Global Research

(Please read Part I before this article)

The first part of the article touched upon the defining elements that constitute the paradigm shift created by the Coalition of the Righteous (COR), so it’s time to examine the geopolitical consequences of this game-changing development. Each observation deals either with an analyzed observation or a forecasted scenario, and everyone is integral in understanding the “New Middle East” that’s taking shape under Russian stewardship. The first section addresses the COR crescent between Lebanon and Iran, while the second one looks at the US’ crumbling geopolitical pillars of Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The Resistance-Republican Arc Is Reborn

The author wrote about this scenario twice, once back in January and the other earlier last month (butpublished this week), and it deals with the geopolitical resurrection of the Resistance Arc between Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The earliest forecast suggested that Iran could play a stabilizing role in convincing the Kurds to abandon their secessionist desires, while the latest one built upon that idea by highlighting the crucial role that a pro-Resistance Kurdish entity (whether independent or still part of Iraq) would play in fulfilling this scenario. Also, the most recent analysis postulates that with all three entities having the common denomination of Republicanism (be it Secular or Islamic), there’s a certain ideological synergy between them that makes their cooperation all the more natural, and can also lead to the inclusion of Lebanon if it ever truly stabilizes. The COR can thus be seen as the second iteration of the Resistance-Republic Arc, but this time much more strengthened in its geopolitical standing as a result of the Russian Federation’s formal incorporation. In the context of the New Cold War, this makes the coalition the number one military enemy of the US, since it’s the only force that is literally fighting back against its proxies and dedicated to sweeping them and their puppet masters completely out of the geo-pivotal Mideast region.

Kurdistan Makes Its Choice

Continuing with the theme of the Kurds’ criticality to any Resistance Arc recreation in the Mideast, it needs to be directly stated that their leaders have made a clear choice in favor of the COR. By going from unipolar clients to multipolar allies, the Kurds have played a major role in ensuring the viability of the coalition and securing its internal unity in the face of terrorist aggression against it. Russia was the kingmaker in having this happen, as its focused diplomatic efforts over the past two months are largely responsible for the Kurdish Pivot. Without this having occurred, then the geopolitical danger of a pro-American Kurdish client state rising out of the coalition’s anti-terrorist campaign would have hung over the multipolar world like the ultimate Damocles’ Sword. Therefore, the Kurds certainly deserve their fair share of credit and should be saluted for bravely rejecting the US’ vision for them and transferring their trust to the COR instead. Washington can’t in the least bit be happy about this, but it’s mostly unable to do anything about it because its Turkish attack dog is mired in an escalating civil war at home and not at all in a position to project large amounts of punitive force across the border (with its latest small-scale ground and air raids being the most it can realistically do for now).

Iran’s Internal Debate Is Over

The signing of the Iranian nuclear agreement temporarily revealed the internal divisions among the country’s elite, with Western-slurred “hard-liners” decrying it as being full of too many concessions while the so-called “moderates” praised it for its pragmatism. Going further, Iran entered into a brief period of political schizophrenia, courting Western investment at the same time that Ayatollah Khamenei reaffirmed that his country’s stance towards the US remains unchanged. This confusing dichotomy led the author and others to wonder whether or not Western-friendly “moderate” forces had succeeded in secretly assuming power behind the scenes and hijacking Iran’s geopolitical orientation. While some level of political differences still most surely exist in Iran’s upper echelons, the country’s participation in the COR firmly indicates that the “hard-liners” (in reality, the forces that are the most geopolitically pragmatic in Iran) are still calling the shots, which is a huge relief for the multipolar world. Venturing to explain how they pulled out on top, it’s very likely that F. William Engdahl’sexplanation of Russia’s embedded military and technical influence strategically overriding any of the West’s economic temptations is the most accurate reason, and while questions still remain about the impact that Iran’s forthcoming return to the global energy market will have for Russia, that too is likely to have already been addressed by both parties.

The Friendship Pipeline Returns

One of the geopolitical dividends that the War on Syria was supposed to reap for the West and its regional allies was the unviability of the Iran-Iraq-Syria Friendship Pipeline, but with order soon to return to the latter two states, it’s very probable that the project will actually be revived. This is even more so as Western Europe continues to look for a non-Russian energy alternative, especially now that the Turkish-Kurdish War has raised serious questions about the security of the TANAP and TAPlines. Thus, a geo-energy reversal appears to be taking place, one in which TANAP and TAP look unviable while the Friendship Pipeline seems realistic. The windfall of transit revenue that Iraq and Syria would receive for hosting the pipeline could greatly assist with their post-war reconstruction efforts, thus making it a natural economic choice for their leaderships (aside from the loyal commitment that each of them already have in resurrecting the fraternal project). Assuming that the opportunity arises for its physical creation (which is very possible considering that the COR will succeed), this begs the question about how such a large influx of gas on the global market would impact on Russia’s grand energy strategy.

The issue of massive Iranian gas exports threatens to potentially split Russia and Iran in the future more than any other, but in all likelihood, it seems as though Moscow has already thought this through in advance and reached some sort of understanding with Tehran. After all, it’s logical to conclude that once Iraq and Syria return to full stability, Iran would naturally take the lead in suggesting the recreation of the Friendship Pipeline, even more so in the context of the post-sanctions environment it will be in by that time. The pipeline won’t be built right away, of course, and this gives Russia time to flex out its response, which is predicted to be the continued trend of lessening its budgetary dependency on energy exports and diversifying more towards the Asian marketplace. Pair this with the fact that the Friendship Pipeline will export LNG, which thus gives it a very narrow consumer base concentrated mostly in Western Europe, and one can realize how it won’t directly threaten the demand for Russia’s geo-critical Balkan Stream pipeline, thereby avoiding the potential for an unfriendly energy competition between the two Allies. On a final note about this topic, Russia is also primed for expanding its real-sector economic relations via a broad South Eurasian Pivot (which touches into East Africa, too), meaning that its prior relative dependence on energy exports (typically misrepresented, at that) will take on even less of an importance than before as the country engages in new, innovative, and geographically wider methods of spreading its influence.

The Lebanese Lifeline

The Russian military intervention in Syria has relieved the pro-government ground forces of enormous pressure, and it’s thus made it much easier for them to operate. This opens up the possibility that Hezbollah’s fighters there are no longer needed in the same capacity as before, and could thus return to Lebanon to potentially deal with the domestic crisis there without having much of a negative on-the-ground consequence for the Syrian Arab Army right now. One shouldn’t misunderstand the author at this juncture – Hezbollah played an enormously important role in supporting Damascus in its anti-terrorist missions – but it’s just that Lebanon, the epicenter of the movement, is now facing its own existential crisis that might necessitate the organization playing a key role there in some way or another. Had Russia not directly intervened in Syria, then it would have been much more difficult for the Syrian Arab Army to manage the frontlines had Hezbollah needed to abruptly pull most of its forces out of the country for whatever unexpected reason. Now, however, no such military vulnerability exists in the same sense as it previously did, thus giving Hezbollah more freedom of military maneuverability to save Lebanon without having to make the painful decision of choosing between helping its homeland or Syria.

Hezbollah’s flexibility in now being able to more conveniently transfer units from Syria back to Lebanon will likely help it in better managing the country’s crisis if it escalates and such a need arises. Complementarily to this, Russia has also just announced that it will provide an unspecified amount of military equipment to Lebanon’s armed forces and law enforcement agencies to assist with their anti-ISIL efforts. This stroke of strategic genius will help the country counter any terrorist threat that spills over its borders during the forthcoming Russian-Syrian Liberation Offensive, and it will also serve to bolster the state in repelling any destructive Color Revolution-like Islamist takeover. The lifeline that Russia has thus extended to the Lebanese state might be sufficient enough not only to finally bring some semblance of stability to it, but also to make it a member of the COR. If the latter comes to be, then the Resistance Arc would continue to consolidate itself as the Republican Arc, further highlighting the ideological differences between it and the unipolar-affiliated monarchies to the south. Additionally, Lebanon’s incorporation into the Alliance would help it shake off the influence of pro-Saudi infiltrators that have snuck the Kingdom’s influence into the country and its institutions over the past decade.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentaror currently working for the Sputnik agency.

In the age of phone cameras, we have become increasingly used to photos and videos of Palestinians in the West Bank being shot by soldiers in unjustifiable circumstances.

Think of 18-year-old Hadeel Hashlamon, who was killed late last month at a checkpoint in Hebron. A series of photos of her suggest, in the words of Amnesty International, that she was “executed” by the soldiers there. She was shot multiple times and left to bleed to death.

The army claimed she had a knife, which they photographed on the ground nearby. But whether she was carrying the knife or it was planted there, still an issue that has not been resolved, the more important point is this: she posed no threat, let alone a lethal one, to anyone when she was killed.

Now we have a disturbing video of a similar shooting but this time not in the occupied territories. This occurs inside Israel and the victim is an Israeli citizen – a member of the country’s Palestinian minority, which comprises a fifth of Israel’s population.

Israa Abed, a 30-year-old mother of three from Nazareth, was shot today at the central bus station in Afula, close to Nazareth. She was surrounded by many soldiers, police and what appear to be armed Israeli civilians. The soldiers there are probably passengers on the many buses that pass through Afula.

The Israeli media initially reported that she was shot while trying to stab a security guard. The video (below) shows that to be definitively not the case. She is shot after long moments of standing apparently terrified in the bus station, in what looks like a state of all-consuming panic, as more and more people point their guns at her.

From the quality of this video it is near-impossible to know whether she is holding a knife. But it is possible to see that, like Hashlamon, she poses no threat to any of the soldiers when she is shot. That point is underlined by the fact that several soldiers and policemen move closer to her, not away from her, in the final moments before she is shot. She does little more than sway throughout the video, appearing to turn when a policeman runs directly towards her as several gun shots ring out on the sound track.

Fortunately, she appears to have survived the shooting and is reported to be in a stable condition in hospital.

But this video is troubling for several reasons.

First, and most obviously, this woman was shot when she posed no immediate threat. The person or people who opened fire did so with no possible justification, apart from their own fears. One cannot help wondering whether the ease with which Israeli Jews shoot Palestinians, whether fellow citizens of Israel or victims of the occupation, reflects long-dominant discourses in the Israeli education system, media and politics that dehumanise “Arabs”.

Second, the shooting seems to occur not because the armed people around her fear they are in danger, but because the group push themselves into a collective frenzy about the alleged knife. In this kind of atmosphere, someone is going to pull the trigger sooner or later.

This is very similar to another recent video, in which a group of religious (and unarmed) Jews chase after Fadi Alloun in a large open area in Jerusalem calling for him to be shot. When security forces turn up, the video shows police opening fire, apparently on the orders of the crowd, killing him. Again, Alloun does not appear to be posing a threat to anyone at the time he is shot.

Third, Israeli politicians, including the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, have called on Israeli Jewish civilians to carry their weapons at all times and be ready to use them. This video shows where this policy is likely to lead: summary justice carried out by the most unhinged link in the security chain.

Fourth, it is a deeply worrying new trend inside Israel that Jewish civilians are starting to mimick the settlers in the occupied territories in believing they should be carrying out revenge attacks themselves. Today, a Jewish man in Dimona stabbed four Palestinians, two of them Israeli citizens. This video offers a vivid illustration of the mood of victimhood that is sweeping Israel, one that makes Israelis fast on the trigger and ready to play the role of avenging angel.

It is bad enough that Palestinians in Israel have to face security forces that treat them like an enemy. But things will get much, much worse when even the highly prejudicial rule of law in Israel is replaced by the lynch mob.

American Widow’s Story of Her Mayan Activist Husband’s Death — and US Complicity

Earlier this week, we ran a two-parter on the US, Guatemala, corruption, the CIA, genocide, torture, and more. Reader interest was considerable.

We now invite you to watch this video of a presentation made by Jennifer Harbury, an American whose late Guatemalan husband, a Mayan indigenous activist, was “disappeared” by the military. After hunger strikes and investigations, she learned that Efraín Bámaca Velásquez had been tortured and then killed — and that the CIA knew all about it. Her story is a powerful one.

Tens of millions of European and North American immigrants, legal and illegal, have been flooding both the cities and countryside in Asia, Latin America, and even Africa.

Western migrants are charging like bulls and the ground is shaking under their feet; they are fleeing Europe and North America in hordes. Deep down they cannot stand their own lifestyle, their own societies, but you would hardly hear them pronounce it. They are too proud and too arrogant! But, after recognizing innumerable areas of the world as suitable for their personal needs – as safe, attractive and cheap – they simply pack and go!

We are told that some few hundred thousand African and Asian exiles are now causing a great “refugee crises” all over Europe! Governments and media are spreading panic, borders are being re-erected and armed forces are interrupting the free movement of people. But the number of foreigners illegally entering Europe is incomparably smaller than the number of Western migrants that are inundating, often illegally, virtually all corners of the world.

No “secret paradise” can be hidden any longer and no country can maintain its reasonable price structure. Potential European, North American and Australian immigrants are determined to enrich themselves by any means, at the expense of local populations. They are constantly searching for bargains: monitoring prices everywhere, ready to move at the spur of the moment, as long as the place offers some great bargains, has lax immigration laws, and a weak legal framework.

Everything pure and untapped gets corrupted. With lightning speed, Western immigrants are snatching reasonably priced real estate and land. Then, they impose their lifestyle on all those “newly conquered territories”. As a result, entire cultures are collapsing or changing beyond recognition.

Overall, Western immigrants are arrogant and stubborn; they feel no pity for the countries they are inundating. What surrounds them is only some colorful background to their precious lives. They are unable and unwilling to “adopt” local customs, because they are used to the fact that theirs is the “leading culture” – the culture that controls the world.

They come, they demand, and they take whatever they can – often by force. If unchecked, they take everything. After, when there is almost nothing left to loot, they simply move on. After them, “no grass can grow”; everything is burned, ruined and corrupted. Like Bali, Phuket, Southern Sri Lanka, great parts of the Caribbean, Mexico and East African coast, just to name a few places.

*

Who represents the greater “menace”: some 300,000 “illegal” refugees escaping from the countries destabilized or outright destroyed by the West, or those millions of Westerners who are annually fleeing their depressing lifestyles and selfishly over-imposing themselves on so many economically weaker and therefore more vulnerable parts of the world?

I believe the answer is obvious.

People from devastated countries are often left with no choice: many are coming to their tormentors, forced by circumstances to accept totally unreasonable conditions, humiliation and marginalization. They have to work extremely hard. They have to accept jobs Westerners think themselves “too good for”, and they are expected, even ordered, to “adapt” culturally. They go through horrific screenings and interviews, and almost all of them have to degrade themselves just in order to survive and feed their children. Only a minority is allowed to stay. Those who do stay greatly contribute to local economies.

Of course, this is a part of the dirty trick: the West needs foreigners; it cannot survive without immigrants, without their cheap labor. But it would never admit it openly. Before “accepting them”, it has to first humiliate and break even those whom it desperately needs. It has to further demean those whose nations were already robbed of everything, and even thrown into war by the West’s imperialist foreign policy and by corporate terrorism.

*

The West’s migrants are encountering totally different treatment in most of the countries they are inundating.

To begin with, Western immigrants do not even need visas to enter most countries. Decades ago, the Empire opened by force almost all “developing states”. Westerners are treated preferentially, and generally promoted as a “source of income” by local regimes.

It is mainly the Western multi-nationals that are dividing the loot from Asian, African and the Middle Eastern countries, but some part of booty always ends up in the pockets of those ordinary European and North American citizens, mainly in the form of retirement plans or other social benefits. Then, annually, tens of millions of Westerners, armed with funds that have been stolen from the “developing world” are hitting the road, trying to make their money go further in those places where their funds actually originated!

It is no secret that Western migrants are taking advantage of poverty, low prices, and corrupts legal systems. Their arrival raises prices for housing and land. It leaves millions of local people literally homeless, and it raises the prices of food and basic services for the local population.

In a way, people in many poor countries get robbed twice: by Western corporations, and then again, by Western migrants.

But damaged countries are not sending coast guard ships to intercept Western migrants. And there are hardly any deportations. Only those who dare to criticize the system get expelled.

*

I saw entire islands being eaten alive by Western immigrants. Almost no coastal areas are left for local people on the Indonesian islands of Lombok and Bali. The Scandinavian mafias, the Central European mafias, Australian mafias… The theft had reached unimaginable proportions. Even when it is illegal to purchase land, the Europeans and the North Americans are teaming up with local gangs, or forging schemes that include marriages to local women. Western migrants are tremendously canny! There is always some way how to get around the laws and screw poor people in the most miserable countries on earth.

The Italian “takeover” of the Kenyan coast… the child prostitution there.

Thailand’s islands are all gone. No culture remains, almost no houses belonging to the local people… almost no coastal stretch is left untouched. There is just some banal, horrid tourist infrastructure, and millions of Western migrants baking on the sun, all year round, with their pot bellies exposed, wearing flip-flops, downing beer, hand in hand with their culturally uprooted Thai companions. What did these people bring to Thailand? Freedom? Prosperity? High culture? Seriously! Or honestly, isn’t it just a moral corruption and total cultural ruin?

There are literally millions – maybe even tens of millions – of Western (mainly European) migrants living all over Southeast Asia. Exact numbers are unknown; there are no reliable studies and statistics. Many Western immigrants in Southeast Asia are actually “illegal”. Some are “semi-legal”, with their constant “visa runs”, false marriages and shady investments.

Cambodia is one of the places that has been attracting the most depraved migrants from the West. Their sex sprees and “2 dollars per ‘shag’ bargains” have been described in detail in several colorful books.

I encountered many “expats” and “migrants” when I was first investigating and then helping to close down one of the most notorious child-prostitution centers on earth, so-called “Kilometer 11”, located just outside the capital city of Phnom Penh. There, thousands of kidnapped girls, many of them minors, were forced to serve predominantly European clientele. Some of them were kidnapped and gang-raped on the way by traffickers; dragged here from all over Cambodia and neighboring Vietnam. The girls lived in captivity, guarded by vicious gangsters. And all over the place, flashing their proverbial beer bellies, were cheerful middle-aged European migrants, who just moved here, as I was told, “shagging a minor is much cheaper than downing a pint of shitty beer”.

A local Reuters correspondent and I managed to interview several 14-years old girls, some of them clearly dying from AIDS. Later on, when we began photographing the scene from the car, the entire crowd of men began charging, beer bottles in their hands, shorts falling off from their backsides, ready to kill. A great gain for the country of Cambodia, those European migrants!

I fought with all my might those venomous German immigrants at Colonia Dignidad in Southern Chile. There, many European Christian religious fanatics set up their entire state inside the Chilean state, closely collaborating with the US-backed Pinochet’ dictatorship. At one point, Bormann was there, as well as other prominent Nazis. After settling in their “new fatherland”, the German immigrants went busily to “work”, raping children, performing medical experiments on local orphans, and mercilessly torturing opponents of the fascist dictatorship. Of course, they did not immigrate only to Chile; there were millions of European fascist émigrés pouring into all corners of South America. The most prominent of them were shipped there with care by US and British intelligence services.

While Western propaganda keeps talking about illegal immigrants crossing into the US from Mexico, there is very little talk about those tens of millions of people who are continuously immigrating to Latin America from all over Europe, settling in Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and elsewhere. Before the latest wave of Latin American revolutions finally guaranteed equality and respect for the indigenous people of the continent, most European immigrants managed to implant deep racial and social segregation. In some places like Peru and Bolivia, the situation closely resembled that of South African apartheid. Until recently, European immigrants had been pushing the native population to extreme margins, stealing their land and making their cultures irrelevant. It was done all over Latin America and is still done in many other parts of the world.

So, “what are we going to do with those millions of Western immigrants?”

Can we really afford having them in our countries? Can we accommodate them? Can we pay for their needs, for their aggressiveness and their wild and violent cultural and behavioral patterns? Can we allow them to take everything from those who have very little left?

*

Look left and right: the entire planet is full of Western immigrants. They are controlling diamond mines in South Africa as well as “conservancy areas” in Kenya. They are holding huge land expanses in Asia, and virtually all profitable commercial land and industry in Latin America.

And they are coming and coming! They are unstoppable. Most of them are sick of their gray lives in Europe and North America. They are full of superiority complexes, but in reality, they would do anything to escape their loneliness, depression and emptiness at home.

In order to be able to stay “legally” in Southeast Asia, millions of Western male immigrants are marrying maids, go-go dancers, or even sex workers. But then they treat them with spite (as many of them don’t really know how else to behave towards people from other cultures). There are tens of thousands of former US GI’s, living in the villages of Northern Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. After bombing Southeast Asia into the stone age, they “could not cope” with the treatment they received after coming back home. And so they immigrated; they returned to the land that they had already so thoroughly destroyed, poisoned and raped.

I met many of them, as I was writing about this part of the world for many years. Some former GI immigrants were now totally broke, trying to borrow money from me, and coming up with bizarre stories and schemes. Almost all of them felt spite for the local people, but were unable to return to their homeland, because they lost all contacts and skills that could allow them to live there. Some overstayed their visas, owing huge amounts of money in fines to the local authorities.

*

I heard countless desperate stories. But, unlike those profound and heartbreaking stories told by the migrants from the countries destroyed by the West, the stories of the Western immigrants were mainly selfish, centered on the desire to improve their lives, or yearning to escape unpleasant conditions in their countries of origin. Most of the time, their presence brought nothing positive to the countries where they managed to relocate.

In her iconic book “Karma Cola”, an Indian writer Gita Mehta described, already a quarter of century ago, those millions of Westerners who have been flooding Sub-Continent in search of “enlightenment”, alternative lifestyles and other mass-produced, Westernized cultural and religious trends. Many ended up as illegal migrants, rotting in ashrams and in bizarre communes, some even selling their passports in order to survive.

*

The world has been patient – I’d say too patient – with the Western immigrants!

This patience should end, because of the brutality, even savagery, that Europe has been recently demonstrating towards those desperate men, women and children who have been trying to escape from their countries resembling “sinking ships”; “ships” that were torpedoed by Western imperialism.

The world owes nothing to the West, to the contrary! Therefore, visa and immigration policies should be reciprocal, which is exactly the approach of several Latin American countries.

Practically speaking, there are many more legal and illegal Western immigrants living in Indonesia or Thailand, than the other way around. The same goes for countries like Chile.

After horrible centuries during which Western colonialism and imperialism managed to destroy billions of human lives in all corners of the world, Europe still dares to treat its desperate victims as worse than animals. I recently witnessed its spite towards refugees arriving in Greece, France, Germany and the Czech Republic.

And after what I saw, I feel indignant and appalled.

Enough is enough!

With its wars, destabilization campaigns, economic terror, and its plunder of the planet, the West continues to demonstrate how low and brutal its culture really is. The “refugee crises” is just the latest chapter of the never-ending neo-colonialist horror show.

While European ships keep intercepting pitiful boats crammed with wrecked people who are fighting for their lives, while European armies are re-erecting border controls, several Latin American countries which are now governed by progressive governments, including Argentina and Chile, have been demonstrating tremendous moral superiority, solidarity and internationalism, by inviting and taking care of thousands of Syrian and Palestinian refugees, and on top of that, treating them with great dignity and kindness!

*

In one of the hotels in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in a bar late at night, I overheard a conversation between a visiting Swiss businessman and his Chilean counterpart:

“You know, those immigrants that we call ‘paperless’”, lamented Swiss man. “It’s too many of them… too many! We should just throw them directly to the sea; we should drown them! We don’t need such scum in Europe.”

A few days earlier, my friend, an Ecuadorian government official based in Quito, told me a story:

“Lately, many Europeans keep coming to Ecuador and to other Latin American countries, searching for jobs, trying to migrate. Their economies are collapsing, but there is no humility when they come here, only arrogance. Another day, a Spaniard came to me, applying for a job. I asked him for his CV. He looked at me with total outrage: ‘But I am a Spaniard!’ he shouted. ‘So what?’ I replied. ‘These days are over, comrade; days when just being a white European man would be enough to land you a job anywhere in Latin America!’”

*

The non-Western world simply cannot afford to tolerate an annual influx of the millions of Western immigrants! First, it gets attacked by the West, and then robbed, and at the end, is expected to tolerate enormous hordes of ruthless, locust-like, self-centered migrants who are trying to swallow what little is left behind by the Western corporations and governments.

Reciprocal visa regimes should be introduced. Legal frameworks should be strengthened to prevent corruption and speculation with land and real estate. Potential Western immigrants should be forced to prove that their presence would benefit the country where they want to settle, that their skills are really needed, just as all African and Asian immigrants are obliged to prove when they want to settle in Europe, in North America or in Australia.

And once again: let us not forget that there are many more Western immigrants trying to settle abroad, than there are people from poor countries applying for residency in the West.

Immigration crises? Yes of course! But not really “crises” for the West!

Those who do not realize it should check the numbers!

Certainly, many of us understand how depressed many Westerners really are; how their lives in Europe and in North America are disagreeable, gray and confusing. We really understand how much they want to immigrate to a warmer (in terms of weather and in terms of human relationships) part of the world. And if they would humbly admit what they feel, instead of demonstrating arrogance and superiority… if we could have it all in open… if the same rules would apply for everyone… if they would be the same for those who want to immigrate to Europe, to the US, to Asia, Africa or Latin America… then I am sure that at least some people would be willing to show their sympathy and consider accepting at least some of the most desperate Western migrants.

But there can be no sympathy if there is no justice. While Westerners are freely immigrating wherever they desire, Europe is now deploying its military in order to intimidate, humiliate and to stop those mugged and tortured victims of Empire!

*

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”

-Jane Austen, 1775–1817, “Emma”

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On July 14, an agreement was struck in Vienna involving major powers which would see the implementation of provisions to restrict the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions against that Persian Gulf nation.

This agreement has proved controversial. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the deal, saying Iran would still be capable of developing a nuclear weapon while the lifted sanctions would empower Iran to continue to spread unrest in the region. [1] Meanwhile, Republicans in the US House of Representatives have expressed opposition to the deal and have been trying to sabotage it. [2]

Of particular note, is Canada’s Conservative government, which has chosen to balk at the agreement arrived at by its traditional allies of Britain, France and the US.  Indeed Harper’s Conservatives have been remarkably hawkish in their foreign policy orientation. They continue to maintain hostility toward Iran and a militaristic approach toward ISIS/ISIL while campaigning for a fourth straight mandate in this year’s national elections.

More recently, Russia has joined the attacks against not just ISIS/ISIL, but other terrorist groups threatening the sovereignty of Syria. Yet the West’s response seems out of alignment with its usual line about ‘fighting the terrorist threat.’   Is the rhetoric of these Western leaders reflective of their actual motivations? Or does it mask another agenda?

In this week’s Global Research News Hour, we attempt to ascertain the true purpose of these nations’ policy gestures with two distinguished analysts.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College in Cambridge and is currently a Senior Scholar at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. In our first half hour, Mr. Kampmark tries to make sense of the Harper government’s foreign policy, Russia’s incentive to launch airstrikes within Syria, and the mirage that is ‘humanitarian intervention.’ (See transcript below.)

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a sociologist, and award-winning author and geopolitical analyst. In the second half hour, Nazemroaya puts the Iranian nuclear accord in the context of the failing regime of economic sanctions, and articulates how it is being used as a weapon against Russia.

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

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

Notes:

1) http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/benjamin-netanyahu-blasts-iran-nuclear-deal-at-un-general-assembly-1.3252738

2) James Arkin (Sept 11, 2015), RealClearPolitics; http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/11/gop_continues_to_push_iran_deal_opposition_128057.html

Interview with Binoy Kampmark on Iran, ISIS, and Canadian Foreign Policy

Transcript

Global Research: Is there anything that you’ve noticed that concerns you specifically about the way Canada has been conducting itself on the world’s stage?

Binoy Kampmark: Yes, I think one of the things that’s very conspicuous is the remarkably hawkish warring agenda which Harper has embraced, and where that fits effectively, it works on a few levels. It’s a kind of a demonization that is functioning on the policy platform, and so, it’s the idea of seeing…it’s the Islamist debate of course, it’s the idea of how do you combat Islamic State and so forth, and what is happening in the conduct of that foreign policy is that it has had a dramatic impact on domestic policy and that is of course, C-24 I believe, the stripping of citizenship, you know, and that is dramatic. That is a remarkable instance.

It’s not as dramatic as the British approach to this, which allows for the process of stripping British citizenship and making a person stateless, which is actually contrary to international law. C-24 does allow at least for at least dual nationals to retain one nationality but the implication of that in having Canadian citizenship stripped is that that person may well be deported, that person may well be expelled and of course the recipient country will then receive a convict of terrorism, and so effectively that results in an export of terrorism.

In a peculiar kind of way, Harper has created a sort of industry, anticipating an industry of sorts. And this undermining of citizenship has translated itself, broadly speaking, because of this emphasis, this mania, about expanding the war on Islamic State. I am not suggesting for a minute that Islamic State doesn’t pose a threat in the region, but the Canadian indifference, this is Harper’s indifference to understanding the implications of an extended bombing campaign, ineffectual I might add, this is one of the most bizarre things, you know, ISIS/ISIL/the Islamic state they are all actually doing rather well. Their economy and their base is being sustained constantly, notwithstanding the fact that they are being bombed.

So, there is this display of power which is not actually very effectual at all, but it has very significant impacts on domestic legislation, on the Security State and the implications certainly under Harper’s time are significant for the emergence of a considerably heavily involved surveillance State that has…that views its citizens actually with suspicion at least except of course good Canadian stock and so forth.

GR: Now, there is also, in addition to, the war against ISIS you also have counties, Syria and Iran, which are seen as enemies. The governments therein, and of course, recently we have heard about how Russia has come to join the fight against ISIS and that seems to be…their approach seems to be turning the leaders of the US, NATO folks off…

BK: Yes, they have certainly introduced a sizable spanner in the works and what they have done of course, and let’s not fall for the general idea that the Russian approach is not to target Islamic State, necessarily, I know there are numerous media reports coming in suggesting that these particular positions are actually at FSA, Free Syria Army units, that supposedly the Russian Air Force is targeting. But, as Robert Fisk pointed out very recently, it’s a very peculiar thing to say that in Holms for example, the area of Holms, there were actually FSA units, because supposedly according to the US own debriefing from the State Dept those CIA -trained units were not there. They were disbanded at that particular area, so, obviously it is a bit peculiar to suggest that they are there now suddenly, renascent. So that’s one problem in this war of words and information, again we come back to the old story what is it that we need to look at? What is it we need to read and engage in?

But, the second thing too, of course is they have fundamentally different objectives on a certain level. Russia is interested in controlling the Islamic threat because it has the Chechnyan issue. Of course remember, if you look geographically at the Russian context Chechnya is South. It’s not the Middle East it’s the Southern East, it’s the South, if you were, so relative to that quaint- the Middle East to Western powers- the Russian context views it differently. Geographically speaking, Iran and the Arab states focus in a very different league, a very different aspect of their strategy. But Chechnya looms large and there have been Chechen recruits for ISIS. There have been Chechen participants and a very notable Chechen leader has certainly figured in Islamic State. So that’s that aspect to consider.

But the other, of course, problem here from the NATO and the US perspective is that the policy is of course also to shore up Assad. It’s to give him better leg room in terms of the conflict, whereas the US-led approach with France with Britain has always made it clear that they want Assad to be removed. And Russia has made it clear that, no, Assad is doing a lot of the fighting, his forces are doing a lot of the fighting and we need to bolster his efforts.

But – and this is where again you can see the world views collide, you can see that there are very fundamentally different views about this – the US using that fabulously concocted notion of liberalism and liberal markets to tell and suggest that the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, brutal yes, admittedly, that he has to go, but they have come up with this nonsense term called ‘transitional government’.

We know what ‘transitional governments’ look like. They look like Libya, they look like Libya after Gaddafi, they look like Iraq after Saddam Hussein. So expect another instance of a repeat in Syria if that particular envisage plan takes place and it’s what the Russians want to avoid.

GR: Yeah, and you just brought up Libya, and I think it’s kind of important because I know that you wrote a paper about Libya, or contributed a paper on Libya about two years ago, and your appraisal of that whole -it was framed as a humanitarian intervention to protect the people from this brutal dictator -and I guess Syria would have been taking that same approach to protect the people of Syria and it doesn’t seem to be working too well, but if you could talk about how that intervention in Syria (Libya) has helped shape not only the dialogue but the reality that is on display given the current confrontation in Syria?

BK: Well yes, the whole concept of protecting the people is used all too conveniently, and it’s used to distinguish for example French/UK/US efforts and a part of that coalition, as opposed to Assad he is always mentioned as using barrel bombs and there’s been of course, the case of chemical weapons and a range of other weapons used.

But the reality is that there are so many sides in this conflict, so many sides have a stake in the Syrian conflict because it’s in a sense, at the front line of a series of global events writ large, where you’ve got the role of Iran and Hezbollah. You’ve got the role of Russia and its interest, and you’ve got the US side of the equation and how it sees stability or instability in this particular case, and trying to maintain leverage and influence over a country that is also deemed an enemy of Israel.

So you have got a range of strategic factors that play into that and the people are just the chess pieces of the script writer. And yes, all sides are using the rhetoric of civilian deaths, and using this in a degree of protection. It’s obvious that Assad is not particularly interested in protecting certain number of Syrians. The brutality of his armed forces is renowned, but by the same token, you can’t exactly find sainted angels in the FSA, the Free Syria Army. The notion of a moderate Syrian opposition is of course quite absurd. How can one be moderate when heavily armed to the teeth and happy to also conduct one own little cleansing campaigns?

And added to that of course are different groupings with different…

GR:LikeAl Nusra?

BK:…yes, exactly Al Nusra, and even Al Nusra has disagreements at times with Al Qaeda, so you’ve got an Al Qaeda grouping and an Al Nusra grouping. And you’ve got the associated peculiarities of ISIL and so forth.

So what we have essentially are a range of groups that are promoting their agendas on Syrian soil and the Syrian people are of course, theones to suffer from it and occasionally they are idealized in UN resolutions or they might be idealized in the context of humanitarian intervention but you can’t have as I have mentioned before, you can’t have humanitarian intervention at the end of a Tomahawk missile. It just does not work like that.

Humanitarian intervention is grotesquely euphemistic because it suggests a constructive notion when its actually at the end of the day a warring destructive notion which we pad around essentially and Responsibility to Protect I am very critical of the doctrine even though it is very much the flavour in the human securities movement and very much has been the flavour of international, at least attempts to discuss international law reforms but the reality of it is that it is so often a cloak, a garb, a veil to justify realpolitik and genuine power interventions.

GR: Doing an end run around the principle of sovereignty of nations?

BK: Yes, exactly. What it does essentially is it attacks sovereignty via the back door, just cloaks it under a different term.

GR: Yeah, I guess it’s telling that the countries that are pushing for that- I mean Russia has been against that, they are trying to support that principle of sovereignty of nations…

BK: Yes, no of course, and again I do understand that this is diplomacy is a feast of hypocries, and I do understand that it can be perceived that the Russian approach here is (inaudible) noble regarding Ukraine and notions of sovereignty there. The principle still remains that critics of humanitarian intervention have a point in calling it, for example Bricmont calls it a form of imperialism. Humanitarian imperialism. Because ultimately humanity is used as a trick, as a plague, and in that particular case it ends up with disastrous consequences because, the very people that are meant to be protected end up being injured, as we saw in cases like Libya, which is essentially being run now by a set of fiefdoms of various groupings and religious affiliations.

GR: I noticed that there was a nuclear deal that was struck and there has been some contention in the United States but, the president is essentially promoting this in principle, and interestingly enough, Canada has been particularly critical of Iran, they have been very guarded about the whole nuclear issue with Iran. What in your view guides Canada’s approach to Iran? I mean they talk about it being a supporter of terrorism, but is that it? Or is there something more?

BK: No, I think it has to do with the obviously, well I say it’s obvious because it seems to certainly conform to a pattern that I’ve seen in the context of a good number of members of Congress, certainly the GOP, and also in other countries where any country willing to listen to Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who is the one spreading the line that such an agreement is dangerous, that you cannot have an agreement with Iran, because it follows from the premise that because it is it terrorist you cannot with them. And, this of course, is one of those self defeating, illusory measures that you don’t negotiate with anyone you can just label a terrorist.

Iran has of course been – preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is the primary concern but, it has been a primary concern for the countries involved in the agreement to begin with. Even though, I have always felt that this is a very dangerous process. I always thought it was deeply hypocritical for powers to get together, especially those who have it, and that’s the problem with the Non Proliferation Treaty. The Non Proliferation Treaty, it has been argued, may have prevented more countries from going nuclear. That may be true.

But at its core, is a principle of bribery. Because at its core, the NPT is based on the principle that the countries that have nuclear weapons, well, we will eventually disband them, but not for now. And countries who don’t have nuclear weapons, well you shouldn’t have, and you don’t have nuclear weapons and you will be in violation if you have nuclear weapons but, we will give you a concession, you can have cheap nuclear energy. So, that was the tradeoff. Now, the tradeoff has been totally misplaced, at least historically with Iran and Iran was trying to play on that so, quite legitimately, in the context of that.

But, the reality of it is that it’s become so, almost like a hysterical idea, that if Iran gets the weapon it will destabilize the region. There is a certain amount of truth in that. It’s not even Israel itself. I mean Israel could be a significant problem having taken the stance that Iran is not going to be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, but the Saudis have also made it clear that in the event that Iran gets a nuclear weapon, and this is something the Israelis play on, and I want to add that the Israelis and the Saudis on this actually do see eye to eye, which is one of the curiosities that maybe your listeners may or may not be familiar with, the secret services of respective countries do have ties when dealing with Iran. Of course Saudi Arabia is the great enemy of Iran.

Historically, of course the Sunni/Shia divide is made very bleak there, where you’ve got the Shiites represented by Iran fundamentally so and of course, the Sunnis in the form of Saudi Arabia and there you see that replayed in Syria as well. So, the Saudis have also made it clear in fact, there were some rumors that went around last year that in the event that Iran was to obtain a nuclear weapon, they would try to seek Pakistani help in obtaining a Pakistani nuclear option. So, the nuclear weapons would be run by the Pakistanis but essentially they would be placed on Saudi soil. So, that was one of the rumors – well not entirely scotched to my satisfaction.

So, with all that said, and how does that come back and relate to the Canadian role? The Canadian role, I would say is linked to that by virtue of swallowing the Netanyahu line of security and certainly the US line, not necessarily from Obama, but certainly from the GOP line that particular line has been swallowed by Harper on this and he’s almost wanting to make us, and again its one of those things where smaller states want to sound louder and bigger than they are. So, he wants to make the impression that this is a fundamental point, take the lead against terrorism. But this is of course, a childish approach because you cannot have a security resolution in Syria without Iran. You cannot have a peaceful resolution in the Middle East if any of the crises happening there without Iran. And that is the fundamental point that somebody like Prime Minister Harper seems to be missing.

GR: Okay, well, I think another very important thing that needs to be raised, because you just brought up Saudi Arabia and their one of the biggest or Canada’s biggest customers for arms is Saudi Arabia. So, I wonder what you make of that, especially given that the Canadian Prime Minister has been so robust in their opposition to terrorism and Saudi Arabia is a major sponsor of terrorism. So?

BK: Well, yes, you just have to see also the treatment of, for example, the Shia minority in Yemen and the Saudi approach to – not just supply the government response, but also to be involved – Saudi jets. Well jets supplied by countries like Canada, have been involved with strafing positions connected with the Shia minority.

There’s been a blockade, it’s been a vicious battle in fact, that’s I think severely under reported. So, the broader sense of that is Saudi has a strange relationship with Western countries. And, that to large extent, it’s got to do also with, its significance again, there is a natural resource issue. It is a commodities issue, it is oil, and they’re still fundamentally very powerful. So there is that lingering issue.

But, the second thing too is that Saudi Arabia has been perceived as some kind of strategic balance in the area, so obviously there is the idea that it should keep tabs on things. Of course, it is a terrible human rights abuser, and it’s very peculiar on one hand to hold Iran to account on certain abuses but then not to hold Saudi Arabia.

I also found it a very rich remark made by Prime Minster Harper the other day on the issue of the latest deal with Saudi Arabia, in terms of selling more arms, and he would regard that as perfectly consistent to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, but no no, we are not going to do that with the Russians on that because they annexed Crimea, and they are sort of backing militants in the Donbass or in Ukraine.

So we have this typical Janus- faced approach of course, to foreign policy which is fundamental and seems to be the modus operandi of the Harper government and, I dare say he’s not the only one, I do wonder whether his replacement, should he lose office, I just wonder if that’s going to particularly change because that will be a strong statement to say, well, let us stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia because as you rightly pointed out, Saudi Arabia is a sponsor of various groups undermining and destabilizing regimes. Saudi Arabia is to be found everywhere in Syria.

GR: They’re not exactly a Jeffersonian democracy.

BK: No, certainly not. They are not particularly interested in that, and in fact, and for your listens they might be interested in, from the security of their own computer if not their work space, look up the Saudi cables that were released recently by Wikileaks, andthey give also a dramatic picture about Saudi foreign policy and look at exactly those sorts of things about what an otherwise very opaque, archaic state in many ways, with certain degrees of sophistication in peddling information for western consumption.

(End of interview.)

The UN General Assembly: Latin Americans Don’t Call for Nuremberg Prosecution of Western Leaders, Gaddafi Did in 2009

Over 40 Rodent Feeding Studies Show Genetically Modified Food is Disastrous to Health

By Christina Sarich, October 09 2015

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2014.

“John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, allegedly struck a deal with King Abdullah in September under which the Saudis would sell crude at below the prevailing market price. That would help explain why the price has been falling at a time when, given the turmoil in Iraq and Syria caused by Islamic State, it would normally have been rising.” (Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia, Larry Eliot, Guardian)

U.S. powerbrokers have put the country at risk of another financial crisis to intensify their economic war on Moscow and to move ahead with their plan to “pivot to Asia”.

Here’s what’s happening: Washington has persuaded the Saudis to flood the market with oil to push down prices, decimate Russia’s economy, and reduce Moscow’s resistance to further NATO encirclement and the spreading of US military bases across Central Asia. The US-Saudi scheme has slashed oil prices by nearly a half since they hit their peak in June. The sharp decline in prices has burst the bubble in high-yield debt which has increased the turbulence in the credit markets while pushing global equities into a tailspin. Even so, the roiled markets and spreading contagion have not deterred Washington from pursuing its reckless plan, a plan which uses Riyadh’s stooge-regime to prosecute Washington’s global resource war. Here’s a brief summary from an article by F. William Engdahl titled “The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria”:

“The details are emerging of a new secret and quite stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria and the so-called IS. It involves oil and gas control of the entire region and the weakening of Russia and Iran by Saudi Arabian flooding the world market with cheap oil. Details were concluded in the September meeting by US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Saudi King…

..the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has been flooding the market with deep discounted oil, triggering a price war within OPEC… The Saudis are targeting sales to Asia for the discounts and in particular, its major Asian customer, China where it is reportedly offering its crude for a mere $50 to $60 a barrel rather than the earlier price of around $100. That Saudi financial discounting operation in turn is by all appearance being coordinated with a US Treasury financial warfare operation, via its Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in cooperation with a handful of inside players on Wall Street who control oil derivatives trading. The result is a market panic that is gaining momentum daily. China is quite happy to buy the cheap oil, but her close allies, Russia and Iran, are being hit severely…

According to Rashid Abanmy, President of the Riyadh-based Saudi Arabia Oil Policies and Strategic Expectations Center, the dramatic price collapse is being deliberately caused by the Saudis, OPEC’s largest producer. The public reason claimed is to gain new markets in a global market of weakening oil demand. The real reason, according to Abanmy, is to put pressure on Iran on her nuclear program, and on Russia to end her support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria….More than 50% of Russian state revenue comes from its export sales of oil and gas. The US-Saudi oil price manipulation is aimed at destabilizing several strong opponents of US globalist policies. Targets include Iran and Syria, both allies of Russia in opposing a US sole Superpower. The principal target, however, is Putin’s Russia, the single greatest threat today to that Superpower hegemony. (The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria, F. William Engdahl, BFP)

The US must achieve its objectives in Central Asia or forfeit its top-spot as the world’s only superpower. This is why US policymakers have embarked on such a risky venture. There’s simply no other way to sustain the status quo which allows the US to impose its own coercive dollar system on the world, a system in which the US exchanges paper currency produced-at-will by the Central Bank for valuable raw materials, manufactured products and hard labor. Washington is prepared to defend this extortionist petrodollar recycling system to the end, even if it means nuclear war.

How Flooding the Market Adds to Instability

The destructive and destabilizing knock-on effects of this lunatic plan are visible everywhere. Plummeting oil prices are making it harder for energy companies to get the funding they need to roll over their debt or maintain current operations. Companies borrow based on the size of their reserves, but when prices tumble by nearly 50 percent–as they have in the last six months– the value of those reserves falls sharply which cuts off access to the market leaving CEO’s with the dismal prospect of either selling assets at firesale prices or facing default. If the problem could be contained within the sector, there’d be no reason for concern. But what worries Wall Street is that a surge in energy company failures could ripple through the financial system and wallop the banks. Despite six years of zero rates and monetary easing, the nation’s biggest banks are still perilously undercapitalized, which means that a wave of unexpected bankruptcies could be all it takes to collapse the weaker institutions and tip the system back into crisis. Here’s an excerpt from a post at Automatic Earth titled “Will Oil Kill the Zombies?”:

“If prices fall any further, it would seem that most of the entire shale edifice must of necessity crumble to the ground. And that will cause an absolute earthquake in the financial world, because someone supplied the loans the whole thing leans on. An enormous amount of investors have been chasing high yield, including many institutional investors, and they’re about to get burned something bad….. if oil keeps going the way it has lately, the Fed may instead have to think about bailing out the big Wall Street banks once again.” (Will Oil Kill the Zombies?, Raúl Ilargi Meijer, Automatic Earth)

The problem with falling oil prices is not just mounting deflation or droopy profits; it’s the fact that every part of the industry–exploration, development and production — is propped atop a mountain of red ink (junk bonds). When that debt can no longer be serviced or increased, then the primary lenders (counterparties and financial institutions) sustain heavy losses which domino through the entire system. Take a look at this from Marketwatch:

“There’s ‘no question’ that for energy companies with a riskier debt profile the high-yield debt market “is essentially shut down at this stage,” and there are signs that further pain could hit the sector, ” senior fixed-income strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, Dan Heckman told Marketwatch. “We are getting to the point that it is becoming very concerning.” (Marketwatch)

When energy companies lose access to the market and are unable to borrow at low rates, it’s only a matter of time before they trundle off to extinction.

On Friday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) renewed pressure on prices by lowering its estimate for global demand for oil in 2015. The announcement immediately sent stocks into a nosedive. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) lost 315 points by the end of the day, while, according to Bloomberg, more than “$1 trillion was erased from the value of global equities in the week”.

The world is awash in cheap petroleum which is wreaking havoc on domestic shale producers that need prices of roughly $70 per barrel to break-even. With West Texas Intermediate (WTI) presently headed south of 60 bucks–and no bottom in sight–these smaller producers are sure to get clobbered. Pension funds, private equity, banks, and other investors who gambled on these dodgy energy-related junk bonds are going to get their heads handed to them in the months ahead.

The troubles in the oil patch are mainly attributable to the Fed’s easy money policies. By dropping rates to zero and flooding the markets with liquidity, the Fed made it possible for every Tom, Dick and Harry to borrow in the bond market regardless of the quality of the debt. No one figured that the bottom would drop out leaving an entire sector high and dry. Everyone thought the all-powerful Fed could print its way out of any mess. After last week’s bloodbath, however, they’re not nearly as confident. Here’s how Bloomberg sums it up:

“The danger of stimulus-induced bubbles is starting to play out in the market for energy-company debt….Since early 2010, energy producers have raised $550 billion of new bonds and loans as the Federal Reserve held borrowing costs near zero, according to Deutsche Bank AG. With oil prices plunging, investors are questioning the ability of some issuers to meet their debt obligations…

The Fed’s decision to keep benchmark interest rates at record lows for six years has encouraged investors to funnel cash into speculative-grade securities to generate returns, raising concern that risks were being overlooked. A report from Moody’s Investors Service this week found that investor protections in corporate debt are at an all-time low, while average yields on junk bonds were recently lower than what investment-grade companies were paying before the credit crisis.” (Fed Bubble Bursts in $550 Billion of Energy Debt: Credit Markets, Bloomberg)

The Fed’s role in this debacle couldn’t be clearer. Investors piled into these dodgy debt-instruments because they thought Bernanke had their back and would intervene at the first sign of trouble. Now that the bubble has burst and the losses are piling up, the Fed is nowhere to be seen.

In the last week, falling oil prices have started to impact the credit markets where investors are ditching debt on anything that looks at all shaky. The signs of contagion are already apparent and likely to get worse. Investors fear that if they don’t hit the “sell” button now, they won’t be able to find a buyer later. In other words, liquidity is drying up fast which is accelerating the rate of decline. Naturally, this has affected US Treasuries which are still seen as “risk free”. As investors increasingly load up on USTs, long-term yields have been pounded into the ground like a tentpeg. As of Friday, the benchmark 10-year Treasury checked in at a miniscule 2.08 percent, the kind of reading one would expect in the middle of a Depression.

The Saudi-led insurgency has reversed the direction of the market, put global stocks into a nosedive and triggered a panic in the credit markets. And while the financial system edges closer to a full-blown crisis every day, policymakers in Washington have remained resolutely silent on the issue, never uttering as much as a peep of protest for a Saudi policy that can only be described as a deliberate act of financial terrorism.

Why is that? Why have Obama and Co. kept their mouths shut while oil prices have plunged, domestic industries have been demolished, and stocks have gone off a cliff? Could it be that they’re actually in cahoots with the Saudis and that it’s all a big game designed to annihilate enemies of the glorious New World Order?

