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”.

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”.

In 1975 the people of Vietnam successfully ended one of the longest and bloodiest anti-colonial wars in world-history – defeating the US, the world’s biggest imperial power, after 20 years of struggle.

Barely forty years later the Vietnamese regime signed off on the US-Japanese dominated Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement (TPFTA), which essentially converted Vietnam into a vassal state.

Vietnam has gone full circle: From a neo-colony ruled by puppet dictators backed by an American occupation army involving 500,000 troops from 1955-1975, to its current ‘Communist’ rulers who have turned-over its markets, industries, ports, resources and labor to the 500 largest Western and Asian multi-national corporations.

Contrasting Historical Moments:  1975 and 2015

In 1975, the revolutionary government closed all US military bases and expelled all US military personnel.  Today the Vietnam ‘vassal regime’ allows US naval visits and signs military agreements to tighten the imperialist military encirclement of China.

In 1975, the revolutionary leaders promised to end imperial exploitation of plantation and factory labor; today the vassal rulers offer the imperial states cheap labor, at wages less than half that paid to Chinese workers to ‘entice’ multi-nationals.

In 1975, the government intervened in favor of workers, taking over plantations and factories; today the vassal state savagely represses striking workers and outlaws class-based unions.

In 1975, the revolutionary government declared its solidarity with workers’ and peasants’ struggles around the world; today the vassals declare their unconditional support of all of the major imperial organizations – from the World Trade Organization to the Trans-Pacific Treaty organization.

What explains this total reversal of politics and allegiances?  What accounts for the transformation from revolutionary vanguard to submissive vassal of imperial powers?  What factors led to the degeneration and decay of a revolutionary movement of millions and the ascendancy of a corrupt and servile political and socio-economic elite?  Why did this counter-revolution occur without any major mass popular upheaval?

Stages and Circumstances of Vietnam’s Degeneration

Liberated Vietnam facing Military Siege 

Internal and external events and forces played a major role in undermining the promise of social transformation proclaimed by the Vietnamese revolutionaries.

Beginning with the US destruction of the economy and Washington’s subsequent refusal to pay reparations and vindictive policy of post-war boycott and sanctions, the Vietnamese faced monumental tasks with few financial resources.

The US ground and air war devastated the infrastructure and productive enterprises of the country.  Napalm and chemical warfare (Agent Orange) devastated villages and poisoned the rice fields, water and soil.  Millions of cluster bombs maimed scores of thousands of peasants.

The US secretly supported the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian terror regime, in its war on liberated Vietnam.  This further damaged Vietnam’s shattered economy and diverted scarce resources needed for peacetime reconstruction to military operations.

            China launched a border war on Vietnam’s northern frontier, increasing the burden on the depleted resources of the Vietnamese state.

The Difficult Transition

The Vietnamese revolutionary government, during the first decade of its existence, struggled to make the transition from a war to a peace economy.

Given the scarcity of resources, skilled manpower and revenues, and under stress to protect its borders, the Vietnamese government attempted to ‘socialize’ the economy with few personnel and limited external support from the Soviet Union and its allies.

Power was concentrated, political militants and loyalists took command, although many lacked experience or expertise in economic development.  Economic recovery was understandably dictated by political and military priorities.  Politics was in command – trained orthodox economists were in retreat.  The choice was ‘red’ over ‘expert’.

After decades of deprivation and sacrifice, many cadres sought and obtained access to scarce resources. A privileged elite emerged, especially in South Vietnam, where the US military occupation had spawned a huge black-market economy, and a large stratum of wealthy ‘middlemen’ who acted as ‘brokers’ with wealthy overseas Chinese businesspeople, especially in Hong Kong and beyond.

The Vietnamese defeated the Pol Pot terrorist regime at a heavy cost and backed a friendly client regime.

By 1980, China began its transition to capitalism and showed no interest in  providing aid or investment to hasten Vietnam’s socialist reconstruction.  By the mid 1980’s, with the ascendance of Gorbachev, Russia cut off its economic assistance to Vietnamese state enterprises, denigrated socialist planning and backed ‘market solutions’.

External ‘Allies’ Promote Internal Enemies

In sum, Vietnam’s external allies were moving in a direction, which favored Vietnamese technocrats and ‘capitalist holdovers’ from the colonial and neo-colonial period.

The ‘new rich’, including privileged sectors of the revolutionary regime, took advantage of the ‘shortage of capital flows’ and the years of shortages and sacrifices to advocate an ‘opening to the market’ and to promote the entry of foreign capital.  This was accompanied by the privatization of public enterprises (dubbed ‘joint ventures’) and   ‘incentives’ (high profits) to manufacturers, especially from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.

Internal Factions and the Victory of the Capitalist Technocrats

By the late 1980’s, four tendencies competed for influence in the Communist Party:

(1) A revolutionary faction, including some of the historic leaders of the Liberation struggle.

(2) A centrist or reformist faction of privileged officials who sought to protect and promote state enterprises – a source of their own enrichment.  They supported the “partnership” with foreign private capital supposedly as a supplement to the so-called “socialist sector”’

(3) A third faction of technocrats, who favored the gradual conversion to a private capitalist economy, except in some ill-defined ‘strategic sectors’.

(4) A fourth faction, composed of Western educated and connected economists, who sought and secured submission to overseas capitalist and international financial institutions.  They joined forces with the technocrats and privileged, corrupt Party elite and became the eventual rulers of Vietnam.

The Counter-revolutionary ‘Unholy’ Alliance

In the course of the following decade, an alliance of technocrats, corrupt and enriched officials (with their families), who had become business partners, and pre-revolutionary elites took control of the economy.  By the middle of the 1990’s, Vietnam could no longer ‘balance’ between the USSR and China on the one-hand and Western capitalists on the other.  The USSR had disappeared.  Russia was in chaos.  China was in headlong pursuit of capitalist growth at any cost, through any means, especially via the privatization of major enterprises and  stripping workers of all labor and welfare rights.

The Vietnam revolutionaries were ‘retired’ or relegated to the historical museum as respected but impotent figureheads.  They were trotted out on special ‘national’ occasions.

The ‘statists’-the Party CEOs fought rearguard struggles trying to retain lucrative  fiefdoms in public enterprises, but lacked any strategic allies abroad or internally.  They had immobilized the working class and had themselves embraced the privileges of power, luxury and corruption – (with few notable exceptions).

By the turn of the millennium, the technocrats and capitalist ideologues had taken full command of economic decision-making.  They embraced the politics and economics of ‘globalization’ and the insertion of Vietnam into the World Trade Organization (WTO).  They cited Vietnam’s rapid growth, lauding its abundant disciplined, cheap labor, kept in line by the centralized Party. Communist Party leaders exhibited all the features of the authoritarian personality:  arrogant and abusive to the workers under them, submissive and servile to the foreign investors above them.

The Party had become the instrument for repressing outbreaks of industrial strikes, rural protests and public disaffection.

Many of the corrupt officials embraced the ‘free market’ to legitimate their corrupt appropriation of public goods and the laundering of illicit earning.

The ideology “getting rich is good” pervaded the top and middle echelons of the Party, which was ‘Communist’ in name only.

The party-state lost its legitimacy along with its revolutionary legacy.  The former colonial enemies, Japan, the US and their allies were eagerly courted as the Vietnamese elite’s new ‘partners’ and mentors for the upwardly mobile technocrats and economists who served them.

With the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), US imperialism easily secured in luxury conference rooms what they had failed to achieve in twenty years on the battlefield:  Total access to all of Vietnam’s major economic sectors, a captive labor force without rights or protection and a ruling elite willing to serve as an accomplice to its militarist policy of encircling  China.

Imperial Dominance by Invitation

The US political-economic conquest of Vietnam was accomplished by the invitation and complicity of the Vietnamese ruling Communist Party and not by the force of arms, not by a puppet ruler or a bought and bound ‘Generalissimo’.

The main beneficiaries of its vassalage are the Vietnamese collaborators, intermediaries, importers, exporters and labor contractors, who  receive legal and illicit commissions for selling out the nation’s wealth.  This includes a small army of ‘service operators’, embedded in IT start-ups, Chinese-Vietnamese business associates of Hong Kong sweatshop manufacturers, new university graduates turned business consultants and public officials who ‘sign-off’ on tax exemptions,and  fabricate compliance with labor and environmental protection laws.  These are the ones who  grow rich in the new ‘market economy’.

As the major US, Japanese and overseas Chinese corporations take control of Vietnam’s manufacturing, banking, retail and wholesale sectors and local and overseas trade, small-scale local businesspeople will go bankrupt.  State enterprise will be sold or closed. Small farmers and peasants will a lose access to credit while cheap imported  rice will flood the market and bankrupt local farmers.

Vietnamese workers and peasants, once heralded as the vanguard of the liberation struggle, will be savagely  exploited by the Communist – capitalist ‘partnership’.  They are now among the poorest of the poor in all of Asia.

Conclusion

The ascendancy of a pro-imperialist collaborator elite in Vietnam was not inevitable; it was a relatively gradual process, in which the negative external environment gradually eroded the will and capacity of Vietnam’s heroic and historic leaders to combine the revolutionary reconstruction with popular democratic institutions following the defeat of the US military.  In a repeat of the Imperial Roman scorched and salted earth policy, the US took revenge for its humiliating defeat by leaving a devastated country, refusing reparations and imposing vindictive economic sanctions on the Vietnamese people and nation.  The demise of the USSR and China’s turn to capitalism forced Vietnam to look for alternative sources of external finance.

Added to these harsh external conditions, difficult internal problems complicated the transition: Vietnam’s revolutionary leaders, who were magnificent and victorious strategists of politico-military struggle, were mediocre economic strategists.  They turned to the pre-revolutionary Chinese-Vietnamese business elite, linked to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland business families, to navigate the economy.

The young, educated post-revolutionary generation was drawn heavily from privileged families, especially from Saigon;  they inexorably adapted and imposed their neo-liberal ideology on the regime.

The marriage of corrupt repressive statist officials to the traditional privileged clans and classes brought the new post-revolutionary educated technocrats to power.

The authoritarian Party elite ensured the de-radicalization of the workers and peasants, the exclusion and repression of leftwing activists and the unhindered application of neo-liberal, pro-imperial economic policies.

The Vietnam experience provides us with several important historical lessons:

 The first lesson is the importance of democratizing and socializing production, distribution and culture following national liberation to check against the post-revolutionary seizure of power by Party and military leaders and to limit the advance of the old privileged classes.

Secondly, the educated classes must serve the interests of the revolutionary masses, and admission to institutes of higher education should favor the sons and daughters of the working class, not the children of the traditional comprador elite.

University students should be integrated into democratic class organization to further and deepen their links to the past and present revolutionary heritage

Public resources should be concentrated on economic and social programs that improve the lives of wage and salaried workers and local producers.  The presence of private, local and foreign investors should be rigorously controlled via time- bound agreements.

The administration and decision-making in cooperative, self-managed and local enterprises should be decentralized.

Political education should be based on egalitarian ethics.  Anti-corruption, disciplinary committees, elected by workers, peasants, employees, accountants, consumers and environmentalists should be established throughout the economy.

State expenditures on social and private consumption should be balanced with emphasis on public transport, health, education and leisure facilities.

Solidarity and support for on-going liberation struggles around the world should be the rule.  Social practice in everyday life should be combined with individual and collective learning of technical, historical, social and literary subjects, which enrich and deepen understanding of the revolutionary roots of contemporary society.

The state should combat the tendency of organized local ethnic groups to serve as agents loyal to foreign regimes.  Material and symbolic rewards for excellence should be combined and lifetime accomplishments recognized.  Those guilty of illicit economic and social activities, especially those related to nepotism or kin/clan enrichment, should be marginalized and punished.

The post-liberation defeat and reversal of Vietnam’s revolutionary gains was not inevitable.  Negative lessons should be studied and serve as guidelines for future revolutions.  There are grounds to believe that the Vietnamese revolutionary legacy is not dead.  The revolutionary grandparents in ‘retirement’ can and will transmit their vision and experience of  an alternative class struggle to their grandchildren, who are going to suffer savage exploitation, dispossession and de-nationalization following Vietnam’s entry into the  imperialist Transpacific Partnership Agreement.

Leaders, who have grown rich from the TPP, will face anger and revolt by the Vietnamese masses who are destined to pay heavily for their leaders’ sell-out.

The Vietnam’s leaders have embraced the aggressive US-Japanese militarist policy against China; this betrayal of the people’s struggle will have long-lasting negative consequences.

Once against external and domestic developments will converge – hopefully, this time ushering in a new phase of revolutionary change.

In 1975 the people of Vietnam successfully ended one of the longest and bloodiest anti-colonial wars in world-history – defeating the US, the world’s biggest imperial power, after 20 years of struggle.

Barely forty years later the Vietnamese regime signed off on the US-Japanese dominated Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement (TPFTA), which essentially converted Vietnam into a vassal state.

Vietnam has gone full circle: From a neo-colony ruled by puppet dictators backed by an American occupation army involving 500,000 troops from 1955-1975, to its current ‘Communist’ rulers who have turned-over its markets, industries, ports, resources and labor to the 500 largest Western and Asian multi-national corporations.

Contrasting Historical Moments:  1975 and 2015

In 1975, the revolutionary government closed all US military bases and expelled all US military personnel.  Today the Vietnam ‘vassal regime’ allows US naval visits and signs military agreements to tighten the imperialist military encirclement of China.

In 1975, the revolutionary leaders promised to end imperial exploitation of plantation and factory labor; today the vassal rulers offer the imperial states cheap labor, at wages less than half that paid to Chinese workers to ‘entice’ multi-nationals.

In 1975, the government intervened in favor of workers, taking over plantations and factories; today the vassal state savagely represses striking workers and outlaws class-based unions.

In 1975, the revolutionary government declared its solidarity with workers’ and peasants’ struggles around the world; today the vassals declare their unconditional support of all of the major imperial organizations – from the World Trade Organization to the Trans-Pacific Treaty organization.

What explains this total reversal of politics and allegiances?  What accounts for the transformation from revolutionary vanguard to submissive vassal of imperial powers?  What factors led to the degeneration and decay of a revolutionary movement of millions and the ascendancy of a corrupt and servile political and socio-economic elite?  Why did this counter-revolution occur without any major mass popular upheaval?

Stages and Circumstances of Vietnam’s Degeneration

Liberated Vietnam facing Military Siege 

Internal and external events and forces played a major role in undermining the promise of social transformation proclaimed by the Vietnamese revolutionaries.

Beginning with the US destruction of the economy and Washington’s subsequent refusal to pay reparations and vindictive policy of post-war boycott and sanctions, the Vietnamese faced monumental tasks with few financial resources.

The US ground and air war devastated the infrastructure and productive enterprises of the country.  Napalm and chemical warfare (Agent Orange) devastated villages and poisoned the rice fields, water and soil.  Millions of cluster bombs maimed scores of thousands of peasants.

The US secretly supported the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian terror regime, in its war on liberated Vietnam.  This further damaged Vietnam’s shattered economy and diverted scarce resources needed for peacetime reconstruction to military operations.

            China launched a border war on Vietnam’s northern frontier, increasing the burden on the depleted resources of the Vietnamese state.

The Difficult Transition

The Vietnamese revolutionary government, during the first decade of its existence, struggled to make the transition from a war to a peace economy.

Given the scarcity of resources, skilled manpower and revenues, and under stress to protect its borders, the Vietnamese government attempted to ‘socialize’ the economy with few personnel and limited external support from the Soviet Union and its allies.

Power was concentrated, political militants and loyalists took command, although many lacked experience or expertise in economic development.  Economic recovery was understandably dictated by political and military priorities.  Politics was in command – trained orthodox economists were in retreat.  The choice was ‘red’ over ‘expert’.

After decades of deprivation and sacrifice, many cadres sought and obtained access to scarce resources. A privileged elite emerged, especially in South Vietnam, where the US military occupation had spawned a huge black-market economy, and a large stratum of wealthy ‘middlemen’ who acted as ‘brokers’ with wealthy overseas Chinese businesspeople, especially in Hong Kong and beyond.

The Vietnamese defeated the Pol Pot terrorist regime at a heavy cost and backed a friendly client regime.

By 1980, China began its transition to capitalism and showed no interest in  providing aid or investment to hasten Vietnam’s socialist reconstruction.  By the mid 1980’s, with the ascendance of Gorbachev, Russia cut off its economic assistance to Vietnamese state enterprises, denigrated socialist planning and backed ‘market solutions’.

External ‘Allies’ Promote Internal Enemies

In sum, Vietnam’s external allies were moving in a direction, which favored Vietnamese technocrats and ‘capitalist holdovers’ from the colonial and neo-colonial period.

The ‘new rich’, including privileged sectors of the revolutionary regime, took advantage of the ‘shortage of capital flows’ and the years of shortages and sacrifices to advocate an ‘opening to the market’ and to promote the entry of foreign capital.  This was accompanied by the privatization of public enterprises (dubbed ‘joint ventures’) and   ‘incentives’ (high profits) to manufacturers, especially from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.

Internal Factions and the Victory of the Capitalist Technocrats

By the late 1980’s, four tendencies competed for influence in the Communist Party:

(1) A revolutionary faction, including some of the historic leaders of the Liberation struggle.

(2) A centrist or reformist faction of privileged officials who sought to protect and promote state enterprises – a source of their own enrichment.  They supported the “partnership” with foreign private capital supposedly as a supplement to the so-called “socialist sector”’

(3) A third faction of technocrats, who favored the gradual conversion to a private capitalist economy, except in some ill-defined ‘strategic sectors’.

(4) A fourth faction, composed of Western educated and connected economists, who sought and secured submission to overseas capitalist and international financial institutions.  They joined forces with the technocrats and privileged, corrupt Party elite and became the eventual rulers of Vietnam.

The Counter-revolutionary ‘Unholy’ Alliance

In the course of the following decade, an alliance of technocrats, corrupt and enriched officials (with their families), who had become business partners, and pre-revolutionary elites took control of the economy.  By the middle of the 1990’s, Vietnam could no longer ‘balance’ between the USSR and China on the one-hand and Western capitalists on the other.  The USSR had disappeared.  Russia was in chaos.  China was in headlong pursuit of capitalist growth at any cost, through any means, especially via the privatization of major enterprises and  stripping workers of all labor and welfare rights.

The Vietnam revolutionaries were ‘retired’ or relegated to the historical museum as respected but impotent figureheads.  They were trotted out on special ‘national’ occasions.

The ‘statists’-the Party CEOs fought rearguard struggles trying to retain lucrative  fiefdoms in public enterprises, but lacked any strategic allies abroad or internally.  They had immobilized the working class and had themselves embraced the privileges of power, luxury and corruption – (with few notable exceptions).

By the turn of the millennium, the technocrats and capitalist ideologues had taken full command of economic decision-making.  They embraced the politics and economics of ‘globalization’ and the insertion of Vietnam into the World Trade Organization (WTO).  They cited Vietnam’s rapid growth, lauding its abundant disciplined, cheap labor, kept in line by the centralized Party. Communist Party leaders exhibited all the features of the authoritarian personality:  arrogant and abusive to the workers under them, submissive and servile to the foreign investors above them.

The Party had become the instrument for repressing outbreaks of industrial strikes, rural protests and public disaffection.

Many of the corrupt officials embraced the ‘free market’ to legitimate their corrupt appropriation of public goods and the laundering of illicit earning.

The ideology “getting rich is good” pervaded the top and middle echelons of the Party, which was ‘Communist’ in name only.

The party-state lost its legitimacy along with its revolutionary legacy.  The former colonial enemies, Japan, the US and their allies were eagerly courted as the Vietnamese elite’s new ‘partners’ and mentors for the upwardly mobile technocrats and economists who served them.

With the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), US imperialism easily secured in luxury conference rooms what they had failed to achieve in twenty years on the battlefield:  Total access to all of Vietnam’s major economic sectors, a captive labor force without rights or protection and a ruling elite willing to serve as an accomplice to its militarist policy of encircling  China.

Imperial Dominance by Invitation

The US political-economic conquest of Vietnam was accomplished by the invitation and complicity of the Vietnamese ruling Communist Party and not by the force of arms, not by a puppet ruler or a bought and bound ‘Generalissimo’.

The main beneficiaries of its vassalage are the Vietnamese collaborators, intermediaries, importers, exporters and labor contractors, who  receive legal and illicit commissions for selling out the nation’s wealth.  This includes a small army of ‘service operators’, embedded in IT start-ups, Chinese-Vietnamese business associates of Hong Kong sweatshop manufacturers, new university graduates turned business consultants and public officials who ‘sign-off’ on tax exemptions,and  fabricate compliance with labor and environmental protection laws.  These are the ones who  grow rich in the new ‘market economy’.

As the major US, Japanese and overseas Chinese corporations take control of Vietnam’s manufacturing, banking, retail and wholesale sectors and local and overseas trade, small-scale local businesspeople will go bankrupt.  State enterprise will be sold or closed. Small farmers and peasants will a lose access to credit while cheap imported  rice will flood the market and bankrupt local farmers.

Vietnamese workers and peasants, once heralded as the vanguard of the liberation struggle, will be savagely  exploited by the Communist – capitalist ‘partnership’.  They are now among the poorest of the poor in all of Asia.

Conclusion

The ascendancy of a pro-imperialist collaborator elite in Vietnam was not inevitable; it was a relatively gradual process, in which the negative external environment gradually eroded the will and capacity of Vietnam’s heroic and historic leaders to combine the revolutionary reconstruction with popular democratic institutions following the defeat of the US military.  In a repeat of the Imperial Roman scorched and salted earth policy, the US took revenge for its humiliating defeat by leaving a devastated country, refusing reparations and imposing vindictive economic sanctions on the Vietnamese people and nation.  The demise of the USSR and China’s turn to capitalism forced Vietnam to look for alternative sources of external finance.

Added to these harsh external conditions, difficult internal problems complicated the transition: Vietnam’s revolutionary leaders, who were magnificent and victorious strategists of politico-military struggle, were mediocre economic strategists.  They turned to the pre-revolutionary Chinese-Vietnamese business elite, linked to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland business families, to navigate the economy.

The young, educated post-revolutionary generation was drawn heavily from privileged families, especially from Saigon;  they inexorably adapted and imposed their neo-liberal ideology on the regime.

The marriage of corrupt repressive statist officials to the traditional privileged clans and classes brought the new post-revolutionary educated technocrats to power.

The authoritarian Party elite ensured the de-radicalization of the workers and peasants, the exclusion and repression of leftwing activists and the unhindered application of neo-liberal, pro-imperial economic policies.

The Vietnam experience provides us with several important historical lessons:

 The first lesson is the importance of democratizing and socializing production, distribution and culture following national liberation to check against the post-revolutionary seizure of power by Party and military leaders and to limit the advance of the old privileged classes.

Secondly, the educated classes must serve the interests of the revolutionary masses, and admission to institutes of higher education should favor the sons and daughters of the working class, not the children of the traditional comprador elite.

University students should be integrated into democratic class organization to further and deepen their links to the past and present revolutionary heritage

Public resources should be concentrated on economic and social programs that improve the lives of wage and salaried workers and local producers.  The presence of private, local and foreign investors should be rigorously controlled via time- bound agreements.

The administration and decision-making in cooperative, self-managed and local enterprises should be decentralized.

Political education should be based on egalitarian ethics.  Anti-corruption, disciplinary committees, elected by workers, peasants, employees, accountants, consumers and environmentalists should be established throughout the economy.

State expenditures on social and private consumption should be balanced with emphasis on public transport, health, education and leisure facilities.

Solidarity and support for on-going liberation struggles around the world should be the rule.  Social practice in everyday life should be combined with individual and collective learning of technical, historical, social and literary subjects, which enrich and deepen understanding of the revolutionary roots of contemporary society.

The state should combat the tendency of organized local ethnic groups to serve as agents loyal to foreign regimes.  Material and symbolic rewards for excellence should be combined and lifetime accomplishments recognized.  Those guilty of illicit economic and social activities, especially those related to nepotism or kin/clan enrichment, should be marginalized and punished.

The post-liberation defeat and reversal of Vietnam’s revolutionary gains was not inevitable.  Negative lessons should be studied and serve as guidelines for future revolutions.  There are grounds to believe that the Vietnamese revolutionary legacy is not dead.  The revolutionary grandparents in ‘retirement’ can and will transmit their vision and experience of  an alternative class struggle to their grandchildren, who are going to suffer savage exploitation, dispossession and de-nationalization following Vietnam’s entry into the  imperialist Transpacific Partnership Agreement.

Leaders, who have grown rich from the TPP, will face anger and revolt by the Vietnamese masses who are destined to pay heavily for their leaders’ sell-out.

The Vietnam’s leaders have embraced the aggressive US-Japanese militarist policy against China; this betrayal of the people’s struggle will have long-lasting negative consequences.

Once against external and domestic developments will converge – hopefully, this time ushering in a new phase of revolutionary change.

Serbian users of Twitter Social Network launched a counter campaign on the initiative of the self-proclaimed Kosovo’s admission to UNESCO, placing a series of photographs and documents that testify the destruction of Serbian cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija.

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[GR editor’s Note: this cultural heritage of Serbia was also destroyed with the complicity of NATO (using the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as its foot-soldiers), which in the course of the 1999 bombing campaign targeted numerous historical monuments and churches throughout Serbia. The KLA leadership with links to organized crime subsequently formed the post-1999 government of Kosovo ]

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#NoKosovoUnesco

#NoKosovoUnesco Thanks, but we do not accept the barbarians Kosovo in @UNESCO NEVER.

#NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/wEDuCSG4Fo

— Milan Pantelic ® (@panta1fm) October 13, 2015

Devic monastery (15 century) – Srbica burned in March 2004. #Kosovo deserve @UNESCO membership! #NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/D1VhYJrKpd

— Marko Jaksic* (@jaksicmarko) October 13, 2015

 

No Kosovo in UNESCO! Any sane mind would vote #NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/c7QhuUeaoV

— It’s an ultra life (@itsultralife01) October 12, 2015

 

KLA terrorists want a seat at @UNESCO after decades of destroying Christian heritage in #Kosovo #NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/btohWVXv3z

— Serb Republic (RS) (@SerbRepublic) October 12, 2015

#NoKosovoUnesco #UNESCO @UNESCO #ISIS or #Kosovo* it is the same. Smashing the statues in #Mosul & #Pristina pic.twitter.com/YV1vRqQBF8

— Neven Đenadija (@NevenDjenadija) October 13, 2015

Is this “taking care” of historical heritage? #NoKosovoUnesco @UNESCO pic.twitter.com/RgtAwB8XCQ

— Anja Petrovic (@NanaaaPe) October 13, 2015

#NoKosovoUnesco #UNESCO @UNESCO #UN Peacekeepers in front of Holy Virgin of Ljevis church.Burned by Kosovo Terrorists in 2004 pic.twitter.com/dpCsUlQgt8

— Neven Đenadija (@NevenDjenadija) October 13, 2015

#UNESCO #NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/cJymUDzfpE

— Bogdan Jovic (@bogdan_jovic) October 13, 2015

#NoKosovoUnesco pic.twitter.com/jPggqZkDv0

— Marko Knežević (@EnteringM) October 13, 2015

#NoKosovoUnesco #SerbianHeritage #UNESCO Serbian church of St. Nicholas from the 14th century (1356) Destroyed

pic.twitter.com/gmlELhCNto

— Стефан Високи (@Stefan_Visoki) October 13, 2015

 

Two weeks of Russian airstrikes against ISIS and other terrorist targets already had a devastating impact on their operations, turning the tide of battle so far, enabling Syrian ground forces to recapture lost territory.

They’re on the move, advancing, taking the initiative, imported US-supported death squads on their heels, routed in some areas, in disarray, facing a formidable force against which they’re defenseless – no matter how many US weapons airdrops follow.

Russia will target and destroy them, along with Syrian ground forces, finding abandoned weapons caches as they advance.

Western leaders and supportive media tell a different story. So does the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), fronting for Western interests, well funded to distort truth.

Willful Big Lies and distortion claim Russia isn’t targeting ISIS, just so-called “moderates.” None exist. Virtually all anti-Assad forces are mercenary cutthroat killers, ISIS and others, imported from scores of countries – common knowledge suppressed in the West, Israel and anti-Assad rogue Arab states.

Regular SOHR reports claim Russian airstrikes kill civilians. Not a shred of evidence proves it. Moscow scrupulously avoids hitting civilian areas. Pentagon warplanes and ground forces target them indiscriminately – longstanding policy in all US wars throughout its history, notably homeland ones, as well as during and since WW II.

Since Russian airstrikes began on September 30, regular SOHR reports claim civilian deaths. A falsified October 16 account claimed “Russian warplanes kill 60, 30 of them were women and children…the number of the dead is likely to rise because of the serious injuries.”

Western media regularly cite SOHR as a legitimate source of front line information. Yet one man reports from London, paid by his imperial sponsors, distant and detached from ongoing conflict – his information entirely gotten from powers benefitting from his propaganda.

Friday headlines claim Turkey downed a Russian drone near its border – or one believed to be operated by its military forces, more fabricated information, part of the daily anti-Russian drumbeat. Some sample reports include:

New York Times, America’s leading disseminator of state propaganda: “Turkish Jets Shoot Down Drone Near Syria…Turkey…complain(ing) several times of incursions by Russian aircraft airspace” failing to explain only one accidental nonthreatening incident occurred.

Washington Post: “Turkey downs drone near Syrian border; Russia denies aircraft lost. (A) senior US defense official said the drone…appears to be Russian made.”

Wall Street Journal: “Turkish Military Downs Drone That Entered Airspace from Syria…NATO and Ankara accused Russia of twice crossing into Turkish airspace” earlier. Only one brief nonthreatening accidental incident occurred, as explained above.

Reuters: “Turkey shoots down drone near Syria, US suspects Russian origin”

UK owned and operated BBC: “Syria crisis: Turkey downs ‘drone’ on Syrian border…A US official (claimed it’s) of Russian origin.”

Washington, Israel, Turkey, Syria and Russia operate drones in the area. Fingers automatically point at Moscow – most often about things that never occurred.

It’s unknown if Turkey downed any aircraft. Tass, Sputnik News and RT International all debunked falsified reports about downing a Russian drone.

Russian General Staff Deputy Chief Andrey General-Lt. Kairtiapolov said Turkey’s report has nothing to do with Russia.

I am telling you with full authority that our unmanned aerial vehicles are either performing combat missions in the assigned areas or are staying at the air base. You can only guess or find out whom the unmanned aerial vehicle belonged to.

Defense Ministry spokesman General-Major Igor Konashenkov said “(a)ll the aircraft of the Russian combat group in the Syrian Arab Republic returned (safely) to the Hmeymim base after completing their mission(s).”

RT International said “Russian manufacturer St. Petersburg Technological Center issued a statement refuting claims that the downed drone was of their production after seeing its photos published on social media.”

“It’s definitely not an Orlan shown in the published photos,” it said. “Russia doesn’t make UAVs with such gliders,” calling the incident “a provocation.”

Russia-bashing continues relentlessly. Propaganda substitutes for hard facts. Believe nothing Western politicians claim – or supportive news sources proliferating their misinformation and Big Lies.

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.

A new report, “ Israel’s Arbitrary Killings and its System of Structural Violence,” was released by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor in a press conference in Geneva.

The report summarizes the results of Euro-Med’s investigations into recent Israeli human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian Territories. Featured at the press conference were video footage and photos illustrating the harassment and killing of Palestinian civilians involved in political protests during the last two weeks.

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.”

Click here to read the report

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.

It’s no wonder then that the jewellery industry remains silent about the ongoing trade in diamonds that are a major source of funding ($1bn/yr) for the Israeli military which stands accused of war crimes and 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.

With the pressure cooker of occupation and subjugation crushing Palestinian society the brutality of the Zionist project in occupied Palestine is being laid bare once again. Israel’s record of gross human rights violations has been documented over decades but never before has it seemed so up close, so personal and so primeval.

In the past few days and weeks gruesomely breathtaking pictures and videos of the inhumanity that is part and parcel of the expansionist Zionist project have flashed from our screens at a rate that both numbs and enrages in equal measure.

Some of the scenes are similar to what one might expect to see in a snuff film. Unarmed Palestinian children have been shot and killed even though they posed no danger to heavily armed soldiers and police. In one particularly harrowing scene, as a 13 year old child, Ahmed Saleh Mahayan (Manasra), lay seriously injured in a pool of blood after being deliberately run over by a police vehicle and denied medical assistance for minutes on end, he was kicked by a police officer and goaded and cursed by Israeli settlers who recorded the scene with their phones.

No one sought to reassure, comfort or assist him as he struggled for live.

At least one other cold-blooded execution was also recorded on video.

In another incident a 30 year old Palestinian woman with her hands raised in the air was gunned down in cold blood. Israeli authorities claimed afterwards that she tried to stab a soldier but they failed to produce a weapon of any sort. Witnesses denied she was armed or threatened the soldiers. A video of the scene shortly after she was shot showed a soldier kicking away a pair of sunglasses which she had in her hand.

In besieged Gaza seven unarmed Palestinian youths were shot and killed and scores more were wounded by snipers firing from the fortified safety of border posts inside Israel. Over thirty Palestinians and seven Israeli’s have been killed since this latest escalation of violence erupted at the end of August when occupation forces denied Muslims access to the Al Aqsa mosque and allowed right wing Jewish extremists enter the compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

The infrastructure for Israel’s full spectrum subjugation doesn’t come cheap. Soldiers, tanks, planes, nuclear weapons, ships, armoured vehicles, bombs and bullets all come at a price. In addition to the $3 billion received in US military aid it cost the Israeli economy about $17 billion each year. Any other economy of similar size would be crushed by such a burden. But the Israeli economy has a golden goose that keeps laying – a diamond industry that accounts for 30% of manufacturing exports which add $10 billion net to the economy each year.

Despite the fact that diamonds from Israel account for about 30% of the market in value terms, jewellers still claim diamonds are “ethically sourced” and “conflict free”. This is the equivalent of supermarket claiming that chicken fed on a diet laced with antibiotics and hormones is organic if the egg it hatched from came from an organic farm. Just because a rough diamond is conflict-free it doesn’t follow that the cut and polished stone isn’t a blood diamond.

If any other industry foisted such a deliberate and deceitful fraud on consumers it would sanctioned by regulatory authorities and sued in the courts by disgruntled customers – something that might still happen as more and more people learn about the deception at the heart of the diamond industry.

Publicly listed companies such as Anglo American, which owns De Beers and the Forevermark brand, Signet, Harry Winston, Sotheby’s and others involved in the diamond industry are covering up the trade in cut & polished blood diamonds which evade of the Kimberley Process regulations that only apply to rough diamonds.

As long as blood diamonds that fund rogue regimes guilty of the sort of human rights violations being witnessed daily in Palestine are allowed to contaminate the legitimate market, masquerading as conflict-free diamonds, all diamonds should be considered blood diamonds.

Israel accused of blocking investigations as films suggest security forces quick on trigger with Palestinian suspects 

It has been called the “smartphone intifada”. After a sharp escalation in violence between Palestinians and Israelis in recent weeks, shocking scenes captured on video have spread across social media.

According to Israeli human rights organisations, several such videos challenge the accuracy of official Israeli accounts of the circumstances in which police have killed or injured Palestinians.

The footage, the nine groups said in a statement this week, provided concrete evidence that police were “quick to shoot to kill” rather than arrest Palestinians in Jerusalem and Israel who were suspected of involvement in attacks on Israelis Jews.

The shootings, they added, had occurred when the Palestinians posed no physical threat to security forces.

Lawyers have also accused the justice ministry of thwarting investigations, especially into the police killing of Fadi Alloun, a Palestinian from Jerusalem. Security camera footage of his shooting has been withheld and his family have been denied access to his body for an autopsy.

Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel has illegally annexed, are subject to Israeli civil law – unlike the West Bank, where Palestinians live under Israeli military rule.

Human rights groups have long complained that Israeli soldiers in the West Bank carry out “extra-judicial executions”.

The Israeli government recently announced it was authorising for the first time the use of live-fire against Palestinians, including children, who throw stones in Israel and Jerusalem.

Israel includes a population of 1.6 million Palestinians who have citizenship, while most of East Jerusalem’s 370,000 Palestinians have Israeli residency permits.

Adalah, a legal centre for Israel’s Palestinian citizens, said details of the government’s new live-fire regulations had yet to be divulged to them.

But it cited Israeli politicians and police commanders as openly calling for extra-judicial killings since the upswing in tensions.

‘Terrorists will not survive’

Jerusalem’s police chief, Moshe Edri, is reported to have said: “Anyone who stabs Jews or hurts innocent people is due to be killed.” Police minister Gilad Erdan similarly declared: “Every terrorist should know that he will not survive the attack he is about to commit.”

Adalah and Addameer, a Palestinian group defending prisoners’ rights, sent a letter to Israel’s attorney general this week highlighting three cases where video footage documented the unjustified shooting or abuse of Palestinian suspects.

Suhad Bishara, an Adalah lawyer, said the Israeli justice ministry had given no indication that its police investigations unit, Mahash, would investigate any of the incidents.

“What they are saying is the precise opposite: that these officers are heroes, that they behaved according to the law,” she said.

Mahash is already deeply mistrusted by Israel’s Palestinian minority, a fifth of the population, after it failed to identify any of the police officers responsible for killing 13 unarmed demonstrators inside Israel at the start of the second intifada in October 2000.

There have been 51 deaths of Palestinian citizens at the hands of the security forces since the October 2000 events, most in unexplained circumstances, compared to two Israeli Jews.

Bishara said: “We seem to have reached an even worse point than after the October 2000 events. Then Mahash conducted some investigations, even if they were deeply flawed. Now the need for investigations is simply being ignored.”

A spokeswoman for Mahash confirmed that a complaint from Adalah had been received but would make no further comment.

The urgent need for investigations was underscored late Thursday when the interior minister, Silvan Shalom, said he intended to strip Palestinian-Israeli “terror suspects” of their citizenship and those in Jerusalem of their residency permits.

According to international law, countries should not leave their citizens stateless.

Body kept from family

Adalah and Addameer are concerned that in the most prominent of the filmed shootings – of Alloun on 4 October – Israeli officials are putting up obstacles to block any investigation.

Videos on social media show a policeman shooting dead 19-year-old Alloun as he seeks protection from a mob of Israeli Jews chasing him and demanding that he be executed.

The crowd accuses him of a stabbing that occurred moments earlier close to the Old City. Even though the film suggests he posed no physical threat at the time, a police officer fired at him seven times. Alloun fell to the ground after the first shot.

Morad Jadalah, a lawyer with Addameer, said the authorities had refused to make available footage from security cameras in the area that might provide a clearer view of what happened.

They had also denied Alloun’s family access to his body, and the police had buried him without an autopsy being carried out.

