it simply is unable to make one. If it makes no distinction than the US accusation is nonsense. If such a distinction is impossible then it is also impossible for the US regime to know which terrorists are in fact the “wrong” or “moderate” ones.

One plausible explanation for the function of so-called “moderate” terrorists trained and armed by the US is that these “moderates” are merely a conduit for weapons to the ISIL corporate group. It was (and presumably is) a standing practice of the US to send its National Guard units to selected Latin American countries (e.g. Honduras during the US war against Nicaragua) for training.[4] National Guard inventories are not posted in the US military budget in the same way that regular army equipment or defence military assistance supplies are. When the Guard returned to the US, they left their weaponry, which was then booked as used, lost, or destroyed while it was in fact transferred to local agents of US power—official and unofficial. The US’s so-called “moderate” terrorist programs mirror this strategy for concealing the flow of weapons and ammunition to the local subsidiary of capitalism’s invisible army—ISIL.

However it lies in the nature of moderate extremism that there are no facts that a reasonable person is capable of discerning. Moreover it is the extremist moderate who is incapable of recognising facts in any context—historical or logical—that would lead to humane, let alone just evaluation of the circumstances at issue.

In this sense we find precisely the situation and the condition that prevailed in 1964. It is a condition that has characterised the entirety of the era benignly called the “American Century”—a century in which the United States, beginning with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has been the leading purveyor of violence on this planet.[5] In fact for saying this in the land of the free and the genocide of the “braves”, that both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were murdered.

We must ask why this has been the condition of the American Century? Why have the country and the regime which rules it been able to commit such uninterrupted atrocities, despite the values to which it has laid sole claim since its founding nearly three centuries ago?

The answers to these questions are not complex although they are not without contradictions. There have been moments in the history of the United States when its destiny was not solely in the hands of the small band of psychopathic adventurers who have perpetuated the myths upon which this new Eden was based. In the interest of brevity I shall confine myself to a phenomenon, which C. Wright Mills called “the conservative mood”.

Given the state of mass society, we should not expect anything else. Most of its members are distracted by status, by the disclosures of pettier immortalities and by that Machiavellianism-for-the-little-man that is the death of political insurgency. Perhaps it might be different were the intellectual community not so full of the conservative mood, not so comfortably timid, not so absorbed by the new gentility of many of its members. But given these conditions of mass society and intellectual community, we can readily understand why the power elite of America has no ideology and feels the need of none, why its rule is naked of ideas, its manipulation without attempted justification. It is this mindlessness of the powerful that is the true higher immorality of our time; for with it, there is associated the organised irresponsibility that is today the most important characteristic of the American system of corporate power.  [6]

The “conservative mood” is a gentle name for the historical processes that turned the settler-colonial state founded by the UDI of 1776 into the archangel of settler-colonialism throughout the world.[7] The overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon elite that formed and still dominates the US shared the ideals or better said obsessions, which underlay Winston Churchill’s History of the English-speaking Peoples.[8] Its fundamental acceptance and promotion of racism as a means of state-formation did not originate on the shores of North America.[9] It merely found the least resistance. This culture and political praxis induced the US regime to cripple the Haitian Revolution, to steal vast tracts of land from independent Mexico (and to force that country’s people to work for US corporations rather than the benefit of their own society), to deprive the Philippines and Cuba of the independence from Spain for which those countries had fought; to support the apartheid regime in South Africa; to conquer Korea after Japan’s surrender. The list is even longer but these examples are horrid enough.[10]

Not least of which the United States has, even more than its predecessor Great Britain, helped to create and maintain the State of Israel, a settler-colonial regime formed first by white Europeans with the connivance of the British Empire and ripened to a level of monstrosity that even a former US President felt compelled to condemn.[11]

How is it that a regime that financed the National Socialist regime for the benefit of its greatest corporations and tacitly accepted the industrial slavery with its millions of dead as a means of corporate profit and war against the hated Soviet Union earn the status of “defender” of Israel? Is it because the regime has ever had any interest in the fate of Jews? Had that been the case then the executives of Ford, Standard Oil, IBM and its major banks would have shared the dock with Hermann Goering. Is it because the regime has sought to promote the rights of peoples to national self-determination? Had that been the case, Haiti would be a prosperous independent state today instead of a North American slaveholding.

No, the reason why the United States is the self-appointed protector of the Jewish state in Palestine is because Israel occupies the same plot of ground its ancient Christian mercenary ancestors seized in the Crusades. More importantly, through the state with its capitals in Tel Aviv and Washington the regime supports white rule in the region. However unlike the days of slavery or Jim Crow, unlike the days before the US regime joined the United Nations by agreement in Yalta (only to highjack the organisation in San Francisco), the US regime is compelled to moderation. It can no longer stridently assert the superiority of its European Christian cultural heritage. In fact once the Soviet Union and China broke the US atomic monopoly, it had to moderate its threats to annihilate unwilling peoples of colour.

After US Forces were nearly driven out of Korea after its invasion in 1951—by “yellow” soldiers armed with Russian tanks and after humiliating defeat at the hands of “yellow” soldiers and irregulars in Vietnam, it had to moderate the language of conquest and exploitation. The necessity of drafting and recruiting most of its land forces from its “coloured” population made it moderate its official abuse, although this only applied to the federal level.[12]

The US regime was forced—at least until the mid-1970s—to improve its treatment (and control) of non-whites within its borders. Only by these acts of moderation was it possible to enhance the violence done by its corporations and mercenaries beyond its borders—in Latin America, Africa, and especially the Middle East.

Elsewhere I have analysed the ways in which the language of deception, developed by the regime’s political warfare institutions, has channelled and manipulated domestic opinion as well as the public opinion in Europe.[13] However here I feel compelled to take exception to a recent article published in the pages of a widely read online journal of American progressivism.[14] As Malcolm X said in his Oxford address, I do not select this article because of the particular author but because of the “type” of author and article that it represents.

Arguing that Russia is now in the best position to alleviate the situation in Syria today and that it is incumbent upon Russia to act if there is to be a solution to the present crisis there, Trent University (Canada) professor emeritus Michael Neumann wrote:

“It’s extraordinary how so much analysis is devoted to Syria, yet so little to the reasons Russia is there.  Russia is in some ways the key to the catastrophe. Yes, the West could do more, but only Russia could put an end to the fighting without expense or risk. Russia could from one day to the next stop direct support of the Syrian régime and pressure Iran to do the same. Russia could drop its Security Council support for the régime, unleashing vastly increased Western pressure on Assad. Iran on its own would know Assad was a lost cause, and he would fall.  All this would cost Russia not one penny, not one life. Given this is more like common knowledge than a secret, why doesn’t it attract more attention?

I submit it’s because Russia’s atrocious, unforgivable role in Syria has much to do with perfectly legitimate concerns about the West.“[15]

It defies historical fact and reason to suggest that “Russia is in some ways key to the catastrophe”, when it is a matter of record—even in Washington—that the US war against Syria is decades old. Moreover the apparent concession that Russia has “perfectly legitimate concerns about the West” is disingenuous. The reasons Neumann admits might motivate Russia are themselves caricatured and trivialised. One has to wonder why his country’s government should not be compelled to alter its behaviour, thus allaying such legitimate concerns.[16] Reading the first paragraph strains patient efforts at understanding what a professor of ethics might mean here.

If one reads further Professor Neumann explains:

Since Russia’s motives for pretty much anything are shrouded in an absurd fog of propaganda redolent of the crudest 1950s fanaticism, let’s get some things out of the way.

In fact, the Russian president explained in plain terms to the entire General Assembly the motives for Russian support of the Syrian government.

Russia has consistently opposed terrorism in all its forms. Today, we provide military-technical assistance to Iraq, Syria and other regional countries fighting terrorist groups. We think it’s a big mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian authorities and government forces who valiantly fight terrorists on the ground.

We should finally admit that President Assad’s government forces and the Kurdish militia are the only forces really fighting terrorists in Syria. Yes, we are aware of all the problems and conflicts in the region, but we definitely have to consider the actual situation on the ground. [17]

After conceding that the West has pursued a policy of encirclement and that “the West wants Russia at his mercy”, Professor Neumann reaches for the most startling comparisons.

And there lies perhaps the only faint hope for a minimally acceptable end to the Syrian catastrophe. Russia is a great power with a huge nuclear arsenal.  It will never be held accountable for its crimes, any more than any other nuclear power – any more than the US will pay for what it did in Southeast Asia, or Israel will pay for what it does to Palestinians. Russia’s criminal support for Assad will end when the world makes it worth Russia’s while to end it. What would that involve? [18]

His faint hope for a minimally acceptable end—moderation—is Russian withdrawal of its military support to Syria. Now we are told that Russia, like any other nuclear power “will never be held accountable for its crimes”. What crimes Russia has committed in Syria or anywhere else for that matter has not been stated. Since when is the compliance with a mutual assistance pact by invitation of a recognised and in terms of international law legitimate government (state-party to such pact) per se criminal? In contrast US and Israeli airstrikes in violation of Syria’s sovereign air space do constitute crimes against the peace in terms of the UN Charter. Instead Russia has been compared with the US in Vietnam or Israel’s unending war against the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine (not to mention the rest of the region that it bombs at will). The honest might infer that Neumann acknowledges that Israel is also a nuclear power and hence will not pay for crimes everyone knows it is committing as I write.

Still reading patiently to find the virtue of such moderation, one finds Professor Neumann asserting:

The example of Guantanamo shows that a major military base, particularly with convenient air and sea access, can easily survive in hostile territory. The US and NATO can make its survival a certainty.

Here we come even closer to the root of the matter. Indeed Guantanamo is a base imposed on the Cuban people after independence and despite continuous demands by the sovereign government of Cuba that the US vacate Cuban territory, remains. Guantanamo is not only the US Gibraltar but also the site of its most notorious torture and psychological warfare centre. Since 1956 Russia has had a base in a country with which it has maintained friendly relations for over half a century. Neumann proposes outrageously that Russia join the US Empire in destroying Syria in return for the privilege of a hostile military base—hostile here can only mean hostile to the US.

Returning to moderation, Neumann continues,

Does this sound cynical? Not at all; it is a matter of ending horror. The fantasies of a liberal future for Syria, or one ruled by squeaky-clean pro-American groups, or bringing the Russian scoundrels to the International Court of Justice …these are self-indulgent daydreams that push an end to the conflict ever further away. And it is not a matter of what ‘the world’ ‘must demand’, as if there was such an entity in any position to demand anything. A part of the world, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf States, might take steps toward the solution. The US, weak, feckless, and happy to be done with the Middle East, might go along. But this can happen only when it is understood that Russia, however evil its Syrian strategy, is beyond the reach of justice, yet far from beyond the reach of remedy.

It is striking that Professor Neumann proceeds cavalierly with his assessment of the relations between the states in the region, the role of the US and its vassals, and the utterly compromised International Court of Justice. How the slaveholder states in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula—whose fiefdoms are operated almost entirely with Filipino, Bangladeshi and other Southeast Asian leased chattel—earn a place in Neumann’s diplomatic pantheon is too absurd to contemplate. Although he asks the reader rhetorically whether his appraisal and recommendations are cynical, they almost sound sarcastic. An examination of his other writing on Syria more than suggests that he is very serious indeed.[19]

Why does Professor Neumann have this view of Syria and the Middle East? Why did he write elsewhere this appraisal of Assad and other national leaders?

Whatever his ultimate agenda, Milosevic was fighting to preserve Yugoslavia, which in retrospect looks like a paradise compared to the results of its Western-backed breakup. Assad achieved nothing of the sort either internationally or domestically. So he is not in the same league as these ‘devils’, let alone the likes of Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh.  [20]

His references suggest that he has not been utterly blind to the pursuit of national independence in countries historically colonised and pillaged by the US and European states. Can it be that his sense of moderation leads him to such skewed comparisons?