It certainly looks that way.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

 by M. Oliver Heydorn

There is a very interesting legal case that is playing out in Canada at the moment. William Krehm, Anne Emmett, and COMER (The Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform: http://www.comer.org/) filed a lawsuit on December 12th, 2011, in Federal Court to try to force a restoration of the Bank of Canada to its mandated purposes. In essence, they want the Bank of Canada to provide interest-free loans to the federal, provincial, and municipal governments, as provided for in the Bank of Canada Act.

This money would be used to finance public expenditures whenever there is a budgetary deficit. Apparently, the federal government used to borrow interest-free (to at least some extent) from the Bank of Canada up until 1974. At present, governments borrow all of the necessary money (apart from any bonds they may sell to the public) from private banks at the going rate of interest. Canadians are economically burdened with the resultant debt-servicing charges because the Bank of Canada does not make use of its prerogatives in the interests of the Canadian public. The case is being prosecuted by Rocco Galati, who is widely considered to be Canada’s top constitutional lawyer.

The nature of the lawsuit has been explained on www.pressfortruth.ca in the following terms:

“TWO CANADIANS AND A CANADIAN ECONOMIC THINK TANK CONFRONT THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL POWERS IN THE CANADIAN FEDERAL COURT. THE CANADIANS PLEAD FOR DECLARATIONS THAT WOULD RESTORE THE USE OF THE BANK OF CANADA FOR THE BENEFIT OF CANADIANS AND REMOVE IT FROM THE CONTROL OF INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE ENTITIES WHOSE INTERESTS AND DIRECTIVES ARE PLACED ABOVE THE INTEREST OF CANADIANS AND THE PRIMACY OF THE CONSTITUTION OF CANADA

Canadian constitutional lawyer, Rocco Galati, on behalf of Canadians William Krehm, and Ann Emmett, and COMER (Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform) on December 12th, 2011 filed an action in Federal Court, to restore the use of the Bank of Canada to its original purpose, by exercising its public statutory duty and responsibility. That purpose includes making interest free loans to municipal/provincial/federal governments for “human capital” expenditures (education, health, other social services) and /or infrastructure expenditures.The action also constitutionally challenges the government’s fallacious accounting methods in its tabling of the budget by not calculating nor revealing the true and total revenues of the nation before transferring back “tax credits” to corporations and other taxpayers. The Plaintiffs state that since 1974 there has been a gradual but sure slide into the reality that the Bank of Canada and Canada’s monetary and financial policy are dictated by private foreign banks and financial interests contrary to the Bank of Canada Act.

The Plaintiffs state that the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were all created with the cognizant intent of keeping poorer nations in their place which has now expanded to all nations in that these financial institutions largely succeed in over-riding governments and constitutional orders in countries such as Canada over which they exert financial control.The Plaintiffs state that the meetings of the BIS and Financial Stability Board (FSB) (successor of FSF), their minutes, their discussions and deliberations are secret and not available nor accountable to Parliament, the executive, nor the Canadian public notwithstanding that the Bank of Canada policies directly emanate from these meetings. These organizations are essentially private, foreign entities controlling Canada’s banking system and socio-economic policies.

The Plaintiffs state that the defendants (officials) are unwittingly and /or wittingly, in varying degrees, knowledge and intent engaged in a conspiracy, along with the BIS, FSB, IMF to render impotent the Bank of Canada Act as well as Canadian sovereignty over financial, monetary, and socio-economic policy, and bypass the sovereign rule of Canada through its Parliament by means of banking and financial systems.” http://pressfortruth.ca/top-stories/case-reinstate-bank-canada/

On the 26th of January, 2015, the latest appeal on behalf of the Crown to have the case dismissed was rejected by three judges in Federal Court in Toronto. The Federal government now has 60 days to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Cf. http://pressfortruth.ca/top-stories/update-bank-canada-vs-comer/. Interestingly enough, both the case itself and the various developments that have occured are not being covered at all by the mainstream media. While Mr. Galati’s other cases have regularly received wall-to-wall coverage across the country, this particular case, which he believes is probably his most important case to date, has so far been ignored. When questioned about this, Mr. Galati said that he has a firm basis for believing that the Canadian government has requested or ordered that the mainstream media not cover the case (he could not divulge his sources), and that, in his opinion, the government does control the media to a certain extent and on certain limited issues. He also added that he does not believe that we in Canada are living in a democracy. In fact, as far back as 1999, he has been on record as claiming that we have entered a ‘quiet dictatorship.’

As far as its merits are concerned, Mr. Galati said that the case is on solid legal and constitutional grounds and his clients should win. Whether they will win or not is another question. As Mr. Galati has acknowledged: “Not all meritorious cases in our judicial system win”.

From a Social Credit perspective, saving the taxpayer large sums of money and/or preserving the country from an increase in public indebtedness via the issuance of interest-free money from the Bank of Canada is certainly a good thing.[1] However, such a reform of the system does not address the fundamental problem with the present financial and economic orders: the chronic lack of consumer buying power. The macroeconomic gap between prices and incomes, which is primarily caused by how real capital (machines and equipment) are financed and how their costs are then accounted for under existing conventions, is THE issue which needs to be addressed. In the main, the present system deals with the gap by filling it with additional debt-money from the private banking system in the form of public, corporate, and consumer debts. In lieu of these palliatives, a Social Credit system would fill the gap with ‘debt-free’ money and distribute it to consumers, directly through a National Dividend, and indirectly through a National Discount on retail prices. It is critical that the individual, the common consumer, be the prime beneficiary of any monetary reform and that he be accorded full control of credit-policy within the context of a properly functioning financial system.

In connection with this particular lawsuit and as a further clarification of the point just made, I should also mention that granting the government the right to fill the gap according to its policy-objectives (i.e., employing people to work on public production), or, more broadly, granting it or the state the sole right to control the whole money supply, is thoroughly incompatible with Social Credit’s underlying social and political philosophy. Institutions exist to serve the interests of individuals, not the other way around. That is, individual consumers must control financial policy, not the government, the state, or the private banks. There is no point in “restoring the right to create and issue money to the state” if the state is then going to control the purposes for which producer and consumer credit are to be issued. This is the great trap of which certain monetary reformers, who are rightly concerned about the hegemony of private banking, are blissfully unaware. If, God forbid, such reformers get their way, and the state were to obtain total monopoly control over the money supply, I think they will find to their horror that the same people who levy a great deal of control over the private and partially decentralized monetary system will be in complete control of the state system.

Monopoly is the name of the game; let us not be ‘useful idiots’.

Addendum: 

Those individuals who believe that the main problem with the current financial system and economic regime consists in the mere fact that the private banks create the bulk of the money supply ex nihilo and then charge interest on the loans that they issue would do well to carefully read the following blog posts which explain the differences between this view and the unique Social Credit approach to monetary reform: (emphasis added)

http://www.socred.org/blogs/view/social-credit-and-usury,

http://www.socred.org/blogs/view/usury-social-credit-and-catholicism,

http://www.socred.org/blogs/view/social-credit-a-simple-if-somewhat-lengthy-explanation,

http://www.socred.org/blogs/view/it-s-time-for-an-economic-copernican-turn.

Douglas often criticized the practice of relying on borrowings from private banks at the going market rate of interest in order to finance government operations. Cf., for example, C.H. Douglas, Social Credit, rev.ed. (Gordon Press, New York: 1973), 136-139: 

“The National Debt rose between August 1914 and December 1919 from about six hundred and sixty millions sterling, to about seven thousand seven hundred millions sterling. And this rise represents, on the whole, the expenditure over that period which it was deemed impracticable to recover in current taxation. That is to say, if we take the average taxation for supply purposes over that period 1914-1918, as being about three hundred millions per annum, the amount paid by the public as consumer for the goods and services supplied to it for war purposes, was about thirteen hundred and fifty millions, and the financial cost of those goods and services was about eight thousand three hundred and fifty millions, a ratio of cost to price of about roughly 1 : 6.2. In other words, goods were sold to the public at one-sixth of their apparent financial cost, and no one lost any money over it at the time. How was this done?

A considerable amount of this money (some of which may be in excess of the figures just mentioned) was created through what are known as the Ways and Means Accounts, and the working of this is described in the first report of the Committee on Currency and Foreign Exchanges, 1918, page two. Paraphrased, the process may be shortly explained as follows.

If ten million pounds credit is advanced at the Bank of England to the credit of Public (i.e. State) Deposits (which simply involves the writing up of the Public Deposits account by this amount), this amount is paid out by the Spending Departments to contractors in payment for their services, and when the cheques are cleared, passes to the credit of the contractors’ bankers (joint Stock Banks) account with the Bank of England. The joint Stock Banks are accustomed to regard their credits with the Bank of England as cash at call and, therefore, ten million pounds is credited to the depositors of the Joint Stock Banks, and ten million pounds to the Joint Stock Banks’ cash account.

As a result of this, the joint Stock Banks, working on a ratio of one to four between so-called cash and short-date liabilities, are able to allow their customers (working on Government contracts) overdrafts to the extent of forty millions, a portion of which their customers may devote to taking up Treasury Bills or War Loans. The banks themselves may take up about eight millions of Treasury Bills or War Loan, out of their additional ‘deposit’ balances, or they may lend about eight millions to the Bank of England to lend to the Government. Eventually, the result is the same, namely that the Government owes forty millions to the banks, through the Bank of England.

Now the first point to notice is that the result of this complicated process is exactly the same as if the Government itself had provided forty millions, in Currency Notes, with the important exception that the public pays 4 or 5 per cent per annum on the forty millions, instead of merely paying the cost of printing the Currency Notes. The effect on prices, while the forty millions is outstanding, is the same, and the contractors pay 6 or 7 per cent for their overdrafts instead of getting the use of the money, free. But if the forty millions is redeemed through taxation, or a Capital Levy, the public pays not only the 5 per cent per annum, together with the contractor’s 6 or 7 per cent, plus a profit on both of them, but it pays the whole of the forty millions out of money which has been received in respect of wages, salaries, and dividends. So far as I am aware, no one has ever suggested that Currency Notes should be retired by taxation. It is true that when this forty millions has been repaid, both the original debt and the repayment cancel each other, and only the interest charges go to the Profit and Loss Account of the Bank. But since, as we have seen, the repayment of bank loans means the immobilisation of an equivalent amount of price-values, this only means that a fresh loan with fresh interest charges has to be created. A consideration of these facts will make it easy to understand the implacable opposition of bankers and financiers to Government paper money and their insistence on the importance of what they term redemption. The payment in current taxation of only one-sixth of the price of war stores, etc., meant, therefore, that a credit grant of the other five-sixths of the price was made to the Public. The repayment of this credit is only justifiable on the assumption that banks own Public Credit.”

GMO Free USA has published a listing of more than 40 rodent studies showing that animals fed GM corn and soy suffer dire results. For those who say there is no ‘science’ to prove that GMOs are unsafe, I enjoin them to peruse the following list. [1]

Among the ailments suffered by the rats fed Roundup Ready or Bt-toxin GM-feed were:

• Increased intestinal infections
• High cholesterol
• Birth defects
• Weight-increase and higher incidence of mortality
• Organ pathologies in the liver, kidneys, pancreas, ovaries, testes, and adrenals
• Major issues with both the intestinal tracts and immunity of the animals tested

And why again are we still eating GM food? These studies suggest they should all be banned as Russia is doing – if not at least labeled.

• “1. E. Abdo, et al. “Feeding Study with Bt Corn (MON810: Ajeeb YG) on Rats: Biochemical Analysis and Liver Histopathology,” Food and Nutrition Sciences, Vol. 5 No. 2, 2014, pp. 185-195.

• 2. Battistelli S., Baldelli B., Malatesta M. (2008), Influence of a GMO-containing diet on pancreatic acinar cells of adult mice: effects of a short-term diet reversion, “Microscopie”, 10, pp. 36-43

• 3. S. Battistelli, B.Citterio, B. Baldelli, C. Parlani, and M. Malatesta (2010) Histochemical and morpho-metrical study of mouse intestine epithelium after a long term diet containing genetically modified soybean Eur J Histochem. September 26;54(3): e36

• 4. Brasil FB, Soares LL, Faria TS, Boaventura GT, Sampaio FJ, Ramos CF.(2009) The impact of dietary organic and transgenic soy on the reproductive system of female adult rat. Anat Rec(Hoboken).292(4):587594.

• 5. B Cisterna, F Flach, L Vecchio, SML Barabino, S Battistelli, TE Martin, M Malatesta, M Biggiogera (2008) Can a genetically modified organism-containing diet influence embryonic development? A preliminary study on pre- implantation mouse embryos. Cisterna.Vol.52(4)

• 6. Joël Spiroux de Vendômois, François Roullier, Dominique Cellier, Gilles-Eric Séralini (2009) A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health Int J Biol Sci; 5(7):706-726.

• 7. O. P. Dolaychuk, R. S. Fedoruk (2013) Biological Effects of Different Levels of Soybeans Conventional and Transgenic Varieties in the Second-Generation Female Rats Ration. The Animal Biology, 2013, vol. 15, no. 2

• 8. Thanaa A. El-Kholy, Mohammad Abu Hilal, Hatim Ali Al-Abbadi, Abdulhalim Salim Serafi, Ahmad K. Al-Ghamdi, Hanan M. Sobhy and John R. C. Richardson (2014) The Effect of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Soybean on DNA, Cytogenicity and Some Antioxidant Enzymes in Rats. Nutrients, 6(6), 2376-2386

• 9. El-Shamei ZS et al. Histopathological changes in some organs of male rats fed on genetically modified corn (Ajeeb YG). J Am Sci. 2012;8(10):684–696.

• 10. Ermakova IV (2006) Genetically modified soy leads to weight loss and increased mortality of pups of the first generation. Preliminary studies. EkosInform. Federal Environmental Law Gazette. a | -1,, p. 4-10.

• 11. Ermakova IV (2007) New data on the impact of GMOs on physiological state and the higher nervous activities mammals. All-Russia Symposium TRANSGENIC PLANTS AND BIOSAFETY Moscow, October 22 – 25, pages 38-39

• 12. Irina Ermakova (2007) GM soybeans—revisiting a controversial format NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY VOLUME 25 NUMBER 12 DECEMBER 1351-1354

• 13. Ermakova IV, IV Barskov (2008) Study of the physiological and morphological parameters in rats and their offspring using a diet containing soybean transgenic EPSPS CP4 Biological sciences. 6. p.19-20.

• 14. Ermakova IV (2009) Influence of soybean gene EPSPS CP4 on the physiological state and reproductive functions of rats in the first two generations Contemporary Problems in Science and Education Number 5, p.15-20.

• 15. Finamore A, Roselli M, Britti S, Monastra G, Ambra R, Turrini A, Mengheri E. (2008) Intestinal and peripheral immune response to MON810 maize ingestion in weaning and old mice. J Agric Food Chem. Dec 10;56(23):11533-9.

• 16. Gab-Alla AA et al. Morphological and biochemical changes in male rats fed on genetically modified corn (Ajeeb YG). J Am Sci. 2012;8(9):1117–1123.

• 17. Т. V. Gorbach, I. U. Kuzminа, G. I. Gubina-Vakulik, N. G. Kolousova (2012) HORMONAL REGULATION OF SEXUAL FUNCTION AND OVARIAN HISTOLOGICAL FEATURES IN THE EXPERIMENT WITH GMO-SOYA USE IN FOOD. TAVRICHESKY LIFE SCIENCES BULLETIN 2012, Volume 15, № 2, Part 2 (58) pages 235-238

• 18. G.I. Gubin-Vakulik, S.A. Denisenko, T.V. Horbach, N.G. Kolousova, T.M. Popova (2012) MORPHOFUNCTIONAL STATE OF ADRENAL GLAND IN FEMALE RATS WISTAR WITH GENETICALLY MODIFIED SOY INCLUSION IN THE DIET. TAVRICHESKY LIFE SCIENCES BULLETIN 2012, Volume 15, № 3, Part 1 (59) pages 85-88

• 19. GI-Gubin VAKULIK TV, GORBACH BB, NG KOLOUSOVA HS, GOPKALOV (2013) THE METABOLIC AND HISTOLOGICAL CHANGES OF KIDNEYS IN FEMALE RATS AND THE FIRST GENERATION AFTER CONSUMPTION OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED SOYBEANS. SCIENTIFIC STATEMENTS Series Medicine. Pharmacy. 2013. № 11 (154). Issue 22 pages 150-155

• 20. G.I. Gubina-Vakulik, S.A. Denisenko, T.V. Gorbach, N.G. Kolousova, A.V. Andreev (2014) Morphofunctional Adrenal State in Adults Descendants With the Diet by Genetically Modified Soy. ЕКСПЕРИМЕНТАЛЬНА І КЛІНІЧНА МЕДИЦИНА. 2014. № 2 (63)

• 21. SERDAR KARAKUŞLU (2014) THE INVESTIGATION OF THE POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED (GMO) MAIZE (Zea mays L.) ON SWISS ALBINO MICE. JUNE 2014, 25 Pages

• 22. Kiliç A, Akay MT. (2008) A three generation study with genetically modified Bt corn in rats: Biochemical and histopathological investigation. Food Chem Toxicol. 2008 Mar;46(3):1164-70.

• 23. Hasan Kiliçgün, Cebrail Gürsul, Mukadder Sunar, Gülden Gökşen (2013) The Comparative Effects of Genetically Modified Maize and Conventional Maize on Rats J Clin Anal Med ;4(2): 136-9

• 24. MA Konovalova, VA Blinov (2006) Influence of genetically modified soybean in mice and their offspring. Commercial Biotechnology 2006

• 25. Konovalova, MA, VA Blinov (2007) Morphometric parameters and features of the spectrum Blood enzymes mice receiving GENETICALLY MODIFIED SOY. All-Russia Symposium TRANSGENIC PLANTS AND BIOSAFETY Moscow, October 22 – 25, page 48

• 26. Konovalova MA, Potemkin EG (2007) Influence of genetically modified soybean on transport of carbohydrates in tissue.

• 27. Kuzmin, J. Yu, A. Kuzmin, and N. Pasieshvili (2012) Histological and Hormonal Features of Ovaries in an Experiment at Application of GMO-Soya in Nutrition. Journal of Research. 2012. № 4

• 28. Magaña-Gómez JA, Cervantes GL, Yepiz-Plascencia G, de la Barca AM. (2008) Pancreatic response of rats fed genetically modified soybean J Appl Toxicol. Mar;28(2):217-26.

• 29. Malatesta M, Caporaloni C, Gavaudan S, Rocchi MB, Serafini S, Tiberi C, Gazzanelli G. (2002) Ultrastructural morphometrical and immunocytochemical analyses of hepatocyte nuclei from mice fed on genetically modified soybean. Cell Struct Funct. Aug;27(4):173-80.

• 30. Manuela Malatesta, Chiara Caporaloni, Luigia Rossi, Serafina Battistelli, Marco BL Rocchi, Francesco Tonucci, and Giancarlo Gazzanelli (2002) Ultrastructural analysis of pancreatic acinar cells from mice fed on genetically modified soybean J Anat. November; 201(5): 409–415

• 31. Malatesta M., Biggiogera M., Manuali E., Rocchi M.B., Baldelli B., Gazzanelli G.(2003) Fine structural analysis of pancreatic acinar cell nuclei from mice fed on GM soybean. Eur J Histochem. 47,3858.

• 32. Malatesta M, Tiberi C, Baldelli B, Battistelli S, Manuali E, Biggiogera M. (2005) Reversibility of hepatocyte nuclear modifications in mice fed on genetically modified soybean. Eur J Histochem. Jul-Sep;49(3):237-42.

• 33. Malatesta M, Boraldi F, Annovi G, Baldelli B, Battistelli S, Biggiogera M, Quaglino D. (2008) A long-term study on female mice fed on a genetically modified soybean: effects on liver ageing. Histochem Cell Biol. Nov;130(5):967-77.

• 34. Maligin AG, Ermakova IV (2008) Soy diet suppresses reproductive function rodents. Modern problems of science and education № 6. (Annex “Biological sciences”). – C. 26

• 35. Nazarova AF, Ermakova IV (2010) Effect of soy diet on reproductive function and testosterone levels in rats and hamsters. Academy Trinitarism, № 77-6567, publ.15788, 12.02.

• 36. SG Nimbueva, R. Shirokov, SA Polyakov, SD Evgaldaev (2012) Influence of long term use of genetically modified soybeans on some morphofunctional indicators in pancreas of rats in the experiment. Articles XVII International Ecological Student Conference “Ecology Russia and adjacent territories “: in 2 volumes. Volume 2 / Novosibirsk State. Univ. Novosibirsk, 2012. Pages 119-120.

• 37. Oliveri et al (2006) Temporary depression of transcription in mouse preimplantation embryos from mice fed on genetically modified soybean. 48th Symposium of the Society for Histochemistry. Lake Maggiore(Italy), Sept.7- 10.

• 38. Hanaa ORABY, Mahrousa KANDIL, Nermeen SHAFFIE, Inas GHALY (2014) Biological impact of feeding rats with a genetically modified-based diet. Turk J Biol (2014) 38:

• 39. Séralini GE, Cellier D, de Vendomois JS.(2007) New analysis of a rat feeding study with a genetically modified maize reveals signs of hepatorenal toxicity. Arch Environ Contam Toxicol. May;52(4):596-602.

• 40. Gilles-Eric Séralini, Emilie Clair, Robin Mesnage, Steeve Gress, Nicolas Defarge, Manuela Malatesta, Didier Hennequin and Joël Spiroux de Vendômois (2014) Republished study: long-term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize. Environmental Sciences Europe , 26:14

• 41. AV Surov, NY Feoktistov, MV Ushakov, AV Gureeva (2010) Changing the physiological parameters of mammals feeding genetically modified ingredients of vegetable origin. Institution of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ecology and Evolution behalf ANSevertsov RAS (IEE RAS)

• 42. Vecchio L, Cisterna B, Malatesta M, Martin TE, Biggiogera M. (2004) Ultrastructural analysis of testes from mice fed on genetically modified soybean. Eur J Histochem. Oct-Dec;48(4):448-54.

• 43. Irena M Zdziarski, John W Edwards, Judy Carman, Adrian Jones, Marni Spillanie, Ysabella Van Sebille, Julie I Haynes (2012) GM feed and its effect on the stomach mucosa of rat. 6th Australian Health and Medical Research Congress 2012

• 44. ZHOU Ze-wei et al. (2012) Comprehensive Evaluation on Functions & Safety of Imported GM Soybean Using BDI-GS System Soybean Science Oct. Vol. 31 No 5″

Notes:

[1] Study list found here: https://www.facebook.com/GMOFreeCanadaGroup

GMO Free USA

False history continues to kill Americans, as we saw once again last week at Umpqua Community College in Oregon where a disturbed young man whose mother had loaded the house with loaded handguns and rifles executed nine people and then committed suicide – one more mind-numbing slaughter made possible, in part, by an erroneous understanding of the Second Amendment.

A key reason why the United States is frozen in political paralysis, unable to protect its citizens from the next deranged gunman and the next massacre, is that many on the American Right (and some on the Left) have sold much of the country on a false history regarding the Second Amendment. Gun-rights advocates insist that the carnage can’t be stopped because it was part of what the Constitution’s Framers designed.

Republican presidential candidates have been among the leaders in promoting this fake narrative, with surgeon Ben Carson saying the latest slaughter and all the other thousands of shootings are just part of the price of freedom. “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away,” Carson said, noting that he had removed bullets from a number of gunshot victims.

But the Constitution’s Framers in 1787 and the authors of the Bill of Rights in the First Congress in 1789 never intended the Second Amendment to be construed as the right for individuals to take up arms against the Republic. In fact, their intent was the opposite.

A painting of President George Washington leading a force of federalized state militias against the Whiskey rebels in western Pennsylvania in 1794.

The actual goal of the Second Amendment was to promote state militias for the maintenance of order in a time of political uprisings, potential slave revolts and simmering hostilities with both European powers and Native Americans on the frontiers. Indeed, its defined purpose was to achieve “security” against disruptions to the country’s republican form of government. The Second Amendment read:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” In other words, if read in context, it’s clear that the Second Amendment was enacted so each state would have the specific right to form “a well-regulated militia” to maintain “security,” i.e., to put down armed disorder and protect its citizens.

In the late Eighteenth Century, the meaning of “bearing” arms also referred to a citizen being part of a militia or army. It didn’t mean that an individual had the right to possess whatever number of high-capacity killing machines that he or she might want. Indeed, the most lethal weapon that early Americans owned was a slow-loading, single-fired musket or rifle.

No Anarchists

Yet, one of the false themes peddled by some on the Right and the Left is that the Framers, having won a revolution against the British Crown, wanted to arm the population so the people could rebel against the Republic created by the U.S. Constitution. This vision of the Framers of the Constitution and members of the First Congress as some anarchists wanting an armed population to overthrow the government if the people weren’t happy with something is completely opposite of what was intended.

Whatever one thinks about the Federalists, who were the principal constitutional Framers and the leaders of the First Congress, they constituted the early national establishment – people like George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris. They feared that their new creation, a constitutional republic in an age of monarchies, was threatened by the potential for violent chaos, which is what European aristocrats predicted.

According to the idea of a representative democracy, the Framers sought a system that reflected the will of the citizens but within a framework that constrained the passions of democracy. In other words, the Constitution sought to channel political disputes into non-violent competition among various interests. The Framers also recognized how fragile the nation’s independence was and how domestic rebellions could be exploited by European powers.

Indeed, one of the crises that led to the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787 was the inability of the old system under the Articles of Confederation to put down Shays’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786-87. So, the Federalists were seeking a system that would ensure “domestic Tranquility,” as they explained in the Constitution’s Preamble. They did not want endless civil strife.

The whole idea of the Constitution – with its mix of voting, elected and appointed representatives, and checks and balances – was to create a political structure that made violence unnecessary. In other words, the Framers weren’t encouraging violent uprisings against the Republic that they were founding. To the contrary, they characterized violence against the constitutional system as “treason” in Article III, Section 3. They also committed the federal government to protect each state from “domestic Violence,” in Article IV, Section 4.

One of the first uses of the new state militias formed under the Second Amendment and the Militia Acts, which required able-bodied men to report for duty with their own muskets, was for President Washington to lead a federalized force of militiamen against the Whiskey Rebellion, a tax revolt in western Pennsylvania in 1794.

In the South, one of the principal reasons for a militia was to rally armed whites to put down slave uprisings. Again, the Second Amendment was meant to maintain public order – even an unjust order – rather than to empower the oppressed to take up arms against the government. That latter idea was a modern reinterpretation – or distortion – of the history.

The Constitution’s Framers were not some early version of Leon Trotsky favoring permanent revolution. The most radical-talking leader at the time, Thomas Jefferson, had little to do with either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights since he was serving as a diplomat in France at the time.

Yet, the revisionists who have transformed the meaning of the Second Amendment love to cite provocative comments by Jefferson, such as a quote from a 1787 letter criticizing the Constitution for its commander-in-chief provisions. Jefferson argued that violence, like Shays’s Rebellion, was to be welcomed. He declared that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s [sic] natural manure.”

It is ironic, however, that Jefferson was never willing to risk his own blood as that “natural manure.” During the Revolutionary War when traitor Benedict Arnold led a force of Loyalists against Richmond, Jefferson, who was then Virginia’s governor, declined to rally the state militia in defense of the capital but rather fled for his life. Later, when British cavalry approached Charlottesville and his home of Monticello, Gov. Jefferson again took flight.

However, Jefferson was eager for Virginia to have a state militia of armed whites to crush possible black slave rebellions, another prospect that terrified him. As a slaveholder and a pseudo-scientific racist, Jefferson surely did not envision blacks as having any individual right to own guns themselves or to fight for their own liberty. Reflecting on blacks who fought bravely in the Revolution, Jefferson concluded that their courage was an illusion resulting from their intellectual inability to recognize danger.

Yet, whatever one thinks of Jefferson’s racism and cowardice, it’s a historical error to cite Jefferson in any way as speaking definitively about what the Framers intended with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He was not directly involved in either.

A Collective Right

The real history of the Second Amendment was well understood both by citizens and courts in the generations after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were enacted. For most of the years of the Republic, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment as a collective right, allowing Americans to participate in a “well-regulated Militia,” not an individual right to buy the latest weaponry at a gun show or stockpile a military-style arsenal in the basement.

It’s true that many Americans owned a musket or rifle in those early years especially on the frontier, but regulations on munitions were still common in cities where storing of gunpowder, for instance, represented a threat to the public safety. As the nation spread westward, so did common-sense restrictions on gun violence. Sheriffs in some of the wildest of Wild West towns enforced gun bans that today would prompt a recall election financed by the National Rifle Association.

However, in recent decades – understanding the power of narrative on the human imagination – a resurgent American Right (and some on the Left) rewrote the history of the Founding era, dispatching “researchers” to cherry-pick or fabricate quotes from Revolutionary War leaders to create politically convenient illusions. [See, for instance, Steven Krulik’s compilation of apocryphal or out-of-context gun quotes.]

That bogus history gave rise to the image of the Framers being wild-eyed radicals encouraging armed rebellion against the Republic. Rather than people who believed in the rule of law and social order, the Framers were contorted into crazies who wanted citizens to be empowered to shoot police, soldiers, elected representatives and government officials.

This false history was advanced particularly by the American Right in the last half of the Twentieth Century as a kind of neo-Confederate call to arms, with the goal of rallying whites into a near-insurrectionary fury particularly in the South but also in rural areas of the North and West. Many fancied themselves an armed resistance against the tyrannical federal government.

Southern whites brandished guns and engaged in violence to resist the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, when the federal government finally stepped in to end Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. In the 1990s, “citizens militias” began to pop up in reaction to the election of Democrat Bill Clinton, culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1994.

While designed primarily for the weak-minded, the Right’s faux Founding history also had an impact on right-wing “intellectuals” including Republican lawyers who worked their way up through the federal judiciary under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

By 2008, these right-wing jurists held a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and could thus overturn generations of legal precedents and declare that the Second Amendment established an individual right for Americans to own guns. Though even these five right-wing justices accepted society’s right to protect the general welfare of the population through some gun control, the Supreme Court’s ruling effectively “validated” the Right’s made-up history.

The ruling created a political dynamic in which even liberals in national politics, the likes of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, had to genuflect to the supposed Second Amendment right of Americans to parade around in public with guns on their hips and high-powered semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders.

What the Framers Wanted?

As guns-right activists struck down gun regulations in Congress and in statehouses across the nation, their dominant argument was that the Second Amendment offered no leeway for restrictions on gun ownership; it’s what the Framers wanted.

So, pretty much any unstable person could load up with a vast killing capacity and slouch off to a bar, a work place, a church or a school – even an elementary school – and treat fellow Americans as targets in a violent video game. Somehow, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was overtaken by the “right” to own an AR-15 with a 30-or-100-bullet magazine.

When right-wing politicians talk about the Second Amendment now, they don’t even bother to include the preamble that explains the point of the amendment. The entire amendment is only 26 words. But the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, another Republican presidential candidate, find the preamble inconvenient because it would undercut the false storyline. So they just lop off the first 12 words.

Nor do they explain what the Framers meant by “bear arms.” The phrase reflected the reasoning in the Second Amendment’s preamble that the whole point was to create “well-regulated” state militias to maintain “security,” not to free up anybody with a beef to kill government officials or citizens of a disapproved race or creed. (The Oregon gunman targeted practicing Christians; a previous gunman in South Carolina went after African-Americans in a church.)

Yet, after the massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, Fox News personality Andrew Napolitano declared:

“The historical reality of the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms is not that it protects the right to shoot deer. It protects the right to shoot tyrants, and it protects the right to shoot at them effectively, with the same instruments they would use upon us.”

Noah Pozner, 6, one of 20 children murdered on Dec. 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

At the time, the clear message from the Right was that armed Americans must confront the “tyrannical” Barack Obama – the twice-elected President of the United States (and the first African-American to hold that office) – especially if he pressed ahead seeking commonsense gun restrictions.

But Napolitano is simply wrong on the history. The Second Amendment was designed for states to maintain “security,” whether that meant putting down a tax rebellion in Pennsylvania, a slave revolt in the South or a Native American uprising on the frontier. One can disagree about the rightness of those actions by state or federal authorities, but the history is clear.

The Second Amendment was not designed to encourage violence against the government or – for that matter – to enable troubled individuals to murder large numbers of their fellow citizens.

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.

NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels Thursday gave their final approval to the expansion of the Enhanced NATO Response Force to 40,000 troops as part of a major escalation of the US-led alliance’s military buildup against Russia.

The NATO ministers, including US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, seized upon Moscow’s airstrikes in Syria against Islamist militias seeking the overthrow of the government of President Bashar al-Assad as the pretext for more aggressive deployments of military forces on Russia’s border.

In particular, Washington and its NATO allies have sought to turn a pair of alleged brief incursions by Russian warplanes across Syria’s northern border into Turkish airspace last weekend as an effective act of war.

“NATO is ready and able to defend all allies, including Turkey against any threats,” NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters as he entered the meeting. He added that NATO was prepared to deploy troops to Turkey and had already taken steps to increase the alliance’s “capacity” and “preparedness” to do so.

The magnification of the alleged violations of Turkish airspace into a confrontation between Moscow and the Western alliance has been driven mainly by Washington with the aim of ratcheting up the campaign against Russia.

The government of President Vladimir Putin has insisted that the violations of Turkish airspace were accidental, a claim that has been rejected by Washington and NATO.

The reality is that the Islamist militias, including both ISIS and the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front, operate in close proximity to the border with Turkey, which serves as their pipeline for funds, arms and foreign fighters.

Moreover, Turkey has itself treated its border with Syria as something quite malleable. Since 2012, when a Turkish warplane was downed by a Syrian missile after it flew into Syrian airspace, Turkey has unilaterally declared a five-mile buffer zone, reserving the right to shoot down any target within that distance of the Turkish border that it regards as hostile.

Turkey itself, meanwhile, routinely violates its neighbor’s borders, carrying out bombing raids against Kurdish camps inside Iraq and launching air strikes against Syria, without the permission of either country’s government.

Boasting of NATO’s military buildup, Secretary General Stoltenberg told the assembled ministers, “We are implementing the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.”

The buildup was initiated in the wake of the crisis that erupted in Ukraine in February 2014, when the US-backed coup in Kiev ousted President Viktor Yanukovych and brought to power a far-right, ultranationalist regime subservient to Washington and the European Union.

This provocation along with the dramatic expansion of US and NATO to Russia’s western borders has dramatically elevated the threat of a military confrontation between the two main nuclear-armed powers, the United States and Russia, with catastrophic implications for the entire planet.

This danger has only been exacerbated by the civil war in Syria, which was instigated by Washington and its allies in an attempt to effect regime change and install a US-puppet government in Damascus. With Russia’s intervention, the possibility of an incident bringing US and Russian warplanes into a deliberate or unintended confrontation has only heightened the threat of war.

US Defense Secretary Carter complained bitterly at the NATO ministers’ meeting about Moscow not having given Washington any advance notice before it launched 26 cruise missiles against targets in Syria from Russian warships deployed in the Caspian Sea, more than 900 miles away.

In what sounded distinctly like a threat, Carter warned, “This will have consequences for Russia itself…” He added, “I also expect that in coming days, the Russians will begin to suffer casualties in Syria.”

Much of the denunciations of Moscow’s military actions in Syria center on their being aimed at, in the words of Carter, “targets that are not IS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria].” This description of what the targets are not, rather than what they are, is typical of US and NATO officials. It is meant to obscure the fact that Washington and its allies are objecting to Russia conducting airstrikes against Al-Nusra and other Al-Qaeda-connected Islamist militias, with which the West is operating in a de facto alliance.

In addition to the move to field the 40,000-troop NATO Response Force, the meeting in Brussels took a number of other actions meant to step up pressure and provocations against Russia.

The NATO ministers moved to add two new military headquarters in Hungary and Slovakia, in addition to six others already planned in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania. Each of these headquarters, known as NATO Force Integration Units, is to have about 80 military personnel and is being put in place to plan and prepare for the rapid deployment of large numbers of NATO troops.

Meanwhile, Britain announced that it would begin regular deployment of units of up to 150 troops to the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine for training. British Defense Minister Michael Fallon said that the action was being taken in response to “Russian aggression and provocation.”

The British announcement was condemned by the Russian government. “An invented excuse about the suggested threat coming from Russia is possibly just camouflage used to disguise the plans to further expand NATO toward our borders,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “Of course, any plans to bring NATO’s military infrastructure closer to the Russian Federation lead to reciprocal steps needed to restore the necessary parity.”

In addition to Syria and NATO escalation in Eastern Europe, the ministers’ meeting discussed the situation in Afghanistan, where the recent fall of the northern city of Kunduz to the Taliban has exposed the fragility of Washington’s Afghan puppet regime and its security forces, which the Pentagon has spent some $65 billion training. Defense Secretary Carter asked for “flexibility” in terms of the withdrawal of some 6,000 non-US NATO troops presently deployed in the country.

The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, testified for a second time on Capitol Hill Wednesday, arguing against the previously stated timetable for withdrawing all but 1,000 US troops by the end of 2016. There are presently 9,800 US troops in the country.

The Russians are having remarkable success with their attacks on ISIS, and the US has revealed itself to be disinterested in helping them extend that success further.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has blasted the refusal of the US to share intel on ISIS positions in Syria. He says that it “just confirms once more what we knew from the very start, that the US goals in Syria have little to do with creating the conditions for a political process and national reconciliation.“

Ryabkov added:

“I would risk saying that by doing this the US and the countries that joined the US-led coalition are putting themselves in a politically dubious position. The question is: which side are you fighting for in this war?“

John Kirby, a spokesman for the US State Department, even admitted that “there’s no shared, common objective here about going after ISIL“. He suggested that “I don’t know how you can share intelligence when you don’t share a basic, common objective inside Syria.“

Igor Konashenkov, of the Russian Defence Ministry, had this to say on US defiance:

“Our partners from other countries, which view Islamic State as a real enemy, which must be destroyed unconditionally, actively help us with data on bases, depots, command posts and training camps of terrorists. And those, who, apparently, have a different opinion about this terrorist organization, are constantly looking for reasons to refuse to cooperate in the fight against international terrorism.“

The US, therefore, finds itself in a strange position. While claiming for so long to be the world’s leader in the infamous ‘war on terror’, certain figures within the US government are now openly hindering the fight on the world’s frontline against terror.

US objectives in Syria do not then consider eradicating ISIS as the highest priority, despite spending $10 million per day supposedly doing so, which explains the huge upstaging suffered by Russia; who is on the verge of eradicating ISIS after just one week.

Moreover, those who have argued that the US was only ever interested in regime change in Syria now appear to be vindicated, as these world leaders openly expose and rebuke US actions.

Watch a video of this report here:

Our thanks to Truthstream.

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Last night in Jerusalem, new clashes saw more wounded Israelis and a Palestinian shot dead, as tensions continue to rise in Israel and its Occupied Territories.

Not surprisingly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is blaming this fall’s wave of violence on the native Arabs and foreign countries who support them. He blamed recent violence on the Palestinian Authority that (sort of) controls the West Bank, and of course he blames Hamas in Gaza, claiming that their “incitement and libels and lies” have set off unrest.

Israel continue to suppress any effort for an independent Palestine.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stated he does not want the current situation to escalate. Many feel that Abbas is holding back a new intifada, but wonder for how long.

Fearing the symbolic power of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Netanyahu has declared a ban on any Arab-Israel MPs from going to the mosque, as well restricting Palestinians’ access to the holy site.

In a bid to calm tensions, Netanyahu has barred members of parliament and ministers from visiting the Old City’s Al-Aqsa mosques compound, which has seen repeated clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian youths in recent weeks.

Israel are also still reeling from last week’s UN flag ceremony which recognized Palestine in the ‘community of nations’ – moving it one step closer to statehood – something Netanyahu and others Israeli Zionist fundamentalists have vowed never to allow. UN head Ban Ki-Moon said at the time, “This is a day of pride for Palestinians around the world. It is a day of hope. It’s a reminder that symbols are important,” he said. “May the raising of this flag give rise to the hope among the Palestinians and the international community that Palestinian statehood is achievable.”

Meanwhile, Netanyahu (pictured left) continues to crow, “The radicals, the terrorists will not achieve anything… we will prosecute them, and we will be victorious!“, which sounds very much like another flamboyant despot in history, who also said, “We will be victorious, because we have to be victorious!”

What Netanyahu will not admit publicly, is that Israeli is running a full-blown, militarized colonial police state, and its heavy-handed treatment and over-the-top force is routinely used against all Palestinians, and also against any non-Jewish protesters, media or bystanders.

Last week two AFP journalists, covering clashes between Palestinians and IDF were assaulted by thuggish Israeli soldiers. RT explains:

“Israeli soldiers reportedly pointed their weapons at the Italian video journalist Andrea Bernardi and his colleague, Palestinian photographer Abbas Momani. Both journalists were wearing body armor clearly marked “Press.” According to AFP, Bernardi was thrown to the ground, jabbed in the side with a weapon, and held by a soldier until he showed his press card. The journalist suffered bruised ribs and an eye injury.”

“The soldiers reportedly smashed a video camera and a stills camera and took away another camera, and a mobile phone.”

In addition, Israel has also been using sniper rifles against stone-throwing Palestinians. Watch:

Killing Fields

Many now believe that the IDF are preparing to mount one of their biggest killing sprees since last year’s genocidal cull in Gaza. The moralists and human rights community in Washington DC seem all too willing to see history repeat itself, again.

Despite the scale of the violence against civilians last year, the West effectively turned a blind eye to Israel’s role during its decidedly vicious incursion, where the IDF slaughtered nearly 2,200 Palestinians and injured many thousands of others, as well as destroying 10,000 homes and severely damaging another 30,000. As the conflict seemed to wind down over last summer – the IDF bombed several large civilian buildings without any justifiable reason according to Amnesty International.
Over the last two weeks, the situation been on a knife edge. Tensions exploded over this past weekend in East Jerusalem following a number of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli paramilitary police, including one which took place near the town center Beit Furik two weeks ago following the funeral of Ahmed Khatatbeh, 26, who died after being shot by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Nablus in the West Bank. As a result of the killing by the IDF, thousands of Palestinians marched in his funeral – which predictably stoked even more tension.

After this, tensions began to escalate again, before protests erupted following the IDF demolishing two homes in East Jerusalem homes which the Israeli government claim belonged to the families of two alleged ‘militants’ accused of murder by Israeli officials. Both men were said to have been shot and killed during the attacks.

Finally, this week, clashes came between the IDF and Palestinians, mostly youths in Bethlehem, after a funeral for Abed al-Rahman Obdeillah, a 13-year-old Palestinian killed on Monday by Israeli soldiers. In addition, three other Palestinians were murdered by IDF forces during protests.

Many pundits are now predicting a new intifada will almost certainly will emerge out of the current maelstrom in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Judging by past Israeli killing sprees by Israel in its occupied territories, if the violence does not de-escalate quickly, then it’s likely the bloodshed will increase exponentially by next week.

CBS‘s claim of a “plot to sell nuke materials to ISIS” is misleading; the assertion that “ISIS looks to buy nuclear weapons” is just wrong.

The Associated Press (AP) published this week (10/5/15) a thrilling account of how the FBI, in concert with Moldovan authorities, “disrupted” a smuggling ring that was supposedly trying to sell “nuclear material” to ISIS and other terror organizations over a five-year span. The primary developments in the story are almost a year old, but the resurfaced tale made news across the English-speaking world:

‘Annihilate America’: Inside a Secret, Frightening Scheme to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS

—Salon (10/7/15)

AP: Smugglers Busted Trying to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS

—CBS News (10/7/15)

FBI Foils Smugglers’ Plot to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS

—The Independent (10/7/15)

There was only one problem: At no point do the multiple iterations of the AP‘s reporting show that anyone involved in the FBI sting were members of or have any connection to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (aka ISIL or Daesh). While one of several smuggling attempts discussed in AP‘s reporting involved an actual potential buyer–an otherwise unknown Sudanese doctor who four years ago “suggested that he was interested” in obtaining uranium–the “terrorists” otherwise involved in the cases were FBI and other law enforcement agents posing as such. According to the AP and NBC’s Pete Williams:

However, the official emphasized that there was no known ISIS connection. An undercover informant, working with Moldovan police, claimed that he was an ISIS representative.

“But that was totally made up,” the official said.

This would not perturb the American press, who once again eager to hype an ISIS threat, either A) heavily implied this “plot” was evidence of ISIS seeking a nuclear weapon or B) actually went step further and said as much despite it being wholly untrue.

First the outlets who heavily implied ISIS was involved but used the qualifiers “attempted,” “tried” or the abstract “plots” so as to not expressly lie:

Smugglers Tried to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS

—NBC News (10/7/15)

Smugglers Try to Sell Nukes to ISIS

—Fox News (10/7/15)

FBI Has Foiled 4 Attempts by Gangs to Sell Nuclear Material to ISIS Through Russian Connections

—Daily Mail (10/7/15)

(Note that the Daily Mail managed to also work the threat du jour into the headline by means of the reference to “Russian connections”–a phrase so vague as to be virtually meaningless.)

Then there were the publications who said ISIS was involved (a falsehood):

AP Investigation Finds That Nuclear Smugglers Shopped Radioactive Material to ISIS and Other Terrorists
—Business Insider (10/6/15)

Nuclear Smugglers Shopped Radioactive Material to Islamic State, Other Terrorists: AP report
—Chicago Tribune (10/6/15)

Again, there was nothing “shopped” to ISIS, because ISIS was never involved. While it’s accurate–if misleading–to say they “attempted” or had a “plot” to sell radioactive material to ISIS, it is factually incorrect to say anyone “shopped” something to people who weren’t in any way involved in the transaction. While it can be said that smugglers “seeking” ISIS is disturbing in and of itself, it’s untrue that this solicitation is evidence of an actual ISIS threat.

Fox News and CBS would take it one step further, by expressly saying the plot was evidence that “ISIS was trying to buy a nuke.”

Fox’s Gretchen Carlson started off an interview with Rep. Mike Turner by asking, “Congressman, what are we supposed to make of this news that ISIS and other terrorist groups are trying to get their hands on dirty bombs?” CBS, meanwhile, led their broadcast by breathlessly revealing “new fears tonight that ISIS is ready to go nuclear.”

But neither of these statements are true. This sting does not support the claim that ISIS is “trying to buy a nuke,” because “there was no known ISIS connection.”

International Business Times’ Christopher Harress would take misinformation to whole new heights, inventing a Jason Bourne narrative out of whole cloth and, evidently, not bothering to read the AP story:

Members of the Islamic State group with links to Russian gangs were trying to get hold of nuclear material to build a radioactive dirty bomb before Moldovan police and FBI operatives stopped them, according to an investigation reported Wednesday by the Associated Press. The terror group, which is also known as ISIS, had been approached by gangs in Moldova that were specifically seeking a buyer from ISIS.

This is 100 percent false. There is no evidence the Islamic State group (with links to “Russian gangs” or otherwise) were trying to get a hold of radioactive material to build a dirty bomb. What there is evidence of is that FBI and local authorities posed as “ISIS” and conned some Moldovan gangsters into selling them some materials that may or may not have actually been “nuclear,” much less capable of creating a “dirty bomb”–a weapon, it should be noted, that is thus far entirely hypothetical.

So here we are: Fake FBI ISIS setting up ostensibly real post-Soviet mobsters to purchase material for a potentially deadly device that exists only in the minds of counterterrorism threat risk managers. The media, either agnostic to or incapable of understanding what really happened, paints the picture of the FBI swooping in to stop a Russian/ISIS nuclear conspiracy at the 11th hour.

What takes place, before our very eyes, is a kind of War on Terror transubstantiation. Representational terror plots become real ones, fake enemies become Russo-Jihadi crime syndicates, and an American public, once again, is presented with a cartoonish, wildly inflated threat profile that’s increasingly divorced from reality.

Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc.

In September 2000, Netanyahu’s late mentor, Ariel Sharon, incited the 2nd intifada by his intentionally provocative visit to the sacred Al­-Asqa Mosque (also known to Jews as the Temple Mount). The word ‘intifada’ being Arabic, meaning to revolt against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

The Al-­Aqsa Mosque itself is part of a compound that is widely considered the third holiest site in Islam. Israel asserted its control over it by incorporating East Jerusalem into occupied Jerusalem in 1980. Now Likud Premier, Binyamin Netanyahu, has provoked further violence by emulating the discredited actions of his predecessor. As a result, there have been more than 20 flash points in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in recent weeks, leading to violence and killings on both sides.

‘In the past 11 days of violence, alone, five Palestinians have been killed, including a 13 year old boy from a refugee camp in Bethlehem who locals said was shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers as he was walking home from school.’

The actions of this Netanyahu government give rise to the suspicion that it is planning the initial steps to illegally annex both East Jerusalem and the West Bank. If so, it would lead to an Intifada that could spread to encompass the entire region, with frightening consequences.

Though Argentina Bolivia Cuba Ecuador Venezuela and Nicaragua condemned US wars and murderous exploitation during this year’s UN Gen. Debate, they as other delegates, lamented the current deplorable condition of today’s world of death and destruction, of poverty and starvation calling for everyone to work to rectify the situation. No delegate even once called for justice through prosecution. Gaddafi UN speech quoted.

All the delegates to the 2015 General Assembly began their statements hailing the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in the same year 1945 that saw the end of WW II, but every single delegate ignored the third major event of 1945, which was the first ever trial of a nation for crimes against humanity, crimes against peace and genocide. The Nuremberg Principles were created by the International Law Commission of the United Nations codifying the legal principles underlying the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi party members, and were signed on to by all members of the UN.