Adalah and Addameer accused the police of seeking to “disrupt the investigation in advance” and “damage essential factual findings”.

Jadalah said: “If we can’t examine Alloun’s body to see how he was killed, we have no case against the police in court, whatever the videos reveal. The authorities are engaged in attempts to prevent justice from being done.”

In another case taken up by Adalah, from 9 October, Israa Abed, a 30-year-old mother of three from Nazareth, is filmed surrounded by soldiers and police at a bus station in northern Israel. As she stands almost immobile before them, several shots are fired, wounding her.

Although the security services have claimed there was a knife in her hand, she can be seen making no effort to attack them. Another video, taken shortly after she was shot, appears to show a pair of sunglasses, not a knife, next to her.

Doctors have said she was shot six times from the same gun.

Shalom named Abed, who survived the shooting, as one of two Palestinian citizens he wanted to strip of their citizenship.

Boy left to bleed

In the third case, 13-year-old Ahmed Manasra is filmed being kicked by police and denied medical treatment as he lies bleeding and severely injured on a road in a settlement in East Jerusalem on 12 October. Crowds of settlers curse him and shout “Die! Son of a bitch.”

He was rammed by a vehicle after he and an older cousin were suspected of stabbing two Israeli Jews, one a child his own age.

Physicians for Human Rights in Israel decried a video and photos released by the government on Thursday of Manasra recovering in an Israeli hospital. They said the images violated Israel’s juvenile and privacy laws, and the hospital’s involvement was a severe breach of medical ethics.

Suspicions have been raised too about the fatal shooting of Basel Sidr on 14 October. Footage shows police shooting the 20-year-old as he tried to attack them with a knife at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City.

However, B’Tselem, an Israeli organisation monitoring Israeli violations in the occupied territories, expressed “grave concern” that the officers continued to shoot at Sidr after he was wounded on the ground with no one near him.

Jadalah, of Addameer, said: “These videos are helping to fuel Palestinian rage. They reinforce the sense in Jerusalem that we are fighting for our lives and the city.”

Since the start of the month, 32 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded. Attacks have left seven Israeli Jews dead.

On Wednesday thousands of soldiers and paramilitary Border Police were deployed in Jerusalem and major cities in Israel where Palestinians live. It is the first time in more than a decade soldiers have been used inside Israel.

8,000 gun permit requests

Meanwhile, Israeli media reports indicate that, since the unrest erupted, Israeli soldiers and police have had a light finger on the trigger and have rushed to conclusions about the threat posed by Palestinians unsupported by evidence.

On Thursday a soldier opened fire in a train near Haifa, causing minor injuries, after other soldiers wrongly shouted out a warning that someone was holding a knife.

Later the same day, police admitted that two Palestinians from East Jerusalem arrested on suspicion of planning an attack after a major manhunt in Tel Aviv were simply visiting the city.

Israeli politicians such as Jerusalem’s mayor Nir Barkat have called on Israeli civilians who own a firearm to carry it at all times. On Friday some 8,000 Jews were reported to have applied for a gun permit in the first 24 hours after the easing of licensing rules by the government.

“In the current atmosphere, the call by politicians for Israeli civilians to arm themselves constitutes incitement to kill Palestinians for no reason,” said Bishara, of Adalah. “It sends a message to the security forces and to Israeli civilians that Arab life is of no value.”

There has also been a spate of reports in the past week of Palestinian citizens being beaten or stabbed by Israeli Jews after they were identified as Arab. Mobs of Jews chanting “Death to Arabs” are now a familiar sight in Jerusalem.

In the southern town of Dimona last week, an Israeli Jew stabbed four Palestinians over the course of an hour.

Jadalah said: “When Israeli Jews carry out knife attacks, they are arrested, not killed. It seems the police can follow proper procedures when Jews are involved.”

Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, echoed Jadalah on Twitter: “Of course the Jewish stabber ended the spree [of stabbings] without a bullet or scratch.”

Rami Nasreddin, the director of Palvision, a youth empowerment programme in Jerusalem, said videos of violence by the security forces and of Jewish mobs had left many Palestinians in Jerusalem frightened to go out.

“Most of the schools are closed because parents are afraid to let their children on to the streets,” he said.

I have to admit I am scared myself. I know that if a settler shouts out that I have a knife or that I am a terrorist, the police are likely to shoot me without a second thought.

On the evening of October 22, 2014 I found myself in Toronto sitting alone in a restaurant watching a CNN news broadcast playing on a huge TV in the restaurant’s main room. The Ottawa shootings of the day were front and centre.

When the young waitress brought my bowl of chili I said to her,

“So we’re being attacked by terrorists now?”

“So they say,” she replied evenly.

“You know,” I said, “I have my doubts about this whole thing.”

“Of course,” she replied. “This is obviously meant to support Harper’s military intervention in the Middle East.”

My jaw dropped. Maybe my fellow Canadians were more inclined to skepticism than I thought?

The “war on terrorism” has been a tangle of deceptions, so there were plenty of reasons to greet this latest act of apparent terrorism with suspicion. For my part, I had just finished writing a book about the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US, so I was in a mood for questioning. The anthrax attacks had appeared to be a jihadi attack (“DEATH TO AMERICA…ALLAH IS GREAT,” said the letters) and they were used to justify invasions of other countries and the theft of civil rights in the US. But shortly after the Patriot Act was signed into law in October of 2001 by George W. Bush the jihadi story had collapsed. The anthrax spores in the deadly letters, including the letters to two key Democratic senators holding up passage of the Patriot Act, were revealed to have originated neither in an al-Qaeda lab nor an Iraqi lab, but in a US lab serving the military and intelligence communities. [1]

Here was a theme I would not forget: the very security and intelligence agencies that gain power from a bill intimidate the people’s elected representatives into passing the bill.

Such thoughts were in my mind as I sat in the restaurant in Toronto watching the events on Parliament Hill. Centre Block was, in those moments, still in lockdown. Canadian Members of Parliament, having been exposed to a barrage of gunfire right outside their caucus doors, were trapped, and definitely intimidated, while officers with guns went through the houses of Parliament.

Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette has recalled her experience in her Senate office:

At 2:30 p.m., to cries of “Police,” my assistant opens the office’s main door. He comes face to face with soldiers aiming their machine guns at him and ordering him to put his hands in the air. One by one, our doors are opened and the soldiers point their guns at my other assistants who exit their offices, hands in the air, as if they were criminals… The door we go through is destroyed; glass has exploded all over the floor. The door across the hallway has also been knocked in. Glass litters the hallway. There are more than 50 people crammed into four offices, everyone talking to one another…

I sit near the open window. I’m breathing but stunned: parliamentarians are under the command of the military. Parliament is in the hands of the armed forces. [2]

The people with guns who took control of Parliament were likely militarized police rather than the armed forces per se,but it was not easy to tell them apart. Police of different types swarmed the vicinity, some of them carrying heavy automatic weapons and dressed in helmets, boots and green fatigues.

I wondered on October 22, 2014 if we were witnessing a revised version of the 2001 US fraud—another intimidation of an elected legislature by internal security forces to facilitate a shift in power. Bill C-13, allowing increased surveillance of Canadian citizens, was before Parliament and C-44, further empowering Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, was to be introduced that very day, October 22. Soon we would learn that another bill was on the way. It turned out to be the infamous Bill C-51, now made law as the “Anti-terrorism Act, 2015,” one of Canada’s most repressive and dangerous pieces of legislation.

On October 23, 2014, Kevin Vickers, the sergeant-at-arms responsible for killing the Parliament shooter, got a standing ovation in Parliament. Unity in the legislature as all parties joined in celebrating their safety! Soon citizens were treated to images of the Prime Minister hugging the leaders of the opposing parties. More unity! But the hugs were familiar from the fall of 2001. The image of Democratic senate majority leader Tom Daschle embracing George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was fresh in my mind. This particular unity had enabled the passing of a bill permitting the use of armed force overseas, Authorization for Use of Military Force, 2001. The subsequent anthrax attacks had kept this unity intact long enough to enable the passing of the Patriot Act. [3]

There was another troubling development. Those parliamentarians who did not bow and scrape before the Prime Minister, and who resisted the use of the October 22 attacks to pass repressive legislation, tended to adopt a “lone nut” narrative. According to this story the suspect, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, was simply an unbalanced homeless man acting on his own—a case for social services rather than a sign of coordinated political violence. The problem was that this narrative did not accommodate all the available evidence.

There was evidence that Zehaf-Bibeau had planned his attack carefully and had had access to considerable resources; there was evidence that the October 22 attack was linked to an earlier October 20 attack in the province of Quebec; and there was a good deal of evidence that police knew well in advance that attacks such as those that took place that week were in the works. The story of the drug-addled loner seemed inadequate. Accordingly, I wrote a letter to a local Member of Parliament warning him not to invest all his credibility in this lone nut narrative. I suggested that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would, at an opportune moment, display the video shot by the suspect just before his killing of a soldier at the War Memorial. The video would show Zehaf-Bibeau to have been cogent and as well as committed to some form of jihadi enterprise.

That, of course, is what happened. After keeping the video from the public for months RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson decided, during the hearings held in association with Bill C-51, that it was time for Canadians to see it. In fact, now we not only could see it, we really should see it. He asked that his showing of the video be televised live in Canada. Sure enough, the Zehaf-Bibeau we saw in that video did not look like an unbalanced homeless man. Clean, well groomed and rational, he appeared to know just what he was doing.

So, if he was not a lone nut, who and what was he? Was he acting with, or on behalf of, others? If so, what others? I did not know at the time, and I still do not know, the answers to these questions. But I do know that the usual two hypotheses—the lone nut and the member of an Islamic terrorist organization—do not exhaust the possibilities, and that a third possibility is being kept from the Canadian public. I also know that the police narrative is tattered, trailing a host of unanswered questions, and kept in place with the help of RCMP secrecy and deception.

As for the third hypothesis, the unspeakable hypothesis, it is merely necessary to recall that the majority of people who come before the courts in North America on charges related to violent terrorism have been aided and abetted by police and intelligence agencies.

This known fact was seldom part of the discourse in the heated discussions on television in the weeks and months after October 22, 2014. Police pretended to be unaware of the pattern. For example, in a CBC Radio interview on March 7, 2015, RCMP Commissioner Paulson stated that when he had first watched Zehaf-Bibeau’s jihad video, he had found it shocking. The clarity, the sense of purpose of this violent man! Mr. Paulson neglected to tell listeners that in the previous year the RCMP had taken a young man similar in many ways to Zehaf-Bibeau—impoverished, adrift in Vancouver, caught between drug addiction and his personal version of Islam—and had done their best over a period of months to turn him into a terrorist. RCMP moles had prompted this man, John Nuttall, and his common law wife to make videos taking responsibility for “violence in the name of Allah.” The moles had assisted in the jihadi video productions and “even provided the black Islamic flag the two used as a backdrop for a video message urging jihad.”

Were we really supposed to believe, then, that Mr. Paulson was shocked by Zehaf-Bibeau’s video? And, given the well established broad pattern of entrapment by police and intelligence agencies in North America, would it not be perverse for any thoughtful person to neglect the possibility that state agencies may have been complicit in the October 22 shootings? Yet avoidance of this possibility has been the rule in this year since the 2014 events, on the part of both the media and Members of Parliament.

We appear to be in the presence of yet another taboo in the Global War on Reason.

Determined that civil society researchers not allow themselves to be silenced by this taboo and determined as well not to allow information available in the early hours and days of this event to be swept down the memory hole, I decided to write a report on the October 22 shootings. My central aim was to see whether the questions many of us had in the wake of the events had been answered. My 25,000-word report, submitted to Canadian NGO, Democracy Probe International, is now available here:

http://democracyprobe.ca/2015/10/report-on-oct-22-2014-attacks-received-by-dpi/

The list of important, unanswered questions is a long one. For this reason I am calling for a federal public inquiry.

Why is a public inquiry necessary? First of all, police killed the suspect, putting 31 bullets in his body. There is no sign of further suspects and, therefore, no court case on the horizon. No court case usually means no serious effort to discover the truth. Secondly, several months ago a series of police reports was released but they added little to what we already knew. Redaction in these reports is heavy, methodology is poor, and the most serious questions have not even been asked. Thirdly, the media have not done their job. There were fierce promises on the day of October 22, 2014 that they would pursue the key questions, but for the most part these promises have been broken.

I hope readers who are disgusted when they see foreign military intervention defended, and repressive legislation passed, on the basis of obscure events shrouded in police secrecy will download this report, study it, build on it, and use it.

Graeme MacQueen was the founding director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University and has been involved in peace-building projects in several war zones. His book The 2001 Anthrax Deception was published by Clarity Press in 2014.

Notes

With the exception of the few cases below, sources are given in the report referred to in the article: The October 22, 2014, Ottawa Shootings: Why Canadians Need a Public Inquiry.

[1] Céline Hervieux-Payette, October 22, 2014. The Day the Military Police Took Control of Parliament. Blog of Senator Hervieux-Payette.

http://eurekablog.ca/en/articles/politics/national/october-22-2014-day-military-police-took-control-parliament/

I am grateful to Amy MacPherson for pointing me to this blog.

[2] Graeme MacQueen, The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2014. See especially Chapter 5.

[3] Ibid. See especially Chapter 3.

The richest person in the world isn’t anyone in the Forbes list, which excludes calculations for any heads-of-state, but is instead King Salman of Saudi Arabia, whose net worth is in the trillions of dollars. He virtually owns the Saudi Government, which owns the world’s largest oil company, Aramco, among other assets.

Aramco alone is worth “anywhere between US$1.25 trillion[7] and US$7 trillion,[8] making it the world’s most valuable company.” The company’s website says: “1980: Saudi Arabian government acquires 100 percent participation interest in Aramco,” most of which it had already owned. The Saud family’s partners since 1933 had been Chevron Corporation, or Standard Oil of California, which built Aramco.

It was a Rockefeller company then; but no one can say who controls it today. As of 2013 (see p. 56 there), the only two investors that owned more than 0.002 or .02% of Chevron, each owned around 6% of it: Blackrock, Inc., and State Street Corp., and they essentially jointly controlled that company, regarding anything on which the two agreed. But the controlling stockholder of Blackrock in 2013 was PNC Financial Services, at 20.8%. PNC is jointly controlled by Wellington Management, Blackrock and the Vanguard Group, each at more than 5%. Wellington, the main stockholder, is jointly controlled by Blackrock, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Royce & Associates, T. Rowe Price, and Wellington Management itself. Some companies, such as Wellington Management, simply hide their owners. All of this is called ‘democracy.’ (Or, at least, it’s “capitalism” of the fascist sort.)

However, King Salman’s ownership of the Saudi Government is relatively clear, since he controls the Government as his private fiefdom, and since his Government owns Aramco and other assets. Individuals such as Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffett, and Amancio Ortega, are each only around 1/20th to 1/50th as rich as is he.

The officially-given-out figure for Salman’s personal wealth is $18 billion, but Forbessimply omits including him at all. (Bloomberg’s billionaires-list does likewise.) They don’t want to offend the richest people in the world; and heads-of-state who have become enormously wealthy from heisting an entire country prefer to keep the actual size of their heists hidden. (Furthermore, in order to pretend that the basic capitalist myth is true — that accumulation of wealth reflects mainly one’s merit instead of one’s power — they need to play down wealth that’s been accumulated by crime, or by inheritance; and head-of-state wealth tends strongly to be the product of both.)

On October 14th, Britain’s Guardian bannered, “Saudi Arabia: Mother of Saudi man sentenced to crucifixion begs Obama to intervene,” and opened:

“The mother of a Saudi protester sentenced to death by beheading and crucifixion has begged Barack Obama to intervene to save her son’s life. In her first interview with foreign media, Nusra al-Ahmed, the mother of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, whose case has made headlines around the world, described the intended punishment as savage and ‘backwards in the extreme’. … She said her son had been detained sometime after joining Shia demonstrators in the eastern coastal city of Qatif seeking equal religious rights in the Sunni-majority country. … Visiting after his arrest, she alleged he had been tortured. ‘When I visited my son for the first time I didn’t recognise him. I didn’t know whether this really was my son Ali or not. I could clearly see a wound on his forehead. Another wound in his nose. They disfigured it. …[When] I started talking to him [he told me that] during the interrogation [he was] being kicked, slapped, of course his teeth fell out … For a month he was peeing blood. He said he felt like a mass of pain, his body was no more.’”

This was/is his punishment for participating in a peaceful demonstration.

Ali Mohammed al-Nimr’s father “Mohammed al-Nimr, said his son is among eight young men facing capital punishment but insisted that he was completely innocent of the charges against him.” The father is similarly pleading for British leader David Cameron to push publicly for his son’s life to be spared. The Guardian reported the father on October 8th saying, “My son is completely innocent. He has denied all accusations against him and said so in court. My son is a peaceful man. They forced him to sign a confession for a crime he never committed.”

This is part of a global war between Sunni and Shiia political leaders. America and its vassal-states (including David Cameron’s Britain) are allied with Sunni-run nations, while Russia and its cooperating nations are allied with Shiia-run nations.

The Saudi royals are the world’s top Sunni force, and they have long been allied with the United States, against post-Shah (post-1979) Iran and all other Shiia-ruled countries, such as Syria, and such as the next-door Yemenese Shiite Houthis, who are being bombed incessantly by the hard-line Sunni Sauds using their U.S. weapons. According to the former bookkeeper of the Sunni organization Al Qaeda, the man who collected all of the financial donations to that organization, virtually all of Al Qaeda’s funding consisted of multimillion-dollar donations, mainly from the Saud family but also from other Sunni Arab royals; and their followers, the terrorists, were mercenaries in their pay, almost as much as they were true-believing fundamentalist Sunnis — they were being paid very well by their royal sponsors, to serve as a ‘volunteer’ army for jihad to bring a globalized version of the ancient Caliphate, or Sunni Empire. Such terrorism can be quite lucrative for a jihadist, even if the bigger payoff is promised to come in his afterlife.

The official religion of Saudi Arabia is the Wahhabist or Salafist fundamentalist Islamic sect of the Sunni version of Islam. It’s the version of Islam that seeks a return of the ancient Caliphate or Sunni Empire, but now on a global level (extending at least as far away from Arabia as Afghanistan and Pakistan) — and, of course, the Saud family (after all their ancient conquests) owns Mecca, in whose direction every Muslim (Sunni or not) is required (according to the standard understanding of the Quran, in Surah “The Cow” or “ Al Baqarah,” 142-143) to bow towards in prayer, every day. So: King Salman controls not only the estimated quarter-trillion-barrels of oil that Aramco has, but also the Mecca for all of Islam. And, of course, he also relies upon the decades-long military backing of the United States Government.

If President Obama, or Prime Minister Cameron, pleads publicly for King Salman not to behead Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, then what about the perhaps hundreds of other head-chops that Salman will do (via his hired executioners) this year? (There are already more than a hundred so far in 2015. You can see a few of them in secretly-filmed phone-videos that are included on this recent documentary, which also shows the boy/man Ali Mohammed al-Nimr whose crime was to seek an end to the systematic discrimination against Shiia in Saudi Arabia. It also discusses the situation of women, and the plight of slaves.) For Obama to issue any such request publicly would get in the way of his (and especially the Sauds’) anti-Shiia “Assad Must Go” campaign. After all, in September 2015, the U.S. House of Representatives issued a report saying that:

Today we are witnessing the largest global convergence of jihadists in history, as individuals from more than 100 countries have migrated to the conflict zone in Syria and Iraq since 2011. Some initially flew to the region to join opposition groups seeking to oust Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but most are now joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), inspired to become a part of the group’s “caliphate” and to expand its repressive society. Over 25,000 foreign fighters have traveled to the battlefield to enlist with Islamist terrorist groups, including at least 4,500 Westerners. More than 250 individuals from the United States have also joined or attempted to fight with extremists in the conflict zone.

5,000 foreign Sunni jihadists in Syria came from Tunisia — it’s how Tunisia managed to get rid of enough of them to be able to establish something of a democracy in their own land. The second-biggest national contingent, 2,275, is from Saudi Arabia itself, the same country that supplied fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists. But the exodus of 2,275 jihadists from Saudi Arabia can’t enable democracy to emerge in Saudi Arabia, because the Saud family’s own Wahhab faith is based upon supporting jihad. Most of the Saudi population aren’t in favor of extending Wahhabism around the world, but the Sauds are. Conveniently, their war to spread Allah’s power happens to be also a war to spread the Sauds’ power. (It’s not spreading the power of the rest of the Saudi population.) The Sauds believe that Allah is on their family’s side. After all: God (and the pillaging that had enabled the Saud family to conquer the country) gave them 260 billion barrels of oil!

These warriors are all doing battle to oust Bashar al-Assad, the most secular (or non-sectarian) leader in the Middle East (far more secular, for example, than is America’s ally, Israel). The Syrian Constitution under his Ba’ath Party has always been non-Islamic, and not only non-jihadist. There is a strict separation of religion from politics. By contrast, in Saudi Arabia, “The Qur’an is declared to be the constitution of the country, which is governed on the basis of Islamic law (Shari’a).” Furthermore, “No political parties or national elections are permitted[2] and according to The Economist’s 2010 Democracy Index, the Saudi government was the seventh most authoritarian regime from among the 167 countries rated.” (Notice that euphemism ‘authoritarian.’ When we were fighting self-declared fascists in World War II, we used instead the honest term for them, “dictatorships.” The Sauds are dictators.) The Sauds are dictators.) TheEconomist rated Syria the fifth-most “authoritarian,” but theEconomist is allied with the Saudi royal family and wants Assad to be overthrown. And, at seventh-worst, Saudi Arabia was actually ranked far worse than any other of the magazine’s listed allies. (The Economist is hardly a trustworthy source, more a mouthpiece of the aristocracy.)

U.S. President Obama has consistently since 2011 argued that, “The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people. We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” How wonderful to know that our President cares so much about “the Syrian people” as to bomb their government and try to replace it with one more like the Sauds’. The stars-and-stripes waves so proudly around the world. (Actually not — certainly not now.)

Obama said on 2 October 2015, “They’ve been propping up a regime that is rejected by an overwhelming majority of the Syrian population because they’ve seen that he has been willing to drop barrel bombs on children and on villages indiscriminately.” He blatantly lied.

Polling in Syria, even by Western polling firms and throughout the period of the invasion by Saudi and other fighters and the U.S. bombing of Assad’s forces, has consistently shown at least 55% support by Syrians for continuation of Assad as being Syria’s leader. There are no such political polls published in Saudi Arabia; its royals don’t allow that; but, if such polls were to be done there, then anyone who might be indicated to threaten continuation of the Sauds’ dictatorship would simply be beheaded anyway.

That’s the type of orderly nation the United States can defend. The United States can also support the regime it had installed in a violent February 2014 coup in Ukraine that’sfirebombing the residents of the area that refused to accept the coup-government the U.S. had installed. (Firebombs areworse than barrel bombs.) For some reason, things like this are not what U.S. politicians and ‘news’ media talk about, with ‘our’ ‘free’ press. So, it’s easy for the U.S. public to be unaware of such realities about the ‘democracy’ that ‘they’ ‘elect.’ Out of sight is out of mind; ignorance is bliss. Under such circumstances as this, it’s more comfortable for the public to be ignorant, and America’s aristocrats want their public to be comfortable, at least enough so that the public will vote for the candidates they finance. Just as George W. Bush wanted his torture-operation to be done offshore, Barack Obama also wants the beheadings etc. to besmirch other countries such as Saudi Arabia, not the U.S., which keeps regimes like that in power while demanding that Syria, Libya, Russia, etc., must have “regime change,” in order, supposedly, to bring there the blessings of ‘democracy.’

What ‘blessings of ‘democracy’ has the United States recently brought to the people in Honduras, or in El Salvador, or in Guatemala? The results have been floods of refugees from there, just like the floods of refugees from U.S. bombing campaigns in Libya and in Syria. America and its allies and their ‘news’ media blame the refugees on the countries that America has destroyed. This, too, helps promote, among the public, the ‘bliss’ that is ignorance — or, worse yet, deception — in these ‘democracies’: blaming the U.S.-caused refugees for the refugees-problem (both in the U.S. and in Europe).

America’s rot in international affairs is pervasive. Take for example Obama’s drone-warfare program to kill some Saudi-inspired extremists; it too is full of lies. In a rare example of honest mainstream U.S. journalistic dissent, Jeremy Scahillat Huffington Post reported on October 15th that:

“The White House and Pentagon boast that the targeting killing program is precise and that civilian deaths are minimal. However, documents detailing a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan, Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.” (Yet, even knowing this, Obama continues his drone program.)

Obama was mainly building support there for the Saudi-originated Taliban (they started out as being called the“Mujahideen” and were supplied weapons by the U.S.). Taliban gain support among villagers whose loss of innocent family-members on account of these U.S. drone-strikes drives them to favor the fight against the enemy that has been killing their loved-ones (i.e., against the U.S.). The Taliban are actually allies of the Sauds, who sometimes are even brought in to help persuade them to back off (and another example of that is here). In fact,

“Riyadh helped foster the rise of the Taliban beginning in the mid-1990s largely to serve as a proxy force against Afghanistan’s post-Soviet leadership. But Saudi Arabia also supported the radical Islamic militants to counter Iran.”

So, at the very same time that the U.S. Government tries to fool its public that the U.S. military are focused primarily against the threat from Islamic jihadists (not against Russia), U.S. policies are actually directed instead against the enemies of the Sauds (who are behind Islamic jihadists): that’s to say, against Iran, the leading Shiia power; and especially against Russia, the leading competitor to Saudi Arabia in the oil and gas markets — and the chief country that’s still holding out against takeover by the U.S. aristocracy.

Without continuing U.S. support, the Sauds would be treated by Saudis even worse than Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Nicholas II, and Benito Mussolini, were: they’d be treated the same way they themselves have treated anyone in Saudi Arabia who has protested their decades-long tyranny. Would the fanatic fundamentalist clergy that the Sauds have shared power with be treated any better? Even from the standpoint of moderating Islamism, the results of overthrowing the Sauds would likely be better than what America — the world-policeman for the imperial Saudi tyrants — has produced. But it would need to be done before the Sauds acquire nuclear weapons.

What needs to be changed first is the American government — its control by an aristocracy that’s firmly wedded to the Sauds. The American aristocracy (especially its three most powerful components: petrodollar Wall Street, oil-and-gas billionaires, and military-industrial-complex billionaires — all of whom benefit from alliance with the Sauds) needs to be defeated in America. The American people need to strip the U.S. aristocracy (at least those three elements of it) of their power over the U.S. Government. It can’t be done unless the news-media start informing the American people of reality. (For example, in neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party Presidential debates has this immense problem, and candidates’ positions regarding it, been even so much as mentioned. That can’t possibly reflect a democratic nation — an authentic democracy.)

Continued dishonesty will lead only to catastrophe. If honesty doesn’t start now, it probably won’t start until such a disaster can’t be avoided. Honesty needs to start now. It starts here, or it won’t start at all.

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.

Note: Article originally published on our website in 2003

Which is the more remarkable — that the United States can openly announce to the world its determination to invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its government in the absence of any attack or threat of attack from the intended target? Or that for an entire year the world has been striving to figure out what the superpower’s real intentions are?

There are of course those who accept at face value Washington’s stated motivations of “liberating” the people of Iraq from a dictatorship and bestowing upon them a full measure of democracy, freedom and other eternal joys fit for American schoolbooks. In light of a century of well-documented US foreign policy which reveals a virtually complete absence of such motivations, along with repeated opposite consequences, we can dispense with this attempt by Washington to win hearts and mindless. Presented here are some reflections about several of the causes that make the hearts of the imperial mafia beat faster in regard to Iraq, which may be helpful in arguing the anti-war point of view:

Expansion of the American Empire: adding more military bases and communications listening stations to the Pentagon’s portfolio, setting up a command post from which to better monitor, control and intimidate the rest of the Middle East.

Idealism: remaking the world in what the true believers see as America’s image, with free enterprise and Judeo-Christianity as core elements; here is Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, now at the American Enterprise Institute (one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq): “If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.” Oil: the sine qua non of Middle East policy, yesterday, today and tomorrow; to be in full control of Iraq’s vast reserves, with Saudi oil and Iranian oil waiting defenselessly next door; OPEC will be stripped of its independence from Washington and will no longer think about replacing the dollar with the Euro as its official currency; oil-dependent Europe may think twice next time about being so uppity.

Globalization: Once relative security over the land, people and institutions has been established, the transnational corporations will march into Iraq ready to privatize everything at fire-sale prices, followed closely by the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization and the rest of the international financial extortionists.

Arms industry: As with each of America’s endless wars, military manufacturers will rake in their exorbitant profits, then deliver their generous political contributions, inspiring Washington leaders to yet further warfare, each war also being the opportunity to test new weapons. Israel: The men driving Bush to war include long-time militant supporters of Israel, such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith, who, along with the rest of the powerful Israeli lobby, have advocated smashing Iraq for years. Israel has been playing a key role in the American military buildup to the war. Besides getting rid of its arch enemy, Israel could use the opportunity to carry out its final solution to the Palestinian question — transferring them to Jordan, (liberated) Iraq, and anywhere else that expanded US hegemony in the Middle East will allow. Iraq’s abundant water could be diverted to relieve a parched Israel.

The EU and Turkey have agreed on an “action plan” that might give Ankara up to €3 billion ($3.4bn) in aid, visa privileges and new talks on Turkey-EU membership in return for its help in stemming the flow of refugees to Europe.

The EU summit in Brussels stretched into the early hours of Thursday, and seems to have achieved some results. While no final deal has been inked, EU leaders and Ankara have managed to agree an “action plan”, European Council President Donald Tusk told reporters.

“Our intensified meetings with Turkish leaders … in the last couple of weeks were devoted to one goal: stemming the migratory flows that go via Turkey to the EU. The action plan is a major step in this direction,” said Tusk.

Yet he expressed “cautious optimism,” that the plan would succeed, but has welcomed the agreement of an EU-Turkey joint action plan to tackle the current migratory crisis.

In the summit’s spotlight was the ambitious deal, previously drafted between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

The deal’s terms included three billion euros ($3.4 billlion) in aid, the easing of visa restrictions for EU travel for Turkish nationals, and resurrecting negotiations for EU membership. Turkey also wanted to be included on the list of “safe countries” for asylum.

In return, Turkey promised to strengthen its border controls, greater co-operation with Greece, being another first destination for refugees fleeing war, instability and poverty in the Middle East.

In exchange for visa-free access for its citizens, Ankara would agree for the previously drafted readmission deal, meaning that Turkey would take back those asylum seekers, who entered the EU from its territory.

“We will not sign the readmission agreement before steps are taken on the Schengen visa and thus a visa liberalization is secured for Turkish citizens,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in an interview before the summit. According to Davutoglu, Turkey would like the deal by the first half of 2016.

While Turkey wants EU to show good will addressing the free-visa travel, European leaders want proof that Turkey will live up to its pledges, as part of the deal would see Turkey increase its crack down on people-smugglers.

“We need guarantees that Turkey’s response to our offer will be as concrete and as substantive as ours,” European Council President Donald Tusk said.

As for the 3 billion euros in aid for Turkey, the EU leaders agreed that the request was reasonable.

“We are declaring as ready and pulling to have a share the burden with Turkey because Turkey, on the very doorstep of the European Union, has to shoulder responsibility for more than two million refugees and it stands for a number of years already, so in this period of burden sharing, in this period of solidarity between neighbors, it is only right for the European Union to think how it can participate in this,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said.

To cement the potential deal Merkel is set to visit Istanbul on Sunday.

“There is still a huge amount to do,” Merkel said in a press conference. “But you cannot say that we’ve achieved nothing.”

The deal to pursue Ankara’s help stems from German Chancellor Angela’s Merkel calls to “secure the external borders” of the Union. Over 710,000 migrants have arrived to the EU’s border so far this year.

“We cannot organize or stem the refugee movements without working with Turkey,” said Merkel as the leaders of the 28 nation states arrived for the summit in Brussels.

Germany, which has taken on a hefty leading role in offering migrants a new home, is struggling to deliver on its promises. Many that arrive in Germany live on the streets, waiting for the bureaucratic machine to processes their paperwork.

Turkey on the other hand has enormous experience dealing with the influx of refugees that have flooded its borders mainly following the Syrian conflict that began in 2011.

The number of refugees in Turkey in 2015 is expected to rise to 1.9 million people, including 1.7 million Syrian migrants, UN Refugee Agency UNHCR says. With war-torn Syria just across the border, Turkey has set up 22 camps for refugees. Another two camp are under construction now. While the majority of refugees are Syrian, with half being children, others flock to the country from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Somalia.

Turkey has accommodated more than two million Syrian refugees, spending over €7 billion (nearly $8 billion). So far it has received only €1 billion ($1.1 billion) in external aid.

“The three billion euros can play a role in the sense that Turkey has already spent more than seven billion on the refugees and has received less than one billion. I think that in the future we have to share the burden, where we were left alone during the last three-four years,” the German Chancellor said.

A large portion of them continue on their outward journey to the EU, risking the rough sea conditions to reach the safety of European borders, where they are often neglected.

Just as EU leaders were discussing the migrant crisis, an Afghan man trying to make his way from Turkey into Bulgaria near the southeastern Bulgarian town of Sredets was shot and killed.

“A big group of illegal migrants attempted to enter Bulgaria from Turkey. One man suffered a gunshot wound in the incident and died on the way to hospital,” an interior ministry spokeswoman told AFP.

The incident marks the first time that an EU border guard has shot and killed a refugee crossing into the EU. Reacting to the news of the death after the summit, Tusk said that the incident has shown the need for external borders protection.

“For me its the next argument, how important our discussion was tonight. I mean the protection of our external borders is the main priority today,” Tusk said. “In fact, half of our discussion was today about how we can help in this very demanding process I mean rebuilding of control of our external borders. I think it’s the, this is the next, the next reason to continue this, this work.”

In addition to the shooting, a Lebanese family of five drowned while crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey to Greece, bringing the toll of those drowned at sea to over 3,000 people.

Note: Article originally published in 2014.

1. The integration of Greece into the EU is the real cause of its catastrophic crisis

The almost complete destruction of the lower classes in Greece is not due to the causes usually attributed to it by the “Left”.[1] In fact, contrary to the misleading “explanations” provided by this Left and the Right alike, the actual cause is the full integration of the Greek economy into neoliberal globalization, through its accession into the EU. This has meant the complete transformation of Greece into an economic and political protectorate of the Transnational Elite.[2]

The catalyst for this crisis was Greece’s unofficial default, which, however, was merely the consequence of the destruction of its production structure, as a result of the opening, and liberalization of markets imposed the EU, following Greece’s entry in 1981. It is therefore no wonder that both the Left (apart from the Communist Left) and the Right––in fact, the entire Greek establishment––are fully united in not challenging the main cause of the present economic destruction: Greece’s membership in the EU.

In other words, contrary to the deceptive pre-election promises of SYRIZA, (which is an organic part of the Euro-left that has just chosen its leader, A. Tsipras, as its candidate for president of the EU Commission), there is no way that an EU/EMU Member State could refuse to apply the policies imposed by neoliberal globalization, as borne out by History with Mitterrand, Lafontaine, Hollande, et. al.  It is equally disorienting to state, as SYRIZA does, that, if elected to power, it would revert the catastrophic legislation imposed by the well known ‘Troika’ (representing the IMF, the EU and the ECB) in the past three years or so.

The above deceptive promises are based on the myth that neoliberalism is some kind of a mistaken ideology or a doctrine[3] upheld by “bad” politicians such as Thatcher, Merkel, Blair, etc. However, neoliberal globalization is, in fact, a systemic phenomenon implying, also, that the EU members’ economic growth does not rely anymore mainly on the domestic market but on the international market (within the EU and without) and that it is the Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) that control world production and trade, and–– through the Transnational Elite[4]––the international political, military and cultural institutions.  

So, only if the EU governments were taken over by the Euro-Left and they then forced the TNCs based in EU to operate solely within the EU area––imposing in the process strict social controls on the movement of capital and commodities from the other economic blocks (i.e. those of the Far East and America)––only then could the European economy be indifferent to its own level of competitiveness and live in the Euro-Left’s nirvana, happily ever after. In fact, however, EU is moving in exactly the opposite direction of further integration within the New World Order (NWO) defined by neoliberal globalization! This is clearly shown by the current negotiations between EU and US for a Transatlantic Free Trade Area.

2. Capitalist globalization can only be neoliberal

The Euro-elites simply cannot afford to lose more of their competitiveness. In fact, the real reason for the creation of EU and later of the Eurozone had nothing to do with the ideals of freedom, democracy, human values and the rest of its ideology, as EU’s history has clearly shown. It was the growing gap in competitiveness (in terms of EU’s share of world exports) during the 1980s, which led the Euro-elites to speed up the integration procedures, which were mostly dormant up to then. The EU economic failure was clearly due to the fact that the competitiveness of its commodities was increasing at much slower rates than those of is competitors, particularly in the low cost countries of the Far East.[5] As supporters of the EU and its integration were claiming at the time, only a market of continental dimensions could provide the security and the economies of scale that were necessary for the survival of the European capital in the hyper-competitive global market that was just emerging at the time.

However, despite the high degree of integration achieved by the ‘Single European Act’ in the 1990s, and even despite the creation of the Eurozone, its decline in competiveness continued. Thus, whereas the share of Euro-exports to world exports was 35.8% in 1990, ten years later, it has fallen to 29.7% and by 2010 it has fallen further to 26.3%![6] In other words, within two decades, the Eurozone countries have lost more than a quarter of their competitiveness, measured in terms of their share in world exports. Although the Euro-elites are well aware of the fact that a significant part of their ‘loss’ of exports is in fact due to their de-industrialization­­––because of the move of industrial capital by the TNCs (most of them based in the metropolitan countries including the Eurozone ones) towards the low-cost paradises of China, India and the rest–– this is obviously no consolation to their own workers (and electorates), which benefit very little (if at all!) by globalization!

The present EU policies therefore, are not the result of a conspiracy or a satanic plot of the elites to exploit further the European workers but simply of the fact that the opening and liberalization of markets required by globalization, so that TNCs could expand their activities further, inevitably led to the present neoliberal policies implemented by every country fully integrated into the New World Order. To put it simply, globalization in a capitalist world can only be neoliberal and the rest is mythology adopted by today’s bankrupt world “Left”––apart from the genuine (but diminishing) anti-systemic Left.

3. Competitiveness is the rule

If, therefore, we accept the premise that the Euro-elites have no other option but to improve their competitiveness within the globalized economy, the next question is how competitiveness can be improved. There are two main ways in which a country’s competitiveness could improve: either by changing relative prices, i.e. squeezing the prices of locally produced commodities with respect to those produced abroad by squeezing wages and salaries, or by improving productivity of locally produced commodities, which may lead to lower cost of production without reducing real wages and salaries or to better quality products, etc.