In his book The Case Against Israel, Neumann wrote:

The mere fact that, say, the United States is founded on genocide, massacre, and exploitation is not sufficient reason to destroy the United States. This is because the cure of destruction is worse than the disease of illegitimate existence. In practise, wiping out a powerful state like Israel or the US would cause even more suffering than letting it survive. More important, attacks on these states would almost certainly be unsuccessful and merely add to the evil of illegitimate existence the much more serious evil of catastrophic warfare. [21]

Why does Professor Neumann believe that in the case of Israel or the US, illegitimate existence should have no consequences when he is clearly convinced that the destruction of Syria would be beneficial? Israel for instance is a state ruling a population of some 8 million. Syria—at least before the US-operated terror campaign to depopulate began—had some 22 million inhabitants. The destruction of a nation of 22 million can be expected to cause objectively more suffering than that incurred by the much smaller state ruling Palestine. Neumann does not say that it would be wrong to destroy the US or Israel or if they were to vanish, but that the consequences would be much worse than if their de facto power were acknowledged as their de jure right to exist.

It is Neumann’s moderation that argues for the necessity of accepting the right of powerful (especially atomic-armed) states to exist. Yet such moderation does not extend to the less powerful states that assert their legitimacy and the support of their inhabitants. One has to ask the question whether Neumann would be so moderate were he Syrian or Libyan or Haitian or Congolese?

Professor Neumann—like Wright’s liberals of “conservative mood”—is a Pangloss who believes that the US is the best of all possible worlds. Syrians for Neumann are like the people of Lisbon whom Pangloss said were there so that the earthquake could destroy them.

This is really all reducible to white supremacy. He can imagine Syria or some other country being abolished because in the last instance, Syrians are not really white. It is not that Neumann even knows he thinks like this, it is structural racism. It is really painful to consider all the racism one has consumed as a “white”, all the “nigger jokes” all the strangeness one feels when meeting “mixed” groups– whether couples or families or social gatherings. It goes right to the bone. It gets better only if one confronts it and withdraws in part at least from its most noxious habitats.

Although the world has been tortured by Christianity for over 500 hundred years and over a thousand if one includes (especially Eastern) Europe, it is virtually impossible for whites to consider more than a few marginal Christian groups “fanatical”. But Islam (Muslims) is either abhorred because it means non-white or because the Euro-Americans have done their best to cultivate the most reactionary forms available (no doubt inventing a few along the way).[22]

The term sovereignty is incomprehensible to Americans because their entire history is based on the denial of sovereignty to non-whites.

Neumann is caught in this trap like most whites. Although he agrees that Israel is not a “Jewish” state any more than the US is a Christian state– it is first and foremost a white supremacist state with an ideology concocted in Jewish religious jargon. The US is also a white supremacist state concocted with Christian religious jargon. In both cases the purpose of jargon is to sustain ideological control– it is advertising language. To say this at cocktail parties (although most people today those are passé) or at Starbucks would be considered rude at best.

To discuss the quantity of suffering an empire’s destruction might cause as “more than the cost of its survival” would certainly have met with considerable wonder in India before 1947. What his type does not see is that the United States is not just the territory and inhabitants of North America and Hawaii. Israel is not just a state settled in Palestine, accommodating the good Jews and terrorising the Palestinian population. The United States was born as an empire. Had it remained within those boundaries established by the eradication of the indigenous peoples and expulsion of Mexicans by the end of the 19^th century, that empire would probably have remained as relatively benign in the world as the Brazilian Empire which has confined itself largely to the exploitation of its own internal boundaries. It is reasonable to say that there was an admittedly very short period when despite the European “invasion” that produced Israel, its legitimacy could have been established. In fact, the German Empire was destroyed without destroying Germany.

However, like the massive expansion of the US Empire after the defeat of Spain, the post-war European garrison in Palestine was inseparably linked to the denial of Arab, Persian, and African independence after 1945. Together with the Anglo-American outpost in Riyadh and the Gulf satellites, the State of Israel chose the mantle of the medieval crusaders rather than that of anti-colonialism.

The problem presented by the US is that its empire is non-contiguous with its State. The US Empire is the empire of the “open door”, the empire of the burglar and rapist—not the classical permanent conqueror. The US Empire is based on an insidious eroticism developed in its vast consumer culture and insatiable quest for control of populations in the form of “markets”. While the moderate beneficiary of US Empire praises his regime’s virtue in only temporarily occupying Afghanistan or Iraq and never doing more than ejaculating with Marine Expeditionary Forces, he or she swoons in social media at such crooners as Pussy Riot.[23] “White” Americans cannot conceive of the destruction of the US Empire because—to the extent they are honest—this means surrender of corporate power projection whether in the form of “smart phones”, Starbucks, or the rest of its synthetic culture. The adoration of US Empire by the moderate classes cannot be stilled because its constituting values of profit and success are deeply religious. The religious ecstasy of universal consumerism poses an enormous barrier to the reduction of corporate power, to shrinking the empire within its original territorial borders.

If a powerful country like the US or Israel—both armed with atomic weapons—has a right to exist because to destroy it would cause more suffering than its survival, then how much suffering can an American—especially a white American—impose on weaker countries before such suffering equals that which would justify putting an end to the cause?

What if, for instance, people like Neumann were to take seriously the assertion, which I believe to be accurate, that the US regime not only collaborated actively in creating the NS regime and supporting its war against the Soviet Union but was as willing to close it eyes to the deportation of Jews as it was to annihilate the Native Americans whose land Neumann also inhabits?

One of the conditions that make Professor Neumann’s type of argument possible is that just like the many who immigrated to Britain under the Empire, the hundreds of thousands driven to the US from the wreckage of its empire, have to pay a price for survival– an ideological price, a moral sacrifice. That moral sacrifice consists in forgetting, disregarding or minimalizing the wanton destruction, shameless greed, and vicious racism that devastated their countries of origin and induced them to immigrate. Many pay that price to put the trauma of US or UK violence behind them. Others pay it for privilege. White folks pay it because it keeps them white.

Can anyone truly believe that the suffering caused by the continuation of the US Empire—the political manifestation of its corporate power elite—justifiably continues? The destruction of that empire—which is not the destruction of the United States itself—might well mean the beginning of an end to the suffering in Africa, which the US Empire perpetuated in 1964. It might well mean an end to the suffering in the Middle East or South Central Asia or for the inhabitants of the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia. However if the violation and destruction of sovereignty for the weaker nations, like Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq and ultimately Syria continues, who and with what will the non-white peoples of the world begin to rebuild or create those modest claims for liberty and justice that moderation by the white people of the world have denied them for the past 500 years?

 Notes

Israeli settlements are permitted to freely terrorize defenseless Palestinians including young children, committing daily acts of violence and vandalism, at times cold-blooded murder with impunity.

Israeli authorities do nothing to stop them, de facto encouragement to rampage freely, often protected by soldiers and police – notably when they disruptively enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound where they don’t belong, commit vigilante attacks against young children, farmers in their fields, holy places or homes by settling them ablaze.

Yesh Din Volunteers for Human Rights receive daily complaints from abused Palestinians, notably during recent weeks of Israeli instigated violence, settlers attacking them at home, in vehicles, in village areas, in fields, virtually anywhere in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Attacks happen so often, it’s hard keeping track of how many or making accurate damage assessments. Israeli soldiers and police, as well as PA security forces do nothing to protect defenseless victims.

Maan News said over 200 radicalized settlers attacked Wad al-Haseen and Wad al-Nasara villages overnight Saturday – throwing stones and “firebombs” at Palestinian homes.

At least three injuries were reported, including two children, one wounded seriously when a firebomb struck him in the chest.

Residents saw Israeli soldiers protecting their rampage, letting them attack Palestinians freely. Homes were set ablaze. Villagers fled to mosques for safety, warned others about what was happening.

When other Palestinians arrived to help, soldiers attacked them with live fire, rubber-coated steel bullets and toxic tear gas.

Radicalized settlers rampage freely. Soldiers attack Palestinian victims. Israeli forces killed at least 44 Palestinians since October 1, including 11 children.

Scores of arrests are made daily, many hundreds detained and brutalized, over 500 wounded by live fire, around 5,000 harmed by toxic tear gas inhalation.

On Saturday morning, a radicalized settler dressed in white, holding two guns, murdered 18-year-old Fadel al-Qawasmi. Video footage showed the incident’s aftermath.

The settler directed soldiers to the body of the youth he murdered, unarmed, threatening no one. Soldiers failed to disarm a killer or arrest him, free to kill again, allowed to do it unaccountably.

Paramedics were denied access to the dying youth, left to bleed to death unattended, his body then whisked away to an unknown location, his family denied access to it.

Soldiers lethally shot another Palestinian youth and a young woman threatening no one. Since October 1, most victims were young children or youths.

Only two Israelis died over the same period, both lethally shot, none by so-called knife-wielding Palestinians. The Big Lie about them terrorizing Israelis continues unabated.

Most people believe it because hard truths are suppressed. One-sided support for Israeli state terror ignores longstanding Palestinian suffering and the horrors they’re experiencing now.

BDS activists called for worldwide solidarity with courageous Palestinian resisters. “Boycott Israel now,” they urged!

“A new generation of Palestinians is marching on the footsteps of previous generations, rising up against Israel’s brutal, decades-old system of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid,” they explained.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have joined demonstrations taking place in dozens of cities across historic Palestine and in refugee camps in neighbouring Arab countries.

A “wave of action” is underway in solidarity with their struggle – in “in response to Israel’s intensifying ethnic cleansing and (brutal) oppression…”

Since July alone, Israeli security forces and settler attacks left over 1,000 Palestinian children and youths either disabled or faced with life-altering injuries – victims of brutal state terror, supported by Washington, other Western regimes and despotic regional ones.

Global solidarity is needed to fight back. Boycotts, divestments and sanctions are essential.

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 1PMCentral time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

October 20, marks the four-year anniversary of the US-backed assassination of Libya’s former leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and the decline into chaos of one of Africa’s greatest nations.

In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; by the time he was assassinated, he had transformed Libya into Africa’s richest nation. Prior to the US-led bombing campaign in 2011, Libya had the highest Human Development Index, the lowest infant mortality and the highest life expectancy in all of Africa.

Today, Libya is a failed state. Western military intervention has caused all of the worst-scenarios: Western embassies have all left, the South of the country has become a haven for ISIS terrorists, and the Northern coast a center of migrant trafficking. Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all closed their borders with Libya. This all occurs amidst a backdrop of widespread rape, assassinations and torture that complete the picture of a state that is failed to the bone.

Libya currently has two competing governments, two parliaments, two sets of rivaling claims to control over the central bank and the national oil company, no functioning national police or army, and the United States now believes that ISIS is running training camps across large swathes of the country.

On one side, in the West of the nation, Islamist-allied militias took over control of the capital Tripoli and other key cities and set up their own government, chasing away a parliament that was previously elected.

On the other side, in the East of the nation, the “legitimate” government dominated by anti-Islamist politicians, exiled 1,200 kilometers away in Tobruk, no longer governs anything. The democracy which Libyans were promised by Western governments after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi has all but vanished.

Contrary to popular belief, Libya, which western media routinely described as “Gaddafi’s military dictatorship” was in actual fact one of the world’s most democratic States.

Under Gaddafi’s unique system of direct democracy, traditional institutions of government were disbanded and abolished, and power belonged to the people directly through various committees and congresses.

Far from control being in the hands of one man, Libya was highly decentralized and divided into several small communities that were essentially “mini-autonomous States” within a State. These autonomous States had control over their districts and could make a range of decisions including how to allocate oil revenue and budgetary funds. Within these mini autonomous States, the three main bodies of Libya’s democracy were Local Committees, Basic People’s Congresses and Executive Revolutionary Councils.