How strange, mysterious, unexplainable, illogical, baffling, painful for millions facing death or worse today that no delegate called for justice under the law, neither for them or for the tens of millions of survivors of past mega profitable crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and forms of genocide since the founding of the UN.

Not so, during the UN General Debate in 2009, when Muammar Gaddafi, Leader of the Revolution of the Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, spoke in the name of the African Union:

“We are about to put the United Nations on trial; the old organization will be finished and a new one will emerge.” 

Gaddafi called for investigations into ten past wars of permanent members of the Security Council, the US, UK and France, to be followed by trials of those guilty of causing these wars, suffering and millions of deaths and suffering “that has surpassed that brought by the Nazis.”

By contrast, during this year’s General Debate, in which delegates lamented the current deplorable condition of today’s world of death and destruction, of poverty, extreme poverty and starvation, and in a serious tone of voice gave lip service to the usually heard plea that everyone try harder to rectify the murderous exploitation of most of humanity, no delegate even once called for bringing anyone or any nation before the law.

To this puzzled elderly archival research peoples historian working for former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, it seemed as if magically, the delegates had had the Nuremberg Principles of international law extirpated from their minds and from the UN Charter they often referred to. As if German government officials and officials of other fascist nations, who had ordered bombings, invasions and mass murderous occupations of many nations, had never been hanged or imprisoned and reparations adjudicated. 

Why did delegates only decry, denounce and complain of annually planned starvation of millions of children and the genocidal foreign policies of the colonial powers that bring about the same kind of invasions, bombings and murderous occupations, which Nazis had been tried and convicted of as the United Nations was being founded?  Why are these universally signed on Nuremberg Principles of International Law never mentioned? It is also weird that delegates seem careful to avoid using the word ‘crime,’ let alone identify prosecutable crimes against humanity or prosecutable crimes against peace in their statements.

Were any of the delegates heralding the UN Charter aware that almost immediately  upon the founding of a colonial powers created incipient United Nations, a UN General Assembly with only one quarter of the members in today’s UN, that this body was pressured into self-authorizing itself pass a phony and insane UN partition plan to cut British occupied Palestine into six disjointed pieces, a plan never meant to be implemented but rather intended and fully expected to torch the Holy Land into permanent civil war and allow for the right Zionists faction heavily funded by Wall Street to force a brave international socialist Zionist majority to fight for their lives and at the same time be used to conquer out a military state that would be a Western outpost in the oil rich Arab lands. Your author has thoroughly documented [1] it as a typical British Empire joint Anglo-American colonial crime against humanity that used the United Nations and the unwanted survivors of a Holocaust and WW II made possible by enormous American investment in, and joint venturing with, a prostate Nazi Germany that built Hitler’s Wehrmacht up to world number one military in five years, all the while Hitler was making clear his intentions to clean Europe of Jews and move against the Soviet Union.

Delegates repeated automatically the time worn call for a Palestinian state that the Israelis will not allow. In 2009, Gaddafi told the General Assembly, “The two-State solution is impossible; it is not practical. Currently, these two States completely overlap. Partition is doomed to failure. These two States are not neighbors; they are coextensive, in terms of both population and geography. There are half a million Israeli settlers in the West Bank and a million Arab Palestinians in the territory known as Israel. The solution is therefore a democratic State without religious fanaticism or ethnicity.  Look at Palestinian and Israeli youth; they both want peace and democracy, and they want to live under one State. This conflict poisons the world. Arabs have no hostility or animosity towards Israel. We are cousins and of the same race.”

For sixty-seven years, the same colonial powers, who forced through passage of the frightening UN Partition Plan have kept up  a murderously deceitful pretense of trying to bring peace to Palestine and the oil rich Middle East, and UN delegates seem to willing to play along with it.  Gadaffi did not.

Did any of the delegates expressing pride in the accomplishments of the UN remember the two to three million Koreans slain during the invasion of Korea by American Armed Forces flying the UN flag, the UN flag painted as well on every US Air Force bomber during years of air attack that flattened every city and town of the entire Korean peninsula, North and South save Pusan a US naval base?

When delegates praised the work of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, did any remember that Ban Ki-Moon often praises that US ‘Police Intervention’ dutifully called for by the UN’s first Secretary General, Trygve Lie,  as the Koreans of the North were sweeping away the unpopular dictatorship the US had set up in the South, recently documented by the present Southern government as having massacred more that 100,000 of its own citizens in the South prior to the North reunifying Korea in five short weeks.[2]

Six years ago Gaddafi told his fellow delegates, “Those responsible for causing the Korean War should be tried and should pay compensation and damages.” Does this not sound reasonable?
 
When many delegates spoke of the wonderful work of UN Peace Keeping Missions, were they aware how most  missions were created in the big powers controlled Security Council to enforce brutal imperialist foreign policies of the Anglo-American led European colonial-neocolonial powers? Poor Somalia is the most horrific example. Years of US support of cooperative war lords causing chaos led to the birth of a government made up of the country’s Islamic Courts that was supported by Somalia’s business community and was clean and efficient and extremely popular. When US air strikes could not save its war lords, US client armies of Ethiopia and Kenya were called upon to invade and it was the youth wing of the conservative Islamic Courts government, the Movement of Striving Youth, which drove out the Ethiopian army, forcing the US to have the UN call upon subservient African nations to send the troops that are still there fighting the now radicalized Shabab, or Movement of Striving Youth – of late, conveniently demonized for being intermeshed with an originally US created al Qaida.[3] Oxfam estimates more than a million Somalians have  starved to death during these years of disruption. It is commonly known that the ill trained and badly behaved African troops are hated just as the UN foreign occupation force in Haiti, where their job is to keep a US friendly government in power against the wishes of the Haitian people, whose popular priest socialist President was kidnapped by the US following an invasion of Haiti by thugs.[4][5][6]

Was the ghost of the UN Secretariat slandered revolutionary leader Gaddafi present at the 2015 General Assembly Debate? How many delegates remembered the UN ‘No Fly Zone’ under which the 53rd highest Quality of Life UN indexed nation, the wealthiest in Africa, once the poorest for being exploited by Britain and France, was destroyed mercilessly with unopposed air strikes by its former colonial occupying exploiters after initial devastation by air and naval missile strikes by the US superpower professedly “to protect Libyans from certain slaughter” by their beloved [7] revolutionary leader who was also Chairman of the African Union he had himself revived after its long sleep since the colonial powers backed overthrow of its first founder President Nkruma of Ghana. 

Prophetically in regard to his own assassination few years later, Gaddafi had warned,  “At present, the Security Council is security feudalism, political feudalism for those with permanent seats, protected by them and used against us. It should be called, not the Security Council, but the Terror Council.”

Six socialist presidents of Latin America, those of Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela did call delegates attention to the Libyans now suffering incessant slaughter in a formerly prosperous Libya in describing the overall disastrous situation the world finds itself in due to continued colonial neocolonial economic, political and military control and exploitation. “They called Gadaffi a tyrant,” shouted Evo Morales, and some must have recalled Fidel Castro was also called a tyrant, and survived innumerable assassination attempts as did Gadaffi. With number one enemy Gadaffi gone, North Africa has been wide open for USAFRICON military penetration. At our UN of false appearances, there is mostly diplomatic silence about the uncomfortably obvious.

With the exception of Latin America’s revolutionary delegates, the striking embarrassment that various Muslim nations lie in ruins, in good part because of  criminal acts of the UN Secretary General, the destruction of these UN member nations went uncommented upon in the delegates’ speeches. The UN’s chief officer’s support for infantile stories thrown out for public deception that should not have been believed; CNN stories of public uprising and Libyan government violence without one single video or photo to prove such lies; the world treated to nine weeks of videos of tough guys in heavy weapons armed pickup trucks posing as liberators with little or no reports allowed from rebel held Benghazi and elsewhere,[8] all this must be diplomatically unremembered by the cooperative majority of delegates. [see a day by day chronicle history: There Was No Libyan Peaceful Protest Just Murderous Gangs and CNN’s Nic Robertson]

The same is true of Syria, suffering deadly US funded invasions of terrorists openly abetted by a Ban Ki-Moon concurring with every US thought up vilification of President Assad. However fiery President Fernandez of Argentina did threw up her hands in desperation as she railed against the US, “Now is the ISIS , this new monster that has appeared on television – terrorist beheading people in real stagings that one wonders how, from where, because let me , I have become quite suspicious of all after seeing all the things that have happened . And things that go on television in the series that both entertain and amuse us , fictions are small next to the reality we have to live today as world.” “Where do they get weapons , where do they get the resources.”

Raul Castro, in his turn, limited himself to lecturing, ” We renew our confidence that the people of Syria are capable of resolving their differences themselves and we demand the ceasing of outside interference.” (A bit too diplomatic as those “differences” were false flagged up to ‘civil war’ appearances four years ago) [9]

Afghanistan? That Muslim country, where a coalition of every single blessed Caucasian populated nation of Earth, even tiny Andorra, Lichtenstein, etc. has been part of a coalition of invaders and murderous occupiers of an innocent Afghan nation over fifteen bloody years of drug lord installed government and kids freezing to death outside the warmly comfortable military accommodations of ‘Coalition Forces.’  Now that is an impressive example of white people solidarity. The non pale skin world that includes the majority of UN delegates shows a backhanded solidarity in ignoring it.

At the 2015 UN debate, the biggest exception to diplomatic propriety was  Nícolas Madero of Venezuela, who spoke at length of the invasions of Afghanistan, and then at length of Iraq, Libya and Syria, shouting a one point, “Who is going to pay for the crimes in Libya, in Afghanistan, in Iraq in Syria and recognize the horror movie made in Hollywood, politics of horror, politics of terror.” Madero over and over called out the perpetrator by name “los Estados Unidos de America – the United States,” as no other delegate to the 2015 General Debate did.

Why didn’t a delegate answer Madero’s question with, ‘We must make the United States pay for the crimes not only in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, but in Vietnam, in Laos, in Cambodia, in Congo, in Greece, in Guatemala, in Dominican Republic, in Angola, in Yemen, in Somalia, in Panama, in Grenada, in Cuba, in Haiti, in Iran, in Chile and almost every single country in Latin America?

Rafael Correa of Ecuador, speaking in determined, even on occasion angry, demeanor, did use words that reminded one of law and order, ”can’t have liberty without justice, only seeking justice will we get real liberty,”  but in quoting an economist, “When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it,” Correa seemed to put justice out of our reach. This may be true enough at the moment in regard to prosecuting economic crimes causing poverty, but not when it come to military madness. We have laws against murder which sadly no delegate demands be called into force. Making use of these laws would make investment in profitable illegal and death dealing use of armed forces unprofitable.  Prosecuting military crimes against humanity would reduce the investment in weapons and war which is the major cause of the unjust impoverishment of humanity. Raul Castro pointed out dramatically in the very opening of his address, “795 million people go hungry , 781 million adults are illiterate and 17 000 children die every day from preventable diseases , while annual military spending worldwide totals more than 1.7 trillion dollars.”
 
Evo Morales of Bolivia cried out to the General Assembly,

“Every year we hear here the speeches of Obama on war”
“wars that leave destruction and death, but also wealth for the arms industry”

and “If we want to end poverty we have no other way but to end the imperialist system”

The Vice-President of Nicaragua speaking for President Daniel Ortega cited the “greed of capitalism, the empire of global capitalism, the destruction of even developed nations” and that “the UN must respond to barbaric interventions.”

Dear readers and Their Excellencies representing member UN nations:

Persecuted humanity has the laws to prosecute and end the wars by which the imperialist system perpetuates itself. These international laws unlike many parts of the Charter are not observed voluntarily. No person anywhere, no nation’s law, is above the Nuremberg Principles of international law.[10]

What is needed is some awakening of that desire for justice in the court of public opinion that is usually a prerequisite to justice happening in a formal court.
M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky’s often quoted hypothetical “All the US presidents after FDR would have been hanged if tried under the same laws as the as the Nazis were tried under,” is never responded to with a ‘Well, let’s try a few!’ Latin American delegates may have elaborated on Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s widely heard outcry, “God damn America for her crimes against humanity,” but today’s revolutionary delegates seemed to have backtracked from the investigations and prosecutions Gadaffi called for six years ago. Many such crimes crimes against humanity need no investigation, being long admitted to (as mistakes of course).

In June of this year, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark entered a friend of the court brief supporting the case of Iraqi mom, Sundus Shaker Saleh, who is suing top of officials in the Bush administration for violating crimes against peace under laws set down at the Nuremberg Trials used to prosecute Nazi war criminals, which since than have become an integral part of the US Constitution. Former President Bush, former Vice President Richard Cheney, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of State Colin Powell are all named as defendants.

In 2013, the Obama Administration had had Department of Justice attorneys file a successful ‘motion to dismiss’ and grant immunity to the government officials by citing the Westfall Act,  which shields government employees from criminal repercussions for any actions that take place “within the scope of their employment.”

The amicus brief submitted on Saleh’s behalf by the group of attorneys that include U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the former president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the former president of the National Lawyers Guild, a founding board member of the International Commission for Labor Rights, and the co-chair of the International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, among others—states that the previous court was “forbidden” to use Westfall protections to dismiss the charges because the Nuremberg Tribunal established “norms” that prohibit “the use of domestic laws as shields to allegations of aggression […] National leaders, even American leaders, do not have the authority to commit aggression and cannot be immune from allegations they have done so.” [emphasis added]  Nuremberg Principle Principle III reads as follows: The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Not only was this lawsuit unmentioned by the dozen or so delegates who spoke a few words about death and destruction still continuing in Iraq, but neither is it talked or written about  anywhere else. There is a kind of gentlemen’s agreement throughout the entire first world that it be not proper to bring up the subject of lawsuits against the powers that be, or even a hint of such an eventuality. Left progressive ostensibly anti-war journalism is even bereft of any allusion whatever to GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul having gotten to repeat on prime time news over a two week period years ago that “all US invasions and bombings beginning with Korea were illegal and unconstitutional.”

In vain has Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark given his name to encouraging journalists not to write interesting exposes, erudite explanations, entertaining insights into the horror of the nearly continuous US genocide as Realpolitik, as if it were something other than prosecutable crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.  Mass homicidal events are being avidly discussed as news and politics, almost never as crimes against humanity and crimes against peace, rather as if they were as unchallengeable as the weather.  Professors and other intellectuals are, by such omission, leaving their reading public with the gut feeling that the lethal bombings, invasions, wars of occupation and covert violence are somehow lawful and that those engaging in, supporting and abetting this mayhem will not, and cannot, be brought before the law.

At the UN, this is somewhat exemplified by a subservient attitude of the delegates of the six-sevenths of humanity of the undeveloped, underdeveloped and now developing Third World still recovering from having been criminally plundered into such a condition over centuries by rapacious marauders from an under civilized Europe. Right now, there is no movement to hold the imperialist nations accountable, beyond a few marginalized writers. Which all goes to show why Gaddafi was so dangerous, for in that year the presidency of the General Assembly was held by a fellow Libyan, he went on at length about the justice that must be demanded:

“Another matter that should be voted on in the General Assembly is that of compensation for countries that were colonized, so as to prevent the colonization of a continent, the usurpation of its rights and the pillaging of its wealth from happening again.

Why are Africans going to Europe? Why are Asians going to Europe? Why are Latin Americans going to Europe? It is because Europe colonized those peoples and stole the material and human resources of Africa, Asia and Latin America — the oil, minerals, uranium, gold and diamonds, the fruit, vegetables and livestock and the people — and used them. Now, new generations of Asians, Latin Americans and Africans are seeking to reclaim that stolen wealth, as they have the right to do.

At the Libyan border, I recently stopped 1,000 African migrants headed for Europe. I asked them why they were going there. They told me it was to take back their stolen wealth — that they would not be leaving otherwise. If you decide to restore all of this wealth, there will be no more immigration from the Philippines, Latin America, Mauritius and India. Let us have the wealth that was stolen from us.

Why is the Third World demanding compensation? So that there will be no more colonization — so that large and powerful countries will not colonize, knowing that they will have to pay compensation. Colonization should be punished. The countries that harmed other peoples during the colonial era should pay compensation for the damage and suffering inflicted under their colonial rule.”

At this 64th General Assembly in 2009, Gaddafi had proudly asked, “Why is there no Libyan immigration to Italy? Italy agreed to provide Libya with $250 million a year in compensation over the next 20 years and to build a hospital for Libyans maimed during Italy’s occupation.”

And that although we know not how or where it will happen, when it becomes a topic of conversation throughout the world in the street, home, marketplace, workplace and school, a way will be found.

Upon my return to the less happy atmosphere in New York, it came to me that in the most widely read Anglo-American independent journalism and news commentary there exist without exception a doomsday scenario of impending world war and worse. The just concluded 70th UN General Debate gave me the same impression of hopelessness, blistering condemnations of the US by Presidents Fernandez, Morales, Castro, Correa, Madero and Vice-president Halleslevens of Nicaragua notwithstanding.

Apart for revolutionaries, one senses an incomprehensible attitude of helplessness, as if the world must perforce continue to be run lawlessly by investors in wars and thievery for as long as anyone can imagine.

For someone who has lived in for many years in China, other Asian cultures, Latin America and a bit in Africa  among peoples whose ways of life will inevitably be propelled into influencing thinking world wide as the West declines in economic power, this paralyzing poverty of thought that surrounds us at the moment is seen as temporary.

When the US loses its power to sanction its former victim nations into silence, a reconstituted United Nations, no longer under Anglo-American-EU control, can be expected to be adjudicating in its courts a plethora of mega monstrous in size lawsuits for compensation for millions of unlawful deaths and tens of millions of injuries, indemnity for enormous destruction of property and reparations for awesome theft of natural resources that parallel the descriptions of genocidal crimes described by the presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua, economic terrorist crimes described by the presidents of Argentina and Cuba and the massive crimes against Mother Nature and our planetary home as described by the presidents of Bolivia and Ecuador.

Should a reader wish to calculate how great could be the cost of such expected future lawsuits for investors in the illegal use of US Armed Forces, five years ago former US Attorney General gave his blessing to a educational and stimulus website campaign: Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now that contains the pertinent laws and a color coded country by country history of US crimes in nineteen countries.

Notes

1. US Economic Facilitation of Holocaust and Middle East Destabilizing Partition By jay janson
www.minorityperspective.co.uk/…/us-economic-facilitation-of-holocaust… 
Dec 6, 2012

http://www.minorityperspective.co.uk/2012/12/06/us-economic-facilitation-of-holocaust-and-middle-east-destabilizing-partition/
Synopsis: Israel is in bed with a US business elite that once heavily invested in Hitler, was itself anti-Semitic in outlook, coldly indifferent and even complicit during the Holocaust its investments made possible. A popular quip in Yiddish goes, “with such friends, who needs enemies?” Arabs saved Jews from Christian persecutions in 637, 1187, 1492. Now Christians are persecuting Arabs. Needed! Jewish-Arab Semitic solidarity.

An earlier and less through version of this article was published by OpEdNews in two parts:  June 9, 2011, titled: 
US Invested Heavily in Hitler Compensated Europe’s Jews with Arab Land – Therefore: [Parts 2 & 3] 2. Distortion  3. Imagining 
 
2 Prosecutable US Crimes Against Humanity In Korea. By Jay Janson. 31 March, 2013. Countercurrents.org. While staring at the New York Times front page photo …
http://www.countercurrents.org/janson310313.htm

3. Which country created Al Qaeda?
In this video Hilary Clinton admits that the US government created and funded Al-Qaeda in order to fight the soviet union, and she even considers that as a good thing.
Hillary Clinton : We created Al-Qaeda – Al-Qaeda YouTube
 m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqn0bm4E9yw

4. Merciless US NATO UN Genocide In Somalia Brought Nairobi Shopping Mall Blowback!

http://www.countercurrents.org/janson141013.htm
Oct 16, 2013 The UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon arrived in Somalia fresh from the ….. Internet explorer ‘s still the industry primary along with a good portion of folks will …

5. OpEdNews Op Eds 12/12/2011 at 08:59:50
Korean Traitor US Stooge UN ‘Terror Council’ Sec. Gen. in Somalia
By Jay Janson
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Korean-Traitor-US-Stooge-U-by-Jay-Janson-111210-798.html

6. The Kidnapping of President Jean Bertrand Aristide
Mar 31, 2004 – Background. Beginning in early February 2004, the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, faced an armed rebellion …
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/COH403A.html

7. Berlusconi says Libyans love Qaddafi: as Italians protest against NATO, Italian news agency ANSA.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article171382.html

8. There Was No Libyan Peaceful Protest, Just Murderous Gangs and Nic Robertson By Jay Janson June 20 2011 “Information Clearing House” — Nic Robertson …
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28376.htm

9. Syria: CIA, M16, French, Mossad, Saudi Involvement Unreported In Imperialist Media. By Jay Janson. 27 June, 2011. Countercurrents.org. What is unfolding in … www.countercurrents.org/janson270611.htm

10. THE UN CHARTER:

Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.  (Article 1. of Purposes of the United Nations reads: To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.)
Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, subsequently part of the Charter of the United Nations, and by the way by Article II of the US Constitution, a integral part of that constitution (”In the United States…, our constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land. It is, consequently, to be regarded in courts of justice as equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself, without the aid of any legislative provision. – Chief Justice Marshall in 1829:)
Principle I
Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.
Principle II
The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.
Principle III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
Principle IV
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Principle V
Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
Principle VI
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
a
Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts
mentioned under (i).
b
War crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, illtreatment or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill – treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
c
Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
Principle VII
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.
Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950, vol. II, para 97

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents in 67 countries; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, Sweden and the US; now resides in NYC.   Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign: (King Condemned US Wars). http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/ and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign. http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/ featuring a country by country history of US crimes and laws pertaining.

While the Republican contenders swish and sway through the presidential race with mixed success, their recent engagements of the GOP on the Hill can only be described as disastrous.  Much of this centres on one of US politics most important positions: that of the House Speaker.  John Boehner (R., Ohio) had promised to resign, effective from October 30, leaving the Republicans to fight it out as to who would actually fill the soon vacant seat.

On Thursday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) took his hat out of the ring as a contender, feeling that he would be unable to farm a sufficient number of votes from the House Freedom Caucus.  “By refusing to give Kevin McCarthy the maybe 10 to 15 votes he needed to get to 218 [the minimum needed if all House members vote for the speaker] they decided to leave John Boehner serving as speaker.”  Those words by Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R.,Fla.) summed up a certain mood, one amply reflected by the divine guidance McCarthy was wishing for after he and his wife prayed.[1]  God, it seemed, had better things to do.

The reasoning behind his demise is put down to the debilitating factors that affected Boehner himself.  The camp of no compromise remains the shackle the party has to deal with, a sort of repetitive fanaticism that finds solace in ideology over practice.

Even ahead of any vote, McCarthy was facing promised resistance from the GOP hardline which has decided to regard Washington as a city of chronic blockages rather than agile movement.  The shock jock circuit, involving radio talk show hosts and various conservative groups, were digging the trenches in the electorates, hoping to trip up Boehner’s potential successor.

McCarthy’s position against a wholesale government shutdown was further compounded by a stumble of veracity on the Benghazi hearings regarding Hillary Clinton.  McCarthy had let the cat out of the bag of political tricks, cutting to the issue about what the primary aim of the hearings was: political, a weapon designed to lower Clinton’s popularity.  “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?  But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a special committee, what are her numbers today?”[2]

In letting this particular mask fall, McCarthy did himself few favours in attempting to win back voices within the dogmatic fold.  “Being unable to hold the line when it comes to conservative bullshit,” poses Amanda Marcotte, “is mandatory for a modern Republican who wants to hold office.”[3]

The result of this withdrawal has moved the shiny, conspicuous light of interest in the direction of Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.  According to Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), “He’s really the only one that can do the job”.  Ryan, however, is treating the position as a poisoned chalice best avoided – for the moment.

From the hardline perspective, the speaker’s role has been distinctly one of terrier-like qualities with a barrel scraping IQ, evading options of keeping business going on in Washington while being fashionably reactionary.  In what must be an amusing spectacle to officials from other developed, let alone developing states, the scratching nature of US politics on the nature of borrowing limits to fund government expenses must seem an odd one.

Shutting down a government and effectively starving it of funds is something that the GOP, in its most extreme practice, have made its own during the Obama years.  Much of the business surrounding Boehner centred on the reminder from the Treasury Department that Congress had to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit by November 5.  Current funding expires on December 11, and lawmakers have been absorbed by the pure procedural nature of getting a two-year budget deal.

The GOP illness regarding the Speaker’s chair goes back to last year when Eric Cantor, then House Majority leader, found himself on the losing end of a challenge in his suburban Richmond district from local economics professor David Brat. Cantor was seen as the unofficial speaker-in-waiting, someone to slide effortlessly into the seat once Boehner vacated the position.  Instead, Cantor became the first sitting majority leader to lose a primary since the position’s creation in 1899 (The Atlantic, Jun 10, 2014).

It was also the scale that stunned US politics watchers, not to mention some in the GOP who felt that Tea Party hyperventilating was on its way out.  With 97 percent of the vote countered, Brat could positively become one with 56 percent, leaving Cantor dry at 44 percent.  This was Tea Party activism renascent, one dressed up in the faux anti-establishment rhetoric championed by such voices of admirable delusion as Ann Coulter.

The Brat success also signalled to various hardline lawmakers within the GOP that a reactionary stance over such policies as immigration reform might not be such a bad thing. The art of compromise was seen as the prose of surrender, given that Cantor was himself someone suspected of shedding the credentials that made him lead the sabotaging effort against the 2011 debt-limit deal.  That ingenious effort by the GOP establishment crippled Washington’s budgetary position sufficiently well to warrant a downgrade in the country’s credit rating.

A statement from McCarthy’s office does a good job of distilling the self-destructive mood in the GOP.  “Over the last week it has become clear to me that our conference is deeply divided and needs to unite behind one leader. I have always put the conference ahead of myself.”  The options for his replacement are few and far between.

Editor’s note:  This article is an excerpt from Greg Guma’s The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution, originally published in 1987.

Madeleine Kunin was offended. She was being judged unfairly, she told the reporter from the Village Voice. Along with dozens of other writers, James Ridgeway was looking for insights into the race between Bernie Sanders, the Vermont “neosocialist,” and Kunin, the “neoliberal.”

The governor protested this classification. “You can’t have the strategies that were true in the 60s or even 70s: simply spending money,” she explained. “You’ve got to be accountable for every cent. You have to leverage the private sector and get them involved… I consider myself to be in the mold of governors like Dukakis, Cuomo, and to some extent Robb who is more conservative.”

It was vintage Kunin — cautious and firmly in the middle of the road. For years already she had lived with the nickname Straddlin’ Madeleine and had learned to make the best of it. Elected a state representative, she proved herself as a strong chairperson of the House Appropriations Committee and defeated Peter Smith, Vermont’s preppy Republican version of Robert Redford, to become lieutenant governor. After four years in Governor Richard Snelling’s shadow, she challenged him in 1982 in her first gubernatorial run and lost.

But Kunin didn’t straddle when it came to setting goals or building a personal organization. In the 1984 election, with Snelling temporarily retired, she squeaked into office over Attorney General John Easton, becoming Vermont’s first female chief executive, and began to set her own agenda.

In many ways, Kunin was an archetypal moderate: she favored social programs but fiscal conservatism. To progressives, her support of feminist and labor issues seemed weak and equivocal, yet she used her first term to bring women into state government and to prove, just as Sanders had done in Burlington, that being different — in her case, female — didn’t mean she was incompetent. When it came to keeping the state in sound financial shape or protecting water quality, she could be as strong as Sanders and Snelling.

Still, Kunin was no world-shaker. She shied away from raising the minimum wage or demanding that corporations give notice before closing down plants. She wanted nuclear plants to be safe, but she didn’t think they should be shut down “overnight.” In the estimation of Sanders and his Rainbow backers, Kunin was just another “lesser evil”; supporting her would not be worth losing the chance to expand the Progressive base. If a Sanders run meant that Smith would be elected, so be it — he would be only marginally different from her.

“If you ask her where she stands,” said Sanders of Kunin, “she’d say, in the middle of the Democratic party. She’s never said she’d do anything. The confusion lies in the fact that many people are excited because she’s the first woman governor. But after that there ain’t much.”

Kunin was not much kinder to her socialist opponent. “I think he has messianic tendencies,” she told Ridgeway. “That’s not uncommon in politicians. But it does mean he dismisses everyone else’s alternative solutions… His approach is always to tear down. But I think you can make progress and change for the better by working within the structure… A lot of what he says is rhetoric and undoable… He has to create a distinction between us, and to do that he has to push me more to the right, where I really don’t think I am. I don’t think it’s fair. He’s not running against evil, you know.”

The third player, Smith, had some kind words for Kunin. “She’s a good person,” he said, “she’s got some commitment.” But he also felt that she was a case of “vision without substance.” In Sanders, Smith saw passion, confusion, and noise. “If Bernie were as gutsy and honest as he says he is, he’d run as a Socialist,” charged the Republican. “He is a socialist! That’s why he went to Nicaragua.That’s why he goes to Berkeley.”

But if Sanders was a noisy neosocialist and Kunin was an empty vessel, what did that make Smith? He had begun his career as an educational reformer, launching Community College of Vermont. But his liberal leanings didn’t prevent him from joining the Republicans; he supported first Bush, then Reagan, in 1980. He was intelligent and a creative thinker, and yet willing to play the compliant foot-soldier in Reagan’s conservative revolution.

Kunin didn’t view either of her opponents as devils, but she was concerned about how to survive the campaign, particularly the series of public debates that would give Sanders his best opportunity to win more votes. On the podium, she realized, nobody in Vermont did it better than the mayor.

Her press secretary, Bob Sherman, contacted me early in the summer. He knew I wasn’t in Sanders’ camp this time, and he wondered whether I would be available to help Kunin prepare for her debate ordeal with a rehearsal. The idea was to stage a mock debate between the governor and stand-ins for her two challengers. Would I be able to “play” Bernie? The offer was irresistible.

We met in a Montpelier “safe house,” accompanied by key staff members. Democratic legislator Peter Youngbaer had prepared himself to be Smith; I had reviewed recent Sanders speeches and tried to unravel the magic of his style. With a video camera recording our face-off, we tackled environmental, tax, and development issues. Kunin’s problem, I discovered, was her preoccupation with details. She often answered questions by trying to explain the thinking that led to her policy choice rather than by simply taking a strong stand. Bernie’s strength, in contrast, was his ability to turn any question to his own advantage — even if that meant ignoring it — in order to get his point across.

In the end I summed up with some classic Sanderisms. “In my view, the Reagan administration has been a disaster for American,” I barked. “We are planning to spend a trillion dollars on Star Wars and hundreds of millions to overthrow the government of Nicaragua while, in Vermont, we don’t have enough money to adequately fund education or social services. That has to change.

“The other candidates think we can just say a lot of nice things and tinker here and there to make everything okay. I don’t. I believe we need fundamental change, and that the governor of Vermont should be leading the fight. We can be the conscience of the nation. We don’t have to settle for Reagan’s insanity or the indecision of the Democrats.”

Afterward, when Kunin saw her image on the screen, she was a bit shaken. “Sanders” and “Smith” had won some points, while she had been tedious and indecisive. Yet she balked at the suggestion that she challenge Sanders if he went on the attack, arguing, “He’s not the enemy.”

To support Kunin over Sanders was, of course, progressive heresy. Even  those who felt he was authoritarian could see no reason to support his Democratic opponent. As labor organizer Ellen David-Friedman put it, “Challenging the system is considered a better goal than maintaining the status quo.”

Queen Madeleine, Preppie Peter, and Lord Bernie — the nicknames created by columnist Peter Freyne were apt descriptions of Vermont’s new political royalty. Each was an established star with a proven popular base. But Sanders’ early boast that he was “running to win” was soon revised by his campaign organizers. A July poll put the Lord of Burlington at a mere 11 percent statewide, while the Queen, also a Burlingtonian, had 53, well outdistancing Preppie.

By October, the Sanders campaign, if not the candidate himself, had lowered its sights to seeking a respectable 20 percent. Within his organization, feelings were frayed and hopes disappointed. Writing in the Guardian, a radical newsweekly, Kevin Kelley explained that even David-Friedman, who had managed the campaign for several months, felt it hadn’t become a grassroots movement. “Bernie had trouble,” she said, “recruiting activists and contributors who had been involved in his previous campaigns. Some of them felt it was the wrong race to be running, and others thought it was more important that he stay in Burlington to consolidate the gains we had made there.”

She also noted that “middle-class progressives” weren’t enthusiastic since Sanders wasn’t organizing but simply running. “Bernie acts in a way that’s similar to [Jesse] Jackson in terms of focusing more on a candidacy and less on an organization,” she felt. She was still committed to his campaign, but she acknowledged his limitations. In a public letter to the left two weeks before the election, she praised Sanders’ leadership but scored his resistance to accountability or organization.

Murray Bookchin, a libertarian socialist thinker and leader of the emerging Green movement, was more blunt. “Bernie’s running a one-man show,” he said. “The only justification for a socialist campaign at this point is to try to educate people, and Sanders isn’t doing that at all. Instead, he’s running on the preposterous notion that he can get elected as governor this year.”

In truth, however, Sanders was running of issues as well: reducing reliance on the property tax, a more progressive income and corporate tax system, lowering utility bills, raising the minimum wage, and phasing out Vermont Yankee, among others. It was basically the same thrust he had always pushed — redistribution of income and wealth. But neither his reform program nor his powerful speaking style were enough to overcome the barriers in his way. His opponents could still outspend him, and his own ranks were split.

Working with Patrick Leahy, who was fighting Snelling to keep his US Senate seat, Kunin staged an impressive get-out-the-vote effort. It was the most sophisticated voter-identification program in state history. With unemployment at a record low and no state deficit, she had economics on her side. On Election Day, Kunin failed to win 50 percent of the vote, but she left both her opponents well behind and was dutifully confirmed by the legislature.

Sanders came away with 15 percent — far less than he had been hoping for, but nevertheless remarkable. Running as an Independent, he had established a solid base, and his percentage was far too big to be simply a protest vote. But it wasn’t just the total that was significant, noted Chris Graff, Vermont’s Associated Press bureau chief. “It is the fact that it came from the conservative hilltowns, the Republican strongholds, the farm communities.” Sanders had, in fact, won his highest percentage in the conservative Northeast Kingdom. Once again he had touched a chord and transcended traditional lines.

Greg Guma has lived in Vermont since the 1960s and wrote The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. His new sci-fi novel, Dons of Time, was released in October 2013.

Pundits and politicians are already looking for a convenient explanation for the twin Middle East disasters of the rise of Islamic State and the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria. The genuine answer is politically unpalatable, because the primary cause of both calamities is U.S. war and covert operations in the Middle East, followed by the abdication of U.S. power and responsibility for Syria policy to Saudi Arabia and other Sunni allies.

The emergence of a new state always involves a complex of factors. But over the past three decades, U.S. covert operations and war have entered repeatedly and powerfully into the chain of causality leading to Islamic State’s present position.

The causal chain begins with the role of the U.S. in creating a mujahedeen force to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Osama bin Laden was a key facilitator in training that force in Afghanistan. Without that reckless U.S. policy, the blowback of the later creation of al-Qaida would very likely not have occurred. But it was the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq that made al-Qaida a significant political-military force for the first time. The war drew Islamists to Iraq from all over the Middle East, and their war of terrorism against Iraqi Shiites was a precursor to the sectarian wars to follow.

The actual creation of Islamic State is also directly linked to the Iraq War. The former U.S. commander at Camp Bucca in Iraq has acknowledged that the detention of 24,000 prisoners, including hard-core al-Qaida cadres, Baathist officers and innocent civilians, created a “pressure cooker for extremism.” It was during their confinement in that camp during the U.S. troop surge in Iraq 2007 and 2008 that nine senior al-Qaida military cadres planned the details of how they would create Islamic State.

he Obama administration completed the causal chain by giving the green light to a major war in Syria waged by well-armed and well-trained foreign jihadists. Although the Assad regime undoubtedly responded to the firebombing of the Baath Party headquarters in Daraa in mid-March 2011 with excessive force, an armed struggle against the regime began almost immediately. In late March or early April, a well-planned ambush of Syrian troops killed at least two dozen soldiers near the same city. Other killings of troops took place in April in other cities, including Daraa, where 19 soldiers were gunned down.

During the second half of 2011 and through 2012, thousands of foreign jihadists streamed into Syria. As early as November 2011, al-Qaida was playing a central role in the war, carrying out spectacular suicide bombings in Damascus and Aleppo. Obama should have reacted to the first indications of that development and insisted that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar keep external arms and military personnel and funding out of Syria in order to allow a process of peaceful change to take place. Instead, however, the administration became an integral part of a proxy war for regime change.

Seymour Hersh reported last year that an unpublished addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi revealed a covert CIA operation to arm Syrian rebels, in cooperation with Sunni allies’ intelligence services. In early 2012, Hersh reported, following an agreement with Turkey, then-CIA Director David Petraeus approved an elaborate covert operation in which Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar would fund the shipment of weapons to Syrian rebels from stocks captured from the Gadhafi government. The scheme employed front companies set up in Libya to manage the shipments of arms in order to separate the U.S. government from the operation. An October 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report released by the Department of Defense to Judicial Watch confirmed the shipments of Libyan weapons from the port of Benghazi to two Syrian ports near Turkey beginning in October 2011 and continuing through August 2012.

A larger covert program involved a joint military operations center in Istanbul, where CIA officers worked with Turkish, Saudi and Qatari intelligence agencies that were also providing arms to their favorite Syrian rebels groups, according to sources who talked with The Washington Post’s David Ignatius.

By November 2012, al-Qaida’s Syrian franchise, al-Nusra Front, had 6,000 to 10,000 troops—mostly foreign fighters—under its command and was regarded as the most disciplined and effective fighting force in the field. The CIA’s Gulf allies armed brigades that had allied themselves with al-Nusra—or were ready to do so. A Qatari intelligence officer is said to have declared, “I will send weapons to al-Qaeda if it will help” topple Assad.

The CIA officials overseeing the covert operation knew very well what their Sunni allies were doing. After the U.S. shipments from Benghazi stopped in September 2012 because of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic post there, a CIA analysis reminded President Obama that the covert operation in Afghanistan had ended up creating a Frankenstein monster. Even the now-famous account in Hillary Clinton’s 2014 memoirs about Obama rejecting a proposal in late 2012 from CIA Director Petraeus for arming and training Syrian rebels does not hide the fact that everyone was well aware of the danger that arms sent to “moderates” would end up in the hands of terrorists.

Despite this, after rejecting Petraeus’ plan in 2012, Obama approved the covert training of “moderate” Syrian rebels in April 2013. As the Pentagon has been forced to acknowledge in recent weeks, that program has been a complete fiasco, as the units either joined al-Nusra or were attacked by al-Nusra. Meanwhile, as Vice President Joe Biden pointed out in October 2014, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons” into Syria that were ending up in the hands of the jihadists.

Unfortunately, Biden’s complaint came two and a half years too late. By October 2014, more than 15,000 foreign fighters, including 2,000 Westerners, were estimated to have gone to Syria. Islamic State and al-Nusra Front emerged as the two major contenders for power in Syria once Assad is overthrown, and the Saudis and Qataris were now ready to place their bets on al-Nusra. In early 2015, after King Salman inherited the Saudi throne, the three Sunni states began focusing their support on al-Nusra and its military allies, encouraging them to form a new military command, the “Army of Conquest.” The al-Nusra-led front then captured Idlib province in March.

Obama, focusing on the Iran nuclear agreement, has given no indication that he is troubled by his allies’ approach. If the Bush administration destabilized Iraq in order to increase U.S. military presence and power in the Middle East, the Obama administration has countenanced a proxy war that has destabilized and Syria because of his primary concern with consolidating the U.S. alliances with the Saudis and the other Sunni regimes.

Although it has been almost a rigid rule that pundits must ascribe U.S. fealty to its Saudi alliance to oil interests, oil is far from the top of the list of U.S interests today. More important to our national security state is the interest of the Pentagon and the military services to protect the military bases they have in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE. Their need to preserve those alliance relationships is intensified by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) cornucopia of military contracts for U.S. arms manufacturers that assures enormous profits will continue to flow for the foreseeable future. One estimate of the total at stake for the Pentagon and its private allies in military relationships with the GCC is $100 billion to $150 billion over two decades.

Those are crucial bureaucratic and business stakes for the U.S. national security state, which is usually driven by the bottom lines associated with different courses of action. Especially given the administration’s lack of a coherent geopolitical perspective on the region, the security state’s interests offer a persuasive explanation for Obama’s effectively farming out the most important element of its Syria policy to regional allies, with disastrous results.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

The US Treasury has recently opened an inquiry about the so-called “Islamic State’s” (ISIS/ISIL) use of large numbers of brand-new Toyota trucks. The issue has arisen in the wake of Russia’s air operations over Syria and growing global suspicion that the US itself has played a key role in arming, funding, and intentionally perpetuating the terrorist army across Syria and Iraq.

ABC News in their article, “US Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks,” reports:

U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned. 

Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department — part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.

The report went on to cite Iraqi Ambassador to the US, Lukman Faily:

“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” Faily said. “How could these brand new trucks… these four wheel drives, hundreds of them — where are they coming from?”

Not surprisingly, it appears the US Treasury is asking the wrong party. Instead of Toyota, the US Treasury’s inquiry should have started next door at the US State Department.

Mystery Solved 

Just last year it was reported that the US State Department had been sending in fleets of specifically Toyota-brand trucks into Syria to whom they claimed was the “Free Syrian Army.”

US foundation-funded Public Radio International (PRI) reported in a 2014 article titled, “This one Toyota pickup truck is at the top of the shopping list for the Free Syrian Army — and the Taliban,” that:

Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.

Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army’s wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, is a fan of the truck.

“Specific equipment like the Toyota Hiluxes are what we refer to as force enablers for the moderate opposition forces on the ground,” he adds. Shahbander says the US-supplied pickups will be delivering troops and supplies into battle. Some of the fleet will even become battlefield weapons..

The British government has also admittedly supplied a number of vehicles to terrorists fighting inside of Syria. The British Independent’s 2013 article titled, “Revealed: What the West has given Syria’s rebels,” reported that (emphasis added):

So far the UK has sent around £8m of “non-lethal” aid, according to official papers seen by The Independent, comprising five 4×4 vehicles with ballistic protection; 20 sets of body armour; four trucks (three 25 tonne, one 20 tonne); six 4×4 SUVs; five non-armoured pick-ups; one recovery vehicle; four fork-lifts; three advanced “resilience kits” for region hubs, designed to rescue people in emergencies; 130 solar powered batteries; around 400 radios; water purification and rubbish collection kits; laptops; VSATs (small satellite systems for data communications) and printers.

It’s fair to say that whatever pipeline the US State Department and the British government used to supply terrorists in Syria with these trucks was likely used to send additional vehicles before and after these reports were made public.

The mystery of how hundreds of identical, brand-new ISIS-owned Toyota trucks have made it into Syria is solved. Not only has the US and British government admitted in the past to supplying them, their military forces and intelligence agencies ply the borders of Turkey, Jordan, and even Iraq where these fleets of trucks must have surely passed on their way to Syria – even if other regional actors supplied them. While previous admissions to supplying the vehicles implicates the West directly, that nothing resembling interdiction operations have been set up along any of these borders implicates the West as complicit with other parties also supplying vehicles to terrorists inside of Syria.

What Mystery?

Of course, much of this is not new information. So the question remains – why is the US Treasury just now carrying on with this transparent charade? Perhaps those in Washington believe that if the US government is the one asking this obvious question of how ISIS has managed to field such an impressive mechanized army in the middle of the Syrian desert, no one will suspect they had a role in it.

Of course, the trucks didn’t materialize in Syria. They originated outside of Syria and were brought in, and in great numbers, with the explicit knowledge and/or direct complicity of the US and its regional allies. Asking Toyota where the US State Department’s own trucks came from is another indication of just how lost US foreign policy, legitimacy, and credibility has become.

Russia’s intervention, and what should become a widely supported anti-terror coalition must keep in mind the criminality of the US and its partners when choosing its own partners in efforts to restore security and order across the Middle East and North Africa.

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

Russian air power together with Syrian ground forces constitute a potential death blow to Washington’s anti-Assad campaign – for the first time challenging it effectively, why US officials are flummoxed about what to do next.

On the one hand, Putin wants terrorism defeated and Syrians alone deciding who’ll lead them. On the other, he wants ISIS and other terrorist threats prevented from spreading, especially to Russia’s homeland, a scheme no doubt Washington intends, targeting China and Iran as well.

Syria’s military is rejuvenated. Russian air power raised its spirit. It’s on the move. The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) headlined “Russian and Syrian Airstrikes Continue, More Casualties and Losses Among Terrorist Organizations’ Ranks,” saying:

“(A)rmy units (are) striking hard on terrorists’ positions,” inflicting heavy losses, destroying “their heavy armaments and equipment…”

Ongoing air and/or grounds operations are widespread –  targeting the Damascus countryside, Sweida, Daraa, Quneitra, Homs, Hama, Raqaa, Hasaka, the Aleppo countryside, Idlib and other areas.

On Thursday, Syrian Army and Air Force Chief of General Staff Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoud issued a statement, saying:

“Today the Syrian armed forces started a wide-scale attack, aiming at uprooting terrorists’ gatherings and liberating the areas and towns which have been suffering (from) the woes and crimes of terrorism.”

Russian air power made the current offensive possible. Already, it’s inflicted significant damage to ISIS’ capability. Air and ground operations killed hundreds of terrorists. Many other fled in panic – many to residential areas Russia won’t bomb, others leaving Syria.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said Moscow “produced significant results in several days that greatly surpass those achieved by the (so-called) US-led) coalition in over a year” – an operation hitting infrastructure targets, not ISIS or other terrorists.

Syria’s ambassador to Russia, Riad Haddad, said “strikes carried out by Russia’s aerospace forces against the IS positions in Syria are precise and efficient. Russia helps the Syrian army to conduct ground operations.”

“Coordination is carried out through the information center in Baghdad. However, coordination is also underway with participation of all general of the Syrian army. This is done so that precise airstrikes are delivered at the positions of the Islamic State terrorist organization.”

The entire free world supports Putin’s righteous mission. US officials ludicrously claiming he made a strategic blunder, encouraging the spread of terrorism reveals Washington’s tenuous position, now on the back foot for the first time in recent memory.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg looked foolish saying “(i)n Syria, we have seen a troubling escalation of Russian military activities” code language for Putin beating Obama’s dirty game.

State Department spokesman Admiral John Kirby repeated the Big Lie, claiming Russia’s intervention “exacerbated the conflict…”

Media reports said Obama officials are discussing a no-fly zone as a possible option – illegal without Security Council authorization Russia won’t permit, nor will it deter its operations if unilaterally implemented.

Would US warplanes dare confront Russia’s belligerently? Don’t bet on it. They might come out second best. Kirby lied saying Russian air strikes target “opposition groups,” not ISIS.

“Greater than 90% of the strikes that we’ve seen them take to date have not been against ISIL or Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists.”

“They’ve been largely against opposition groups that want a better future for Syria and don’t want to see the Assad regime stay in power.”

Fact: All “opposition groups” are terrorists. No so-called “moderates” exist.

Fact: US bombing targets Syrian infrastructure, supporting, not attacking ISIS and other takfiri terrorists.

They’re US creations – death squad tactics, a strategy originating with Operation Phoenix in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 70s.

Fact: America’s war on terrorism is a  war OF terrorism at home and abroad. The goal: destroying fundamental freedoms. Replacing them with tyranny – continuing until Washington achieves unchallenged world dominance, a lunatic scheme threatening world peace.

Russia’s intervention is the most important development since Obama launched proxy war in March 2011. It has the potential to greatly impede Washington’s imperial Middle East agenda, maybe defeat it altogether.

Putin’s mission has US officials frantic, scrambling for a Plan B, unsure how to handle a real challenger, not like walkover countries Washington attacks. Bullies shun fair fights. They want things all their way.

A sort of St. George and the Dragon scenario may be developing. Imagine the good guy slaying the monster, freeing the world from its terror. Putin’s intervention deserves universal support.

A Final Comment.

RT International reported US, UK, Arab and Pakistani instructors working with ISIS elements in Afghanistan – planning to expand terrorism to Central Asia, especially Russia, part of Washington’s longstanding destabilization agenda.

According to Putin’s special representative for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, “(t)here are several camps operated by (ISIS in Afghanistan) that train people from Central Asia and some regions of Russia. They speak Russian there.”

Russian intelligence estimates around 3,500 militants in Afghanistan, pledging allegiance to ISIS – and the number is rising, Kabulov explained.

He called “(t)he rise of (this terrorist group) in Afghanistan a high priority threat” – a key reason for Putin’s involvement in Syria. Perhaps Iraq is next, if Baghdad requests help.

Russian Armed Forces Chief of General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov estimates around 50,000 fighters in Afghanistan belonging to over 4,000 militant groups – Taliban elements by far the strongest with around 40,000 fighters.

ISIS elements are increasingly challenging them, Gerasimov said. They see Afghanistan as a rich recruiting ground, a foothold for expanding into Central Asia, according to Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate chief Col. Gen. Igor Sergun.

He sees US-supported ISIS exploiting the worsening  situation in Afghanistan to strengthen its position,” posing a real threat to Russia’s security.

“We estimate that ISIL gets new troops by bribing field commanders of Taliban, the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan and other radical religious organizations operating on Afghan territory,” Sergun explained.