Changing relative prices in the former way is the easy solution, as it could be implemented, almost at a stroke, in case a country controls its own currency and Greece itself has repeatedly resorted to devaluation policies in the post-war period to improve, temporarily, its competitiveness. In case however a country does not control its currency, as is the case of Greece in the Eurozone, the only other option, given its historically low level of labor productivity because of the lack of investment in research and development, is the presently implemented policy of squeezing wages and salaries in the hope that the cost of production will fall accordingly. In fact, the level of Greek productivity of labor, for instance has always been historically much lower than that of the Eurozone (in 2006 it was just 77% of the average Eurozone one[7]), something which is not that much peculiar if we take into account the fact that the proportion of productive investments to the GNP is much higher in the European ‘North’ than in the ‘South’ in general and Greece in particular.

So, if we start with the premise that the uneven levels of competitiveness and productivity are unavoidable in an economic union like the EU, which consists of countries at highly different levels of development (as they have been historically formed within a very uneven development process like the capitalist one), then we may easily understand the causes of the crisis in countries like Greece. The fact, therefore, that a Eurozone country like Greece, facing a problem of low competitiveness, cannot devalue its currency (i.e. change its relative prices without the need for suppressing domestic wages and incomes) is not the cause of the crisis. This may be the cause of a similar competitiveness crisis of an advanced capitalist country like Germany but not of a country like Greece where low competitiveness is a development problem.

Particularly so, when the Greek entry to the EU and later to the Eurozone had itself significantly exacerbated the development problem by effectively dismantling the productive structure of the country, as its infant industry and agriculture were not capable to compete with the imported commodities, following the opening and liberalization of markets imposed by the Single Market. Under these conditions, even a Greek exit from the Euro and a devaluation of the drachma that will be re-introduced in its aftermath, could only have temporary effects on Greek competitiveness, unless mass investment in its productive structure takes place at the same time, which is far from guaranteed in an internationalized market economy.

4. The EU as a mechanism to transfer surplus from its “South” to its “North”

In other words, competitiveness at the core Euro countries, which are characterized by higher levels of labor productivity than in the South, mainly depends on keeping wages and prices under control, so that German commodities continue to be competitive (because of their higher quality and so on) compared to similar commodities produced in East Asia and beyond. On the other hand, compettiveness in the European periphery, which consist of countries with lower levels of labor productivity, like Greece, mainly depends on improving productivity through new investment on R&D.  Therefore, the competitiveness problem in the South is mainly a development  problem and refers to the need of creating a strong productive base, which will not be formed within the process of uneven capitalist development (as today), but within a process of social control of the economy to create a self-reliant economy.

Yet, despite the fundamental difference concerning the causes of low competitiveness between the “North” and the “South” of the EU, in the framework of the post-Maastricht Europe, a common policy was adopted for all member countries––a policy that was determined by the needs and the interests of the North. Thus, the Single Market, did not mean the unification of peoples, as the EU propaganda presented it, not even the unification of states, but simply the unification of free markets. ‘Free markets’, however mean not only open markets (i.e. the unhibited movement of commodities, capital and laboutr), but also flexible markets (i.e. the elimination of any obstacle  in the free formation of prices and wages, as well the restriction of state role in the control of economic activity, which implies the drastic restriction of the element of ‘national economy’.

This was the essence of the neoliberal globalization characterizing the new institutional framework of the EU, i.e. that the state control of the domestic market of each member state (which was drastically restricted within the Single Market of 1992) was not replaced  by a corresponding EU control of it, apart from some (mostly nuissance) regulations on uniformity, etc. In other words, the new institutions aimed at the maximization of the freedom of organized capital,, whose concentration was facilitated in any way possible, and the minimization of the  freedom of  organized labor, whose co-ordination was restricted in any way possible and mainly through the unemployment threat.

 If Germany is indeed the country which was on the receiving end of the greatest benefits from joining EU and the Eurozone, whereas the countries of the European South received the least benefits out of it, this was far from accidental or due to the bad designing of the Eurozone as, post-Keynesians and other reformists (including the Euro-Left!) argue. When the Eurozone was institutionalized at the beginning of the new millennium Germany already enjoyed relatively high levels of labor productivity and competitiveness and the new currency essentially has ‘frozen’ the relative deviations between the advanced North of the Eurozone and the much less advanced South (parts of which were in fact underdeveloped).

Then, the Single Market itself, under conditions of a common currency, brought about a relative equalization of commodity prices and a certain increase in wages in the South, as workers were struggling to maintain the real value of wages and at the same time to narrow the gap in wages with Northern workers. On the other hand, German employers were in a much better position to suppress wage rises because of the difference in labor productivity they enjoyed due to advanced technology and investment in R&D, but also due to better relative prices. As Wolfgang Münchauput it, “Germany entered the Eurozone at an uncompetitive exchange rate and embarked on a long period of wage moderation.

Macroeconomists would say Germany benefited from a real devaluation against other members”.[8] If we add to this, that the countries in the South no longer had the power to devalue their currencies, whereas Germany did not have any need to devalue its currency as long as it could keep wage rises in pace with labor productivity increases, then we can understand why (and how) the Eurozone essentially functions as an economic mechanism to transfer economic surplus from the countries of the European South to those in the North and particularly Germany.

5. The disorienting role of the “Left”

The obvious conclusion is that it is impossible to take any radical measures to exit from the current economic (and not only!) disaster, without a unilateral exit from the EU along with a cancelation of the debt (for which the people were never asked anyway), as well as the discarding of all legislation imposed by the Troika and the adoption at the same time of the necessary geostrategic changes. Only this way, Greece could retrieve the minimum required economic and national sovereignty for a strategy for economic self-reliance, which is necessary for the permanent exit from the crisis, through building a new productive structure to meet its needs.

This means that the views that we could implement another policy even within the Eurozone, as SYRIZA suggests, or that it would suffice to exit from the Euro (without the parallel direct and unilateral exit from the EU) to implement a radically different economic strategy (as other Left organizations suggest), are completely misleading. This is because, as I tried to show above, the cause of the present economic catastrophe in Greece is neither the austerity policies of the Troika, as the supporters of the former view claim, nor the poor design (and implementation) of the Euro that led us to deficits and massive debt, as argued by the supporters of the latter view.[9]

Thus, supporters of the former view (Laskos and Tsakalotos), in fact, reproduce the myths of an obsolete internationalism according to which the struggle of the European proletariat within the EU will reverse the austerity policies, despite the fact that, after almost five years of economic crushing of the popular strata, there has not been even a single (“official” or unofficial) European strike against these policies! On the other hand, the supporters of the latter view (Flassbeck and Lapavitsas), acting as the “Plan B” of the Euro-elite––in case it is forced to expel (temporarily or permanently) Greece from the Eurozone––argue for a Greek exit from the Euro, but not from the EU. However, in both cases, the failure of the proposed policies can be taken for granted, although the consequences will not be identical.

 Thus, in the first scenario of a SYRIZA-based government (which looks likely following the Euro elections that could well function as a catalyst for general elections) it is a matter of time for its failure to become evident, if it insists on its pro-EU and pro-Euro policy. Despite its present rhetoric, it would simply have to follow the same economic policies as the present government, perhaps with a minor relaxation of austerity policies (assuming that the Euro-elites will find a way to cancel part of the Debt to make the rest of it payable). As markets will remain open and liberalized under a Syriza government (the party never challenged this fundamental tenet of neoliberal globalization), labor markets will also continue to be flexible. However, open and liberalized markets mean:

• wages and salaries will be kept at around their present minimum levels, or, at least, these levels will be the basis for any future increases strictly linked to productivity rises;
• Public Health and Education will never recover from their present dismantling, as the government will have to continue implementing the present Eurozone strict fiscal policies to keep budget deficits under strict controls;
• the selling out of the social wealth of Greece, following privatizations of essential services like electricity, water, transport, ports and airports, communications (and now even Greek islands!) will not be reversed, making the implementation of any effective social policy to protect the victims of globalization impossible;
• Unemployment may marginally fall from the present almost 30% of the working population (and 60% of young people) only to the extent that foreign investors will be attracted by the present extremely low wages/salaries and the ‘political stability’ that SYRIZA might secure. However, given the strong competition on this front by other low-wage countries in the Balkans and beyond (East Asia), unemployment is bound to be stabilized at very high levels for any foreseeable future, with young Greeks having either to work in Greece’s “heavy industry” (as the establishment calls tourism) or emigrate.

Clearly, this Latin-Americanization (or Balkanization) of the Greek economy will become permanent under SYRIZA’s pro-EU policy, and in the elections to follow a (likely brief) period of SYRIZA in power, the party will probably have the fate of the social democratic party PASOK, which has effectively been demolished. In fact, this would simply be the belated end of the Euro-Left in Greece, following the similar end of this kind of “Left” in the rest of Europe, in the era of globalization. Yet, the International “Left” is unable to see all this and would be ready to celebrate the possible victory of SYRIZA in the next elections,[10] whereas Leo Panitch, is so enthusiastic about the new kind of ‘progressive’ reform SYRIZA represents that he became almost lyrical when reading that Tsipras “spoke in terms of the ‘historic opportunity’ that now exists for a left alternative to the current capitalist ‘European model’.[11] This, at the very moment when the same Tsipras is also indirectly praised by the New York Times, the leading organ of the Transnational Elite, presumably as a ‘serious’ Left politician worthy of its trust, compared to the ‘loony left’ they so despise:

Mr. Tsipras…has backed away from past rhetoric about abandoning the euro and said he does not want Greece to drop out of the 18-country zone that uses the currency. But he does want a fundamental reworking of the terms of Greece’s bailout funds, worth 240 billion euros, or about $328 billion.“Our intention is to change the framework, not smash the euro”, he said.[12]

On the other hand, in the case of the second scenario, i.e. of a Left government that decides a Greek exit from the Euro (but stays in the EU), the image would be much more blurred, as the reintroduction and significant devaluation of the reintroduced drachma would initially bring in some positive results. But, these would be completely temporary, unless they were accompanied by a parallel radical restructuring of the productive structure, based on social decisions and not left to the market forces, as both scenarios implicitly or explicitly assume. And this brings us back to the need for a strategy of self-reliance that presupposes a Greek exit from both the Euro and the EU.

The main reason why both approaches are not only wrong, but also completely misleading, is that they are not based on the fact that the current devastating crisis is due to structural reasons having everything to do with the uneven capitalist development process, which is further exacerbated in the era of neoliberal globalization and the consequent policies implemented by the EU, and very little to do with the broader financial crisis[13], austerity policies, or the debt itself and the ways to deal with it .

Thus, as far as austerity policies are concerned, it is obvious that they are a consequence and not the cause of the devastating crisis. The solution, therefore, to the “problem” is not just the redistribution of income at the expense of profits and in favor of wages, as (supposedly is the conclusion drawn by a “Marxist” kind of analysis), as this inequality is nothing new but an inherent characteristic of the capitalist system. Unsurprisingly, despite growing world inequality during the era of neoliberal globalization, the system has enjoyed a sustained period of expansion throughout this period, with world GDP rising at an average 2.9% in the 1990s and 3.2% in the period up to the beginning of the latest financial crisis (2000-08)[14]. Furthermore, the only case that a systematic redistribution of income against the rich took place in a capitalist system was when the tax burden was shifted to the rich during the social democratic period (approx. 1945-1975). However, this kind of redistribution is simply not feasible anymore in the NWO of Neoliberal Globalization, since Trans-national Corporations can easily move to tax havens like Ireland, India, etc. leaving massive unemployment and poverty behind them.

Yet, neither the deficits and the consequent debts were created by reckless fiscal policies nor, as more sophisticated variations on the same theme maintain, because of the fact that the German elite were suppressing wage rises at a time when the other elites in the Eurozone, and particularly the elites in the Euro periphery, were doing the exact opposite. This policy, according to the same argument had created an artificial competitive advantage and consequent Balance of Payments (BP) surpluses in Germany and, vice versa in the European South, i.e. low competitiveness and BP deficits. This, in turn, had led to excessive borrowing by the peripheral countries, (made easy by the fact that it was backed up by a strong currency, the Euro) up to the moment that the fiscal “bubble” burst, when the consequent shortage of liquidity made lending to these countries much tighter, leading to the well known debt crises in countries like Greece. Not surprisingly, the Euro-elite, has just decided to adopt an even tighter economic control of the Euro-members, through the Banking Union.[15]

6. Concluding remarks

The crucial, therefore, issue arising is the following one: can a small Euro-peripheral country like Greece afford not to implement the policies of neoliberal globalization today? Or, should, (as the present “Left” suggests), the millions of unemployed and poor wait for a radical change in the balance of forces in the EU and the Eurozone, so that a new pan-European Left government proceeds with the ‘progressive’ reforms suggested by its supporters? Alternatively, should they better wait for a new socialist revolution in order to proceed with genuine socialist policies, as suggested by the dwindling anti-capitalist Left? My sympathies would of course be (as have always been) for an anti-systemic Left, as it is the only one which struggles against its full integration into the system and the NWO. Yet, it is obvious to me that, today,  this Left is no less millenarian than the integrated into the system “Left”, and as such is equally useless to the victims of globalization, who every day lose even more their hope for any better future, many of them increasingly resorting to suicide.  

Under these conditions, it is clear to me that only if a country broke away from the internationalized market economy and pursued a policy of self-reliance, it could retrieve the necessary degree of economic and therefore national sovereignty, so that it is the people who will be determining the economic process, i.e. which economic and social needs are met and how, instead of leaving this life-and-death issue to ‘market forces’ and the Social Darwinism they inevitably imply. This, for a country like Greece would imply the need for the creation ‘from below’ of a Popular Front for Social and National Liberation[16] (instead of relying on the professional politicians of the “Left” or of the Right), which will formulate a program for the radical changes needed to achieve the short term aim of restoring full social control on all markets, unilaterally cancelling the Debt and all related legislation imposed by the Troika, as well as a unilateral exit from the EU. Although socialization of the banking system and of the de-nationalized industries, particularly those covering basic needs (energy, water, transport, communication, etc.) will be necessary even at this early stage, yet, the medium-term aim will have to be economic self-reliance, so that the basic needs of all citizens are met through the rebuilding of the economic structure according to social needs rather than according to market demand. On the other hand, the issue of the systemic change, i.e. whether Greece would be in the future a state-socialist society, an Inclusive Democracy,[17] or a radical kind of social democracy, will be determined by the people themselves at a later stage once the present crucial problems concerning their survival have been sorted out..

In fact, Greece will not be alone in such a struggle against the NWO and neoliberal globalization. Not only the peoples in other countries in the European periphery and beyond would follow its example when they realize  that there is a way out of the present catastrophe, HERE and NOW, but also the  peoples who already fight against neoliberal globalization would also join the common struggle against the New World Order of neoliberal globalization. In fact, this struggle is already intensifying from Latin America (Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, et. al.) up to the Eurasian peoples of the ex-USSR, and the peoples in the Arab countries (I do not of course mean the pseudo-revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt or the engineered insurrections in Libya and Syria),[18] who shed their blood everyday in the struggle for their national and social liberation.

Takis Fotopoulos is a political philosopher, editor of Society & Nature/Democracy and Nature/The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy. He has also been a columnist for the Athens Daily Eleftherotypia since 1990. He is also the author of numerous books in Greek on development; the Gulf War; the neo-liberal consensus; the New World Order; the drug culture; the New Order in the Balkans; the new irrationalism; globalization and the Left; the war against “terrorism”; His latest book in Greek is Greece as a protectorate of the transnational elite: The need for an immediate exit from the EU and for a self-reliant economy (Athens: Gordios, November 2010). He is also the author of over 1,000 articles in British, American and Greek theoretical journals, magazines and newspapers, several of which have been translated into over twenty languages. His latest book is :Subjugating the Middle East. Integration into the New World Order (Progressive Press, 2014) 

Notes 

[1] See e.g. the recent book by two members of the SYRIZA  leadership, ( one of them a member of Parliament representing the party), Christos Laskos and Euclid Tsakalotos, Crucible of Resistance: Greece, the Eurozone and the World Economic Crisis, (Pluto Press, Sept. 2013).

Changing US explanations following the October 3 Kunduz hospital attack were all lies – willful deception, covering up a deliberate attack on a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) facility.

Pentagon officials knew it was a hospital, yet attacked it anyway – multiple times for over an hour, killing 24 doctors, other medical staff and patients, injuring 37 others.

Make no mistake! This was a deliberately planned war crime. An AP report said “US analysts knew (the) Afghan site was (a) hospital.”

They’d been gathering intelligence on it for days – the strike authorized on the phony pretext of it being used by “a Pakistani operative…coordinat(ing) (with) Taliban activity,” said AP.

MSF stressed doctors, other medical staff and patients alone were in the facility – no Taliban, Taliban supporters, or other US-installed Afghan puppet regime opponents.

According to AP,

US “special operations analysts had assembled a dossier that included maps with the hospital circled, along with indications that intelligence agencies were tracking the location of the Pakistani operative and activity reports based on overhead surveillance, according to a former intelligence official who is familiar with some of the documents describing the site.”

Claiming the “intelligence suggested the hospital was being used as a Taliban command and control center and may have housed heavy weapons” was a complete fabrication.

Nothing of the sort was there. It was solely a hospital, providing vital medical services for thousands of Afghan victims of US imperialism, now with nowhere to go because of Washington’s horrific war crime.

US General John Campbell in charge of Afghan operations lied, calling the strike a mistake, changing previous phony explanations, stopping short of saying who authorized it.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook compounded his Big Lie, claiming US forces

“would never intentionally target a protected medical facility. We have confidence that the ongoing investigations into this tragic incident will uncover exactly what happened and why this hospital was mistakenly struck.”

Ongoing US, NATO and Afghan investigations will all whitewash Washington’s willful war crime when released – exercises solely in coverup and denial of what’s obvious from what’s already known.

MSF needs approval from US and puppet Afghan authorities to proceed with the independent investigation it demands – unwilling to accept the results of phony ones now being conducted.

On October 15, it launched a petitions drive, urging worldwide support, saying:

MSF “today launched a petition urging citizens to call on President Obama and the United States to consent to an independent investigation into the bombing of MSF’s trauma hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, on October 3.”

MSF called for an independent investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) into the repeated US airstrikes on the hospital…

MSF is calling for the United States and the Obama administration to consent to an investigation into the Kunduz hospital bombing. Consent is required before an impartial truth-seeking investigation can be launched.

Read the petition. Add your name. Demand US war criminals be held accountable for 14 years of naked aggression against a nation threatening no one – the Kunduz hospital attack the latest example of their contempt for human life and welfare.

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 video of 13 year old Palestinian Ahmed Manasrah bleeding to death on the pavement of an East Jerusalem neighborhood has been described as “shocking,” “disturbing,” and “painful to watch.” The callous verbal abuse and insults from Israelis watching the child writhe in agony are variously characterized as “heartless” and “cruel”; and indeed they are. “Die you son of a whore. Die! Die!” the Israeli onlookers can be heard shouting in the video which has since gone viral on social media.

While there has been much discussion of this video, and other similar incidents involving the extrajudicial executions of Palestinian youths accused by Israel of having stabbed Israelis (the veracity of some of these claims is disputed), there is decidedly little examination of the sociological implications. Specifically, it has become taboo to interrogate just what sort of ideological and psychological conclusions can be drawn about Israelis society – a society where such behavior is not an outlier; where, rather than being an anomaly, it is indicative of a significant, if not mainstream, attitude. Such undeniably barbaric treatment is not simple hate, and cannot be explained away or justified. But that is precisely what the corporate media does.

Suffice to say that there are many political analysts, activists, and others who are timid about outright condemnations of Israeli society and Israeli attitudes. They are, with much justification, fearful of being demonized as anti-Semitic, terrified that rather than open dialogue and critical examination, they will have their arguments twisted and portrayed as hateful and racist. While such accusations are sometimes warranted – as in the case of fascist bigots and neo-Nazis for whom “Jew” is synonymous with “evil” – more often than not these are willfully deceptive deflections designed to shield Israeli society from the criticism that it so clearly deserves.

But those whose interest is in justice and speaking the truth cannot be silent, cannot allow themselves to become the victims of self-censorship induced by fear. For muted criticism of Israel is in fact a failure to properly defend oppressed people; it is an abdication of the responsibility to speak against injustice, the brutality of colonialism, and the inhumanity of contemporary Zionism. It is equally an abandonment of the duty to deconstruct dominant narratives in the interest of social justice, to challenge the propaganda of corporate media whose primary function is to shield power from the uncomfortable light of criticism. I cannot, and will not, be silent.

Media Propaganda and the Danger of False Equivalence

Reading the New York Times, Washington Post, and other allegedly liberal major media outlets, one could be forgiven for thinking that the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is tit-for-tat, that it is the product of an ongoing cause-effect-countereffect relationship. That is precisely how the conflict is portrayed in nearly all so-called ‘respectable’ papers.

Take, for instance, an article published in America’s “paper of record,” the New York Times, just hours after the incident with the headline Stabbings, and Deadly Responses, Add to Israel’s Security Challenge. In deconstructing the headline alone, it is clear where the bias and deception lies; the Times imbues the very headline of the article with a presumption of guilt on the part of the Palestinians. According to the syntactic logic of the headline’s construction, it is the “stabbings” (presented first) which are the root of the problem and, therefore, the “deadly responses” are just that, responses. The effect is to justify the murder of Palestinians by portraying them as simply responses to an external factor: violence against Israelis.

But of course anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of the issues knows that the stabbings are themselves responses to the attacks by Israeli settlers and security forces on Palestinians, as well as the predictable outgrowth of seemingly endless brutality and occupation, poverty and despair. The history of colonialism is replete with such examples.

And yet Israelis, and the Israeli state itself, are presented as the victims. The headline frames the issue as being one of a “security challenge” for Israel, rather than, say, a colonialism problem, or a vicious occupation. So, taken in total then, the headline and accompanying article have the cumulative effect of making the victims into perpetrators, and perpetrators into victims, thereby inverting the oppressor/oppressed relationship. This inversion is absolutely necessary in order to whitewash Israel’s crimes, and absolve the state and its fanatical, fascist far right of guilt.

Even the allegedly even-handed treatment of the issue by a presumably moderate liberal outlet such as NBC News, belies a dishonest treatment of the conflict and the recent violence. In covering the incident, NBC News published a story about the Ahmed Manasrah shooting and subsequent taunting with the headline Viral Video of Shot Ahmed Manasrah Sums Up Israel-Palestinian Conflict. The article purports to present the issue fairly by presenting the events surrounding Ahmed’s heinous shooting as emblematic of the entire conflict. Essentially, NBC News here tries to present the competing narratives of Israeli and Palestinian sources as indicative of the broader struggle for public opinion, trying to convince readers that the ongoing allegations and counter-allegations are just more of the same, and that the truth is simply unknowable; after all, Israeli sources say X, Palestinian sources say Y. I guess we’ll never know.

The reader of the NBC article is left with the utterly dishonest, though politically very useful, conclusion that both sides are equally guilty, equally worthy of blame, and that the conflict itself is beyond critical analysis. Moreover, in presenting the issue in this way, the outlet, in this case NBC, is seen as fair, as having provided a balanced accounting. In reality however, it has simply obscured the true nature of the conflict: one between a colonial oppressor and its victims, displaced and dispossessed systematically for seven decades.

But false equivalence aside, by obscuring the truth of the issue, NBC News here inadvertently reveals something fundamentally true about the conflict; that, indeed, this incident very much “sums up the Israel-Palestine conflict.” Though they didn’t intend it this way, NBC News correctly exposes the fact that the behavior of the Israelis on camera is clearly emblematic of the broader society of Israel, one which sees Palestinian children as “dogs,” and “sons of whores” unfit to breathe, unworthy of living.

The Pathology of Israeli Fascism

What the Ahmed Manasrah video laid bare for the world to see is the inhumanity of Zionism, a Jewish supremacist ideology which necessarily places non-Jews in an inferior relation to Jews, which places less value on the life of the non-Jew. It is not simple hatred that motivated the disgusting comments from the onlookers, it is an ingrained, inter-generational sense of superiority bred of dehumanization of the Palestinian, and the Arab generally.

This fundamental fact is only very rarely discussed, but it lies at the heart of the Palestine conflict. By seeing Arabs as subhuman, many Israelis are able to justify, often on an unconscious level, all forms of brutality, violence, and oppression. It should be said here that there are some Israelis who fight against just such thinking (Gideon Levy is perhaps the most prominent and vocal opponent of such supremacist ideology), but sadly they are drowned out by the rabid barbarism of the Israeli right (and much of the center, it must be said).

And this phenomenon, quick to get you rhetorically tarred and feathered as an anti-Semite, is what underlies all Israeli policies, and the active or passive acceptance of those policies by the Israeli body politic. While Ahmed Manasrah bleeding to death amid a swirl of insults from Israelis may elicit a brief outpouring of shock on social media, it is merely one instance of such violence. Is it really that different from Israeli bulldozers demolishing countless Palestinian homes? Is it somehow more barbaric than the torching of Palestinian homes with babies sleeping inside?

Perhaps it would be best not to express shock and outrage at the video, but rather to see it as the logical outgrowth of the fascist, supremacist ideology espoused by the leaders of the Israeli state. For the Israelis on the video are merely following the example of leaders such as Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked who, at the height of Israel’s criminal war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, infamously wrote:

The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation, no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the oblique references. This is a war…It is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority…This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people… What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy… Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs… They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

Such rhetoric, with all the attendant dehumanization, is reminiscent of any number of fascist ideologies, from German Nazism of the 1930s to the contemporary Ukrainian politics of Right Sector and Azov Battalion. The notion of “total war” against an entire people, including non-combatant women and children, is really beyond simple war propaganda, it is the advocacy of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

And this is exactly the point: ethnic cleansing as both a concept and military objective has become the political currency of modern Israel. So why should it surprise anyone when young Israelis wish death upon a bleeding Palestinian, calling him a “son of a whore.” After all, isn’t Ahmed Manasrah just another “little snake”?

…And One More Thing

If past history is any indicator, what has been written above will undoubtedly elicit some negative reactions, condemnations, hate mail, and insults of every sort. “Anti-Semite,” “traitor,” and “self-hater” are some of the most common epithets I’ve heard countless times when I’ve written or spoken out about Israel, Zionism, Jewish supremacy, and such issues. Not only do such obloquies not deter me, they motivate me to further speak out because they are an indication that the words are striking a nerve, one that is raw, and desperately in need of exposure.

I equally recognize the privilege with which I write these lines. As an avowed atheist who rejects the ethno-nationalism and tribalism inherent in the political ideology of Zionism, my Jewish background provides me with a modicum of insulation from accusations of anti-Semitism (not that it stops them, of course). Not only does that allow me greater latitude to write and speak freely on these issues, it reminds me that I have a duty to do so.

For those who don’t righteously oppose the crimes of imperialism, colonialism, oppression, and genocide are undoubtedly complicit in them. I, for one, will not be.

After changing its story many times, the US now admits that it intentionally threw bombs, for more than an hour, at the now famous Doctors Without Borders hospital, proving accurate the assessment of DWB staffer Meinie Nicolai, who said the US attack was “a premeditated massacre.”

Since initial US claims that the protected DWB hospital was a “Taliban stronghold” and so forth have been debunked as stupid, the US now claims it targeted the hospital because one man, a “Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence spy”, was inside.

However, Glenn Greenwald points out that the US puppet government in Afghanistan has had it out for DWB for some time because they treat patients indiscriminately, whereas US allies like Israel, for example, discriminate between patients, treating Al Qaeda fighters while targeting members of the UN-recognized Syrian government: “Israel has opened its borders with Syria in order to provide medical treatment to Nusra Front and al-Qaida fighters wounded in the ongoing civil war, according to The Wall Street Journal.”

On October 14th, an “international panel” announced that it was “ready to investigate the deadly US [hospital] bombing”, but would need “assurances from Barack Obama and the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, that their governments [would] comply.”

The US rejected the initiative for the investigation, and instead, on October 15th, sent soldiers to smash up the bombed hospital with a tank, “destroy[ing] potential evidence” for the war crimes investigation.

To explain this, the US announced that the tank was carrying the US’s own “investigators”.

In the mean time, a whistle-blower has released classified documents on Obama’s global assassination ring that illustrate gross recklessness and confirm that almost one hundred percent of the people being killed are not actual targets – though targeting people and executing them is also criminal.

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

As certain NATO powers are exploiting the recent flood of refugees from the Middle East and Africa to push for more military action in Syria, it is essential to further illustrate the deceptive and nefarious nature of a previous war conducted by the military alliance, namely the 2011 war in Libya.

“We came, we saw, he died”

 These are the repugnant words of the former US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, in an apparent reference to the famous words attributed to Julius Caesar:  “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Clinton was gloating following the brutal murder of the Libyan leader,Muammar al-Qaddafi, by the Libyan rebels in October 2011.

NATO powers exploited the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 which established a “no fly zone” in the country to bomb Libyan government positions and force regime change. As Paul Joseph Watson succinctly summed it up, “a “no fly zone” is merely a euphemism for aerial bombardment and aggressive regime change.”

Supported by Western intelligence agencies – most notably the CIA and MI6 – the al-Qaeda affiliated Libyan rebels worked alongside NATO to overthrow the Libyan government, plunging the country into intolerable chaos which has never halted since 2011. Many fighters from Libya then travelled to fight alongside the Syrian rebels in the proxy war against Bashar al-Assad.

NATO’s intervention turned an advanced country which had the highest standard of living on the African continent, into a failed state devoid of leadership, cohesion and structure.

Inverted Narratives

In a policy brief written in September 2013 by Alan J. Kuperman, an Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, who also holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kuperman outlines that NATO’s only objective in Libya was to force regime change in the country. Despite the inverted narrative promulgated by the Western establishment that the war was a “humanitarian intervention”,

Kuperman details how NATO overthrew the Qaddafi regime even at the expense of civilian life.

The policy brief was based on an earlier article by Kuperman which was published in the summer 2013 issue of the International Security journal, titled: “A Model Humanitarian Intervention? Reassessing NATO’s Libya Campaign“, a project of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School.

Kuperman writes in his policy brief, Lessons from Libya: How not to Intervene, that NATO’s so called “humanitarian intervention” in the North African nation actually “exacerbated humanitarian suffering”:

NATO’s action magnified the conflict’s duration about sixfold, and its death toll at least sevenfold, while also exacerbating human rights abuses, humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons proliferation in Libya and its neighbors. If Libya was a “model intervention,” then it was a model of failure.

The author continues to dispel the mainstream narratives on the war by documenting that the Libyan government did not “initiate Libya’s violence”, but instead “responded” to violence perpetuated by the protestors:

The conventional account of Libya’s conflict and NATO’s intervention is misleading in several key aspects. First, contrary to Western media reports, Qaddafi did not initiate Libya’s violence by targeting peaceful protesters. The United Nations and Amnesty International have documented that in all four Libyan cities initially consumed by civil conflict in mid-February 2011—Benghazi, Al Bayda, Tripoli, and Misurata—violence was actually initiated by the protesters. The government responded to the rebels militarily but never intentionally targeted civilians or resorted to “indiscriminate” force, as Western media claimed.

It was not just the media that was pushing this narrative however, US President Barack Obama asserted in a March 2011 speech that “Qaddafi began attacking his people”, and the US responded by assigning forces “to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger.”

Other assessments of what actually transpired in Libya starkly differ from the President’s words though, as Kuperman argues that NATO was belligerently attempting to force regime change in Libya at any cost, “even at the expense of increasing the harm to Libyans”:

The conventional wisdom is also wrong in asserting that NATO’s main goal in Libya was to protect civilians. Evidence reveals that NATO’s primary aim was to overthrow Qaddafi’s regime, even at the expense of increasing the harm to Libyans… NATO continued to aid the rebels even when they repeatedly rejected government cease-fire offers that could have ended the violence and spared civilians. Such military assistance included weapons, training, and covert deployment of hundreds of troops from Qatar, eventually enabling the rebels to capture and summarily execute Qaddafi and seize power in October 2011.

Kuperman also notes the potential “crimes against humanity” committed by the rebels after they had overthrown the Libyan regime:

The victorious rebels perpetrated scores of reprisal killings and expelled 30,000 mostly black residents of Tawerga on grounds that some had been “mercenaries” for Qaddafi. HRW reported in 2012 that such abuses “appear to be so widespread and systematic that they may amount to crimes against humanity.” Ironically, such racial or ethnic violence had never occurred in Qaddafi’s Libya.

Regime Change in Libya was a Premeditated Geostrategic Objective

Contrary to many mainstream news outlets, the overthrow of the Libyan regime was not a spontaneous decision by NATO powers in response to the Libyan government ‘savagely attacking their own people’. Instead, it was part of a much grander geostrategic plan by Western powers to destroy any nation-state that could resist Western hegemony.

In addition to being named on the neoconservatives hit list in 2000, Libya was targeted for regime change in a 2001 plan circulating around the Pentagon. The plan was revealed by retired four star general and former NATO commander, Wesley Clark, in a speech in 2007 at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco. Clark recites a conversation he had with an official at the Pentagon in 2001, who had received a classified memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office:

I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office, it says we are going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years. We’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

In 2014, three years after the war in the country, Libya joined the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), an organisation which is a corporate member of one of the most preeminent organisations within the Western establishment – the Royal Institute of International Affairs (or Chatham House).

In the future, the EBRD will offer un-payable loans to the North African nation. This will result in Libya being in debt to an organisation that will ensure the country will be subservient to the interests of Western imperialism, whilst experiencing a sustained period of chaos induced by NATO’s war in 2011. This is 21st century imperialism par excellence.

It is clear that for many political leaders in Western capitals, humanitarianism is merely a euphemism for imperialism. Today’s Western elite unimaginatively use the same propaganda over and over again to justify perennial wars. David Cameron recently regurgitated the slogans we heard ad nauseam in 2011, when he claimed the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has “butchered his own people”.

Libya provides a window into Syria’s future if the West ousts Assad, as NATO strategists have no intention of stabilizing Syria if they succeed in ousting the government in Damascus. The Western overthrow of Assad will most probably result in Syria being balkanized into small autonomous regions whilst experiencing a sectarian bloodbath. We can be assured it won’t transition into a democratic utopia (but that doesn’t stop Western propaganda pushing this fairytale).

Thankfully however, Russia will not allow the West to butcher Syria in the same manner they butchered Libya.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Zionist  rabbi Meir Kahane is the founder of the Arab-hating Jewish Defense League (JDL). Israel banned it in 1988, calling it a “threat to national security.”

Even the Islamophobic Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said its membership includes only “thugs and hooligans” – dedicated to hate-mongering and violence against Palestinians.

Its poisonous ideology persists in Israel. Hate-mongering rabbis responded to questions including: “Am I allowed to kick the insurgent, hit him or shoot him in order to kill him after he has been arrested or is this prohibited?”

Rabbi Rabbi Rav Benzion Mutzafi said

“(i)t is not only desirable to do so, but it is a religious duty that you hold his head down to the ground and hit him until his last breath.”

City of Safed chief rabbi Shmeul Eliyahu said it’s

“prohibited to keep (Palestinian ‘vandals’) alive after (their arrest), because if (they’re) left alive, there is a fear that (they’d) be released and (be able to) kill others.”

Since October 1, Israel arrested around 700 Palestinians, many held uncharged, others accused of stone-throwing and/or threatening public security.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club said half of those detained are children, denied contact with family and legal counsel, subjected to brutal torture, forced to confess to whatever charges Israel concocts.

Other children are being lethally shot. Defense for Children International-Palestine’s Accountability Program director Ayed Abu Eqtaish said:

It’s now a matter of when the next Palestinian child fatality will occur and not if it will take place. The complete disregard for human life that Israeli soldiers exhibit suggests that the use of lethal force is their standard operating procedure whatever the circumstance.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad called for Palestinian solidarity against Israeli repression and occupation. They saluted brave martyrs, sacrificing their lives for freedom.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) called on Palestinians to condemn US support for Israeli viciousness. Be wary of John Kerry’s upcoming visit, it stressed – aimed only at ending resistance against repressive occupation, issuing a statement, saying:

The United States presents a strong barrier in front of our people and our rights in all international forums, and uses the veto as a weapon wielded dozens of times to prevent our people from exercising their right to self-determination.

The United States was and still is the head of the snake which spreads poison and sectarian wars to the Arab nation.

On Friday, John Kerry’s spokesman issued a statement saying, he

“strong(ly) condemn(ed) (Palestinian) terror attacks against innocent civilians, and (expressed) support for Israel’s right to defend its citizens.”

An Islamophobic Wall Street Journal editorial accused Palestinians of being knife-wielding terrorists – calling their heroic self-defense “terrorism in its most exact and repulsive form.”

Journal editors endorsed Israeli state terror, saying if its “critics…think they could do better under similar circumstances, they ought to explain how” – ignoring Netanyahu-ordered provocations, then unleashing violence, Israel’s usual tactic, brutalizing defenseless civilians.

The following statement was issued by human rights groups listed below:

Since the beginning of the current wave of violence, there has been a worrying trend to use firearms to kill Palestinians who have attacked Israelis or are suspected of such attacks.

Several incidents have been documented and reported, raising concern that the chosen response to such persons is the harshest possible, with lethal or – at the very least – unnecessary consequences.

In instances when Jews have been suspected of attacks, none of the suspects has been shot. Politicians and senior police officers have not only failed to act to calm the public climate of incitement, but on the contrary have openly called for the extrajudicial killing of suspects.

They have also urged civilians to carry weapons. For example, Jerusalem District Police Commander Moshe Edri was quoted as saying: ‘Anyone who stabs Jews or hurts innocent people is due to be killed.’

Interior Security Minister Gilad Arden declared that ‘every terrorist should know that he will not survive the attack he is about to commit.’ MK Yair Lapid stated that ‘you have to shoot to kill anyone who pulls out a knife or screwdriver.’

Much of the media joined in and encouraged a similar approach. The bodies responsible for supervising police operations – the State Attorney’s Office and the Department for the Investigation of Police – remained silent in the face of these comments.

No-one disputes the serious nature of the events of recent days, nor the need to protect the public against stabbing and other attacks.

However, it seems that too often, instead of acting in a manner consistent with the nature of each incident, police officers and soldiers are quick to shoot to kill. The political and public support for such actions endorses the killing Palestinians in the Territories and in Israel.

Rather than imposing collective punishment on Palestinians in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government should act to end the reality of ongoing and daily oppression faced by some four million people who live without hope of any change in the situation, without any horizon for the end of occupation, and without prospects for a life of liberty and dignity.

Signed by:

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel

Amnesty International-Israel Branch

B’Tselem

The Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel

HaMoked Center for the Defence of the Individual

Yesh Din Volunteers for Human Rights

Adalah – The Legal Center for the Rights of the Arab Minority in Israel

Physician for Human Rights-Israel

A Final Comment

Maan News said an Israeli settler lethally shot a Palestinian teenager around midday on Saturday – near the Beit Haddassah outpost.