The Basic People’s Congress (BPC), or Mu’tamar shaʿbi asāsi was essentially Libya’s functional equivalent of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom or the House of Representatives in the United States. However, Libya’s People’s Congress was not comprised merely of elected representatives who discussed and proposed legislation on behalf of the people; rather, the Congress allowed all Libyans to directly participate in this process. Eight hundred People’s Congresses were set up across the country and all Libyans were free to attend and shape national policy and make decisions over all major issues including budgets, education, industry, and the economy.

In 2009,  Gaddafi invited the New York Times to Libya to spend two weeks observing the nation’s direct democracy. The New York Times, that has traditionally been highly critical of Colonel Gaddafi’s democratic experiment, conceded that in Libya, the intention was that

“everyone is involved in every decision…Tens of thousands of people take part in local committee meetings to discuss issues and vote on everything from foreign treaties to building schools.”

The fundamental difference between western democratic systems and the Libyan Jamahiriya’s direct democracy is that in Libya all citizens were allowed to voice their views directly – not in one parliament of only a few hundred wealthy politicians – but in hundreds of committees attended by tens of thousands of ordinary citizens. Far from being a military dictatorship, Libya under Mr. Gaddafi was Africa’s most prosperous democracy.

On numerous occasions Mr. Gaddafi’s proposals were rejected by popular vote during Congresses and the opposite was approved and enacted as legislation.

For instance, on many occasions Mr. Gaddafi proposed the abolition of capital punishment and he pushed for home schooling over traditional schools. However, the People’s Congresses wanted to maintain the death penalty and classic schools, and the will of the People’s Congresses prevailed. Similarly, in 2009, Colonel Gaddafi put forward a proposal to essentially abolish the central government altogether and give all the oil proceeds directly to each family. The People’s Congresses rejected this idea too.

For over four decades, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.

Unlike in the West, Libyans did not vote once every four years for a President and an invariably wealthy local parliamentarian who would then make all decisions for them. Ordinary Libyans made decisions regarding foreign, domestic and economic policy themselves.

America’s bombing campaign of 2011 has not only destroyed the infrastructure of Libya’s democracy, America has also actively promoted ISIS terror group leader Abdelhakim Belhadj whose organization is making the establishment of Libyan democracy impossible.

The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups in North Africa and the Middle East will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.

The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side Western nations and extremist political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.

Since then America has used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt against Soviet expansion, the Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia and the Jamaat-e-Islami terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not least there is Al-Qaeda.

Al Qaeda: The CIA’s Computer Data Base

Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization throughout the 1980’s. Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of western intelligence agencies. Robin Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means “the base” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) used to have a different name: Al Qaeda in Iraq.

ISIS is metastasizing at an alarming rate in Libya, under the leadership of one Abdelhakim Belhadj. Fox News recently admitted that Mr. Belhadj “was once courted by the Obama administration and members of Congress” and he was a staunch ally of the United States in the quest to topple Gaddafi. In 2011, the United States and Senator McCain hailed Belhadj as a “heroic freedom fighter” and Washington gave his organization arms and logistical support. Now Senator McCain has called Belhadj’s organization ISIS, “probably the biggest threat to America and everything we stand for.”

Under Gaddafi, Islamic terrorism was virtually non existent and in 2009 the US State Department called Libya “an important ally in the war on terrorism”.

Today, after US intervention, Libya is home to the world’s largest loose arms cache, and its porous borders are routinely transited by a host of heavily armed non-state actors including Tuareg separatists, jihadists who forced Mali’s national military from Timbuktu and increasingly ISIS militiamen led by former US ally Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Clearly, Gaddafi’s system of economic and direct democracy was one of the 21st century’s most profound democratic experiments and NATO’s bombardment of Libya may indeed go down in history as one of the greatest military failures of the 21st century.

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

A new analysis of the Obama-proposed TTIP ‘trade’ treaty, which the U.S. would have with Europe, finds that it was initiated and shaped by large international corporations, which will, also according to the only independent economic analysis that has thus far been done of TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), be the only beneficiaries of the proposed Treaty — all at the expense of the publics in each one of the participating countries.

This new study is titled «Public Services Under Attack», but it’s about more than just the proposed treaty’s impacts upon replacing «Public Services» by private services.

Corporate Europe headlined about this study on October 12^th, «Public services under attack through TTIP and CETA», and listed 15 of what they consider to be the report’s highlights. The following will instead quote extensively from the study itself, so that this summary will come mainly from  the report itself:

The study is »Published by Association Internationale de Techniciens, Experts et Chercheurs (AITEC), Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), European Federation of Public Services Unions (EPSU), Instytut Globalnej Odpowiedzialności (IGO), Transnational Institute (TNI), Vienna Chamber of Labour (AK Vienna), and War on Want». So: it reflects a concern for workers, and for the poor, not mainly for corporate owners — the latter being the proposed Treaty’s sole sponsors and beneficiaries.

This new study opens by defining (page 8) «Public Service»: «Public services are those provided by a government to its population, usually based around the social consensus that certain services should be available to all regardless of income». Another way of stating this is that a «public service» is one provided to citizens as a right, available to all equally, instead of as a privilege, available only upon the basis of ability-to-pay. The «social consensus that certain services should be available to all regardless of income» is repudiated in treaties like this, because they reflect instead a «libertarian» (to use the U.S. term) or «liberal» (to use the European term) viewpoint, that a person’s wealth reflects that person’s contribution to society, so that no poor person possesses any rights at all. (Supporting this viewpoint, Adam Smith, in his 1762 Glasgow Lectures on Jurisprudence, said: «Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor».

He wrote this in a society and age in which virtually all wealth – or else poverty – was inherited from one’s parents, not earned. He portrayed the poor as being the enemies. Their rights were no more than their wealth, in his view. He retained that aristocratic view throughout his life.) This viewpoint is also often referred to as being «conservatism», because it conserves the existing power-structure, with the richest (the aristocracy) being the most powerful in the future, as they have been in the past. Consequently, in the West at least, the ideological polarity is between «liberalism» versus «conservatism», both of which are fundamentally the same. Progressivism hardly even has a name, as of yet. (In other words: the ideological ‘debate’ is bogus, and is shaped on ‘both’ sides by the aristocracy.)

Therefore, proponents of Obama’s proposed ‘trade’ treaties call themselves, variously, «liberals», «libertarians», and «conservatives»; but only the terminology varies, because the reality does not.

The same section of the study says: «With free trade treaties like CETA and TTIP, governments will lose policy space to organise public services according to societies’ preferences by locking in liberalisation and privatisation. This is raising great concerns about whether profit will distort the ability of these services to be run in the public interest. Moreover, government attempts to regulate them could be deemed ‘barriers to trade’ and overturned».

The report’s Table of Contents is also something of a summary of the report:

Executive summary…3

1. Introduction…6

2. Dangerous liaisons: business, services, and trade…9

2.1 A brief history of services lobbying: the birth of GATS and ESF…10

2.2 Brothers in arms: the EU negotiators soliciting corporate lobbying…10

2.3 Systemic collusion: DG Trade’s calls for support…12

3. Business wish-list for Europe‘s public services…14

3.1 Public services: everything must go!…15

3.2 Dismantling public health…16

3.3 Competitive tendering: bidding for health contracts…17

3.4 Financial industry: a major player in services liberalisation…19

3.5 Procurement: attack on public utilities…20

3.6 Public Private Partnerships: profiting from austerity…20

3.7 Post: eroding universal service…21

3.8 Hollywood: fighting the cultural exception…22

3.9 Future proofing TTIP: digital trade in public services…23

3.10 Locking in privatisation…24

3.11 Protecting investment – endangering welfare…24

4. Rolling out the red carpet: how the EU bows to corporate demands…26

4.1 An ESF win: privatising everything but the kitchen sink?…27

4.2 Pleasing BusinessEurope: negotiating PPPs…30

4.3 Standstill: no backtracking from postal services liberalisation…31

4.4 Water utilities unprotected…32

4.5 Energy services: blocking policy space…33

4.6 On the rise: privately funded services…33

4.7 TNCs and the commodification of education…34

4.8 NHS: the sell-off of public health…37

4.9 Audiovisual services: nixing an exemption…39

4.10 Cashing in: the financialisation of social services…40

4.11 ISDS: defending a corporate privilege…42

4.12 Private tribunals adjudicating on public services…43

5. Conclusion: democracy and social justice, not trade deals threatening public services…45

Here is the opening of:

3.1 Public services: everything must go

To ensure maximum coverage of services in TTIP, the powerhouse lobby groups on both sides of the Atlantic, ESF and CSI, recommended a particular negotiation strategy known as a ‘negative list’ which means that all public services are subject to liberalisation unless an explicit exception is made. 

This ‘list it or lose it’ approach dramatically expands the scope of a trade agreement as governments make commitments in areas they might not even be aware of, such as new services emerging in the future (see box 7 on page 28). It marks a departure from the positive lists used so far in EU trade agreements containing only those services which governments have agreed to liberalising. 

At the same time, transatlantic lobby groups are trying to prevent negotiators from exempting any public services from the trade agreement. Their alarm bells started to ring in February 2015 when the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (INTA) drafted a TTIP resolution asking for «an adequate carve-out of sensitive services such as public services and public utilities (including water, health, social security systems, and education) allowing national and local authorities enough room for manoeuvre to legislate in the public interest».21 …

Then, there is:

3.2 Dismantling public health

The public health sector is one of the main targets of business lobbyists advocating for TTIP, hoping to capitalize on increasing health expenditure driven by aging populations in both the EU and the US, while public health sectors continue to suffer from fiscal pressures and harsh austerity measures. For instance, the powerful Washington-based Alliance for Healthcare Competitiveness (AHC) assembles companies and associations representing service providers, hospital operators, insurers, producers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, as well as IT and logistics companies (including Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, UPS, Intel, United Health Group, CSI, PhRMA, and USCIB). It prides itself on being «the only coalition advocating for the freer flow of health goods and services at the healthcare sector level». 26 

AHC complains that «today’s world of health care services is highly restricted and fragmented», but an «open trading world for these services would create a large new flow of revenue into the United States [to executives and major stockholders of those companies]». …

Then, there is:

3.10 Locking in privatisation 

Beyond prising open services markets, one of the central features of free trade agreements such as TTIP and CETA is their capacity to effectively lock in previous and future liberalisations and privatisations – regardless of any government that gets voted in or what its mandate or policies might be. 

Apart from ‘standstill’ clauses irreversibly binding existing policies, business groups further demand the inclusion of a so-called ‘ratchet’ provision which would effectively lock in future deregulations. … 

Then, there is:

3.11 Protecting investment – endangering welfare 

Business lobbyists are united in their call to have a broad investment protection chapter in TTIP, including the highly controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism (ISDS), granting foreign investors the exclusive right to bypass international tribunals. One of the overarching corporate aims is to prevent governments from any regulatory changes limiting private profits. 

Then, there is:

4.1 An ESF win: privatising everything but the kitchen sink?

Heeding the demands of the business lobby, CETA and TTIP apply to virtually all public services … at best excluding some core sovereign functions such as law enforcement, the judiciary, or the services of a central bank.84 [In common parlance, as Grover Norquist has phrased the matter, «reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.»]