Defeating ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq takes on greater importance.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html . Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

A federal lawsuit was filed on October 6, demanding damages and relief for prisoners assaulted and tortured by Sonoma County sheriff deputies inside the county jail on May 28, 2015. The plaintiffs, Marqus Martinez and Daniel Banks, were two of at least 20 prisoners viciously beaten in the jail’s Administrative Segregation (high security) section on that day. Other abused inmates may join the suit.

At a press conference in Santa Rosa, about 60 miles north of San Francisco, attorney Isaak Schwaiger announced the legal action, and described the actions of the deputies: “Dressed in black, wearing black body armor, black ski masks and without badges, they went in like the Gestapo. From one module to the other end they carried on the beatings for five-and-a-half hours. Some prisoners were beaten four times.”

Joining Schwaiger at the speakers table were Laurie Banks, mother of Daniel Banks, and Karina Arango Lopez, sister of Jesus Lopez, who received particularly extreme and prolonged torture.

Attorney Isaak Schwaiger, Karina Arango Lopez, Laurie Banks Oct. 6 press conference Photo: Richard Becker

Laurie Banks read from a letter from her son, who was in the last cell attacked: “Mom I knew they were coming, they were going down the line.” She continued, “he was scared for his life. He had no idea how bad the beatings were.”

The assaults came to light as a result of inmates informing their attorneys of what had taken place. The attorneys urged their clients to write down their accounts of what had taken place in the jail on May 28. The letters were later forwarded to Schwaiger who is known in the area for a lawsuit he filed last December for a man tasered 23 times by Sonoma County deputies. The original letters were displayed at the press conference.

Sonoma County Sheriffs’ Department, Santa Rosa Police Department and other police agencies in Sonoma County are infamous for their records of killings and abuse. As far back as 1999, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission held hearings in Santa Rosa and recommended that a civilian review board be created.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors have declined to take any such action, even after the murder of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by Sonoma sheriff’s deputy Gelhaus in October 2013.

The office of Sheriff Steve Freitas predictably denied all allegations of torture and beatings, and claimed that the deputies were responding to a “riot that interfered with the safety of the jail.” What makes this claim ridiculous on its face is the fact that all the assaulted inmates were locked in individual cells, except for the times when they were dragged out for more abuse.

The sheriff has so far refused release videos which reportedly showed the beatings.

Schwaiger stated, “If he wants to call them [the abused inmates] liars then show me that video and I’ll be very happy to withdraw the lawsuit and walk away.”

He said that he believes “there are several hundred videos” at the jail documenting similar events.

The following are excerpts of a press release from the office of Attorney Isaak Schwaiger, with graphic descriptions of some of the abuse suffered by prisoners on May 28, drawn from the federal court filing.

A federal complaint filed today by the Law Office of Izaak Schwaiger on behalf of two Sonoma County men charges the County of Sonoma, Sheriff Steve Freitas, and other named Deputies with violations of the U.S. Constitution for heinous and inexplicable beatings of more than twenty inmates on May 28, 2015 in the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility in Santa Rosa, CA.

The allegations set forth in the complaint describe in minute specificity the unconscionable events of May 28th, perpetrated by Sonoma County Deputy Sheriffs and ratified by Sonoma County Sheriff Steve Freitas.

They grabbed Montes and threw him to the ground, handcuffed him, then slammed his head into the floor, striking several rapid and violent blows about his head, shoulders, neck, and back. One deputy kicked Montes in the head. Another deployed a taser against the inmate. Deputies then removed Montes from the unit to administer “yard-counseling,” a practice that is common in the jail and routinely involves the application of physical violence to inmates. Deputies dressed in all black wearing ski masks dragged Montes to the shower, ordered him to strip naked, and told the inmate he was their “bitch.” While naked and defenseless, deputies threw Montes to the ground and began another round of savage beatings…

…deputies then began a third round of violent beatings, punching and kicking Lopez and smashing his face into the concrete. As the beatings continued, the lieutenant told Lopez that he was to blame for the violence. Lopez cried that they were treating him worse than an animal. The response from the deputies was swift. Lopez felt an unknown deputy punch the back of his neck and other deputies began punching, kicking, and body-slamming Lopez to the point of involuntary defecation. They placed shackles around Lopez’s feet and attached them through his handcuffs to a chain secured around his waist. A mask was put over his head and Deputy Medeiros began bashing his face into the floor. The deputies dragged Lopez to the mental health unit and stripped him naked. Covered in his own feces, Lopez pleaded for toilet paper. The deputies ignored his pleas, laughed at him, and locked him naked in isolation covered in his own feces for two days…

…Martinez repeatedly called for medical assistance for over an hour with no response. Due to his injuries, he was unable to pick himself up off the floor where the deputies left him. For two more hours he listened to screams of pain and torture from the other inmates as jail staff proceeded down the tier, removing each individual from his cell and subjecting him to similar beatings. Laying on the floor unable to move, Martinez heard his door open again. Hoping that it was the doctor, the inmate looked up just in time to see the SERT team returning to his cell wearing all black, with their nametags removed and ski masks covering their faces. They entered his cell and attacked him with overwhelming force, kicking, punching, and kneeing him and knocking his head into the floor. They called him a “bitch” and “a piece of shit.” They spat on him and threatened to continue the beatings if he were to ever yell out again…

While the housing module filled with the screams of other inmates, Daniel Banks, laid face down on his mattress with his hands behind his back. For hours he had listened to the beatings all around him. He hoped that by his show of submission he would avoid being beaten as well, but the deputies merely saved him for last. His cell door opened and four deputies wearing black entered the small cell. All but one was wearing a ski mask. The four deputies jumped on top of him and began kneeing and punching him in the back and wrenching his arms above his head, causing him excruciating pain. The deputies yelled, “stop resisting!” and smashed a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, causing the metal to cut into him and leaving him with bruising, swelling, permanent nerve damage and pain. Though face down, Banks turned to see his tormenters, and observed that one was not wearing a ski mask. He brought his face close to Banks’ and yelled, “That’s right – get a good look at me, you punk bitch – This is our house!” and spit in his face. The deputies brought Banks out of his cell, down the stairs, and into the yard where the beating continued…

Santa Rosa criminal defense and civil rights attorney Izaak Schwaiger received more than twenty letters from inmates following the beatings. A former prosecutor and Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War, Schwaiger called the systematic assaults on the prisoners “gut-wrenching” and “beyond the pale.” Schwaiger’s early investigation reveals that jail staff videotaped a large portion of the beatings, and that those videos are in the possession of the Sonoma County Sheriff. “This is like a horror movie,” said Schwaiger. “And we have reason to believe this was not an isolated incident.”

The complaint seeks unspecified damages and injunctive relief.

Washington’s impulsive use of power is a danger to America and to the world. Arrogant Washington politicians and crazed neoconservatives are screaming that the US must shoot down Russian aircraft that are operating against the US-supplied forces that have brought death and destruction to Syria, unleashing millions of refugees on Europe, in Washington’s effort to overthrow the Syrian government.

Even my former CSIS colleague, Zbigniew Brzezinski, normally a sensible if sometimes misguided person, has written in the Financial Times that Washington should deliver an ultimatum to Russia to “cease and desist from military actions that directly affect American assets.” By “American assets,” Brzezinski means the jihadist forces that Washington has sicced on Syria.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43059.htm

Brzezinski’s claim that “Russia must work with, not against, the US in Syria” is false. The fact of the matter is that “the US must work with, not against Russia in Syria,” as Russia controls the situation, is in accordance with international law, and is doing the right thing.

Ash Carter, the US Secretary for War, repeats Brzezinski’s demand. He declared that Washington is not prepared to cooperate with Russia’s “tragically flawed” and “mistaken strategy” that frustrates Washington’s illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government with military violence.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/oct/07/ash-carter-russia-us-syria-airstrikes-video

Washington’s position is that only Washington decides and that Washington intends to unleash yet more chaos on the world in the hope that it reaches Russia.

I guess no one in hubristic and arrogant Washington was listening when Putin said in his UN speech on September 28: “We can no longer tolerate the state of affairs in the world.”

The intolerable state of affairs is the chaos that Washington has brought to the Middle East, chaos that threatens to expand into all countries with Muslim populations, and chaos from which millions of refugees are flooding into Europe.

Not satisfied with threatening Russia with war, Washington is preparing to send US Navy ships inside the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit of islands created by China’s land reclamation project. The Navy Times reports that three Pentagon officials have said on background that “approval of the mission is imminent.”

So here we have the US government gratuitously and provocatively threatening two nuclear powers. The Washington warmongers try to pretend that land reclamation is “an act of regional aggression” and that Washington is just upholding international law by protecting “freedom of navigation.”

By “freedom of navigation,” Washington means Washington’s ability to control all sea lanes. After all of Washington’s violations of international law and war crimes during the last 14 years, Washington’s claim to be protecting international law is hilarious.

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence organization, said that Washington needs to understand that “Russia also has foreign policy; Russia also has a national security strategy” and stop crossing Russia’s “red lines.” https://www.rt.com/news/317710-russia-red-lines-flynn/ Gen. Flynn thus joins with Patrick J. Buchanan as two voices of sense and sensibility in Washington. Together they stand against the arrogance and hubris that will destroy us. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43055.htm

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

On October 8, Chief of the General Staff of the Army and Armed Forces, Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoub officially announced that the Syrian armed forces had started a large-scale assault aimed at retaking several key cities and regions from terrorist forces after a week-long bombing campaign by Russia targeting the jihadists. A day earlier, SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence reported that Syrian forces start full-scale offensive. The main aims are the Hama-Homs axis and to lift the ISIS siege of the Kuweries Military Airport.

Today, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) with the National Defense Forces (NDF) conducted a large-scale offensive at the terrorist-controlled towns of Kafr Zita, Qala’at Al-Madayq, Latmeen, and Al-Lataminah in the Hama Governorate. The Free Syrian Army, CIA-backed Liwaa Suqour Al-Ghaab, Sham Legions, Jabhat Al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham militant gropus oppose the Syrian forces there.

The clashes started off successfully for the SAA as they recaptured Al-Mughayr, Lahaya, and Markabah. Following this success the SAA advanced closer to the Idlib-Hama border, capturing the hilltops of Tal Sakhar, Tal-Sikeek, Tal Uthman and the town of Al-Haweez near the city of Kafr Zita. A the moment the SAA is reaching the Latmeen-Morek axis and the eastern perimeter of Latmeen.

The primary objective of this offensive is to seal off the Northern Hama border with Idlib and build a buffer-zone around the city of Khan Sheikhoun located on the important Aleppo-Lattakia Highway. Then the government forces will be able to concentrate on the remaining pockets in the Hama governorate that are under the control of the militants.

On October 7, four Russian Navy warships in the Caspian Sea fired 26 missiles at the positions of ISIS in Syria. The missiles flew some 1,500 km to destroy 11 ISIS targets. This fact highlights the 3 important features of the ongoing situation:

First is Russian Navy got a combat expirience of usage of the Russian Kalibr missile systems (3M-54 Klub) which are intended to strike naval and land targets.

Second is this act required cooperation from Iran and Iraq because missiles had to travel through their airspace to reach Syria. At the same day, the chairman of Iraqi parliament’s defense committee Hakim al-Zamili said that Baghdad may soon officially request Russia for airstrikes against ISIS. In this case, the Russia-Iraq-Iran-Syria joint information center’s role will be expanded to coordinate Russia’s airstrikes in Iraq. Thus, we could conclude Iraq was almost moved from the US zone of influence in the Middle East.

Third is it’s a demostration of power for the Russia’s “Western partners”. Earlier, the head of the Defense Committee of Russia’s State Duma, Vladimir Komoyedov, said that Russia is ready to use its naval forces to establish a blockade along the Syrian coastline to facilitate the delivery of armaments for terrorists in Syria. Russia shows that it can defend its military group in Latakia even from the Caspian Sea. The Russian military group in Syria seriously depends on the supplies through maritime. So, if Turkey which failed its policy in Syria decides to cut it from the Russian Naval base in Crimea closing straits, Russia will be ready.

On October 6, Erdogan said that Russia could lose a friend as Turkey. But his relationships with the US becomes colder also. At the moment, it’s clear that there are no moderate repebls which could be publicly supported by the US in Syria. Free Syrian Army (FSA) is more a myth then reality. A large part of the FSA’s units are directly linked to the Syrian Al Qaeda. The US in this case surely needs some controlled force in Syria as alternative to Assad in order to prevent him from regaining full control over the country. The only candidate for this role is the Kurdish YPG. The US will likely support the Kurds in an attack on Raqqa, the Islamic State headquarter and important logistic center in Syria. This alliance is unacceptable for Turkey which strongly stands against any kind of Kurdish autonomy at its borders. Furthmore, Rakka is a crucial point for the Islamic State’s oil trade with Turkey. If Rakka falls, the both will lose serious profits. Anyway, the US has no other choice but to replace its “moderate rebels” with the YPG and pay the price for it – even if the price includes a cooling down of Washington-Ankara relations.

Thus, the US-led web of political alliances and relationships in the Middle East is disintegrating roughly. The vestiges of control on terrorists groups sponsored by the pro-Western block could be lost. It leads to escalation of the free for all war in the region. The growing Russia-led anti-ISIS coalition is the only chance of the regional stabilization. The coalition also includes Iran, Syria and Iraq. China and Egypt are candidates for membership. Egypt has a serious internal problem with the local branch of ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula. China will probably participate actively in the Syrian anti-ISIS campaign, but its armed forces extrimely need a combat expirience. So, limited military ground and air force contingent could take part in the anti-ISIS campaign.

ISIS militants have been gathering momentum and concentrating in northern Afghanistan. They see this region as a foothold for further expansion into Central Asia, according to Zamir Kabulov, Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan, and the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Department.

“It seems like someone’s hand is pushing freshly trained ISIL fighters to mass along Afghanistan’s northern border.

They don’t fight foreign or Afghan government troops. They conserve and gather strength,” RIA cites Kabulov’s words from the international forum on Afghanistan.

The threat is also growing in the South. Three months ago, SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence already pointed out that the number of ISIS militants has been growing at the borders of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. We also noted serious domestic problems of the Central Asian states.

According to our information, additional Russian and Kazakh armed forces have been deployed in the region under the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) since June, 2015. The Chinese intelligence specialists have joined the Russian and Kazakh servicemen.

Experts believe that only the joined forces of Russia and Kazakhstan are able to counter the ISIS threat successfully. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan military have lack equipment and suffer from low military effectiveness.

The current general structure of the deployed allied armed forces in Tajikistan includes:

• The border guards’ first line: Tajik border outposts, joint frontier posts and border control composed of troops from Russia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan; Russian and Kazakh military advisers present at the Tajikistan border outposts.
• Units of Tajik army have been bolstered by Russian and Kazakh military advisers, down to squad level in some rapid reaction and special units.
• There are Russian, Kazakh and Belarusian military formations (though Belarus’ contribution is a small) being based at the 201st Russian Military Base around Dushanbe, Kulyab and Kurgan-Tyube
• Other units and infrastructure of CSTO and the Regional Counter-Terrorist Structure of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (RCTS) include Russian, Kazakh and Chinese intelligence assets

In general, we could argue that Russia, China, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states estimate the threat properly and are making intense preparations to meet it.

FOREIGN POLICY DIARY CENTRAL ASIA  ADVANCE OF ISIS, from June 2015

Central Asia is a place of long-standing geopolitical confrontation. Now it turns into an active phase to destroy the peace in the region. After a roughly fail of public stated purposes of the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, the only power capable to maintain security and peace in the region are a Russian-lead SCTO military alliance and The Shanghai Cooperation Organization combating against terrorism, separatism and extremism.

Central Asia is a place of long-standing geopolitical confrontation. Now it turns into an active phase to destroy the peace in the region. The situation is worsening in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. In 2014 37 civilians were killed in bloody terror attack in Xinjiang, China. Earlier. Afghan Taliban has been fighting in order to capture checkpoints and ground at the Turkmenistan-Tajikistan border. Now, they have focused on the south-north direction: from Gerat to Kandagar. It’s intended way of TAPI gas pipiline in Afghanistan and high road A1. Islamic State has risen its presense in the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border. Turkmen borderguard has been taking high casualities and witnesses reporting mass beheadings there.

The appearance of US-trained Tajikistan Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov in an Islamic State propaganda video on 27 May has sent a chill across Central Asia. The head of Tajikistans Special Assignment Police Unit promised to wage violent jihad. IS and other foreign fighters, probably the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, are operating effectively on Tajikistan’s southern border. The one of the most problem territories named Gorno-Badakhshan has a long, open border with Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and China. The situation is also tense in Uzbekistan hit by series of terror. Terrorist groups operating in the region are supplied mostly from the territories of Afganistan.

After a roughly fail of public stated purposes of the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, the only power capable to maintain security and peace in the region is a Russian-lead SCTO military alliance, comprising Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Belarus with support of China and Iran. China and Russia are connected in The Shanghai Cooperation Organization combating against terrorism, separatism and extremism. The SCTO focused on providing security in the countries participants which face threat of security and stability. Islamic State is the biggest danger in the region. The SCTO proposed measures to ensure border security in member states in case of radical group advancement.

Currently, militants have been building up for an attack on Turkmenistan from two main directions: Murhaba and Amu-Darya. Advance from Murhaba direction threatens field Galkinish. Advance from Amu-Darya threatens the whole gas infrastucture of Turkmenistan supplying China, Bagtyryalyk field on the left bank of the Amu Darya and transitions across the river. Probably, Islamic State and Taliban don’t plan full scale intervention because of complicated situation in their home front in Afghanistan. However, territory of Turkmenistan will be systematicaly hit by break-ins. These circumstances will probably stop developing of TAPI and TUKC gas projects. Tajikistan is in risk too. The most possible actions of militants are taking of Badakhshan, attack on Horog, intervention into Hatlon region, taking of border settlements and raids on Kurgan-Tube. Also, there is capacity of movement into Kirgiztan by Tahar-Tavildara-Garm direction. The one more opportunity for militants is to exercise mass disturbances and establish an independent Islamic State in Badakhshan. Or to start water blockade of Turkmenistan by attacking on Karakum channel.

It’s clear that Afghanistan-Turkmenistan-Tajikistan-Uzbekistan border will be ground of hard security and humanitarian crisis in the region. One of the main reasons of it is rough presence of the US and NATO in Afghanistan and Iraq. In result of the Washigton’s actions states have become bases of terrorists, often, armed by US armaments and trained by its military advisers. Meanwhile, the only success gained by US-led anti-ISIS coalition is that Islamic State had gained only more territories in Iraq and Syria. Apparently, solving of threats in Central Asia needs contrary approach.

Also internal situation in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan is dangerous because of low standards of living and education, distrust of the authorities. The US puppeteers have been taking advantage of these factors by pursuing its own goals through various non governmental organizations.

It is not a secret that the US tries to hold a global domination. It uses all of the opportunities to kill two birds with one stone. Main geopolitical opponents are China and Russia. The plan of the US to set ablaze Central Asia in the fire of terrorism, separatism and extremism.

Please note that this article is being published as a three-part series on Occupy.com.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an organization that is shrouded in mystery, mainly due to the fact that the majority of people don’t even know of its existence. According to the BIS itself, the main purpose of the Bank is to “to promote the cooperation of central banks and to provide additional facilities for international financial operations” and “act as trustee or agent in regard to international financial settlements entrusted to it under agreements of the parties concern.”[1] This means that the BIS is to have the central banks work with one another to facilitate international operations and to oversee any international financial settlements.

The Bank has a Board of Directors, which “may have up to 21 members, including six ex officio directors, comprising the central bank Governors of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Each ex officio member may appoint another member of the same nationality. Nine Governors of other member central banks may be elected to the Board.”[2] BIS also has a management wing in the form of a General and Deputy General Manager, both of whom are responsible to the board and supported by Executive, Finance, and Compliance and Operational Risk Committees.[3]

However, its purpose has changed and evolved over the decades, however, it has always been a club for central bankers, yet in many ways it can aid some countries more than others.

The origins of the BIS lie in the United States, specifically New York City. The individuals involved were international bankers who, despite past differences, “worked together to establish a world financial order that would incorporate the federal principle of the American central banking system.”[4] Specifically among them were people such as “Owen D. Young, J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas W. Lamont, S. Parker Gilbert, Gates W. McGarrah, and Jackson Reynolds, who, in conjunction with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, sought to extend the principle of central bank cooperation to the international sphere.”[5]Before delving any further into the creation of the Bank, it is necessary to examine some of the more notable of these individuals to better understand why they would be involved in the creation of an international bank.

Owen D. Young was already in good with the US government as he, “with the cooperation of the American government and the support of GE, organized and became chairman of the board of the Radio Corporation of America” and “in subsequent years he engineered a series of agreements with foreign companies that divided the world into radio zones and facilitated worldwide wireless communication”[6] Young had a strong belief that global radio service and broadcasting were important for the advancement of civilization. In 1922, Young became chairman of General Electric, and along with GE President Gerard Swope, “urged closer business-government cooperation and corporate self-regulation under government supervision.”[7]

During the 1920s, Young became involved in international diplomacy as the foreign affairs spokesman for the Democratic Party. At the behest of then-Secretary of State, Charles Evan Hughes, Young and Charles Dawes, a banker, were recommended to the Allied Reparations Commission in order to deal with the breakdown in Germany’s reparations payments following the First World War.The Commission resulted in the Dawes Plan which allowed for “Germany’s annual reparation payments would be reduced, increasing over time as its economy improved; the full amount to be paid, however, was left undetermined. Economic policy making in Berlin would be reorganized under foreign supervision and a new currency, the Reichsmark, adopted.”[8] Young viewed improving the world financial structure as important to “the very survival of capitalism” and furthermore he “sought rather the ‘economic integration’ of the world which would prepare the way for ‘political integration’ and lasting peace.”[9]

John Piermont Morgan, Jr. was already ensconced in the world of international banking, having inherited the JP Morgan Company from his father. During World War One, the House of Morgan worked hand-in-hand with the British and French governments, engaging in a number of tasks such as floating loans for the two countries, handling foreign exchange operations, and advising officials of each respective country.[10]

Both these individuals were heavily involved in politics and banking therefore had a personal interest in the creation of a global bank. It should be noted, this fits into the US government’s own policies as they wanted to “[keep] aloof from the political entanglements in Europe while safeguarding vital American interests by means of unofficial observers or participants.”[11] The Federal Reserve also was interested in the creation of the BIS as it would “[promote] both the ascendancy of New York City in world banking and the reconstruction of a stable and prosperous Europe able to absorb American exports.”[12]

This idea of an international bank didn’t occur in a vacuum. The creation of the bank “was inextricably tied to the problem of German reparations in the context of Germany’s overall debt burden during the 1920s.”[13] A slowdown in international lending to Germany began in 1928 as markets became extremely worried about the internal politics of the Weimar Republic. Due to the breakup of a center coalition government and the Social Democrats needing support from right-wing parties, the political situation began to fall apart with “government stability [being] threatened whenever budget debates exposed the basic social divide of unemployment insurance and increased industrial taxation on the one hand versus spending austerity and tax cuts on the other.”[14] The budget problems came on the heels of the Reparations Committee having determined that Germany’s total reparations came to $33 billion, which was twice the size of the country’s total economy in 1925. As long as foreign capital kept coming into Germany, things were fine, however as was aforementioned, that situation changed in 1928.

Between February 1929 and January 1930, negotiations were made to reschedule Germany’s reparations payments. “These negotiations were initiated by central bankers and private actors, who were the first to link problems in the capital market with the need to reorganize Germany’s financial obligations.”[15] Thus, it should be no surprise that many of the main individuals involved in the creation of the BIS were central bankers or engaged in international affairs/finance to some extent.

The idea for an international bank had already been explored to some extent by people such as John Mayard Keynes[16], however the idea truly took off during the Young Conference in 1929 when the Allies were attempting to deal with Germany’s reparations debts for World War One. Belgian delegate Emile Franqui bought up the possibility of having a settlement organization to administer the reparations agreement and the very next day, Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank and chief German representative at the conference, presented a proposal to establish such an organization to as a direct financier of global economic development and trade. The bank would act as a lender to the German central bank in case the Germany currency weakened and the government found itself unable to make the reparations payment. In addition, it would give steps for how to proceed in the case of German default as if “Germany did not resume payments within two years, the BIS would propose revisions collectively for the creditor governments (which would only go into effect with their approval)” and “the bank was responsible for surveillance and informing the creditor countries about economic and financial conditions in Germany.”[17]

While the US State Department was concerned with having a settlement as State Department “economic adviser Arthur N. Young observed, ‘a final reparations settlement’ would ‘promote both political and economic stability in Europe, and thus tend to be of advantage to the United States,” the US government as a whole didn’t want any type of linkage between reparations and war debts due to the fact that because each of the Allied nations was demanding reparations from Germany large enough to cover the debts it owed to the US, having such a linkage would mean that “Germany’s refusal or inability to pay that amount would put Washington in the position of having to agree to a debt reduction or bear the opprobrium and suffer the consequences of opening the door to financial chaos.”[18] However, several other countries had their own interests as well in the creation of the BIS.The French Prime Minister, Raymond Poincare, promised the French public that the reparations would cover the country’s debts to both the US and Britain as well as cover the war damages. France was also interested in reaching an agreement on German debts as they were developing trade interdependence with the Germans and stability was needed.[19]

The British wanted to use the BIS as a means to ensure that the Germans would pay on their debts as scheduled. The Bank of England itself supported the creation of the BIS “because of its potential role in stabilizing the position of the pound in the international monetary system. Britain’s relatively small gold reserves made it difficult to defend the pound without international monetary cooperation and the willingness of smaller powers to hold foreign exchange as reserves instead of gold.”[20]At the meeting in Baden, Germany in October 1929 to draw up the final plans for the BIS saw the heavy presence of US finance in the form of Melvin Traylor of the First National Bank of Chicago and Federick Reynolds of the First National Bank of New York. There, the two nominated Gates W. McGarrah, chairman of the board of the New York Reserve Bank for the officer of President. Later, his assistant, “Leon Fraser, a legal counselor at Gilbert’s reparations office, the Young conference, and Baden,”[21] would become president of the Bank in 1935. When the Bank of England expressed anger and that the European public wouldn’t find American domination of the Bank acceptable, they were effectively told that if they wanted American participation in the BIS it would have to be on American terms. However, they did agree to appoint Pierre Quesnay of the Bank of France as the general manager of the BIS. The Bank was officially founded on May 17, 1930.

The role of the BIS quickly changed as with the onset of the Great Depression, it was unable to “play the role of lender of last resort, notwithstanding noteworthy attempts at organizing support credits for both the Austrian and German central banks in 1931” and due to the Depression, the issue of reparations was off the table due to Germany’s inability to pay. The problem was further compounded when countries such as Britain and the US began to devalue their currencies (i.e. print more money) and the BIS attempted numerous times to end the exchange rate instability by restoring the gold standard, “the BIS had little choice but to limit itself to undertaking banking transactions for the account of central banks and providing a forum for central bank governors to help them maintain contact.”[22] During the Second World War, all operations were suspended for the duration of the conflict, yet the situation became rather dicey for the Bank once the guns stopped firing.

Immediately after World War Two, the global economic landscape had massively changed and thus a new system was needed, In July 1944 over 700 delegates from the Allied nation met in Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, NH for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference which “agreed on the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (BRD), which became part of the World Bank,”[23] where the IMF would pay attention to exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to nations in debt. A new global currency exchange system was created in where all currencies were linked to the US dollar and in exchange the US agreed to fix the price of gold at $35/ounce.

All of this meant that there would be no need for currency warfare or manipulation. This proved a threat to the BIS as if the IMF was to be the center of this new global financial order, what need would there be for the BIS? Wilhelm Keilhau, a member of the Norwegian delegation, even went so far as to propose a notion to eliminate the BIS. However, the Bank was to continue as several other European nations noted its importance to the financial matters of the European continent and soon the move to eliminate the Bank was rescinded.Matters were stable until the 1960s and ‘70s as while the Bretton Woods system of “free currency convertibility at fixed exchange rates” coincided with a massive increase of international trade and economic growth, cracks began to show as the British currency was weak and, more importantly, the gold parity on the US dollar was straining due to “an insufficient supply of gold and from the weakening of the US balance of payments.”[24] However, the Bretton Woods system collapsed on August 1971; however the system of ‘managed floating’ was created in its place which allowed for flexibility of exchange rates within certain parameters.

Later in the 1970s, the situation became all the more dire due to the creation of OPEC and the subsequent rise in oil prices and the Herstatt Bank failure.The Herstatt Bank was central in processing foreign exchange orders (people exchange currencies, such as trading in dollars for yen) and when German regulators withdrew the bank’s license forcing the bank to close up shop on June 26, 1974. Meanwhile, “it was still morning in New York, where Herstatt’s counterparties were expecting to receive dollars in exchange for Deutsche marks they had delivered”[25] and when Hersttat’s clearing bank Chase Manhattan refused to fulfill the orders by freezing the Herstatt account, it caused a chain of defaults. It was this problem that led to the creation, in conjunction with the G-10 countries and Switzerland, of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in which the goal was to set the global standard for bank regulation and to provide a forum for bank supervisory matters.

Yet, this newly created stability was short-lived as in the 1980s and ‘90s saw serious economic problems involving Latin America and Asia.

Oil prices quadrupled in November 1973, leading to stagflation, an increase in balance of payment imbalances, and major shocks in international banking. The Euro-currency markets were growing as they began to be utilized by OPEC countries more and more as the oil-producing nations invested in European money markets, greatly increasing the money European banks had and thus could lend. Thus, the European Coal and Steel Community began loaning money to developing nations at a faster and faster peace and while this was largely beneficial to the world economy at the start, “it also implied that the international banking system was faced with an increase in country risk,”[26] as many of the countries that were being loaned to were getting more and more into debt. This concerned then-BIS Economic Advisor Alexandre Lamfalussy who warned of a threat of a crisis and was specifically focused on credit, saying in a 1976 speech that from” ‘[looking at]… the continuous growth of credits, the spread of risks to a large number of countries, and the change in the nature of credits – I draw the conclusion that the problem of risks has become a very urgent one.”[27]

While real interest rates (the difference between yearly interest rates on savings and inflation rates) were negative in the 1970s, meaning that borrowers lost a percentage of every dollar they loaned, allowed for an increase in credit, it quickly came to a halt in 1979 as the US Federal Reserve tightened US monetary policy which led to an increase in debts which many Latin American countries were unable to pay off.

The BIS was worried about debt that matured in less than a year as by early 1982, such debt would amount to half of Mexico’s and Argentina’s debt respectively. On August 12, 1982, Mexico alerted the US that its financial reserves were exhausted. This prompted the BIS to work to get financial assistance to Mexico in the form of loans, as the Mexican government negotiated with the IMF. Specifically, the BIS “offered a US$ 925 million loan, backed by the G10 central banks and the Bank of Spain” and both the US Federal Reserve and Treasury “matched this with an equal amount, so that a total of US$ 1.85 billion was made available for an initial period of three months.”[28] While there were some last-minute problems, Mexico eventually accepted the loan and made a promise to pay it back, “[consisting] of a gold pledge by the Bank of Mexico and advance claims on future revenues of the Mexican state oil company Pemex.”[29] The first loan was paid out on August 30, 1982.

However, the loans were tied to the Mexican government enacting austerity measures.[30] This had serious effects as the cutback in public spending “set back many development programs, including poverty alleviation programs”[31] and the overall economic effects harmed “especially the lower and middle classes. For Mexican workers, real wages in 1986 were at virtually the same level they had been at in 1967; for many, a generation of economic progress had been wiped out by the ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s.”[32]

In the late 1990s in Asia, a new crisis would emerge. There were extremely robust GDP rates in the Asian markets, ranging from “more than 5 percent in Thailand to 8 percent in Indonesia. This achievement continued a pattern existing since the early 1980s. Rapid growth was fueled by high rates.”[33] However, the growth began to slow down in 1996, which “[reflected] slower growth of demand in the region’s principal export markets, a slowdown in the global electronics industry, and competition from Mainland China.”[34] This slowdown led to an increase in deficit rates, especially with Thailand, whose deficits grew eight percent of GDP. In an attempt to prevent fluctuations in the Thai currency, the baht, the government tied the value of the baht to a basket of foreign currencies, heavily leaning on the US dollar. However, because the dollar was gaining strength, the strength of the baht also grew, making the export of goods more difficult.

Thailand, as well as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia devalued their currencies 25 to 33 percent in the middle of 1997 and when Taiwan began to devalue its currency, it led to a speculative currency attack on Hong Kong the in which people sold off their Hong Kong dollars, expecting them to fall in value. This caused the Hong Kong stock market to crash in October 1997 while at the same time the South Korean won was weakening in value. From there the crisis grew to global proportions and spread to a number of countries such as Russia and Jakarta.

Thailand as well as South Korea and Indonesia went so far as to request assistance from the IMF, which the IMF granted of course, but only in exchange for brutal austerity measures. Much of this led to violence and even deaths in Indonesia and protests in South Korea.[35]

What is most interesting about the crisis is how the leaders of some of the affected countries spoke about it. Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, said in a speech on September 26, 2008 that “in 1997-98 American hedge funds destroyed the economies of poor countries by manipulating their national currencies.” It should be noted that this isn’t a simply ‘blame America’ attitude as Dr. Mohamad is “recognized as an authority on the role of hedge funds in financial crises, given his experience managing the Asian currency crisis as it engulfed his nation.”[36] The Reserve Bank of Australia “produced two reports in 1999 on the potentially destructive role of highly leveraged institutions such as hedge funds.” The reports claimed that “hedge funds contributed to the instability of its exchange rate in 1998, and it describe how hedge funds can have a destabilizing impact on not only the currencies of emerging economies but also on currencies such as the Australian dollar which has the eighth largest global trading volume.”[37]

In a paper written in early 1999 after the crisis ended, William R. White, then-Economic Adviser and Head of the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements, wrote that “Many Asian-Pacific authorities (including representatives from Australia, Hong Kong and Malaysia) feel strongly that hedge funds set out systematically to destabilize their currencies and their financial markets. However, other evidence is less compelling in support of this hypothesis and, even if accepted, would not necessarily lead to the conclusion that such funds should be regulated.”[38]

So he is not only denying the evidence that not only have Dr. Mohamad produced, but also the Reserve Bank of Australia produced, but effectively saying that even if he did accept the information, so what?However, years later, in a turn of the ironic, White had warned of the global crisis as he and his team had been paying attention to the growing US real estate bubble and they “criticized the increasingly impenetrable securitization business, vehemently pointed out the perils of risky loans and provided evidence of the lack of credibility of the rating agencies.”[39] He started warning people back in 2003, “[imploring] central bankers to rethink their strategies, noting that instability in the financial markets had triggered inflation, the ‘villain’ in the global economy.”[40] White retired from the BIS on June 30, 2008 with his advice having been ignored.

This was due to the fact that the Federal Reserve was attempting to “artificially prop up those markets [of bad debt and worthless assets] and keep those assets trading at prices far in excess of their actual market value”[41] which led to them providing “$16 trillion to domestic and foreign banks in the form of secret loans and bought mortgage-backed securities that were in reality, completely and totally worthless”[42] as well as the fact that many of the people on the board of directors at the Federal Reserve also had connections to corporations that received bailout money.

Even still, after the financial crisis seemed to be over, the BIS was sounding the alarm about debt, in June 2010 the organization “delivered a stern message to central banks and governments that keeping interest rates low for too long, or failing to act quickly to cut budget deficits, could sow the seeds for the next crisis.”[43] Earlier that year, the organization was warning of a sovereign debt crisis and noted that “Drastic austerity measures will be needed to head off a compound interest spiral, if it is not already too late for some.”[44] It seems that from the austerity measures that have been enacted in Europe and the US, the call has been heeded. The question is this: how much devastation will this have and will it result in a ‘lost generation’ such as in 1980s Mexico?

Devon DB is a 23 year old independent writer and researcher and is the Politics/Government Department Chair of the Hampton Institute. He can be contacted at devondb[at]mail[dot]com.

Notes

1: Roger Auboin, The Bank for International Settlements, 1930-1955, Princeton University, https://www.princeton.edu/~ies/IES_Essays/E22.pdf2: Bank for International Settlements, Board of Directors,http://www.bis.org/about/board.htm3: Bank for International Settlements, Management of the BIS,http://w
ww.bis.org/about/officials.htm4: Frank Costigliola, “The Other Side of Isolationism: The Establishment of the First World Bank, 1929-1930,” The Journal of American History 59:3 (1972), pg 602

5: Ibid, pg 603

6: Steven Schoenherr Home Page, Owen D. Young,http://www.sunnycv.com/steve/ar/dd5/young.html7: Ibid

8: US State Department, The Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, German Reparations, and Inter-allied War Debts, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/dawes9: Costigliola, pg 605

10: Martin Horn, “A Private Bank At War: J.P. Morgan & Co. and France, 1914-1918,” Business History Review 74:1 (2000), pg 86

11: Costigliola, pg 603

12: Ibid

13: Beth A. Simmons, “Why Innovate? Founding the Bank for International Settlements,” World Politics 45:3 (1993), pg 370

14: Simmons, pg 375

15: Simmons, pg 377

16: J. Keith Horsefield, International Monetary Fund 1945-1965 Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation, vol. 1 Chronicle (Washington D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 1986)

17: Simmons, pg 383

18: Costigliola, pg 610

19: Simmons, pgs 384-385

20: Simmons, pg 389

21: Costigliola, pg 616

22: Bank for International Settlements, BIS Archive Guide,http://www.bis.org/about/arch_guide.pdf

23: Adam Lebor, Tower of Basel (New York: Public Affairs, 2013) pg 87

24: Bank for International Settlements, BIS Archive Guide,http://www.bis.org/about/arch_guide.pdf

25: Gregana Koleva, “Icon of Systemic Risk Haunts Industry Decades After Demise,” American Banker, http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/bankhaus-herstatt-icon-of-systemic-risk-1039312-1.html (June 23, 2011)

26: Piet Clement, Ivo Maes, “The BIS and the Latin American Debt Crisis of the 1980s,” National Bank of Belgium, Working Paper 247, December 2013, pg 3

27: Ibid, pg 4

28: Ibid, pg 17

29: Ibid

30: Paul Lewis, “Mexico to Receive $1.85 Billion In Loans,” New York Times, August 31, 1982 (http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/31/business/mexico-to-receive-1.85-billion-in-loans.html)

31: Bhuvan Bhatnagar, Aubrey C. Williams, eds. Participatory Development and the World Bank: Potential Directions for Change, http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1999/10/21/000178830_98101903552081/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf (October 31, 1992), pg 103

32: Robert M. Buffington, Don M. Coerver, Suzanne B. Pasztor, Mexico Today: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary History and Culture (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004), pg 137

33: Barry Eichengreen, Understanding Asia’s Financial Crisis, Saint John’s University, https://www.csbsju.edu/Documents/Clemens%20Lecture/lecture/Book98.pdf (November 2, 1998)34: Ibid

35: PBS, Timeline of the Crash, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/crash/etc/cron.html36: Stephen J. Brown, “The Role of Hedge Funds in Financial Crisis,” The EconoMonitor, October 20, 2008 (http://www.economonitor.com/blog/2008/10/the-role-of-hedge-funds-in-financial-crisis/)

37: Hedge Funds, Hedge Funds Studies, http://www.fundshedge.co.uk/hedgefundsreports.htm

38: Bank For International Settlements, Mr. White discusses the Asian crisis and the Bank for International Settlements, http://www.bis.org/review/r990331a.pdf

39: Beat Balzi, Michaela Schiessl, “The Man Nobody Wanted To Hear: Global Banking Economist Warned Of Coming Crisis,” Der Spiegel, July 8, 2009 (http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-man-nobody-wanted-to-hear-global-banking-economist-warned-of-coming-crisis-a-635051.html)

40: Ibid

41: John Wallace, “The Financial Crisis and the Federal Reserve,” News Blaze, September 27, 2008 (http://newsblaze.com/story/20080927140845tsop.nb/topstory.html)

42: Bernie Sanders, The Fed Audit, http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/the-fed-audit (July 21, 2011)

43: Brian Blackstone, “International Finance: BIS Warns Countries About Risks of Debt,” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2010

44: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Sovereign Debt Crisis At ‘Boiling Point,’ Warns Bank for International Settlements,” The Telegraph, April 8, 2010 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7564748/Sovereign-debt-crisis-at-boiling-point-warns-Bank-for-International-Settlements.html)

Lynton Crosby has a full schedule. He is the modern electoral PR hitman for parties in dire straits. He is hired to stir the pot of resentment and undermine hopes for change. His very existence suggests that democracies are shadows of their actual function, operating on traditional platforms of populism when required.

Those familiar with the Crosby portfolio should be aware about various hobgoblin practices he has been engaging in over the years. When he has the brief of desperation from governments in trouble, racial and immigration tensions will be fanned. The security state imperative will be encouraged. Sore spots will be scratched. When he has the ear of the aspirant in question, he will suggest a formula of divide and conquer, laced with a lingering sense of fear.

He cut his teeth on conservative politics in Australia, being the dark “architect” behind the return of the Liberal-National coalition after 13 years in opposition. The 1996 campaign that saw the election of John Howard remains his moment of triumph, unseating a visionary prime minister for what became, in time, the established mediocracy of Australian politics. Subsequent victories followed, and word got around on the political grapevine that Crosby was something of a magician.

Each election victory after that was characterised by extreme shallowness – knee jerk populism, a myopic vision, the politics of immediate gain. The political scene has not changed since, and one can almost sense that the reason Australia is a relative pygmy in climate change policies while being an enthusiastic participant in failed US-led interventions can be attributed, in part, to Crosby’s handiwork.In the Crosby galaxy, the now matters, an immediacy governed by sibilant public relations advisors without a care in the world about what public interest and the welfare of the good. Crosby, in fact, protects the welfare of political survival, a job he tends to accomplish well.

In 2004, the British Tories decided to make use of his services, hoping that another Howard, this time Michael, could mount a valiant effort against Tony Blair. The BBC ran with the headline of “Howard’s wizard of Oz.” Various other descriptions were offered for Crosby: the “master of the dark political arts” and the “Australian Karl Rove”.Crosby’s remarks on his appointment then are worth noting. “We had [former Australian PM] Keating running a very slick political machine. But the glitz and the glamour can only last so long. Ultimately you have to deliver.”[1] His strategy is that of whipping up hysteria in marginal seats, those where swinging voters will succumb accordingly and deliver a suitable bounty to the political punter. Thought is less important than base sentiment – he is interested in the approach of “getting the barnacles off the boat”.

That particular effort in 2005 proved to be a fizzer, lost in the ether of an electorate yet to be boiled by the prejudices against immigration and asylum. But Crosby, malodorously, hung around, accepting his Tory retainer with the intense conviction of the Inquisition. It initially paid dividends at the mayoral level, enabling a clownish, foot-in-mouth Boris Johnson to win two victories (2008 and 2012). Red London was rinsed in Tory blue.

Eventually, David Cameron succumbed to the allure of Crosby’s black magic. Indeed, Crosby received a cool half million pounds to make sure that the dirt was spread through the electorate for the 2015 election. The winning result was largely attributed to him, vesting Crosby’s strategy with the powers of a deity.

Now, Crosby is hawking his wares through the Commonwealth circuit, moving onto Canada, where he is advising the incumbent, Stephen Harper. It has been picked up that Harper’s team has sporadically sought advice from the Australian strategist over the years. “We were fans of Lynton Crosby,” gushed Harper campaign spokesperson Kory Teneycke, “before many people knew who Lynton Crosby was.”[2]The appointment has made ripples. Would Harper, speculated David Beers, soften his image of the “ruthless, controlling, divisive character that many increasingly perceive him to be?” Or perhaps an option re-emphasising those attributes by bringing in the “political ‘rottweiler’ who specialises in fomenting wedge issues, abusive exchanges, and winning”?[3] The latter seems like a match made in ghastly heaven.

Crosby comes into his own when the gap between contenders for office seem close, but widening. In the context of this year’s British election, his “cleverest trick of all” notes the Guardian, “was to make it look as if the Tory campaign wasn’t working.” While the commentators and pundits were frothing over Crosby’s techniques, the “infantry” went about the business of netting the marginal seats.[4]

Crosby’s very existence is symptomatic of a broader illness in democratic states, where weasel words and the internal polling mechanism of the advisor holds sway over progressive policies that drive change and transform sentiment. Nastiness pays, if only in the short term. He is the most direct of guns for hire, from being an advisor to Tory winning strategies, to disruptive pro-tobacco campaigns against unbranded cartons.[5] If the latter does not convince you of the contempt he holds for the commonweal, nothing will.

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

Notes

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4000439.stm

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/10/canada-conservatives-lynton-crosby-election

[3] http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/09/11/Lynton-Crosby-Things/

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/08/lynton-crosby-wedge-politics-general-election-tories

[5] http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/05/questions-cameron-over-lynton-crosbys-links-alcohol-and-tobacco-firms

For the first part in this two-part series, go here.

Guatemala’s current situation and tragic history can be traced back to the CIA-led coup in 1954 that ousted the democratically elected government of President Jacobo Arbenz and installed the military dictator Carlos Armas. Arbenz was an advocate for land reform and was loved by the poor. The wealthy hated him. And when the CIA couldn’t bribe him, they ousted him in a most humiliating way. Even after he went into exile, the agency used constant disinformation to smear him in every way imaginable until his strange death in a bathtub in 1971.

Since the 1954 coup, and with the ongoing support of the CIA and the School of the Americas (SOA), the Guatemalan people have lived a nightmare. What follows should give you a sense of the CIA’s thinking behind the coup and its aftermath. It is a transcription of a CIA document released to The National Security Archive, a research institute, on May 23, 1997 under a Freedom of Information Act request.

A hammer, axe, wrench, screwdriver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand, or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice.” For an assassin using “edge weapons,” the manual notes in cold clinical terms, “puncture wounds of the body cavity may not be reliable unless the heart is reached.

United Fruit Company Building. Photo credit: Michael Bentley / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

“A Study of Assassination,” unsigned, undated:

Among the documents found in the training files of Operation PBSUCCESS and declassified by the Agency is a “Study of Assassination.” A how-to guide book in the art of political killing, the 19-page manual offers detailed descriptions of the procedures, instruments, and implementation of assassination. “The simplest local tools are often much the most efficient means of assassination,” counsels the study. “A hammer, axe, wrench, screwdriver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand, or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice.” For an assassin using “edge weapons,” the manual notes in cold clinical terms, “puncture wounds of the body cavity may not be reliable unless the heart is reached…. Absolute reliability is obtained by severing the spinal cord in the cervical region.” The manual also notes that to provide plausible denial, “no assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded.” Murder, the drafters state, “is not morally justifiable,” and “persons who are morally squeamish should not attempt it.”

“President Arbenz delivers on his promise — Farmers: here is your land. Defend it, care for it, cultivate it.” (1954) One of a series of photos by Cornell Capa, documenting the sweet,short-lived dream of life under a democracy. Photo credit: Cornell Capa

No, this dirty work is not for the “morally squeamish.”

If one is searching for the truth about the coup, the document above is accurate and revealing. However, if one searched the web and discovered a posting at globalsecurty.org (see sidebar at the end of the article) one would be misled. That posting is nothing more than a summary of a Congressional Research Service report. It never mentions Guatemala, although it includes other Latin American countries — Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Peru. A gullible reader might come away with the impression that the School of the Americas had nothing to do with Guatemala, when, in fact, it had a great deal to do with it. Why leave out this country in particular?

Could it be that GlobalSecurity.org is unfamiliar with documents such as the one described above? Is it one of those glib sites that posts articles that do not give the full picture, even if inadvertently? Or is it a site that presents disinformation? The web is filled with questionable information, so one must proceed skeptically.

Those interested in the truth must probe much deeper, but that is difficult as the following account of the propagandist Edward Bernays makes clear.

From PR to “The Engineering of Consent”

The 1954 coup d’etat was ably assisted by American Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, who is often called the “father of public relations.” He is barely known to the general public and is part of our secret history. A war propagandist for the US during World War I, Bernays used his propaganda techniques — now called PR — to “engineer the consent” of the American people on behalf of the power elite.

Leading up to the 1954 coup, he was the chief propagandist for The United Fruit Company and in that capacity created a vast media campaign painting the Arbenz government as communist and in cahoots with the U.S.S.R.

This was the height of the Cold War, and the American government was consumed with using anti-communist and anti-Soviet rhetoric to defend its spheres of interest; for a long time the American government, in conjunction with American corporations, had considered Latin America and the Caribbean their de facto colonies.

The United Fruit Company — now Chiquita Brands International — was an American corporation that had controlled vast tracts of land and numerous businesses in Guatemala and throughout Latin America since the early 1900s. The company was known for its support of dictators and the exploitation of the people and the land.

Intimately linked to the power elite within the US government, United Fruit extracted huge profits and rejected any reforms that challenged its control of the land. It was the largest landholder and employer in Guatemala. It owned railroads and discouraged the building of highways. It had long controlled Guatemala’s politicians. It’s power was so extensive that one historian compares it to the Dutch East India Company in its influence. It’s shareholders and supporters were amply distributed throughout the foreign policy establishment in the US.

As US Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler made clear in 1935, the US military was used to deal with any resistance to American corporations’ business interests overseas. Guatemala is a case study in this regard. President Arbenz’s land reform act of 1952 — Decree 900 — expropriated rural farm land, 70 per cent of which was in the hands of 2 percent of the landowners, including vast acreage controlled by United Fruit but, significantly, only land not under cultivation by the company. The land was redistributed to poor peasants. The owners ( who included Arbenz himself) were to be compensated at fair market value.

But this arrangement was not acceptable to United Fruit or their backers in Washington. The American Ambassador to Guatemala, John Peurifoy (CIA Director Allen Dulles’s handpicked man), then tried to bribe Arbenz with a $2 million payoff to terminate the land reforms.