Area resident Mufeed Sharabati said “paramedics of the Palestinian Red Crescent (Society) arrived, but Israeli soldiers didn’t allow them to access the (victim).”

“The soldiers then covered (his) face and took him in an ambulance to (an) unknown destination.” Settlers celebrated his death by “distributing candies.”

Witnesses saw Israeli soldiers place a knife by his lifeless body – to be able to claim he attempted to stab his assailant.

The incident came shortly before soldiers lethally shot another Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem. As of midday Saturday local time, the Palestinian death toll stands at 40 since October 1.

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.

Institutionalised brutality is a rather easy thing to replicate. It begins with a selected language, and ends up justifying monstrous conduct. It pardons behaviour, and it condemns victims. The global debate on refugees is characterised by its distinct lack of humanity, and Australia, leading the charge, knows no limits on how far that lack of humanity can go.

The response to the claims that a Somali woman was raped, and then brought back to Australia for an abortion from Nauru, only to then have her returned back to the offshore prison camp, is yet another inglorious tale. Canberra’s response was one of genuine disbelief that a traumatised individual might have required counselling about the procedure.

The immigration minister Peter Dutton decided to go one step further about this perceived wobbliness on her part – a “racket” exploited by asylum seekers had grown up to subvert Australia’s mandatory offshore system. (Repulsively, Australian detention centres, privatised and immunised from legal scrutiny, may designate asylum seekers refugees but not send them back to the Australian mainland.)

Accordingly, Dutton’s statement takes aim at refugee advocates and refugees generally. Regarding the circumstances of her rendition, Dutton was convinced that, “Comments from some advocates to the contrary are a fabrication, while some others appear to be using this woman’s circumstance for their own political agenda. They should be ashamed of their lies.”

Dutton certainly baulks against any notion of humanitarianism, a significant handicap given his ministerial portfolio. At 9:00am on Friday, he authorised immigration officials to take Abyan from her room at Sydney’s Villawood detention centre. The intention was to effectively render her back to Nauru. Before her legal team could get an injunction preventing her effective expulsion from the mainland, government lawyers informed the Federal Court that the application was futile – she was already in Honiara on her way to Nauru.[1] When it comes to expelling and rendering refugees, Canberra’s snail-paced bureaucrats suddenly get busy.

The Refugee Action Coalition’s Ian Rintoul explained to ABC’s AM program that, “What we now know is that she was at some point put on a jet to Honiara to get her out of the country, to avoid court action that might have prevented her being removed from Australia.”

The Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, preferred a different tact to explaining why the government effectively sabotaged due process by speedily whisking Abyan away and out of the court’s jurisdiction. “The information I have is that [the] woman in question changed her mind about seeking a termination and that’s all I know.”

Abyan’s lawyer George Newhouse also disclosed to the ABC that his client wished to see a counsellor before going through with the abortion. “We asked for counselling, support and for her to understand the procedure she was about to undertake.” According to Newhouse, it was precisely in asking for such assistance that the government retaliated. “We are gobsmacked.”

There is certainly more to come. Authorities in Nauru, ever willing to show a colonial like submissiveness to the Australian metropole, have been happy to target alleged victims of rape by releasing police file details and names. A Somali woman known as Najma was one such individual. Nauru’s justice minister, David Adeang, shows little interest in the rampant sexual abuse taking place in what effectively are prison conditions for refugees and asylum seekers. He prefers to see detainees as habitual liars and detainee guards as victimised saints.

Adeang, and Dutton, may have minds cut from the same cloth, but ample evidence has been adduced to the Senate select committee investigating the Australian-funded facility of atrocious conditions. Effectively sending detainees back to such conditions brings the Refugee Convention into play, with such rendition violating the rule against non-refoulement.

Last month, the committee inspired by the gruesome findings of the Moss Review, which revealed the alleged sexual exploitation of detainees, including children, by the staff at the processing centre, found it was “not adequate, appropriate or safe for the asylum seekers detained there.” The committee further observed that, “There appears to be no other pathway for those affected by what they have seen and experienced in the Regional Processing Centre (RPC) on Nauru to disclose allegations of mistreatment, abuse or to make complaints.”[2]

Dutton’s desensitised response? It was an obvious witch hunt that unnecessarily rubbished a strong response against scoundrels seeking to come to Australia by unconventional routes.

With the rendering of a pregnant Somali woman back to Nauru, away from judicial scrutiny and review, on a Royal Australian Airforce Aircraft, the deeply militarised approach to refugees have been confirmed. It is a world of secrets guarded by threats of punishment; it is a world policed by former service personnel. And it is one treated as non-Australian, an issue for the Nauru authorities.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2015-10-17/pregnant-asylum-seeker-returned-to-nauru-changed-her-mind-about-having-an-abortion-pm-says/1504522

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-31/senate-inquiry-calls-for-children-to-be-removed-from-nauru/6738644

The Syrian conflict is profoundly misrepresented across the entirety of the Western press.

To call it a civil war is a gross mischaracterization. The entire conflict was engineered and fueled from beyond Syria’s borders. And while there are a significant number of Syrians collaborating with this criminal conspiracy, the principle agents driving the conflict are foreigners. They include special interests in the United States, across the Atlantic in Europe, and regional players including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel.Syria is far from an isolated conflict. America’s interest in dividing and destroying Syria is part of a much larger agenda serving its aspirations both in the region and globally. The division and destruction of Syria as a functioning, sovereign nation-state is admittedly meant to set the stage for the conquest of Iran next.

US End Game in Syria is Just the Beginning for Wider Regional War  

Reuters recently published an op-ed titled, “Syria’s one hope may be as dim as Bosnia’s once was,” which argues that the only way the US can cooperate with Russia regarding Syria is if all players agree to a weakened, fragmented Syria.

If this scheme sounds familiar, that is because this op-ed was authored by Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution – a corporate-financier funded think-tank that has in part helped engineer the chaos now consuming the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). O’Hanlon previously published a paper titled, “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war,” in which he also calls for the division and destruction of Syria.

In it, O’Hanlon calls for the establishment of “safe zones,” the invasion and occupation of Syrian territory by US, European, and Persian Gulf special forces, the relaxing of criteria used to openly fund what would essentially be terrorists operating in Syria, and openly making the ousting of the Syrian government a priority on par with the alleged US fight against the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL).

“Relaxing” criteria regarding who the US can openly fund and provide direct military support for, is nothing less than tacit support for terrorism and terrorists themselves.

But none of these treacherous methods should be shocking. That is because O’Hanlon is also a co-author of the 2009 Brookings Institution report titled,

“Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran”.

In this signed and dated criminal conspiracy, methods for covertly overthrowing the Iranian government with US-backed mobs augmented with armed militants, the use of US listed foreign terrorist organizations to wage a proxy war against Iran, the provocation of open war with Iran, and the use of Israel to unilaterally attack Iran first, before bringing America inevitably into the war shortly after are all described in great detail throughout the 156 page report.

This territory has never been in the hands of the Islamic State, deputy chief of the Russian General Staff Andrey Kartapolov points out

Traces of airstrikes against household buildings have been found at the Syria-Jordan border, where Russian warplanes have performed no missions, deputy chief of the Russian General Staff Andrey Kartapolov said on Friday.

“We have spotted ruins of household buildings destroyed by bombing near the settlement of Kherbet Ghazala at the Syrian-Jordan border,” he told a briefing for foreign military attaches and journalists.

“Russian warplanes have never performed any missions there and, as far as we know, the Syrian aviation has not been used there either,” he stressed. “This territory has never been in the hands of the Islamic State. Moreover, this area has been controlled by the Free Syrian Army since 2013.”

He demonstrated photos of the area featuring bomb-destroyed buildings. “You can see on these photos that there are no signs of military activity around these cottages, there are no military hardware, not even signs of military hardware. These are regular gardens and fields with buildings to keep farming tools,” he said.

“Why destroy these buildings? It looks like somebody’s pilots were just training their skills or dropped bombs to report to their command about completed mission,” Kartapolov said.

Airstrikes by US-led coalition in Syria increase refugee flow to Europe

Airstrikes of US-led coalition on civilian facilities o the Syrian territory lead to increasing refugee flows to the European Union, Kartapolov went on to say.

“Over the last two weeks, we have provided enough video materials confirming the precision of [Russian] airstrikes. Our jets deliver airstrikes at facilities located outside of settlements,” Kartapolov said.

“It is not in our rules to advise colleagues on where to deliver their airstrikes. However, on October 11, near the settlement of Tel-Alam, the coalition’s jets destroyed by airstrikes a thermal power plant and transformer substation,” he added. As a result, hospitals and schools in Aleppo were left without electricity. Water pumping stations and sewage also stopped working which can be very harmful in the conditions of high temperatures.

“I think that it is unlikely that our partners did not know that the thermal power plant worked only eight hours per day. Airstrikes were delivered for several days, and on October 11, the power station was completely destroyed. One might het an impression that someone is deliberately destroying infrastructure in settlements, thus making the life of local population impossible. Because of that, civilians leave these settlements after losing living conditions and increase the refugee flow to Europe,” Kartapolov noted.

It doesn’t get any more backward than this. Potentially, this is the dumbest move yet by bureaucrats in Brussels.

Turkey is set to pick up a few big sweeteners from Brussels if it ‘tries’ to stop refugee flow into Europe – even though it’s nearly impossible for Ankara to actually come good on its lofty promise to ‘contain’ the large refugee flow through Turkey into the European promise land.

It’s true that Turkey has accommodated roughly 2 million Syrian refugees, and is said to have spent over nearly $8 billion on the crisis thus far. 

What they are not telling us however, is that Turkey has been the primary facilitator of the Syrian conflict, mainly by hosting terrorist and ‘rebel’ training and equipping for tens of thousands of fighters since 2011, as well as providing a continuous safe haven for terrorist fighters – freely coming and going over its southern border with Syria.

FREE EU ENTRY: Turkish passport holders from ISIS will now be free to enter the whole of Europe.

The public got a shocking glimpse of the casual relationship between Turkish authorities and ISIS last year after video surfaced showing Islamic State militants having a friendly chat with a group of Turkish border guards near the besieged Syrian city of Kobane. The fact that Turkey is a NATO member makes this crime all the more egregious.

In short, Turkey is a “bad actor” in the Syria story. Now they are being rewarded with what essential has most of the features of a ‘fast-track’ provisional membership into the EU. Cries from European leaders like David Cameron to halt the flow of immigrants and to ‘not risk the security of Europe’ are sounding more hollow than ever right now.

ISIS ENABLER: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has managed to fool a clueless EU.

‘Easy’ EU Entry For Turkish Terrorists?

The terms of this latest deal are almost unbelievable. Incredibly, EU official seem to be completely ignorant of the fact that most of the new ISIS recruits are now coming from Turkey. This completely insane new proposal from Europe effectively gives legal access into the entire EU for any Syria or Turkey-based ISIS and al Nusra Front terrorists who either have, or can acquire a Turkish passport.

With Russian airstrikes now crushing ISIS infrastructure in Syria, fleeing terrorist fighters are looking for an easy escape over Syria’s northern border into Turkey – and now, thanks to this deal from Brussels – they are one step closer to the streets of Europe.

Brussels appears clueless to the reality of what is happening on the ground in Turkey. This might be the stupidest move that the EU has ever made in its history.

Perhaps this is exactly what Brussels wants in order to erect the next phase of its technocratic security state?

Merkel’s stance on #RefugeesCrisis ‘naive, irrational’ – former Czech presidenthttp://t.co/8tMFCf8IHN pic.twitter.com/uvONW5UUIw

— RT (@RT_com) October 15, 2015

Another stitch-up from the boys in Brussels..?

Israel is more killing machine than nation – a ruthless Arab-hating monster. On Friday, it continued murdering Palestinians in cold blood, another five lethally shot, the death toll now at 38 since October 1 alone, around 2,000 others injured, 300 on Friday alone, many thousands more from toxic tear gas.

Palestinians have no heavy weapons, mostly stones, their bare hands and passion to be free from a heavily armed brutal occupier. International law affirms their right to resist – heroically struggling for decades for freedom, deserving it as much as Israelis and everyone else, getting virtually no world community support.

Friday saw clashes throughout the West Bank. Security Council members met in emergency session to discuss ongoing violence, accomplishing nothing. US veto power assures no resolution or other action condemning Israeli high crimes.

Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour called for immediate UN intervention against Israeli violence. At the same time, his PA leadership openly collaborates with its state terror.

Washington absolves Israel of blame, complicit with its viciousness, blaming Palestinians for ongoing violence. An entire population is being raped and held responsible for its own suffering.

Amnesty International’s Middle East/North Africa director Philip Luther said “(w)e are seeing a dangerous pattern of deliberate attacks on civilians and unlawful killings.”

Israeli forces have used excessive force on a large scale and intensified restriction on movement and have vowed to increase illegal punishments such as home demolitions.

Security measures must respect international law. Collective punishment of the Palestinian population can never be justified.

On Friday, Obama showed which side he’s on. During a press conference with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, his comments surprised no one, saying:

We condemn in the strongest possible terms violence directed against innocent people and believe that Israel has a right to maintain basic law and order and protect its citizens from knife attacks and violence on the streets.

No mention of premeditated, cold-blooded Israeli murders, extreme brutality against a long-oppressed people, terrorizing them ruthlessly – with full US support and encouragement.

There’s no ambiguity about what’s ongoing, a continuation of decades of occupation harshness – unaccountable because of full US support, echoed by one-sided media reports, blaming Palestinians for Israeli high crimes.

Murder is self-defense when its security forces commit it – terrorism when Palestinians defend themselves heroically. Longstanding injustice condemns them to endless misery, the cross they continue to bear.

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.

Note: This article was originally published in 2014.

A multi-spectrum war is being waged against Moscow by Washington. If there are any doubts about this, they should be put to rest. Geopolitics, science and technology, speculation, financial markets, information streams, large business conglomerates, intelligentsia, mass communication, social media, the internet, popular culture, news networks, international institutions, sanctions, audiences, public opinion, nationalism, different governmental bodies and agencies, identity politics, proxy wars, diplomacy, countervailing international alliances, major business agreements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), human rights, prestige, military personnel, capital, and psychological tactics are all involved in this multi-spectrum war. On a daily basis this struggle can be seen playing out on the airwaves, in the war theaters in Ukraine and the Middle East, through the statements and accusations of diplomats, and in the economic sphere.

Additionally, the debates and questions on whether a new cold war—a post-Cold War cold war—has emerged or if the Cold War never ended should be put to rest too. The mentality of the Cold War never died in the Washington Beltway. From the perspective of Russian officials, it is clear that the US never put down its war mace and continued the offensive. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, defeating the Soviets and Eastern Bloc, and seeing the Soviet Union dismantled into fifteen republics was not enough for the Cold War warriors in the US. The newly emergent Russian Federation had to be placated in their views.

Petro-politics have been a major feature of this multi-spectrum war too. [1] Not only have energy prices been a factor in this struggle, but so are financial markets and national currencies. The manipulated decline in the price of energy, which has been driven by the flooding of the global market with oil, is now being augmented by a siege on the value of the Russian ruble. This is part of what appears to be a deliberate two-pronged attack on the Russian Federation that seeks to cut Russia’s revenues through market manipulation via economic sanctions and price drops. It is what you would call a «double whammy». While sanctions have been imposed on the Russian economy by the US and its allies, including Australia, Canada, the European Union, and Japan, offensives on Russia’s main source of revenue — energy — and its national currency have taken place.

Currency Warfare and Inflation

The price of the Russian ruble begun to drop in December 2014 as a consequence of the economic siege on the Russian Federation, the drop in global energy prices, and speculation. «Judging by the situation in the country, we are in the midst of a deep currency crisis, one that even Central Bank employees say they could not have foreseen in their worst nightmares», Interfax’s Vyacheslav Terekhov commented on the currency crisis while talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a Kremlin press conference on December 18, 2014. [2] Putin himself admitted this too at the press conference. While answering Terekhov, Putin explained that «the situation has changed under the influence of certain foreign economic factors, primarily the price of energy resources, of oil and consequently of gas as well». [3]

Some may think that the drop in the Russian ruble’s value is a result of the market acting on its own while others who recognize that there is market manipulation involved may turn around and blame it on the Russian government and Vladimir Putin. This process, however, has been guided by US machinations. It is simply not a result of the market acting on its own or the result of Kremlin policies. It is the result of US objectives and policy that deliberately targets Russia for destabilization and devastation. This is why Putin answered Terekhov’s question by saying that the drop in the value of the Russian ruble «was obviously provoked primarily by external factors». [4]

Both US Assistant-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland — the wife of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) co-founder and neo-conservative advocate for empire Robert Kagan — and US Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury Daniel Glaser told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives in May 2014 that the objectives of the US economic sanctions strategy against the Russian Federation was not only to damage the trade ties and business between Russia and the EU, but to also bring about economic instability in Russia and to create currency instability and inflation. [5] In other words, the US government was targeting the Russian ruble for devaluation and the Russian economy for inflation since at least May 2014.

It appears that the US is trying to manipulate the Kremlin into spending Russia’s resources and fiscal reserves to fight the inflation of the Russian ruble that Washington has engineered. The Kremlin, however, will not take the bait and be goaded into depleting the approximately $419 billion (US) foreign currency reserves and gold holdings of the Russian Federation or any of Russia’s approximately 8.4 trillion ruble reserves in an effort to prop the declining value of the Russian ruble. In this regard, while holding a press conference, President Putin stated the following on December 18, 2014: «The Central Bank does not intend to ‘burn’ them all senselessly, which is right». [6] Putin emphasized this again when answering Vyacheslav Terekhov’s question by saying that the Russian government and Russian Central Bank «should not hand out our gold and foreign currency reserves or burn them on the market, but provide lending resources». [7]

The Kremlin understands what Washington is trying to do. The US is replaying old game plans against Russia. The energy price manipulation, the currency devaluation, and even US attempts to entrap Russia in a conflict with its sister-republic Ukraine are all replays of US tactics that have been used before during the Cold War and after 1991. For example, dragging Russia into Ukraine would be a replay of how the US dragged the Soviet Union into Afghanistan whereas the manipulation of energy prices and currency markets would parallel the US strategy used to weaken and destabilize Baathist Iraq, Iran, and the Soviet Union during the Afghan-Soviet War and Iran-Iran War.

Instead of trying to stop the value of the ruble from dropping, the Kremlin appears to have decided to strategically invest in Russia’s human capital. Russia’s national reserve funds will be used to diversify the national economy and strengthen the social and public sectors. Despite the economic warfare against Russia, this is exactly why the wages of teachers in schools, professors in post-secondary institutions of learning and training, employees of cultural institutions, doctors in hospitals and clinics, paramedics, and nurses — the most important sectors for developing Russia’s human capital and capacity — have all been raised.

The Russian Bear Courts the Turkish Grey Wolf

The Kremlin, however, has an entire list of options at its disposal for countering the US offensive against Russia. One of them involves the courting of Turkey. The Russian courtship of Turkey has involved the Russian move away from the construction of the South Stream natural gas pipeline from Russia across the Black Sea to Bulgaria.

Putin announced that Russia has cancelled the South Stream project on December 1, 2014. Instead the South Stream pipeline project has been replaced by a natural gas pipeline that goes across the Black Sea to Turkey from the Russian Federation’s South Federal District. This alternative pipeline has been popularly billed the «Turk Stream» and partners Russian energy giant Gazprom with Turkey’s Botas. Moreover, Gazprom will start giving Turkey discounts in the purchase of Russian natural gas that will increase with the intensification of Russo-Turkish cooperation.

The natural gas deal between Ankara and Moscow creates a win-win situation for both the Turkish and Russian sides. Not only will Ankara get a discount on energy supplies, but Turk Stream gives the Turkish government what it has wanted and desired for years. The Turk Stream pipeline will make Turkey an important energy corridor and transit point, complete with transit revenues. In this case Turkey becomes the corridor between energy supplier Russia and European Union and non-EU energy customers in southeastern Europe. Ankara will gain some leverage over the European Union and have an extra negotiating card with the EU too, because the EU will have to deal with it as an energy broker.

For its part, Russia has reduced the risks that it faced in building the South Stream by cancelling the project. Moscow could have wasted resources and time building the South Stream to see the project sanctioned or obstructed in the Balkans by Washington and Brussels. If the European Union really wants Russian natural gas then the Turk Stream pipeline can be expanded from Turkey to Greece, the former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, and other European countries that want to be integrated into the energy project.

The cancellation of South Stream also means that there will be one less alternative energy corridor from Russia to the European Union for some time. This has positive implications for a settlement in Ukraine, which is an important transit route for Russian natural gas to the European Union. As a means of securing the flow of natural gas across Ukrainian territory from Russia, the European Union will be more prone to push the authorities in Kiev to end the conflict in East Ukraine.

In more ways than one the Turk Stream pipeline can be viewed as a reconfigured of the failed Nabucco natural gas pipeline. Not only will Turk Stream court Turkey and give Moscow leverage against the European Union, instead of reducing Russian influence as Nabucco was originally intended to do, the new pipeline to Turkey also coaxes Ankara to align its economic and strategic interests with those of Russian interests. This is why, when addressing Nabucco and the rivalries for establishing alternate energy corridors, this author pointed out in 2007 that «the creation of these energy corridors and networks is like a two-edged sword. These geo-strategic fulcrums or energy pivots can also switch their directions of leverage. The integration of infrastructure also leads towards economic integration». [8]

The creation of Turk Stream and the strengthening of Russo-Turkish ties may even help placate the gory conflict in Syria. If Iranian natural gas is integrated into the mainframe of Turk Stream through another energy corridor entering Anatolia from Iranian territory, then Turkish interests would be even more tightly aligned with both Moscow and Tehran. Turkey will save itself from the defeats of its neo-Ottoman policies and be able to withdraw from the Syrian crisis. This will allow Ankara to politically realign itself with two of its most important trading partners, Iran and Russia.

It is because of the importance of Irano-Turkish and Russo-Turkish trade and energy ties that Ankara has had an understanding with both Russia and Iran not to let politics and their differences over the Syrian crisis get in the way of their economic ties and business relationships while Washington has tried to disrupt Irano-Turkish and Russo-Turkish trade and energy ties like it has disrupted trade ties between Russia and the EU. [9] Ankara, however, realizes that if it lets politics disrupt its economic ties with Iran and Russia that Turkey itself will become weakened and lose whatever independence it enjoys

Masterfully announcing the Russian move while in Ankara, Putin also took the opportunity to ensure that there would be heated conversation inside the EU. Some would call this rubbing salt on the wounds. Knowing that profit and opportunity costs would create internal debate within Bulgaria and the EU, Putin rhetorically asked if Bulgaria was going to be economically compensated by the European Commission for the loss.

The Russian Bear and the Chinese Dragon

It is clear that Russian business and trade ties have been redirected to the People’s Republic of China and East Asia. On the occasion of the Sino-Russian mega natural gas deal, this author pointed out that this was not as much a Russian countermove to US economic pressure as it was really a long-term Russian strategy that seeks an increase in trade and ties with East Asia. [10] Vladimir Putin himself also corroborated this standpoint during the December 18 press conference mentioned earlier when he dismissed — like this author — the notion that the so-called «Russian turn to the East» was mainly the result of the crisis in Ukraine.

In President Putin’s own words, the process of increasing business ties with the Chinese and East Asia «stems from the global economic processes, because the East – that is, the Asia-Pacific Region – shows faster growth than the rest of the world». [11] If this is not convincing enough that the turn towards East Asia was already in the works for Russia, then Putin makes it categorically clear as he proceeds talking at the December 18 press conference. In reference to the Sino-Russian gas deal and other Russian projects in East Asia, Putin explained the following: «The projects we are working on were planned long ago, even before the most recent problems occurred in the global or Russian economy. We are simply implementing our long-time plans». [12]

From the perspective of Russian Presidential Advisor Sergey Glazyev, the US is waging its multi-spectrum war against Russia to ultimately challenge Moscow’s Chinese partners. In an insightful interview, Glazyev explained the following points to the Ukrainian journalist Alyona Berezovskaya — working for a Rossiya Segodnya subsidiary focusing on information involving Ukraine — about the basis for US hostility towards Russia: the bankruptcy of the US, its decline in competitiveness on global markets, and Washington’s inability to ultimately save its financial system by servicing its foreign debt or getting enough investments to establish some sort of innovative economic breakthrough are the reasons why Washington has been going after the Russian Federation. [13] In Glazyev’s own words, the US wants «a new world war». [14] The US needs conflict and confrontation, in other words. This is what the crisis in Ukraine is nurturing in Europe.

Sergey Glazyev reiterates the same points months down the road on September 23, 2014 in an article he authors for the magazine Russia in Global Affairs, which is sponsored by the Russian International Affairs Council — a think-tank founded by the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russian Ministry of Education in 2010 — and the US journal Foreign Affairs — which is the magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relation in the US. In his article, Glazyev adds that the war Washington is inciting against Russia in Europe may ultimately benefit the Chinese, because the struggle being waged will weaken the US, Russia, and the European Union to the advantage of China. [15] The point of explaining all this is to explain that Russia wants a balanced strategic partnership with China. Glazyev himself even told Berezovskaya in their interview that Russia wants a mutually beneficial relationship with China that does reduce it to becoming a subordinate to Beijing. [16]

Without question, the US wants to disrupt the strategic partnership between Beijing and Moscow. Moscow’s strategic long-term planning and Sino-Russian cooperation has provided the Russia Federation with an important degree of economic and strategic insulation from the economic warfare being waged against the Russian national economy. Washington, however, may also be trying to entice the Chinese to overplay their hand as Russia is economically attacked. In this context, the price drops in the energy market may also be geared at creating friction between Beijing and Moscow. In part, the manipulation of the energy market and the price drops could seek to weaken and erode Sino-Russian relations by coaxing the Chinese into taking steps that would tarnish their excellent ties with their Russian partners. The currency war against the Russian ruble may also be geared towards this too. In other words, Washington may be hoping that China becomes greedy and shortsighted enough to make an attempt to take advantage of the price drop in energy prices in the devaluation of the Russian ruble.

Whatever Washington’s intentions are, every step that the US takes to target Russia economically will eventually hurt the US economy too. It is also highly unlikely that the policy mandarins in Beijing are unaware of what the US may try to be doing. The Chinese are aware that ultimately it is China and not Russia that is the target of the United States.

Economic Terrorism: An Argentina versus the Vulture Funds Scenario?

The United States is waging a fully fledged economic war against the Russian Federations and its national economy. Ultimately, all Russians are collectively the target. The economic sanctions are nothing more than economic warfare. If the crisis in Ukraine did not happen, another pretext would have been found for assaulting Russia.

Both US Assistant-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury Daniel Glaser even told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives in May 2014 that the ultimate objectives of the US economic sanctions against Russia are to make the Russian population so miserable and desperate that they would eventually demand that the Kremlin surrender to the US and bring about «political change». «Political change» can mean many things, but what it most probably implies here is regime change in Moscow. In fact, the aims of the US do not even appear to be geared at coercing the Russian government to change its foreign policy, but to incite regime change in Moscow and to cripple the Russian Federation entirely through the instigation of internal divisions. This is why maps of a divided Russia are being circulated by Radio Free Europe. [17]

According to Presidential Advisor Sergey Glazyev, Washington is «trying to destroy and weaken Russia, causing it to fragment, as they need this territory and want to establish control over this entire space». [18] «We have offered cooperation from Lisbon to Vladivostok, whereas they need control to maintain their geopolitical leadership in a competition with China,» he has explained, pointing out that the US wants lordship and is not interested in cooperation. [19] Alluding to former US top diplomat Madeline Albright’s sentiments that Russia was unfairly endowed with vast territory and resources, Putin also spoke along similar lines at his December 18 press conference, explaining how the US wanted to divide Russia and control the abundant natural resources in Russian territory.

It is of little wonder that in 2014 a record number of Russian citizens have negative attitudes about relations between their country and the United States. A survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center has shown that of 39% of Russian respondents viewed relations with the US as «mostly bad» and 27% as «very bad». [20] This means 66% of Russian respondents have negative views about relations with Washington. This is an inference of the entire Russian population’s views. Moreover, this is the highest rise in negative perceptions about the US since 2008 when the US supported Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi’s war against Russia and the breakaway republic of South Ossetia; 40% viewed them as «mostly bad» and 25% of Russians viewed relations as «very bad» and at the time. [21]

Russia can address the economic warfare being directed against its national economy and society as a form of «economic terrorism». If Russia’s banks and financial institutions are weakened with the aim of creating financial collapse in the Russian Federation, Moscow can introduce fiscal measures to help its banks and financial sector that could create economic shockwaves in the European Union and North America. Speaking in hypothetical terms, Russia has lots of options for a financial defensive or counter-offensive that can be compared to its scorched earth policies against Western European invaders during the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, and the Second World War. If Russian banks and institutions default and do not pay or delay payment of their derivative debts and justify it on the basis of the economic warfare and economic terrorism, there would be a financial shock and tsunami that would vertebrate from the European Union to North America. This scenario has some parallels to the steps that Argentina has taken to sidestep the vulture funds.

The currency war eventually will rebound on Washington and Wall Street. The energy war will also reverse directions. Already, the Kremlin has made it clear that it and a coalition of other countries will de-claw the US in the currency market through a response that will neutralize US financial manipulation and the petro-dollar. In the words of Sergey Glazyev, Moscow is thinking of a «systemic and comprehensive» response «aimed at exposing and ending US political domination, and, most importantly, at undermining US military-political power based on the printing of dollars as a global currency». [22] His solution includes the creation of «a coalition of sound forces advocating stability — in essence, a global anti-war coalition with a positive plan for rearranging the international financial and economic architecture on the principles of mutual benefit, fairness, and respect for national sovereignty». [23]

The coming century will not be the «American Century» as the neo-conservatives in Washington think. It will be a «Eurasian Century». Washington has taken on more than it can handle, this may be why the US government has announced an end to its sanctions regime against Cuba and why the US is trying to rekindle trade ties with Iran. Despite this, the architecture of the post-Second World War or post-1945 global order is now in its death bed and finished. This is what the Kremlin and Putin’s presidential spokesman and press secretary Dmitry Peskov mean when they impart—as Peskov stated to Rossiya-24 in a December 17, 2014 interview — that the year 2014 has finally led to «a paradigm shift in the international system».

NOTES

The New York Times Plays Games with MH-17 Tragedy

By Robert Parry, October 16 2015

In its single-minded propaganda campaign against Russia, The New York Times has no interest in irony, but if it had, it might note that some of the most important advances made by the Dutch Safety Board’s report on the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 came because the Russian government declassified sensitive details about its anti-aircraft weaponry.

Could it be that premier scientific journals are finally conveying the truth about GMOs? In a relatively recent exploration of ‘ubiquitous’ GMOs that have taken over our food supply, the New England Journal of Medicine tackles 2 new concerns over genetically modified organisms and the pesticides used to grow them.

As the journal points out, the omnipresence of GMOs are taken for granted by most physicians. They aren’t high on their list of health concerns, and barely receive a mention when patients come for a visit. This might start to change though, due to 2 fresh developments concerning GM crops.

1. The EPA Approved Enlist Due – A Toxic Herbicide Concoction

The first is the fact that there have been “sharp increases in the amounts and numbers of chemical herbicides applied to GM crops,” and the numbers are expected to increase.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently approved Enlist Duo, a new combination herbicide comprising glyphosate and 2,4-D, both chemicals have been proven to be extremely dangerous to human health, and equally detrimental to the environment.

Enlist Duo was formulated to combat herbicide-resistance, a seeming paradox of poison meets poison, or a serpent eating its own tale to the most high degree. An infinite loop of disregard for nature only brought about more disregard with an ouroboros-like action.

If only biotech could actually sustain life with its destruction of it. Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, etc. certainly have no plans to plant organic seeds in the burnt carnage they’ve left behind in our fields. In fact, Enlist Duo will be marketed with new GM seeds engineered and approved to withstand the spraying of more glyphosate and 2,4-D than ever before. Even the EPA admitted that it expects a 7-fold increase in the use of these pesticides due to their own approval of the chemical concoction.

How did the EPA manage to give Enlist Duo a green light? They used toxicology studies commissioned by herbicide manufacturers in the 1980’s and 1990’s that were never published – not an uncommon practice in U.S. pesticide regulation. These studies are of toxicology alone, and do not take into consideration the more recent studies showing what these pesticides and herbicides do to our endocrine system.

They also discount all epi-genetic effects, as well as ignoring health risks to infants and small children. Finally, these commissioned studies fail to look at environmental effects, either, as we’ve recently watched our pollinators suffer profoundly. As if this isn’t enough, the studies also fail to look at the ‘inactive’ ingredients in glyphosate or 2,4-D, known to be just as toxic as the active ingredients themselves.

2. The WHO Declares Widely-Used Herbicide “Probably Carcinogenic”

The second new development which is a cause for concern is the declaration by the IARC that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen” and 2,4-D is a “possible human carcinogen.”

These classifications were based on comprehensive assessments of the toxicologic and epidemiologic literature that linked both herbicides to dose-related increases in malignant tumors at multiple anatomical sites in animals and linked glyphosate to an increased incidence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in humans.

These issues were important enough that The National Academy of Sciences convened a new committee to reassess the social, economic, environmental, and human health effects of GM crops. This development is welcome, but the committee’s report is not expected until at least 2016.

Unless we tell the EPA with vehemence that they need to reverse their decision on Enlist Duo, we’re just beginning to see the damage that GMOs can do. Their decision was based on bad science, and likely influenced by the motivations of those within the regulatory body that have deep ties with the biotech industry. The revolving door (see below) is killing our pollinators, us, and our future generations.

The New England Journal of Medicine summarizes the issue:

“We believe the time has come to revisit the United States’ reluctance to label GM foods. Labeling will deliver multiple benefits. It is essential for tracking emergence of novel food allergies and assessing effects of chemical herbicides applied to GM crops. It would respect the wishes of a growing number of consumers who insist they have a right to know what foods they are buying and how they were produced.

And the argument that there is nothing new about genetic rearrangement misses the point that GM crops are now the agricultural products most heavily treated with herbicides and that two of these herbicides may pose risks of cancer. We hope, in light of this new information, that the FDA will reconsider labeling of GM foods and couple it with adequately funded, long-term postmarketing surveillance.”

The Revolving Door, Biotech, And The Government 

Revolving Door Between GMO Companies, And US Government Agencies:

• “David W. Beier . . .former head of Government Affairs for Genentech, Inc. . . . chief domestic policy advisor to Al Gore when he was Vice President.

• Linda J. Fisher . . .former Assistant Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances…now Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto Corporation.

• Michael A. Friedman, M.D. . . former acting commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Department of Health and Human Services . . .now senior vice-president for clinical affairs at G. D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceutical division of Monsanto Corporation.

• Val Giddings . . . former biotechnology regulator and (biosafety) negotiator at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA/APHIS) . . .now Vice President for Food & Agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

• Marcia Hale . . . former assistant to the President of the United States and director for intergovernmental affairs . . .now Director of International Government Affairs for Monsanto Corporation.

• Michael (Mickey) Kantor. . . former Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce and former Trade Representative of the United States . . . now member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.

• Josh King . . . former director of production for White House events. . . now director of global communication in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.

• Terry Medley . . . former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice-chair of the United States Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council, former member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food advisory committee…and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation’s Agricultural Enterprise.

• Margaret Miller . . . former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto, . . .now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).*

• Michael Phillips . . . recently with the National Academy of Science Board on Agriculture . . . now head of regulatory affairs for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

• William D. Ruckelshaus . . . former chief administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). . .now (and for the past 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation.

• Michael Taylor . . . former legal advisor to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods, later executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA… still later a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding where he supervised a nine-lawyer group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company… still later Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the United States Food and Drug Administration, . . . and later with the law firm of King & Spaulding… now head of the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation.*

• Lidia Watrud . . . former microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, . . .now with the United States Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division.

• Jack Watson. . .former chief of staff to the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, . . .now a staff lawyer with Monsanto Corporation in Washington, D.C.

• Clayton K. Yeutter . . . former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, former U.S. Trade Representative (who led the U.S. team in negotiating the U.S. Canada Free Trade Agreement and helped launch the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations), now a member of the board of directors of Mycogen Corporation, whose majority owner is Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company.

• Larry Zeph . . . former biologist in the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, . . . now Regulatory Science Manager at Pioneer Hi-Bred International.

• *Margaret Miller, Michael Taylor, and Suzanne Sechen (an FDA “primary reviewer for all rbST and other dairy drug production applications” ) were the subjects of a U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation in 1994 for their role in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Posilac, Monsanto Corporation’s formulation of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbST or rBGH). The GAO Office found “no conflicting financial interests with respect to the drug’s approval” and only “one minor deviation from now superseded FDA regulations”. (Quotations are from the 1994 GAO report).”

Plants in the area around Fukushima, Japan are widely contaminated with radioactive cesium, which is producing mutation and death in local butterflies, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa and published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The butterflies were found to experience severe negative effects at all detectable radiation levels, even very low ones.

“We conclude that the risk of ingesting a polluted diet is realistic, at least for this butterfly, and likely for certain other organisms living in the polluted area,” the researchers wrote.

Insects hard hit

The researchers note that although the 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant released “a massive amount of radioactive materials … into the environment,” few studies have looked at the biological effects of this disaster. Researchers have, however, measured elevated radiation levels in the polluted area, and have chronicled the accumulation of radioactive material in both wild and domestic plant and animal life in the region.

Studies have also suggested that insects may be particularly hard-hit by the increased radiation. One study found an increase in morphological abnormalities (physical deformities) in gall-forming aphids. Another found that insect abundance has decreased in the affected region, particularly butterfly abundance.

In order to test the effects of the radioactivity on local insects, researchers collected pale grass blue butterfly (Zizeeria maha) larvae from Okinawa, which is distant from Fukushimaand “likely the least polluted locality in Japan.” They then fed the larvae on plant leaves collected from one of five different regions: Hirono, Fukushima, Iitate-flatland, Iitate-montane and Ube. Because the five regions are all at different distances from Fukushima, the researchers expected that plants collected there would have differing levels ofradioactive cesium, which tests confirmed. The plants from Ube contained essentially no radioactivity, and were used as a control group.

The pale grass blue butterfly is a species commonly found in many regions of Japan, including near Fukushima.

The researchers found that caterpillars that ate radioactive leaves pupated into mutated butterflies that did not live as long, compared with caterpillars that ate non-radioactive leaves. These mutations and increased mortality were seen even in butterflies that consumed only very small doses of radioactive cesium.

“There seemed to be no threshold level below which no biological response could be detected,” the researchers wrote.