Then, there are sections indicating that postal services and also the water utility are to be privatized so as to be available only only on a for-profit basis: excluding or else prohibitively charging regions where those services are unprofitable:

4.3 Standstill: no backtracking from postal services liberalisation

4.4 Water utilities unprotected 

Education gets treated similarly. Then, there is:

4.8 NHS: the sell-off of public health

TTIP and CETA will allow investors domiciled in North America to exploit liberalisations already undertaken in Europe’s public health sectors to force through further market openings and to lock in past privatisations. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is an important case in point. … 

Then, there are several sections devoted to such things as:

Regulatory changes, such as new laws or taxes diminishing private profits, may be seen as breaches of an investor’s «legitimate expectations» justifying multi-billion euro payouts in compensation [to companies that have been prohibited from activities by regulations, or even to the violating companies that have been fined]. 

and,

Thus, «indirect expropriation» lends itself to an extremely broad range of interpretation. For example, tribunals have already denounced many public interest regulations as measures «tantamount» or «equivalent» to expropriation – and ordered states to pay multimillions of euros in compensation. 

THE STUDY’S MAJOR FAILINGS

A major failing of this study is that it ignores such things as: Locking in food, drug, automobile-safety, and other existing regulations, so that, for example, when new scientific studies or else newly developed technologies indicate that an updating of a regulation would save lives or otherwise help the public, the regulation under TTIP and similar treaties cannot be updated (except by subjecting the government to potentially crippling lawsuits), which crippling of government will produce ever-increasing numbers of diseases and deaths as government is frozen even while science and technology continue to advance.

This is feudal. Fascism is to the industrial age what feudalism was to the agrarian age; and this is fascism, but on an international or imperial scope, perhaps even an emerging fascist world government — the exact opposite of what the United Nations was founded in order to promote.

U.S. President Barack Obama was elected to office in 2008 with the promise and public expectation that he opposed anti-democratic, pro-aristocratic, initiatives such as this. The fact that he now goes even far beyond the extremists Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in them, is virtual proof that the United States is no longer a democracy. (At least those candidates were honest about their conservatism.) Is the EU at all a democracy? Or will they accept Obama’s global-aristocratic monstrosity, and push for the aristocracy against the public, like the U.S. government does? The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.

Anyone who wants to know the mechanisms by which Obama’s mega ‘trade’ treaties — TTIP, TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), and TiSA (Trade in Services Agreement)  — will operate, can find that machinery (the means to enslave the public to the aristocrats) described here.

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

Legitimate opposition parties are banned from participating in Egypt’s first parliamentary elections since junta authority seized power by coup d’etat – complicit with Washington in ousting President Mohamed Morsi, now imprisoned on trumped up charges.

Strongman ruler Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is a US War College graduate, taught to crush all opposition to junta rule, undisguised despotism, governing by state terror. Democracy is strictly forbidden.

Elections underway are farcical by any standard, proceeding in two phases for 596 parliamentary seats (568 elected ones, the others Sisi-appointed) onOctober 18 and 19 in 14 governorates, then in 13 remaining ones on November 22 and 23.

Run-offs will be held in districts with no clear winner. Final results are expected in December.

Junta supporting candidates alone are participating. Legitimate regime opponents risk imprisonment or execution, one way or another excluded from the political process.

Sisi urged Egyptians to “(l)ine up in front of polling stations and plant with your votes the hope for a brighttomorrow for our new Egypt” – impossible with him in charge. Despotism isn’t democracy.

Junta power rules ruthlessly. Fundamental freedoms don’t exist. Tens of thousands of regime opponents languish in gulag hell – guilty of challenging tyranny.

Journalist Khaled Dawoud said “(t)here are no big issues being discussed…(I)t’s not an election of ideas. (Candidates) are competing over who will be” Sisi stooges.

“You don’t join parliament to oppose the government.” Membership means being part of a privileged club, everyone reading from the same page.

Sisi’s 2014 decree neutralized political parties – 75% of seats reserved for unaffiliated candidates to give junta power brokers a clear advantage.

Sisi arranged things to solidify his grip on power, assuring a rubber-stamp parliament once the political process is completed, a meaningless exercise in junta rule, legitimizing the illegitimate.

Press censorship is rife, government criticism strictly forbidden. Offenders can expect harsh treatment. No one against Hosni Mubarak is running for office. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood party was banned, officially designated a terrorist group, their members when apprehended are imprisoned.

Many pro-democracy supporters went underground or live abroad in exile. Democracy International monitors elections. On Friday, it said it’s unable to “conduct the comprehensive observation mission earlier envisioned” because junta officials refused to issue visas for some members of its team.

Reuters reported low turnout and “little enthusiasm” by late afternoon local time, saying most Sisi political opponents and critics are “behind bars.”

Most voters showing up are privileged Egyptians and elderly Sisi supporters. The new chamber will rubber-stamp his rule.

A monitor at a working-class Cairo polling station said only around 10% of eligible voters showed up. Most other locations had more security force presence than voters. Final turnout will be very low, no matter the official count, likely way inflated when announced.

Muslim Brotherhood member Wafaa Hefney called the election “a farce. I don’t think anyone in Egypt is taking it seriously. All the candidates are” junta approved.

Egypt has had no parliament since June 2012 – when a court arbitrarily dissolved a body dominated by Muslim Brotherhood members.

Reuters said Egypt’s constitution may be amended post-election to concentrate power solely in Sisi’s hands – to “legitimize” his despotic rule, officially making parliament a rubber-stamp body only, delegitimizing it before established if reports are accurate.

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 1PMCentral time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Washington so-called war on ISIS is a complete fabrication. Russia’s is the real thing. Its effectiveness is why Obama won’t cooperate with Putin – even though both leaders claim they share the same goal.

In over a year of daily Syria bombing, America’s vaunted military destroyed zero ISIS targets, nor those of other terrorist groups.

On Friday, Russia’s General Staff said its warplanes destroyed 456 ISIS targets since September 30, striking them with pinpoint accuracy. Its Main Operations Directorate chief Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov said:

Most armed formations are demoralized. There is growing discontent with field commanders, and there is evidence of disobedience. Desertion is becoming widespread.-

Intelligence shows about 100 terrorists enter Turkey from Syria daily. They’re leaving front line positions through refugee routes, fleeing for their lives.

Kartapolov said Russian “aircraft carry out strikes against the militants infrastructure based on data provided through several intelligence channels as well as intel supplied by the information center in Baghdad. We only attack targets held by internationally-recognized terrorist groups.”

Washington’s campaign targets Syrian infrastructure sites, not ISIS or other terrorist groups, falsely claiming otherwise, willfully deceiving the US public.

“It is against our principles to advise our colleagues which targets to strike,” said Kartapolov. “However, on October 11, a power plant and an electrical substation were destroyed by coalition warplanes in the vicinity of Tell-Ala.”

US and allied warplanes are “deliberately destroying the civilian infrastructure in population centers making them unfit for habitation. Because of that civilians are fleeing these towns and contribute to the flow of refugees to Europe.”

Washington refuses to share intelligence data on ISIS and other terrorist groups’ locations. “So we went ahead and created a comprehensive map of areas controlled by ISIL, based on our intel and on data provided by the information center in Baghdad, Kartapolov explained.

In Beijing at the 6th Xiangshan Security Forum, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov addressed what Putin repeatedly stresses.

Russia seeks cooperative relations with all nations. Washington rejects it, especially Moscow’s outreach to coordinate efforts on each nation’s Syrian operations.

“We are constantly in touch with the Syrian army,” Antonov explained. “All of our strikes are surgical and delivered with precision, exclusively against Islamic State infrastructures. We have not hit any other military or civilian facilities, let alone communities and mosques, contrary to what some western media have been claiming.”

“We cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that individual countries (notably America, Britain, France and Israel) help terrorist groups, counting on achieving their own selfish national objectives” – while duplicitously claiming otherwise.

Russia’s righteous campaign has Washington flummoxed, on its back foot, its regional imperial strategy taking a  major body blow, its imported anti-Assad death squads getting pummelled.

Syrian ground and air forces killed hundreds of ISIS and other terrorists since their major offensive began days earlier – a sustained effort to regain lost territory, liberating one village after another, reversing past setbacks, US proxies taking heavy losses.

No wonder Washington rejects cooperating with Russia. Putin’s righteous mission means its Middle East agenda is no longer unchallenged – maybe prologue for contesting it on a broader scale.

America’s dark side reflects pure evil, humanity’s greatest ever threat, its survival literally up for grabs.

Paul Craig Roberts calls Washington’s criminal agenda “unmatched anywhere on earth or in history.” Its rage for world dominance may kill us all.

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 distinguished and knowledgeable international commentator William Engdahl, in a superb statement, has expressed the view I gave you that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on September 28 at the 70th anniversary of the United Nations changed the balance of power in the world. Until Putin’s speech the world was intimidated by the Washington Bully. Resistance to Washington brought swift retribution. In the Middle East and Africa it brought economic sanctions and military invasions that destroyed entire countries. In France and other US vassal states it brought multi-billion dollar confiscations of bank net worth as the price of not following Washington’s policies toward other countries. 

Other countries felt powerless in the face of the arrogant hegemonic Unipower, which from time to time replied to noncompliance with threats, such as US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage delivered to Pakistan, to bomb noncompliant countries “back to the stone age.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5369198.stm 

President Putin of Russia brought all that to end on September 28. He stood up before the world in the presence of the overflowing hubris of the hegemon and belled the cat.

Putin denounced Washington’s threat to the sovereignty, and thereby the freedom, of peoples and countries. He denounced the heartless criminality of Washington’s destruction of the lives of millions of peoples on the basis of nothing other than Washington’s own arrogance. He denounced the illegality of Washington’s assaults on the sovereignty of other peoples, and declared that Russia can no longer tolerate this state of affairs in the world.

Two days later he took over the war in Syria and began exterminating the Washington financed and equipped Islamic State. Cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea hit ISIL targets with pinpoint accuracy and showed Washington’s EU vassals that Washington’s ABM system could not protect them if Europe permitted Washington to force Europe into conflict with Russia.

Washington’s response was more lies: “the missiles hit Iran,” said the idiots in Washington. The entire world laughed at the lie. Washington, some said, is whistling past its empire’s own graveyard.

Putin’s declaration of multi-polarity was seconded by the President of China, who said in his understated mild way that every country must participate in shaping the future and not just follow the leadership of one.

The hegemonic Unipower ceased to exist on September 28.

This is a sea change. It will affect the behavior of every government. Even some of the craven vassals states, whose “leaders” are bought-and-paid-for, will move toward a more independent foreign policy.

The remaining danger is the crazed American neoconservatives. I know many of them. They are completely insane ideologues. This inhuman filth has controlled the foreign policy of every US government since Clinton’s second term. They are a danger to all life on earth. Look at the destruction they have wreaked in the former Yugoslavia, in Ukraine, in Georgia and South Ossetia, in Africa, in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The American people were too brainwashed by lies and by political impotence to do anything about it, and Washington’s vassals in Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan had to pretend that this policy of international murder was “bringing freedom and democracy.”

The crazed filth that controls US foreign policy is capable of defending US hegemony with nuclear weapons. The neoconservatives must be removed from power, arrested, and put on international trial for their horrendous war crimes before they defend their hegemony with Armageddon.

Neoconservatives and their allies in the military/security complex make audacious use of false flag attacks. These evil people are capable of orchestrating a false flag attack that propels the US and Russia to war.

The neocons are also capable of plotting Putin’s assassination. The crazed John McCain, whom idiotic Arizonians keep returning to the US Senate, has publicly called for Putin’s death, as have other former federal officials, such as former CIA official Herbert E. Meyer, who publicly called for Putin’s removal “with a bullet hole in the back of his head.” I am confident that the neoconservatives are plotting Putin’s assassination with their Chechen terrorist friends. Unlike the US president, Putin often presents himself in open situations.

Here is William Engdahl’s superb statement from the New Eastern Outlook (also published on GR), October 15, 2015. It is clear that the neoconservatives are not sufficiently realistic to accept this change in the power balance and will resist it to the point of war.