Arbenz refused, and his overthrow was set in motion by the CIA. Bernays was called upon to present the land redistribution as a communist takeover and a threat to US national security. His media propaganda campaign, presenting Arbenz as a communist in league with the USSR, together with the CIA’s additional propaganda, created the justification for the CIA-led coup.

What wasn’t revealed at the time was that the Eisenhower administration had intimate ties to United Fruit. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had represented United Fruit at his law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, and his brother, Allen Dulles, the CIA chief in charge of the 1954 coup, once sat on United Fruit’s board of directors and had also done legal work for them. Both brothers had large financial stakes in the company. Such clear-cut conflicts of interest were not an anomaly within the Eisenhower administration. Many other administration officials were connected in one way or another to United Fruit. Bernays’s propaganda, using anti-communist rhetoric, served perfectly the interests of his conjoined clients — United Fruit and the CIA. As a result of Dulles’s and Bernays’s machinations, hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans were eventually massacred

The excellent documentary by Adam Curtis, The Century of Self, documents Bernays’s profound and largely pernicious influence on American life with a section specifically devoted to his propaganda efforts on behalf of the 1954 coup. Today’s “mainstream media” has learned a lot from Bernays, so if one wishes to see through the vast amount of propaganda and dissimulation in current news coverage, learning about Bernays is crucial.

The recent arrest of Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina on corruption charges cannot be understood except within the larger context of US interference in Latin American countries going back more than a century. And that record of US meddling in Central and South America has been largely left out of official histories of the United States.

The rise of the CIA to virtually unchallenged supremacy in Washington’s power structure is but one part of this backstory. Peter Dale Scott, who has written voluminously on the subject, calls this phenomenon of a de facto shadow government hidden behind the public facade while serving corporate interests, “the deep state.” This secretive power elite, through its decades-long support of coups and death squads in Guatemala, has linked that country’s fate inextricably to US interests and policies.

***

Sometimes even when the mind knows and assents, the heart stays frozen. But music, like poetry, can often break the ice within. Here is the acclaimed singer and former Panamanian reform presidential candidate Ruben Blades, singing a song from his album, Nothing but the Truth. The song is called “In Salvador,” but his words could apply to what goes on in many Latin American countries. The “regular guys” of Ruben’s song are often death squad killers, “made in America” at the “School of the Assassins.”

Over the last few days I’ve been in Greece as part of a delegation with the Greece Solidarity Campaign. The scale of the challenge facing the Greek people, though already at the forefront of my mind, has been amplified by the many people I’ve met who describe to me a country in utter turmoil. Greece’s economy has been hit by a depression deeper than the one which plagued the USA in the 1930s. A quarter of the workforce is unemployed and half of the country’s children live in poverty. Wages have declined, more than half of pension payments don’t cover the basics and deprivation has risen.

In my practice of holistic mental health care, I encountered a number of unfortunate patients that had had one or more series of electroconvulsant (shock) “therapies” (ECT) , where a series of sub-lethal electrical shocks are administered directly to one or both hemispheres of the brain.

To be regarded as “therapeutic”, enough electricity in this still very controversial procedure (often utilizing up to 400 volts) has to be given to cause a grand mal seizure, which inevitably results in post-seizure coma. Shock to the brain commonly results in memory loss (both short-term and long-term) and the loss of cognitive abilities (both short-term and long-term).

General anesthesia plus intravenous sedatives are also administered in order to eliminate any memory of the otherwise painful procedure and also to relax muscles (thus minimizing muscle damage and the possibility of fractured bones during the often violent seizure). Both drugs are brain-altering and potentially brain-damaging but are routinely given. The cocktail of futile and potentially neurotoxic psychiatric drugs that may even have caused chemical brain damage are typically continued for fear of causing serious withdrawal syndromes if they were to be stopped.

Labor costs account for much of the $500 – $1,000 cost for each ECT session, some or most of which is usually borne by health insurance companies. Most ECT is given in a series of 6 – 12 sessions, usually three times per week for 2 – 4 weeks. Besides the attending psychiatrist and an anesthetist or anesthesiologist, a number of other psychiatric staff, including psychiatric nurses, are present as assistants.

In the ECT-treated patients that came to my clinic, the memory loss and cognitive disabilities (which their psychiatrists had reassured them would be temporary) had actually become permanent, even years after the shock “treatments”. Permanent social security disability status was common, as was difficulty in functioning on the job. (A classic example of one of the many unintended consequence of ECT from history is Ernest Hemingway, who, after complaining of his severe loss of cognition and memory (his main tools as a writer), committed suicide shortly after the second of his two series of ECTs he had received at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.)

Every one of my ECT patients had also been treated – usually for years – with high doses of a multitude of powerful, brain-altering (even brain-damaging and dementia-inducing) psychiatric drugs in a bewildering array of guess-work cocktail combinations that failed the patient or made her worse. (It is important to note that no combination of two or more psychiatric drugs has ever been thoroughly tested, short-term or long-term, for safety or efficacy – even in the experimental animal lab. Indeed, most of the trial-and-error psychiatric drug combos that my ECT patients had been given were capable of (according to the Physician’s Desk Reference [PDR]) actually causing worsening depression, lethargy and/or suicidality. So-called “treatment-resistant” depression (drug “poop-out”, drug failure or drug intoxication) and suicidality are reasons commonly given for recommending ECT.

Given the multitude of exposes in the recent media concerning the high incidence of traumatic brain injuries in Iraq War veterans and NFL football players, it is important to point out that  autopsy studies that have been done on patients who died following ECT show findings very similar to what is found in the autopsies done on traumatic brain injury cases and vaccine brain injuries, namely, cerebral hemorrhages (abnormal bleeding), edema (excessive accumulation of fluid), cortical atrophy (shrinkage of the cerebral cortex), fibrosis (thickening and scarring), gliosis (growth of abnormal tissue) and partially destroyed brain tissue. Consult the bibliography below for proof.

 ECT: Another Industry That is Too Big to Fail or Criticize?

Pro-ECT insider organizations, such as the American Psychiatric Association, the AMA and the NIMH have very little oversight from unbiased observers. Indeed, they have enormous conflicts of interest. Even the pharmaceutical industry-subsidized FDA – the so-called “regulatory agency” that rules on the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical devices – proclaims that patients might “improve” following electroshock. Of course, depending on the reporting parameters of the study, they could just be changing symptomology.

These for-profit medical industries (including Big Pharma and the medical device industries like those that manufacture ECT machines and accessories) are typically the same ones that design, fund, subsidize, perform, analyze, publish and propagandize the scientific studies “proving” the safety and effectiveness of ECT. Those studies are readily published in mainstream medical journals, which are the journals that get read by average healthcare practitioners. But black-listed whistle-blowers like Breggin only get published in obscure (albeit peer-reviewed) journals that receive no advertising money from Big Pharma and other aligned entities. Of course, the insiders are subjected to essentially no oversight from unbiased observers.

Interestingly, these biased industry insiders have been forced to admit that they have no idea why ECT seems to “help” the occasional patient. But the best guess as to why patients are different after ECT (ie, from the perspective of the many skeptics who doubt the heavily advertised benefits of sub-lethal electrocution to the brain) is that the memory loss, cognitive disability, post-trauma brain inflammation and the common reliance on personal care-givers (post-ECT) causes patients to ignore or forget the reasons that they entered the psychiatric system in the first place.

Indeed, by the time patients get to this “Hail Mary” treatment plan, most everybody involved, especially the drugged-up and very vulnerable patient, has forgotten about 1) the (potentially curable through psychotherapy alone) temporary, decompensating, emotional crises, 2) the psych drug-induced brain intoxications, 3) the psych drug-induced withdrawal syndromes and/or 4) the ubiquitous brain malnutrition that led everybody to the conclusion that drastic measures needed to be taken. By ignoring those four common causes for the failure of “standard” treatment, it is not hard to understand why some psychiatrists throw up their hands and try the “last resort”.

Dr Peter Breggin, the Conscience of Psychiatry

Practicing psychiatrist and author (called by many the “conscience of psychiatry”) Peter Breggin wrote an important article (see extended excerpts below) for the Huffington Post. In that article, Dr Breggin talks about the various aspects of the ECT industry that are profiting from electroshocking vulnerable patients. Each of them can be expected to resist reformation.

There are medical journals that are entirely devoted to ECT. Physicians who are trained to perform surgery, do specialty procedures or perform other “gimmicks“ earn a lot more money than non-procedural physicians. The same is true for ECT psychiatrists, for they have incomes that are about twice as large as the average clinical psychiatrist. The anesthesiology industry profits as well. The corporations that design, market and sell expensive ECT machines are very profitable. Those machines often need regular technological upgrades, and thus new machines to replace the old ones that are now proclaimed to be obsolete or inferior.

Just as happens in many for-profit corporations, there are any number of financial and professional conflicts of interest that manage to very successfully deflect and deny the strong evidence that electroshock is not good for the brain. Anybody with a little common sense will know that 400 volts of electricity can fry living tissue, especially delicate nerve tissue that can conduct electricity. Everybody understands that lightning strikes or shocks from touching a 120 volt electrical cord is capable of permanently frying skin, nerves and muscles or even stopping the heart. It doesn’t take much imagination to know what 400 volts does to the vulnerable tissues of the brain.

Here is Dr Breggin’s powerful piece, which the mainstream media chose not to comment on, not wanting to disturb the peace or criticize another institution that is too big to criticize or fail. Please consult the books and papers listed in the abbreviated bibliography at the end of this column before reflexively trying to refute Breggin’s premise.

Disturbing News for Patients and Shock Docs Alike, By Peter Breggin, MD – Huffington Post

Something most remarkable and unexpected has occurred in the field of psychiatry. Lead by a lifelong defender and promoter of shock treatment, Harold Sackeim, a team of investigators has recently published a follow up study of 347 patients given the currently available methods of electroshock, including the supposedly most benign forms — and confirmed that electroshock causes permanent brain damage and dysfunction.

Based on numerous standardized psychological tests, six months after the last ECT every form of the treatment was found to cause lasting memory and mental dysfunction. In the summary words of the investigators, “Thus, adverse cognitive effects were detected six months following the acute treatment course.” They concluded, “this study provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse cognitive effects can persist for an extended period, and that they characterize routine treatment with ECT in community settings.”

After traumatic brain damage has persisted for six months, it is likely to remain stable or even to grow worse. Therefore, the study confirms that routine clinical use of ECT causes permanent damage to the brain and its mental faculties.

The term cognitive dysfunction covers the entire range of mental faculties from memory to abstract thinking and judgment. The ECT-induced persistent brain dysfunction was global. In addition to the loss of autobiographical memories, the most marked cognitive injury occurred in “retention of newly learned information,” “simple reaction time,” and most tragically “global cognitive status” or overall mental function. In other words, the patients continued to have trouble learning and remembering new things, they were slower in their mental reaction times, and they were mentally impaired across a broad range of faculties.

Probably to disguise the wide swath of devastation, the Sackeim study did not provide the percentages of patients afflicted with persistent cognitive deficits; but all of the multiple tests were highly significant (p<0.0001 on 10 of 11 tests and p<0.003 on the 11th). Also, the individual measures correlated with each other. This statistical data indicates that a large percentage of patients were significantly impaired.

Many patients also had persistent abnormalities on the EEGs (brain wave studies) six months after treatment, indicating even more gross underlying brain damage and dysfunction. The results confirm that the post-ECT patients, as I have described in numerous publications, were grossly brain-injured with a generalized loss of mental functions.

Some of the older forms of shock — and still the most commonly used — produced the most severe damage; but all of the treatment types caused persistent brain dysfunction. The greater the number of treatments given to patients, the greater was the loss of biographical memories. Elderly women are particularly likely to get shocked — probably because there is no one to defend them — and the study found that the elderly and females were the most susceptible to severe memory loss.

Destroying Lives

The study does not address the actual impact of these losses on the lives of individual patients. Like most such reports, it’s all a matter of statistics. In human reality the loss of autobiographical memories indicates that patients could no longer recall important life experiences, such as their wedding, family celebrations, graduations, vacation trips, and births and deaths. In my experience, it also includes the wiping out of significant professional experiences. I have evaluated dozens of patients whose professional and family lives have been wrecked, including a nurse who lost her career but who recently won malpractice suit against the doctor who referred her for shock. Her story is told at my website at www.breggin.com.

Even when these injured people can continue to function on a superficial social basis, they nonetheless suffer devastation of their identities due to the obliteration of key aspects of their personal lives. The loss of the ability to retain and learn new material is not only humiliating and depressing but also disabling. The slowing of mental reaction time is frustrating and disabling. Even when relatively subtle, these disabilities can disrupt routine activities of living. Individuals can no longer safely drive a car for fear of losing their concentration or becoming hopelessly lost. Others can no longer find their way around their own kitchen or remember to turn off the burner on the stove. Still others cannot retain what they have just read in a newspaper or seen on television. They commonly meet old friends and new acquaintances without having any idea who they are. Ultimately, the experience of “global” cognitive dysfunction impairs the victim’s identify and sense of self, as well as ruining the overall quality of life.

Although unmentioned in the Sackeim article, in addition to cognitive dysfunction, shock treatment causes severe affective or emotional disorders. Much like other victims of severe head injury, many post-shock patients become emotionally shallow and unable to relate on an intimate or spiritual level. They often become impulsive and irritable. Commonly they become chronically depressed. Having been injured by previously trusted doctors, they almost always become distrustful of all doctors and avoid even necessary medical care.

Decades of Opposition to Shock Treatment

This breaking scientific research has confirmed what I’ve been saying about shock treatment for thirty years. In 1979, I published Electroshock: Its Brain-Disabling Effects, the first medical book to evaluate the brain damaging and memory wrecking effects of this “treatment” for depression that requires inflicting a series of massive convulsions on the brain by means of passing a traumatic electric current through it. After many rejections, the courageous president of Springer Publishing Company, Ursula Springer, decided to publish this then controversial book. Dr. Springer told me about venomous attacks aimed at her at medical meetings as a result of her brave act in publishing my work. She never regretted it.

Over the years, I have continued to write, lecture, testify in court and speak to the media about brain damage and memory loss caused by electroshock (e.g., Breggin 1991, 1992, 1997, and 1998). At times my persistence has resulted in condemnation from shock advocates such as Harold Sackeim and Max Fink whom I have criticized for systematically covering up damage done to millions of patients throughout the world. It would require too much autobiographical detail to communicate the severity of the attacks on me surrounding my criticism of ECT. It was second only to the attack on me from the drug companies for claiming that antidepressants cause violence and suicide.

ECT Can Cause Substantial – Even Permanent – Memory Loss

Given the vigor with which shock doctors have suppressed or denigrated my work, the study further surprised me by citing my 1986 scientific paper “Neuropathology and cognitive dysfunction from ECT” published in the Psychopharmacology Bulletin, noting that “critics contend that ECT invariably results in substantial and permanent memory loss.” They contrast this critical view with “some authorities,” specifically citing Max Fink and Robert Abrams, who have argued against the existence of any persistent shock effects on memory. The implication was clear that the critics were right and the so-called authorities were wrong. Sackeim was among those authorities.

Fink’s “authoritative” testimony at a number of malpractice trials has enabled shock doctors to get off scot-free after damaging the brains of their patients. Abrams used to testify successfully on behalf of shock doctors until I disclosed his ownership of a shock machine manufacturing company.

Unfortunately, the Sackeim group did not cite the work of neurologist John Friedberg who risked his career to criticize electroshock treatment. Nor did their article give credit to the published work of psychiatric survivor Leonard Frank or the anti-shock reform activities of the survivor moment lead by David Oaks of MindFreedom International. They also didn’t cite Colin Ross’s 2006 review and analysis showing that ECT is no more effective than sham ECT or simply sedating patients without shocking them.

Will the latest confirmation of ECT-induced brain damage cause shock doctors to cut back on their use of the treatment? Not likely. Psychiatrists and their affiliated neurosurgeons always knew that lobotomy was destroying the brains and mental life of their patients but that knowledge did not daunt them one bit. It required an organized international campaign to discredit, to slow down and to almost eliminate the surgical practice of psychiatric brain mutilation in the early 1970s (Breggin and Breggin 1994). The ECT lobby is much larger and stronger than the lobotomy lobby, and much better organized, with its own journal and shock advocates positioned in high places in medicine and psychiatry.

Stopping shock treatment will require public outrage, organized resistance from survivor groups and psychiatric reformers, lawsuits, and state legislation.

(This essay also appeared in Dr. Breggin‘s column in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, which is sponsored by the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (www.ICSPP.org).

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

Notes

Breggin, P. (1979). Electroshock: Its brain-disabling effects. New York: Springer Publishing Company.

Breggin, P. (1991). Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy, and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock, and Biochemical Theories of the “New Psychiatry”. New York: St Martin’s Press. (1992).

“The return of ECT”. Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health, 3 (March, No. 1), 12-17

Breggin, P. (1997). Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex. New York: Springer Publishing Company.

Breggin, P. (1998). “Electroshock: Scientific, ethical, and political issues.” International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine 11, 5-40. Breggin, P. and Breggin, G. (1998).

The War Against Children of Color. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press.

Frank, L. (1978). (Ed.). The History of Shock Treatment. Available from L. Frank, 2300 Webster Street, San Francisco, CA 94115.

“Electroshock: Death, Brain Damage, Memory Loss, and Brain Washing”. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 11, 489-512. Frank, L. (2006).

“The Electroshock Quotationery.” Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 8, 157-177. Friedberg, J. (1976).

Electroshock is Not Good for Your Brain. San Francisco: Glide Publications. Friedberg, J. (1977).

“Shock Treatment, Brain Damage, and Memory Loss: A Neurological Perspective.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 134, 1010-1014. Ross, Colin (2006).

“The Sham ECT Literature: Implications for Consent to ECT.” Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 8, 17-28. Sackeim, H., Prudic, J., Fuller, R., Keilp, J., Lavori, P. and Olfson, M. (2007).

“The Cognitive Effects of Electroconvulsive Therapy Community Settings.” Neuropsychopharmacology, 32, 244-254.

Andre, Linda (2009) Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment – Rutgers University Press

Introduction

In its June 2015 preliminary report the Debt Truth Committee demonstrated that the largest part of Greece’s post-2009 debt was in fact private debt converted into sovereign debt. The same countries and institutions that converted private into public debt later entered into a series of loan agreements and Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) from 2010 onwards, the bulk of which was used to repay the aforementioned debt and the ensuing interest, while at the same time imposing upon the Greek population conditions of extreme austerity. The Debt Truth Committee found that the debt is odious, illegal and illegitimate and wholly unsustainable. Such characterisations were consistent with pertinent definitions adopted by specialized UN bodies. Moreover, in line with other international human rights bodies, the Debt Truth Committee held that the conditions imposed upon Greece violated not only its Constitution but also its international treaty and customary obligations.

In August 2015, the Tsipras (SYRIZA/ANEL) government agreed to a new MoU and a Financial Assistance Facility Agreement [loan agreement]. The terms of the August 2015 MoU [Third MoU) and loan agreement entered into by the Tsipras government brings into question two particular aspects of odious debt doctrine; namely: a) the proper place of economic self-determination (as expressed by popular vote) in debt restructuring and; b) the actual outcomes of these agreements on the Greek people, the fiscal and financial impositions on the State and the sustainability of the debt overall. These aspects of the agreements will determine the odious, illegal or illegitimate nature of the aforementioned outcomes.

The Binding Nature of the Referendum

The referendum of 5 July 2015 requested the Greek people to decide whether or not to accept two sets of proposals put forward by the EU Commission, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB). The proposals were set out in two distinct documents. The first was titled “Reforms for the Completion of the Current Program and Beyond”, while the second was titled “Preliminary Debt Sustainability Analysis”. The effect of both documents (would-be-agreements) was the provision of liquidity, chiefly for debt-repayment in exchange for severe fiscal and social conditionalities. It was because of these severe conditionalities and their detrimental impact on society and the country’s fiscal independence that the Prime Minister called for a referendum. The outcome of the referendum was an overwhelming NO vote (61.3%) against the contents of the two documents. The Prime Minister and the ruling SYRIZA parties had championed the NO vote, this being consistent with SYRIZA’s pre-election manifestos. However, in the aftermath of the referendum and despite its outcome, the Prime Minister adopted the Third MoU and loan agreements, the contents of which are of equal or great social and fiscal impact as compared to the preceding ones. See the Annex titled “Significant Differences between the Text Rejected by the July 2015 Referendum and the July 9^th Accepted by the Greek Government.

Domestic and international press has remained silent, or in any event made no serious attempt, to explain the legality of rejecting the clear outcome of the referendum. Article 44(2) of the Greek Constitution stipulates the conditions under which a referendum may be held. It envisages two types of referenda; the first concerns crucial national issues whereas the second relates to adopted bills regulating important social matters, save if they concern fiscal issues. This provision is, however, silent as to whether the results of referenda possess a binding as opposed to a consultative character. The better view, which is accepted by the majority, is that both types of referenda are binding as to their outcome.

As regards the second type of referendum concerning bills dealing with important social issues, these are deemed accepted but not yet officially adopted if they have not been implemented into a presidential decree and not yet published in the Official Gazzette. In between these two (i.e. adoption by Parliament and issuance of a presidential decree) lies the referendum, which allows the people to either approve or reject the bill in question. The Constitution stipulates that if the referendum approves the bill, then the outcome of the referendum becomes effective from the date of the referendum and not the date on which the presidential decree containing it was published.

But even beyond this procedural legal analysis, it is accepted by the vast majority of constitutional commentators that both types of referenda are binding as to their substantive outcome. However, each type of referendum is addressed to, and accordingly constrains, only a particular state institution. Hence, referenda on crucial national issues affect the ability of the executive to take contrary action on the substantive matter decided by the referendum. Equally, a referendum concerning important social matters (by means of a bill) imposes limitations on parliament to legislate on the matter decided. Nonetheless, although referenda are binding in the sense described, they do not prevent the executive and parliament respectively to deal with issues that are peripheral to the substantive content of the referendum. Moreover, the executive and parliament may re-engage with the substantive issue already determined by a referendum, but this can only be justified if it is ‘in the benefit of the people” (Article 1(3) of the Constitution) and as long as it respects the Constitution and the rule of law.

It is beyond doubt, therefore, that referenda under Greek law are binding as to their substantive content. In the case at hand, because the question contained in the 5 July referendum concerned the adoption of international agreements and Greece’s fiscal sovereignty – and by extension the economic self-determination of the Greek people – it is best described as a referendum on crucial national matters. As a result, the overwhelming rejection of the two proposals (would-be-agreements) constrains the power of any post-referendum Greek government from entering into agreements with a similar content. Given that the debt for which such agreements are destined has been found to be odious, illegal and illegitimate – and moreover its social impact has been well documented – it is inconceivable that any circumvention of the referendum outcome can ever be “in the interests of the Greek people”.

The referendum was intended as a clear exercise of economic self-determination, both internal and international, which constitutes a rule of customary international law and jus cogens. The clear expression of almost 62 per cent of the Greek electorate body demonstrated its opposition to the contents of the aforementioned documents and by extension any future agreement containing their terms. The circumvention of the referendum’s outcome violates Article 44 of the Constitution and the rule of law and as a result does not bind successor governments because of its illegal nature. Moreover, because it also violates the collective right of self-determination it constitutes a violation of Greece’s treaty and customary obligations. The principle that agreements must be honoured (pacta sunt servanda) finds no application in the present instance because the underlying cause of action is illegal (i.e. constitutional violation).

In any event, one should also consider the moral dimension of an electorate outcome with a clear majority of 62 per cent. It is inconceivable that a government can lightly reject the outcome of such a popular vote and that subsequently other states and intergovernmental organizations can enter into agreements that are wholly antithetical to such a popular vote. Such agreements are no doubt illegitimate and lack any moral foundation.

The Post-Referendum MoU and Loan Agreement

On 19 August 2015 the Greek government signed the aforementioned MoU with the EU Commission and the ESM, followed by a Financial Assistance Facility Agreement [loan agreement] a little later. The agreements envisaged the disbursement of 86 billion Euros to Greece, of which more than 25 billion was earmarked for the re-capitalisation of Greek private banks.

On paper only, the MoU addresses several social issues, such as social welfare nets, justice, labour incentives, access to healthcare and others, but the actions by which these are to be implemented are vague or non-existent. It is only tax, privatisation and revenue-collecting measures that are discussed in detail. Without a concrete proposal that tackles debt sustainability while at the same time truly promoting foreign and domestic direct investment (which will lead to meaningful job creation) all the aforementioned safety nets are merely hortatory and hollow promises. Below it is shown that, in fact, several user fees are imposed on all or most social services (including healthcare), as well as new taxes on trade and commerce, all of which will inhibit inward investment, while at the same time making services more expensive. Hence, the impact on socio-economic rights will be detrimental for the middle class (at the very least), the youth and unemployed. The same detrimental effect on fundamental human rights will continue unabated as debt repayment is the only focal point and objective in the MoU and the loan agreement.

The MoU, which is more concerned with policies as compared to the loan agreement, gives no real substance to even its hortatory promises on social issues. None of these is envisaged as justiciable rights, but rather as contractually agreed terms between two sovereigns, namely a debtor and several creditors. This observation is significant even though it may seem that the two outcomes are identical. For example, the MoU stipulates that a user fee of 5 euros for admission to public hospitals may be re-introduced. Although such a fee may ultimately be waived for the ultra-poor, this may not be the case for those with some (meager) income but who are unable to otherwise afford the fee, thus denying them the right to healthcare. Such persons cannot challenge the hospital fee as their right to healthcare under the MoU and subsequent agreements will have been eliminated. Hence, the rights that the Greek people enjoyed under the Constitution and international law are rendered non-justiciable and subject to the terms of loan agreements. A person will be entitled to the contents of a fundamental right (not the right itself) only if the terms of the MoU or loan agreement permit. This state of affairs constitutes an unprecedented violation of fundamental rights.

The MoU makes a number of other hollow promises with a view to communicating its content to the Greek people. It promises 50,000 new jobs while at the same time making investment and trade unprofitable and without specifying even in the slightest where and how these jobs are to materialize and without elaborating how Greece is to boost employment. There is absolutely no provision for enhancing the Greek economy in such a way that it can create jobs. By way of illustration, there is no plan for boosting particular industries through R&D, developing the tourist industry, or for attracting employment-boosting investment. In fact, the MoU imposes measures that are not conducive to serious, long-term, investment. Hence, there is nothing in the agreements promising to enhance Greece’s investment or business environment or otherwise boost consumerism, which in turn would spur confidence in the internal market and lead to some job creation.

Furthermore, the third MoU is based on the same hypotheses and postulates as the first two previous MoU. Therefore it is destined to fail, leaving the debt unsustainable. See the annex “The third memorandum is unsustainable just like the previous two”.

The MoU is also silent on the odious, illegal and illegitimate nature of the Greek debt as a whole (particularly the conversion of private into public debt), as well as the odious, illegal and illegitimate nature of the loans disbursed to Greece since 2010, which were used almost entirely (almost 92 per cent) in order to repay capital and interest to creditors. In fact, the 2015 MoU and loan agreement are an extension of these previous odious loan agreements (advanced by the same creditors) and hence it is not surprising that no reference to the nature of the Greek debt is made. Given that the debt and all of the 2010-2014 loan agreements have been found to be odious, illegal and illegitimate, any subsequent loan agreement that is predicated on these (while ignoring their illegal character) is itself also odious, illegal and illegitimate.

Coercion, Unlawful Coercive Measures and Direct Interference in the Domestic Affairs of Greece

In its June 2015 preliminary report the Debt Truth Committee pointed out that the majority of debt instruments entered into by Greece between 2010-2014 had encompassed a large degree of coercion. Indeed, it was demonstrated that where a state is coerced into violating its constitutional, treaty and customary obligations in order to secure credit and liquidity, especially where it is forced to forego a significant part of its legislative and socio-economic sovereignty, such a state is deemed as having consented under a high degree of coercion. It was explained in the preliminary report (at page 59-60) that the term “coercion” under Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) may be construed as including also forms of economic coercion and should not necessarily be limited to armed force. The report provides ample references to several instruments whereby economic pressure is viewed as a form of aggression. Moreover, it was explained in the preliminary report that the aforementioned type of economic coercion also qualifies as unlawful intervention in the domestic affairs of a state, which, although does not invalidate consent, may nonetheless offer a basis for denouncing a treaty under Article 56(1) VCLT.

Principle 4 of the 2015 UN General Assembly resolution outlining several customary principles on sovereign debt restructuring, which is discussed below, requires that all actors involved refrain from exercising any undue influence in the process. It is clear that no part of the negotiations were concluded in good faith and that undue influence was exercised from the outset against the Greek government and the Greek economy as a whole. Undue influence was also imposed against the Greek people in the run up to the January 2015 elections and up until the referendum. |1| It should be stated that the rejection by the Greek government and its creditors of the overwhelming referendum result constitutes undue influence in the people’s constitutional prerogative to choose their financial future and is itself illegitimate and contrary to the rule of law (principle 7).

Since February 2015, following the ascent to power of SYRIZA, the forms of coercion and intervention were mostly direct and threats were not limited to the government but also to the Greek people. This manifested itself in numerous ways and we shall limit our reference here to only a few.

On 27^th June, the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, announces a referendum concerning the creditors’ ’unbearable’ austerity demands. In a speech on national television after a late night cabinet meeting on Friday, Alexis Tsipras said that the Greek people would vote on 5 July whether to accept conditions imposed by Greece’s three main creditors, the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary fund, known collectively as the Troika. On 29^th June Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of ECB, told the French financial daily Les Echos that “an exit from the euro zone, so far a theoretical issue, can unfortunately not be excluded any more“, adding that this was the consequence of Athens’ decision to end the talks. Benoît Cœuré said that if Greeks vote ”Yes“ in the referendum for the aid package, he had ”no doubt“ euro zone authorities will find ways to meet commitments towards Greece. Alternatively, he pointed out, if the ”No“ vote wins, ”it would be very difficult to resume political dialogue”, he said. |2| During this time the ECB refused any liquidity assistance to Greece for an entire week.

On 3 July 2015, ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio said he could not say whether the ECB would provide emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) to Greek banks if Greeks vote ’No’ in a referendum on Sunday. Asked if the ECB would grant the assistance that Greek banks need to stay afloat, Constancio said: “I cannot in advance answer that question.””It will be a decision by the (ECB) Governing Council. We will have to wait and see how the Governing Council as a whole will analyse the situation”, he told a news conference following a speech to a financial conference. |3| On 11 July, a few days after the overwhelming No vote, the German finance ministry paper said: “These proposals cannot build the basis for a completely new, three-year [bailout] programme, as requested by Greece.” This was a reference to the new fiscal austerity proposals suggested by the Greek Prime Minister. It called for Greece to be expelled from the Eurozone for a minimum of five years and demanded that the Greek government transfer €50bn of state assets to an external agency for sell-off. |4|

The stance of the ECB and its financial coercion of Greece and its people was not only direct but wholly unveiled and extremely hostile. During this time EU officials and government officials, such as Wolfgang Schauble, made the point that Greece will be led to a humanitarian crisis with tanks being rolled on the streets should the electorate choose to vote No in the referendum, thus intimating that Greece was destined to a complete breakdown. |5| The decision of the ECB to limit the provision of additional liquidity to the Greek banking system, which effectively brought about the imposition of capital controls, contravened its mandate and core responsibilities. Given that the ECB had deemed Greek banks solvent in the stress tests conducted in 2014 it was under an obligation to provide Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) in order to stem the bank run as long as these banks could post collateral in line with its regulations. At the moment the ECB capped the ELA it is estimated that Greek banks could have accessed up to an additional 28 billion euros in emergency funding. |6| The ECB clearly breached its obligations under the EU treaties. Firstly, the disruption imposed upon the payments system of Greece is in clear violation of its obligation to ensure the smooth operation of said system as prescribed in Article 127 of the EU Treaty. Secondly, the ECB has the mandate to “support the general economic policies in the Union with a view to contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the Union”. One of those economic policies is the “imperative to break the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns”. |7| By forcing the closure of the banks and pushing the country close to a de facto and illegal exit from the Euro, the ECB created a situation in which the Greek state and its banks became even more intertwined.

On 13 July Alexis Tsipras accepts the creditors’ austerity deal and agrees on the terms of a third MoU. On 19^th August Alexis Tsipras signs the Third MoU. On 14^th September in an interview to Reuters, Vitor Constancio replied to the question: “What doubts were raised about the euro?”

“It raised doubts for the markets that countries like Greece could cope with the challenges of monetary union. There was never any doubt among the majority of member countries. We maintain that the euro is irreversible. Legally, no country can be expelled. The actual prospect of that happening was never for real.” |8|

It is also telling that following the referendum, in the crucial discussion before the UN General Assembly concerning a resolution on sovereign debt restructuring, which is discussed below, Greece abstained from voting. Such a political stance is inconceivable given that the substance of the resolution was of the utmost national importance for an indebted country such as Greece (and the terms of the resolution were favorable). Despite the EU common position on this matter, |9| there is a clear conflict of interest between Greece and other EU states, given that Greece is a debtor and its other partners are creditors. The EU common position effectively demanded that member states vote against the resolution, or that at the very least cast a vote of abstention, which has the same legal effect. Hence, Greece’s position on this matter can only be the result of pressure from its creditors as its abstention is wholly against national interests.

Direct statements against the NO vote and the calamities that would befall the Greek people were moreover made by powerful officials of the EU, in clear defiance of democracy and democratic principles. Illustrative examples are those of the President of the EU Parliament, Martin Schultz. No doubt, the coercion described in this section was aided by a large part of the Greek press, which went as far as distort predictions as to the outcome of the referendum. Several polls predicted that the YES vote prevailed. Such a result could not have possibly been retrieved from the available data at the time.

All of the above were designed and meant to instill fear in the Greek people and hence to sway their vote in favor of the YES option and additionally to coerce the Greek government into accepting the terms of its creditors.

Indicative Outcomes from Acceptance of Third MoU

The Third MoU is in line with its predecessors. It continues to violate fundamental human rights, while at the same time crippling the Greek economy and providing no incentives or platform for growth, investment and enhancement of trade. Its aim is to collect even more taxes and raise revenues in order to continue repaying Greece’s “debt” without any reference to debt reduction with a view to serious debt sustainability. The MoU calls for greater privatization which is contrary to economic self-determination and without a serious plan risks dissipating and under-selling profitable businesses and creating more joblessness.

Greece has effectively lost its sovereignty in the same manner as the previous agreements. Any bill that comes through parliament must receive the approval of the creditors before being adopted. Such restrictions on legislative sovereignty can only culminate in an absence of democracy and the imposition of subservience and colonialism. It is instructive that upon reaching agreement with its creditors, the SYRIZA government adopted a series of laws which the creditors had long demanded. One illustrative example is the adoption of a new Code of Civil Procedure. Many of the provisions of this new Code had been rejected by 93 per cent of the legal profession (lawyers and judges) and had been resisted by previous parliaments. Astonishingly, the new Code envisages that where an entity is insolvent or otherwise unable or unwilling to satisfy its creditors, private banks will always carry the status of preferential creditors, above and beyond the State! This outcome is alien to Greek constitutional, administrative and civil law and is no doubt the result of intense pressure by Greece’s creditors.

Social implications of 3^rd Memorandum

The third MoU that accompanies the August 2015 loan agreement, just like the previous ones in 2010 and 2012, transfers the weight of structural adjustment to Greek society. As a result, the third MoU will increase poverty, class polarization and social exclusion. It is telling that while creditor demands envisage to broaden the tax base, tackle tax avoidance, etc, at the same time they seek to eliminate a 26% withholding tax on cross border transactions. This was set to come into operation on 1 September 2015 with the aim of halting a very common source of tax avoidance, under the guise that this would enhance the free movement of capital.

In addition, the economic terms of the third MoU and the August 2015 loan agreement will further undermine the sovereign rights of Greece.

Source: Assessment of the Social Impact of the new Stability Support Programme for Greece, Commission Staff Working Document, Brussels 19.8.2015, SWD(2015) 162 final

It is beyond doubt that the new austerity measures, among many other consequences:

– Reduces pensions in line with the measures implemented through the anti-pension reforms of 2010 and 2012 under the promise to save around 0.25% of GDP in 2015 and 1% of GDP by 2016. The package, inter alia, creates strong disincentives for increasing early retirement penalties; raises health-related contributions of pensioners to 6%; integrates all supplementary pensions funds which henceforth will be financed exclusively by personal contributions by 1 January 2015; freezes monthly guaranteed contribution pension limits in nominal terms until 2021; establishes a closer link between contributions and benefits; phases out the solidarity grant (EKAS) for all pensioners by end-December 2019, starting with the top 20% of beneficiaries in March 2016.

– Increases taxation on farmers. The squeeze on farmers’ income will be derived in the following forms: Firstly, with the gradual abolition of excise tax refund on diesel oil in two equal steps in October 2015 and October 2016. Secondly, through the increase of direct taxation and, thirdly, by means of increasing social security contributions.

– Phases out progressively, by 31 December 2016, VAT discounts currently available to businesses on the Aegean islands. The first round of abolition will be announced by a joint ministerial decision by 1.10.2015. The aim of the exemption was to decrease consumer prices in distant and not easily reachable islands and hence to achieve regional coherence.

– Eases attachment and garnishment processes in favor of tax authorities and banks. This is to be achieved through the elimination of the existing 25% ceiling for the attachment/seizure of wages and pensions and by lowering all thresholds of 1.500 euros. This measure will trigger a new wave of seizures on wages, pensions and deposits.

– Increases the advance corporate income tax not only for large enterprises, but even for the self-employed up to 75% for incomes in 2015 and 100% for 2016 incomes, thus further reducing available income.

– Imposes a new round of market liberalization under the instructions of the OECD’s so-called toolkit. The only beneficiaries from the opening of the (now) restricted professions of notaries, actuaries and bailiffs will be banks, law firms and big employers. There will be negative impacts upon working class rights, including the revision of the framework of collective bargaining and wage setting, industrial action and collective dismissals. The further flexibility of labor relations (as the experience of the previous years has shown) will culminate in even lower wages and increase in unemployment, precariousness, undeclared work and non-taxable profits.

Furthermore, quasi-automatic correction mechanisms that will impose new spending cuts in cases of failure to achieve their stated fiscal aims, will undoubtedly bring about a new wave of austerity measures. These measures despite being unknown until now have the pre-approval of the Greek parliament. This was adopted by parliament through a monster-size law that was demanded by Greece’s creditors and ultimately accepted by the government. One may easily predict that under such favorable conditions, creditors need not worry about the failure of their fiscal targets. As a result, it is more likely than not that they will announce a new round of spending cuts on the ground that such measures have already been approved by parliament.

By way of conclusion, the period of draconian austerity measures introduced in 2010, and which is depicted in the following statistics, continues …

Source: Ibid.

CONCLUSION

In the recent UN General Assembly resolution on sovereign debt restructuring, |10| several principles were laid down. These are important for several reasons. Despite the fact that UN General Assembly resolutions are not binding per se, they evince, where there is sufficient support, the official position of states on a particular matter. Where support is overwhelming, sustained and over a significant time (or where the practice supported in the resolution satisfies these criteria) the principle(s) in the resolution may in time reflect customary international law. In the case at hand, the resolution received 136 votes in favour, only 6 against and 41 abstentions. The Assembly made it clear that the principles enunciated in the resolution were guided by customary international law and in any event, the overwhelming support of these principles by 136 states demonstrates a clear customary consensus. It should be pointed out that the principles are rather conservative and not at all in favour of sovereign borrowers. Their emphasis is on debt repayment and honouring of loan agreements. The first principle, which is central to this discussion, states that:

“A Sovereign State has the right, in the exercise of its discretion, to design its macroeconomic policy, including restructuring its sovereign debt, which should not be frustrated or impeded by any abusive measures”.

This is also consistent with the UN Guiding Principles on Foreign Debt and Human Rights, adopted by the UN Independent Expert on debt and human rights and endorsed by the Human Rights Council. |11| In equal measure, principle 2 requires good faith by the parties with a view to achieving durable debt servicing and sustainability. |12| Sustainability in principle 8 is defined as follows:

“Sustainability implies that sovereign debt restructuring workouts are completed in a timely and efficient manner and lead to a stable debt situation in the debtor State, preserving at the outset creditors’ rights while promoting sustained and inclusive economic growth and sustainable development, minimizing economic and social costs, warranting the stability of the international financial system and respecting human rights.” |13|

Based on the aforementioned discussion and the pertinent law applicable to the facts of the case, the following conclusions are beyond any doubt evident:

– the Third MoU and August 2015 loan agreement is illegal, illegitimate and odious because it fails to recognize the illegal, illegitimate and odious character of Greece’s existing debt, as well as the odious, illegal and illegitimate nature of the instruments by which this debt was financed from 2009 until early 2015.

– the Third MoU and August 2015 loan agreement violates the fundamental human rights of the Greek people (both civil and political as well as socio-economic rights) as these are set out in the Greek Constitution and international law (treaty-based and customary).

– Since the ascent to power of the SYRIZA government until its political agreement with Greece’s creditors, there was an unprecedented level of coercion and direct interference in Greece’s domestic affairs (including threats against the Greek people) with a view to scaring the Greek government and its people in order to accept the terms of the creditors. Such interference and coercion render any agreements invalid and open to unilateral denunciation by future governments. Moreover, such actions evince an absence of moral fibre and solidarity from the leaders of EU states and EU institutions and demonstrate that the wellbeing of the private banking system is the greatest imperative in EU policy

The Committee would like to express its deep regret that the Tsipras government took no consideration whatsoever of the outcomes of the Committee’s preliminary report in its negotiations with the creditors. In fact, Prime Minister Tsipras agreed that no haircut to the debt would take place despite being fully aware of the odious, illegal and illegitimate character of the country’s debt. |14|

In PDF version with two extra annexes :
– Introduction (p.5)
– The Binding Nature of the Referendum (p.6)
– The Post-Referendum MoU and Loan Agreement (p.8)
– Coercion, Unlawful Coercive Measures and Direct Interference in the Domestic Affairs of Greece (p.10)
– Indicative Outcomes deriving from the Acceptance of the Third MoU (p.12)
– Social Implications of the Third Memorandum (p.13)
– Conclusion (p.15)
– Annex 1 : Impact on Labour Relations (p.16)
– Annex 2 : The third memorandum is unsustainable just like the previous two (p.17)

Illegitimacy, Illegality, Odiousness and Unsustainability of the August 2015 MoU and Loan Agreements

 

Notes

|1| http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/29/greek-crisis-referendum-eurozone-vote-germany-france-italy

|2| http://www.lesechos.fr/monde/europe/021174193580-benoit-coeure-bce-la-sortie-de-la-grece-de-leuro-ne-peut-plus-etre-exclue-1132860.php

|3| http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/29/eurozone-greece-coeure-idUSL5N0ZF4VU20150629

|4| http://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2015/jul/11/greek-debt-crisis-eurozone-creditors-meet-to-decide-countrys-fate

|5| http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-19/streets-athens-will-fill-tanks-kathimerini-reveals-grexit-black-book-shocker

|6| Barclays Research (2015). Greece’s Achilles’ Heel.

|7| Council of the EU (2012), Euro Area Summit Statement of 29 June 2012.

|8| https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2015/html/sp150916.en.html

|9| EU Common Position on the UN Draft Resolution A/69/L.84, Doc 11705/15 (7 September 2015).

|10| UN Doc A/69/L.84 (29 July 2015).

|11| UN Guiding Principles on Foreign Debt and Human Rights, UN Doc A/HRC/20/23 (10 April 2011), paras 73-75.

|12| UN Guiding Principles, para 54

|13| Equally endorsed in the UN Guiding Principles, paras 48 and 65.

|14| Euro Summit Statement, 12 July 2015, at 6.

The most unedifying spectacle since Russia’s full-blooded attempt to change the tide of conflict in Bashar al-Assad’s favour has been the lexical scrounging on the part of Western governments. They are on the hunt for excuses what, exactly, they are defending, let alone protecting.

There is little doubt that no intervention would be the best sort of intervention in Syria.  That tends to be the rule for most countries where sectarian, brutal conflict takes place.  Secular religions such as humanitarian intervention, or regime change in the name of human security, are no less dangerous than fanatics who have also resolved all contradictions in life.

Goodness at the end of a gun tends to end rather badly.  But many sides with an ideological and religious gripe sees fit to have a stab in the Syrian conflict, the country has become a bazaar of contending, ultra violent factions.

In this bazaar, efforts are being made to locate fighters to ennoble.  The United States has money, in literal and moral senses, riding on CIA trained elements who have tended to be better capitulators than fighters.  The extremes in this conflict tend to be attracting poles, magnetically drawing in all who consider themselves moderate.  Whether it is the al-Qaida branch formations, or those that Russia seems to be mainly targeting – Jaesh al-Islam, or ISIS itself, recruits will find their way into the ranks.

Efforts being made by Washington, Paris and London on this score have not been yielding worthy fruit.  Weapons are being surrendered to such groups as Jabhat al-Nusra, a notable incident of which involved the Pentagon-trained Division 30 in northern Aleppo. Designated a “moderate” faction, its fighters stemmed from the poorly directed US-led training program in Turkey.[1]

In September, one Abu Fahd al-Tunisi, a member of Jabhat al-Nusra, tweeted with glee that “the new group from Division 30 that entered yesterday hands over all its weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra after being granted safe passage.”  In no uncertain terms, this constituted, a “strong slap for America”.

The 70 graduates of the Syria “train and equip” program did not end up being particularly stellar, a few of whom were captured and executed, and the rest generally joining other factions.  The program, and its students, flunked.

Throughout, the entire effort has been plagued by inadequate resources and a daring effort to kidnap one of its commanders, Colonel Nadim al-Hassan, and several of his companions.  A contemptuously daring effort against Division 30’s headquarters by the Nusra Front left five dead and 18 others wounded. A statement from Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad al-Dhaher spoke of insufficient supplies, trainees and fighters, claiming that there was “a lack of accuracy and method in the selection of Division 30’s cadres.”  Such is the outcome of the moderates in Syria.

They might have started with another one of its commander, Anas Ibrahim Obaid, who was more than willing to hand over US supplied weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra. As one of the latter’s members, Abu Khattab al-Maqdisi, observed, Division 30’s happily disgraced leader “promised to issue a statement… repudiating Division 30, the coalition and those who trained him.”

None of this swill of confusion seems to afflict the Russian effort.  Convinced that Assad’s regime is worth fighting for, the Kremlin has its own war to fight against those it regards as extremists.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov illustrates the broad nature of the program, which is an internalised version of Moscow’s targeting of fundamentalism within its borders: “We have attacked targets from ISIS and other targets.  We attack all Islamic terrorist groups, not just ISIS.”

In one fundamental sense, the battle is focused on such fighters as battle hardened Chechens who may become the very imported Islamists that governments from the US to Australia have feared.  As with campaigns waged in Chechnya, we can forget the softening role of humanitarian law in such missions.

There is one area that is thriving.  The weapons trade is flourishing, and some US members of Congress, in moments when reason has truly taken a long holiday, think it wise to add to it.  To sell or supply such weapons demands the brand label of moderate to pass muster – the humanitarians in Washington need justifications for murder.  The advertising front man for such false solutions is Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) who believes Russia to be but a gas station masquerading as a real country.[2]

McCain’s untidy reasoning on the Russian entry into the conflict serves to illustrate that wonderfully Hegelian view that history holds no lessons that we can truly learn, since we are bound not to learn anything from it anyway.  A few points towards this end reared up in an interview with Fox News on September 30.  The first is the suggestion that the Free Syrian Army, clearly defined, and irrefutably “moderate”, has been a target of Russian missiles in Homs.  This is odd, given that much of it has seemingly melted.

The second is even more dramatic and instructive.  If, asked the interviewer, Russian planes were “attacking the very guys who we want to see topple Assad [would you] let American planes just pass them and let them do that?”

The response was out of the top drawer of the musty archive of CIA-orchestrated blowback, garnished with Cold War trimmings.  “No, but I might do what we did in Afghanistan many years ago, to give those guys the ability to shoot down those plans.  That equipment is available.”[3]  Those guys, McCain clarified, were the Free Syrian Army, brought back to life as modernised Afghans who “shot down Russian planes after Russia invaded Afghanistan.”

That equipment, supplied in impulse, without a care about cultural or historical circumstance, can just as easily be used against US-led coalition aircraft, a feature that should not have gone unnoticed from the Afghanistan invasion in 2001.  The Taliban, bankrolled by US funds and its armoury, were ever so happy to repay their loans in using weapons, and resources, availed to them courtesy of Washington’s Cold War gambles.  So much, in such cases, for moderate assessments in a war that, by its very nature, repudiates moderation.  Sponsors of revolutions and violence eventually get their due.

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

Notes:

Once again, Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s person is serving as a front to help legitimize Haiti’s pillage by the international community. On September 29 and 30, while a group of more than 15 Haitian political parties organized a series of forums to discuss the debacle of the Haitian elections and conclude that they should be annulled, the Fanmi Lavalas party organized a conflicting series of activities that culminated with Mr. Aristide’s first appearance in four years.

After all the Haitian protests, all the poor who paid with their lives for their calls for Mr. Aristide’s return, he has kept silent during the four years since he came back to Haiti, but he found it appropriate to appear in public for the first time to support the presidential candidacy of Maryse Narcisse in the elections. According to Radio Kiskeya, Mme Narcisse is not only a former Minister of Public Health but also a former employee of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Haiti has been entirely without a government since Michel Martelly replaced, by presidential decree, every elected local judge and executive (governor, mayor, police commissioner, etc.) with his own appointees starting in 2012, and he allowed the parliament to expire on January 12, 2015 by failing to hold two rounds of elections. The current project for Haiti, which is certainly impossible, is to elect all of its government, federal and local, in slightly more than four months, specifically between August 9 and December 27, 2015.