Small dose increases lead to large jump in mutation and death

The more radioactive cesium that the larvae consumed, the greater the rates of mutation and early death. Indeed, rates of both problems increased more rapidly than dosage (a non-linear relationship).

The study was not designed to test for similar effects on human beings, but the researchers warn that there is still enough evidence to be concerned. Two of the locations that radioactive leaves were collected from – Fukushima City and Hirono Town – currently have people living in them. In addition, the study findings were consistent with radioactivity levels found in plants following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The Chernobyl meltdown led to a sharp rise in infant deaths in locations as far from the plant as Western Germany and the United States. A recent study, published in the journalRadiation Research, linked a sharp jump in thyroid cancer rates in the years following that disaster directly to the amount of radioactive iodine that children were exposed to in the months immediately after the meltdown and explosion.

The triple meltdown at Fukushima is now considered by many scientists to be the worst civilian nuclear disaster the world has ever seen, surpassing even Chernobyl.

Both sites have yet to be fully cleaned up or sealed off.

Notes:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com

http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140515/srep04946/pdf/srep04946.pdf

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

US Congressman Trey Gowdy recently invited the American media to ask questions about the Benghazi incident which led to the death of the United States ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens back in 2012. Gowdy is apparently Donald Trump’s choice for US Attorney General if Trump becomes the president of the United States.

That the ‘Benghazi Incident’ is the subject of a state cover up is not in doubt.

My guess is that the late ambassador Stevens was involved in liaising with the Islamist militants NATO aided in overthrowing the regime of Colonel Muamer Gaddafi.

The term “militants”, of course, refers to al-Qaeda sympathetic groups such as the now disbanded Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The British Special Forces regiment, the SAS, were instrumental in training them and coordinated their advances when French and other NATO jets bombarded Gaddafi’s forces.

Benghazi was the route through which these fighters and weaponry were transferred to Turkey en route to the next theatre for NATO destabilisation: the Ba’athist government of Bashar al Assad in Syria.

The murky matter of “stand down” orders and the other strange events leading to the disaster may have involved competing factions within the intelligence agencies of the United States.

Some talk about a “Mormon Faction” within the US National Security apparatus springing an ‘October Surprise’ aimed at simultaneously embarrassing the incumbent Barack Obama and bolstering the electoral prospects of his rival Mitt Romney.

Whatever the truth of that, it would appear that the subsequent fall from grace of retired US Army General David Petraeus, who was then the head of the CIA, was tied into this political infighting.

But the pith of the thesis of a transaction gone wrong in regard to weapons and fighters being transported from Benghazi to Syria will likely be vindicated when the truth is finally revealed.

It is worth noting for the benefit of the “Obama-is-a-Muslim” hating crowd that the United States has had a longstanding relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood dating back to the Eisenhower years and continuing up to the support given during the tenure of Ronald Reagan to the Afghan Mujahedeen -many of them foreign Islamist mercenaries including a young Osama bin Laden- against the Soviet occupation.

The administration of George W. Bush also re-orientated its Middle East strategy in the mid-2000s to bolster support for Sunni Islamist groups (read: al Qaeda) against Shia forces in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Syria and Iran.

These groups of course metastasized into the Jamaat al Nusra brigade and the Islamic State fanatics of present day infamy.

One final point.

Speaking of suspected massive covers ups, stand downs, traitorous decision-making and so on, I wonder if Congressman Trey Gowdy would be minded to invite the press to ask what the true story was behind the destruction of the USS Liberty back in June of 1967?

After all, the pursuit of truth and justice should go beyond the narrow confines of party political point-scoring.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

The US-led coalition requires no assistance from Russian jets in striking Islamic State (ISIL) positions in Syria, Australia’s Ambassador to Russia Paul Myler said.

“Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians it is an act of terrorism.”- Barack Obama, 15^th February 2013.

Even to those who do not watch closely it has to be apparent that Washington’s vast disinformation machine is finally out of control, seriously awry, or desperate.

The latest foray in apparent media manipulation was the claim (1) by US “anonymous sources” that four Russian missiles targeting terrorist groups in Syria, landed in Iran.

US Administrations are serial repeaters of untruths. However talking of stray missiles after bombing a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan under a week before – when coordinates of the buildings had been confirmed to US authorities again just prior to the attack – then changing the story as to how it happened four times in less days, is skating on wafer thin ice.

As Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of MSF and former French Foreign Minister wrote:

“Targeting a red cross drawn on the roof of a hospital is … unacceptable … a line has again been crossed.” Demanding an independent investigation he stated: “It is a war crime.” (Guardian, 9^th October 2015.)

Former US Senate candidate, Mark Dankof, speaking to Iran’s Press TV regarding US claims of stray missiles in Iran believes a full-blown psychops operation towards Russia is underway. (2) President Putin’s Ministers stating that all terrorists terrorizing the people of Syria are targets – thus including the US backed ones – might be the reason.

Dankof points out:

“ … two anonymous US officials (are) a basis for this claim, who in turn are quoting unspecified, uncorroborated, and unverified ‘military and intelligence information.’ ” (3)

Moreover: “This is laughable … and underscores the blizzard of lies spun by the American government, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council, and Turkey, about what has been going on in Syria, and who is clearly responsible for the 250,000 Syrian deaths, one million wounded, and 9.5 million displaced citizens of that country”, he added.

“The blame is clearly on the aforementioned states, who have financed, supported, and introduced the … extremists and terrorists into the sovereign state of Syria in an illegitimate attempt to overthrow the legitimate and recognized government  … This is not simply evil, but illegal.

“The lies being woven by Zionist corporate media in the West about Russia are an attempt to conceal the alliance of ISIL, al-Qaeda, and affiliates with American, Israeli, British, French, and Saudi intelligence, and to conceal the obvious fact that the Russian airstrikes are hurting these terrorist groups militarily, even as they take place legally because the sovereign government … of Syria has formally requested Russian assistance.”

Dankov pointed out that on Thursday 8^th October, the “White Helmets” became CNN’s source for their reports on the stray missiles, the network citing them as “an independent medical team” in Syria. However:

“The truth is that the White Helmets are an invention of state intelligence agencies and NGOs who seek the overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This organization has special links to the British government in particular, and (also) to the PR firm Purpose Inc., to lobby for military intervention against Assad.

“They are closely linked to the Avaaz NGO which has the same agenda, and is linked to the Open Society Foundation of George Soros …”

Australian born Jeremy Heimans, co-founder and CEO of Purpose Inc. (“We create new organizations and ventures to tackle issues where mass participation and collective action can unlock big change”; “Purpose moves people to remake the world”) is also a co-founder of Avaaz.

However, back to “stray missiles”, a story speedily silent in the Western media.  Russian General Musa Kamali told Sputnik News Agency (9^th October 2015): “We have no reports of any Russian missiles crashing in Iran … those media reports alleging that Russian missiles aiming at Syria hit Iran are blatant lies.

“If the people making those claims had any proof, they would have certainly presented it”, he said. Quite.

Of course US expertise excels not alone in stray missiles, but in planned assaults on hospitals and other buildings protected under international laws. Hospitals are specifically protected under Article 20 of the Geneva Convention, amongst other binding international laws.

Intended indiscriminate destruction was demonstrated, in 2003, when: “The scenes of downtown Baghdad in flames (made it) abundantly clear why US officials insisted on covering up a reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ at the UN Security Council during Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5^th (2003) presentation of the American case for war against Iraq.” (4) Picasso’s painting commemorates a Basque town razed to the ground by a German aerial assault in April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

At the onset of their illegal invasion US aircraft were making bombing runs on Baghdad at the rate of 1,000 a day with many parts of the city described as “an inferno.” Holocaustal war crimes of enormity. (Holocaust: “ Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire.”)

Further, the US is also no stranger to stray missiles. As Time Magazine reported in April 2003, just two weeks in to America’s bombardment:

“ … in the past week, three U.S. Tomahawks have gone missing in the rocky plains of southeastern Turkey en route to Iraq, several hundred miles from the war zone. Five more went astray in Saudi Arabia, and a handful of others have broken up in Iran and reportedly, Syria.” (5)

Bombing in Iraq, as everywhere “liberated” by America was criminally indiscriminate, Edward Herman cites Fallujah as a chilling example and of war crimes of enormity (6):

“According to Dr. Hafidd al-Dulzanni, head of the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah Citizens, the U.S. assault (of 2004) destroyed some 7,000 houses, 840 stores, workshops and clinics, 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries, 59 schools, 13 government buildings, two electricity stations, three water purification plants, along with several railroad stations and sewage purification plants, among other things. Hospitals were an explicit target and weapons like white phosphorus and uranium-loaded projectiles were used, all adding up to massive violations of the laws of war.” (Emphasis mine.)

Fallujah’s illegal destruction both targeted and indiscriminate was, a metaphor for all Iraq.

On the day the US military entered Baghdad (8^th April 2003) they declared war on journalists, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol 1 and a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

First US troops directed a missile at the Al Jazeera offices in Baghdad killing correspondent Tariq Ayoub and seriously wounding several others. It should be noted that: “The attacks came amid broadcasts showing some of the mounting slaughter being conducted by US troops throughout the Iraqi capital.” (7)

The surviving Al Jazeera staff sought shelter in nearby Abu Dhabi TV which then also came under US attack. Abu Dhabi TV correspondent, Shaker Hamed issued an on air call for help reporting: “Twenty-five journalists and technicians belonging to Abu Dhabi television and … Al-Jazeera are surrounded in the offices of Abu Dhabi TV in Baghdad.” Note the “surrounded”, these were seemingly no “stray” airborne missiles, the tanks were firing from near point blank range. “Kill the messenger” comes to mind.

Hamed called for relevant agencies: “to intervene quickly to pull us out of this zone where missiles and shells are striking in an unbelievable way.”

In a now chillingly familiar story, also reminiscent of the MSF hospital in Kundiz: “Al-Jazeera had written to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on February 23 giving the precise location of its office so as to avoid being targeted.” Giving co-ordinates to the US military is, it appears, literally the kiss of death.

Al Jazeera was also attacked by the US troops in Afghanistan at the time of the US invasion, as Iraq, destroying their offices.

Having targeted Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, the US troops turned their attention to the Palestine Hotel, where two hundred journalists and world wide media were based. They killed Reuters correspondent Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso of Spanish Telecinco TV. Three other journalists were injured, the hotel was extensively damaged. The US military had of course, been informed that the Palestine was the media’s base.

The previous day, in Basra, Al Jazeera offices were targeted by two US missiles which failed to explode and outside Baghdad on the highway both Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV cars, clearly marked as such on roof,     sides and hood were targeted, miraculously no one was hurt.

ITV journalist Terry Lloyd was murdered near Basra by the US within four days of the invasion – also in a clearly marked car. Cameraman Fred Nerac and their Lebanese assistant Hussein Osman in an accompanying car were also killed. French cameraman, Daniel Demoustier, injured in the attack said the US were firing on media vehicles: “to wipe out troublesome witnesses.” Given the examples above and the continuing litany of such attacks by US troops (and British) during the occupation, he seems to have hit the nail on the head.

When it comes to war crimes the US is a serial offender. In the 1991 assault on Iraq all water purification plants were deliberately destroyed on the orders of US Central Command, as were clinics, schools, separate Education Ministry stores, media centres and radio stations were obliterated across the country. (8) Over fifty percent of all livestock was destroyed, farms and herds, chicken farms a special target. Iraq was the world’s largest exporter of dates – the US clearly regarded date palms as an enemy and bombarded great ancient, majestic groves too.

The women and children who nightly went to the great, reinforced Ameriyah Shelter on the outskirts of Baghdad were also incinerated – the US had satellites over the Shelter which recorded the women and children entering as dusk fell and leaving at first light.

The factory that made baby milk powder was reduced to rubble and described as a “chemical weapons factory.” The machinery was provided, installed and maintained by a company in Birmingham, England – and could only have been used to provide baby milk.

Also destroyed were plants which produced basic medical supplies as syringes, pain killers, antibiotics, a well worn path followed in other US bombings as a civilian pharmaceutical factory, Al-Shifa (“The Cure”) Sudan in August 1998 when missiles also rained down on Afghanistan. Two US embassies in East Africa had been attacked, so as ever, proof-free Judge, jury and executioner, the US randomly bombed.

Barely noticed have been the numerous US attacks on ancient Yemen (population just 24.41 million) before their ongoing proxy attack by current Chair of the UN Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia.

Ninety eight US missile and drone attacks struck Yemen between 2002 and 2015; forty one in 2012, twenty six in 2013 and fourteen in 2014, with other attacks in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The cost in human life is hidden and shaming. In May 2010 alone an “errant” US drone killed five people. In December 2009 a US Cruise missile killed forty one souls. (9)

In 1999 former Yugoslavia was decimated – with stray US missiles landing in Macedonia, hitting Belgrade’s media centre, the Chinese Embassy, markets, obliterating train passengers, all “liberated” from life the American way.

2011 brought involvement in Libya’s destruction – another metaphor for the monstrosity of lawless might presented as benevolent saviour.

Let us hear no more phony allegations of stray missiles before the hell of the real ones have been accounted for.

Notes

1. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/09/russia-denies-missiles-aimed-at-syria-landed-in-iran
2. http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-russian-intervention-exposes-coalition-lies-the-terrorists-r-us/5480359
3. http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/10/09/432620/US-Russia-Syria-psyop
4. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/bagh-m22.html
5. http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,439517,00.html
6. http://www.globalresearch.ca/after-all-we-did-for-them-in-fallujah/5480223
7. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/04/jaz-a09.html
8. http://www.globalresearch.ca/operation-desert-slaughter/7920
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Yemen

I am indebted to Nicolas J. Davies, author of the eye opening “Blood on Our Hands – The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq” for the reminder of stray US missiles.

(http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/90107:blood-on-our-hands)

In its single-minded propaganda campaign against Russia, The New York Times has no interest in irony, but if it had, it might note that some of the most important advances made by the Dutch Safety Board’s report on the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 came because the Russian government declassified sensitive details about its anti-aircraft weaponry.

The irony is that the Obama administration has steadfastly refused to declassify its intelligence information on the tragedy, which presumably could answer some of the key remaining mysteries, such as where the missile was fired and who might have fired it. While merrily bashing the Russians, the Times has failed to join in demands for the U.S. government to make public what it knows about the tragedy that killed 298 people on July 17, 2014.

In other words, through its hypocritical approach to this atrocity, the Times has been aiding and abetting a cover-up of crucial evidence, all the better to score some propaganda points against the Russ-kies, the antithesis of what an honest news organization would do.

In its editorial on Thursday, The Times also continues to play on the assumed ignorance of its readers by hyping the fact that the likely weapon, a Buk surface-to-air missile, was “Russian-made,” which while true, is not probative of which side fired it. Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, is armed with Russian-made weapons, too.

But that obvious fact is skirted by the Times highlighting in its lead paragraph that the plane was shot down “by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile,” adding: “Even Russia, which has spent much of those [past] 15 months generating all kinds of implausible theories that put the blame … on Ukraine, and doing its best to thwart investigations, has had to acknowledge that this is what happened.”

Though some misinformed Times’ readers might be duped into finding that sentence persuasive, the reality is that Russia has long considered it likely that a Buk or other anti-aircraft missile was involved in downing MH-17. That’s why Russia declassified so many details about its Buk systems for the Dutch investigation – something governments are loath to do – and the Russian manufacturer issued a report on the likely Buk role last June.

But the Times pretends that the Russians have now been cornered with the truth, writing that Russia “now argues that the fatal missile was an older model that the Russian armed forces no longer use, and that it was fired from territory controlled by the Ukrainian government.” Yet, much of that information was provided by the Russian missile manufacturer a long time ago and was the subject of a June press conference.

Blinded by Bias

If the Times editors weren’t blinded by their anti-Russian bias, they also might have noted that the Dutch Safety Board and the Russian manufacturer of the Buk anti-missile system are in substantial agreement over the older Buk model type that apparently brought down MH-17.

Almaz-Antey, the Russian Buk manufacturer, said last June that its analysis of the plane’s wreckage revealed that MH-17 had been attacked by a “9M38M1 of the Buk M1 system.” The company’s Chief Executive Officer Yan Novikov said the missile was last produced in 1999.

The Dutch report, released Tuesday, said:

“The damage observed on the wreckage in amount of damage, type of damage, boundary and impact angles of damage, number and density of hits, size of penetrations and bowtie fragments found in the wreckage, is consistent with the damage caused by the 9N314M warhead used in the 9M38 and 9M38M1 BUK surface-to-air missile.”

Also on Tuesday, the manufacturer expanded on its findings saying that the warhead at issue had not been produced since 1982 and was long out of Russia’s military arsenal, but adding that as of 2005 there were 991 9M38M1 Buk missiles and 502 9M38 missiles in Ukraine’s inventory. Company executives said they knew this because of discussions regarding the possible life-extension of the missiles.

Based on other information regarding how the warhead apparently struck near the cockpit of MH-17, the manufacturer calculated the missile’s likely flight path and firing location, placing it in the eastern Ukrainian village of Zakharchenko, a few miles south of route H21 and about four miles southwest of the town of Shakhtars’k, a lightly populated rural part of Donetsk province that the Russians claim was then under Ukrainian government control.

Calculation by the Buk manufacturer, Almaz-Antay, showing what it considered the likely area of the launch that took down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

The area is about three miles west of the 320-square-kilometer zone that the Dutch report established as the likely area from which the missile was fired. In July 2014, control of that area was being contested although most of the fighting was occurring about 100 kilometers to the north, meaning that the southern sector was more poorly defined and open to the possibility of a mobile system crossing from one side to the other.

Almaz-Antay CEO Novikov said the company’s calculations placed the missile site in Zakharchenko with “great accuracy,” a possible firing zone that “does not exceed three to four kilometers in length and four kilometers in width.” However, Ukrainian authorities said their calculations placed the firing location farther to the east, deeper into rebel-controlled territory.

Thus, the importance of the U.S. intelligence data that Secretary of State John Kerry claimed to possess just three days after the plane was shot down. Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on July 20, 2014, Kerry declared, “we picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.”

But the U.S. government has released none of its evidence on the shoot-down. A U.S. intelligence source told me that CIA analysts briefed the Dutch investigators but under conditions of tight secrecy. None of the U.S. information was included in the report and Dutch officials have refused to discuss any U.S. intelligence information on the grounds of national security.

In the weeks after the shoot-down, I was told by another source briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts that they had concluded that a rogue element of the Ukrainian government – tied to one of the oligarchs – was responsible for the attack, while absolving senior Ukrainian leaders including President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. But I wasn’t able to determine whether this U.S. analysis was a consensus or a dissident opinion.

Last October, Der Spiegel reported that German intelligence, the BND, concluded that the Russian government was not the source of the missile battery – that it had been captured from a Ukrainian military base – but the BND blamed the ethnic Russian rebels for firing it. However, a European source told me that the BND’s analysis was not as conclusive as Der Spiegel had described.

Prior to the MH-17 crash, ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine were reported to have captured a Buk system after overrunning a government air base, but Ukrainian authorities said the system was not operational, as recounted in the Dutch report. The rebels also denied possessing a functioning Buk system.

Who Has These Buks?

As for whether the 9M38 Buk system is still in the Ukrainian military arsenal, government officials in Kiev claimed to have sold their stockpile of older Buks to Georgia, but Ukraine appears to still possess the 9M38 Buk system, based on photographs of Ukrainian weapons displays. In other words, Ukrainian authorities appear to be lying about this crucial point.

It should be noted, too, that just because Russia no longer deploys the outmoded Buks doesn’t mean that it might not have some mothballed in warehouses that could be pulled out and distributed in a sub rosa fashion, although both the Ukrainian rebels and Russian officials deny this possibility. According to the Ukrainian government, the rebels were only known to have shoulder-fired “manpads” in July 2014 – and that weapon lacked the range to destroy a civilian airliner flying at 33,000 feet.

Yet, rather than delve into this important mystery, The New York Times’ editorial simply repeats the Western “group think” that took shape in the days after the MH-17 tragedy, that somehow the rebels shot down the plane with a Buk missile supplied by Russia. The other possibility that the missile was fired by some element of the Ukrainian security forces was given short-shrift despite the fact that Ukraine had moved some of its Buk batteries into eastern Ukraine presumably to shoot down possible Russian aircraft incursions.

As described in the Dutch report, this Ukrainian concern was quite real in the days before the MH-17 shoot-down. On July 16 – just one day before the tragedy – a Ukrainian SU-25 jetfighter was shot down by what Ukrainian authorities concluded was an air-to-air missile presumably fired by a Russian warplane patrolling the Russia-Ukraine border.

Thus, it would make sense that the Ukrainian air-defense forces would have moved their Buk batteries close to the border and would have been on the lookout for possible Russian intruders entering or leaving Ukrainian air space. So, one possibility is that a poorly organized Ukrainian air-defense force mistook MH-17 for a hostile Russian aircraft high-tailing it back to Russia and fired.

Another theory that I’m told U.S. intelligence analysts examined was the possibility that a rogue Ukrainian element – linked to a fiercely anti-Russian oligarch – may have hoped that President Vladimir Putin’s official plane was in Ukrainian air space en route home from a state visit to South America. Putin’s jet and MH-17 had very similar markings. But Putin used a different route and had already landed in Moscow.

A side-by-side comparison of the Russian presidential jetliner and the Malaysia Airlines plane.

A third possibility, which I’m told at least some U.S. analysts think makes the most sense, was that the attack on MH-17 was a premeditated provocation by a team working for a hard-line oligarch with the goal of getting Russia blamed and heightening Western animosity toward Putin.

Obama’s Secrets

But whatever your preferred scenario – whether you think the Russians or the Ukrainians did it – the solution to the mystery could clearly benefit from President Barack Obama doing what Putin has done: declassify relevant intelligence and defense information.

One might think that the Times’ editors would be at the forefront of demanding transparency from the U.S. government, especially since senior U.S. officials rushed out of the gate in the days after the tragedy to put the blame on the Russians. Yet, since five days after the shoot-down, the Obama administration has refused to update or refine its claims.

Earlier this year, a spokesperson for Director for National Intelligence James Clapper told me that the DNI would not provide additional information out of concern that it might influence the Dutch investigation, a claim that lacked credibility because the Dutch investigation began within a day of the MH-17 crash and the DNI issued a sketchy white paper on the case four days later.

In other words, the initial U.S. rush to judgment already had prejudiced the investigation by indicating which way the United States, a NATO ally of the Netherlands, wanted the inquiry to go: blame the Russians. Later, withholding more refined intelligence data also concealed whatever contrary analyses had evolved within the U.S. intelligence community after Kerry and the DNI had jumped to their hasty conclusions.

Yet, The New York Times took note of none of that, simply piling on the Russians again and hailing a dubious online publication called Bellingcat, which has consistently taken whatever the U.S. propaganda line is on international incidents and has systematically screwed up key facts.

In 2013, Bellingcat’s founder Eliot Higgins got the firing location wrong for the sarin gas attack outside Damascus, Syria. He foisted the blame on Bashar al-Assad’s forces in line with U.S. propaganda but it turned out that the missile’s range was way too short for his analysis to be correct. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.”]

Then, earlier this year, Higgins fed Australia’s “60 Minutes” program wrong coordinates for the location of the so-called “Buk-getaway video” in eastern Ukraine. Though the program treated Higgins’s analysis as gospel, the images from the video and from the supposed location clearly didn’t match, leading the program to engage in a journalistic fraud to pretend otherwise. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Reckless Stand-upper on MH-17.”]

But the Times’ editorial board simply gushed all over Bellingcat, promoting the Web site as if it’s a credible source, writing that the Dutch report “is consistent with theories advanced by the United States and Ukraine as well as evidence collected by the independent investigative website Bellingcat.com, which hold that the fatal missile was fired from territory controlled by Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.”

The Times then distorted the findings of the Buk manufacturer to present them as somehow contradicted by the Dutch report, which substantially relied on the declassified information from the manufacturer to reach roughly the same conclusion, that the missile was an older-model Buk.

However, without irony, the Times writes,

“This fact is not something Russians are likely to learn; Russian television has presented only the Kremlin’s disinformation of what is going on in Ukraine and, for that matter, Syria. … Creating an alternative reality has been a big reason for President Vladimir Putin’s boundless popularity among Russians. He sees no reason to come clean for the shooting down of the Boeing 777.”

Yet, the actual reality is that Russia has provided much more information and shown much greater transparency than President Obama and the U.S. government have. The Dutch report also ignored one of the key questions asked by Russian authorities in the days after the MH-17 shoot-down: why did Ukraine’s air defense turn on the radar used to guide Buk missiles?

But the Times remains wedded to its propaganda narrative and doesn’t want inconvenient facts to get in the way. Rather than demand that Obama “come clean” about what the U.S. intelligence agencies know about the MH-17 case, the newspaper of record chooses to mislead its readers about the facts.

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.

Israel’s hard­line Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is now politically isolated as he brings ordinary Israelis into personal danger by having refused to negotiate a peace agreement with the Palestinians and by having incited violence by continuing illegal settlements on Palestinian land, in a policy that has been condemned internationally.

The Jewish Diaspora is today dismayed and frightened as historic holy sites in Jerusalem burn as a consequence and bloodshed increases as a result of Netanyahu’s intransigence. There is an increasing consensus that he has become a dangerous anachronist who needs to be replaced, as soon as possible, by a statesman, or woman, who will sue for peace.

The present unrest has been triggered, in part, by Palestinian anger over what is perceived as the increasingly Jewish encroachment over the al-­Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, which has disturbed the status quo ante that has existed for decades.

Whether the current phase of Israel’s intensified repression and Palestinian popular resistance will evolve into a full-fledged intifada or not, one thing is already evident – a new generation of Palestinians is marching on the footsteps of previous generations, rising up en masseagainst Israel’s brutal, decades-old regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.

World governments, especially in the west, are calling this a “cycle of violence” where both sides are to blame, ignoring the root cause of the colonial conflict and their own complicity in enabling Israel to maintain it and to violate international law with impunity. Almost all Palestinians today are calling for a full boycott of Israel and for isolating it internationally, in all fields, just as apartheid South African once was.

In this latest round, Israel has fanned the flames of Palestinian grassroots resistance by stepping up its attacks against al-Aqsa mosque compound, the Noble Sanctuary, located in the heart of the Israeli occupied Old City of Jerusalem. Fanatic, government-backed Jewish fundamentalist settler groups have persistently desecrated the compound, often verbally insulting worshippers with vile racism and openly calling for the destruction of the mosque. This has triggered widespread anger and protests in Jerusalem and among Palestinians everywhere in historic Palestine.

Ethnic Cleansing and Judaization

Typically, the Israeli army’s response was to protect the criminal settlers and punish the Palestinian victims, ultimately denying almost all Palestinians access to their holy site. These threats are taken seriously by Palestinians who suffer daily the consequences of Israel’s official policy of “Judaization” of the city, a policy of gradually colonizing the land and replacing its indigenous Christian and Muslim Palestinian population with illegal Jewish settlers. This policy, which amounts to ethnic cleansing and a war crime under international law, is implemented through incessant land confiscations, expansion of the colonial wall, house demolitions, settler take-overs of Palestinian homes, extrajudicial killings, arrests and expulsions, all supported by Israel’s “justice” system, a constantly reliable, rubber-stamp partner in crime.

The latest Israeli attack against the al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, moreover, is not an isolated incident. Hundreds of historic churches and mosques have been destroyed by Zionist militias and later the Israeli state since 1948. Last summer, during the massacre in Gaza, Israel bombed to the ground 73 mosques. Many Palestinian churches and mosques have been defaced or otherwise desecrated this year alone by Jewish extremists in so-called “price tag attacks,” including the Church of Loaves and Fishes (Multiplication), overlooking Lake Tiberias, which was set on fire last June.

These racist and criminal attacks against Palestinians and their freedom of religion come as an extension of a massive shift in Israel to the extreme right and the unprecedented prevalence in Israeli society of overt, deeply-seated colonial racism and racial hatred against the indigenous Palestinian people.

Virtually all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza are denied access to Jerusalem, which is besieged by walls, watch towers and barbed wire, and are subject to daily assault and humiliation.

In a typical so-called “period of calm,” Israel enforces its medieval siege of Gaza, conducts incursions into Palestinians cities, confiscates Palestinian land, including in the Naqab (Negev), destroys Palestinian property, and builds illegal Jewish-only settlements. In its ongoing attempts to entrench its system of apartheid and colonial rule, Israel denies Palestinians their full spectrum of rights in the most banal of ways, from a child’s right to education to a mother’s access to health care, to a farmer’s ability to reach his/her land and to the right of a family to even live together in one home. And all this is done with the blessing of the courts.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Now!

In light of the apathy or direct complicity of world governments and the UN, and as a result of Israel’s impunity in perpetuating this system of injustice against Palestinians, in historic Palestine as well as in exile, the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has made great strides in redefining Israel’s positioning in the world stage as a pariah state.

Through boycotts of institutions that are complicit in Israeli violations of international law, through divestment from corporations supporting Israeli oppression and through a principled call for sanctions against Israel, the BDS movement has increased the isolation of Israel and started to impose costs on its regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid and occupation.

The World Bank has revealed that Palestinian imports from Israel are falling significantly. Israeli businessmen are reporting that European investors are no longer willing to invest in Israel, while a UN study confirms that foreign direct investment in Israel dropped by 46% in 2014, as compared to 2013. A Rand study predicts that BDS may cost Israel between 1 and 2 per cent of its GDP each year over the next ten years, and, most recently, credit rating agency Moody’s has reported that BDS is a potential threat to the Israeli economy.

More needs to be done, however, to hold Israel to account and shatter its still strong impunity. Complicit governments must be exposed. Corporations that are enabling and profiting from Israel’s human rights violations must pay a price in their reputation and revenues. Israel’s military machine, including its research arm, must face a comprehensive international military embargo, and all Israeli leaders, officers and soldiers who are involved in the commission of the current and past crimes must be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court as well as national courts that respect international jurisdiction.

Israel is not just oppressing Palestinians; it is exporting its ruthless model of securitization and repression to the world. Israel is deeply involved in training and arming death squads in Latin America, often as a U.S. proxy, selling weapons and military expertise to dictatorships in Asia and Africa, often to both sides of a civil war, and militarizing police forces in Ferguson, Los Angeles, London and cities around the world. Israel today is a key player in domestic repression against racial, social, economic and environmental justice movements around the world.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the Palestinian leadership of the global BDS movement, calls on people of conscience around the world to support Palestinians in their quest for freedom at this crucial moment by stepping up BDS activities against Israel’s regime of oppression. In particular, and related to the current mass revolt on the streets of Palestine, we call on supporters of the Palestinian struggle to:

• Build awareness about Palestinian rights under international law and support for BDS through media outreach, including social media;
• Pressure parliaments to impose a military embargo on Israel;
• Campaign against Israeli military companies such as Elbit Systems;
• Support boycott and divestment campaigns against complicit companies, such as G4S and HP, that are most blatantly complicit in Israel’s infrastructure of oppression;
• Pass effective and strategic, not just symbolic, BDS resolutions in unions, academic associations, student governments and social movements that can lead to concrete measures, and enhance the cultural boycott of Israel;
• Consider legal action against Israeli criminals (soldiers, settlers, officers and decision-makers) and against executives of corporations that are implicated in Israel’s crimes and violations of international law.

Like their parents’ generation, the thousands of Palestinian youth in Jerusalem, Gaza, Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jaffa, Nazareth and elsewhere who have taken to the streets in large protests against Israel’s occupation and apartheid are first and foremost shaking off despair and liberating their minds of the myth of oppression as fate. They are also nourishing the entire Palestinian people’s aspiration to self-determination and living in freedom, dignity and a just peace.

It is high time to isolate Israel’s regime of militarization, securitization and racism as a danger not just to Palestinians and the Arab region, but to humanity at large. •

President Barack Obama Thursday publicly rescinded his previously declared proposal for drawing down the US military force occupying Afghanistan and adopted a plan dictated by the Pentagon to keep the remaining 10,000 troops in place, likely beyond the end of his presidency.

“As you are well aware,” Obama said in his speech Thursday, addressing himself to the American people, “I do not support the idea of endless war.”

The “idea,” i.e., the phony rhetoric of hope and change, has long since become a tired joke. As the pliant mouthpiece of the military and intelligence apparatus that dominates the American state, the US president has assured that “endless” and ever-expanding war is an undeniable reality.

Obama cynically dropped his previous argument that keeping US troops in Afghanistan indefinitely, at the current cost of roughly $35 billion a year, was neither fiscally nor politically justifiable. While his administration can find no money for jobs, education, health care or other vital social needs, unlimited resources are always on offer for America’s war machine.

The decision to upend the US timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan comes little more than a year after Obama ordered thousands of US troops back into Iraq and launched an air war in both that country and neighboring Syria.

The immediate impetus for Obama’s scrapping of the planned reduction in troop strength in Afghanistan is of a piece with the motive for sending US troops back into Iraq: the spectacular collapse of puppet security forces trained and armed by the Pentagon at the cost, in the case of the Afghan forces, of $65 billion.

The Iraqi security forces fled with virtually no resistance in the face of an offensive by a much smaller force, handing over Mosul, the country’s second largest city, to ISIS. A virtual carbon copy of this episode unfolded at the end of last month in Kunduz, the strategic center of Afghanistan’s northeast, when the Afghan army and police melted away in front of a force of several hundred Taliban fighters. In both cases, the puppet security forces left behind tons of US arms and military equipment.

In both countries, well over a decade of war and the expenditure of trillions of dollars have produced only a debacle for US imperialism, together with death and destruction for millions of Iraqis and Afghans.

For Afghans, this carnage goes back more than 35 years, to the CIA-instigated war to oust a pro-Soviet government in Kabul. Then, Washington employed the mujahedeen forces that would subsequently give rise to Al Qaeda as a proxy force. During the period since, an estimated two million Afghans have lost their lives, while millions more have been turned into refugees.

The carnage has only escalated in the recent period, with the United Nations agency for Afghanistan reporting the highest casualty figures since it began counting. The number of civilians killed by the US-backed Afghan security forces in the first half of this year increased by 85 percent compared to the same period in 2014.

Atrocities by both the Afghan forces and US warplanes and special forces units continue unabated and, for the most part, unreported.

One incident that has come to world attention, the savage bombardment of the Doctors without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz that killed 22 patients and medical personnel, has exposed the criminal character of the US war.

The ever-shifting explanation given by the Pentagon for this war crime has been exposed by an AP report Thursday showing that the hospital was deliberately targeted in an apparent attempt to kill one man, an alleged Pakistani intelligence operative who was supposedly coordinating actions by the Taliban. To that end, an AC-130 flying gunship was sent to carry out five separate strafing runs at the well-marked hospital in the course of an hour, incinerating patients in their beds and blowing doctors and nurses to pieces.

Obama made no mention of this atrocity in his speech Thursday, though the decision he announced will lead to many similar massacres. His only reference to Kunduz was as a supposed victory against the Taliban, where “Afghan forces backed by coalition support have been able to push them back.”

Obama’s justification for the continued US occupation of Afghanistan was riddled with outright lies and grotesque distortions.

More than 14 years after the September 11 attacks, he continued selling it primarily as part of the “global war on terrorism” inaugurated by his predecessor as the pretext for the invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan. “I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again,” he said.

In addition to the fact that there remain many unanswered questions about what happened on 9/11, the claim that the US is engaged in some global war on Al Qaeda terrorism is ludicrous given that the American military has used Al Qaeda-connected fighters as proxy ground forces in the US-backed wars for regime change in both Libya and Syria.

The US president praised the Afghan government as a “stable and committed ally,” the product of “the first democratic transfer of power” in the country’s history. The reality is that the two-headed puppet regime of Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah was imposed on the instructions of the White House and consists of a gang of war criminals and kleptocrats with no popular base and virtually no remit outside of the capital of Kabul.

Obama asserted that “the majority of the Afghan people share our goals.” Where is the evidence? That a movement like the Taliban could grow as it has can only mean that there is no popular support for the US occupation. Meanwhile, millions are fleeing the country, with Afghans last year making up fully 44 percent of recorded undocumented migrants and refugees the world over.

Fourteen years after the US invasion and a trillion dollars later, the living conditions of Afghans remain abysmal, with an estimated 60 percent of the active population unemployed and over 40 percent living in abject poverty.

The closest Obama came to the truth was when he described US plans to maintain four US military bases in Afghanistan in the capital of Kabul, Bagram air base, Jalalabad in the east and Kandahar in the south. These bases, he said, would constitute “a key piece of the network of counterterrorism partnerships that we need, from South Asia to Africa…”

US imperialism’s predatory aims in Afghanistan remain today what they were 14 years ago: advancing the interests of the American ruling class by projecting US military power into the energy-rich Caspian Basin as well as against its principal global and regional rivals: Iran to the west, China to the east and Russia to the north.

The reversal of the Afghanistan withdrawal plans coincides with an increasingly dangerous eruption of American militarism, with Washington mounting provocative threats against Russia and China, both of them nuclear-armed powers. Not only are the wars of American imperialism “endless,” they are expanding in scope, bringing the world to the brink of another global cataclysm.

One of the most lamentable features of international relations courses remains the continued, and looming presence, not merely of Henry Kissinger the statesman but Henry Kissinger the theorist.  Whatever one may think of old Heinz, he shaped geopolitics and counselled the movements of US hegemony with ruthless, even cynical fashion.  In engaging the politics of the pirate, and the practices of plunder, he gave such practices the deceptively neat term “realism”.

This did not shore up well with a certain strand of US political tradition which sentimentalises liberty even as it ravishes it. The realist cannot purport to be an exceptionalist, precisely because such a statement is absurd.  There are powers and non-powers, brutes and the brutalised.

Even if we accept the heavily battered realist credentials, restoring, let alone lifting Kissinger, from the darkness of his record is a tall order.  Nefarious, calculating, war-mongering, and expansively self-delusional, it is hard to go past such works as Christopher  Hitchens’ The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001) without feeling that the fellow did not cut the mustard in a range of areas.  Even weightier accounts such as Seymour Hersh’s The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (1983), and Walter Isaacson’s Kissinger: A Biographer (1992) prove muddying and gory.

Niall Ferguson, himself an apologist of imperial projects past and current, has decided to come to the already crowded party of Kissinger biographies with his first volume of his Life. Ferguson tends to be allergic to modesty, and duly claims that Kissinger begged him to engage the project.  This should immediately trouble the reader: reading the copy of “embedded” journalists is to be regarded with as much suspicion as the biographer with an exclusive dinner invitation.  Such proximity, notably to an individual so prone to flattery and flattering, exerts its corrupting pull.

Ferguson’s point, rather, is do ditch the view that Kissinger was the realist history accords him, and attempt to dislodge him from the reliquary of a certain political tradition. Flipping the ideological cards, he suggests a dominant streak of idealism, one fed by European precedent.   But what, exactly, does this act of flipping actually accomplish?