Paul Craig Roberts

*        *       *

Putin is Defeating More than ISIS in Syria. “The Hypocritical Obama Administration Mask has been Blown Off”

William Engdahl

Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin, a little more than a year ago, in July 2014 were the focus of attention in Europe and North America, accused, without a shred of forensic evidence, of shooting down an unarmed civilian Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine. The Russians were deemed out to restore the Soviet Union with their agreement to the popular referendum of Crimean citizens to annex into the Russian Federation and not Ukraine. Western sanctions were being thrown at Russia by both Washington and the EU. People spoke of a new Cold War. Today the picture is changing, and profoundly. It is Washington that is on the defensive, exposed for the criminal actions it has been doing in Syria and across the Middle East, including creating the recent asylum crisis in Germany and large parts of the EU.

As a student of international politics and economics for most of my adult life, I must say the emotional restraint that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government have shown against tasteless ad hominem attacks, from people such as Hillary Clinton who likened Putin to Adolf Hitler, is remarkable. But more than restraint is required to bring our world from the brink or some might say, the onset of a World War III. Brilliant and directed action is essential. Here something extraordinary has taken place in the very few days since President Vladimir Putin’s September 28, UNGA speech in New York.

What he said . . .

What Putin said to the UN General Assembly must be noted to put what he and Russia did in the days immediately following into clear focus. First of all he made clear what the international law behind the UN Charter means and that Russia is scrupulously abiding by the Charter in actions in Syria. Russia, unlike the US, has been formally asked by the legitimate Syrian government to aid its war against terror.

To the UN delegates and heads of state Putin stated,

“The decisions debated within the UN are either taken in the form of resolutions or not. As diplomats say, they either pass or they don’t. Any action taken by circumventing this procedure is illegitimate and constitutes a violation of the UN Charter and contemporary international law.”

He continued,

“We all know that after the end of the Cold War the world was left with one center of dominance, and those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think that, since they are so powerful and exceptional, they know best what needs to be done and thus they don’t need to reckon with the UN, which, instead of rubber-stamping the decisions they need, often stands in their way.”

Putin followed this with a clear message to Washington and NATO governments on the subject of national sovereignty, something anathema to many who embrace the Nirvana supposed to come from globalization, homogenization of all to one level: “What is the meaning of state sovereignty, the term which has been mentioned by our colleagues here?” Putin rhetorically asked.

“It basically means freedom, every person and every state being free to choose their future. By the way, this brings us to the issue of the so-called legitimacy of state authorities. You shouldn’t play with words and manipulate them. In international law, international affairs, every term has to be clearly defined, transparent and interpreted the same way by one and all.”

Putin added, “We are all different, and we should respect that. Nations shouldn’t be forced to all conform to the same development model that somebody has declared the only appropriate one. We should all remember the lessons of the past. For example, we remember examples from our Soviet past, when the Soviet Union exported social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress.”

Those few words succinctly point to what is fundamentally wrong in the international order today. Nations, above all the one proclaiming herself Sole Superpower, Infallible Hegemon, the USA, have arrogantly moved after the collapse of the main adversary, the Soviet Union in 1990, to create what can only be called a global totalitarian empire, what G.H.W. Bush in his September 11, 1991 address to Congress called a New World Order. I believe with conviction that borders do matter, that respect for different cultures, different historical experiences is essential in a world of peace. That is as much true with nations as with individual human beings. We seem to have forgotten that simple notion amid all the wars of the past decades. Vladimir Putin reminds us.

Then the Russian president goes to the heart of the matter. He lays bare the true activities of the Obama Administration in Syria and the Middle East in arming and training “moderate” Islamist terrorists to attack Washington’s bête noire, Syria’s duly-elected and recently re-elected President, Bashar al Assad.

Putin states,

“instead of learning from other people’s mistakes, some prefer to repeat them and continue to export revolutions, only now these are “democratic” revolutions. Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa…problems have been piling up for a long time in this region, and people there wanted change. But what was the actual outcome? Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention rashly destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life.”

Then in a remark addressed to Washington and their NGO Color Revolutions known as the Arab Spring, Putin pointedly asks, “I’m urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done?“

Putin, without naming it, addresses the US and NATO role in creating ISIS, noting with precision the curious anomaly that the sophisticated new US Treasury unit to conduct financial sanctions against terrorist organizations, has utterly ignored the funding sources of ISIS, their oil sales facilitated by the Turkish President’s own family to name just one. The Russian President stated,

“the Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes. Having established control over parts of Syria and Iraq, Islamic State now aggressively expands into other regions. It seeks dominance in the Muslim world and beyond…The situation is extremely dangerous. In these circumstances, it is hypocritical and irresponsible to make declarations about the threat of terrorism and at the same time turn a blind eye to the channels used to finance and support terrorists, including revenues from drug trafficking, the illegal oil trade and the arms trade.\

And what Putin is doing . . .

Russia in the last weeks has completely out-maneuvered the diabolical, and they are diabolical, agenda of the Obama Administration not only in Syria but also in the entire Middle East and now in the EU with unleashing the flood of refugees. He openly reached out to invite Obama in their New York September 30 meeting to cooperate together in defeating ISIS. Obama stubbornly insisted that first Assad must go, despite the fact that Christine Wormuth, the Pentagon Undersecretary responsible for the Syrian war, confirmed Russian statements about Assad’s essential role today in any defeat of ISIS. She told the US Senate that Assad’s military “still has considerable strength,”adding, “it’s still the most powerful military force on the ground. The assessment right now is the regime is not in imminent danger of falling.”

Now come the howls of protest from neo-con warhawks, like the ever-ready-for-war Senator John McCain, chairman of the NGO International Republican Institute of the democratic revolution exporting US-backed NGO, National Endowment for Democracy. Or we hear flaccid protests from President Obama. This is because Washington finds itself deeply exposed to the light of world scrutiny for backing terrorists in Syria against a duly-elected state leader and government. The US warhawks accuse Russia of hitting “the moderate opposition” or civilians.

Emperor’s New Clothes . . .

Russia’s Putin is playing the role ever so elegantly, even gracefully, of the small boy in the Hans Christian Anderson classic fairy tale from 1837, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The boy stands with his mother amid thousands of other villagers in the crowd outside the vain Emperor’s palace balcony, where the disassociated king struts around the balcony naked, thinking he is wearing a magnificent new suit of clothes. The boy shouts, to the embarrassment of all servile citizens who pretend his clothes are magnificent, “Mother, look the Emperor has no clothes!”

What do I mean? In the first four days of precision bombing of select sites in Syria Russian advanced fighter jets firing Kh-29L air-to-surface laser-guided missiles that strike targets with a precision less than two meters, managed to destroy key ISIS command centers, munitions depots and vital infrastructure. According to the Russian Defense Ministry official reports, with photos, Su-34 bombers attacked an ISIS special training camp and munition depot near Al-Tabqa, Ar-Raqqah province,” a critical ISIS outpost captured in August, 2014 after bitter battles. “As a result of explosion of the munition depot, the terrorist training camp was completely destroyed,” the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman stated. Russian Su-25 jets have also attacked training camp of the Islamic State in the Syrian Idlib, destroying a workshop for explosive belt production.

Moscow states its air force has “engaged 3 munition, fuel and armament depots of the illegal armed groups. KAB-500 aviation bombs detonated the munition and armament,” and they used BETAB-500 concrete-piercing bombs to destroy four command posts of the ISIS armed groups. The facilities with terrorists are completely destroyed,” the Moscow spokesman added. Russia’s aviation conducted 20 flights and carried out 10 airstrikes against facilities of the Islamic State (ISIL) terrorist group in the past 24 hours. Then Moscow announced they had also hit key outposts of other terror groups such as the Al Qaeda-franchise, Al Nusra Front.

These are the so-called “moderates” that McCain and the Washington warhawks are weeping over. Washington has been creating what it calls the “New” Syrian Forces (NSF), which they claim is composed of “moderate” terrorists, euphemistically referred to as “rebels.” Imagine how recruitment talks go: CIA recruiter, “Mohammed, are you a moderate Islamist? Why yes, my dear CIA trainer. Please take me, train me and arm me in the fight against the ruthless dictator Assad and against ISIS. I’m on your side. You can trust me…”

In late September it was reported that Major Anas Obaid a.k.a. Abu Zayd, on completing his CIA training in Turkey, defected from the train-and-equip program to join Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) immediately on entering Syria. Incredibly, US officials admit that Washington does not track or exercise command-and-control of its Jihadist proxies once they enter Syria. Abu Zayd’s defection after being trained in advanced warfare techniques by the US, is typical. Other elements of the New Syrian Forces directly handed all their weapons to Nusra upon entering Syrian territory at the town of Atareb at the end of September.

These latest “moderate” defections to join Al Qaeda’s Al-Nusra Front affiliate in Syria come less than two weeks after Gen. Lloyd Austin III, head of the US “war against ISIS,” during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Syria, admitted that the US military program that intended produce 5,400 trained fighters a year has so far only resulted in “four or five” who still remain on the ground and active in combat. The rest have all joined ISIS or Al Nusra Front of Al Qaeda, the US-backed “moderate opposition” to ISIL.

What the successful Russian precision airstrikes have done is expose in all its ugly nakedness the Emperor’s New Clothes. For more than one year, the Obama Administration claims it has committed the most awesome airpower on the planet allegedly to destroy ISIS, which has been described as a “ragtag band of militants running around the desert in basketball shoes.”

Curiously, until last week, ISIS has only expanded its web of power in Syria and Iraq under US bombings. Now, within 72 hours, the Russian military, launching only 60 bombing runs in 72 hours, hitting more than 50 ISIS targets, has brought the ISIS combatants into what the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman described as a state of “panic” where more than 600 have deserted. And, according to Moscow, the fight is only beginning, expected, they say to last three to four months.

The Obama Administration has been training terrorists of Al Qaeda/Al Nusra, allegedly to fight ISIS, much like the disgraced General David Petraeus did in Iraq and Afghanistan along with Obama’s special ISIS coordinator, the just-resigned General John Allen. The US-trained “moderate” terrorists were being readied, it’s now clear to all the world, in reality, to battle Assad and open the way for a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Syria and a real plunge into darkness for the world if that were to succeed.

Now, with the truth in the open, exposed by the remarkable successes of a handful of Russian fighter jets in four days against ISIS, accomplishing more than the US “anti-ISIS coalition” in more than one year, it is clear to the world Washington has been playing a dirty double game.

Now that hypocritical Obama Administration mask has been blown off with the precision hit of a Russian laser-guided Kh-29L missile. As German and other EU governments have admitted, much to the strong objection of Washington, Putin has demonstrated that Russia is the essential part of any peaceful resolution of the Syria war. That in turn has a huge bearing on the current asylum-seeker crisis in Germany and other parts of the EU. It also has a huge bearing on prospects for world peace. The Norwegian Parliament’s Nobel Peace Prize Committee, rather than consider John Kerry, might consider Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister, Sergey Shoygu, for the prize.

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

Fair-and-balanced Fox News reported on Wednesday that “Cuban military operatives reportedly have been spotted in Syria, where sources believe they are advising President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S.”

Fox’s claim of an imaginary enemy alliance relies on two sources: the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies and an anonymous U.S. official.

The source at the Miami Institute indicated that

“An Arab military officer at the Damascus airport reportedly witnessed two Russian planes arrive there with Cuban military personnel on board. When the officer questioned the Cubans, they told him they were there to assist Assad because they are experts at operating Russian tanks.”

It is unclear what nationality the “Arab” officer was. Perhaps, said Arab determined the people aboard the Russian plane were Cubans because he saw them smoking cigars and drinking mojitos. The Cuban soldiers then volunteered – supposedly – they were “there to assist Assad” because of their expertise manning Russian tanks. However improbable this may seem to an unbiased observer, the source from the Miami Institute said that “it doesn’t surprise me.”