So far, the elections have been a disaster. I have related the details of this elsewhere and will only mention here that the first-round legislative elections on August 9 excluded several major cities. Even by official estimates, this exercise drew no more than 8 percent of the electorate in the greater Port-au-Prince area, where about 40 percent of the population lives. In the end, only 8 out 119 candidates for the Lower House and 2 out 20 candidates for the Senate were elected. Most of these individuals were connected to either Michel Martelly’s party or the coup government that had succeeded Aristide’s removal in 2004. The unofficial estimates are much worse.

Haiti’s presidential candidates have paraded themselves in the US and Haiti as if the position of President of the Republic is the only one being filled. It is important to keep in mind that on October 25 the country is expected to hold, not only the first round of its presidential elections but also the second round of its legislative elections and its municipal elections, all of which are certain to be disastrous.

The risk that the mess in Haiti might explode into a major revolt during Hillary Clinton’s election campaign is so high that it has led the US State Department to take a quite active interest in recent weeks in the Haitian elections. Presidential candidates have debated each other at George Washington University, as if the State Department and Haitian diaspora would elect them. Secretary of State John Kerry has held an audience in Washington DC with Evans Paul, whom Martelly decreed last December 25 to be prime minister, almost as a Christmas gift to the US; Kerry is scheduled to visit Haiti on October 6. Kenneth Merten, who was deputy secretary to Hillary Clinton, while she was secretary of state, and the US ambassador to Haiti during the 2010 elections, has returned, presumably to teach Haitians another lesson on democracy.

It is ironic that the United States, which continued to be a slave-owning country for 59 years after Haiti became a republic of self-emancipated slaves, can pretend to instruct Haitians in matters pertaining to democracy and human rights. Haitians understand the profound insult of these sham elections to their aspirations for a democratic society. An Interim Electoral Council (Conseil Electoral Provisoire, CEP) is in charge of the elections, which have cost more than $50 million. This council is financed by the international community via the United Nations, and it is considered by most Haitians to be corrupt. It has rejected more than 30 percent of the candidates for the Lower House without explanation, and its methods of vote tabulation have been less than transparent.

At least 15 major political parties want the CEP to be dissolved and replaced by a transitional government that can properly conduct the elections. CEP Member Nehemy Joseph resigned his post on October 2 and wrote that his respect for the law and regard for each citizen’s vote had brought him to do so. Many Haitians have tired of marching with posters. Unlike the George Washington University affair, attempts to hold a charade of a presidential debate at Haiti’s National University (University d’Etat d’Haiti, UEH) on September 29 were disrupted by students who required that the candidates “demonstrate a requisite minimum of morality and honesty.” At least one presidential rally has been scattered by gunmen. One CEP employee, Wilkenson Bazile, was shot to death on July 5, and a CEP Member, Vijonet Demero, had his home riddled with bullets during the night of September 29.

By contrast, the CEP has the enthusiastic support of Haiti’s handful of wealthy families. According to Le Nouvelliste, Reginald Boulos has said: “I’m going to shock the world, but I believe that this CEP is still one of the best CEPs that we have had. We forget, we forget. We forget the CEP of 2010, and the CEP of 2000. We forget so many things…. We estimate that the October 25 elections will take place…. There will be greater participation, and we will move toward the transfer of power from an elected president to another elected president….” Gregory Brandt had this to add: “The process is flawed. Adjustments are being made. They are necessary…. Let the campaign proceed, let the people choose their president on October 25.”

The president has already been chosen, and it is certain to be Mme Narcisse. The zeal with which the mainstream US media has reported the involvement of Aristide in the elections to support Narcisse suggests that his participation was staged. In his appearance by the gate of his house, Aristide looked imprisoned. His speech was reported by the Associated Press and Agence France Press earlier than any Haitian newspaper. In fact, it was reported by Fox News earlier than anyone. It is disappointing to think that Aristide and Narcisse are part of a subterfuge to persuade the world, particularly the US, that Haiti’s elections are legitimate. This is far from the truth.

It appears that Mr. Aristide can be switched off and on by the US at any time. This has happened before, when he disappeared abroad for years and then was brought back by Bill Clinton. Without the capital of knowledge from his most nationalistic partisans and financial supporters, including people like Antoine Izmery, all of whom have been killed, Aristide has become nothing more than a symbol of the Haitian poor’s failed attempt to retake Haiti by drafting a new Constitution in 1987 and hijacking the presidential elections of 1990. After the 1991 coup, he was returned to Haiti in 1994 in a plexiglass box and kept under guard while Clinton initiated a sale of the country, firstly to his Arkansas backers. Aristide was there to break the ground at the inauguration of Clinton’s first sweatshop in Haiti; he was there too when the tariffs were reduced on rice imports and the country was flooded with subsidized Arkansas rice to destroy Haiti’s agriculture. For decades, he has been there whenever the appeasement of the population and a façade of legitimacy have been needed by those who were set on robbing Haiti. Aristide has the affection and backing of the Haitian poor, who still regard him as being the only major political figure who has spoken for them since Dumarsais Estime in the 1940s. But in his golden cage, and without his most resourceful supporters, Mr. Aristide is nothing but a hollow shell of his former self. It is time for Haitians to stop putting their hopes and dreams into providential men and women.

For more from Dady Chery on the Haitian elections, read We Have Dared to be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation, available as a paperback from Amazon and e-book from Kindle.

Notes

News Junkie Post 

Publicado en 2011

Estados Unidos y la OTAN están apoyando una insurrección armada en el Este de Libia, tratando de justificar su intervención como “intervención humanitaria”.

Este no es un movimiento de protesta no violento como en Egipto y en Túnez. Las condiciones en Libia son completamente diferentes. La insurgencia armada en el Este de Libia está directamente apoyada por potencias extranjeras. La insurrección en Bengasi enarboló inmediatamente la bandera roja, negra y verde con la media luna y la estrella: la bandera de la monarquía del Rey Idris, que simbolizaba el dominio de los antiguos poderes coloniales. (Véase Manlio Dinucci: “Libya-When historial memory is erased”, Global Research, 28 febrero 2011).

Las fuerzas especiales y los asesores de la OTAN están ya sobre el terreno. La operación se planeó para hacerla coincidir con el movimiento de protesta en los países árabes vecinos, haciéndosele creer a la opinión pública que el movimiento de protesta se había extendido de forma espontánea a Libia desde Túnez y Egipto.

La administración de Obama, en consultas con sus aliados, está propiciando una rebelión armada, es decir, un intento de golpe de estado:

“La administración Obama está preparada para ofrecer “cualquier tipo de ayuda” a los libios que tratan de derrocar a Moammar Gadafi. Estamos tendiendo la mano a muchos libios que están intentando organizarse en el este, y cuando la revolución se extienda hacia el oeste, también allí”, dijo la Secretaria de Estado Hillary Clinton el 27 de febrero. “Creo que es demasiado pronto para poder decir cómo se va a desarrollar la situación, pero vamos a estar preparados para ofrecer cualquier tipo de ayuda que cualquiera pueda necesitar de Estados Unidos”. Se están llevando a cabo esfuerzos para formar un gobierno provisional en la parte oriental del país, donde empezó la rebelión a mediados del pasado mes.

EEUU amenaza con adoptar más medidas contra el gobierno de Gadafi, pero no dijo cuáles eran ni cuándo iban a anunciarse, según Clinton.

“EEUU debería reconocer al gobierno provisional que se está ya tratando de instaurar” [McCain].

Lieberman se despachó en términos similares, instando a proporcionar “apoyo tangible, una zona de exclusión aérea, reconocimiento del gobierno revolucionario y prestar apoyo a los ciudadanos con ayuda humanitaria, aunque yo les proporcionaría armas”.

(“Clinton: US Ready to aid to Libyan opposition”, Associated Press, 27 febrero 2011, énfasis añadido).

La planeada invasion

EEUU y la OTAN están ahora considerando una invasión militar de sus fuerzas bajo un “mandato humanitario”.

EEUU está enviando fuerzas navales y aéreas a la región en preparación de todas las opciones posibles en el enfrentamiento con Libia”, anunció el 1 de marzo el portavoz del Pentágono, Coronel Dave Lapan del cuerpo de marines. Dijo después que “fue el Presidente Obama el que pidió al ejército que se preparase para esas opciones ‘porque la situación en Libia iba a peor’” (Manlio Dinucci, “Operation Libya: The Pentagon is “Repositioning” its Naval and Air Forces…, Global Research, 3 marzo de 2011, énfasis añadido)

El objeto real de la “Operación Libia” no es establecer la democracia sino tomar posesión de las reservas de petróleo de Libia, desestabilizar la National Oil Corporation (NOC) y, finalmente, privatizar la industria petrolera del país, es decir, transferir el control y propiedad de la riqueza petrolera de Libia a manos extranjeras. La National Oil Corporation se sitúa en el puesto 25 entre las 100 compañías petroleras más importantes del mundo. (“The Energy Intelligence ranks NOC 25 among the world’s Top 100 companies”, Libyaonline.com.)

Libia está entre las mayores economías petroleras del mundo, con aproximadamente el 3,5% de las reservas globales de petróleo, más de dos veces las de EEUU (para más detalles, véase en breve la parte II de este artículo, que se llamará: “Operación Libia” y la batalla por el petróleo).

La planificada invasión de Libia, que está ya en marcha, forma parte de la más amplia “Batalla por el Petróleo”. Cerca del 80% de las reservas de petróleo de Libia se localizan en la meseta del Golfo de Sirte, al este de Libia. (Véase mapa al final)

Los supuestos estratégicos tras la “Operación Libia” son reminiscencia de las anteriores empresas militares de EEUU y la OTAN en Yugoslavia e Iraq.

En Yugoslavia, las fuerzas de EEUU y la OTAN desencadenaron una guerra civil. El objetivo era crear divisiones étnicas y políticas que finalmente llevaron al desmembramiento de todo un país. Ese objetivo se consiguió mediante la financiación y entrenamiento secretos de ejércitos paramilitares armados, primero en Bosnia (Ejército Musulmán Bosnio, 1991-95) y seguidamente en Kosovo (Ejército de Liberación de Kosovo -KLA, por sus siglas en inglés-, 1998-99). Tanto en Kosovo como en Bosnia, la desinformación llevada a cabo por los medios (incluyendo mentiras e invenciones) se utilizaron para apoyar las proclamas de EEUU y la UE de que el gobierno de Belgrado había cometido atrocidades, justificando así una intervención militar en función de razones humanitarias.

Irónicamente, la “Operación Yugoslavia” está ahora en labios de los políticos estadounidenses: el Senador Lieberman ha “comparado la situación en Libia con los acontecimientos en los Balcanes en la década de 1990, cuando dijo que EEUU ‘había intervenido para detener un genocidio contra los bosnios’. Y lo primero que hicimos fue proporcionarles armas para que se defendieran. Esto es lo que creo que deberíamos hacer en Libia”. (“Clinton: US Ready to aid to Libyan opposition”, Associated Press, 27 febrero 2011, énfasis añadido).

Esta opción está en marcha ya. La invasión de Libia ha dado comienzo.

“Cientos de asesores militares estadounidenses, británicos y franceses están ya en Cirenaica, la provincia separatista oriental de Libia… Los asesores, incluyendo oficiales de inteligencia, llegaron desde barcos de guerra y buques con misiles hasta las ciudades costeras de Bengasi y Tobruk” (DEBKAfile, “US military advisers in Cyrenaica”, 25 febrero 2011).

Las fuerzas especiales de EEUU y los aliados están sobre el terreno en el este de Libia, proporcionando apoyo secreto a los rebeldes. Esto se reconoció tras arrestarse a comandos de Fuerzas Especiales SAS británicas en la región de Bengasi. Estaban actuando como asesores militares de las fuerzas de oposición:

Ocho comandos de las fuerzas especiales británicas, en misión secreta e intentando poner en contacto a diplomáticos británicos con los principales opositores al Coronel Gadafi en Libia, acabaron humillados tras ser detenidos por fuerzas rebeldes al este de Libia”, informaba hoy el Sunday Times.

Los hombres, armados pero con ropas civilesl, afirmaron que estaban allí para examinar las necesidades de la oposición y ofrecer ayuda” (“Top UK comandos captures by rebel forces in Libya: Report”, Indian Express, 6 marzo 2011, énfasis añadido).

Las fuerzas de los SAS fueron arrestadas cuando escoltan a una “misión diplomática” británica que había entrado ilegalmente en el país (sin duda alguna desde un buque de guerra británico) para mantener conversaciones con los dirigentes de la rebelión. El Foreign Office británico admitió “haber enviado al este de Libia a un pequeño equipo para iniciar contactos con la oposición que apoya a los rebeldes”. (“UK diplomatic team leaves Libya”, World – CBC News, 6 marzo 2011).

Para colmo de ironías, las informaciones no sólo confirman la intervención militar occidental (incluyendo varios cientos de fuerzas especiales), sino que reconocen que la rebelión se opone firmemente a la presencia ilegal de tropas extranjeras sobre suelo libio:

La intervención de las SAS indignó a los dirigentes de la oposición libia que ordenaron que se encerrara a los soldados en una base militar. Los opositores a Gadafi temen que éste pueda utilizar cualquier prueba de interferencias militares occidentales para reunir apoyos patrióticos hacia su régimen. (Reuters, 6 marzo 2011).

El “diplomático” británico capturado con siete soldados de las fuerzas especiales era un miembro de la inteligencia británica, un agente del MI6 en “misión secreta” (The Sun, 7 marzo 2011).

Los comunicados de la OTAN han confirmado que estaban suministrando armas a las fuerzas de la oposición. Hay indicios, aunque no pruebas claras hasta ahora, de que se entregaron armas a los insurgentes antes de la embestida de los rebeldes. Es más que probable que también hubiera sobre el terreno asesores de inteligencia y del ejército de EEUU y la OTAN previamente a que los insurgentes dieran comienzo a su ofensiva. Esa fue la pauta aplicada en Kosovo: fuerzas especiales apoyando y entrenando al Ejército de Liberación de Kosovo en los meses anteriores a la campaña de bombardeos de 1999 y la invasión de Yugoslavia.

“La gran ofensiva lanzada por las fuerzas favorables de Gadafi [4 marzo] para arrancar el control de las ciudades y centros petroleros más importantes de Libia de manos rebeldes tuvo como consecuencia la recuperación de la ciudad clave de Zawiya y la mayoría de las ciudades petroleras por todo el Golfo de Sirte. En Washington y Londres, todo el parloteo acerca de una intervención militar al lado de la oposición libia se acalló al comprender que la inteligencia de campo a ambos lados del conflicto libio era demasiado superficial como para que pudiera servir de base para tomar decisiones.” (Debkafile, “Qaddafi pushes rebels back. Obama names Libya intel panel”, 5 marzo 2011, énfasis añadido).

El movimiento de oposición está firmemente dividido en cuanto a la cuestión de una intervención extranjera.

La división se da entre los movimientos de base, por un lado, y los “dirigentes” de la insurrección armada apoyados por EEUU, por otro, que están a favor de la intervención militar extranjera alegando “razones humanitarias”.

La mayor parte de la población libia, tanto los seguidores como los opositores al régimen, se opone firmemente a cualquier forma de intervención exterior.

Desinformación mediática

Los medios no están mencionando los amplios objetivos estratégicos que subyacen en la propuesta invasión. Tras una campaña mediática engañosa, donde se han estado fabricando literalmente las noticias sin informar sobre lo que realmente sucedía sobre el terreno, un gran sector de la opinión pública mundial ha otorgado su firme apoyo a la intervención extranjera por razones humanitarias.

La invasión está sobre la mesa de planes del Pentágono. Se está elaborando para llevarla a cabo sin tener en cuenta las demandas del pueblo de Libia, incluidos los opositores al régimen, que han expresado claramente su aversión ante una intervención militar extranjera en derogación de la soberanía de la nación.

Despliegue de fuerzas navales y aéreas

Si esta intervención militar se perpetrara, acarrearía una guerra a gran escala, un ataque relámpago, que implicaría bombardear objetivos militares y también civiles.

A este respecto, el General James Mattis, Comandante del Mando Central de EEUU (USCENTCOM), ha dado a entender que el establecimiento de una “zona de exclusión aérea” implicaría de facto una campaña de bombardeo a gran escala contra, entre otros objetivos, el sistema defensivo aéreo libio:

Sería una operación militar, no bastaría con decirle a la gente que no volasen aviones. ‘Habría que anular toda la capacidad de defensa aérea para establecer esa zona de exclusión aérea, pensar otra cosa es hacerse falsas ilusiones’.  (“U.S. general warns no-fly zone could lead to all-out war in Libya, Mail Online, 5 marzo 2011, énfasis agregado).

A lo largo de la línea costera libia se ha desplegado un potencial naval masivo estadounidense y aliado.

El Pentágono está trasladando sus buques de guerra hacia el Mediterráneo. El portaaviones USS Enterprise pasó por el Canal de Suez pocos días después de la insurrección (http://www.enterprise.navy.mil)

También están desplegados por el Mediterráneo buques de guerra anfibios estadounidenses: el USS Ponce y el USS Kearsarge.

Se ha enviado a 400 marines estadounidenses a la isla griega de Creta “antes de su despliegue en buques de guerra hacia Libia” (“Operation Libya”: US Marines on Crete for Lybian deployment, Times of Malta, 3 marzo 2011).

Mientras tanto, Alemania, Francia, Gran Bretaña, Canadá e Italia se preparan para desplegar navíos de guerra a lo largo de la costa libia.

Alemania ha desplegado tres buques de guerra pretextando que van a ayudar en la evacuación de los refugiados que se encuentran en la frontera entre Túnez y Libia. “Francia ha decidido enviar el Mistral, su buque-transporte de helicópteros, que, según su Ministerio de Defensa, contribuirá a evacuar a miles de egipcios”(“Towards the Coasts of Libya: US, French and British Warships Enter the Mediterranean”, Agenzia Giornalistica Italia, 3 marzo 2011). Canadá ha enviado (2 de marzo) la Fragata Naval HMCS Charlottetown.

Mientras tanto, la 17ª Fuerza Aérea estadounidense, denominada Fuerza Aérea EEUU para África, con sede en la Base de la Fuerza Aérea de Ramstein, Alemania, está ayudando en la evacuación de refugiados. Las instalaciones aéreas de EEUU y la OTAN en Gran Bretaña, Italia, Francia y Oriente Medio están a la espera.

Texto original en inglés :
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23548

Traducido del inglés para Rebelión por Sinfo Fernández

(Continuará en Parte II: La “Operación Libia” y la Batalla por el Petróleo)

Syria’s Ambassador to Russia Riad Haddad said that around 40 percent of Islamic State infrastructure in Syria has been destroyed since Russia began its military operation in the country.

Entrevista en La Havana, Cuba TV, Octubre de 2010

Ongoing Israeli instigated violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (along with intermittent Gaza bombings and cross-border incursions) is part of its longstanding ethnic cleansing policy. The objective: maximum Jews and minimum Arabs, remaining ones confined to isolated ghettoized bantustans on worthless scrubland.

Nothing this extreme would be happening without US approval.

What began in late July with settlers killing three Dawabsha family members by immolation, followed by violent Israeli rampaging through the Al-Aqsa Mosque shifted to intensified state terror throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, turning the entire territory into a battleground while Mahmoud Abbas and other PA officials do nothing to help defenseless Palestinians they’re sworn to serve and protect. Their inaction reflects complicity, collaboration with Israeli viciousness.

Where is world outrage? Why are Western and most regional leaders virtually silent in the face of ongoing Israeli atrocities?

They include murdering young children threatening no one, breaking into Palestinian homes pre-dawn, terrorizing families, traumatizing children, damaging property, arresting innocent people, killing and brutalizing at will – a devastating reign of terror on an entire population.

Israel is run by Arab-hating fascists, Zionist extremists and religious fundamentalist zealots – a police state rejecting rule of law principles, enforcing apartheid worse than South Africa’s version, allowed to get away with it because Washington approves.

One rogue state supports another, partnering in each other’s high crimes. Israel is no democracy. It’s a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses, Joel Kovel explains. Its Zionist ideology is a cancer harming Jews and non-Jews alike – a scourge on humanity.

More than ever, global BDS activism is needed. The most effective way to confront Israeli ruthlessness is economic – hitting it in the pocketbook where it hurts most, convincing growing numbers of people worldwide to lend support.

Israel considers BDS a strategic threat. It’s a significant force to be reckoned with. Each time a company or institution divests, Israel’s economy takes another body blow.

Palestinians are buying fewer Israeli products, choosing ones from other countries more often. The whole world needs to follow their example. Shun everything made in Israel, especially illegal settlement products.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) coordinates Palestinian boycott campaigns, its General Coordinator Mahmoud Nawajaa, saying:

Declining Palestinian purchases of Israeli products “indicate that the grassroots boycott campaigns against Israel that have taken off across Palestine in recent years are already costing the Israeli economy hundreds of millions of dollars and could become an even more important factor in the near future.”

“This adds to the growing economic and political isolation that Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid is starting to face internationally as a result of the fast-growing impact of the BDS movement.”

In 2014, direct foreign investment in Israel declined by 46%, BDS effectiveness a contributing factor. In September, French company Viola divested entirely from Israel, costing its economy billions of dollars.

Nawajaa cites the urgency of BDS activism, needed more than ever, saying:

“The recent upsurge in popular resistance by Palestinians is a response to the way in which this far-right Israeli government has done everything possible to intensify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the desecration of our holy sites, the collective punishment of our people in Gaza, the construction of colonial settlements, and the adoption of more apartheid laws.”

“As a typical settler-colonial regime, Israel is viciously attacking and repressing popular Palestinian resistance with military violence, including indiscriminate use of force against Palestinian civilians, which constitutes war crimes.”

“Israel is only able to attack Palestinians with impunity and maintain its decades-old regime of settler colonialism and apartheid because of direct complicity of governments and their failure to ensure that Israel complies with international law.”

“Governments should meet their legal obligations to hold Israel accountable for its indiscriminate use of force against Palestinians, including by imposing an immediate two-way military embargo on Israel and cutting ties with Israeli academic institutions that are deeply involved in military research.”

“Grassroots BDS pressure on Israel will continue to grow rapidly and become even more widely supported both in Palestine and internationally.”

It bears repeating. The best way to combat Israeli viciousness is economic, making its economy scream.

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.

Over the last 14 months the notion of the United States as a bastion of human rights and democracy has been further shattered.

With the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, it set off not only a rebellion in this St. Louis County suburb but nationwide demonstrations across the country. The rebellion in Ferguson forced the Obama administration to pay some symbolic attention to the plight of African American people who have been largely ignored as it relates to domestic policy over the last several decades.

In fact when it comes to Civil Rights and Human Rights, there has only been regressive legislation and “benign neglect” since the late 1960s. Realizing the complexity of the crisis facing the African American people, other people of color communities and working people in general, the system would rather ignore the problems rather pay any attention to them.

Nonetheless, Ferguson proved to be a turning point in U.S. history. Periodicals published in states that are aligned with Washington issued editorial questioning the domestic and foreign policy posture of the administration of President Barack Obama.

Even though the Justice Department was sent into to St. Louis County to investigate the circumstances surrounding the killing of Michael Brown, no federal charges were ever filed against Darren Wilson or anyone else within the law-enforcement, judicial and municipal systems in the area. The lack of critical response by the Obama administration compounded the discontent after the local authorities decided that there was no probable cause for charges to be brought against Wilson and others in Ferguson.

The report issued by the Justice Department Civil Rights Division did demonstrate clearly that collusion was rampant within these various departments in St. Louis County. Electronic communications were retrieved which illustrated that the African American community was being grossly exploited through traffic stops, citations, questionable arrests and prosecutions.

Many of the suburban municipalities within St. Louis County are economically unviable and consequently utilized racial profiling and targeting as a means of generating revenue. The New York Times reported several weeks after the rebellion and mass demonstrations began in Ferguson that over 12,000 outstanding warrants existed in the small city of barely over 20,000 residents. This came out to approximately two warrants per household in Ferguson.

Residents with outstanding warrants were subjected to immediate arrests and even higher fines or possible jail terms. Such legal problems hampered people’s abilities to find and retain employment as well as maintain a stable family life.

What appears to have happened in regard to the situation in Ferguson and St. Louis County is there was an apparent agreement that Wilson and other officials would resign their positions in exchange for not being pursued further by the federal government. It was also announced that some form of amnesty would be granted for residents facing high fines and jail time after being systematically targeted by the police throughout the County.

Such a compromise does not approach the resolution of the deeper problems of national oppression and racism so prevalent within law-enforcement culture. High rates of unemployment and poverty are by-products of national oppression and class exploitation which the American system is built upon.

Militarization Unveiled in Ferguson

Rather than examine the causes behind the explosion in Ferguson, the response of the political superstructure and the law-enforcement agencies was to put down the rebellion with a vengeance. Police came on the scene with armored vehicles, batons, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, long range acoustic devices (LRAD) and other forms of highly-sophisticated and deadly weaponry.

Numerous law-enforcement departments were deployed in Ferguson along with the National Guard. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a “state of emergency” while law-enforcement implemented a “no-fly zone” over the region.

The youth and workers who took to the streets both violently and non-violently were immediately criminalized. Journalists seeking to cover the story were attacked and arrested.

Corporate media pundits took to the airwaves over cable television networks to put their own spin on developments surrounding the mass demonstrations and rebellions. Those who fought back against the police and destroyed private property were labeled as criminals and thugs. These characterizations provided a rationale for the use of deadly force and the denial of basic democratic rights of due process.

Governor Nixon and local authorities blamed the unrest on “outside agitators” seeking to deflect attention away from the exploitative and repressive conditions so widespread in St. Louis County. President Obama and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sought to define the forms of dissent that were acceptable those that were not.

Moreover, the question becomes: where did these weapons, tanks, noxious gases and sound devices come from? These are the same weapons that have been used against the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and other geo-political regions over the last several decades.

The federal government through the Pentagon supplies these armaments through grants to local law-enforcement agencies. Are these the best tools to fight street crime? Or are these weapons supplied to fight existing unrest and more violent rebellions and revolts that are bound to come in the future?

We Can’t Breathe: Eric Garner and the Impunity of the State

In Staten Island New York the police killing of Eric Garner provided additional lessons in our understanding of the current character of state repression. Garner’s encounter with the police was caught on a cellphone video and transmitted worldwide. His last words gasping “I Can’t Breathe” became a rallying cry for those who went into the streets by the tens of thousands in New York and across the country.

Apparently recording of this crime did not matter to the grand jury that acquitted the only police officer investigated in the killing. The billions around the world who saw the video knew that there were many officers who were involved in Garner’s death by holding him down, applying pressure to his vital areas and refusing to provide any medical attention while he lay dying.

The youth who videoed the killing was himself targeted for prosecution and jailed. Once again the Justice Department did not take any action against the cops or the grand jury which allowed the police and emergency medical technicians to walk free.

In response to the grand jury decision, tens of thousands of people went out in protest in Manhattan and other areas of New York City. They blocked streets, expressways, businesses and bridges. The city had not seen such an outpouring of spontaneous demonstrations in many years.

New York City has been notorious for its “stop and frisk” and “broken windows” theory of policing. This style of law-enforcement conduct rides the waves of gentrification and forced removals of African Americans, Latinos and working class people in general throughout the municipality.

Obviously there is a concerted effort to drive millions of oppressed, working class and poor people out of the cities throughout the U.S. In New York, despite claims by officials that crime has been reduced by 80 percent, the plight of marginalized working class has worsened.

The homeless problem in New York is worse than it has ever been in the city’s history. A recent front-page article in the Sunday New York Times published on August 29 exposed the plight of those living in homeless shelters.

Those are the ones who are inside although living with bed bugs and other vermin in over-crowded buildings. Others are unfortunately sleeping on the streets in subways, storefronts, in Times Square and other areas.

Nonetheless, the liberal administration of De Blassio has no program for providing decent housing to those who need it. Wall Street with all of its propaganda about an economic recovery ignores the conditions of the most vulnerable and miserable.

Baltimore: A Flashpoint for Repression and Impoverishment

Just earlier this year in late April young Freddie Grey was killed by the Baltimore Police Department. This was by no means an isolated incident since the city has a long tradition of systematic racism in housing and police-community relations.

However, after the killing of Grey who died in police custody, the community rose up in rebellion. Immediately the Governor declared yet another “state of emergency” moving into Baltimore personally and effectively taking control of the city from its African American woman Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

What was interesting about the rebellion in Baltimore was the more developed counter-insurgency strategy and tactics implemented. Thousands of police officers from various agencies were deployed from across the state as was the case in Ferguson, along with thousands more National Guard troops.

Nonetheless, the authorities utilized a cadre of so-called “community groups” including churches, gang members, elected officials, and other operatives to come into the unrest areas encouraging youth and workers to leave the streets and go home. They were told by these “community activists” to abide by an unjust curfew and to work with the cops and the National Guard.

Tactically they were also covered by the corporate and government-controlled media to present another face of the community to the public. After the first three days of demonstrations and unrest, the media portrayed the community as being hostile to law-enforcement and private property. Suddenly by the time the National Guard and Governor had entered the city, the people who were presented to the press were residents opposed to the unrest and working towards “restoring order”, or we should say restoring the existing order.

Hundreds of these “community activists” stood between the crowds and the police with their backs to the law-enforcement agents and their faces towards the people. This was quite a symbolic effort to turn a section of the city against those who were fed up with the repression and exploitation.

Baltimore, like Detroit, has been hit over the last decade by massive home foreclosures and neighborhood blight. Hundreds of thousands have been forced out of their neighborhoods in East and West Baltimore to make room for the “developers and investors.” The banks were at the root cause of this displacement.

Also in Baltimore, it was announced during the spring that 25,000 households would be subjected to water shut-offs as what has been happening here since the imposition of emergency management and bankruptcy in 2013-2014. Although the emergency managers are being ostensibly withdrawn in Michigan, those who are the purported “elected officials” are carrying out the same draconian program of forced removals and benign neglect of the masses.

The lessons of Baltimore, Ferguson, New York and here in Detroit is that the workers and oppressed must be organized independently of the established two-party system. There must be a link drawn between law-enforcement repression, economic deprivation, gentrification and the denial of public services. The militarization of the police is designed to reinforce the system of oppression. All of these variables must be taken into consideration in any program of resistance and fightback against the structures of exploitation and political repression.

Militarization: From the 1960s to 2015

The militarization of U.S. society is as old as the American system itself. However, for the purpose of this discussion tonight we must look to events of the 1960s when cities exploded from Watts to Detroit during the period of 1965-1968.

Detroit proved to be a turning point in the militarization of the U.S. police when thousands of National Guard and federal troops were deployed to put down the rebellion in July 1967. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder found in its report that the police played an integral part in sparking urban rebellions.

Rather than heed to a program of reform, the society became more militarized and repressive. Under the presidential administration of Lyndon B. Johnson an Office of Law Enforcement Assistance was created.

According to a website entitled “What-When-How”, it says that “In 1965, the Office of Law Enforcement Assistance was created in the U.S. Department of Justice. This was the predecessor to the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), which was established as a result of the work of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.”

By 1968, as a result of a Congressional Commission on crime in the streets, the Law-Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) was created continuing to the early 1980s. This same above-mentioned website notes that to ostensibly achieve the aims of reducing crime in the cities:

“To achieve this objective, the notion of criminal justice planning was introduced to the country. Heretofore, planning in criminal justice was virtually nonexistent. With the passage of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act (1968), LEAA was authorized to provide funds to create a ‘state planning agency’ in each state that would have as its primary function the responsibility to develop a comprehensive statewide plan for the improvement of law enforcement throughout the state. The act also authorized the states to make grants from a population-based block grant allocation to units of local government to carry out programs and projects in accordance with the planning effort to improve law enforcement.”

By the early 1980s the further criminalization of African American and other oppressed communities was well underway. We have witness the growth in the prison-industrial-complex with a rise in the incarcerated population by 500 percent over the last three decades. The “school to prison pipeline” is a reality for the majority of the African American people.

A recent article in Atlantic magazine looks at this phenomena through the experiences of former inmates and the families whose loved ones have been incarcerated. With no real jobs program on a federal level and the rising rates of poverty and marginalization, this problem will not be solved short of drastic and sweeping policy initiatives that are well beyond anything that is being advocated by the White House, Congress and the corporate community.

Therefore, the struggle for justice in the U.S. is up to the people themselves. The organized masses working in solidarity with the oppressed and working people around the globe are the remedies to seriously address these concerns.

This is the charge of the labor movement and the international solidarity struggle. We are part of both and will work with any and every one to achieve total freedom.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire.

Note: This address was delivered on October 7, 2015 before the UAW Local 140 School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) Labor Caucus mobilization and recruitment meeting held at the union hall in Warren, Michigan right outside of Detroit.

The meeting entitled “Resisting Oppression: Reflecting on Our Communities a Global and Local Perspective,” also featured Maria Luisa Rosal, Field Organizer for SOA Watch, who presented a historical review of the SOA in Latin America. Jerry and Laronda King of the Civil and Human Rights Committee co-chaired the meeting. Azikiwe began his talk with expressions of solidarity with the UAW members at Fiat Chrysler who were just hours away from a possible strike that would have shut down auto production. Another tentative deal was reached prior to the Midnight deadline at least temporarily averting a strike. This tentative deal like the first one will have to be voted on by the rank and file workers.

With Russia having completed its first week of airstrikes in Syria, firing some 26 cruise missiles from warships deployed over 900 miles away in the Caspian Sea, an escalating drumbeat of warnings and threats of a far more dangerous conflict and even world war has come to dominate discussions within ruling circles in both the US and Europe.

French President François Hollande, who has ordered French warplanes to bomb Syria, warned European lawmakers Wednesday that the events in that country could spiral into a “total war” from which Europe itself would not be “sheltered.”

Seizing on alleged incidents involving Russian warplanes straying into Turkish airspace, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared, “An attack on Turkey means an attack on NATO,” implicitly invoking Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty, which commits members of the US-led military alliance to an armed response against an attack on Turkey or any other member state.

The Turkish government, which has been one of the primary sources of support for Islamist militias such as ISIS and the al-Nusra Front that have ravaged Syria, routinely violates the airspace of its own neighbors, carrying out bombing raids against Kurdish camps in Iraq and shooting down Syrian planes over Syrian territory.

Top NATO officials have also weighed in with bellicose denunciations of Moscow. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg charged that the alleged Russian incursion into Turkish airspace “does not look like an accident.” He continued, warning, “Incidents, accidents, may create dangerous situations. And therefore it is also important to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”

Speaking in Washington on Tuesday, Navy Adm. Mark Ferguson, who commands NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy, accused Russia of building an “arc of steel” from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean Sea. This deliberate paraphrasing of Winston Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech turns the real relationship of forces inside out, obscuring the relentless encirclement of Russia by Washington and the NATO alliance in the wake of the Soviet Union’s liquidation 25 years ago.

Describing Russia as the “most dangerous threat” facing NATO, Admiral Ferguson called for an increasingly aggressive NATO posture toward Moscow, recommending the honing of the alliance’s “war fighting skills” and the deployment of military forces “on call for real world operations.”

Former high-level US officials, whose views undoubtedly reflect the thinking within powerful sections of the American ruling establishment and its vast military and intelligence complex, have also weighed in with calls for confrontation with Russia.

In a column published by the Financial Times, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration and a longtime US imperialist strategist, wrote that Russian attacks on CIA-backed Islamist militias “should prompt US retaliation.” Like others in Washington, he avoided mentioning that the most prominent of these militias is Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, the al-Nusra Front.

Brzezinski advised that “Russian naval and air presences in Syria are vulnerable, isolated geographically from their homeland” and “could be ‘disarmed’ if they persist in provoking the US.” Presumably, he inserted the quotation marks around “disarmed” to signal that he was employing a euphemism for “militarily obliterated.”

Similarly, Ivo Daalder, who was Obama’s ambassador to NATO until mid-2013, told Politico: “If we want to take out their military forces there, we can probably do it at relatively little or no cost to ourselves. The question is what will be Putin’s response. I think if you sit in the Situation Room you have to play this one out.”

Meanwhile, Frederic Hof, Obama’s former special envoy on a Syrian transition, compared Putin’s actions to those of Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, which brought the world to the precipice of nuclear war.

“Like his predecessor over 50 years ago, he [Putin] senses weakness on the part of a US president. Like his predecessor, he risks discovering that trifling with the United States is not a healthy pursuit. But such a risk entails dangers for all concerned.”

Drawing out the ominous implications of these discussions, Gideon Rachman, the chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, compared the Syrian conflict with the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. He wrote: “A similar proxy war is under way in Syria today—with both the Russian and US air forces bombing targets in the country, and foreign fighters pouring in.”

He continued:

“The countries that were backing opposite sides in Spain in the 1930s were fighting each other directly by the 1940s. The risk of the Syrian conflict leading to a direct clash between the Iranians and the Saudis, or even the Russians and the Americans, cannot be discounted.”

This danger exists because Russia’s intervention—launched in defense of the interests of the Russian state and the ruling class of oligarchs who represent Russia’s energy conglomerates—has cut across US plans to effect regime-change in Syria and redraw the map of the Middle East that date back decades.

The proposal to bring about regime-change in Syria by backing proxy forces on the ground was advanced two decades ago in a document entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” drafted for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a study group that included Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. All three were later to gain high-level positions in the Bush administration, participating in the conspiracy to launch the US war of aggression against Iraq.

A recently released classified document obtained by WikiLeaks establishes that active US planning for regime-change predated the outbreak of the Syrian civil war by at least five years. The secret report from the head of the US Embassy in Damascus outlined “vulnerabilities” of the Syrian government that Washington could exploit. At the top of the list were fomenting “Sunni fears of Iranian influence” to cause sectarian conflict and taking advantage of “the presence of transiting Islamist extremists.”

Given that the document was written in 2006, at the height of Iraq’s sectarian carnage caused by the US invasion and Washington’s divide-and-rule tactics, these proposals were made with full awareness that they would provoke a bloodbath. Nearly a decade later, the bitter fruits of this policy include the deaths of some 300,000 Syrians, with another 4 million driven from the country and 7 million more internally displaced.

While cynically exploiting the suffering of the Syrian people to justify an escalation of US militarism, Washington is not about to let Russia derail its drive to impose its hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East and the entire planet.

The path to war with Russia is by no means accidental. From the outset, the US intervention to topple the regime in Damascus was aimed at weakening the principal allies of the Syrian government—Iran and Russia—in preparation for a direct assault on both countries.

More and more directly each day, the eruption of American militarism, rooted in the historic crisis of American and world capitalism, confronts humanity with the specter of a nuclear Third World War.

There have been now several alleged “violations” of Turkish airspace by Russian warplanes operating from within and across Syrian territory. Conflicting reports have come out regarding how these alleged violations are actually being interpreted and responded to by Turkey itself, with the United States and its well-oiled media machine claiming armed confrontation between the NATO member and Russia is imminent, while other sources claim Turkey and Russia are in close communication and apparent violations have been excused by Ankara.

Depending on whose point of view the ongoing alleged violations are seen from, an array of interests present themselves compelling different players to either play them down or exploit them to widen what is already a volatile regional conflict.

From Ankara 

Russian warplanes are obviously not operating in the region with the intention of threatening Turkey, its people or its military forces. Russian proximity to Turkey’s border is born out of necessity to counter terrorist forces long-operating near it and even across it. Turkey is no stranger to crossing borders in pursuit of what it calls terrorists, and thus one would expect Turkey to appreciate Russia’s current rules of engagement in the region.

Even if Russian warplanes are crossing the border accidentally or in hot pursuit of terrorist forces, belligerence from Turkey would be widely interpreted now as unreasonable. The legitimacy of claims that terrorist forces in Syria, backed by a wide axis of regional players orchestrated by Washington, are ‘moderates’ has withered in the eyes of the general public. Russia’s anti-terror coalition in Syria is steadily expanding both in operational dimensions and in terms of political support from around the world. While Washington’s scorn is to be expected, attempts by Turkey to disrupt ongoing anti-terror operations undertaken by Russia in coordination with the Syrian government would be perceived globally as an act of unwarranted aggression and spite in defense of terrorists, not its own territory or people.

Iran, Iraq, Syria and various forces within Lebanon have already openly joined the effort with China signaling interest. Unified and focused, this Russian-led effort stands a good chance of suceeding. Turkey as a nation may still emerge out of the other side of this conflict with its legitimacy and influence in the region intact, though the same may not be said for the current ruling factions that have collaborated with Washington in regards to destabilizing the region in the first place.

Turkey’s understanding, even cooperation with securing its border and eliminating terrorist forces operating along it, be they labeled the Islamic State or Al Qaeda or ‘moderates,’ could be the first step toward divesting from Washington’s losing proposition and investing in Turkey’s future among the new regional order being formed before our eyes.

From Washington 

For Washington, fighting Russia down to the last Turk is an appealing proposition. Like Washington has accomplished upon the Arabian Peninsula where its allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have committed sizable military forces to be ground to a pulp inside Yemen, there may be hopes that Turkey can be convinced to confront the growing coalition in Syria to reverse or at least mire in perpetual chaos, what now appears to be the inevitable defeat for the West’s regime change scheme. Any confrontation between Turkey and Russia would be costly for Ankara in military, political and even economic terms, denying Ankara alternatives to its Western ties and increasing its dependency on the West both in military and economic terms.

That such desperate and risky options are all that is left for Washington and its various regional partners speaks volumes regarding just how far lost its original plans have become. To Ankara, and indeed all of  Washington’s partners in the region, immediate and incremental divestment appears to be the only viable option.

Washington knows this, and so the game they play now is provocation on one hand, and entrenchment and doubling-down on the other. In the media, and perhaps even on the ground, Washington appears increasingly interested in provoking a conflict with Russia either inside Syria, or near Syria’s borders where Russia warplanes are operating. And as always, Washington prefers that this confrontation take place not between US forces and Russia directly, but through one of its many regional proxies, including Turkey.

From Moscow 

For Russia, there is virtually nothing to be gained by provoking a conflict with Turkey. The two nations could be potent strategic and economic partners, providing Ankara with options should Washington’s meddling within and along Turkey’s borders become unbearable. And while Russia can be a powerful ally, it can also be a punishing enemy. The Russian military footprint in the region is growing, with cruise missiles now raining in from the Caspian Sea from the east, and Russian warplanes carrying out an expanding military campaign from Syria’s western shores.

Any confrontation with Russia triggered by Ankara’s belligerence would result in Russian forces slowly moving up to the Turkish border both with its air assets and its anti-air assets. Together with the Syrian military, the prospect of establishing a no-fly-zone along and even over Syria’s border with Turkey would be a humiliating reversal for Turkey who on Washington’s behalf has maintained a defacto no-fly-zone over parts of northern Syria for years now.

Russia has seemingly offered the various partners in the region a second chance, a chance to divest from Washington’s schemes and to play a constructive role in a new Middle East where progress trumps perpetual provocations. Even the Saudis have been offered an exit from the self-destructive course Washington has set Riyadh on. They have unwisely refused it, and now face a growing battle on their own borders with Yemen, while their proxy forces abroad fighting in Syria face mostly decimation and for those that escape, a scurrilous homecoming back to the Arabian Peninsula where their support has originated.

What will form in the vacuum of Washington’s collapsing schemes is an arc of power that will isolate and overwhelm those forces destabilizing the region. Who those forces will be once this arc is established depends on who continues toeing Washington’s failed agenda, and those who wisely begin divesting and cooperating with deconflicting the region.

Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

“We have the chance to open up more markets to goods and services backed by three proud words: Made in America.” – President Barack Obama, Feb 18, 2015

The estranged political classes continued their defiance of democratic practice by signing, again without the involvement of non-trade interests, a document that has been sold as a choice between the rash and the damned.  The delegates at the Atlanta round of talks for the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement came from twelve states, and some of them were acutely aware that domestic matters were pressing. The election cycle in the United States is starting to gain steam.  Canada faces a close election on October 19.  Australia’s new prime minister is hunkering down.

The TPP is a monster in design on several levels. While it has been reported that China “cautiously” welcomes the agreement, there is little doubt that it has been shaped as a form of financial weaponry against the giants of the Asia-Pacific.  Towards Russia, there is the Trans Atlantic Investment Agreement, framed to incorporate the European Union.  Then comes the enveloping Trade Services Agreement.

The chatter in advance of the agreement has been filled with astrological predictions about wealth creation. Crystal ball gazers have decided to abandon any recourse to evidence.  The tendency in free trade is to gut local industries in favour of capital penetration by foreign companies.  Local labour forces are reconstituted, a euphemistic way of describing job flight, with labour skirting away to cheaper sources of production.  The observation by Ross Perot about the “sucking sound” of jobs from the United States if such agreements were implemented is still pertinent.

Despite this, President Barack Obama would have us believe that the agreement is a brilliant contribution to labour, that it somehow harmonises standards.  (Do free trade agreements actually ever harmonise anything?)  “The TPP,” tweeted the President, “establishes the highest labour standards of any trade agreement in history.”

This is where a juicy, refuting case study is in order, a cold water dose of evidentiary proof.  Australia’s gains from its own free trade agreement with the United States have shown up as mind numbing losses. The pattern is familiar: predictions of growth and obscure references to benefits despite incompetent analysis and an inability to describe “the national interest”.[1]  US negotiators, however, knew exactly what they wanted on that score.

Analysis conducted on the implications of the AUSFTA by the Australian National University this year suggest that both Australia and the United States actually reduced their trade with the rest of the world by a staggering $53 billion.[2]  Preferential treatment for US goods, services and investment seemed to have one notable effect: diverting trade away from more efficient and competitive suppliers.

Free trade, in this case, ceases to be truly free in encouraging a distinct lack of competition, something that repeats itself in the intellectual property chapter of the TPP regarding patents and biologics.  Graphs happily delved out by the White House promising a 48 percent increase of US exports within a time frame should be regarded, not merely with caution but withering disdain.

Even prior to the ill-tidings brought by AUSFTA, the United States was engaging in its own bit of free trade delusions with the North American Free Trade Agreement, an agreement driven by President Bill Clinton till it became law in 1993. While there are expected disagreements among economists over the consequences, a good number point to the evisceration of local manufacturing and a thriving US trade deficit.[3]

Such are the outcomes of liberalising trade dogmas.  As ever, the prediction acts as the staying mechanism of belief, the fanatic’s code.  The economic star gazing Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) looked at their own set of Tarot cards in the 1990s and saw a trade surplus with Mexico, and 170,000 new US jobs by 1995.[4]

It took two briefest years to see a revised total of zero in terms of job growth.  Mexico and Canada duly registered agricultural surpluses.  US companies involved with food production and processing shot over to Mexico to the sound of money – capital migrating to areas of lower wages.  But as dogma reasserts itself, Peter Peterson of the corporatocracy has again promised what he cannot deliver: accurate projections about job and export increases with the TPP.[5]

The other features of deceptive harmonising stem from the illusion that areas such as the environment are somehow protected by the agreement.  This is certainly the position from the Whitehouse, with suggestions that some environmental groups have swallowed the pill regarding the “fluffy” narrative of trade and conservation.

In a distributed message, the White House took the rather distasteful measure of claiming that the TPP agreement would actually combat wildlife trafficking, illegal logging and illegal fishing.  It would make core “environmental protections” enforceable “through the same type of dispute settlement as other obligations.”[6]  A closer reading of what has been made available via Wikileaks suggests that the environment is set for a battering, a trade-off for solid corporate profits.

As Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune argues, the TPP effectively empowers “big polluters to challenge climate change environmental safeguards in private trade courts and would expand trade in dangerous fossil fuels that would increase fracking and imperil our climate” (Salon, Oct 7).

From the start of the TPP, a broader agenda for the control of trade from Washington’s perspective was pushed.  Obama has never shied away from the feeling that the Chinese economic juggernaut will, at some point, pry away American power, counting it among countries “that would like to take away America’s mantle of economic leadership.”[7]

Such parochialism finds expression in an email from the president to the White House email list in February. “My top priority as President is making sure that more hardworking Americans have a chance to get ahead.  That’s why we have to make sure the United States – and not countries like China – is the one writing this century’s rules for the world’s economy.”[8] Never could a more startlingly direct statement on hegemony be stated.

That said, such enunciations of US hegemony show bloody minded determination and daftness. Both come in equal measure – the pugilist’s determination to bloody opponents who might get the better of you, claiming that pockets will be filled; and the self-delusion that you are actually benefiting yourself in embracing such a policy.

Obama’s persistence on emphasising the sanctity of the US work force in the face of the global market is discordant: the policy of the boardroom tends to often cut through the politics of labour and parliamentary representation.  Wealth may well be created, but it remains corporate, concentrated and distant.  Those citizens who trudge on Main Street remain the squeezed, the patronised and the belittled.

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

Notes

In over a year of Washington’s phony war on ISIS, they’re stronger with more territory than when US bombing began – targeting Syrian and Iraqi infrastructure, not terrorist forces or facilities.

On September 30, things changed markedly. Washington wants no interference in its policies. Putin’s intervention leveled the playing field.

ISIS forces are panicking, retreating, hiding in residential areas and mosques, using area residents as human shields – knowing Russia won’t attack noncombatants or civilian infrastructure, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov explained, citing video evidence.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said terrorists may bomb mosques or other civilian targets, blaming Russia for their crimes, eagerly reported by Western media – spreading Big Lies their specialty, governments they represent doing the same thing.

War strategy includes winning heart and minds, no matter how deceptively. Effective propaganda works this way, especially with proliferators like The New York Times and US cable TV channels, blasting out Big Lies round-the-clock – in print, on air and online.