Certainly, Ferguson wishes to show a Kissinger more attuned, more sceptical about American engagements, despite being himself instrumental in them. American adventurism in Vietnam, for instance, was questionable, though such views were not to be expressed too loudly – Kissinger always prized the career path and hedged his bets.

Privately, he would take the Kennedy administration to task for its role behind the assassination of South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem.  “The honour and moral standing of the United States require that a relationship exists between ends and means….  Our historical role has been to identify ourselves with the ideals and deepest hopes of mankind.” He would also object to making use of small states as “pawns”.

Such views tend to be meaningless, largely because they never factored in Kissinger’s own actions. Whether such behaviour can be put down to an overwhelming sense of moral cowardice, or calculation, vanishes before the bloody details. When it mattered, Kissinger supported the most ruthless regimes in the broader cause against Communism, with an enormous cost to human life. Democratic causes were enfeebled; elected governments, such as that of Allende in Chile, were overthrown with his blessing.

Ferguson the biographer duly becomes Ferguson the apologist, taking his own dump on smaller states and reducing them to geopolitical excreta that have little to do with the idealist he so desperately wishes to find:  “[A]rguments that focus on loss of life in strategically marginal countries – and there is no other way of describing Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile, Cyprus, and East Timor – must be tested against the question: how, in each case, would an alternative decision have affected US relations with strategically important countries like the Soviet Union, China, and the major Western European powers?”

Then there is the fallback every admiring biographer tends to find about a subject he wishes to lionise. Ferguson needs to put his finger on the reason why his subject was so detested. No, not because of his role behind the surveillance state, failed wars, deadly policies in Latin America, pro-White government policies in Africa, and a general destabilising disposition to states, but because people were envious.  He had a way with women; he charmed in the manner of an experienced courtesan. And he was, well, a Jew, which grated with establishment anti-Semitism.

Yet for all that, Kissinger’s official biographer cannot get away from a cluttered mind that legitimised such doctrines as “limited” nuclear war, tantamount to suggesting that a state can engage in “mild” exterminatory practices.  The “balance of power” as Greg Grandin explained in his own biography Kissinger’s Shadow, is something “constantly tested through gesture and deed.”  To be relevant, the grand state must perform with vicious virility.  Stillness is death.

Hegemons can lay waste to the earth, but eventually, some restoring balance can be attained – there will be survivors; every cast of power needs a maniacal Dr. Strangelove.  Now, if that is a form of mad idealism, then so be it.  It does not detract, nor revise, Kissinger’s role in history.

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

EU heads of state comprise the European Council (EC), Donald Tusk its current president since December 2014.

Political and military developments in Syria were discussed at the EC’s October 15 meeting, among other pressing issues, EU leaders ignoring Obama’s war, saying in a statement issued:

“The Assad regime bears the greatest responsibility for the 250,000 deaths of the conflict and the millions of displaced people.”

“The EU is fully engaged in finding a political solution to the conflict in close cooperation with the UN and the countries of the region and calls on all parties involved to work to that effect.”

“There cannot be a lasting peace in Syria under the present leadership and until the legitimate grievances and aspirations of all components of Syrian society are addressed. The European Council expressed its concern about the Russian attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and the risk of further military escalation.”

EU leaders gave short shrift to fighting ISIS and likeminded terrorists. They irresponsibly blamed Assad for Obama’s high crimes, failed to praise Russia’s important intervention, lied claiming it’s killing civilians and not targeting ISIS.

Putin’s righteous mission is  extremely effective against a terrorist scourge vital to eliminate. He deserves support from all world leaders.

Ahead of Thursday’s EC meeting, Syria condemned its support for Obama’s imperial war. A Foreign Ministry source rejected EU-supported naked aggression against the Syrian people, its blatant interference in the internal affairs of the country, partnering with Washington’s hegemonic agenda, adding:

EU leaders aim to undermine Moscow’s vital mission, fronting for US policy. Earlier reports about France allying with Russia may have been premature.

President Francois Hollande expressed support for EU anti-Assad policy, at the same time urging a political solution involving Western and regional states along with Russia.

At a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) meeting in Kazakhstan, leaders of former Soviet Republics Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan formed a joint task force to defend their borders from potential terrorist threats during a time of Western-instigated crisis.

Putin explained his involvement in Syria, saying an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 Russians and other Central Asians are now ISIS terrorists. “We certainly cannot allow them to use the experience they are getting in Syria on home soil,” he stressed.

“By carrying out airstrikes on targets chosen in coordination with the Syrians, our troops have produced significant results. Dozens of command points and depots, hundreds of terrorists and a large number of military hardware have been destroyed.”

Russia supports “as big a coalition to fight the extremists and terrorists as possible and is working with major regional and international partners” – in full compliance with international law, following Syria’s request for help.

CIS member states need to prepare for possible terrorist attacks, Putin stressed, expressing concern for deteriorating Afghan security conditions.

“The situation is becoming critical,” he said. “Terrorists of all flavors are gaining influence there and don’t hide their plans to expand. One of their targets is Central Asia. We have to be prepared to respond to this contingency.”

Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Russian warplanes on Thursday flew 33 sorties against ISIS targets in Aleppo, the Damascus countryside, Deir as-Zor, Hama and Idlib, explaining:

“The militants are retreating, trying to establish new positions, and changing underway the course of their existing logistics system for the supply of ammunition, weaponry and equipment.”

Fewer combat missions were flown because “the Syrian army’s offensive is transforming the contact line with Islamic State terrorist formations.”

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mikdad said effective Russian intervention is polar opposite US policy to continue endless war and human suffering – together with its rogue EU and regional allies.

“Syria will not sacrifice its sovereignty and independence under any condition,” he stressed. “We will not accept any solution where any of these fundamental elements are not safeguarded.”

Washington intends to keep resupplying ISIS and other takfiri terrorists, part of its unrelenting campaign to replace Assad with pro-Western puppet governance it controls, no matter the cost in human lives and suffering.

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.

“He brought to Ottowa an oilman’s attitude to climate change and a sheriff’s approach to law and order.” – The Economist on Stephen Harper, Oct 17, 2015

Everything about Canada’s long time serving Prime Minister is supposedly counterintuitive to the country’s spirit. This, at least, is the casual response from those who have a very specific view of Canada, one infuriatingly courteous, and soporifically relaxed.  But the very fact that Stephen Harper has stayed in power for this length of time, including three election victories, suggests a refutation of that view. 

Harper’s playbook is one that sees politics as an endeavour for its own sake.  The currency of fear sluices the system. Manipulation, and targeted demagoguery, is fundamental.  And there is that matter of foreign interventions and local corruption.  A Harper government is not viable without corrosive corruption; a Harper government is not feasible without its staccato-like emphasis on a vision of “Great” Canada.

Harper’s project on Canada was his project of Canadian conservatism writ large.  The Progressive Conservative Party seemed to him spineless, lacking necessary grit to win office.  His populist Reform Party became a platform to then merge with the PCP and create the current, more abrasive style we have come to expect from Team Harper.  Under him, federal expenditure has fallen, while big trade deals have flourished.

There is little doubt that Harper is of that tried school that lies have vast wings and take flight with repeated articulation.  Having shown himself to be a friend of coal-driven electricity, he proceeded to celebrate in the September 28 leaders’ debate that, “We will be the first country in the world to effectively shut down coal-fired electricity, the biggest single source of emission on the planet.”  This, from the same figure who took Canada out of the Tokyo Protocol in 2011 while waging guerrilla warfare against alarmed scientists.

On refugee and immigration policy, Harper can only beam, with Canada supposedly having “the most generous immigration and refugee system in the world.”  On Harper’s watch, however, citizenship was delayed, fees were raised, and immigrant selection slanted in favour of temporary foreign workers.[1]

As for the Syrian refugee crisis, Harper has done much wriggling on the subject, giving the impression that it was a recent phenomenon entirely attributable to Islamic State.  Four years of history have been conveniently wiped off the slate.

Refugee processing was also secretly halted this month under the auspices of vetting the list provided by the UNHCR – you could not be too careful about them for reasons of “security”. But Harper’s approach, in the manner of a political animal, was far more calculating.  According to CTV news, the staff at the prime minister’s office were busily scouring files for persecuted religious groups who might be sympathetic to the conservative cause while also discouraging the acceptance of “applications from Shia and Sunni Muslims.”[2]  Refugees in the network of camps from Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon were also avoided.

For all its misdemeanours, the frittering away of Canadian democracy has been the most fundamental feature of his rule. Parliament has been misled and badgered into docility, the supreme court has been harassed and hectored, diplomats have been silenced, espionage on opponents has been confirmed.  John Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail hardly gives a ringing endorsement for Harper and the political machine behind him.  “No prime minister in history and no political party have been loathed as intensely as Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party.”[3]

This might well be, but it hardly explains the durability of Harper.  On its basic, if not base level, Harper’s tactical outlook treats democratic parliamentary process as plutocratic and mischievous.  There is always room to move and manipulate, for hard politicians to stomp on opponents while sailing close against the constraints of legality.  His theft of the 2006 election, for it was regarded as something pilfered by the usually tight-lipped body of Elections Canada, took place because electoral rules were significantly bent.

It was subsequently found in March 2012, a distant six years later, that the Conservatives had engaged in an illegal campaign with the use of funds and were made to pay $282,000 in fines and restitution.  By then, Harper’s Teflon brand had been successfully sold for two more elections (November 2008 and May 2011).

Nick Davies in The Guardian has pointed out a salient feature of the Harper book of tactics. Like his nefarious mentor of political survival, Richard Nixon, tactical sabotage known as “ratfucking” has its revered place.  Interns are deployed to heckle opposing candidates; voters are harassed by impersonating campaigners calling them late at night; and false information disseminated via “robocalls” deceive electors into thinking that their polling booths have moved.

The latter point received judicial recognition in the words of Justice Mosley, who would have invalidated the election but for the fact the calls may not have swung the result significantly.  Leading up to the final days of this election, we can expect more of the same, those acts of desperation that have taken Harper’s opponents off guard through his rule.  The only question to ask here will be whether his appeal to the darker sentiments of the civitas pulls him across the line.

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

“This is the highly sought after secret ‘final’ agreed version of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Chapter on Intellectual Property Rights. There is still a finishing ‘legal scrub’ of the document meant to occur, but there are to be no more negotiations between the Parties. The TPP Parties are the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei Darussalam.

TO ACCESS THE COMPLETE DOCUMENT LEAKED BY WIKILEAKS CLICK BELOW

TPP-Intellectual Property Chapter

Source: Wikileaks, 2015.

Note: Copyright of this text belongs to the TPP Negotiations, 2015

[ignore default copyright below]

Thousands of Iranian soldiers have arrived in Syria to join a major offensive against Sunni militants located in the northwest section of the country. The Iranian ground forces will be part of a joint operation that will include the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), Russia and fighters from Lebanese militia, Hezbollah. The assault comes on the heels of a withering two week aerial bombardment of enemy positions by the Russian Air Force which has wreaked havoc on US-backed jihadis along the western corridor. The mobilization of Iranian troops indicates that the 4 year-long conflict is entering its final phase where the Russian-led coalition will attempt to crush the predominantly-Sunni militias and restore security across the country.

Currently, the fiercest fighting is taking place in three areas that are critical for Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s survival: The Rastan enclave, the North Hama salient, and the Ghab plain. While Assad’s forces are expected to overpower the jihadis at all three sites, the militants are dug in and have destroyed a number of armored vehicles and tanks. The regime must seize this area in order to control the M5 highway which runs north to south and connects the cities that create an integrated state. Once these enemy strongholds are broken into smaller pockets of resistance, coalition forces will move further north to close the borders with Turkey while attempting to recapture the strategic city of Aleppo. (See: Sic Semper Tyrannis for an excellent breakdown of the ground offensive with maps.)

According to military analyst Patrick Bahzad: “Overall, the outcome of the current operations in the three areas mentioned above is clear. Whether the various rebels groups have thrown everything they got into these battles is hard to say, therefore no assessment can be made as to how their fighting capabilities will be affected by the coming defeat.

It is also worth mentioning that once SAA units have managed to break through rebel defences…. this might cause a disorganised retreat of the trapped rebel units. That moment of the battle could be crucial, as it might be the starting point to a massive artillery barrage (MRLs) and large RuAF airstrikes, resulting in crippling casualties among rebel ranks.” (Sic Semper Tyrannis)

In other words, there’s a good chance that the jihadis will realize that they have no chance of winning and will head for the exits, but it’s still too early to say when that will be.

According to a report in Reuters,  “…a large mobilization of the Syrian army … elite Hezbollah fighters, and thousands of Iranians” are moving northwards to retake Aleppo. However,  ISIS militants are also headed towards the city from the east which means that a major clash could take place at anytime. In response, the Russian air force has increased its bombing raids to more than 100 sorties per day. That number is expected to double in the days ahead as the fighting intensifies.

According to early reports from Syria Direct, the Syrian army has enclosed Aleppo in an open fist configuration that cuts off the main artery of vital supplies to the north from Turkey. As the fist tightens around the city, US-backed rebel units have fled to the west which is now the only possible escape route. The panicky retreat has precipitated protests against rebel leaders who are blamed for losses on the battlefield and for allowing   “the regime’s disastrous completion of the Aleppo siege.” One of the militia’s commanders summarized his frustration saying:

The myriad brigades under al-Jabha a-Shamiya’s umbrella in northeast Aleppo are bleeding men and hardware across multiple fronts…They’re caught between regime forces to the south, and IS to the north….(Due to) the complete lack of coordination between each brigade, and not nearly enough guns and cash from the Americans to compete with the much-better equipped Islamic State, and they had no choice but to retreat.  (“Jabha Shamiya commander blames ‘complete lack of coordination’ for Aleppo losses“, Syria Direct)

Aleppo is a key node in Moscow’s strategy to defeat terrorism and reestablish order across Syria. The battle is bound to be hard-fought, possibly involving close-range, house-to-house urban warfare. This is why it is imperative that coalition forces seal the border from Turkey and stop the flow of arms and supplies as soon as possible. There are rumors that Putin will use Russia’s elite paratroopers north of Aleppo for that very mission, but so far, they are just rumors. Putin has repeatedly said that he will not allow Russian ground troops to fight in Syria.

There’s no way to overstate the Obama administration’s destructive and nihilistic role in Syria. Along with its Gulf allies, the US has funded, armed and trained the bulk of the jihadi hoodlums that have ripped the state apart and killed nearly one quarter of a million people. Now that Putin has decided to put an end to Washington’s savage proxy war, the administration is planning to add more fuel to the fire by air-dropping pallets of ammunition and weapons to their fighters in central and eastern Syria.  The editors of the New York Times derided the program as “hallucinatory.” Here’s an excerpt from the article:

 …the White House on Friday unveiled a plan  that is even more incoherent and fraught with risk.

The Pentagon will stop putting rebel fighters through training in neighboring countries, a program that was designed to ensure that fighters were properly vetted before they could get their hands on American weapons and ammunition. The new plan will simply funnel weapons through rebel leaders who are already in the fight and appear to be making some headway…..

Washington’s experience in Syria and other recent wars shows that proxy fighters are usually fickle and that weapons thrust into a war with no real oversight often end up having disastrous effects……..The initial plan was dubious. The new one is hallucinatory.  (“An Incoherent Syria War Strategy“, New York Times editorial Board)

The administration has also delivered “27 container loads of weaponry to the (Syrian) Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD)”  and its military wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The weapons are supposed to be used against ISIS, but the move has infuriated Turkish president Erdogan who regards the group as terrorists. While it appears that the Obama team is merely looking for ways to show its critics that it is being proactive in its fight against terrorism, it may have created the perfect pretext for a Turkish invasion into N Syria which would greatly complicate the situation on the ground. Here’s a clip from the Turkish Daily Hurriyet:

Findings in the aftermath of deadly explosions in Ankara on Oct. 10 targeting pro-Kurdish and leftist activists indicate the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as well as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), may be involved, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said on Wednesday.

“As we deepen the investigation, based on the [information obtained about] Twitter accounts and IP addresses, there is a high possibility that Daesh [Arabic name for ISIL] and the PKK have played an effective role in the bombing,” he said while speaking at a press conference with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov in İstanbul.  (“Turkish PM says both ISIL and PKK may have role in Ankara bombing“, Hurriyet)

There is, in fact, no evidence of PKK (Kurdish militia) involvement at all. DNA samples from the two suicide bombers indicate they were both members of ISIS. The only reason Erdogan would want to implicate the PKK would be to either discredit his (Kurdish) political rivals or to create a pretext for invading Syria.   (Note: A Turkish court has imposed a confidentiality order on the bombing investigation that strongly hints at a government cover up. According to Altan Tan, a deputy of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), “Bombs explode all over Turkey. Two conclusions can be made on this — either the government is behind those attacks or it failed to prevent those attacks.” Either way, the government is responsible.)

While Turkey’s future role in the Syrian conflict remains uncertain, US support for the Kurds greatly increases the chances of a Turkish invasion and a broader, regional war. Is this the administration’s real objective, to draw Turkish troops across the border into Syria so that Russia gets bogged down in a costly and protracted  quagmire?

It sounds far fetched, but there are points worth considering. For example, on CBS news program 60 Minutes, Obama said this:

I’ve been skeptical from the get go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside of Syria. My goal has been to try to test the proposition, can we be able to train and equip a moderate opposition that’s willing to fight ISIL? And what we’ve learned is that as long as Assad remains in power, it is very difficult to get those folks to focus their attention on ISIL. (60 Minutes)

Naturally, Obama wants everyone to believe that “it’s all Assad’s fault”, after all, he’s not going to blame himself.  But he is being honest about one thing: He never really thought arming Sunni extremists was a good idea. In other words, he supported the objective (regime change) just not the methods. (arming jihadis) And he probably felt vindicated when–after 4 years of fighting–the conflict deteriorated into a stalemate.

So if he was convinced that arming jihadis wasn’t going to work, then what was his backup plan, his Plan B?

We’ve suggested in earlier columns that Obama might have struck a deal with Erdogan to launch a Turkish invasion of Syria as long as the US provided air cover for Turkish ground forces. We think this was part of a quid pro quo that Obama agreed to for the use of the strategic airbase at Incirlik.  Keep in mind, Erdogan withheld US access to Incirlik for more than a year until the US met his demand to help him topple Assad. Naturally, this is not something that Obama could acknowledge publicly, but it would have been an essential part of any agreement. An interview on PBS News Hour last week with David Kramer, the former assistant secretary of state during the George W. Bush administration, provides some support for this theory. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, David Kramer, what about that? There is the real worry if the U.S. gets involved, it gets sucked in, dragged in, and can’t get out.

DAVID KRAMER: The Turks had indicated a long time ago that they were prepared to send forces in if the United States provided cover and support. So, we should create safe zones. We should create no-fly zones. We should enforce those for any planes that would threaten people in those areas, whether they’re Syrian planes or Russian planes. We should give the Russians full notice that any violations or attacks on those zones would constitute an attack that we would have to respond to.

Nobody wants this. There are bad decisions that have to be made here, but that’s where we are right now. And I think unless we do that, we will continue to see people get killed, we will continue to see people flee Syria, so there aren’t any good solutions. We have to find the least worst options.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But my question is, isn’t that an entire new level of risk, U.S. planes get shot down, U.S. troops get potentially captured, not to mention a conflict, potential conflict with Russia, unintentional?

DAVID KRAMER: We have the Turks that have indicated a willingness to go ahead. We may have other countries, including from the Gulf, although they’re not great contributors to this kind of operation.  The United States could provide the air support, to provide the cover that way. I think there is a way of doing this without putting U.S. forces on the ground, but there aren’t any good options here.” (“Pulling the plug on rebel training, what’s next for U.S. in Syria?“, PBS News Hour)

Kramer not only sounds extremely confident that “The Turks… were prepared to send forces in if the United States provided cover and support.”  He also seems to imply that a great many Washington elites were aware of the deal but kept it under their hats.

Fortunately, Putin’s military intervention sabotaged any prospect of implementing Plan B, so we’ll never know whether Turkey would have invaded or not.

What matters now is that the Russian-led coalition move fast to solidify their gains, disrupt enemy supply lines, block the exits, seal the borders and discourage Turkey from taking any action that would expand the war. Erdogan will surely listen to reason if it is backed by force.

The jihadi mercenaries must either surrender or be wiped out as quickly as possible so that 11 million Syrians can return safely to their homes and begin the arduous task of starting over.

Iran and Russia indagate their cooperation over the Middle East regional stability and security as a strategic goal. The countries have been conducting mutual consultations over the topic since 2011. Both Iran and Russia support the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad because beleive that he can prevent the country’s dissolution.

Since the start of the Syrian war, Iran has been directly involved in it. It provides financial, media and humanitarian support to the Assad government, supplies arms and equipment. It’s widely known that special teams of the Iranian Armys Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC) have been fighting against terrorists in Syria.

On October 10, Iranian Armys Revolutionary Guard Command Brigadier General Hossein Hamadani was killed along the Khanasser Highway in Southern Aleppo. Hamadani was reportedly responsible for recruiting and organizing for the governments offensive to lift the ISIS siege of the Kuweires Military Airport. Another Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (IRGC) commander, colonel Farshad Hasounizadeh, providing military counseling services to the Syrian governments forces was killed in Syria on October 13. Iranian media stated that Farshad Hasounizadeh was a former collonel of IRGC, but we really doubt that somebody could be a former member of IRGC.

According to the SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence’s information, over 3000 servicemen of IRGC are taking part in the Syrian offensive in the Hama-Homs axis. Also, at least 1500-strong grouping of Hezbollah is there. These forces include modern artillery and military rocket launcher systems. Moreover, an Iranian air base has been~set in the area around the city of Hama. It has been working as an air lift transporting troops and military equipment. In future, the air base could be used by the Iranian Air Forces to conduct air strikes against terrorists in Syria.

Last Tuesday fighters of the Lebanese Hezbollah arrived in Aleppo to join the Syrian army to take part in a full-scale military operation there. The pro-government forces will start offensive there in the coming days. The Russian Air force will provide air support for the operation. We remember, Hezbollah has a longs-tanding relations with Iran, recieves funding and support from it.

Teheran denies the fact of direct military involvement, but it confirms that IRGC members fulfil at least the role of military advicers in the Syrian forces.

As Russia, Iran has advanced many initiatives to solve the Syrian conflict by the joint political decision of the main participants of the conflict including Bashar al-Assad. The main goals of them are to start joint operation against ISIS and to maintain the Syrian territorial integrity. The US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other members of the US-led coalition stand against this. Indeed, Russian and Iranian appraoches are very similar.

The very same time, Iranian elites don’t have a joint attitude over the Russian role in the Syrian crisis. Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is ctiricizing the Russian military actions as the US-led coalition’s approach. He believes there is only political decision over the conflict. IRGC-linked media are actively opposing his attitude. In general, Iran supports the Russian activity in the region, but it’s ready to protect own interests in case if they will be negatively impacted by Russia.

At the moment Iran’s assistance has a character of the diplomatic assistance and consultancy support. There are no confirmed reports that mechanisms for military collaboration between Russia and Iran at the Syrian battlespace are agreed.

Terrorists of Jabhat al-Nusra perpetrated a massacre in Teirmaal village in Homs northern countryside on Thursday.

A military source told SANA that terrorists committed their crime at 7:00 am in synchronization of the army operations in the area, adding that the act aimed at accusing the Syrian Army and the Russian air force of targeting civilians.

“The Syrian Ministry of Defense stresses that the Syrian Army and the Russian air force do not target civilian-populated areas and holds Jabhat al-Nusra and its associates full responsibility for such crimes,” the source said.

The armed terrorist groups had perpetrated a number of crimes against civilians in several areas, the purpose of many of these acts were to accuse the Syrian Army of targeting civilians. Photos and videos footages of such acts have been used repeatedly to mislead local and international public opinions.

In November 2012, terrorists committed a massacre against two families in al-Marjeh in Aleppo city, misleading media outlets distributed the footages and photos and alleged the Syrian Army was the perpetrator.

A terrorist rocket attack in Homs city leaves 3 civilians injured

In a relevant context, three civilians were injured due to a terrorist rocket attack in al-Arman neighborhood in Homs city.

Two rocket shells fired by terrorist organizations positioned in the northern countryside of Homs hit al-Arman neighborhood, a source at Homs governorate told SANA.

The attack, the source said, left 3 civilians injured and caused material damage to the citizens’ properties and the infrastructure in the site.

Victims in a terrorist explosion of a car bomb in al-Tal, Damascus countryside

Terrorists detonated a car bomb in al-Tal city in Damascus countryside on Thursday, leaving a number of victims among the civilians.

Civil sources told SANA that terrorists blew up a car bomb behind the municipality building in al-Tal city, causing several victims and injuries among the civilians.

Meanwhile, a medical source at al-Mowasa hospital told SANA that two children and a man were received in the hospital, having different injuries due to the explosion.

Mazen Eyon

Material damages in a mortar shell that fell near TV& Radio building

Terrorists fired a mortar shell that fell in the surrounding of Umayyad main square in Damascus.

A police source told SANA that a mortar shell hit the fence of the Radio and TV building without leaving any causality.

If your bubble has burst, you can hardly listen to him through to the end. And if you somehow succeed you will develop an increased awareness of his deception. And of your own disgust.

Over 4,700 words that perfectly fit the narrative that the mainstream media daily foist off on the public. Indeed MSM has failed us all countless times, and though deception was revealed, no retraction followed. Yet this man persists. Dour mug, focused eye, a measured declaring, as of one who bears upon his shoulders fathomless commitments – we had gotten used to it. Patently, there’s an impressive number of people who actually believe he does.

If the U.S. weren’t sick with Corporatism, this man wouldn’t be on that podium lying to us all. Advanced symptoms of the disease are apparent, as corporations dominate nearly every aspect of society, and government serves them as a tool to consolidate their power ever further. A Corporate State has a Corporate Government, which enacts Corporate Laws, pushes for a Corporate Economy, and then provides Corporate Jobs (aka McJobs), Corporate Education, and Corporate Healthcare to a Corporate Citizenry.

A Corporate State is a Corporation-ruled state.

In a Corporate State no one but a stooge will stand as President. No matter whether in charge is a bubba from Arkansas, a sham cowboy, a sissy black, or a warmongering harebrained bitch: a stooge bears no responsibility. However indecent or heinous he might be, as long as he’s doing his Corporate Bidding, he’ll brazenly beat the rap. The rise of dissenting voices will remain offstage; unheard, ineffective. A Corporate State holds power over the citizens through the Corporate Media apparatus, which spreads scourge by shaping opinion.

Mesmerized by News channels and distracted by status quo-supporting Hollywood paradigm, Corporate Citizenry firmly believes itself to be free and safe, while shamelessly parroting events and statements it was indoctrinated to, proudly saluting its flag, listening to and thanking the Stooge-in-Chief.

At the UN General Assembly on September 28, U.S. President Barack Obama praised the founding, 70 years ago, of the institution and its achievements, acknowledging unparalleled advances in human liberty and prosperity, diplomatic cooperation, a buttress to global economy, and the lift of a billion people from poverty. Despite many notches scored by the UN, his administration bypassed it entirely when it was time to invade Libya, and is currently doing the same in Syria, where it is bombing with no UN Security Council mandate or invitation by the duly-elected government.

In his speech, Obama called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a tyrant who dropped barrel bombs on children, but the attacks in East Ghouta on August 2013 shortly afterwards turned out to be a false flag operation, with no shred of evidence against Syrian government forces. Indeed, it was to serve as pretext for another U.S. humanitarian invasion, but Russian warships were promptly deployed off the Syrian coast. Obama said that a terrorist group beheads captives, slaughters the innocent, and enslaves women. Those are the moderate rebels that his administration funded, the CIA trained, and its counterparts in the Mideast facilitated the rise, in order to create a strategic asset to use for regime change in Syria. Assad is fighting against them.

Obama purported to remind us how the Syrian mess began: “Assad reacted to peaceful protests by escalating repression and killing that, in turn, created the environment for the current strife.” Before 2011, Syria was the only country in the Mideast with no domestic conflicts. Assad had, and still has, the support of the overwhelming majority of the population. The Syrian fake revolution began with attacks during pro-government rallies perpetrated by armed groups against demonstrators and police – the same plot as in Libya and Ukraine. Operations were masterminded by Western Intelligence services and triggered a civil war waged by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel. The truth is Syria is the only Mediterranean country with a state oil company and the only Arab country not indebted to IMF. Here’s what created the environment for a strife.

A truly frightening thing Obama said was, “We know that ISIL depends on perpetual war to survive.” Truly scary for those whose bubble has burst indeed, since they know that after WW2 in the U.S. even Defense Industry merged with Corporatism – a Corporate Defense to profit from war.

Likewise he referred to Gaddafi, without naming him, as a tyrant. Gaddafi’s 40-year long rule turned Libya into the richest African country, which provided its citizens free healthcare, free education including University, free electricity, no interest loans, exceptional welfare state, and much more. In addition to this, Gaddafi was engaged in a project of de-dollarization in African natural resources trade, and the creation of an African bank system to free the continent from the clutches of Western corporations. A good reason to make a tyrant out of him.

Amazingly, Obama claimed the military intervention prevented a slaughter. Actually, it’s estimated that 30,000 Libyans were killed by NATO and its rebels.

Then he recalled Russia’s annexation of Crimea, pointing out Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. Even Commander-in-Chief of theArmed Forces of Ukraine General Viktor Muzhenko stated they have no evidence of Russian troops on Ukrainian soil. French Intelligence and the OSCE observers claimed the same. German Authorities revealed that the ‘Russian invasion’ issue was an invention of U.S. mainstream media. Yet still some idiots yack about it – the Stooge-in-Chief along with them. Why does a referendum stir up plenty of bile to Obama? Were the Crimeans to use firebombs and batons, like the neo-Nazis in Kiev, to please him?

He went on to state that the U.S. has few economic interests in Ukraine. Possibly it’s unknown to him that Hunter Biden, the cocaine addict son of U.S. VP Joe Biden, is on the board of directors of a company engaged in partnership with Shell in fracking (Hydraulic Fracturing) in East Ukraine, aka Donbass? A 50-year production sharing deal between Shell and Ukraine was signed on January 2013. It’s worth $10 billion and is the largest foreign direct investment ever for Ukraine. Then, why did Senator Insane McCain and other U.S. and EU officials cheer up anti-government protesters in Kiev? By the way, none of them appealed to the mob to eschew violence. And why did Deputy Secretary of State V. Nuland discuss with U.S. Ambassador G. Pyatt who should or shouldn’t be in the next Ukrainian government? And most of all, why did puppet-president Poroshenko – a CIA insider in Ukraine since 2006 – sign the law on Ukraine’s abandonment of its non-aligned policy?

The Stooge said, “Imagine if Russia had engaged in true diplomacy.” Let’s say, ‘Imagine if Russia had deployed some hundreds bases in Mexico, Canada, and all over the Caribbean.’

He praised the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that will open markets, while protecting the rights of workers. Of course, a deal comparable to a gift to workers is way better to be negotiated in secrecy.

He blathered on about a nation of immigrants, international law, Ebola, future generations, free media. Free media in a country where six corporations control 90% of the media – is a Corporate State! His administration has been brutal in targeting whistleblowers, guilty of leaking real information to the press. A Pentagon document, the Law of War Manual, states that journalists may be treated like ‘unprivileged belligerents’, and allows the military to detain and question them. World Press Freedom Index ranked the U.S. at 49th place, lower than several African and South American countries. Obama said, “You can jail your opponents, but you can’t imprison ideas.” He should have said, “I can detain indefinitely without trial, as well as torture, and kill whomever I please within the U.S. and abroad.”

And again, “You can try to control access to information, but you cannot turn a lie into truth.” Meanwhile his administration paid for CNN content to run propaganda. Trumped-up stories were to look like news and adverse ones were to be deleted – it was the Amber Lyon Show!

He mentioned social media, but not to say that Facebook and Google, along with U.S. spy agencies, are part of Big Brother, which intercepts all data communication of Americans and the colonized Europeans – including Merkel and Hollande.

Then, he rejected the wall to keep out migrants in Hungary – but the one built by Israelis is cool, right? According to him, for 50 years the U.S. pursued a Cuba policy that failed to improve the lives of the Cubans. Improving lives by imposing an embargo, I wonder? What an idea! Let’s say the U.S. are increasingly isolated in Latin America, losing ground in favor of Russia, and this compelled him to end hostile policies.

And again he said, “We can be patriotic without demonizing someone else.” So, were those compliments, when addressing Assad, Putin, Gaddafi? Lately, wasn’t he saying even Venezuela has turned into a threat to American security? Wasn’t a Chinese aggression undergoing in the South China Sea? After having violated the Constitution in any possible way, he dared to cite George Washington! And more minor gibberish, unsubstantiated claims likely ridiculous even to the debt-bloated penpusher who wrote that filth on his behalf.

Obama’s speech included just a couple of sentences not to be labeled as pitiful lies. It was about Iran: “The Iranian people have a proud history, and are filled with extraordinary potential. But chanting Death to America does not create jobs, or make Iran more secure.”

True. Neither do sanctions create jobs. Nor does surrounding Iran with U.S. military bases make it secure. By the way, how many jobs were created by chanting Death to Gaddafi? And has that made Libya more secure?

Iran has never owned nukes. Sanctions were imposed against them to harm a competitor rich in resources and noncompliant with a U.S.-vetted government in office, and they were lifted because circumstances were changing to its benefit: with or without their removal, Russia, China, and even the EU were to re-engage Iran.

Drawing to a close, Obama found a way to insert a veiled threat: “Catastrophes, like what we are seeing in Syria, do not take place in countries where there is genuine democracy and respect for the universal values this institution is supposed to defend.”

It means any country whose government from the Western point of view is not deemed democratic, aka neoliberal/pro-U.S., runs the risk of facing violent uprisings and a raise of terrorist formations aiming at overthrowing the government in office. It’s the export of colored revolutions, a destabilize/invade/plunder program sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

By the end of a self-complacent, damning, lengthy performance, the message handed over was: all in all, the Good Guys have done a good job, and American exceptionalism is here to stay.

‘We can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world.’

About half an hour had passed when these words bashed that very audience in a fraught silence. Russian President Vladimir Putin put matters straight in 23 minutes and nailed whomever it may concern to their responsibilities without having to mention them once.

Policies perpetrated by a sole center of dominance, based on conviction in its exceptionalism and impunity, may lead to the collapse of international relations, and give rise to a world ruled by selfishness rather than collective effort, by dictate rather than equality and liberty, with protectorates controlled from outside rather than independent states.

No nation should be forced to conform to a single development model that somebody has declared the right one. Still, some prefer to export so-called “democratic” revolutions. In the Mideast and North Africa, the unleashed violence has destroyed government institutions and local lifestyle, bringing about poverty, social disaster, and total disregard for human rights, including the right to life.

‘I’m urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done?’

Vacuums of power resulted in the emergence of areas of anarchy, quickly filled with extremists and terrorists. Members of the so-called ‘moderate’ Syrian opposition get arms and training by the West, then defect to the Islamic State, which does not come from nowhere, for it was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes. It’s hypocritical and irresponsible to warn against the threat of terrorism and then turn a blind eye to its funding channels.

Stop playing games with terrorists to achieve political goals. Create a broad anti-terrorism coalition based on UN Charter. Fix the Mideast to fix the refugee crisis. Restore statehood in Libya, strengthen government institutions in Iraq, provide comprehensive assistance to the legitimate government of Syria – President Assad’s troops along with Kurdish militia are the only forces truly fighting terrorists in Syria. Any assistance to sovereign nations is to be offered rather than imposed, in strict compliance with the UN Charter.

It’s been NATO expansionism to Post-Soviet countries to spark off a major geo-political crisis in Ukraine. Sole way out of the dead end is full implementation of the Minsk agreement. No integrity can be ensured by threats or military force, and the rights and choices of Donbass citizens must be respected.

Unilaterally imposed sanctions circumventing the UN Charter serve political objectives and aim to eliminate market competition.

Trade rules are to be discussed within the framework of the United Nations, the WTO, and the G20, not rewritten behind closed doors to accommodate the interests of a privileged few.

Once the speech was over, it was clear who was in charge.

While Obama delivered the crude, deceptive propaganda to the assembly, Putin presented a stark foreign policy agenda, and eventually stood up as the man to take over and put an end to chaos. Putin has faced terrorism all his political career long. He fixed Dagestan. He fixed Chechnya. He fixed South-Ossetia. He’s got skills to fix Syria and Iraq as well.

When he rose to power, Russia was falling apart after the disastrous policies of the soaked-puppet Yeltsin, with no real budget, rampant inflation, low foreign exchange reserve, high crime rate and unemployment, public asset looted by foreign companies and crook oligarchs, and deeply indebted. Fifteen years after, Putin has re-built the country into a superpower reasserting its stance on the global political chessboard, leading major trade partnerships and an impressive military. This makes him a true Statesman.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/28/remarks-president-obama-united-nations-general-assembly

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50385

Israel may always be seen as a ruthless pariah state after over 15 years of Sharon, Olmert, Netanyahu rule, each responsible for mass-murdering Palestinians unaccountably.

Their resistance against injustice is heroic – challenging nearly 7 decades of vicious persecution, victimized by endless Nakba, Israeli state terror against their right to exist.

Netanyahu ordered the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem militarized, Abbas-deployed Palestinian security forces complicit with his ongoing reign of terror.

His pathetic Wednesday night address the latest example of his longstanding duplicity – saying one thing, doing something entirely different, showing again he’s a stooge for Israeli ruthlessness, a shameless illegitimate leader with no credibility whatever.

Most Palestinians despise him for good reason – a deplorable Judas, serving solely as Israel’s enforcer against his own people, complicit with their ruthless persecution, including ongoing Netanyahu-ordered state terror.

Fascist Israeli officials want Jews arming themselves with guns. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon lied saying “(w)e are in the midst of a wave of terrorism in which civilians have become the front, and there is supreme importance for the public to be ready and aware.”

When an incident takes place, the terrorists are shot dead, and our people aren’t. That’s what’s important.

Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan said “(c)ivilians who shoot terrorists are heroes.” Education Minister Naftali Bennett calls courageous Palestinian resistance “cowardly Arab terrorism.” He urged Jews with guns to “eliminate the enemy.”

Zionist Union MK/former foreign minister Tzipi Livni called radicalized settlers brutalizing Palestinians unaccountably and security forces murdering them “the real heroes of the last few days…”

MK Yinon Magal twittered “it is important to make an effort so that terrorists who carry out attacks are not left alive…Whoever is trying to kill us should be taken out.”

Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog sounds like Netanyahu on steroids, calling him a “weak leader,” urging escalated state terror, wanting the entire West Bank placed on lockdown, saying “(w)e are facing a surge of dangerous terrorism, and we…know how to overcome it” – code language for encouraging mass murder and extreme brutality, targeting an entire population.