The supposed U.S. official – who Fox grants anonymity to without giving a reason why – related “evidence” from “intelligence reports” that Cuban troops “may” have trained in Russia and “may have” come to Syria in Russian planes. Sounds legit.

Despite the thinness of the report’s sourcing and the improbability of its content, other news organizations were quick to parrot its claims. Spanish newspaper ABC noted the next day that media from Germany to Argentina to the Middle East had echoed the Fox News report, while ABC did the same themselves.

By Friday, the story had gained enough traction that it was raised at a White House briefing. In a response that should have been enough to put the story to rest, the White House Press Secretary said “we’ve seen no evidence to indicate that those reports are true.”

But a few hours later, the Daily Beast had definitively declared in a headline that: “Cuba Is Intervening in Syria to Help Russia. It’s Not the First Time Havana’s Assisted Moscow.”

Progressive concern troll James Bloodworth turned Fox’s rumors into fact and wrote that

“Not for the first time Cuban forces are doing Russia’s dirty work, this time in Syria… Obama has been holding his hand out in a gesture of goodwill to America’s adversaries only for them to blow him a raspberry back in his face – while standing atop a pile of Syrian corpses.”

In reality, Obama’s “gesture of goodwill” is little more than behaving less overtly hostile after decades of American aggression against Cuba and Iran. If you are choking someone unprovoked and you loosen you’re grip, it is far from a gesture of goodwill.

Bloodworth also tries to make a historical argument that Cuba’s (imaginary) military actions in Syria are consistent with their “bloody” interventions elsewhere. He decries “Cuban terror in Ethiopia” that resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being killed.

“The tragedy was largely a consequence of the policies pursued by the Communist dictatorship that ruled Ethiopia at the time – a regime propped up by Cuba and the Soviet Union.”

In 1977, Somalia had invaded Ethiopia in an attack that “had been encouraged by ambivalent signals from Washington,” according to historian Piero Gleijeses in his book Visions of Freedom. Initially reluctant to become involved, Fidel Castro finally agreed to Ethiopian requests to send troops to repel the Somali invasion.

Gleijeses found in his extensive review of formerly classified military documents that Cuba’s motives in aiding Ethiopia were sincere:

With hindsight, we know that Mengistu’s policies resulted in disaster, but this was not clear in 1977: though the process was undeniably bloody, the Ethiopian junta had decreed a radical agrarian reform and taken unprecedented steps to foster the cultural rights of the non-Amhara population… The evidence indicates that the Cubans intervened because they believed, as Cuban intelligence stated in March 1977, that ‘the social and economic measures adopted by Ethiopia’s leadership are the most progressive we have seen in any underdeveloped country since the triumph of the Cuban revolution.’ [2]

In addition to correcting the record on Ethiopia, Gleijeses’ study also serves to set the record straight on Cuba’s historical modus operandi in its military interventions abroad. Cuba did maintain a large military presence in Angola for nearly 15 years, starting in 1975.

Castro first sent troops in November 1975 after Angolan President Agostinho Neto warned of a South African invasion of the country already underway which would inevitably topple the nascent government without outside support. Cuba agreed to send soldiers to Angola right away. Several months later, they would repel the apartheid army back to Pretoria. They remained in Angola at Neto’s bequest to prevent further incursions from the racist South African army into the country’s sovereign territory.

At the same time, there was an ongoing civil war between Neto’s MPLA, the largest and most popular of the guerilla groups, and the South African and American-backed UNITA guerillas led by former Portuguese collaborator Jonas Savimbi.

Castro was adamant that Cuban troops would be responsible for preventing a South African invasion, while Angolan troops should deal with their own internal conflict. In meetings with Neto, Castro “kept hammering away on the need to fight the bandits … He explained to us that the fight against the bandits was necessarily and without question the responsibility of the Angolans, that we could not wage this war, that it was their war.” [3]

Cuba’s position during the Angolan conflict is consistent with the diplomatic approach they have repeatedly espoused in Syria, that the Syrian conflict is a domestic problem for the Syrian people and government to resolve themselves, while the international community works to achieve a peaceful solution.

“Cuba reiterates that international cooperation, based on the principles of objectivity, impartiality and non-selectivity, is the only way to effectively promote and protect all human rights,” Cuban representative to the UN Human Rights Council Rodolfo Reyes said at a meeting in Switzerland. He added that “Cuba is confident of the capacity of the Syrian people and government to solve their domestic problems without foreign interference.”

Unreliable Sources

That the Fox News could cause such a stir is a testament to the refusal of mainstream news organizations to verify sources. In all of the iterations of the “Cuban troops in Syria” fantasy, there are no new sources cited. The original Fox News report cites one anonymous U.S. official who may, or may not, even exist. The only source on record with their incredulous claims is someone from the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami.

ICCAS is notorious for its reactionary, anti-Communist politics revered among the fanatically right-wing Cuban and Cuban-American population in Miami. Their academic research includes a conspiracy theory that appears to implicate Fidel Castro in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Another ICCAS report claims “the often-repeated view in many countries that the United States is an evil power, guilty for much of the problems and sufferings of the developing world, is owed in great part to the propaganda efforts of Fidel Castro” – not, rather, to decades of direct U.S. military intervention; profligate support to fascist military dictatorships; and predatory, neo-colonial lending policies that demand neoliberal structural adjustment programs which funnel public assets and resources to creditor interests, at the expense of the employment, health and well-being of the vast majority of local populations.

ICCAS is also home to the Cuba Transition Project whose mission is “to study and make recommendations for the reconstruction of Cuba once the post-Castro transition begins in earnest.” CTP acknowledges on its Web site that “the project was established in 2002 and supported by grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) until 2010.” It’s funding indicates it is at least indirectly an arm of the U.S. government’s destabilization and subversion efforts dedicated to regime change of the politically and economically independent Cuban government.

Cuban Prensa Latina reporter in Syria Miguel Fernández noted that ICCAS has reported six or seven times since 2006 that Fidel Castro has died. He suggested reports such as those originating with ICCAS about Cuban troops in Syria were part of the campaigns of reactionary groups opposed to normalization to tarnish the new relations between Cuba and the United States.

The Cuban Embassy in Damascus reportedly “laughed” at the report of Cuban troops in Syria, and told Sputnik News: “It’s pure lunacy. It is as if they were claiming that Russia had sent its troops to Madagascar to protect lemurs.”

Despite claims of Cuban troops in Syria contradicting Cuba’s stated policy and historical modus operandi, and the fact that now four days have passed without a single piece of corroborating evidence to the laughable Fox News report, the imaginary Cuban troops in Syria are likely to morph into more outrageous fantasies of media who have shown themselves primarily interested in fabricating tales of intrigue about America’s evil enemies rather than reporting actual verifiable facts.

Matt Peppe writes about politics, U.S. foreign policy and Latin America on his blog. You can follow him on twitter.

Notes

[1] Gleijeses, Piero. Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991. The University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Kindle edition.

[2] Ibid.

[3] as quoted in Gleijeses, 2013

If the invaders lost the war in Afghanistan with the presence of hundreds of thousands of troops, their hopes of reversing the tide with five thousand troops are also misguided. Taliban statement, Voice of Jihad, Oct 16, 2015

However anything scribbled about the Taliban’s durability is titled, the substance is the same: Afghanistan, whatever or whoever the resistance might be, remains a reliquary of failed imperial projects. Super powers have gone there to bleed and wither; social projects have been implemented only to perish in barren soil. Counter-insurgency scholars and specialists have been shown up time and time again as retained charlatans.

This is not the message the Obama administration wishes to give. In the last legs of his administration, the president is keen to make sure that the US will not leave the Afghanistan with a bloodied nose.

The reality on the ground suggests that the US-led presence is one of boxing in the wind, a series of futile gestures that merely seek to prolong the inevitable. The Taliban’s “footprint”, as analyst like to call it with euphemistic restraint, has proven so difficult to remove, their presence has been normalised. Their footprints, in fact, are conspicuous across the country, getting bigger and more pronounced over time.

Bill Roggio of The Long War Journal has shown that one-fifth of the country is either under Taliban control or contested by the group, a figure he admits is an under estimation of worth. Extrapolating this further, Roggio suggests that the Taliban, in actual fact, “probably either control or heavily influence about a half of the country.”[1]

According to the LWJ editors, the data “understates the Taliban’s influence in areas of Afghanistan, particularly in the east and south, as we are using open source reports to determine a district’s status.”[2]

The stuttered, and one might even say ineffectual, US presence has been further confused by a revised timetable for lengthier withdrawal. Currently, the garrison numbers 9,800 troops, a presence that was deemed inadequate to mount a viable, prolonged counter-insurgency strategy. The fall of Kunduz for two weeks to the Taliban last month, along with dozens of other districts has certainly made a mockery of the US role. It has also terrified US-sponsored satraps.

On October 15, Obama decided to retain 5,500 troops to the end of his term, stationed at Kabul, Bagram, Nangarhar and Kandahar using language suggesting permanent occupation. “I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again.” They will continue to bolster the dysfunctional, precariously positioned government of Ashraf Ghani, which appears to be a model of anti-governance and institutionalised theft.

Retired general Atiquallah Amarkhil could only express relief about the announcement, calling it “an important boost to the Afghan army morale [showing] that the world is not leaving them alone.” But the very sponsorship of such an entity adds succour to the Taliban cause. A fanatic’s certainty might be troubling, but in some cases reassuring when weighed against disingenuous colonialists and self-serving police officials.

Given that the Ghani-Abdullah “unity” government was only ever a bandaid solution designed to avert total chaos till the grand assembly (loya jirga) ironed out a better option, the entire operation reeks of borrowed time.

Such a situation leads to two options. Either the US gives up the ghost – actually, truly, meaningfully – and beats a retreat from an area it has shown no capacity to police let alone occupy; or embrace the colonising devil with full conviction.

Even conservative commentators of the war mongering inclination are sceptical that Washington’s imperial credentials are up to the task. Staying power, argues Niall Ferguson, has always been a US problem when it comes to imperial projects. Its brand of democracy tends to spoil on route, as does its messianic mission. It is hardly coincidental to see that US administration too often becomes a matter of drone strikes and judicial assassination rather than durable governance. The former is so much easier.

The LWJ crew, on the other hand, simply resort to the game of numbers and garrisons – the more, the merrier. Living up to the name of their publication, the long war should simply be made longer, with greater numbers of personnel. “We argue that this force [of 5,500] is insufficient to halt the Taliban’s advance.”

The Taliban statement conveyed through the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on its Voice of Jihad has a far more coherent, and convincing line. It even mocks the Pentagon’s own projections of worth, being dismissive of the 5,500 number. “Insisting upon war and occupation will further reduce the support America enjoys around the world and with the American people themselves.”

Then, a fateful reminder. “America will get entangled in the war inside Afghanistan all by herself such that her fate shall be similar to that of the Soviet Union.”[3] While it is unlikely that the US will unravel and suffer an internal implosion because of its Afghanistan misadventure, the Jihadists may be entitled to gloat just a tad. While they do so, they will be witnessing a factionalised Afghan government that has been appropriately dismissed as being one of “one truck, two drivers.”

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

Notes

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/29/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-maps.html?hp=&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

[2] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2015/10/taliban-controls-or-contests-70-districts-in-afghanistan.php

[3] http://shahamat-english.com/statement-of-islamic-emirate-regarding-prolonging-stay-of-american-invaders-in-afghanistan/

UNESCO has approved Italy’s proposal to send UN peacekeepers to protect heritage sites around the world from various threats, primarily from terrorist attacks and destruction by militants.