Antonov said Russia uses information from reconnaissance, satellites, and Syrian military intelligence before choosing targets – checking and rechecking to be “100% sure” the right ones are struck, so far with impressive results, Washington getting a closeup view of Moscow’s formidable military strength.

On October 7, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said 112 ISIS targets were struck since September 30. “The intensity of strikes is growing,” he explained.

“Many targets were discovered in the past two days, command posts, ammunition and military hardware depots, militant training camps. All the targets were destroyed, no civilian facilities were damaged” – including “19 command posts, 12 ammunition caches, 71 military hardware pieces and six explosive device making facilities.”

On Wednesday morning, 23 aircraft struck terrorist positions. Russia’s navy is involved. Four warships fired 26 cruise missiles from Caspian Sea positions, 1,500 km away, hitting 11 targets with pinpoint accuracy, destroying them, harming no civilians, an impressive display of military might, perhaps enough to give Pentagon commanders pause on challenging Russia head-to-head, madness if dared.

Flight paths passed through Iraqi and Iranian airspace with their permission, all three countries working cooperatively with Syria against ISIS and other takfiri terrorists.

Putin praised initial results so far. He’s coordinating Moscow’s efforts with Damascus, Iran and Iraq – partnered against terrorism, waging real war to defeat it, challenging Washington’s phony war, an agenda for conquest, domination and exploitation.

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.

ISIS has many faults, but it sure knows a good car when it sees one. The US Treasury is now pressing Toyota about why so many of its vehicles are being driven around by the terrorist group, as evidenced in their propaganda videos.

Toyota has issued a statement to explain that this is part of a wider probe into terrorist supply chains and capital flow, according to ABC. The company also says it does not know how its trucks ended up in ISIS hands in such a quantity, and is “supporting” the inquiry.

The model most popular with Islamic State drivers seems to be the Hilux, similar to Tacomas and Land Cruisers. This overseas version is a mainstay in ISIS propaganda videos, often loaded to the brim with heavy weapons.

The company says the cars in the videos aren’t recent models, but ABC spoke to the Iraqi ambassador to the US, Lukman Faily, who said that in addition to re-purposing old vehicles, the terrorist group has been acquiring “hundreds” of “brand new” ones in recent years.

“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” the ambassador said. “How could these brand new trucks… these four-wheel drives, hundreds of them – where are they coming from?”

Some of the other cars paraded in victory parade videos include Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Isuzu.

“Regrettably, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux have effectively become almost part of the ISIS brand,” said Mark Wallace, a former US ambassador to the United Nations. Wallace is CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, a group specializing in tracking terrorist finance channels.

“ISIS has used these vehicles in order to engage in military-type activities, terror activities, and the like,” he said. “But in nearly every ISIS video, they show a fleet – a convoy of Toyota vehicles and that’s very concerning to us.”

But according to Lewis, “It is impossible for Toyota to completely control indirect or illegal channels through which our vehicles could be misappropriated.”

The current inquiry isn’t the first time somebody’s asked about Toyota popping up frequently in IS hands. A report last year by Public Radio International exposed a delivery by the US State Department of 43 Toyota trucks to Syrian rebels – the“moderate” ones, as has been the Western line since the start of the Syrian war in 2011. Australian media has also this year been circulating reports of some 800 vehicles stolen, and authorities believing they may have been shipped to war zones in the Middle East.

As this goes on, Toyota’s sales of Hiluxes and similar models appear to be going through the roof. Since 2011, the figures for Iraq have tripled in 2013 to 18,000 vehicles sold. The number has been fluctuating since.

Brigadier General Saad Maan with the Iraqi army suspects an outside middleman was used to smuggle the trucks into Iraq.

Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo, responsible for shipping the vehicles to the region, told ABC news in an email they have “no way to know” how to track vehicles appropriated by illegal means. Whereas a spokesman for the dealership in Syria said all operations with the country were halted in 2012.

Although he doesn’t think Toyota is making any profit from it, Wallace believes the company should do more to investigate and disclose the illegal channels, and to put in place the regulations that would “make sure we don’t see videos of ISIS using Toyota trucks in the future.”

The company wrote back to Wallace in response to his comments, saying, again, that it halted all operations, and that it’s actively working with US authorities, but won’t provide further details of the cooperation so as not to “compromise its efforts to understand and prevent diversion, or make it easier for illicit groups to penetrate our supply chains or those of any other company.”

“We briefed Treasury on Toyota’s supply chains in the Middle East and the procedures that Toyota has in place to protect supply chain integrity,” said Ed Lewis, the car giant’s Washington-based director of public policy and communications.

The company says it has a “strict policy to not sell vehicles to potential purchasers who may use or modify them for paramilitary or terrorist activities,” Lewis said.

The Russian military has launched airstrikes against Islamic State militant targets in Syria. The move was approved after a request from President Bashar Assad to Vladimir Putin, who has also expressed concern about the number of Russian extremists in the country. 

The US’ plan to construct a “New Middle East”, announced during the failed 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon, has been totally offset by Russia’s game-changing anti-terrorist intervention in Syria. Although no formal details were ever officially provided as to what this “New Middle East” would look like, many caught on that it would likely follow the destructive contours of Ralph Peters’ “Blood Borders”, in which the entire region falls apart along ethnic and sectarian lines in a Yinon-esque scenario. In fact, the fulfillment of this strategy is one of the main reasons why the “Arab Spring” theater-wide Color Revolutions and the War on Syria were unleashed, but all of that is proving to be for naught now that Russia brilliantly flipped the initiative and has indisputably become the leading actor in the Mideast.

Moscow’s “Mideast Pivot” is geared towards restoring the principles of order in the region that Washington had so wantonly disregarded as it blindly sought to destroy the status quo and chaotically remake the Mideast according to its own desired vision. With the tables having dramatically been turned, however, it’s time to explore another vision of the future, albeit one in which Russia, not the US, plays the guiding role over events. This “New Middle East” is a lot different than the one the US had intended, and it eliminates just about every lever of influence that Washington had previously employed in attempting to keep the region servilely under its strategic command.

The article’s premise is predicated on the Coalition of the Righteous (Russia-Syria-Iraq-Iran) succeeding in its extermination campaign against ISIL, and Part I proceeds to describe the paradigm shift that the Allies have enacted through their actions. Part II is then broken up into two separate sections that uncover the wide-ranging geopolitical consequences of a coalition victory, with the first one discussing the Lebanon-to-Iran Resistance Arc and the second one detailing the resultant destabilization of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Finally, in response to this historical defeat inflicted against unipolarity, the article concludes by forecasting the ways in which the US will seek geopolitical revenge against Russia for unseating it from its prized perch at the crossroads of Afro-Eurasia.

Out With The Old, In With The New

The Coalition of the Righteous (COR) has completely upended the previous US-led order in the Mideast, and not much of the strategic architecture that Washington created over the past two and a half decades is expected to remain by the time its campaign is concluded. Here are the most notable elements that define this paradigm shift:

Russian Leadership

First off, the most visible difference is that Russia has assumed the key role of setting the region’s agenda, and it’s Moscow, not Washington, that’s affecting the most tangible change in the Mideast. This development didn’t come out of nowhere, as despite the surprised reaction of many observers (especially Western ones), Russia had been steadily growing its regional clout for decades through the management of two ultra-strategic partnerships with Syria and Iran. The one with Iran is relatively new and mostly goes back to the early 2000s, but the relationship with Syria began in the early 1970s and is remarkably the only Soviet-era friendship to remain unscathed by Russia’s international drawdown in the 1990s. Through the simultaneous leveraging and strengthening of each of these bilateral partnerships, plus the unified strategic overlap between them (i.e. the Syrian-Iranian Strategic Partnership), a super nexus of interests has been established, thereby setting the strategic backdrop for the COR and the multilateral pushback against the US’ “New Middle East” of chaotic destruction. Unlike the US, Russia leads from the front, not from behind, and this fearless example has energized its coalition and raised the hopes of the entire multipolar world.

The Iraqi War Of Independence

One of the most prominent elements of the Russian-led “New Middle East” is the inclusion of Iraq in the COR, which can be read as nothing less than the country’s desire to liberate itself from American proxy domination and truly experience its first sense of independence since 2003. Most Iraqis, and especially their government (as can be inferred by their membership in the COR), are cognizant of the fact that the US had been using ISIL as its strategic wrecking ball for actualizing Ralph Peters’ “Blood Borders”, and whether Sunni, Shia, or Kurdish, they appear to have finally had enough. Over 13 years of full-on destruction and countless false promises are enough to make even the most stalwart pro-American forces falter in their loyalty, and the Iraqi experience is the most striking global example of the grave perils that befall all of America’s second-rate, non-Western ‘partners’. The Iraqi War of Independence, which is what its COR anti-ISIL campaign basically amounts to, powerfully demonstrates that even the most abused proxy states have the real potential to fight back, provided that the political will is there at the highest levels and that the population is truly fed up with the prior state of affairs.

Syria Comes Full Circle

Syria, the scene of the present global attention, ironically just so happens to be the first battleground of the New Cold War, and it makes for a certain sense of poetic justice that the most epic geopolitical resistance that the US has ever experienced is taking place right there. The Pentagon’s power ploy in wrestling full control of the region by means of the “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions was the opening salvo of the New Cold War, as the US had originally planned to carry the chaotic regime change momentum all the way to Central Asia the thenceforth to the Resistant & Defiant (R&D) states of Russia, China, and Iran. It goes without saying that all three of these actors understood the global power grab that the US was undertaking even if they were slow in coordinating their response, and had it not been for fierce and patriotic Syrian resistance to this scheme, it’s possible that they would have been in a much less advantageous and more disorganized position in confronting it today.

Syria’s sacrifices stopped the tidal wave of terror from slamming into the R&D states, and Russia’s gratitude was expressed through its 2013 diplomatic intervention in staving off an American bombing campaign against the country. This bought the R&D states a bit more time to prepare before the next imminent onslaught, but it unwittingly provoked the US into moving forward its regime change plans for Ukraine and deploying them a year ahead of schedule. This vengeful attempt was meant to ‘punish’ Russia for the global embarrassment that it inflicted on the US in Syria, and it’s what most people mistakenly think set off the New Cold War, overlooking that it was Syria, not Ukraine, where the first battle was fought. Incidentally, everything has come full circle, and the most important stage of the New Cold War is presently being played out in Syria, as the COR smashes the terroristic instruments of unipolar hegemony and midwifes the birth of the multipolar world order, and more than likely, it won’t limit its successes to the Mideast either.

Chasing Evil

The largest uncertainty facing American strategists is exactly how far the COR will geographically go in fighting back against global terrorism. The present focus is obviously on the Syrian-Iraqi theater, but after the conclusion of that campaign, one must realistically ponder whether the Allies could repeat their success in Libya or Afghanistan, pending of course an official request from those countries’ leaders. Of corroborating note, it’s hugely significant that shortly after the COR’s anti-terrorist intervention in Syria, Kerry urgently pleaded with Libya’s leaders (both de-jure and de-facto) to form a government as soon as possible so as to stop ISIL from taking further hold of the country. One could venture to guess that the US is seriously worried about the possibility that an expanded COR, this time including Egypt (which has selectively intervened in Libya in the past), could intervene in the failed state in order to root out the Pentagon’s proxy forces and save the country from following The New York Times’ “Blood Borders”-like scenario of trilateral state fragmentation.

Concerning Afghanistan, if ISIL ever manages to establish a destabilizing enough foothold there, it’s possible that Kabul, having been witness to the efficiency of the COR’s anti-terrorist airstrikes in Syria, could request similar assistance in dislodging the terrorist group. If that happened, then it would be the final nail in the US’ Central-South Asian coffin of chaos, as Afghanistan would thus be signaling the beginning of its own War of Independence in removing the US’ presence. With the proxies go the patron, so it’s expected that as soon as the terrorists are extinguished from Libya and Afghanistan (potentially with COR assistance), the US will also be shown the door as well and these two states can finally regain the sovereignty that they had earlier lost.

Additionally, as a tangent of the Afghan scenario, if some type of terrorist threat emanating from the country was directed towards Central Asia (most realistically Tajikistan), it’s unquestionable that Russian-led COR-CSTO airstrikes will immediately be used to stop it. Likewise, Uzbekistan might even entertain the possibility of requesting multilateral Russian-involved assistance if a similar incident happens along its borders and spirals out of control, but only, of course, in very specific circumstances and if absolutely necessary for its survival. The problem in this operational Central-South Asian theater, however, is if a multitude of threats emerges simultaneously, which in that case could prove overwhelming for Russia’s military-strategic planners and will be addressed in Part IV of the article.

Crushing The US’ Pillars Of Power

Not counting Israel (which is in a special category of its own), US influence over the Mideast had rested on two primary pillars of power, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, but this construction is now crumbling as Russia returns to the region. In a twist of geopolitical fate, what the US had previously assumed to be the most stable countries in the region are now the two on the greatest verge of destabilization, and ironically, the two which the US had tried the most to destabilize (Syria and Iraq) are now the ones which look to have one of the most stable futures. Addressing the former, Erdogan’sbumbling miscalculations have returned Turkey to a state of de-facto civil war, while Saudi Arabia’s disastrous War on Yemen has given rise to a ‘rogue royal’s’ plan for regime change (to say nothing about the separate threats of ISIL and an Eastern Province revolt).

Looking at Syria and Iraq, one of the COR’s geopolitical intentions is to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its members, and the elimination of ISIL goes a far way in accomplishing that goal. Furthermore, concerning the previous fears of Kurdish separatism, it’s safe to say that Russia’smilitary assistance to the group has quelled this sentiment and endeared Moscow with a certain degree of influence in Erbil, which could of course be used to temper any secessionist thoughts that would play out to the US’ strategic advantage. With the Kurdish issue being dealt with, and the Wahhabist terrorists on the run, Syria and Iraq have a lot more to look forward to in their futures than civil war-struck Turkey and (royally and domestically) divided Saudi Arabia do, and this has of course weakened American grand strategy in the Mideast unlike any other series of events that has come before it and will be fleshed out more in Part II.

The Defeat Of The Reverse Brzezinski

The COR’s carefully delegated application of force in Syria – Russian support remains limited to air missions, the Syrian Arab Army and Kurdish militias take care of the full ground component – presents a disciplined way to prevent the temptation of mission creep, the core of the Reverse Brzezinski. If Russia and Iran can avoid this strategic pitfall, then they’d have nullified one of the US’ most innovative policies and won themselves much-needed breathing room for addressing future regional security threats. The more one reflects upon it, the more it becomes clear that the key to beating the Reverse Brzezinski is to assemble the proper coalition of forces for intervening in the “quagmire” zone. If either Great Power attempted to do so on its own and without self-restraint, then it’s chances of falling for the dupe would have greatly increased, but in the current case of Syria (and soon to be, Iraq), they’ve proven themselves more than able to patiently and multilaterally address the situation and steer clear of the US’ trap. If they can maintain this state of mind and inclusive operational behavior going forward (and there’s no reason to think that they can’t), as well as carry these lessons over to any forthcoming Reverse Brzezinski scenarios such as the South Caucasus orCentral Asia, then the US’ formerly flexible strategy of entrapment would become a lot more rigid and much less likely to be employed in the future.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentaror currently working for the Sputnik agency.

They suffer without voices. Giles Duley

While Russia was bombing ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria, the US was bombing a hospital in northern Afghanistan.

In the early hours of Saturday last, a day after the US warned Russia not to target civilians in Syria, a US airstrike killed twenty-two aid workers and patients—three of them children— at the health facility in Kunduz, run by the humanitarian assistance organization, Medicins sans Frontieres–Doctors without Borders (DWB).

The bombardment lasted thirty minutes, despite frantic appeals by the staff to Washington and Kabul. GPS co-ordinates had recently been supplied to all parties in the fighting.

On Sunday, Christopher Stokes, general director of DWB, called the strike a “war crime.” On 4 October, The Washington Post wrote, “U.S. forces may have mistakenly bombed a hospital.” Hamdullah Danishi, acting governor in Kunduz, said, “The hospital campus was 100 percent used by the Taliban.” DWB officials contested in a statement the charge that Taliban forces were posted in the garden, at the center of the charity hospital: “The gates of the hospital were all closed so no one that is not a staff, a patient or a caretaker was inside the hospital when the bombing happened.”

By a curious coincidence, only a week before the bombing of the hospital compound in Kunduz, DWB in Yemen had discredited the claim by the Saudi government that the massacre of a wedding party on 28 September had been a mistake and that the target of the Saudi coalition forces had been the rebels, not the 131 civilians (80 of them women) who were killed. DWB officially stated that there had been no military presence in the vicinity of the wedding party.

The United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) underscores the critical role   that DWB performs in Yemen in saving lives:

Médicines Sans Frontières continues to operate its surgical centre in Aden, and has played a crucial role in saving the lives of many severely injured people. The continuity and scaling up of this centre is critical in ensuring an effective health response in Aden.

WHO reports that all governorates in Yemen are in dire need of trauma and surgical medicines; of fuel for ambulances and generators in health facilities; of medicines for chronic diseases; of safe water in health facilities; of food, particularly as 170,000 children in Yemen are already suffering from malnutrition after six months of the US-backed war; of more ambulances and more medical teams in Southern Yemen. Yet, WHO laments that attacks on existing medical personnel and facilities have been ongoing:

On 4 April, two volunteer paramedics with the Yemen Red Crescent Society in Aden were shot when their ambulance was hit by gunfire. The paramedics, who were brothers, died from their injuries on their way to hospital. On 30 March, a volunteer ambulance driver with the Yemen Red Crescent Society was killed after his vehicle was hit by gunfire in Al Dhale’a.

Although WHO is careful not to reveal the agency of the attackers on medical teams and facilities, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, reports that thirty-eight Yemeni civilians were killed on average every day between 25 March and 12 April by the Saudi-led bombing campaign:

Two-thirds of the reported civilian deaths during the conflict since March were caused by airstrikes. When you’re getting this very high toll of civilians, it suggests something may be going badly wrong or perhaps not enough care is being taken.

Indeed, in recent days, the US-backed Saudi coalition has become a source of embarrassment to the American political establishment. In the New York Times, US Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter is credited with saying that the US-backed Saudi bombing campaign has strengthened Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This is a tergiversation for the cold truth: the campaign has not succeeded in quelling the Houthi rebellion, but it has succeeded in wreaking civilian chaos on Yemen.

Though seldom front-page news, the Saudi airstrikes have destroyed hospitals, schools, neighborhoods, and refugee camps. On 30 March, in Northern Yemen, an airstrike at a camp for displaced people killed dozens of internal refugees. Shortly afterwards, an airstrike destroyed an Oxfam warehouse, storing humanitarian aid. An airstrike on the Mazraq camp for displaced persons in Hajiah province killed forty people and wounded two hundred, as reported by the International Organization for Migration, which provides assistance in the camps.

Not that all grief in Yemen can be laid at Saudi doors. Yemen has been subjected to US drone strikes since December 2009, when President Obama authorized the first known strike, killing fourteen women and twenty-one children. On December 12 last, a drone hit a wedding convoy, killing twelve men. From 2011 to the present, Obama has sold the Saudis $80 billion in arms.

In the context of these atrocities against civilian persons and social structures in Yemen, it becomes absurd to hold up the lamp of humanitarian righteousness against the supposed motivational dark perfidy of the Russian intervention in Syria, which anyway appears to be making short shrift of the ISIS hordes in less than a week. When ISIS beheads people the media whips up the public into berserker frenzy; when Russia beheads ISIS, the media responds morosely.

Quite frankly, the whole treatment of civilians in Yemen since 2009 turns American protests against week-long Russian strikes killing civilians in Syria a farce—not to mention that such accounts are reported by the dubiously “neutral” Syrian Observatory on Human Rights, which, excluding unnamed “activists” and “activist groups,” appears to be the single source available to and quoted for evidence by the Western press and media.

Trevor Timm in the Guardian implicitly sums up for readers the difficulty the US has in selling the Orwellian ritual of the daily two-minute-of-hate-Russia, based on a count of Russian atrocities to civilians in Syria vis-à-vis longstanding, largely American atrocities in Yemen:

While the crisis in Syria continues to garner front-page headlines and ample television coverage, the media has largely turned a blind eye to the other travesty unfolding in the Middle East: Yemen has turned into a humanitarian disaster, where thousands of bombs are being dropped, 1.5 million people are displaced and more than 90% of the population is in need of assistance. The major difference? In Yemen, the US is one of the primary causes of the problem.

American humanitarianism is just plain double-speak. British news photographer, Giles Duley, who lost three limbs in Afghanistan in February of 2013 while documenting the work of the Italian war-surgery hospital of Emergency in Kabul, puts it trenchantly:

After more than 10 years of being in Afghanistan, during a so-called “nation building process,” we are yet to build one functioning hospital.

The director of Emergency, heart and lung transplant surgeon, Gino Strada, has just been awarded the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative to the Nobel Prize. Emergency runs a worldwide network of charity war-injuries hospitals based on “the right to be cured,” in accordance with The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Paris, 10 December 1948). On the medical situation in Afghanistan, the website of Emergency writes:

The number of hospitalized injured has increased in a frightening way: from 2010 to now, the admissions to our war-surgery hospitals have more than doubled. The deterioration in the security situation was also registered by the United Nations. According to the latest report from Unama (United Nation Assistance Mission in Afghanistan), in the first 6 months of 2015, there have been at least 4.921 victims between dead and injured, the highest number ever, considering the same period in previous years.

To expose the ludricous argument that refugees flee “dictators,” we need only turn to Iraq, where the US removed a “dictator” twelve years ago. As the website of Emergency notes,

From 1 January 2014 to 30 April 2015, 14.947 civilians in Iraq have lost their lives; 29.189 were injured. In the same period, more than 2.8 million people have been forced to abandon their home. Among these, there were 1.3 million children (Report, United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq).

It is a moral trial for me to accept the objections of my brothers and sisters on the left to any intervention that would begin to challenge the serial provider of all this suffering. Admittedly, I am prejudiced by experience. When the Allies bombed Italian cities, we cursed the bombs but not the bombers. Frankly, it made no difference who the bombers were. They could have been 13^th-century flying Mongols. They were bringing the war to an end. That’s all that mattered, for war makes unscrupulous survivors of us all.

Meanwhile on Monday, Gino Strada’s Emergency received twenty-one patients from Kunduz:

At the Emergency hospital in Kabul yesterday 25 patients arrived from the city of Kunduz and the hospital of Médecins sans Frontières, bombed by Nato on Saturday night. Nineteen were hospitalized, the other 6 were treated and discharged. The Emergency hospital in Kabul was already full: in the last 3 days 60 wounded arrived, 320 in the last month, 1.719 in the last 5 months. Our staff is preparing more space, in anticipation for the arrival of other wounded [my translation].

And so it goes. Every horror story has its heroes.

Sources

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/03/kunduz-charity-hospital-bombing-violates-international-law

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/04/afghanistan-hospital-airstrike-us-military-investigation-msf-doctors-without-borders

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/afghan-official-hospital-in-airstrike-was-a-taliban-base/2015/10/04/8638af58-6a47-11e5-bdb6-6861f4521205_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/afghan-official-hospital-in-airstrike-was-a-taliban-base/2015/1

http://mondoweiss.net/2015/09/coalition-killing-civilians?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=194ce0ca76-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-194ce0ca76-398530681

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/09/29/world/middleeast/ap-ml-yemen.html?_r=0

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2014/1/17/what-really-happenedwhenausdronehitayemeniweddingconvoy.html

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-widens-role-in-saudi-led-campaign-against-yemen-rebels-1428882967

https://soundcloud.com/bbc-world-service/unsafe-streets-of-yemen?ocid=socialflow_twitter

http://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/yemen/WHO_Yemen_sitrep2_7_April_2015.pdf?ua=1

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/06/us-backed-airstrikes-yemen-kill-civilians-hopes-peace#_=_

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-seeks-new-authority-to-expand-yemen-drone-campaign/2012/04/18/gIQAsaumRT_story.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/opinion/how-drones-help-al-qaeda.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/world/middleeast/ashton-carter-us-defense-secretary-warns-of-al-qaeda-gains-in-yemen.html?_r=0

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/10/01/444912621/u-s-backed-saudi-bombing-campaign-blamed-for-civilian-deaths-in-yemen

To those who bothered to listen to President Obama’s UN General Assembly speech without falling asleep like Secretary John Kerry clearly wished to do, there was a stark contrast to that speech which followed from the Russian President. First before Barack Obama completed his first sentence we could feel his emotion. It was projecting a contempt and arrogance of a special variety: “We have the biggest, baddest military; we call the shots, you peons of the nations of the world.”

Going through the official Obama text it’s difficult to find even one sentence where he speaks honestly. It’s an example not of grey propaganda but black. I cite several of the most egregious instances.

Near the start after the usual pious homage to the 70-year history of the United Nations, Mr. Obama says, “the United States has worked with many nations in this Assembly to prevent a third world war — by forging alliances with old adversaries; by supporting the steady emergence of strong democracies accountable to their people instead of any foreign power.”

I am challenged to think of one single strong democracy accountable to their people that US interventions of the past years have supported. On the contrary look at the actual record since the US invasion and destruction of Afghanistan in 2001 and then Iraq in 2003. Then we have seen the US State Department’s launching, under Hillary Clinton, of the NGO and social media-steered Arab Spring destabilizations under the false flag of installing democracy. ThenWashington went on to the destruction of Africa’s most stable, peaceful state, Qaddafi’s Libya. And in 2013 the US-directed Maidan coup d’etat to install a neo-nazi band of hooligans in Kiev to try to destabilize Russia. Every covert and overt US intervention has brought the world a giant step closer to World War III. The latest move in that direction is US insistence on placing the most advanced nuclear bombs on German soil making a major destabilization of the current status quo between NATO and Russia.

Further on in the Obama speech, after nice sounding words about the wonderful principles of the UN Charter, “collective endeavor,” and of “diplomatic cooperation between the world’s major powers,” he inserts a bizarre non-sequitur: “I lead the strongest military that the world has ever known, and I will never hesitate to protect my country or our allies, unilaterally and by force where necessary.” A kind of modern cover version of the 1970’s Jim Croce song that might be titled, “You don’t mess around with Barack…” So much for the UN Charter. Here is the mailed fist under the velvet glove that all too often these last decades is the substance of US foreign political and military policy.

Then Mr. President goes on to speak of dictators and tyrants. Trying to deflect accusations that the US creates regime change via NGOs, Barack Obama declares, “It is not a conspiracy of US-backed NGOs that expose corruption and raise the expectations of people around the globe; it’s technology, social media…” The truth is just that of US-backed NGOs as most in the UN audience know from personal experience with US-Congress financed NGOs like National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and the Soros Open Society Foundations. It is precisely this Washington regime change by “US-backed NGOs that expose corruption,” via the “weaponization of democracy and human rights,” which is toppling legitimate regimes that refuse to bow to Washington’s agenda, from Brazil to Syria. As the recent Snowdon and other revelations confirm, precisely the US-based social media such as Facebook, Twitter and others are tied to or work closely with the CIA, State Department, NSA, and facilitate the NGO regime change.

Now comes a whopper. The President of the United States states,

 “No matter how powerful our military, how strong our economy, we understand the United States cannot solve the world’s problems alone. In Iraq, the United States learned the hard lesson that even hundreds of thousands of brave, effective troops, trillions of dollars from our Treasury, cannot by itself impose stability on a foreign land.”

With due respect, Mr President, if you learned that hard lesson after wasting “trillions of dollars,” not from your Treasury, but from US taxpayers and Chinese and others invested in your US Treasury bonds, to finance that debacle called the Iraq War, why are you in Syria today? What are you doing training the Ukraine military today? Why are you meddling all over the world to stir people up? Why are you building military bases on every piece of dirt around the world where you can dig a hole to plant the American flag? You even admit it was a total fiasco. There is a significant reality disconnect in Washington today.

Finally the US president hits the real point of his current discontent: Russia. “Consider Russia’s annexation of Crimea and further aggression in eastern Ukraine. America has few economic interests in Ukraine…we cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated. If that happens without consequence in Ukraine, it could happen to any nation gathered here today. That’s the basis of the sanctions that the United States and our partners impose on Russia.” This statement skillfully ignores the reality of the Ukraine events of 2013-2014.

It is a documentable matter of record that it was a Washington-sponsored Color Revolution that launched the November, 2013 Maidan Square protests against the legal, elected government of corrupt-but-legitimate President Viktor Yanukovich. It was ignited by US-backed NGOs of George Soros and others within seconds after a tweet from US-backed now Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, calling for “EuroMaidan” protests against the legitimate decision of the Yanukovich cabinet to accept an offer, a very economically attractive one, from Russia to join their emerging Eurasian Economic Union, receive a reduction of Russian gas costs of 30% and an offer to buy $15 billion of Ukraine state debt.

It was neo-conservative Assistant State Secretary, Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland (who says Washington today has forgotten the fine art of diplomacy?), who, together with Vice President Joe Biden and US Ambassador in Kiev, Jeffrey Pyatt, and droves of CIA agents, who made what George Friedman, US CEO of Stratfor, termed “the most blatant coup in history,” in Ukraine inFebruary 2014. Washington has gone on to hand-pick the Ukraine government, even placing an American citizen, a US State department veteran as Finance Minister, and named the son of Vice President Biden to the board of the Ukraine state gas company and other such “US interests.”

The Syrian Fraud

Finally Barack Obama comes directly to Syria, the issue that Russian diplomacy has recently exposed to world scrutiny. President Obama states, “Nowhere is our commitment to international order more tested than in Syria. When a dictator slaughters tens of thousands of his own people, that is not just a matter of one nation’s internal affairs — it breeds human suffering on an order of magnitude that affects us all. “

First it has never been established that Assad has killed “tens of thousands” of Syrian citizens. Secondly, it’s a sly way to attempt to justify an insidious idea, “Responsibility to Protect,” (RTP) that was used by Washington in Libya in 2011 to destroy that country. RTP is a direct violation of the UN Charter. Washington’s “coalition” bombing of Syria allegedly to destroy IS is also in violation of the UN Charter, as it is bombing a sovereign nation without being invited officially by their government as required in the Charter Washington drafted in 1944 at Dumbarton Oaks.

Moderate Syrian Opposition?

The Washington game is first to force elected President Assad out, at the same time it claims it wants to destroy ISIL (or IS or ISIS or DAESH depending on your choice of the many names). Russia’s position is clear: The only organized force in Syria today capable of destroying terrorist Salafists, all terrorist Salafists, is Bashar al Assad’s government and the Syrian National Army and intelligence services that remain loyal to him.

The Obama speech talks of the US support for “moderate” opposition rebels. Yet as far back as April 2013, when ISIS was called Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria, and run now by Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, the US-trained lieutenant of the late Osama bin Laden, the New York Times, quoting numerous US officials, documented that virtually all of the rebel fighters in Syria are hardline Islamic terrorists. There are no “moderate” oppositionists fighting today. The so-called “moderate” Free Syrian Army has also signed a non-aggression pact with ISIS since 2014.

On September 16, 2015, almost two weeks before the Obama UN speech, Gen. Lloyd Austin III, head of the US “war against ISIS,” during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Syria, admitted that the military program 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. At the same Senate hearings, Christine Wormuth, the Pentagon Undersecretary responsible for the Syrian war confirmed recent Russian statements, noting 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.”

There is a Russian joke currently making the rounds in Moscow. Russia’s Putin arrives back in the Kremlin after his September New York meeting with President Obama on Syria and other topics. A trusted aide asks how the talk with Obama went. Putin tells his aide that, in a bid to lower the temperature and calm the nerves before turning to grave topics like the wars in Syria and Ukraine, the Russian president proposed they first sit down to a game of chess. Putin tells his aide what it’s like playing chess with Obama. “It’s like playing with a pigeon. First it knocks over all the pieces, then it shits on the board and finally struts around like it won.”

Este texto es la traducción del primer capitulo del libro de Michel Chossudovsky, La Globalizacion de la Guerra, La Guerra prolongada de Estados Unidos en Contra la Humanidad  

Titulo en ingles: The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity, Global Research, Montreal, 2015 .

Este texto constituye el documento de apoyo a la presentación de Michel Chossudovsky al II Conferencia de Estudio Estrategicas, intitulado:

“Cuba y la Política Exterior de los Estado Unidos” 

II Conferencia de Estudio Estrategicas,

Transicion geopolitica del poder global: entre la cooperación y el conflicto,

Centro de investigacion de Politica Internacional (CIPI),

La Havana, Cuba, 14-16 de Octubre de 215

La publicación del libro de Michel Chossudovsky en español esta prevista para enero 2016.

*      *      *

Introducción 

Estados Unidos y sus aliados en la OTAN se han embarcado en una aventura, una “guerra prolongada” que amenaza el futuro de la humanidad. Esta “guerra sin fronteras” está íntimamente relacionada con el proceso mundial de reestructuración económica, la que ha conducido al colapso de economías nacionales y al empobrecimiento de amplios sectores de la población mundial. El Departamento de Defensa de EE.UU. otorga muchos miles de millones de dólares a los fabricantes de armas en concepto de contratos para la adquisición de sistemas de armas avanzadas. A su vez, “la batalla por el petróleo” en Oriente Medio y Asia Central conviene directamente a los intereses de las grandes empresas petrolíferas angloestadounidense. Estados Unidos y sus aliados hacen “resonar los tambores de la guerra” en los momentos álgidos de una depresión económica global.

El desplazamiento militar de las fuerzas de EE.UU. y la OTAN aunado a la “guerra no convencional” – la cual abarca operaciones de inteligencia encubierta, sanciones económicas y la imposición del “cambio de régimen” – ocurren de forma simultánea en varias regiones del mundo.

Es crucial para la comprensión de cómo se libra una guerra, entender la campaña mediática que le otorga legitimidad a los ojos de la opinión pública. Las operaciones militares se disfrazan con un mandato humanitario llamado la “Responsabilidad de Proteger” (R2P). Así es que se retrata a las víctimas como las causantes de las guerras de EE.UU. Los civiles en Yugoslavia, Palestina, Ucrania, Libia, Siria e Irak son los responsables de sus propias muertes.

Mientras tanto, el Comandante en Jefe de la fuerza militar más grande del planeta es presentado como un pacificador mundial. La entrega del Premio Nobel de la Paz al Presidente Barack Obama en 2009 se ha vuelto parte integral de la maquinaria propagandística del Pentágono. Da un rostro humano a los invasores y sirve para satanizar a quienes se oponen a las invasiones militares estadounidenses.

El Comité Nobel dice que el Presidente Obama le ha dado al mundo “la esperanza de un futuro mejor”. El premio se le otorgó por sus extraordinarios esfuerzos por fortalecer la diplomacia internacional y la cooperación entre los pueblos. El Comité concede una importancia especial a la visión de Obama y su trabajo en pro de un mundo sin armas nucleares.

Su diplomacia se fundamenta en el concepto de que aquellos que son llamados a liderar el mundo deben hacerlo basándose en valores y actitudes que son compartidas por la mayoría de la población mundial.

Las realidades se plantean al revés. “Guerra es paz” dijo George Orwell. Los medios hacen coro y argumentan que las contiendas armadas son una empresa humanitaria. El Washington Post escribe que “Las guerras nos hacen más seguros y más ricos”.

La Gran Mentira se vuelve La Verdad. Por otra parte, defender la Verdad – por medio de una cuidadosa documentación y análisis investigativo de los horrores de las operaciones militares lideradas por EE.UU. – no se toma en serio y se descalifica como “teoría de conspiración”.

Mientras Washington lleva a cabo su “guerra global contra el terrorismo” (GGCT), aquellos que se oponen enérgicamente a la agresión de Estados Unidos son calificados como terroristas. A la guerra se le llama paz, una “empresa humanitaria” digna de encomio. El disenso pacífico se considera una herejía.

El desarrollo de los acontecimientos en curso hoy día en Ucrania y Oriente Medio es síntoma de que la humanidad se encuentra en una peligrosa encrucijada. En ningún otro momento desde la crisis de los misiles en Cuba ha estado el mundo más cerca de lo impensable: el escenario de la Tercera Guerra Mundial, un conflicto global militar con uso de armas nucleares.

La maquinaria asesina está desplegada en todo el mundo en el marco de una estructura de comando de combate unificado, y los  entes  gubernamentales, los medios corporativos y los mandarines e intelectuales del Nuevo Orden Mundial que conforman los grupos de expertos en Washington e institutos de estudios estratégicos la defienden rutinariamente como un incuestionable instrumento de paz y prosperidad global.

Una cultura de asesinatos y violencia se ha incrustado en la conciencia humana.

La contienda armada es ampliamente aceptada como parte de un proceso social: se debe “defender” y proteger la Patria.

Las democracias occidentales consideran que la “violencia legitimada” y los asesinatos extrajudiciales dirigidos contra “terroristas” son instrumentos necesarios de la seguridad nacional.

La “guerra humanitaria” goza del apoyo de la así llamada comunidad internacional. No se juzgan como actos criminales. Sus principales arquitectos son recompensados por su contribución a la paz mundial.

El gobierno de Estados Unidos proclama las armas nucleares son instrumentos de paz. El uso preventivo de armas nucleares es categorizado como un acto de “autodefensa” que contribuye a un elusivo concepto de “seguridad global” (véase el capítulo II).

El así llamado “escudo de defensa antimisiles” o “Guerra de las Galaxias” es una iniciativa basada en el desencadenamiento de un primer ataque nuclear, y ha sido desarrollado en diferentes partes del mundo. El escudo antimisil va dirigido principalmente contra Rusia, China, Irán y Corea del Norte.

Mientras tanto, en el contexto de los acontecimientos en curso en Siria y Ucrania, ha colapsado la diplomacia internacional. En Kiev se ha instalado un régimen neonazi con el apoyo directo de occidente, pero es la Federación Rusa que se encuentra bajo amenaza por la acción militar desplegada por  EE.UU. y la OTAN en su frontera occidental (véase el capítulo IX).

¿Una nueva Guerra Fría?     

La renovada confrontación entre este y oeste ha sido denominada “Nueva Guerra Fría”, etiqueta equivocada en parte porque ya no se cuenta con ninguna de las salvaguardas de la Guerra Fría. Rusia ha sido excluida del Grupo de los Ocho (G-8), que ha vuelto a ser un grupo de siete naciones. La diplomacia ha dejado de funcionar. No hay un diálogo este-oeste al estilo de la Guerra Fría entre superpotencias que si bien competían, también se esforzaban por evitar una confrontación militar. Por su parte, el Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas se ha convertido en un portavoz de facto del Departamento de Estado de EE.UU.

Además, las armas nucleares ya no son vistas como “armas de último recurso”, como en la doctrina de Destrucción Mutua Asegurada que prevaleció durante la Guerra Fría. Más bien el Pentágono las exalta por como “inocuas para la población circundante debido a que la explosión es subterránea”. En 2002, el Senado de EE.UU. dio luz verde para el uso de armas nucleares en un escenario de guerra convencional. Ahora las bombas nucleares forman parte de la “caja de herramientas militares” que se pueden utilizar a la par de las armas convencionales.

La amenaza mundial del “terrorismo islámico” ha reemplazado  la “amenaza comunista” del periodo de la Guerra Fría. Aunque Rusia y China son ahora economías capitalistas de “libre mercado”, todavía se contempla la posibilidad de un ataque nuclear preventivo contra ambos países.

Hoy ya no se piensa que China y Rusia sean “una amenaza para el capitalismo”. Todo lo contrario. Lo que está en juego es más bien la rivalidad económica y financiera entre potencias capitalistas. La alianza chino-rusa en la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghái (OCS) constituye un “bloque capitalista competitivo” que socava la hegemonía económica de EE.UU.

En Asia, EE.UU. ha contribuido con su “giro hacia Asia” a que sus aliados de Asia-Pacífico, incluidos Japón, Australia, Corea del Sur, las Filipinas y Vietnam, amenacen a China y la aíslen como parte del proceso de “cercamiento militar”, que tomó impulso a finales de la década de los noventa.

Mientras tanto, la propaganda guerrerista se ha vuelto cada vez más generalizada.  La contienda armada se vende como un proceso de consolidación de la paz.

Cuando la guerra se vuelve paz, el mundo está patas arriba y ya no es posible conceptualizarla. Surge un sistema social inquisitorial (véase el capítulo X). El consenso es que se debe librar la guerra. La gente ya no puede pensar por sí misma. Acepta lo que dice la autoridad y la sabiduría del orden social establecido.

La comprensión de eventos sociales y políticos fundamentales es reemplazada por un mundo de pura fantasía, en el que acechan “los malhechores”. El objetivo de la narrativa de “guerra global contra el terrorismo” – cuidadosamente promovida por el gobierno de Estados Unidos – ha sido incitar al público para que apoye una campaña mundial contra la herejía.

Guerra mundial

El diseño global militar del Pentágono es uno de conquista mundial. El despliegue militar de las fuerzas de EE.UU. – OTAN ocurre simultáneamente en diferentes regiones del mundo.

El concepto de una “guerra prolongada” ha caracterizado la doctrina militar estadounidense desde finales de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La militarización global forma parte de una agenda económica global.

Se instrumenta la militarización mundial por medio de la estructura de Comando Unificado de las fuerzas armadas de EE.UU.: todo el planeta ha sido dividido geográficamente en Comandos Combatientes controlados por el Pentágono. La sede del Mando Estratégico de EE.UU (U.S. STRATCOM) en Omaha, Nebraska tiene un papel central en la coordinación de operaciones militares.

En el proceso de cercar y confrontar a Rusia y China, se han construido  nuevas bases militares, con vistas a establecer esferas de influencia de EE.UU. en todas las regiones del mundo. Se ha fortalecido a los seis mandos geográficos, incluyendo la creación del Mando África de EE.UU. (AFRICOM) en 2008.

Según lo pregonado por el Pentágono, AFRICOM se ha vuelto un “comando combatiente de pleno espectro”, responsable de las operaciones de “defensa” y “seguridad nacional” de EE.UU. “por medio de un compromiso centrado en nuestros objetivos de seguridad compartidos y sostenido con el apoyo de los socios”. El área de jurisdicción de AFRICOM abarca “todo el continente africano, sus naciones insulares y aguas circundantes”.

Esta militarización de África por parte de EE.UU. sirve de sostén para la conquista económica del continente, el saqueo de sus recursos naturales, la adquisición de sus extensas reservas de petróleo y gas, y así por el estilo.

AFRICOM es un instrumento de un proyecto neocolonial liderado por EE.UU. en alianza con el Reino Unido, que consiste en la expansión del área de influencia angloestadounidense las antiguas colonias francófonas de África Central, Occidental y Septentrional, en gran medida a expensas de Francia.

EE.UU. tiene bases militares y/o instalaciones en más de 150 países, con 160,000 personas en servicio activo. Se planifica la construcción de nuevas bases militares en América Latina, incluso en Colombia, en una zona adyacente con Venezuela.

La ayuda militar a Israel ha aumentado y la administración Obama ha expresado su inquebrantable apoyo a este país y sus fuerzas armadas, las que están programadas para desempeñar un papel primordial en las intervenciones militares lideradas por EE.UU.-OTAN en Oriente Medio. La agenda oculta es la eliminación total de Palestina y el establecimiento del “Gran Israel”.

“Guerra sin fronteras” 

El Proyecto para el Nuevo Siglo Americano (PNAC, 2000), formulado inicialmente por los neoconservadores, se basaba en “librar una guerra sin fronteras”. El PNAC es un centro de estudios vinculado a los estamentos de defensa e inteligencia, el Partido Republicano y el poderoso Consejo de Relaciones Exteriores (CFR), que desempeña un papel importante tras bambalinas en la formulación de la política exterior de EE.UU.

En septiembre de 2000, pocos meses antes de la llegada de George W. Bush a la Casa Blanca, el PNAC publicó un plan de acción para la dominación global titulado “La reconstrucción de las defensas de Estados Unidos”.

Los objetivos declarados del PNAC son los siguientes:

• defender la patria estadounidense
• luchar y ganar decisivamente al mismo tiempo en múltiples y grandes escenarios de guerra;
• realizar sus obligaciones “policíacas” asociadas con la formación del entorno de seguridad en áreas críticas; y
• transformar a las fuerzas armadas de EE.UU. para que aprovechen al máximo la “revolución en asuntos militares”.

El antiguo secretario adjunto de Defensa Paul Wolfowitz, el secretario de Defensa Donald Rumsfeld y el vicepresidente Dick Cheney (administración de G.W. Bush) habían encargado el plan al PNAC ya desde antes de las elecciones presidenciales del año 2000.

El PNAC diseña un hoja de ruta para la conquista militar. Hace un llamado a “la imposición directa de bases militares estadounidenses de avanzada” en toda Asia Central y Oriente Medio, “con vistas a garantizar la dominación económica del mundo, al mismo tiempo que se ahoga a cualquier posible rival” o se torpedea toda alternativa viable a la versión estadounidense de lo que debe ser una “economía de libre mercado”.

A diferencia de los escenarios de guerra, las así llamadas “funciones policíacas” llevan implícita una manera de patrullaje militar global por medio del uso de varios instrumentos de intervención militar, como bombardeos punitivos, el envío de las fuerzas especiales de EE.UU. y otras medidas similares. Estas funciones policíacas globales también incluyen operaciones encubiertas y “cambios de régimen”, los cuales se realizan de acuerdo con un “mandato humanitario”.

Las acciones militares se pueden ejecutar de forma simultánea en diferentes partes del mundo (según lo describe el PNAC), así como de manera consecutiva.

Esta agenda militar, emprendida bajo la bandera de la “responsabilidad de proteger”, prevalece en gran medida también en el gobierno presidido por Obama. La propaganda mediática ha sido determinante para sostener la ficción de que existe tal cosa como una “guerra humanitaria”.

Nuevos sistemas de armamento

La “revolución en asuntos militares” a la que hace referencia el PNAC se puede traducir como “desarrollo de nuevos sistemas de armamento”, y consiste en la Iniciativa de Defensa Estratégica, la instalación concurrente de armamento en el espacio y una nueva generación de armas nucleares.

La Iniciativa de Defensa Estratégica, conocida popularmente como “Guerra de las Galaxias” incluye no solo el controvertido “escudo antimisiles” sino también una amplia gama de armas ofensivas guidas por láser con capacidad de atacar  cualquier parte del mundo. Asimismo, abarca instrumentos de guerra meteorológica y climática, desarrollados por el Programa de Investigación de Alta Frecuencia Activa Auroral (HAARP). Este último es ya plenamente operativo y tiene la capacidad para desencadenar inundaciones, sequías, huracanes y terremotos. Desde una perspectiva militar, HAARP es un arma de destrucción masiva. Constituye un arma de conquista con potencial para desestabilizar selectivamente los sistemas agrícolas y ecológicos de regiones enteras.

Asimismo está contemplado el Programa FALCON, otra creación del Pentágono. Fue formulado durante la administración de George W. Bush Jr. y es el sistema de armamento más reciente del Nuevo Orden Mundial. Su objetivo es la dominación económica y política del planeta. Desde Estados Unidos continental puede alcanzar cualquier parte del mundo. Se describe como un arma de “alcance global” para “reaccionar de manera rápida y decisiva ante acciones desestabilizadoras o amenazantes por parte de países hostiles y organizaciones terroristas”.

Este sistema de misiles de crucero hipersónico, desarrollado por la empresa  Northrop Grumman, “permitiría que EE.UU. condujera misiones de ataques de urgencia efectivos a escala global, sin depender de bases militares en el extranjero”.

A través de FALCON, EE.UU. podría atacar en apoyo a fuerzas de combate en un escenario de guerra convencional o por medio de  bombardeos punitivos dirigidos en contra de países que no obedecen los dictados económicos y políticos de EE.UU.

La hoja de ruta militar en Oriente Medio

Según el antiguo comandante de la OTAN, el general Wesley Clark, la hoja de ruta del Pentágono consiste en una secuencia de países. En Winning Modern Wars (Para Ganar Guerras Modernas), el general Clark declara lo siguiente:

“Cuando caminaba por el Pentágono en noviembre de 2001, uno de los altos oficiales del personal militar se detuvo para charlar. Me contó que todavía estábamos encarrilados para atacar Irak. Pero había más. Esta invasión ahora se discutía como parte de una campaña de cinco años duración que contemplaba un total de siete países, empezando por Irak para continuar en Siria, Líbano, Libia, Irán, Somalia y Sudán”. 

Siria e Irán  

La agresión actual contra Palestina, Siria e Irak es el trampolín para una intervención en Irán, que podría conducir a un proceso de escalamiento militar. Rusia y China, que son aliados tanto de Siria como de Irán, también son blanco de EE.UU.-OTAN. En Irak, bajo la bandera de una “guerra civil”, se libra una intervención encubierta que en su esencia contribuye a la destrucción de todo un país, sus instituciones y su economía. Esta operación encubierta forma parte de una agenda de inteligencia y es un proceso guiado que consiste en transformar Irak en un territorio abierto.

No obstante, se ha hecho creer a la opinión pública que está en juego una confrontación entre los chiítas y los sunitas. La ocupación militar estadounidense de Irak ha sido reemplazada por formas no convencionales de hacer la guerra. Las realidades se vuelven borrosas. Una amarga ironía es que el país agresor es presentado al mundo como el que viene al rescate de un “Irak soberano”.

El resquebrajamiento de Irak y Siria por divisiones sectarias es una vieja política de  Estados Unidos y sus aliados. La partición propuesta tanto de Irak como de Siria tiene como modelo general lo que ocurrió con la Federación de Yugoslavia, que fue desmembrada en siete “Estados independientes” (Serbia, Croacia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Eslovenia, Montenegro y Kosovo).