Netanyahu, Herzog and most Knesset members advocate no-holds-barred ruthlessness against defenseless Palestinians, blaming them for Israeli high crimes – the last refuge for fascist thugs running Israel.

Palestinians are being murdered in cold blood, extrajudicially executed. An eyewitness saw nonthreatening Ahmad Abu-Shaaban lethally shot 10 times by Israeli police after radicalized settlers called him “a terrorist,” shouting “shoot him.”

He was falsely accused of a stabbing attempt. He did absolutely nothing, murdered by Israeli racism, numerous other Palestinians victimized the same way, most accused of crimes they didn’t commit.

Eyewitness testimonies and video evidence reveal Israeli criminality – out-of-control viciousness. Riyyad Dar Youssef suffered a fatal heart attack after soldiers brutally assaulted him. He threatened no one.

Since October 1, Israel murdered 33 Palestinians, including 8 children and a pregnant woman. On October 14, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) headlined “Videos and Photos Showing Israeli Violations Against Palestinian Civilians,” saying:

Social media publishes videos and photos about the atrocities and crimes committed by Israeli forces, police officers and settlers against the Palestinian civilians. These incidents have increased lately following the ongoing escalation in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) along with shooting incidents and employment of excessive lethal force in confronting protests.

In some cases, Israeli forces claim that shootings or other practices were carried out in response to the Palestinians’ attempts to stab Israelis. However, the videos and photos showing the employment of excessive force reflect shooting-to-kill policy in violation of the international standards.

Adding insult to ongoing state terror, Israel’s security cabinet approved a measure to withhold bodies of assassinated Palestinians.

They won’t be returned to family members, instead buried in undisclosed locations. Numbers of extrajudicially executed Palestinians increase daily. Ongoing Nakba continues.

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.

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 the 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”.

This article was first published in 2012

Back in 1992 the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff held a “Strategy Essay Competition.”

The winner was a National War College student paper entitled, “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012.” Authored by Colonel Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. the paper is a well documented, “darkly imagined excursion into the future.”

The ostensibly fictional work is written from the perspective of an imprisoned senior military officer about to be executed for opposing the military takeover of America, a coup accomplished through “legal” means. The essay makes the point that the coup was “the outgrowth of trends visible as far back as 1992,” including “the massive diversion of military forces to civilian uses,” particularly law enforcement.

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/Parameters/Articles/1992/1992%20dunlap.pdf

Dunlap cites what he considered a dangerous precedent, the 1981 Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act, an act that sanctioned US military engagement with law enforcement in domestic “support operations,” including “civil disturbance” operations. The act codified the lawful status and use of military “assets” in domestic police work. 

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-A/part-I/chapter-18

Encroachment upon Basic Freedoms

Since that time the American people have been subject to a series of deeper and deeper encroachments upon our basic freedoms, increasingly extensive deployment of military operations on the home front, perpetrated by a corporate driven military mission creep that now claims the right and duty to arrest and detain us on the word of a Pentagon or White House operative. President Obama’s signing of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) whose Section 1021 sanctions the military detention of American citizens without charge, essentially aims to put the last nail in the coffin of our Constitution, our teetering Republic and our most basic democratic traditions.

The statute contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration (“you can trust me”) would use the authorities granted by the NDAA, and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations. The White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA, but reversed course (of course) shortly before Congress voted on the final bill, which the President signed on the 31st of December 2011, a day that will go down in infamy.

“President Obama’s action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.” According to Senator Dianne Feinstein. “Congress is essentially authorizing the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge,” she said. “We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge.” Think again. (Guardian, 12/14/11)

Under the legislation, suspects can be held without trial  “until the end of hostilities.” They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue. A spokesperson for Human Rights Watch implied that the signing of such a bill by a President would have once been unthinkable, noting that “the paradigm of the war on terror has advanced so far in people’s minds that this has to appear more normal than it actually is.” Further, “it wasn’t asked for by any of the agencies on the frontlines in the fight against terrorism in the United States. It breaks with over 200 years of tradition in America against using the military in domestic affairs.”

In fact, the heads of several “security agencies,” including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. Even some within the Pentagon itself said they were against the bill. No matter, and no matter the intention inherent in lip service opposition, the corporate elite who drive the disastrous and inhumane polices of this country see it otherwise, and they, not the generals or anyone else, call the shots!

And they’ve been at this for some time. A persistent and on-gong counter-insurgency directed against the American people, the detention provisions embedded in the NDAA are about more than “social control.” It amounts to a direct attack on the person, an “unreasonable search and seizure” in the cause of maintaining the shaky capitalist ship of state; suppressing popular resistance, dissent and protest, movements of peace and justice, recast as “civil disorder,” “civil disturbance” and “domestic terror.”

Current U.S. military preparations for suppressing “civil disturbance” and “domestic terrorism” including the training of National Guard troops, local police and the authorization of massive surveillance, are part of a long history of American “internal security” measures dating back to the first American Revolution. Generally, these measures have sought to thwart the aims of social justice movements, embodying the concept, promulgated by elite sectors intent on maintaining their grip on the levers of state; that within the civilian body politic lurks an enemy that one day the military might have to fight; or at least be ordered to fight. (See: Army Surveillance in America, 1775-1980, Joan M. Jensen, Yale University Press, 1991)

Thus, in reaction to a period of social upsurge flush with movements of liberation, justice and peace, and the mounting of powerful campaigns which threatened the status quo and elite control, the US military’s stand alone apparatus for conducting “civil disturbance suppression” operations, including detention, was born, immediately on the heels of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.

The Garden Plot Operation

US Military Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, code-named Operation Garden Plot, follows, as was mentioned, in the footsteps of a long tradition of US military involvement in the suppression of dissent. Intriguingly, the Garden Plot operation is cited in documents related to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. (See: Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, William Pepper, Carroll and Graf, 1995)

http://www.dod.gov/pubs/foi/operation_and_plans/Other/GARDEN_PLOT_DoD_Civil_DisturbancePlan.pdf

http://www.911truth.org/osamas/morales.html

Currently, the Garden Plot operation is centered at the Pentagon’s Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). “Stood up” in 2002, (though In the works prior to 9/11), NORTHCOM, America’s “domestic military command,” is tasked with various “counter-terror,” “homeland defense” and “homeland security” activities, including “civil disturbance suppression” operations, and “assisting law enforcement” within Canada, the United States and Mexico. http://www.northcom.mil/

Under NORTHCOM, Operation Garden Plot functions, with the US Army as “executive agent,” as “ConPlan 2502.” In two parts, the “con plan” is officially listed as: United States Northern Command, Concept Plan (CONPLAN) 3501 (formerly 2501), Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA), dated 11 April 2006; and the United States Northern Command, Concept Plan 3502 (formerly 2502), Defense Support of Civil Authorities for Civil Disturbance Operations (CDO), 23 January 2007.

As noted above, the latest development in the Pentagon’s evolving mission of suppressing, at the behest of it’s corporate “civilian” overseers, a detention provision, is buried within the massive National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 signed by President Obama in the fog (grog) of this past New Years Eve.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf

NDAA 2012

Section 1021 of the NDAA 2012 seemingly allows (the language is evasive) for the detention (without trial or charges) of American citizens redefined by the “executive” elite as “enemy combatants” in the so-called “war on terror, ” a “war” which has become in the eyes of many, a war against the Constitution and civil liberties, a war against the disenchanted, fed-up and dissenting American public, spearheaded by a militarized police state allied to imperial military courts and “tribunals,” buttressed and rationalized with mind-bending mil-speak of “enemy combatants,” “unlawful combatants,” “enemy belligerents,” “homeland battlefield” “domestic extremists” “domestic terrorists” and the like.

And yet, behind all the sophistry, lies and manipulation, the brutal truth is obvious: The corporate elite that directs things has seen fit to unleash it’s military on it’s own people in a desperate attempt to suppress the democratic (read: protest) rights of it’s citizenry, us! Why? Simple: the paranoia of the thief, the well founded fear that knows that forced deprivation and scarcities, violence at home and abroad, rooted in greed, has run it’s course in America. And they are right! And so, it makes ominous sense that we are confronted with the horrific machinations of forced detention for those who resist a “new world order” come home in a “homeland” which opportunistically collapses all distinction between dissent and terrorism, police and military, right and wrong, obfuscating the truth of who the real terrorists are!

When Congress passed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), it included provisions that authorized U.S. armed forces to detain persons who are captured in the conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or “associated forces.”

Section 1021 entitled “AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE” allows for the President (whoever that may be) “to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force … to detain covered persons …pending disposition under the law of war.”

“A covered person,” according to the edict’s malleable lingo, is “any person … who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks …” or, who “was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban,” or “associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

Accordingly, “the disposition of a person under the law of war” will include “detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities …” Now, by stating that “nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force,” and that “nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States,” it would appear that the law exempts American citizens from the threat of detention. Correct?

Detention is a Booming Industry

Don’t be too confident. Detention is a booming industry. In 2006 the Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International reported that Halliburton off-spring, “global engineering and technical services powerhouse KBR [Kellogg, Brown & Root] announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency.” The $385 million dollars over 5 year contract “is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers” building “temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.” Could the 2012 NDAA / Section 1021 be such a “new program?”

There has been some confusion over what Section 1021 actually means, and that in and of itself is cause for concern. Congressional spokespeople have stated that the provisions of NDAA 2012 / Sec 1021 do not provide any “new authority” to detain U.S. citizens or others who may be captured in the United States. Obama waffled likewise in the lead up to his signing the provision. Sen. Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, ho-hummed and said that, “we are simply codifying existing law.” But that was an evasion, since existing law, like it or not, regarding the detention of U.S. persons in the “war on terror” is indeterminate in important respects. And “indeterminate” is not good enough!

A recent report from the Congressional Research Service fleshes out the law of detention as set forth in Section 1021, identifying what is known to be true as well as what is unsettled and unresolved. It is perfectly clear, for example, that a U.S. citizen who fights alongside “enemy forces” against the United States on a foreign battlefield could be lawfully detained. This was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42337.pdf

On the other hand, the CRS report explains, “the President’s legal authority to militarily detain terrorist suspects apprehended in the United States has not been definitively settled.” Nor has Congress helped to settle it. “This bill does not endorse either side’s interpretation,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, “but leaves it to the courts to decide.”

So, if a detention of a U.S. person does occur, the CRS said, “it will be up to a court to determine Congress’s intent when it enacted the AUMF [the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force], or alternatively, to decide whether the law as it was subsequently developed by the courts and executive branch sufficiently established that authority for such detention already exists.”

Up to now, “lower courts that have addressed questions the Supreme Court left unanswered have not achieved a consensus on the extent to which Congress has authorized the detention without trial of U.S. persons as ‘enemy combatants,’ and Congress has not so far clarified its intent.”

Well, it is certainly reassuring that a New York court has sought to clarify it’s intent on the matter. On May 16, 2012 a newly appointed federal district judge, Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York, issued a ruling, hailed by many, which preliminarily enjoins (prohibits) enforcement of the indefinite detention provisions (Sec 1021) of the NDAA 2012.

http://sdnyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/12-Civ.-00331-2012.05.16-Opinion-Granting-PI.pdf

The “temporary restraining order” came as a result of a lawsuit brought by seven dissident plaintiffs — including Chris Hedges, Dan Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and Birgitta Jonsdottir — alleging that the NDAA violated both their free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment as well as due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. “The government was unwilling or unable to state that these plaintiffs would not be subject to indefinite detention under [Section] 1021,” Judge Forrest said in her ruling. “Plaintiffs are therefore at risk of detention, of losing their liberty, potentially for many years.”

Where it will go from here is anybodies guess. Judge Forrest’s ruling was not permanent. A day after the ruling, the Wall Street Journal, for it’s part, offered it’s sour grapes, pontificating that the ruling “will be overturned on appeal,” while “its reasoning needs to be deconstructed so it doesn’t do more harm in the meantime.” A week later, on the 25th, federal prosecutors from Obama’s Department of Justice, calling Judge Forrest’s ruling “extraordinary,” suggested that she lift the injunction, claiming further that her ruling only effects those plaintiffs named and not other potential or future targets of the draconian legislation.

http://sdnyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/12-Civ.-00331-2012.05.25-Govt-Motion-for-Reconsideration.pdf

Well, a few days ago on June 6th the upright Judge Forrest responded with an 8 page, “memorandum and opinion” in which she sought to “eliminate any doubt as to the May 16 order’s scope.” (New York Times, “Detention Provision is Blocked” 6/7/12). And as to whom and for whom her original order was intended: “The May 16th order enjoined enforcement of Section 1021(b)(2) against anyone until further action by this, or a higher, court – or by Congress.” That’s clear enough!

So, as it stands now now, although Judge Forrest’s decision may temporarily protect Americans from provision 1021, it remains to be seen what the higher courts do should Obama’s people appeal. And unfortunately, Judge Forrest’s ruling, as praiseworthy as it is, does nothing to spare both foreign reporters and civilians from a life of imprisonment, let alone the more than 6 billion citizens of foreign nations who can still be handcuffed and hauled away to a US military prison without ever being brought to trial.

So, bottom line, given the indeterminate nature of a law that would snatch us up off the streets, throw away the key, and grant us little or no access to a trial let alone legal counsel of choice not vetted by the Pentagon, we should have no illusions that we are well along the slippery indeterminate slope to a full blown militarized police state; the complete identification, coordination and consolidation of the police and military function in America in the interests of an elite who regard us as the enemy, maybe even their property! Maybe even as targets for assassination!

Naked violation of the 4th and 5th Amendments to the US Constitution

We should recall, that the current attempt by the executive to designate American citizens for detention without trial; a naked violation of the 4th and 5th Amendments to the US Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure and the guarantee of a trial, was preceded by the administration’s “resolve” to assassinate at will Americans abroad, place them on a “kill list,” and eliminate them. According to the New York Times “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” (5/29/12) the President and his advisors have made it clear that they have the authority “to order the targeted killing of an American citizen, in a country with which the United States was not at war, in secret and without the benefit of a trial.”

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel rationalized such a move in “a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch.” (New York Times, “Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen,” 10/8/11) Accordingly, after a dubious period of “internal deliberations,” Mr. Obama gave his approval, and the cleric Anwar al-Awlak was assassinated in September 2011, along with an associate Samir Khan, an American citizen who was not on the target list but happened to be traveling with Mr. al-Awlak. Apparently, campaign rhetoric and public demeanor to the contrary, when asked what surprised him most about Mr. Obama, Mr. Donilon, the national security adviser, answered immediately: “He’s a president who is quite comfortable with the use of force on behalf of the United States.”

The Posse Comitatus Act

How did we get here? We need to recognize that the “massive diversion of military resources” into domestic law enforcement for the purposes of suppressing dissent and worse has a long history, a history that has witnessed the steady evisceration of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, the sole federal statute that criminalizes military incursions into the domain of domestic law enforcement. The Act is the backbone of our democratic republican tradition of separating the military and police function in this country and represents the ultimate bulwark against military dictatorship in the interests of the rich. That is the reason it is and continues to be attacked, ridiculed and ignored by elements in both the corporate and military spheres. For example, “Current Obstacles to Fully Preparing Title 10 Forces for Homeland Defense and Civil Support” by Commander James S. Campbell, United States Navy, May 2008 and, “The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Law Enforcement Title” by COL (Ret) John R. Brinkerhoff, December 2004, both seek to delegitimize and undercut the status and importance of the Act, a law so critical to the maintenance of our freedoms, and yet, a law about which most Americans remain unaware.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA487235

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/call/docs/10-16/ch_11.asp

The 1878 Act, 18 USC § 1385 – USE OF ARMY AND AIR FORCE AS POSSE COMITATUS, more popularly known as The Posse Comitatus Act, reads as follows:

“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, wilfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a Posse Comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

As noted, the 1981 Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement law would seemingly violate the spirit if not the letter of this Act. Nonetheless, like a slowly boiling pot relentlessly eating away at our freedom of movement, assembly, association and expression, the utilization of military assets, under cover of law enforcement to suppress our democratic rights has proceeded steadily by design, virtually un-noticed.

Historical milestones: eating away at our freedom of movement, assembly, association and expression

A very limited listing of some historical milestones:

* In 1968, as mentioned above, concurrent with the creation of the Federal Commission on Civil Disorder, better known as the Kerner Commission, the Pentagon hatched it’s very own “civil disorder” operation. “US Military Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2,” code named “Garden Plot,” coordinates, until this day, all aspects of “civil disturbance suppression” in America, including the use of so-called “non-lethal weapons” during conveniently designated domestic “operations other than war” (OOTW), and “military operations in urban terrain” (MOUT), a “war” which pits “non-combatant” citizens and protesters (overwhelmingly non-violent) against militarized police on the streets of America.

* Only a few months after the round up and detention of 7,000 anti-war protesters in Washington DC, imprisoned in RFK stadium, an early Garden Plot operation, the 1971 Non-Detention Act was passed, specifically to repeal portions of the 1950 “anti-communist” “Emergency Detention Act” which had allowed for detention of suspected subversives without the normal Constitutional checks required for imprisonment. The Non-Detention Act required specific Congressional authorization for such detention. It reads that, “no citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.” In recent years, the statute has been used to challenge military detainment of U.S. citizens accused of terrorist activity, as in the case of Jose Padilla.

http://www.jenner.com/system/assets/assets/5417/original/18.pdf?1321652398

A Congressional Research Service report on the history of the Non-Detention Act noted that, “legislative debate, committee reports, and the political context of 1971 indicate that when Congress enacted Section 4001(a) it intended the statutory language to restrict all detentions by the executive branch, not merely those by the Attorney General.” Further, “lawmakers, both supporters and opponents of Section 4001(a), recognized that it would restrict the President and military authorities.”

As for the Padilla case, the Supreme Court of the United States originally took the 2004 case of Rumsfeld v. Padilla to decide the question of whether Congress’s Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) authorized the President to detain a U.S. citizen, which would run afoul of the Non Detention Act. But it did not give an answer, instead ruling that the case had been “improperly filed.” And so the issue, as to whether and under what circumstances the military can pick you up, detain and imprison you, without charging you, from the point of view the Supreme Court, remains “unsettled.”

* Also in 1971, the California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI) was created. Headed up by Louis Giuffrida, formerly of Army Combat Command, the first director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), CSTI introduced the Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) concept, offering courses on “civil disorder management” for select “militarized” police and National Guard units armed and trained for domestic operations in the urban centers of America. During this period the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) facilitated federal funding and other military largess to the burgeoning militarized sectors of the domestic police forces along with training of selected National Guard units. Still in operation, CSTI is currently headed up by William J. Hatch Colonel, USA (RET), while funding for militarizing local police departments these days is facilitated by the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, funding which has increased drastically since 9/11.

http://americaswarwithin.org/articles/2011/12/21/local-police-stockpile-high-tech-combat-ready-gear

* In 1975 the Trilateral Commission, a Western European, Japanese, US corporate think-tank convened by David Rockefeller, issued a report entitled, “The Crisis of Democracy.” (NYU Press, 1975) Authored by none other than Samuel  Huntington. (“Clash of Civilizations”). Huntington’s book is a blueprint for the on-going counter-revolution in America, emphasizing the elite requirement of suppressing democratic “insurgency,” the “distemper” of the 60s, a “distemper” that according to Huntington, stemmed from an “excess of democracy.” The only and final solution therefore is to “moderate” and “shrink democracy,” concluding that, “there are potentially desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy.”

http://www.wrijneveld.nl/Boekenplank/BoekenVanAanhangersVanDeNieuweWereldOrde/1975-TC-The-Crisis-of-Democracy.pdf

* In 1983, the US Army published Field Manual 3-19-15, Civil Disturbance Operations (since updated in 2005). The manual addresses civil disturbance operations in both continental United States (CONUS) and outside continental United States (OCONUS). It states that, “today, United States (US) forces are deployed on peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and humanitarian assistance operations worldwide. During these operations, US forces are often faced with unruly and violent crowds intent on disrupting peace and the ability of US forces to maintain peace. Worldwide instability coupled with increasing US military participation in peacekeeping and related operations requires that US forces have access to the most current doctrine and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) necessary to quell riots and restore public order.”

“In addition to covering civil unrest doctrine for CONUS operations, FM 3-19.15 addresses domestic unrest and the military role in providing assistance to civil authorities requesting it for civil disturbance operations …The principles of civil disturbance operations, planning and training for such operations, and the TTP [“tactics, techniques and procedures”] employed to control civil disturbances and neutralize special threats are discussed in this manual. It also addresses special planning and preparation that are needed to quell riots in confinement facilities are also discussed. In the past, commanders were limited to the type of force they could apply to quell a riot. Riot batons, riot control agents, or lethal force were often used. Today, there is a wide array of nonlethal weapons (NLW) available to the commander that extends his use of force along the force continuum. This manual addresses the use of nonlethal (NL) and lethal forces when quelling a riot.” And as noted, the training is meant to be operative in both foreign and domestic contexts, the war abroad, the war at home.

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-19-15.pdf

* In 1986, the Pentagon issues Department of Defense Directive 5525.5, or DoD Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Officials. US military involvement in domestic law enforcement is subsumed and rationalized under “doctrines” entitled Operations Other Than War (OOTW) and Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT), along with divisions known as Military Support to Law Enforcement Agencies (MSLEA) and Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA)

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/552505p.pdf

* In 1992 President Clinton’s Justice Department consolidated a partnership with the Pentagon in the area of “technology transfer.” The so-called “technology transfer agreements” allowed for the military to weaponize domestic police forces, further enhancing the growth of para-military “special forces” like “special units” in local police departments across the country, including “civil disturbance” units and training. The Clinton administration extended the police/military connection by mandating that the Department of Defense and its associated private industries form a partnership with the Department of Justice to “engage the crime war with the same resolve they fought the Cold War.” The program, entitled, “Technology Transfer From Defense: Concealed Weapons Detection,” (“Technology Transfer from Defense: Concealed Weapons Detection,” National Institute of Justice Journal, No 229, August, 1995), calls for the transfer of military technology to domestic police organizations to better fight “crime.” Previously, direct “transfers” of this sort were made only to friendly foreign governments. The Clinton directive enhanced and formalized direct militarization of domestic police forces.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39680373/The-Militarization-of-the-Police-by-Frank-Morales

Currently, Title XIV of an earlier NDAA in 2007 entitled, “Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Legislative Provisions,” authorizes “the Secretary of Defense to create a Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Consortium to improve the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DOD) processes for identifying and deploying relevant DOD technology to federal, State, and local first responders.” In other words, the law facilitates the “transfer” of the newest in so-called “crowd control” and surveillance technology to local militarized (politicized) police units.

* In 1993, the US Army and Marine Corps publish Domestic Support Operations Field Manual 100-19.

http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/service_pubs/fm100_19.pdf

* In 1994, the Department of Defense issued Directive 3025.12, Military Assistance for Civil Disturbances (MACDIS) that details the rationale and means (“tactics, techniques and procedures”) for suppressing dissent. It states that, “the President is authorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States to suppress insurrections, rebellions, and domestic violence under various conditions and circumstances. Planning and preparedness by the Federal Government and the Department of Defense for civil disturbances are important, do to the potential severity of the consequences of such events for the Nation and the population.”

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/302512p.pdf

* In 1995, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an key elite “policymaker” headquartered in New York City, set up an “Independent Task Force on Nonlethal Weapons (NLW)” in order “to assess the current status of non-lethal weapons development and availability within the Department of Defense, in light of their potential to support U.S. military operations and foreign policy,” not to mention the suppression of dissent at home. The 16 member Task Force, which published its’ findings in 1999, was chaired by IBM executive Richard L. Garwin, CFR “Senior Fellow for Science and Technology.” Other members of the Task Force included CFR “military fellow” David Jones, United States Navy, Commander, Edward N. Luttwak, member, “National Security Study Group administered by the Department of Defense,” Edward C. Meyer, USA (Ret.), Chair of Mitretek Systems, formerly Chief of Staff, US Army, and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Janet and Christopher Morris, President/Vice President, M2 Technologies, Inc, members US Global Strategy Council.

The Director of the CFR task force on non-lethal “technologies” was W. Montaque Winfield, former Executive Officer to the Commander of the “Stabilization Force” stationed in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Also a 1998-9 CFR “military fellow,” Brigadier General Winfield, some of you might recall, was the deputy director for operations (DDO) in the National Military Command Center (NMCC) at the Pentagon on the morning of 9/11, who according to the 9/11 Commission, left his post that very morning to attend a “pre-scheduled meeting” and allowed a colleague who had only recently qualified to take over his position, to stand in for him. He didn’t return to his post until after the terrorist attacks had ended. http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=montague_winfield

The CFR had issued an earlier report on the subject of “non-lethal” weapons in 1995, and stated in the 1999 report that they had regrettably “found that the DoD has made only limited progress developing and deploying nonlethal weapons since 1995.” The CFR, offering a bit of a tongue lashing to it’s hired generals, considered the “shortfall” the result of a “continued lack of appreciation for NLW among civilian and military policymakers.” Taking a firm line, the CFR report recommends that, “senior civilian and military leaders should make NLW development a priority.” After all, “nonlethal weapons could give policymakers a more potent weapon than economic sanctions.” In fact, “used alone”, the report notes, “NLW could penalize civilian economies without high civilian casualties.” Looking for something between “diplomatic table thumping and outright annihilation,” the armchair corporate warriors at the CRR continued to pound away at the need for accelerated “non-lethal” R and D.

http://revoltrevolt.org/demilitarizethepolice/nonlethal.html

* Subsequently, on July 9, 1996, the Department of Defense complied, issuing Directive 3000.3, Policy for Non-Lethal Weapons. The Directive established Department of Defense policies and responsibilities for the development and employment of so-called “non-lethal weapons,” designating the Commandant of the Marine Corps as Executive Agent for the Department of Defense Non-Lethal Weapons Program. On July 1, 1997, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate was established to support the Executive Agent for Non-Lethal Weapons in the day-to-day management of the Department of Defense Non-Lethal Weapons Program putting the “best and the brightest” at work in designing soft-kill means (including neuro-weapons) of “crowd dispersal” and “social control” set within a strategy of so-called “low-intensity warfare” and “counter-insurgency.”

http://jnlwp.defense.gov/pdf/2011%20Public%20%20Release%20%20NLW%20Reference%20Book%20V1.pdf

http://www.zcommunications.org/electromagnetic-weapons-by-frank-morales

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/the-militarization-neuroscience

Recently, this past May 17, 2012 the DoD issued Instruction 3200.19. Entitled “Non-Lethal Weapons (NLW) Human Effects Characterization,” the “instruction” “establishes policy, assigns responsibilities, and provides procedures for a human effects characterization process in support of the development of NLW, non lethal technology and NLW systems.” It also establishes a “Human Effects Review Board,” which “scientifically” evaluates and quantifies levels of pain, calculating the most desirable “effects” in regard to the use of non-lethal force against non-combatants and protesters. In this regard, they receive a lot of assistance from their friends and associates in academia.

http://cryptome.org/dodi/dodi-3200-19.pdf

In 1997 Penn State University established the Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies. The Institute is “dedicated to providing a base of multidisciplinary knowledge and technology that supports development and responsible application of non-lethal options for both military and civilian law enforcement. “ The Institute is administered by Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory (ARL), under the direction and support of the University’s Office of the Vice President for Research. http://nldt2.arl.psu.edu/

Its Human Effects Advisory Panel sponsored a conference in September 2000, whose purpose was “to assess crowd behavior and the potential for crowd control … a leading core capability sought by the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Program.” Their 2001 report was entitled, “Crowd Behavior, Crowd Control, and the Use of Non-Lethal Weapons.”

http://nldt2.arl.psu.edu/documents/crowd_control_report.pdf

Meanwhile, the University of New Hampshire’s Non-Lethal Technology Innovation Center (NTIC) was created by a grant from the DoD’s Joint Non-lethal Weapons Directorate about the same time “to effect the next generation of NL capabilities by identifying and promoting the development of innovative concepts, materials and technologies within the academic community.” Its “Society of Force Effectiveness, Analysis and Techniques” (FEAT) was “established to engage primary source scientists to share results and analyses from studies of applied force, whether physical, psychological, or emotional. The Society’s scope of interests includes the impact of non-lethal or less lethal force intervention on sustained attention; performance degradation due to fatigue or intentional distraction; compliance; vigilance; and stress resilience.” The Society, given its specific intent on affecting “motivational behavior,” is keen on identifying “disciplines that support the development of tools of behavioral modification through force (e.g., kinetic and electromagnetic energies, psychological operations).”

http://www.unh.edu/ntic/

* In August of 2001, the Pentagon issued Field Manual 3-19.40, Internment and Resettlement Operations. Explicating the role of military police engaged in law enforcement, including at the point of domestic detention activities set within the context of “emergency” support, the extensive manual covers detention policies and methodologies and the use of non-lethal weapons. Chapter 10, Sections 49-66 detail the nature of “emergency services” within the “continental United States,” explaining that “MP (military police) units assisting ES (emergency service) operations in CONUS involve DoD-sponsored military programs that support the people and the government at all levels within the US and its territories.” Classified as “domestic support,” the manual states that, “federal armed forces can be employed when …” in the face of a declared “emergency,” “state and local authorities do not take appropriate action.”

In that instance, FEMA would serve as “the single POC within the government.” With a nod to the Posse Comitatus Act the document goes on to state that, “the MP support to ES in CONUS varies significantly from other I/R (internment/resettlement) operations. The basic difference is that local and state governments and the federal government and its agencies have a greater impact and role in supporting and meeting the needs in an affected community.” “If tasked to set up and operate an I/R facility, the MP commander retains control of military forces under his command,” and can operate “in conjunction with local, state and federal law enforcement officials.”

http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/a22.pdf

* September 11 provided the elite Project for a New American Century and their associates with the “new Pearl Harbor” they sought, as set forth in Rebuilding America’s Defenses (pg.51), a major consequence of which was the September 18, 2001 passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force or AUMF.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/sjres23.es.html

The Pentagon can invade, occupy and destroy at will, pre-emptively (with little or no reason), anyone, anywhere in the world

This singular, presumably legal rationale for much of what we now endure, the AUMF substantiates the notion that the Pentagon can invade, occupy and destroy at will, pre-emptively (with little or no reason), anyone, anywhere in the world, any time it chooses. In addition, apparently as we now see, the AUMF gives the Pentagon and it’s covetous corporate directors justification for the military takeover of America itself and the detention of its people. Thus, the AUMF is cited by the peddlers of Section 1021 of the NDAA 2012.

The modern “military tribunal” structure, which is a major piece of the detention/repression apparatus, came into formal existence as a consequence of the 2002 Department of Defense Military Commission Order No.1, issued on March 21, 2002 by former president (war criminal) George W. Bush.

http://www.defense.gov/news/Mar2002/d20020321ord.pdf

The entire military commission/tribunal structure is a work in progress, or more precisely, a dynamic and strategic power play on the part of the rulers set in motion following 9/11; a “might makes right” gambit undertaken by the militarist directors in the smoke of 9/11. Like the so-called Patriot Act, it was forced down the throats of a submissive, clueless public, sufficiently softened by means of prime time terror, fear and panic. Taking two steps forward and one step back, the militarists act first and then rationalize (or more precisely have their employees in the Congress) baptize the move after the fact. Where do presidents like Dubya, and now Obama get the authority to issue such blanket, unilateral decrees, totalitarian “executive orders,” such as Obama’s “National Defense Preparedness Order” of this year, which would force us to work for the Pentagon? The answer: No where! They have no authority! Particularly to set up parallel systems of jurisprudence as a means of by-passing Constitutional protections. In historical fact, this approach has a parallel in earlier maneuvers of another former “executive,” Adolph Hitler. (see Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich, Ingo Muller, Harvard, 1991)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness

Concurrent with the round-up of over a thousand people following the September 11 attack, many of whom are still being held, many in solitary confinement, with no charges being filed, President Bush signed in November 2001 an order, establishing military “tribunals” for those non-citizens, accused, anywhere, of “terrorist related crimes.” And now, with the NDAA, citizens might soon face the same fate. Just imagine some smug and starchy government lawyer arguing that “the right to equal protection,” a fundamental principle of both U.S. and international law, demands that Americans be detained too!

At the time (2001), the National Legal Aid & Defender Association stated that the Bush promulgated “military order” violated the constitutional separation of powers:

“It has not been authorized by the Congress and is outside the President’s constitutional powers … the order strips away a variety of checks and balances on governmental power and the reliability and integrity of criminal judgments… undermines the rule of law worldwide, and invites reciprocal treatment of US nationals by hostile nations utilizing secret trials, a single entity as prosecutor, judge and jury, no judicial review and summary executions.”

More recently, in October 2009, the U.S. Congress passed and Obama dutifully signed the Military Commissions Act of 2009 (2009 MCA), which remains in effect today, legalizing further, if you will, the naked power grab by the executive in behalf of the elite. Since then the “Office of Military Commissions” has been set up as a public relations/propaganda front for the dictatorship. It promises to “provide fair and transparent trials of those persons subject to trial by Military Commissions while protecting national security interests.” Kind of like Fox’s “fair and balanced” news reporting. http://www.mc.mil/

Finally, we should recall that the NDAA of past years, aside from providing the funding of vast sums for illegal and immoral wars, torture and assassination, has been the site of various embedded measures designed to further limit our democratic rights of free expression and assembly, which is the foundation of effective and meaningful dissent. One such measure dates back to 2007, to the then so-called John Warner NDAA, named after militarism’s best friend and sponsor of the iconic AUMF.

Public Law 109-364, or the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007” (H.R.5122), was signed by George Bush on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony. It allowed the President to declare a “public emergency” and subsequently station troops anywhere in America, seizing control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.” Well, fortunately, a massive protest ensued and the sections of the law that allowed for such were eventually repealed in the midst of which Senator Pat Leahy commented that, “we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law.” Preparing to order the military onto the streets of America, the presumption is that some form of martial law would be in evidence. Note that the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is “martial law.”

http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/911/

The concept of martial rule, as distinct from martial law, is not written, and therefore is an eminently more workable arrangement for “law enforcement forces.” That’s because, as US Army Field Manual 19-15 points out, “martial rule is based on public necessity. Public necessity in this sense means public safety.” According to the manual (cited above), updated in 2005, U.S. state authorities “may take such action within their own jurisdictions.” And yet, “whether or not martial rule has been proclaimed, commanders must weigh each proposed action against the threat to public order and safety. If the need for martial rule arises, the military commander at the scene must so inform the Army Chief of Staff and await instructions. If martial rule is imposed, the civilian population must be informed of the restrictions and rules of conduct that the military can enforce.”

Now, respecting the power of free speech, the manual suggests that, “during a civil disturbance, it may be advisable to prevent people from assembling. Civil law can make it unlawful for people to meet to plan an act of violence, rioting, or civil disturbance. Prohibitions on assembly may forbid gatherings at any place and time.” And don’t forget, “making hostile or inflammatory speeches advocating the overthrow of the lawful government and threats against public officials, if it endangered public safety, could violate such law.”

Further, during civil disturbance operations, “authorities must be prepared to detain large numbers of people,” forcing them into existing, though expanded “detention facilities.” Cautioning that, “if there are more detainees than civil detention facilities can handle, civil authorities may ask the control forces to set up and operate temporary facilities.” Pending the approval of the Army Chief of Staff, the military can detain and jail citizens en masse. “The temporary facilities are set up on the nearest military installation or on suitable property under federal control.” These “temporary facilities” are “supervised and controlled by MP officers and NCOs trained and experienced in Army correctional operations. Guards and support personnel under direct supervision and control of MP officers and NCOs need not be trained or experienced in Army correctional operations. But they must be specifically instructed and closely supervised in the proper use of force.”

According to the Army, the detention facilities are situated near to the “disturbance area,” but far enough away “not to be endangered by riotous acts.” Given the large numbers of potential detainees, the logistics (holding, searching, processing areas) of such an undertaking, new construction of such facilities “may be needed to provide the segregation for ensuring effective control and administration.” It must be designed and “organized for a smooth flow of traffic,” while a medical “treatment area” would be utilized as a “separate holding area for injured detainees.” After a “detainee is logged in and searched,” “a file is initiated,” and a “case number” identifies the prisoner. In addition, “facility personnel also may use hospital ID tags. Using indelible ink, they write the case number and attach the tag to the detainees wrist. Different colors may be used to identify different offender classifications ”

Finally, if and when it should occur, “release procedures must be coordinated with civil authorities and appropriate legal counsel.” If the “detainee” should produce a writ of habeas corpus issued by a state court, thereby demanding ones day in court, the Army will “respectfully reply that the prisoner is being held by authority of the United States.”

In conclusion:

There is no question that the militarized police state, in all its myriad permutations has arrived. In fact, the militarizing of American cities and society as a whole proceeds apace in lock step (Cities Under Seige: The New Military Urbanism, Stephen Graham, 2010) with the racist, anti-immigrant “defense” of the borders, a veritable cash cow for military contractors, booming. The cities, the borders, so how bout the skies? Well, as this is being written, the latest 2013 NDAA discussions include a Senate Armed Services Committee call to allow drones to operate “freely and routinely” in America!

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2012_cr/sasc-uas.html

http://nacla.org/blog/2012/6/7/bringing-battlefield-border-wild-world-border-security-and-boundary-building-arizona

Meanwhile, the GAO has just issued a report to Congress entitled “DOD Should Reevaluate Requirements for the Selective Service System” which calls for an evaluation of Pentagon “manpower needs for the Selective Service System in light of current national security plans.” Such an evaluation would, the report notes, “better position Congress to make an informed decision about the necessity of the Selective Service System or any other alternatives that might substitute for it.”

http://cryptome.org/2012/06/gao-12-623.pdf

Yes indeed, the water is boiling. Not to mix metaphors, but it’s time to jump out of the frying pan and hopefully not into the fire, which I take to mean that we must confront and deconstruct, in a non-violent way, the increasing potential for far more violence and suppression of our basic freedoms. The handing over of our resources, lives, fortune and reputation to a clique of thieves and murderers dressed up as presidents, congress people and corporate military executives and underlings is to foster our continued enslavement to the perpetrators of injustice and genocide, here and broad, inequality and greed, here and abroad, and signals the political suicide for our republic. We have got to act to stop the police state and reassert the values of community, justice and equality in the councils of governance. And to do so we must dis-empower the militarists.

One thing we can do right now is to initiate organizing campaigns in neighborhoods and communities across the country aimed at the passing of Posse Comitatus-like legislation on the local and state level, encouraging dialogue on the de-militarization of our communities, and raising the human right to be free of the violation inherent in all forms of militarism. By removing all aspects of militarism from domestic policing, lock, stock and barrel, we can expand the terrain of dissent and begin to reclaim our country back from the economic vultures and parasites and their violent mercenaries who are killing this country and the world. But first we must criminalize, like the Posse Comitatus Act does, all military involvement in law enforcement.