“UNESCO has said yes to the Cultural Blue Helmets,” Italian culture minister, Dario Franceschini, said adding that 53 countries alongside UN Security Council members supported the suggestion in the light of the destruction of cultural sites, including Syria’s Palmyra, by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants.

“Faced with IS terrorist attacks and the terrible images of Palmyra, the international community cannot stand back and watch,” Franceschini stressed as quoted by AFP.

According to the minister, potential new UN peacekeeping mission would aim to protect “important sites at risk from terrorist attacks, or in war zones, or zones hit by natural disasters, where the international community will be able to send Cultural Blue Helmets to … defend them before they can be destroyed.”

Franceschini also called on the United Nations to “immediately define the operational aspects of this international task force.”

Italy has been calling for the formation of a “blue helmets of culture” group since late March. At that time, Franceschini said that protecting world’s cultural heritage could not be left to an individual state, stressing that “an international rapid response force” was needed “to defend monuments and archaeological sites in conflict zones.”

In April, UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, urged the Security Council to add the protection of cultural sites to the list of tasks for UN peacekeeping forces.

International concern over the fate of cultural sites, artifacts and monuments has been heightened by Islamic State’s sustained destruction campaign against monuments that the terrorist group has been waging in Syria and Iraq.

The jihadists destroyed and looted the 13th-century Assyrian city of Nimrud, the ancient ruins at Hatra and Khorsabad, an ancient Assyrian capital, as well as several other ancient sites in northern Iraq. They also released videos demonstrating ISIS militants smashing priceless artifacts and relics dating back to the 7th century BC in the central museum of Mosul.

After seizing Palmyra in Syria in May, Islamic State jihadists have been consistently destroying the ancient city which is included on the UNESCO World Heritage list demolishing some of its most prized sites.

In August, UNESCO Director-General denounced the destruction of the ancient Roman temple of Baal Shamin as a war crime and called it “immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity.”

However, the threat to cultural sites comes not only from Islamic State but also from other conflicts around the world. On Friday, Irina Bokova expressed her concern over the escalation of violence against cultural and religious heritage in the Middle East and condemned the arson committed against Joseph’s Tomb in West Bank.

“Cultural and religious heritage embodies values that transcend the lines of culture and faith. Nothing can justify their violation,” she said in an official statement.

In a recent interview with RT, the UNESCO chief called the “cultural cleansing” of the Middle East conducted by Islamic State “a human tragedy.”

When someone “persecutes people on the basis of their ethnicity or religion, destroys their monuments, their temples, deprives them of their intangible heritage, attacks their identities – they stop being humane,” she said.

She also stressed that protecting cultural site was “not only about monuments, they are linked to human lives; it is part of the people’s identities.”

This incisive article by Tyler Durden was first published by Zero Hedge in February 2015

While the markets are still debating whether the price of oil is more impacted by the excess pumping of crude here, or the lack of demand there, or if it is all just a mechanical squeeze by momentum-chasing HFT algos who also know to buy in the milliseconds before 2:30pm, we bring readers’ attention back to what several months ago was debunked as a deep conspiracy theory.

Back then we wrote about a certain visit by John Kerry to Saudi Arabia, on September 11 of all days, to negotiate a secret deal with the now late King Abdullah so as to get a “green light” in order “to launch its airstrikes against ISIS, or rather, parts of Iraq and Syria. And, not surprising, it is once again Assad whose fate was the bargaining chip to get the Saudis on the US’ side, because in order to launch the incursion into Syrian sovereign territory, it

“took months of behind-the-scenes work by the U.S. and Arab leaders, who agreed on the need to cooperate against Islamic State, but not how or when. The process gave the Saudis leverage to extract a fresh U.S. commitment to beef up training for rebels fighting Mr. Assad, whose demise the Saudis still see as a top priority.“

We concluded:

Said otherwise, the pound of flesh demanded by Saudi Arabia to “bless” US airstrikes and make them appear as an act of some coalition, is the removal of the Assad regime. Why? So that, as we also explained last year, the holdings of the great Qatar natural gas fields can finally make their way onward to Europe, which incidentally is also America’s desire – what better way to punish Putin for his recent actions than by crushing the main leverage the Kremlin has over Europe?

Because at the end of the day it is all about energy. We made as much very clear one month later when in mid-October we said “If The Oil Plunge Continues, “Now May Be A Time To Panic” For US Shale Companies.” The panic time has long since come, but only after we laid out the problem clearly enough for all to grasp:

 … while we understand if Saudi Arabia is employing a dumping strategy to punish the Kremlin as per the “deal” with Obama’s White House, very soon there will be a very vocal, very insolvent and very domestic shale community demanding answers from the Obama administration, as once again the “costs” meant to punish Russia end up crippling the only truly viable industry under the current presidency.

As a reminder, the last time Obama threatened Russia with “costs”, he sent Europe into a triple-dip recession.

It would truly be the crowning achievement of Obama’s career if, amazingly, he manages to bankrupt the US shale “miracle” next.

Of course, all of the above was purely in the realm of the conspiratorial, because the last thing the administration would admit is that the tradeoff to its bargain with Saudi Arabia to implement a (largely failed) foreign policy regarding ISIS (which has grown in size since the coalition campaign) was to put at risk the entire US shale miracle, a miracle which is evaporating in front of everyone’s eyes. And all thanks to that “closest” of US allies in the middle east: Saudi Arabia.

It was conspiratorial, that is, until today, when thanks to the far less “tinfoil” NYT one more conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact, following a report that “Saudi Arabia has been trying to pressure President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to abandon his support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, using its dominance of the global oil markets at a time when the Russian government is reeling from the effects of plummeting oil prices.”

From the NYT:

 Saudi Arabia and Russia have had numerous discussions over the past several months that have yet to produce a significant breakthrough, according to American and Saudi officials. It is unclear how explicitly Saudi officials have linked oil to the issue of Syria during the talks, but Saudi officials say — and they have told the United States — that they think they have some leverage over Mr. Putin because of their ability to reduce the supply of oil and possibly drive up prices.”

As we predicted, correctly, in September: it was all about Syria:

 “If oil can serve to bring peace in Syria, I don’t see how Saudi Arabia would back away from trying to reach a deal,” a Saudi diplomat said. An array of diplomatic, intelligence and political officials from the United States and Middle East spoke on the condition of anonymity to adhere to protocols of diplomacy.

So what would it take for the price of oil to finally jump? Not much: Putin’s announcement that Syria’s leader Bashar is no longer a strategic ally of Russia.

 Any weakening of Russian support for Mr. Assad could be one of the first signs that the recent tumult in the oil market is having an impact on global statecraft. Saudi officials have said publicly that the price of oil reflects only global supply and demand, and they have insisted that Saudi Arabia will not let geopolitics drive its economic agenda. But they believe that there could be ancillary diplomatic benefits to the country’s current strategy of allowing oil prices to stay low — including a chance to negotiate an exit for Mr. Assad.

…

“Russia has been one of the Syrian president’s most steadfast supporters, selling military equipment to the government for years to bolster Mr. Assad’s forces in their battle against rebel groups, including the Islamic State, and supplying everything from spare parts and specialty fuels to sniper training and helicopter maintenance.”

Will Putin relent?

 Mr. Putin, however, has frequently demonstrated that he would rather accept economic hardship than buckle to outside pressures to change his policies. Sanctions imposed by the United States and European countries have not prompted Moscow to end its military involvement in Ukraine, and Mr. Putin has remained steadfast in his support for Mr. Assad, whom he sees as a bulwark in a region made increasingly volatile by Islamic extremism.

Actually that’s not it: Syria, as we have been explaining for nearly two years is the critical transit zone of a proposed natural gas pipeline, originating in Qatar, and one which would terminate somewhere in central Europe. The same Qatar which was the “mystery sponsor of weapons and money to Syrian mercenary rebels” who eventually became ISIS. The same Qatar which is now directly funding ISIS. Of course, if Putin were to handover Syria to the Saudi princes (and to Qatar), he would effectively shoot himself in the foot by ending any leverage Gazprom has over Europe.

This too is very well known to Putin. For now he has shown that he has no intention of abdicating Syria, and losing critical leverage when it comes to being the provider of last resort of European gas:

The Saudis have offered economic enticements to Russian leaders in return for concessions on regional issues like Syria before, but never with oil prices so low. It is unclear what effect, if any, the discussions are having. While the United States would support initiatives to end Russian backing for Mr. Assad, any success by the Saudis to cut production and raise global oil prices could hurt many parts of the American economy.

After the meeting in Moscow in November between Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, Mr. Lavrov rejected the idea that international politics should play a role in setting oil prices.

“We see eye to eye with our Saudi colleagues in that we believe the oil market should be based on the balance of supply and demand,” Mr. Lavrov said, “and that it should be free of any attempts to influence it for political or geopolitical purposes.”

Which, in retrospect puts the Ukraine conflict, and the western isolation of Russia in a very simple spotlight – the whole point is to inflict as much pain as possible, so Putin has no choice but to hand over Syria.

 Russia is feeling financial pain and diplomatic isolation because of international sanctions stemming from its incursion into Crimea and eastern Ukraine, American officials said. But Mr. Putin still wants to be viewed as a pivotal player in the Middle East. The Russians hosted a conference last week in Moscow between the Assad government and some of Syria’s opposition groups, though few analysts believe the talks will amount to much, especially since many of the opposition groups boycotted them. Some Russia experts expressed skepticism that Mr. Putin would be amenable to any deal that involved removing support for Mr. Assad.

Saudi Arabia’s leverage depends on how seriously Moscow views its declining oil revenues. “If they are hurting so bad that they need the oil deal right away, the Saudis are in a good position to make them pay a geopolitical price as well,” said F. Gregory Gause III, a Middle East specialist at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service.

As for Assad, the Syrian president “has shown no inclination to step aside. He said in a recent interview with Foreign Affairs magazine that the true threat in Syria comes from the Islamic State and Qaeda-affiliated groups that, in his words, make up the “majority” of rebellion. American and Arab officials said that even if Russia were to abandon Mr. Assad, the Syrian president would still have his most generous benefactor, Iran. Iranian aid to the Syrian government has been one of the principal reasons that Mr. Assad has been able to hold power as other autocrats in the Middle East have been deposed.

And as a major oil producer, Iran would benefit if Saudi Arabia helped push up oil prices as part of a bargain with Russia.

“You are going to strengthen your enemy whether you like it or not, and the Iranians are not showing any flexibility here,” said Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center who is close to the Saudi royal family.

But the military aid that Russia provides to Syria is different enough from what Damascus receives from Iran, its other major supplier, that if “Russia withdrew all military support, I don’t think the Syrian Army could function,” a senior Obama administration official said.

The conclusion:

 A number of Arab nations have been pushing for the Saudis and Russians — polar extremes in their positions toward Mr. Assad — to find common ground on the matter as a step toward ending the carnage of Syria’s civil war, now almost four years old. But, as one Arab diplomat put it, “This decision is ultimately in Putin’s hands.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the great oil collapse of 2014/2015 is all about. For those who want to know when to buy oil, the answer is simple: just after (or ideally before) Putin announces he will no longer support the Assad regime. If, that is, he ever does because that act will effectively destroy all leverage Putin may ever have over Europe, and in the process, also end – quite prematurely – his career.

Until then, every single HFT-induced spike in oil is one to be ultimately faded, because as the past few months have shown, it is the Saudis who set the price, and they will not take no for an answer, even if it means crippling the entire US shale, and energy, industry in the process.

John Kiriakou is an American patriot who informed us of the criminal behavior of illegal and immoral US “cloak and dagger” operations that were bringing dishonor to our country. His reward was to be called a “traitor” by the idiot conservative Republicans and sentenced to prison by the corrupt US government.