Communities must organize to de-militarize their police

Communities must organize to de-militarize their police. By analyzing police budgets, cutting the “special ops” training and funding and weapons transfers that fuel the militarization of law enforcement, we will most certainly decrease the level of police violence directed against the citizenry, and bridge issues and communities concerned with the epidemic of racist “police brutality” and the burgeoning of militarized police forces, veritable occupation armies in communities of color across America.

Along with criminalizing the militarization of local police we must work to criminalize racial profiling on the part of the police, a practice (indoctrinated in soldiers) that provides naked justification for “stop and frisk” harassment and the murdering of young black men.

Make killer cops liable for these murders, stripped of the “sovereign immunity” that is their 007 license to kill. Ditto for “stand your ground” or more-arms-for-the-white-right laws, which along with the high rates of gun ownership in certain demographic regions of the country, create the ominous potential for “deputized” armed posses, who along with state sponsored “defense forces” on a mission to presumably protect the “homeland” promise only more violence and repression. Disarm and expose them, expose the fraud of a hyped-up “law enforcement” establishment willing to break any laws to please the master, the financiers, the power brokers who manipulate them for gain, who are really only pawns in their game.

It is irrational and a violation of the civil and human rights of the citizenry to perpetuate the arming of militarized police trained to suppress constitutionally insured rights to free speech and assembly. They are supposed to defend the Constitution, not “detain” those who do! They are supposed to defend the civil rights of the people, not “partner” with the CIA and FBI and spy on activists and Muslim communities, entrapping their youth, victims of the racist charade called “the war on terror.” (Associated Press, “Post-9/11, NYPD targets ethnic communities, partners with CIA,” 8/24/11)

http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s1009r.pdf

They are supposed to defend the right to protest, not brutalize those who do, peacefully, as in the most recent police crack-down on the Occupy movement. (New York Times, “When the Police Go Military” 12/3/11). They are supposed to be sensitive to the civil and human rights of all the people, respect the cultural diversity of their environment, “serve and protect,” not to be trained in “quick shoot reflex” by outfits such as the Firearms Training Systems which trains both the NYPD and the US marines!

Police departments are public institutions subject to the will of local governments, to the will of the public, the people. But only if we act! Where and under what circumstances the police receive their training, are granted “immunity” and what armaments they possess, (paid for by public funds) and what sort of institutional relationships with US military and intelligence agencies (which public documents would make evident) are they engaged in …

These are the kinds of questions and avenues of approach common throughout history in the struggle of citizens against police/military dictatorships. And despite the recent May 17, 2012 issuance of the “DoD Civil Liberties Program,” which defines civil liberties as “fundamental rights and freedoms protected by the Constitution of the United States,” except when “operational requirements” of “an authorized law enforcement, intelligence collection, or counterintelligence activity” dictate otherwise; despite the tightening noose, in the end we must rely on the law, on “the rule of law,” specifically, on the ability (necessity) of reasonable people of good will acquiring sufficient power to draft new and enforceable laws, laws which promote justice, healing, growth, life and peace. And to make them stick!

We claim and hope to be a society of laws, by the people, for all the people. But we are not. Never have been. Nonetheless, we are capable of evolving, of igniting a revolution of values in this country and becoming the land we all aspire to “with justice and freedom for all.” But in order to get there, we will have to overcome the coup of 2012.

Frank Morales / Memorial Day / 2012

Note: This article, originally published on May 27, 2003, takes us back to a turbulent period in American history. That year, the US was fighting a bogus “war on terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The ensuing chaos and brutality in the Middle East led Ron Paul to introduce the 2003 American Sovereignty Restoration Act in the House of Representatives. Over the last decade, Ron Paul’s numerous failed attempts at introducing this bill (his latest attempt was in 2013) show that the American Sovereignty Restoration Act might never be passed into law. Yet, regardless of the current status of the bill, we need to take this document into serious consideration and ask ourselves whether or not Paul’s idea poses a credible threat to the UN’s current role as an agent of American imperial domination.

[DOCID: f:h1146ih.txt]

108th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 1146

To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.

_______________________________________________________________________

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 6, 2003

Mr. Paul introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

A BILL

To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003”.

SEC. 2. REPEAL OF UNITED NATIONS PARTICIPATION ACT.

(a) Repeal.–The United Nations Participation Act of 1945 (Public Law 79-264, 22 U.S.C. 287-287e) is repealed. (b) Termination of Participation in United Nations.–The President shall terminate all participation by the United States in the United Nations, and any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body of the United Nations. (c) Closure of United States Mission to United Nations.–The United States Mission to the United Nations is closed. Any remaining functions of such office shall not be carried out.

SEC. 3. REPEAL OF UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS AGREEMENT ACT.

(a) Repeal.–The United Nations Headquarters Agreement Act (Public Law 80-357) is repealed. (b) Withdrawal.–The United States withdraws from the agreement between the United States and the United Nations regarding the headquarters of the United Nations (signed at Lake Success, New York, on June 26, 1947, which was brought into effect by the United Nations Headquarters Agreement Act).

SEC. 4. UNITED STATES ASSESSED AND VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE UNITED NATIONS.

(a) Termination.–No funds are authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available for assessed or voluntary contributions of the United States to the United Nations or any organ, specialized agency, commission or other formally affiliated body thereof, except that funds may be appropriated to facilitate withdrawal of United States personnel and equipment. Upon termination of United States membership, no payments shall be made to the United Nations or any organ, specialized agency, commission or other formally affiliated body thereof, out of any funds appropriated prior to such termination or out of any other funds available for such purposes. (b) Application.–The provisions of this section shall apply to all agencies of the United Nations, including independent or voluntary agencies.

SEC. 5. UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS.

(a) Termination.–No funds are authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available for any United States contribution to any United Nations military operation. (b) Terminations of United States Participation in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.–No funds may be obligated or expended to support the participation of any member of the Armed Forces of the United States as part of any United Nations military or peacekeeping operation or force. No member of the Armed Forces of the United States may serve under the command of the United Nations.

SEC. 6. WITHDRAWAL OF UNITED NATIONS PRESENCE IN FACILITIES OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND REPEAL OF DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY.

(a) Withdrawal From United States Government Property.–The United Nations (including any affiliated agency of the United Nations) shall not occupy or use any property or facility of the United States Government. (b) Diplomatic Immunity.–No officer or employee of the United Nations or any representative, officer, or employee of any mission to the United Nations of any foreign government shall be entitled to enjoy the privileges and immunities of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of April 18, 1961, nor may any such privileges and immunities be extended to any such individual. The privileges, exemptions and immunities provided for in the International Organizations Immunities Act of December 29, 1945 (59 Stat. 669; 22 U.S.C. 288, 288a-f), or in any agreement or treaty to which the United States is a party, including the agreement entitled “Agreement Between the United Nations and the United States of America Regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations”, signed June 26, 1947 (22 U.S.C. 287), and the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, entered into force with respect to the United States on April 29, 1970, (21 UST 1418; TIAS 6900; UNTS 16), shall not apply to the United Nations or any organ, specialized agency, commission or other formally affiliated body thereof, to the officers and employees of the United Nations, or any organ, specialized agency, commission or other formally affiliated body thereof, or to the families, suites or servants of such officers or employees.

SEC. 7. REPEAL OF UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION ACT.

The joint resolution entitled “A joint resolution providing for membership and participation by the United States in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, and authorizing an appropriation therefor” approved July 30, 1946 (Public Law 79-565, 22 U.S.C. 287m-287t), is repealed.

SEC. 8. REPEAL OF UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM PARTICIPATION ACT OF 1973.

The United Nations Environment Program Participation Act of 1973 (22 U.S.C. 287 note) is repealed.

SEC. 9. REPEAL OF UNITED STATES PARTICIPATION IN THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION.

The joint resolution entitled “Joint Resolution providing for membership and participation by the United States in the World Health Organization and authorizing an appropriation therefor,” approved July 14, 1948 (22 U.S.C. 290, 290a-e-1) is repealed.

SEC. 10. REPEAL OF INVOLVEMENT IN UNITED NATIONS CONVENTIONS AND AGREEMENTS.

As of the date of the enactment of this Act, the United States will end any and all participation in any and all conventions and/or agreements with the United Nations and any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body of the United Nations. Any remaining functions of such conventions and/or agreements shall not be carried out.

SEC. 11. REEMPLOYMENT WITH UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AFTER SERVICE WITH AN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION.

Nothing in this Act shall be construed to affect the rights of employees under subchapter IV of chapter 35 of title 5, United States Code, relating to reemployment after service with an international organization.

SEC. 12. NOTIFICATION.

Effective on the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State shall notify the United Nations and any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body of the United Nations of the provisions of this Act.

SEC. 13. EFFECTIVE DATE.

Except as otherwise provided, this Act and the amendments made by this Act shall take effect 2 years after the date of the enactment of this Act. <all>

Source and Copyright US Congress, 2003

Washington has ‘adjusted’ its controversial program of aiding the Syrian rebels to vet commanders rather than individual fighters, and provide supplies instead of training. A new rebel group in northeastern Syria has emerged as a recipient of US aid.

“The train-and-equip program has changed, but it has not gone away. We’re still equipping moderate Syrian opposition fighters,” Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told the press on Tuesday.

As an example, he cited the airdrop of 50 tons of ammunition to the “Syrian Arab Coalition” (SAC), a 5,000-strong force of Arab insurgents in the east of Syria, which he said was fighting against Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS and ISIL) militants. The shipment consisted of small-arms ammunition, hand grenades, and rounds for mortars and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, he said.

Warren said the group’s leader has been vetted by the US and given “specific training” on some specialized equipment. In his view, the airdrop was “not a major shift” in US operations in Syria, since there have been other supply drops in the past, notably to Kurdish forces in Kobani.

The original program, funded by Congress to the tune of $500 million, envisioned creating a 15,000-strong force of individually vetted US-backed ‘moderates’ that would focus on battling Islamic State forces. After most of the US-trained fighters were captured, or defected to Islamist groups with all their weapons and equipment, the White House announced it would cut the effort short.

“That program didn’t work,” Warren admitted to reporters. “Being an adaptive and agile organization, we’ve made an adjustment. We’ve adjusted our approach,” he added.

@AFP @TheStudyofWar Term “Syrian Arab Coalition” introduced less than 48hrs ago. Already in use. pic.twitter.com/miuMCxodjw

— Ludwig W (@LudWitt) October 13, 2015

Though Warren said the SAC has been fighting IS militants in the region of Raqqa “for months,” and described the US contacts with the group as a result of a “yearlong process of building ties,” the first mention of the group’s name appears to be a New York Times article on October 9.

The group is reportedly part of an even broader coalition: Reuters reported on October 12 that the SAC had teamed up with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in what they called the “Syrian Democratic Forces.” However, when asked about the SDF, Warren said he did not know who they were.

Moscow has expressed skepticism about the ongoing US efforts to back the elusive ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria, as well as the effectiveness of the US-led air campaign which began in October 2014.

“We barely have any doubt that at least a considerable part of these weapons will fall into the terrorists’ hands,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Russia’s NTV, describing the results of the US-led air campaign against IS as “insignificant.”

Reports that ”Syrian Democratic Forces” been established by YPG and ”Syrian Arab Coalition”. #TwitterKurds #Syria https://t.co/Do5BTwcjkZ

— A Dunon (@4rj1n) October 11, 2015

“Syrian Arab Coalition” was basically local Arab groups in Burkan al-Firat + local tribes. http://t.co/9SKA40jXg0 pic.twitter.com/w3brlrsNKW

— A Dunon (@4rj1n) October 11, 2015

US officials have insisted the aid would not be used against the Syrian government troops. Washington remains adamant that the only acceptable end to the Syrian civil war would be regime change in Damascus.

Asked what would happen if the SAC requested US air support against the Syrian government forces, Warren maintained that they were only fighting IS at the moment. However, he admitted that US planes have struck groups other than IS – such as Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra – and that the Pentagon’s policy on air strikes in Syria “still needs a little bit of development.”

LISTEN MORE:

He fully understands they have pure evil intent in their hearts and minds. Rogue hegemons think and act this way – tolerating no one challenging their ruthless policies.

The New York Times and other Western media quoted Putin blasting US policy responsibly. He diplomatically uses the phrase “American partners” knowing no partnership exists.

US/Russian relations are adversarial because Washington wants them this way. Putin is polar opposite, urging mutual cooperation among all nations – the way all responsible world leaders think and act.

Rogue ones like America demand obedience and subservience, independent governments going their own way not tolerated, endless wars of aggression waged to replace them with US-controlled puppet regimes.

Putin slammed Obama for refusing to receive a high-level Russian delegation led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev – to discuss differences between both countries on Syria and other vital issues.

“I don’t really understand how our American partners can criticize Russia’s counterterrorism effort in Syria while refusing direct dialogue on the all-important issue of political settlement,” Putin explained.

“I believe this position to be unconstructive. The weakness of this position is apparently based on a lack of agenda. It seems they have nothing to discuss.”

They continue pursuing their ruthless hegemonic agenda, waging endless direct and proxy wars of aggression, seeking world conquest and domination they won’t achieve.

Putin accused US officials of muddled thinking. “I believe (they) have mush for brains,” he stressed.

They claim “our pilots are striking the wrong targets, not IS.” Russia asked Washington to provide a list of these targets.

Obama officials declined. “ ‘No, we are not ready for this’ was the answer,” Putin quoted them saying.

“Then we thought again and asked another question: then tell us where we should not strike. No answer (again),” he said. “That is not a joke. I did not make this up. How is it possible to work together?”

He blasted the Obama administration for air-dropping weapons, obviously intended for terrorists. No so-called “moderates” exist, nor a Free Syrian Army.

Virtually all anti-Assad elements in Syria are terrorists, imported from scores of countries. Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported “stepped up operations against terrorist organizations, advancing in various areas across the country and making more gains, the latest was establishing control over the strategic Tal Ahmar (hill) in Quneitra.”

On Thursday pre-dawn, a large-scale operation began to liberate areas north of Homs, a Syrian military source saying:

“At 05:30 (AM), our army began a large-scale operation in the north of the Homs Governorate. The village of Haldiye and another neighboring village were freed. The situation on the front line at the moment is excellent.

Syrian television reported ground forces advancing after “concentrated air strikes and heavy preparatory artillery shelling on the terrorist groupings and their bases.”

Other ground and air operations are continuing in and around Aleppo, the Eastern Ghouta, Damascus countryside, Hama, Idleb, Daraa, Deir Ezzor, and Hasaka.

Since October 1, Syrian forces liberated numerous villages. At a Wednesday press briefing, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said US-led demands for Assad to resign are wrongheaded.

“They try to persuade us that, if (he) resigns, the terrorist activity will decline, as the Islamic State is waging a war because of Assad. This is the direct implementation of terrorists’ logic. One cannot interpret these statements otherwise.”

“It’s very odd to hear the civilized world suggesting meeting terrorists’ requirements. In the past, when international terrorism and terrorist attacks were discussed, the world spoke with one voice and acted very resolutely.”

“Nobody said, ‘Let’s meet terrorists’ demands to reduce their influence and minimize the impact.’ “

Separately, The New York Times reported Pentagon and other US officials virtually awestruck over impressive Russian weapons, technology, and ability to wage effective military operations, matching anything America can do.

“The Russian advancements go beyond new weaponry, reflecting an increase in professionalism and readiness,” said The Times.

Military analyst Michael Kofman was cited, saying Russian operations in Syria show it caught up with US military capabilities, including conducting very effective “night strikes, with damage assessments by drones (and) “amazingly capable” cruise missiles.

So far, Russian air power has only “been used to a fraction of its potential.” It represents a formidable challenge to Washington’s regional hegemonic aims and perhaps beyond.

A Final Comment

Lunatic fascists Washington installed in Kiev demand Moscow pay Ukraine $1 trillion dollars “as compensation for the loss of Crimea and its (nonexistent military operations) in Donbass,” RT International reported.

Illegitimate prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk blustered: “We are ready for judicial proceedings.”

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html . Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. 

Last night’s coverage and panel analysis of last night’s Democratic Debate on the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) was proven correct once again.

Despite the Democratic Debate host CNN and other mainstream media outlets claiming the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had ‘won the debate’, the polls numbers told another story – of an absolute rout by Vermont’s US Senator Bernie Sanders over the embattled former Secretary of State.

The CNN Facebook post-debate poll Tuesday evening at one point showed 80% of voters choosing Bernie Sanders as the winner, with the final figure settling in around 75%. Hillary Clinton came in with a poorly 18%. Embarrassed by its own futile attempt to inflate Clinton’s poor showing last night in Las Vegas, CNN only flashed its Facebook poll result up on screen once, and only for 3-4 seconds, before flushing it down the memory hole.

Other major polls reflected this same result. At the end of the debate last night, Time Magazine showed 64% favored Sanders, and the leftist outlet MSNBC showed Sanders blowing out Clinton, taking 84% of the winning endorsements, while liberal outlet The Slate gave Sanders 75% of winning votes. Hillary registered only slightly higher than unknown Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.

INFLATED: The media are trying to prop-up Hillary’s falling popularity, but according to the polls, Bernie had the last laugh.

Clinton poor polling numbers are validated by a nonpartisan poll conducted by Reuters in the week prior to this debate, which shows Clinton on a downward slope. From October 4 to October 9, Clinton’s support dropped ten whole points – from 51 to 41%.

CNN: Manufacturing ‘Consensus Reality’

Even after its own polls showed Sanders crushing Clinton, CNN still sticks to its PR directive from the DNC, running with the inflated headline, “Hillary Clinton’s big night on the debate stage.”

CNN were not alone in the effort to pump-up a phantom victory for Hillary Clinton…

The Huffington Post’s morning email blast read, “Hillary Clinton Dominates at First Democratic Debate”. An incredible headline, considering what really happened.

In addition, the Guardian also got it wrong, leading this morning with skewed headline, “Hillary Clinton rises above controversy – and a Sanders revolution.” Hardly.

Again, another example of the establishment media propping-up the Clinton regime – just as the very same media cartel has been working overtime to sabotage GOP outsider Donald Trump’s presidential run by instead propping-up failing GOP runners like Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorini and Marco Rubio.

Back in 2008, and in 2012, the establishment media, in collusion with the RNC, intentionally omitted polling and voting results, before eventually sidelining popular GOP candidate Ron Paul, whose campaign eventually ended by supporters and delegates being physically locked-out of caucus meetings and party conventions, again, showing the depths of corruption that is systemic in the American two party system.

Readers should know by now after watching how the establishment media goes out its way to distort reality and public opinion – in effect, using their weight to fully interfere with and distort the ‘democratic’ process in the West – that the West has a very long way to go before it can claim that it’s above Third World countries when it comes to lessons modernity and eliminating corruption in its own oligarchical ranks.

CNN: The Election Fixer

To anyone who has been paying attention over the last 12 months, it should come as no surprise that CNN is actively trying to twist reality in the 2016 US Presidential Election, as its been campaigning for Hillary 2016 right in the face of its audience..

In a shameless exhibition of media electioneering and poor journalism, CNN has been regularly hosting one its shows, ‘Erin Burnett: Out Front’, from the event headquarters of the Clinton Global Initiative foundation (pictured above). It’s hard not to notice that CNN is deliberately co-branding these TV shows with the Clintons. This should show even the most ardent skeptic just how in bed the network is with the Clinton campaign.

Here, viewers can see CNN’s Erin Burnett engaging in gushing sycophantic ‘interview’ sessions with Hillary’s husband and former president Bill Clinton – all part of a wider effort to try and rehabilitate sex scandal-ridden Bill’s poor public image and lack of trust worthiness.

Among other high-flying political money laundering activities, the Clinton Global Initiative has also been caught accepting “donations for access.” It was revealed earlier this year how Clinton Foundation donors like Saudi Arabia received weapons deals – while Hillary Clinton was head of the US State Department.

Considering Saudi Arabia’s horrific human rights and women’s rights (non-existent) record, it’s a wonder how so many American Democratic Party women are willing to turn a blind eye to the Clinton’s under the table dealings with a regime that sits at the very bottom of global morality league table. Based on its obvious alignment with the dubious foundation, to call CNN a partner in that corrupt enterprise would be 100% accurate, and to call Clinton a hypocrite on this issue would be a gross understatement.

How long will the media try to inflate the Clinton brand? If they succeed, how much money will have been spent to engineer her into power?

Why can’t election regulators step-in to resolve conflicts of interest, like we see between CNN and the Clinton campaign?

If Big Media is allowed to continue operating like CNN is, then Democracy in America is in big trouble.

A Syrian archbishop warned British politicians of the folly of supporting Islamic militants in the war in his country.

Greek Melkite Catholic Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart of Aleppo said that for the past 60 years, Syria has strived to become a modern secular state. Western support for militants against Syrian President Bashar Assad would destroy all such progress, he said at Tuesday’s meeting in the House of Lords organised by Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic charity helping persecuted Christians.

Christians in his country were instead supportive of Russian military intervention because it gave them fresh hope that the four-year war would end in a solution favorable to them, he told British politicians and Christian leaders at the meeting.

British Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood disagreed with the archbishop’s analysis, telling the meeting that the conflict would continue until Assad stepped down.

During his speech, Archbishop Jeanbart said militants were “killing anyone who is saying anything about freedom, about citizenship, about religious liberty, about democracy.”

“Please, I ask you, I beseech you to have another look at our situation to see what is underneath, what is happening,” the archbishop said.

“It is terrible for us to see all the marvelous things we had destroyed for pretend democracy and freedom. Our country was fighting for 50-60 years to become a secularist regime, a pluralistic country, to give citizens their rights of religion and freedom of choice … and you are destroying this work and pushing on us fundamental jihadis who want to kill everyone who is not similar to them.

“They don’t accept anyone who is different,” Archbishop Jeanbart added. “Anyone who is not a fundamentalist Muslim has no rights — no right to live, no right to be in society, no right to be a citizen.”

The archbishop told the meeting that Syrian Christians are suffering because rebels “have destroyed everything — our economy, our industry, our churches, everything.”

“The most important thing we are suffering from is that they are destroying man. They are taking away our right to choose what we want to be,” he said.

Archbishop Jeanbart said he was pleased to have the chance to speak directly to British politicians because Syria was being isolated and that news from the country was being “manipulated in an unacceptable way.”

The perception that moderate rebel forces were fighting the government to win freedom and democracy was a “big lie,” the archbishop told the meeting, adding that the war was waged between a modern secular state tolerant of religious minorities and jihadi groups who were massacring them.

He said Islamist rebel groups, who go under a variety of names, had slaughtered more than 50 Christians within the last month alone, most recently shooting dead three Assyrian Christians after a ransom for their lives was not paid.

“My colleagues — bishops, priests and faithful — in Syria now feel they have hope that the problems will be sorted and the war will finish since Russia intervened and struck Daesh (Islamic State) seriously,” he added. “That is what they think.”

The conflict in Syria has claimed about a quarter of a million lives and displaced some six million people, most of whom are living in camps along the country’s borders, while thousands of others have entered Europe through Turkey.

In 2013, British Prime Minister David Cameron failed to persuade Parliament to support the bombing of the Syrian regime by the United Kingdom in support of moderate rebel groups. He is expected to try again for permission to intervene militarily within the next few weeks.

Critics of his policy, including Peter Ford, a former British ambassador to Syria, say such moderates scarcely exist, arguing that the forces arrayed against Assad are invariably extremists. They also claim that interventions in Iraq and Libya have proved disastrous.

But Ellwood told the meeting that Assad was an obstacle to peace because no “inclusive government” could ever be formed under his rule.

“The recent Russia action is a clear demonstration of the Assad regime’s weakness,” he said.

“Assad cannot survive without Russian or Iranian support, and Assad cannot win the war in Syria. We don’t buy for one moment his spurious argument that he can protect religious minorities. His actions in effect have fueled sectarian violence, and his regime is ultimately responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and as long as Assad is in power the conflict will go on.”

He said that Britain was presently “supporting nongovernmental efforts to promote dialogue between different ethnic and religious groups in Syria” in preparation for the reconstruction of the country after the fall of Assad.

It was also attempting to promote interfaith dialogue in Iraq, where Christians are suffering acute persecution, he said.

The meeting was also addressed by human rights activist Lord Alton of Liverpool; Timothy Cho, an exile from North Korea who has witnessed the public execution of Christians there; and Victoria Youhanna, a Nigerian woman who escaped from Boko Haram.

Youhanna told participants how she had personally witnessed the beheadings of Christian men after they refused to join Boko Haram.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations in Geneva, detailed the efforts of the Vatican to end the global persecution of Christians.

“Freedom of conscience and religion is a fundamental human right violated with impunity with regard to Christians in the Middle East and regions of Africa, where Christians are made the target of unspeakable violence,” he said. “Christians are decapitated, crucified and forced into exile and enslavement.”

Such violence, largely at the hands of militant Muslim groups, was “emptying the Middle East” of the Christian presence, Archbishop Tomasi said.

Mass protests, boycotts and strikes sparked by the October 10 double suicide bombing targeting a peace march in Ankara have spread across Turkey. Burial ceremonies of the victims of the Ankara bombings have become anti-government rallies, with thousands of mourners chanting “Murderer Erdoğan” and “The murderous state will he held to account.”

On October 12 and 13, an alliance of labor unions affiliated to the main opposition parties and professional organisations held a two-day nationwide strike. Tens of thousands of medical staff, teachers, municipal employees and lawyers struck, while university students boycotted their lessons in some faculties.

The Confederation of Progressive Workers’ Unions (DİSK), the Confederation of Public Laborers’ Unions (KESK), the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB), and the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) took part in the action.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has intensified its pressure on the media and mobilised the police to suppress the rising tide of opposition. The government used the police to impose bans on protest rallies.

On Tuesday, the Istanbul Governor’s Office refused to grant permission for the proposed march from Sirkeci and Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty to Beyazıt Square, saying, “The governorate does not find the planned march and rally appropriate, regarding the sensitivity of the present period.” In other parts of Istanbul, riot police brutally attacked those who defied the ban.

Also on Wednesday, an Ankara court issued a broad media ban on reporting on the Ankara suicide bomber investigation. According to Hürriyet Daily News, the ban includes “all kinds of news, interviews, criticism and similar publications in print, visual, social media and all kinds of media on the Internet.”

The general strike, called by unions and associations affiliated with the pro-Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the mainly Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), mobilised only a minority of the working class. DISK limited its action to walkouts in municipalities under the CHP or HDP control, with the support of the mayors. It did not organise any strike in the factories, while KESK generally let its members stay at home.

The larger trade unions openly support the government. The main Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (Türk-İş), for example, contented itself with expressing its “sorrow” for the bombings and laying red carnations at the main train station in Ankara, while another pro-government confederation, Hak-İş, issued a statement to condemn terror and offer condolences to “the nation.”

Almost a month ago, these trade union confederations, along with business and industrialist organisations had participated in a rally “against terror”—i.e., against the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK)—organised by the government.

There are widespread accusations of state involvement in the Ankara bombings, with claims that the government knew the attacks would take place or directly staged them.

The government has carried out showpiece arrests of suspected members of the Islamic State (IS) in a number of provinces across Turkey. On Tuesday, the police claimed to have identified one of the suicide bomber suspects as Yunus Emre Alagoz, the brother of a bomber who killed 33 people in a separate suicide blast in Suruc in July, also said to be linked to IS. The other bomber was identified as Omer Deniz Dundar, using DNA from the blast. The two were reportedly on a list of 21 potential suicide bombers.

The government declared late on Tuesday that it had removed the police, intelligence and security chiefs of Ankara from their posts in an effort “to conduct an effective investigation into Saturday’s bombings.”

This came after a meeting between Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and the leader of main opposition CHP, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who asked for the resignation or removal of Interior Minister Selami Altınok and Justice Minister Kenan İpek.

After initially declaring that the attack on a pro-peace rally, with a heavy presence of the HDP, was most likely the work of IS—which is at war with the Kurds in Syria and Turkey—the AKP government is now floating an amalgam between the IS and PKK.

Davutoğlu said that the government and police had “made progress on the planning phase of this attack. All the evidence indicates the existence of two different terror organisations. We are trying to find out whether there was collaboration between these two gangs [i.e., IS and the PKK].”

Indicating that more repression is planned, he added that he had “instructed the cabinet to review our entire legal framework on the conduct of public demonstrations,” saying, “There is work for a new security concept.”

The AKP, unable to form a coalition government after elections in June, has called fresh elections for November 1. However, with opposition to its rule increasing, it is relying on whipping up anti-terror and anti-Kurd, pro-war sentiment to mobilise its own base and legitimise the suppression of its political opponents and the media.

“As we go to the November 1 elections, there are those now trying to block the establishment of long-term stability in the country,” Davutoğlu said.

“The main question of the June 7 elections was whether the HDP would pass the 10 percent threshold. The question before this election is whether the AKP will form a one-party government. The objective of this attack is to threaten democracy in Turkey. That’s why the AKP is under attack even before the incident in a bid to influence election results.”

There is rising concern within ruling circles over the stability of the country and the survival of the government. Powerful sections of the Turkish bourgeoisie have withdrawn their support, either from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or from the AKP itself. Some analysts in the media are speculating on the possibility of a broad-based coalition between the AKP and CHP, which would “re-establish stability and revitalise the peace process with the Kurds.”

But the AKP is also threatened by a growing rift with Turkey’s Western allies, above all the United States, over its well-established relations with IS and other Islamist groups and its ongoing war against the PKK. This is cutting across Washington’s alliance with the Kurds in Syria, a key element in US efforts to curb IS and pave the way for a long-desired regime change removing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Even while pledging support for Turkey, and ignoring appeals from Ankara, which has been involved in conflicts with Russia over intrusions into its airspace, the US last Friday went ahead with plans to remove its Patriot air defence missiles from the Kurdish southeast. Germany said it would do the same.

Yesterday, Turkey summoned the US ambassador in Ankara to express concerns at a reported transfer of 120 tons of weapons and ammunition to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is an ally of the PKK.

“Turkey cannot accept cooperation with terrorist organisations that waged a war against us,” Davutoğlu said at a press conference with Bulgaria’s prime minister, Boyko Borisov, in İstanbul. “Turkey is determined to fight against all organisations linked to the PKK, in the same way the US and other allies fought against al-Qaeda affiliates while fighting al-Qaeda itself.”

With an eye to reports that Moscow has also sent arms to the Kurds, he stressed, “This stance has been conveyed to the US and Russia.”

The YPG has declared the formation of a new military alliance with a number of Arab groups, calling itself the Democratic Forces of Syria. A YPG statement, sent to Reuters on Monday, says, “The sensitive stage our country Syria is going through and rapid developments on the military and political front…require that there be a united national military force for all Syrians, joining Kurds, Arabs, Syrians and other groups.”

A stunning new exposé by The Intercept, which includes the publication of classified documents leaked by an intelligence source, provides an unprecedented look at the U.S. military’s secretive global assassination program.

The series of articles, titled The Drone Papers, follows months of investigation and uses rare primary source documents and slides to reveal to the public, for the first time, the flaws and consequences of the U.S. military’s 14-year aerial campaign being conducted in Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan—one that has consistently used faulty information, killed an untold number of civilians, and stymied intelligence-gathering through its “kill/capture” program that too often relies on killing rather than capturing.

“The series is intended to serve as a long-overdue public examination of the methods and outcomes of America’s assassination program,” writes the investigation’s lead reporter, Jeremy Scahill.

“This campaign, carried out by two presidents through four presidential terms, has been shrouded in excessive secrecy. The public has a right to see these documents not only to engage in an informed debate about the future of U.S. wars, both overt and covert, but also to understand the circumstances under which the U.S. government arrogates to itself the right to sentence individuals to death without the established checks and balances of arrest, trial, and appeal.”

The source of the documents, who asked to remain anonymous due to the U.S. government’s aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers, said the public has a right to know about a program that is so “fundamentally” and  “morally” flawed.

“It’s stunning the number of instances when I’ve come across intelligence that was faulty, when sources of information used to finish targets were misattributed to people,” he told The Intercept. “And it isn’t until several months or years later that you realize that the entire time you thought you were going after this target, it was his mother’s phone the whole time. Anyone caught in the vicinity is guilty by association – it’s a phenomenal gamble.”

As outlined by The Intercept, the key revelations of the reporting are:

• Assassinations have depended on unreliable intelligence. More than half the intelligence used to track potential kills in Yemen and Somalia was based on electronic communications data from phones, computers, and targeted intercepts (know as signals intelligence) which, the government admits, it has “poor” and “limited” capability to collect. By the military’s own admission, it was lacking in reliable information from human sources.

• The documents contradict Administration claims that its operations against high-value terrorists are limited and precise. Contrary to claims that these campaigns narrowly target specific individuals, the documents show that air strikes under the Obama administration have killed significant numbers of unnamed bystanders. Documents detailing a 14-month kill/capture campaign in Afghanistan, for example, show that while the U.S. military killed 35 of its direct targets with air strikes, 219 other individuals also died in the attacks.

• In Afghanistan, the military has designated unknown men it kills as “Enemies Killed in Action.” According to The Intercept’s source, the military has a practice of labeling individuals killed in air strikes this way unless evidence emerges to prove otherwise.

• Assassinations hurt intelligence gathering. The Pentagon study finds that killing suspected terrorists, even if they are legitimate targets, “significantly reduce[s]” the information available and further hampers intelligence gathering.

• New details about the ‘kill chain’ reveal a bureaucratic structure headed by President Obama, by which U.S. government officials select and authorize targets for assassination outside traditional legal and justice systems, and with little transparency. The system included creating a portrait of a potential target in a condensed format known as a ‘Baseball Card,’ which was passed to the White House for approval, while individual drone strikes were often authorized by other officials.

•  Inconsistencies with publicly available White House statements about targeted killings. Administration policy standards issued in 2013 state that lethal force will be launched only against targets that pose a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons,” however documents from the same time reveal much more vague criteria, including that a person only need present “a threat to U.S. interest or personnel.”

• New details of high-profile drone kills, including the 2012 killing in Somalia of Bilal al-Berjawi, which raise questions about whether the British government revoked his citizenship to facilitate the strike.

• Information about a largely covert effort to extend the U.S. military’s footprint across the African continent, including through a network of mostly small and low-profile airfields in Djibouti and other African countries.

The investigation comes as the Obama administration announced plans on Thursday to delay withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Administration officials told CNN that troops may conduct “counterterrorism operations” against Islamic State (ISIS) militants there.

But as the documents reveal, assurances from the Obama administration that drone strikes are precise and used only in cases of “imminent” threats are themselves based on intentionally vague definitions of “imminence.”

“Privately, the architects of the U.S. drone program have acknowledged its shortcomings,” said Betsy Reed, editor-in-chief of The Intercept. “But they have made sure that this campaign, launched by Bush and vastly expanded under Obama, has been shrouded in secrecy. The public has a right to know how the US government has decided who to kill.”

As the source himself said, “We’re allowing this to happen. And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.”

Moscow’s success in Syria defines a serous problem for the White House. The idea to blame Russia for bombing moderate rebels doesn’t work. If moderate rebels were in Syria, why did the US need to launch an expensive campaign to train moderate rebels? Moreover, the most part of the US-trained “moderate rebels” with full equipment joined “Jabhat al-Nusra”, declared a terrorist group even by the US.

Despite the fact that the Pentagon’s program aimed to train moderate rebels was a total failure and, indeed, supported terrorism in Syria, the Pentagon officials didn’t pay the penalty. Thus, we could suggest that it was a cover for the real aim to support terrorist groups as “Jabhat al-Nusra” and “Ahrar ash-Sham”. They are the only power that is ready help the US to achieve its main goal, to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. The Kurds’ activity is concentrated in northern Syria. They could advance on Al-Raqqa but they won’t fight against the Syrian government.

If the White House decided to support terrorists, it had to conform its policy with Saudi Arabia, founder and supporter of Jabhat al-Nusra and a number of small terrorist groups in Syria. The fact that US-led coalition Air Force didn’t bomb “Jabhat al-Nusra” last months proves this assumption. Moreover, both Washington and Riyadh are interested in the chaos in Syria to weaken Iran in this region. Thus, they hope to restore the regional balance of powers strongly affected by the Russian military operation.

On October 12, a group of US cargo aircraft already airdropped some 50 tons of small fire ammunition and explosives to terrorists in northern Syria’s Hasakah Governatore. Also, there are numerous reports that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are ready to strengthen their support to terrorist groups with arms, ammunition and even man-portable air defense systems.

At the very same time, US Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Syria (CJSOTF-S) moved to the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. According to reports, CJSOTF-S will coordinate weapon supplies to Syrian groups fighting the Assad government and air-ground cooperation between terrorists and the US Air Force located at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Furthermore, CJSOTF-S is under the command of US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) which has coordinated the $500 million program to train so-called “moderate rebels”. Thus, the US and its allies took a hard line to inspire terrorist activity in Syria.

El triunfo de la Revolución Cubana ha engendrado el más notable cambio político, económico y social de la historia de América Latina.

Desde 1959 las nuevas autoridades lideradas por Fidel Castro han ubicado a los desheredados, particularmente a las mujeres y a las personas de color, principales víctimas de las discriminaciones inherentes a una sociedad patriarcal y segregacionista, en el centro del proyecto reformador. La Revolución “de los humildes, por los humildes y para los humildes”[1] debía echar las bases de una nueva era igualitaria, libre de las angustias de las injusticias ligadas a la historia y a las estructuras sociales del país.

Stating a concern that the proposed law would lead to the reintroduction of border controls between GM and non-GMO-growing countries, the European Parliament news service reported that Members of the Environment Committee shot down a draft EU law that would allow member states to restrict or prohibit sales of genetically modified crops.

This vote goes against numerous EU states that have made it clear in recent months that they plan to instate total bans on GM crops. A total of 19 EU countries have sent letters to the EP saying that they plan GM bans, citing concern over spoiling agricultural markets, and also the desire to provide their citizens with organic food.

Environment Committee chair Giovanni La Via (EPP, IT) said:

“A clear majority in the committee does not want to jeopardize the internal market. For us, the existing legislation should remain in place, and member states should shoulder their responsibilities and take a decision together at EU level, instead of introducing national bans. This proposal conflicts with the principles of “better regulation” and transparency which the new European Commission has taken on board. After we spent so many years getting rid of internal barriers, this proposal could fragment the internal market and lead to a return to border inspections, which we all worked hard to get rid of at the time.”

The recommendation was approved by 47 votes to 3, with 5 abstentions. It should be noted that this is an amendment to existing legislation that allows member EU states to ban at will.

In its proposal, the Commission suggests that it should mirror, as regards genetically modified food and feed, the recent legislation in respect of GMOs intended for cultivation, which entered into force in early April 2015. It therefore proposes to allow member states to restrict or prohibit – under certain conditions – the use of genetically modified food and feed on their territory after these products have been authorized at EU level.