Manning revealed US war crimes and after years of illegal pre-trial prison abuse was sentenced to 35 years in prison for keeping the vow to the US Constitution. Some of the idiot conservative Republicans thought the sentence was too light.

Tom Drake was ruined, and he kept his complaints about NSA illegality within the chain of command.

Julian Assange is confined by the US and UK governments in violation of international law to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for doing his job and publishing leaked documents revealing the mendacity, immorality, and illegality of Washingtonn’s policies.

Edward Snowden is protected by Russia against Washington’s retribution for revealing that Washington’s illegal and unconstitutional spying is universal and includes the personal communications of all of the leaders of Washington’s own vassal states.

The American people accept the persecution of truth-tellers, because they have been brainwashed into believing that patriotism means defense of the government no matter what. As truth is so unfavorable to Washington, Americans believe that it must not be revealed, and if revealed, covered up, and those who reveal truth must be punished.

A country with such a population as this is a police state, not a free country.

It is an irony of history that a government and a population that believes truth must be covered up at all cost parades around the world acting as if Washington is the history’s agent for 
“bringing freedom and democracy to the world.”

Here is John Kiriakou: http://otherwords.org/the-sad-fate-of-americas-whistleblowers/

If Belgrade joins the EU in its policy of anti-Russian sanctions, it would mean that Serbia has lost its independence and turned into a colony, said Sandra Raskovic-Ivic, the president of the Democratic Party of Serbia.

A Resolution on “ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” will once again be presented to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 27 October 2015.

There is a special significance about bringing the Resolution, overwhelmingly endorsed by the UNGA for 23 consecutive years, to the attention of the world body this time. It is happening after the US restored diplomatic relations with Cuba on 17 December 2014.

The announcement on the restoration of diplomatic relations was followed by the return of three Cuban anti-terrorist fighters who had been unjustly imprisoned in the US for years. President Barack Obama also informed the US Congress that he was removing Cuba from the list of States “sponsoring international terrorism” — a list which should never have included Cuba in the first instance since Cuba had been a victim of US engineered terrorism for decades, dramatized by the bombing of one of its civilian aircraft in 1976 that killed a large number of schoolchildren. Obama has also urged the Congress to put an end to the US blockade against Cuba.

Some restrictions pertaining to travel to Cuba, telecommunications and remittances have been relaxed. But the blockade remains.

Any entity that engages in any financial, commercial or other economic activities with Cuba continues to be penalized. A huge fine for instance was imposed upon a German bank in March 2015 just as an American company was subjected to a severe penalty for allegedly violating the blockade.  In the last eight years or so, 42 fines have been imposed upon US and foreign entities amounting to more than 13 billion US dollars.

The US blockade, needless to say, impacts adversely upon every sector of Cuban society, from food and health care to education and sports. If Cuba could buy goods and products from the US market — rather than from some faraway country — it could have saved billions and billions of dollars. In fact, it has been calculated that the 54 year old blockade has cost the Cuban economy more than 1.1 trillion dollars. This money could have been used to raise the standard of living of the Cuban people.

It is because the blockade continues to impede Cuban development that many governments and civil society organizations in various parts of the world have called for its elimination since it was first introduced in 1961. The calls have become louder and louder over the decades. Last year when the UNGA voted on the Resolution to end the blockade, 188 member states supported the Resolution while only two opposed it and three abstained. The two opposing votes came from the US and Israel and the three states that abstained were Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau.

Since Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, many US civic leaders, Church figures and former public officials have openly demanded that the unjust, inhuman, immoral blockade be terminated immediately.    Even current leaders have spoken up. In early October 2015, nine US State Governors sent a letter to the leadership of the US Senate and House of Representatives urging an end to the blockade and emphasizing the benefits of such a move to US’s agricultural industries. More significantly, a Pew Research Center poll conducted in July 2015 showed that 72% of the US population wants an end to the blockade, up from 66% in January 2015.

The only remaining major obstacle now is the US Congress. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate are controlled by the Republicans and Republicans as a whole (there are a number of exceptions) are ideologically more averse to a socialist state like Cuba than the Democrats. Besides, there is a small but influential Cuban-American caucus in both the House of Representatives and Senate that is as antagonistic as ever to the Castro government in Havana. Both the outgoing House Speaker, John Boehner, and the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, are against normalization of ties with Cuba.

This is why after the October 27 vote in the UN General Assembly — expected to be almost unanimous in favor of the lifting of the blockade — a multi-national panel comprising representatives of governments that would have endorsed the Cuban position should seek a formal meeting with the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader to convey to them the feelings of the people of the world about the decades old suffocating embargo against a small nation of eleven million whose only wish is to preserve its independence, its sovereignty and its dignity. The leaders and members of the US Congress should be told in no uncertain terms that they cannot continue to ignore the voice of the international community, and indeed, the voice of their own people.  If they fail to end the blockade now, if they fail to act out of a sense of justice and fairness, they will be damned forever and consigned to the rubbish heap of history.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

 In blatant violation of international law, warplanes of the US-led alliance violated Syrian airspace and attacked a power plant that feeds Aleppo city, causing a blackout in the city.

A military source told SANA that warplanes of the Washington alliance violated Syrian airspace and attacked civilian infrastructure in Mare’a, Tal Sha’er, and al-Bab in Aleppo countryside on Sunday.

The source added that the warplanes attacked the biggest electric power plant that feeds Aleppo city, which resulted in cutting off power from most neighborhoods in Aleppo city.

This transgression comes only 8 days after two F-16 warplanes belonging to the alliance targeted two power plants in al-Radwaniye area east of Aleppo city, cutting off power from the area.

The complexity and history behind the current tensions in Asia Pacific are belied by simplistic narratives underpinned by superficial nationalism. China’s portrayal across the Western media as a regional “bully” versus its victims across Southeast Asia is dividing the general public down two sides of a predictable line.

On one side are those who welcome the rise of China as a counterbalance for longstanding Western hegemony across Asia Pacific, on the other are those that fear China will simply replace  a “benevolent” Western hegemony with its own brand of regional domination.

Somewhere in the middle lies the truth, but to arrive there, one must understand the true nature of the unfolding, and very unnecessary tensions in the South China Sea.

Enduring Imperialism 

The Pacific, and in particular much of China and Southeast Asia, was under the control of colonial European powers with Britain controlling Malaysia, Myanmar (then called Burma), and parts of China, and France controlling Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos.

Through British “gunboat diplomacy,” the empire wrestled concessions resembling what would today pass as a highly unpopular “free trade agreement” from Thailand (then called Siam), as well as from China, including the seizure of Hong Kong. There is literally a street in Hong Kong still named “Possession Street” marking the site where the British first surveyed their newly seized lands, beginning a century and a half of occupation.

Hong Kong was seized during the Opium Wars, so called because they were fought amid attempts by China to shut down the highly destructive opium trade the British were carrying out in their territory.

The World Wars saw a significant reduction of Western power and influence across Asia Pacific. While the United States would retain hegemony over Japan and the Philippines, many other nations first ejected their colonial occupiers, then established independent nations.

Modern Western Hegemony 

The Vietnam War fought between the 1950’s and 1970’s was not only an attempt to maintain Western hegemony over Indochina, but admittedly an attempt to ultimately encircle and contain China. Within the so-called “Pentagon Papers” released in 1969, it was revealed that the conflict was one part of a greater strategy aimed at containing and controlling China.

Three important quotes from these papers reveal this strategy. It states first that:

…the February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.

It also claims:

China—like Germany in 1917, like Germany in the West and Japan in the East in the late 30′s, and like the USSR in 1947—looms as a major power threatening to undercut our importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against us.

Finally, it outlines the immense regional theater the US was engaged in against China at the time by stating:

…there are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR “contains” China on the north and northwest): (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.

The Pentagon Papers in fact provide for us today the context with which to properly view current tensions in Asia Pacific. 

The US still to this day maintains its “Japan-Korea front” against China, with US troops literally stationed in both nations.

Across Southeast Asia, the United States through covert subversion has attempted to string together a supranational bloc constructed by obedient client regimes. These efforts can be best seen with US support through an extensive network of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, and the Shinawatra dynasty in Thailand.  The Philippines have remained subservient to the will of Wall Street and Washington more or less for over a century, while Vietnam has been witnessing a steady increase in US-backed destabilization.

In Pakistan, political subversion and armed violence has been used in key strategic locations to disrupt Chinese investments including at Gwadar Port and throughout the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

And within China itself, the United States has resorted to political subversion in Tibet and Hong Kong, while backing armed terrorism and separatism in China’s Xinjiang region.

While the US, through its “pivot toward Asia,” claims American exceptionalism is necessary to maintain peace and stability thousands of miles from its own borders for the people of Asia, it is clear that much of the chaos unfolding across Asia is the work of the United States itself. It is the proverbial “windshield repair shop” breaking car windows at night, then making a fortune fixing them by day.

China Strikes Back 

China’s journey toward becoming a regional power broker has been different than that of the Anglo-Americans. It has not invaded its neighbors nor erected a massive, region-wide network of subversive NGOs to topple governments under the guise of “popular revolutions.” Instead, it has gained power and influence through economic and industrial power.

It trades and deals throughout the region, as well as invests and builds infrastructure. It is also is building up its ability to eventually oust the West altogether from the region. Corporate think-tank RAND recently published a piece titled, “China’s Airfield Construction at Fiery Cross Reef in Context: Catch-Up or Coercion?” In it, it’s argued that China’s construction and expansion of islands throughout the South China Sea is tantamount to bullying.

In reality, China is constructing defensive capabilities that will render Western fleets moot. An island cannot be sunk or interdicted by US ships. Once constructed, manned, and operational, it is a permanent strategic fixture that is for all intents and purposes incontestable save for a full-scale invasion amid total war.  

Further, the bases give Chinese ships an operational edge over American vessels, providing logistical support in the South China Sea where the US has none. It is displacing the US both operationally and strategically, and if Beijing plays its cards right, displacing it diplomatically as well. 

Should China steer away from attempts to snare it in a regional confrontation, and use its new capabilities to maintain safety, peace, and stability in every real sense as the US claims to, the entire purpose of Western meddling in Asia Pacific will be undermined and eventually collapse. The West will be resigned to playing a role proportional to its proximity to the region – or in other words – a negligible role.

Southeast Asia’s Real Challenge

China’s rising power is not entirely benign. Even for proponents of a rising China, it must be realized that power always has the potential to be abused, and most likely will be if a regional military and economic balance is not struck. 

The real challenge facing Southeast Asia is how to strike that balance without sacrificing its sovereignty to foreign interests like the United States. The maintenance of formidable armies and navies throughout Southeast Asia, along with the preservation of national identities will prevent significant conflicts before they start. National economies throughout Asia that are not overly dependent on imports or exports either to China or the West can better defend their own socioeconomic and regional interests. 

Above all, there needs to be a reluctance to allow the United States to pit the nations of Southeast Asia either against themselves or against China in yet another elementary example of imperial divide and conquer. And while this challenge is that of the nations of Southeast Asia, who dangerously gravitate toward a EU-style system (ASEAN) apparently indifferent to the monumental failure the EU itself has become, Beijing itself must recognize and defuse the tensions the United States is fanning the flames of.

China’s patient, systematic displacement of the United States from the region will inevitably pay off. Those in the region who believe depending on the United States is a viable strategy in keeping China in check are setting themselves and the region up for failure.

Those that hold the best interests of each nation in Asia at heart are those nations themselves and they alone. Neither through supranational interdependent blocs, nor through foreign interests transforming regions into defacto protectorates, can Asia search for its future. Despite the rhetoric underpinning America’s “pivot toward Asia,” only through a multipolar world where nations pursue their own national sovereignty and respect those of others – maintained through military and socioeconomic balance – can true peace and stability be found and maintained.

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