La geopolítica del petróleo

La geopolítica del petróleo y de los oleoductos es crucial para la conducción de las operaciones militares de EE.UU.-OTAN. La región de Oriente Medio-Asia Central en su conjunto concentra más de un sesenta por ciento de las reservas petrolíferas del mundo.

El escenario de guerra en Oriente Medio

Actualmente hay cinco escenarios de guerra en la región de Oriente Medio – Asia Central: Afganistán-Pakistán; Irak; Palestina, Libia y Siria. Un proceso de escalada militar podría conllevar a la fusión de estos escenarios de guerra actualmente separados, lo cual desembocaría en una conflagración más amplia que abarcaría toda la región, desde el norte de África y el Mediterráneo hasta Afganistán, Pakistán y la frontera occidental de China.

El legado de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Traspaso entre poderes imperialistas en pugna

Lo que eufemísticamente se llama la “era de postguerra” ha sido en realidad un periodo de enfrentamiento y militarización continuos. Es importante tenerlo en cuenta para entender las guerras contemporáneas lideradas por Estados Unidos.

Estados Unidos salió ileso de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La mayor parte de las batallas fueron libradas por sus aliados, una estrategia que ha utilizado desde entonces en los conflictos subsiguientes de postguerra. Además, un análisis cuidadoso de la Segunda Guerra Mundial plantea que los intereses corporativos de Estados Unidos, entre ellos la Standard Oil de Rockefeller, dieron su apoyo tanto a los aliados de Estados Unidos como a sus enemigos, incluyendo la Alemania nazi, aun mucho después de la entrada de EE.UU. al conflicto en diciembre de 1941. El objetivo estratégico era debilitar a ambos lados para así desestabilizar a las potencias imperialistas.

Al emerger de la Segunda Guerra Mundial como la nación menos afectada, EE.UU. pudo determinar el perfil político y económico de la Europa occidental de postguerra. Sus tropas se encuentran estacionadas en varios países europeos hasta el día de hoy. Tanto sus adversarios en el conflicto bélico (Alemania, Japón e Italia) como sus aliados (Francia, el Reino Unido, Bélgica, Holanda) se han debilitado. Con la excepción del Reino Unido, que forma parte del eje angloestadounidense, estos países son potencias colonialistas en declive, desplazados por la hegemonía estadounidense. Los territorios que fueron sus colonias antes de la Segunda Guerra abarcan Indonesia, el Congo, Indochina y Ruanda, entre otros, y han sido integrados a lo largo de un periodo de medio siglo a la esfera de influencia dominante de Estados Unidos.

En África, continúa el proceso de desplazamiento de la esfera de influencia de Francia. En la actualidad Estados Unidos ha tomado el control de las antiguas colonias francesas y belgas en África central y occidental. Asimismo, Washington ejerce un papel decisivo en el Magreb (véase el capítulo VIII).

“Colonialismo interno” en la Unión Europea

Asimismo, ha empezado a surgir una forma compleja de “colonialismo interno” en la Unión Europea (UE). Junto con sus socios europeos, las instituciones financieras y conglomerados de negocios de EE.UU. son los que prevalecen al establecer la agenda monetaria, comercial y de inversión.

La política se encuentra subordinada a los intereses financieros dominantes. Lo que ocurre en términos de negociaciones comerciales secretas (bajo la Asociación Transatlántica para el Comercio y la Inversión y el Acuerdo Integral de Economía y Comercio) es un proceso de integración económico y político entre la UE y América del Norte (Estados Unidos y Canadá). Estos acuerdos, junto con la Asociación Transpacífica (ATP), constituyen las piedras angulares de un proceso de dominación económica global.

Mientras tanto, las elecciones presidenciales y parlamentarias en la UE, incluyendo las de Alemania, Italia y Francia (por ejemplo, los casos de Sarkozy y Hollande), son cada vez más objeto de interferencia política encubierta de EE.UU. (según el modelo las “revoluciones de colores”). O sea que Estados Unidos propicia también cambios de régimen en países de la Unión Europea.

La cuestión fundamental, por lo tanto es ¿hasta qué punto los líderes europeos son sus apoderados o representantes políticos?

Las guerras auspiciadas por EE.UU. y las operaciones de inteligencia militar

Todo el período de 1945 hasta el presente ha sido caracterizado por una sucesión de guerras auspiciadas por Estados Unidos e intervenciones militares y de inteligencia en las principales regiones del mundo.

No se trata de operaciones militares fragmentarias y pertinentes a países o regiones específicas. Existe más bien una hoja de ruta militar que describe una secuencia de operaciones militares. En lugar de escenarios de guerra establecidos, se han desplegado formas no convencionales de intervención, por ejemplo ataques terroristas auspiciados por el Estado.

La guerra prolongada que libra Estados Unidos se fundamenta en un plan cohesivo y coordinado de conquista militar mundial que conviene a los intereses dominantes financieros y corporativos. La estructura de las alianzas, entre ellas la OTAN, es crucial para su éxito.

La Unión Europea desempeña un papel central en esta agenda militar. Los Estados miembro de la UE son aliados del eje angloestadounidense, pero al mismo tiempo ocurre un proceso de reestructuración, según el cual países que antes eran soberanos se encuentran cada vez más sujetos a la jurisdicción de poderosas instituciones financieras.

La imposición de las drásticas reformas económicas del FMI a varios países europeos es un síntoma de la interferencia de Estados Unidos en sus asuntos internos. Lo que está ocurriendo es un cambio profundo en las estructuras políticas y económicas de la UE, según el cual los Estados miembro son reclasificados de facto por el FMI y tratados como un país endeudado del Tercer Mundo.

Acción militar en apoyo a la guerra económica

Estados Unidos ha intervenido militarmente en las principales regiones del mundo, pero el objetivo de su política externa es que las operaciones militares las lleven a cabo los aliados, o en su defecto, que pueda recurrir a formas no convencionales de intervención.

Esta agenda tiene dos pilares:

1. El poderío militar de EE.UU. combinado con el de la “OTAN global”, que incluye a Israel (miembro de facto de la Alianza Atlántica), representa una fuerza formidable en términos de sistemas de armas avanzadas. Estados Unidos ha establecido bases militares en todas las regiones importantes del mundo, con una estructura de mando geográfico. En tiempos recientes se ha añadido el Mando África de EE.UU. (AFRICOM).
2. La acción bélica sirve de apoyo a poderosos intereses económicos y financieros. La estrategia de “guerra económica” contemplada en la agenda neoliberal es ejecutada en estrecha coordinación con la planificación militar.

El propósito de las contiendas armadas no es la conquista per se. EE.UU. perdió la guerra de Vietnam, pero se logró la meta fundamental que era destruir Vietnam como país soberano. Hoy día Vietnam y Camboya forman parte de una nueva frontera empobrecida de la economía global basada en mano de obra barata.

Además, los países que lucharon por su soberanía y contra el imperialismo de EE.UU. en Asia (Vietnam, Camboya, Corea del Sur, Indonesia y las Filipinas) han sido integrados en acuerdos bilaterales de cooperación militar con el Pentágono. EE.UU. utiliza esta estructura de alianzas impuesta a los países derrotados para fomentar el conflicto con China.

El proyecto imperial se fundamenta en la conquista económica, lo cual implica la confiscación y apropiación de la riqueza y los recursos de países soberanos. Sucesivas operaciones militares en Oriente Medio han tenido por objeto confiscar las reservas de petróleo y gas.

Los países son destruidos, a menudo transformados en territorios, y se pierde todo vestigio de soberanía. Las instituciones nacionales colapsan y la economía nacional es destruida por medio de la imposición de reformas de “libre mercado” bajo la tutela del FMI, campea el desempleo, se desmantelan los servicios sociales, los salarios colapsan y la gente es empobrecida.

En estos países, las élites capitalistas gobernantes son subordinadas a las de EE.UU. y sus aliados. Los activos y recursos naturales del país se transfieren a manos de inversores extranjeros por medio de programas de privatización impuestos por las fuerzas invasoras en coordinación del FMI y del Banco Mundial.

La historia de las armas nucleares: el legado de Hiroshima y Nagasaki

Al inicio, la doctrina sobre armas nucleares durante el periodo del Proyecto Manhattan no se basaba en las ideas nacidas de la Guerra Fría, como “disuasión” o “destrucción mutua asegurada”. Además, la doctrina nuclear de EE.UU. después de la Guerra Fría se fundamenta en la noción que las armas nucleares se pueden utilizar en escenarios de guerra convencionales y que estas armas son “inofensivas para civiles”.

El objetivo estratégico de usar tanto ataques convencionales como nucleares ha sido desencadenar “eventos causantes de bajas masivas”, o sea, decenas de miles de muertes.

Esta estrategia se puso en práctica por primera vez hacia finales de la Segunda Guerra Mundial en Japón y Alemania, y su propósito era aterrorizar toda una nación, como medio para la conquista militar.

En Japón, el principal objetivo no eran blancos militares: la noción de “daño colateral” fue utilizada como una justificación para el asesinato masivo de civiles, con el pretexto oficial de que Hiroshima era una “base militar” y que los civiles no eran los blancos.

Para citar al presidente Harry Truman:

Hemos descubierto la más terrible bomba en la historia del mundo… Esta bomba se utilizará contra Japón… La emplearemos de tal manera que militares, soldados y marinos sean los blancos y no mujeres y niños. Aunque los japoneses sean salvajes, crueles, desapiadados y fanáticos, nosotros como líderes de un mundo en pro del bienestar común no podemos bombardear ni la vieja ni la nueva capital… El blanco será netamente militar…

Parece ser lo más terrible que se haya descubierto jamás, pero puede que sea lo más útil.

El mundo notará que la primera bomba atómica fue lanzada contra una base militar en Hiroshima. Se hizo así porque en este primer ataque quisimos evitar, hasta donde fuera posible, matar a civiles.^x 

[Nota: La primera bomba cayó sobre Hiroshima el día 6 de agosto de 1945 y la segunda sobre Nagasaki tres días más tarde, el 9 de agosto, el mismo día en que Truman brindó su alocución radial a la nación.]

Harry Truman

Nadie en las altas esferas del gobierno y fuerzas armadas de EE.UU. creía que Hiroshima fuera una base militar. Truman se engañaba a sí mismo y mentía al público estadounidense.

Hasta hoy se sigue justificando el uso de armas nucleares contra Japón en 1945 como un costo necesario para poner fin a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Según esta tesis, al fin y al cabo “se salvaron vidas”.

Ya desde antes de Hiroshima, EE.UU. venia bombardeando Japón sin cesar, con un alto costo en vidas civiles. Hacia el final de la guerra en Europa, las fuerzas aliadas bombardearon también extensamente varias ciudades alemanas, donde utilizaron dispositivos incendiarios que desataron una tormenta de fuego y  destruyeron su centro histórico. No cabe duda que los objetivos eran civiles y no instalaciones militares.

La era después de la Guerra Fría: guerra nuclear preventiva 

El arsenal estadounidense ha aumentado considerablemente. En la era después de la Guerra Fría, ArmsControl.org (abril de 2013) confirma que Estados Unidos

posee 5,113 ojivas nucleares, entre armas tácticas, estratégicas y no desplegadas.¹¹

Según la declaración oficial (2013) del nuevo START, de las más de 5,113 armas nucleares

EE.UU. tiene desplegadas 1,654 ojivas nucleares estratégicas en 792 ICBMs, SLBMs y bombarderos estratégicos…   

Además, según la Federación de Científicos Americanos (FAS), EE.UU. posee 500 ojivas nucleares tácticas, muchas de las cuales se encuentran desplegadas en países no nucleares como Alemania, Italia, Turquía, Bélgica y Holanda.

En el Análisis de Postura Nuclear (NPR), presentado al Senado de Estados Unidos por la administración Bush a inicios del año 2002, se establecieron unos así llamados “planes de contingencia” para un “primer ataque ofensivo” con armas nucleares, no solo contra el “eje del mal” (Iraq, Irán, Libia, Siria y Corea del Norte), sino también contra Rusia y China. En el gobierno de Obama, la doctrina nuclear de EE.UU. también abarca la posibilidad de un “primer ataque” con armas nucleares contra Estados no nucleares.

La historia de crímenes de guerra de EE.UU.

La idea de “eventos causantes de bajas masivas” persiste hasta el día de hoy en las estrategias militares estadounidenses. Invariablemente, como en el caso de Siria, se culpa a las víctimas por las bajas civiles causadas por los agresores.

El periodo que va desde la guerra de Corea (1950-1953) hasta el presente se caracteriza por una sucesión de escenarios de guerra auspiciados por EE.UU. (Corea, Vietnam, Camboya, Afganistán, Yugoslavia e Irak) y diferentes versiones de intervención militar, incluyendo conflictos de baja intensidad o “guerras civiles” en Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, el Congo, Somalia, Etiopía, Ruanda, Sudan); golpes de Estado, escuadrones de la muerte y masacres (Chile, Argentina, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Irán, Indonesia, Tailandia y Filipinas); guerras encubiertas en apoyo de los “luchadores por la libertad” conocidos más adelante como Al Qaeda  (ocupación soviética de Afganistán) y el uso posterior de soldados de esta agrupación  en Siria; e intervenciones militares “humanitarias” en Libia en 2011 (bombardeo aéreo combinado con apoyo a rebeldes de Al Qaeda).

El objetivo no era tanto ganar estas guerras sino en esencia desestabilizar estos países como Estados nación e imponer un gobierno que actúe como agente de los intereses de Occidente.

Un conteo de estas diferentes operaciones militares revela que desde agosto de 1945 Estados Unidos ha atacado, directa o indirectamente, a 44 países en diferentes regiones del mundo en vías de desarrollo, en algunos casos varias veces…

El objetivo declarado de estas intervenciones militares ha sido efectuar un “cambio de régimen”. Invariablemente se ha citado los “derechos humanos” y la “democracia” como fachadas para justificar lo que eran a todas luces actos unilaterales e ilegales.¹² 

Todo el “periodo de postguerra” se caracteriza por extensos crímenes de guerra que han provocado la muerte de millones de personas. Lo que vemos aquí es una agenda de política externa criminal por parte de Estados Unidos. Estos crímenes no son exclusivos de uno o más jefes de Estado. Más bien forman parte de todo un sistema estatal, sus diferentes instituciones civiles y militares, así como de los poderosos intereses corporativos que están detrás de la formulación de la política externa de Washington, las instituciones de investigación y los entes acreedores que financian la maquinaria militar.

Lo que diferencia a los gobiernos de Bush y Obama con relación al historial de crímenes y atrocidades cometidos por Estados Unidos es que los campos de concentración, los asesinatos selectivos y las cámaras de tortura son ahora reconocidos abiertamente como formas legítimas de intervención que sostienen la “guerra global contra el terrorismo” y sirven como herramientas para promover la democracia occidental.

Los crímenes auspiciados por EE.UU. no se limitan a los muertos o las bajas en las guerras y la destrucción de la infraestructura de la nación, sino que los países quedan destruidos, colapsados y empobrecidos. Y como ya dijimos más arriba, los activos y recursos naturales del país se transfieren a manos de inversores extranjeros por medio de programas de privatización impuestos por las fuerzas invasoras.

 La destrucción del internacionalismo: la Doctrina Truman

Terminada la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la administración Truman formuló el objetivo del dominio militar global, en apoyo a un proyecto imperial a finales de la década de los cuarenta, al inicio de la Guerra Fría. Este objetivo fue reafirmado en 1990 por el Presidente George Herbert Walker Bush en un discurso histórico ante una sesión conjunta del Congreso y Senado de EE.UU., en el que proclamó el Nuevo Orden Mundial luego de la caída del Muro de Berlín y la desintegración del bloque soviético.

Los fundamentos ideológicos de esta agenda se encuentran en lo que se conoce como la “Doctrina Truman”, formulada por primera vez en 1946 por el asesor de política exterior George F. Kennan en un informe del Departamento de Estado.

Lo que nos llama la atención al leer este documento es la continuidad que hubo en la política externa de EE.UU., desde la estrategia de “contención” durante la Guerra Fría hasta la guerra “preventiva” y la “guerra contra el terrorismo” en la actualidad. En el fondo, el texto de Kennan dice en términos corteses que EE.UU. debe buscar el dominio económico y estratégico por medios militares:

“Además, contamos con alrededor del 50% de la riqueza mundial, pero solo con el 6.3% de su población. Esta disparidad es particularmente grande entre nosotros y los pueblos de Asia. En esta situación  no podemos dejar de ser objeto de envidia y resentimiento. Nuestra tarea real en la época venidera es la de crear un plan de relaciones que nos permita mantener esta posición de disparidad sin menoscabo de nuestra seguridad nacional. Para hacerlo tendremos que dejar a un lado el sentimentalismo y las quimeras; y nuestra atención tendrá que estar concentrada en nuestros objetivos nacionales inmediatos en todas partes. No debemos engañarnos con la idea de que hoy en día podemos permitirnos el lujo del altruismo y ser los benefactores del mundo. 

… Ante esta situación, nos favorece prescindir de inmediato de varios conceptos que han apuntalado nuestra manera de pensar con relación al Oriente Lejano. Debemos abandonar la aspiración de “caer bien” o ser reconocidos como el repositorio del más alto altruismo internacional. Debemos dejar de ponernos en la posición de guardián de nuestros hermanos y dejar de ofrecer consejos morales e ideológicos.  Debemos dejar de hablar de objetivos vagos e irreales– sobre todo respecto al Lejano Oriente –tales como los derechos humanos, el crecimiento de los niveles de vida y la democratización. No está muy lejos el día en que tendremos que manejar conceptos del poder puro. Para entonces cuanto menos estemos atados por consignas idealistas, mejor.¹³ 

La desintegración planificada del sistema de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) como un organismo internacional independiente e influyente ha estado en el tablero de la política externa de Estados Unidos desde su fundación en 1945. Su desaparición  planificada formó parte integral de la Doctrina Truman, según se definió en 1948. Desde el primer momento, Washington ha procurado por un lado controlar la ONU para sacarle provecho y, por el otro,  busca debilitarla y finalmente destruirla.

En las palabras de George Kennan:

Ocasionalmente, [las Naciones Unidas] ha tenido un propósito útil. Pero, en general, ha creado más problemas de los que ha resuelto y ha dado lugar a la dispersión de nuestros esfuerzos diplomáticos. Y en el empeño por obtener la mayoría de votos en las Naciones Unidas para lograr nuestros principales propósitos políticos, jugamos con un arma peligrosa que algún día puede volverse contra nosotros. Esta es una situación que amerita un estudio muy cuidadoso y de previsión de nuestra parte.¹⁴  

Aunque comprometido oficialmente con la “comunidad internacional”, Washington habla de boquilla sobre las Naciones Unidas. Hoy, la ONU es en muchos sentidos un apéndice del Departamento de Estado de EE.UU. En lugar de socavar la ONU como institución, como lo propusiera George Kennan a finales de la década de los cuarenta, EE.UU. y sus aliados ejercen el control de la Secretaría y los organismos más importantes de la ONU.

Desde la primera Guerra del Golfo, la ONU ha servido principalmente para autorizar las actuaciones de Estados Unidos de manera rutinaria y sin mayores cuestionamientos. Ha cerrado los ojos ante los crímenes de guerra de Estados Unidos y  ha puesto en marcha las así llamadas operaciones de mantenimiento de la paz en nombre de los invasores angloestadounidenses, en violación de la Carta de la ONU. Tras el “despido” de facto del secretario general de la ONU Boutros Boutros Ghali, los secretarios generales que le sucedieron, tanto Kofi Annan como Ban Ki-moon, se  convirtieron en herramientas de la política exterior de EE.UU., tomando sus órdenes  directamente de Washington.

Demás está decir que los sucesivos gobiernos demócratas y republicanos, desde Harry Truman hasta George W. Bush y Barack Obama, han estado involucrados en este proyecto hegemónico de dominación que el Pentágono ha denominado “guerra prolongada”.

Los escritos de Kennan apuntan a la importancia de construir una alianza dominante angloestadounidense basada en “buenas relaciones entre nuestro país y el imperio británico”. En el mundo de hoy, esta alianza caracteriza en gran medida el eje militar que existe entre Washington y Londres, que desempeña un papel dominante en la OTAN, en detrimento de los aliados europeos del primero. Kennan también señaló la importancia de incluir a Canadá en la alianza angloestadounidense, una política que en efecto ha sido mayormente  ejecutada (por medio del CAFTA y la integración de las estructuras de mando militar). El papel de Canadá fue concebido como el de un intermediario entre EE.UU. y Gran Bretaña, y como medio para que Estados Unidos influyera en las colonias británicas, que más tarde llegarían a formar la Mancomunidad.

“La Europa federada” 

En la Doctrina Truman ya se avizoraba un proyecto de unión europea con una “Alemania debilitada”. George F. Kennan  concibió la formación de una “Europa federada” que estaría basada en el fortalecimiento de la alianza dominante angloestadounidense entre Gran Bretaña y Estados Unidos, el debilitamiento de Alemania como un poder europeo y la exclusión de Rusia.

A la luz de los acontecimientos recientes en Ucrania y Europa del Este, es pertinente señalar que en el informe del Departamento del Estado, citado más arriba, Kennan apunta explícitamente a una “política de contención de Alemania, dentro de Europa occidental”. Lo que sugieren las observaciones de Kennan es que EE.UU. debe apoyar un proyecto europeo, pero solamente en la medida en que favorezca a los intereses hegemónicos de EE.UU.

En este sentido, vale la pena recordar que la alianza francoalemana fue la que, por lo general, prevaleció antes de la arremetida angloestadounidense contra Irak en 2003, a la que tanto Francia como Alemania se opusieron.

La invasión de Irak marcó un punto de inflexión. La elección de líderes políticos pro-EE.UU. (el presidente Sarkozy en Francia y la canciller Angela Merkel en Alemania) conllevó a un debilitamiento de la soberanía nacional y, por ende, al declive de la alianza francoalemana.

Hoy día tanto el presidente francés como la canciller alemana reciben sus órdenes desde Washington.

Lo que es más, en el contexto actual, EE.UU. está empeñado en evitar que Alemania y Francia desarrollen relaciones políticas y económicas con Rusia, algo que a los ojos de Washington socavaría sus ambiciones hegemónicas sobre la Unión Europea.

La construcción de una esfera de influencia de EE.UU. en el Este y Sudeste de Asia 

Como ya hemos visto, la Doctrina Truman fue la culminación de una estrategia militar desarrollada después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial por EE.UU., pero que tuvo su génesis con el bombardeo nuclear de Hiroshima y Nagasaki en agosto de 1945 y la rendición de Japón.

En Asia del Este, esta consistió en la ocupación de Japón después de la guerra, así como la toma de posesión del imperio colonial japonés, incluyendo Corea del Sur (Corea había sido anexada a Japón bajo el Tratado de Anexión Japón-Corea de 1910).

Tras la derrota de Japón imperial en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, se estableció una zona de influencia de  EE.UU. en el este y sudeste de Asia,  específicamente en los territorios de la antigua “Esfera de Coprosperidad de la Gran Asia Oriental” del Japón imperial.

Asimismo, la hegemonía de Estados Unidos en Asia se basó en gran medida en la creación de una esfera de influencia en los países bajo la jurisdicción colonial de Japón, Francia y los Países Bajos.

La esfera de influencia en Asia y EE.UU., que fue construida a lo largo de un período de más de 20 años, abarcó Filipinas (un territorio de EE.UU. que fue ocupado por Japón durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial), Corea del Sur (anexado a Japón en 1910 y un Estado cliente después de la Segunda Guerra), Tailandia (un protectorado japonés durante la Segunda Guerra), Indonesia (una colonia holandesa ocupada por Japón durante la Guerra y que se vendría a convertir en un Estado cliente de facto de EE.UU. tras el golpe militar que instaló a la dictadura de Suharto en el poder en 1965).

Esta esfera de influencia de EE.UU. en Asia también extendió su control a las antiguas posesiones coloniales de Francia en Indochina, incluyendo Vietnam, Laos y Camboya, que habían sido ocupadas militarmente por Japón durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

El “giro hacia Asia” de Obama, que amenaza abiertamente a China, es el desenlace de este proceso histórico.

La guerra de Corea y la Doctrina Truman 

La Guerra de Corea (1950-1953) fue la primera gran operación militar llevada a cabo por  EE.UU. después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y empezó casi al inicio de lo que eufemísticamente se llamó  la “Guerra Fría”. En muchos aspectos, era una continuación de la Segunda Guerra Mundial,  cuando las tierras de Corea bajo ocupación colonial japonesa fueron, de un día para otro, entregadas a un nuevo poder colonial en la región, Estados Unidos de América. La entrega de Corea de Sur a EE.UU. tuvo lugar el día 8 de septiembre de 1945, tan solo tres semanas después de la rendición de Japón el 15 de agosto de 1945.

En la Conferencia de Potsdam, celebrada en julio y agosto de 1945, Estados Unidos y la Unión Soviética acordaron dividir Corea a lo largo del paralelo 38. No hubo ninguna “liberación” cuando entraron las tropas estadounidenses. Más bien fue todo lo contrario.

El 8 de septiembre de 1945 se instaló un gobierno militar de Estados Unidos en Corea del Sur. Es más, oficiales japoneses en este país colaboraron con Gobierno Militar del Ejército de Estados Unidos (USAMG) (1945-1948), bajo el mando del General John Hodge, para garantizar la transición. Los administradores coloniales de Japón en Seúl, así como los oficiales de la policía coreana trabajaron de la mano con sus nuevos amos coloniales.

Desde el comienzo, el gobierno militar de EE.UU. se rehusó a reconocer al gobierno provisional de la República Popular de Corea (RPK) (en Corea del Sur), el cual estaba comprometido con unas profundas reformas sociales, como la distribución de la tierra, leyes para proteger a los derechos de trabajadores, leyes para establecer un salario mínimo y la reunificación de las dos Coreas.

El RPK era un gobierno no alineado, con un mandato anticolonial que postulaba “el establecimiento de relaciones estrechas con EE.UU., la URSS, Inglaterra y China, y oposición a cualquier influencia extranjera que interfiriese en los asuntos internos del Estado”.¹⁵

El RPK fue abolido por decreto militar en septiembre de 1945 por el USAMG, No hubo  democracia, ni liberación, ni independencia.

Mientras que Japón fue tratado como un imperio derrotado, Corea del Sur fue identificado como un territorio colonial para ser administrado bajo el régimen militar de EE.UU. y las fuerzas de ocupación estadounidenses. El nuevo Jefe de Estado,  Syngman Rhee, fue nombrado al dedazo por Estados Unidos y llegó a Seúl en el avión personal del general Douglas MacArthur en octubre de 1945.

Crímenes de guerra contra el pueblo coreano 

Los crímenes de guerra cometidos por EE.UU. contra el pueblo coreano en el transcurso de la guerra de Corea y posteriormente, no tienen parangón en la historia moderna.

Además, es importante entender que estos crímenes contra la humanidad auspiciados por Estados Unidos y acaecidos en los años cincuenta han contribuido, con el pasar de los años, a establecer “un patrón de matanzas” y violaciones de los derechos humanos en diferentes partes del mundo.

La guerra de Corea se caracterizó también por la práctica de asesinatos selectivos de disidentes políticos, algo que luego fue implementado por la CIA en muchos otros países, entre ellos Indonesia, Vietnam, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Afganistán e Irak.

Estos asesinatos selectivos fueron perpetrados invariablemente por instrucciones de la CIA y llevados a cabo por agentes de los gobiernos o dictaduras militares clientes de EE.UU. En tiempos recientes, asesinatos selectivos de civiles han sido “legalizados” por el Congreso y son ahora el “la nueva norma”.

Según el libro escrito por I. F. Stone titulado “La historia secreta de la guerra en Corea”, publicado por vez primera en 1952 (durante el auge de la guerra), EE.UU. buscó de manera deliberada un pretexto, un acto de engaño que incitara a Corea del Norte a cruzar el paralelo 38, lo cual conllevó a una guerra total.

El libro de I. F. Stone plantea interrogantes sobre el origen de la guerra en Corea, y argumenta que en su afán por atizar la guerra, el gobierno de Estados Unidos había manipulado a las Naciones Unidas. Asimismo, puso en evidencia que las fuerzas armadas de EE.UU. y la oligarquía de Corea de Sur retrasaron el fin de la guerra más de lo necesario al sabotear deliberadamente las conversaciones de paz”.

En la versión de Stone, el General Douglas MacArthur “hizo todo lo posible para evitar la paz”.

Las guerras de agresión de EE.UU. son libradas bajo el manto de la “autodefensa” y ataques preventivos. Sesenta años más tarde, haciéndose eco de la declaración histórica de I.F. Stone con referencia al general MacArthur, el presidente Barack Obama y su secretario de Defensa Chuck Hagel también están “haciendo todo lo posible para evitar la paz”.

Este patrón de provocar al enemigo para que “tire el primer tiro” es una práctica bien establecida en la doctrina militar de EE.UU. La idea es crear un “pretexto para la guerra” que le brinda al agresor la justificación para intervenir con el argumento de que actúa en “defensa propia”. Este fue el caso cuando los japoneses atacaron Pearl Harbor en Hawái en 1941, inducidos por trampas y engaños. Los funcionarios de Estados Unidos sabían con anticipación que habría un ataque, pero lejos de buscar cómo evitarlo, permitieron que tuviera lugar para así justificar la entrada de EE.UU. en la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

El incidente en el Golfo de Tonkín en agosto de 1964 fue el pretexto que buscaba EE.UU. para atacar Vietnam del Norte, luego de que el Congreso adoptara la Resolución del Golfo de Tonkín, que autorizaba al presidente Lyndon B. Johnson a ir a la guerra contra los comunistas de Vietnam del Norte.

El análisis de I. F. Stone refuta “la versión oficial” de que la guerra de Corea ocurrió a raíz de una agresión no provocada por parte de los coreanos del norte el día 25 de junio de 1950, realizado por instigación de la Unión Soviética con el fin de expandir su esfera de influencia a toda la península, y que la agresión tomó completamente por sorpresa a los coreanos del sur,  Estados Unidos y las Naciones Unidas. ¿Pero fue realmente una “sorpresa”? ¿Podría un ataque con 70,000 hombres y, al menos, 70 tanques avanzando simultáneamente en cuatro puntos diferentes haber sido una sorpresa?

Stone recopila informes de la época encontrados en fuentes sudcoreanas, estadounidenses y de las Naciones Unidas que documentan lo que se sabía antes del 25 de junio. Se ha informado que el titular de la CIA en aquél entonces, el contraalmirante Roscoe H. Hillenloetter dijo de manera oficial  que “la inteligencia estadounidense sabía que existían condiciones en Corea que podrían significar una invasión en esta semana o la otra” (p.2). Stone escribe que “el principal comentarista militar de Estados Unidos, Hanson Baldwin del New York Times, un periodista de confianza del Pentágono, reportó que [los documentos militares de EE.UU.] mostraban ‘desde los primeros días de junio un aumento sustancial del Ejército Popular de Corea” a lo largo del paralelo 38’.¹⁶  (p. 4)

¿Cómo y por qué el Presidente Truman decidió tan rápidamente el 27 de junio que el ejército de EE.UU. intervendría en la guerra en Corea del Sur? Stone sostiene que algunos en el gobierno y las fuerzas armadas de EE.UU. consideraban que una guerra en Corea y la resultante inestabilidad en Asia Oriental favorecían los intereses de Estados Unidos.¹⁷

Según el editor de la revista semanal francesa Le Nouvel Observateur Claude Bourdet:

Si la tesis de Stone está en lo correcto, estamos en presencia del mayor engaño jamás perpetrado a lo largo de la historia militar mundial… no [sería]  cuestión de un fraude inofensivo sino de una terrible maniobra en la que se utiliza conscientemente la mentira para obstaculizar la paz, en un momento cuando ésta es una posibilidad.¹⁸ 

En las palabras de los reputados autores estadounidenses Leo Huberman y Paul Sweezy:

Hemos llegado a la conclusión de que el presidente Syngman Rhee [de Corea del Sur] ha provocado deliberadamente a los norcoreanos, precisamente para que tomaran represalias y cruzaran el paralelo en masa.  Y los norcoreanos cayeron fácil en la trampa.¹⁹

El día 25 de junio de 1950, luego de la adopción de la Resolución 82 del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU, el general Douglas MacArthur, quien encabezara el gobierno militar de EE.UU. en el Japón ocupado, fue nombrado comandante en jefe del así llamado Mando de las Naciones Unidas (UNCOM). De acuerdo con Bruce Cumings, la guerra coreana “tenía una fuerte similitud con la guerra aérea librada contra el Japón Imperial durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y muchas veces fue dirigida por los mismos líderes militares estadounidenses”, incluyendo a los generales Douglas MacArthur y Curtis LeMay.

Si bien no se utilizaron armas nucleares en la guerra de Corea, lo que prevaleció fue la estrategia de “asesinatos masivos de civiles”, que ya se había formulado y probado durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La política de causar masivamente bajas de civiles inocentes fue ejecutada por medio de ataques aéreos y bombardeos masivos de ciudades alemanas por fuerzas estadounidenses y británicas durante las últimas semanas de la guerra. La ironía es que los blancos militares fueron más bien resguardados.

Esta doctrina no oficial de matar a civiles so pretexto de atacar objetivos militares caracterizó en gran medida las acciones militares de EEUU en el transcurso de la guerra de Corea y en lo que vino después. Como escribió Bruce Cumings en su libro Korea: Forgotten Nuclear Threats (Corea: amenazas nucleares olvidadas):

El día 12 de agosto de 1959, la Fuerza Aérea de Estados Unidos dejó caer 625 toneladas de bombas sobre Corea del Norte; dos semanas después el tonelaje diario aumentó a unas 800 toneladas. Los bombarderos de Estados Unidos lanzaron más napalm y bombas sobre Corea del Norte que en toda la campaña del Pacífico durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.²⁰

Los territorios al norte del paralelo 38 fueron objeto de bombardeos de saturación que provocaron la destrucción de 78 ciudades y miles de pueblos:

Lo indeleble en la guerra de Corea de 1950-1953 fue la extraordinaria capacidad destructora de las campañas aéreas de Estados Unidos contra Corea del Norte, desde un uso extenso y continuo de bombas incendiarias (principalmente con Napalm), hasta amenazas de utilizar armas nucleares y químicas, y la destrucción de enormes represas en Corea del Norte durante las últimas etapas de la guerra…

Como resultado, prácticamente todo edificio de cierto tamaño en Corea del Norte fue destruido.²¹

El general de división William F. Dean dio a conocer que “la mayoría de las ciudades y pueblos de Corea del Norte que vio [durante su estadía] no eran más que escombros o terrenos baldíos cubiertos de nieve”.

El general Curtis LeMay, quien coordinó los ataques aéreos en contra de Corea del Norte reconoció sin el más mínimo empacho que:

“Durante un período de tres años más o menos matamos – ¿qué? – como el veinte por ciento de la población. … Quemamos todos las pueblos de Corea del Norte y de Corea del Sur también”.²²

Según Brian Willson:

Ahora se cree que la población al norte del paralelo 38 que les fue impuesto perdió casi un tercio de su población de 8 a 9 millones de personas durante los 37 meses de guerra “caliente” entre 1950 y 1953, quizá un porcentaje sin precedentes de  mortalidad sufrida por una nación debido a la agresividad de otra”.²³

Corea del Norte ha sido amenazada por Estados Unidos con un ataque nuclear durante más de 60 años.

De la Doctrina Truman hasta Clinton, Bush y Obama

Ha habido una continuidad a lo largo de la era posterior a la guerra, desde Corea y Vietnam hasta el presente.

La agenda neoconservadora bajo la administración Bush debe ser vista como la culminación de un marco bipartidista de política exterior de “posguerra”, que proporcionó la base para la planificación de las guerras y atrocidades contemporáneas, incluyendo la construcción de cámaras de tortura, campamentos de concentración y el uso extenso de armas prohibidas contra civiles.

Bajo Obama, esta agenda se ha convertido cada vez más cohesionada, con la legalización de ejecuciones extrajudiciales de ciudadanos estadounidenses bajo la legislación antiterrorista, el uso extenso de ataques con aviones no tripulados (drones) contra civiles, y masacres  ordenadas por la alianza Estados Unidos-OTAN-Israel dirigidos contra civiles sirios e iraquíes.

Desde Corea, Vietnam y Afganistán hasta los golpes militares apoyados por la CIA en América Latina y el Sudeste de Asia, el objetivo ha sido siempre el de asegurar la hegemonía militar de EE.UU. y la dominación económica global, como se formuló inicialmente bajo la Doctrina Truman.

A pesar de las profundas diferencias políticas entre ellos, los sucesivos gobiernos de  demócratas y republicanos, desde Harry Truman a Obama, han llevado a cabo esta agenda militar global.

Todo este “período de posguerra” se caracteriza por  crímenes de guerra que provocaron la muerte de más de veinte millones de personas. Esta cifra no incluye a los que murieron como consecuencia de la pobreza, el hambre y las enfermedades.

La naturaleza criminal de la política exterior de Estados Unidos 

Aquí estamos tratando nada menos que con la agenda criminal de política exterior de EE.UU. La propaganda mediática ha servido para ofuscar las cosas. El intervencionismo de EE.UU. es invariablemente defendido como una labor   humanitaria. Mientras tanto, la así llamada “izquierda progresista” y los “activistas antiguerra” reciben el apoyo de fundaciones corporativas y también argumentan motivos humanitarias en apoyo a esta política (véase el capítulo XI).

Su naturaleza criminal no atañe solo a uno o varios jefes de Estado. Forma parte intrínseca de todo el sistema estatal, sus distintas instituciones civiles y militares, así como los poderosos intereses corporativos detrás de la formulación de la política exterior de EE.UU., los institutos de investigación en Washington y las instituciones acreedoras que financian la maquinaria militar.

Los crímenes de guerra son el resultado de la naturaleza criminal del Estado de EE.UU. y su  aparato de política exterior. No se trata solo de criminales de guerra individuales, sino de todo un proceso que involucra a tomadores de decisiones que actúan a distintos niveles, con el mandato de llevar a cabo crímenes de guerra, según pautas y procedimientos establecidos.

Lo que distingue a las administraciones de Bush y Obama con relación al registro histórico de los crímenes y atrocidades perpetrados por EE.UU., es que los campos de concentración, los asesinatos selectivos y las cámaras de tortura son ahora consideradas abiertamente como formas legítimas de intervención que apoyan la “guerra global contra el terrorismo” y promueven la difusión de la democracia occidental.

EE.UU. apoyó la “guerra sucia” en América Latina 

El Secretario de Estado Henry Kissinger desempeñó un papel importante tras bambalinas en el golpe militar en Argentina, así como en la formulación de la Operación Cóndor, que consistió en una campaña llevada a cabo con la colaboración de los gobiernos militares en los diferentes países de América Latina durante la década de los años setenta y ochenta para perseguir, torturar y asesinar a decenas de miles de opositores a estos regímenes.

El lugarteniente de Kissinger en América Latina, William Rogers, le dijo dos días después del golpe que:

En Argentina debemos esperar dentro de poco cierta represión y probablemente una buena cantidad de sangre.²⁴ 

Las guerras del siglo 21: de la Guerra Fría a la “guerra global contra el terrorismo”

El presunto autor intelectual de los ataques terroristas del 11 de septiembre de 2001 contra las Torres Gemelas en Nueva York y el Pentágono en Washington fue Osama bin Laden, de origen saudita, quien irónicamente fue reclutado por la CIA durante la guerra afgano-soviética  “para luchar contra los invasores soviéticos”.

Desde el comienzo de la guerra en Afganistán a principios de la década de 1980, el aparato de inteligencia de EE.UU. ha apoyado la formación de “brigadas islámicas”.

La teoría de la guerra justa

La teoría de la “guerra justa” (jus ad bellum) tiene una larga tradición. Ha sido utilizada a lo largo de la historia para mantener el orden social dominante y justificar sus guerras. Asimismo, ha servido para camuflar la naturaleza de la política exterior de EE.UU., al mismo tiempo que brinda un “rostro humano” al país invasor.

En el caso de Afganistán, los ataques del 9 de septiembre tuvieron un papel importantísimo al ser utilizados para justificar la invasión. Las guerras lideradas por la OTAN en Yugoslavia, Afganistán y Libia son presentadas como “guerras justas” libradas por motivos humanitarios según la Doctrina de Responsabilidad de Proteger (R2P) adoptada por la Alianza Atlántica.

Los ataques del 11 de septiembre de 2001 y la invasión de Afganistán

Los ataques del 11-S ofrecieron una justificación para hacer una guerra sin fronteras. La agenda de Washington consiste en extender las fronteras del American Empire con el fin de facilitar el control corporativo absoluto de EE.UU. y al mismo tiempo instalar las instituciones del Estado de Seguridad Nacional en el país.

Los ataques de 11-S 2001 también han desempeñado un papel crucial en la formulación de la doctrina militar de EE.UU., específicamente para sustentar la leyenda de que Al Qaeda es un enemigo del mundo occidental, cuando en realidad es un constructo de los servicios de inteligencia de EE.UU. que se utiliza no sólo como pretexto para hacer la guerra por motivos humanitarias sino también como un instrumento de guerra no convencional.

El 12 de septiembre de 2001, la OTAN invocó por primera vez en su historia el artículo 5 del Tratado de Washington, su cláusula de defensa colectiva, y declaró que los ataques del 11-S al WTC y el Pentágono constituían “un ataque a todos los miembros de la OTAN”.

Sin una pisca de evidencia y antes siquiera de que se llevara a cabo una investigación al respecto, Afganistán fue declarado como el “Estado patrocinador” de los ataques. La invasión de Afganistán a inicios de octubre de 2001 fue presentada como una operación contraterrorista dirigida contra los autores de los ataques y sus patrocinadores estatales.

Los sindicatos, organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG) y muchos intelectuales progresistas apoyaron la invasión encabezada por EE.UU. y la OTAN. Los eventos del 11-S fueron de fundamental importancia para lograr el apoyo de varios sectores de la sociedad estadounidense, incluyendo a opositores y críticos de la política exterior del gobierno de Bush.

La guerra en contra de Afganistán ya estaba planificada mucho antes del 11-S. Las preparaciones ya estaban en un avanzado estado de disposición. En menos de 24 horas después de los ataques, se dio luz verde para que Estados Unidos y la OTAN atacaran Afganistán.

Los informes de prensa jamás revelaron un hecho que es conocido y reconocido por los analistas militares: es imposible, en cualquier circunstancia, planificar y poner en práctica un elaborado escenario de guerra en apenas cuatro o cinco semanas.

El argumento jurídico utilizado por Washington y la OTAN para invadir Afganistán a principios de octubre de 2001 fue que los ataques del 11-S constituyeron un “ataque armado” no declarado “desde el exterior” por una potencia extranjera no nombrada y que, en consecuencia, eran aplicables “las leyes de la guerra”, que permiten a una  nación bajo ataque contraatacar en nombre de la “defensa propia”.

La “guerra global contra el terrorismo” fue lanzada oficialmente por el gobierno de Bush el mismo 11 de septiembre de 2001. A la mañana siguiente, el Consejo del Atlántico Norte de la OTAN en Bruselas adoptó el siguiente acuerdo:

“Si se determina que el ataque del 11 de septiembre 2001 en contra de Estados Unidos fue dirigido desde el extranjero [Afganistán] en contra de la región del Atlántico Norte, será considerado como una acción contemplada en el artículo 5 del Tratado de Washington”.²⁵

Afganistán fue invadido el 7 de octubre de 2001, de acuerdo con la doctrina de seguridad colectiva de la OTAN: un ataque a uno de los miembros de la Alianza Atlántica es considerado un ataque a todos sus miembros. Esta premisa supone que en este caso EE.UU. había sido atacado por Afganistán el 11 de septiembre de 2001, una propuesta absurda.

Es decir que para defender la patria se requiere de una guerra preventiva dirigida contra los “terroristas islámicos”. Las realidades se invierten: Estados Unidos y el mundo occidental son los que están bajo ataque.

A raíz de los ataques del 11-S, la creación de este “enemigo exterior” sirvió para ocultar los verdaderos objetivos económicos y estratégicos detrás de las guerras encabezadas por Estados Unidos en Medio Oriente y Asia Central, que abarcan países donde se concentra más del sesenta por ciento de las reservas de petróleo y gas.

Librada por supuestos motivos de defensa propia, la guerra preventiva se presenta al mundo  como una “guerra justa” con un mandato humanitario.

La propaganda pretende borrar la historia de Al Qaeda, una creación de la CIA, ahogar la verdad y “matar la evidencia” de cómo este “enemigo exterior” fue primero inventado y luego transformado en el “enemigo número uno”.

Lo que los medios nunca mencionan es que los terroristas son en esencia asesinos a sueldo  que actúan con el apoyo de EE.UU., la OTAN e Israel.

Guerra no convencional: el uso de los rebeldes de Al Qaeda como soldados de infantería de la alianza militar occidental

La estrategia de utilizar los rebeldes de Al Qaeda como soldados de infantería de las fuerzas armadas de Occidente es de crucial importancia. Ha caracterizado las intervenciones de Estados Unidos y de la OTAN en Yugoslavia, Afganistán, Libia y Siria. Actualmente forma parte de una agenda encubierta para desestabilizar Irak al apoyar al Estado Islámico en Irak y al-Sham (EIIS).

El Estado islámico 

Mientras Washington acusa a varios países de “albergar a terroristas”, Estados Unidos es el principal “patrocinador estatal del terrorismo”: el Estado Islámico de Irak y al-Sham (EIIS) – que opera tanto en Siria como en Irak – recibe de manera encubierta el apoyo y financiamiento de EE.UU., y entre sus aliados se cuentan Turquía, Arabia Saudita y Qatar. Además, el proyecto de EIIS de establecer un califato sunita coincide con la agenda de larga data que ha tenido EE.UU. de repartir Irak y Siria en diferentes territorios separados: un Califato Islámico Sunita, una República Árabe Chiíta, una República de Kurdistán, entre otros.

Brigadas terroristas de Al Qaeda patrocinadas por EE.UU. (y apoyadas de manera encubierta por la inteligencia occidental) también se han desplegado en Malí, Níger, Nigeria, la República Centroafricana, Somalia y Yemen.

El objetivo es crear tantas divisiones sectarias y étnicas como sea posible, con miras a desestabilizar o fracturar países soberanos, según el modelo exitoso utilizado en la antigua Yugoslavia.

El plan de ataque global de EE.UU.: el papel del Comando Estratégico (U.S.STRATCOM)

La guerra global moderna requiere una estructura de mando centralizada y unificada.

Las operaciones militares globales después del 11-S son coordinadas desde la sede del Comando Estratégico de EE.UU. (U.S.STRATCOM), ubicada en la base aérea de Offutt en el estado de Nebraska, en colaboración con los comandos combatientes unificados (COCOM), así como con las unidades de mando de la coalición estacionadas en Israel, Turquía, el Golfo Pérsico y la base militar en la isla de Diego García en el Océano Índico.

La planificación y toma de decisiones militares a nivel de país por los aliados individuales de EE.UU.-OTAN, así como las “naciones socias” están plenamente integradas a un diseño militar global que abarca también la militarización del espacio.

Bajo su nuevo mandato, U.S. STRATCOM tiene la responsabilidad de “supervisar un plan de ataque global” que consiste en armas convencionales y nucleares. En la jerga militar, está programado para desempeñar el papel de integrador global encargado de las misiones de operaciones espaciales; operaciones de información; defensa integral antimisiles; comando y control global; inteligencia, vigilancia y reconocimiento; ataque global; y disuasión estratégica… ²⁶   

Las responsabilidades de U.S. STRATCOM abarcan “liderar, planificar y ejecutar operaciones de disuasión estratégica” a escala global, “la sincronización de planes de combate regionales”, “la sincronización de planes de combate regionales” y así por el estilo.  U.S.STRATCOM es la agencia líder para la coordinación de la guerra moderna.²⁷       

Por otra parte, U.S. STRATCOM se encuentra en coordinación permanente con la sede regional del sistema de mando de combate unificado, el que consiste en seis “áreas de responsabilidad”. Los mandos regionales están encabezados por generales de cuatro estrellas que tienen el mandato de poner en práctica los planes de guerra de EE.UU. dentro de su área geográfica de responsabilidad. El Mando Europeo de EE.UU. (U.S. EUCOM) es responsable de operaciones militares en Europa, Rusia y Turquía. El Mando Central (US CENTCOM) coordina las operaciones militares en el Oriente Medio y Asia Central. La jurisdicción del Mando Pacífico de EE.UU. incluye Asia del Sur, el Sudeste de Asia, China, Japón, Corea y Australia.

El escenario de guerra contemporáneo: ¿hacia una Tercera Guerra Mundial?

En 2005, al inicio del despliegue y escalada militar dirigido contra Irán, U.S. STRATCOM fue identificado como “el mando combatiente para la integración y sincronización de todos los esfuerzos realizados el Departamento de Defensa para combatir las armas de destrucción masiva” (véase el capítulo 3, abajo).²⁸ El papel central de U.S. STRATCOM es aplicable a Irán y el Oriente Medio amplio, así como a China, Rusia y Corea del Norte.

De forma simultánea con el despliegue de sus fuerzas en Oriente Medio, dirigido contra Siria e Irán, EE.UU.-OTAN han aumentado su arsenal y presencia en Polonia y la frontera occidental de Rusia (Kaliningrado). El despliegue de fuerzas de EE.UU. en Polonia empezó en julio de 2010 (a 40 millas de la frontera), con vistas a capacitar a las fuerzas polacas en el uso de misiles estadounidenses Patriot.²⁸En agosto de 2014, el Pentágono anunció el despliegue de tropas estadounidenses y las fuerzas de la Guardia Nacional en Ucrania. Asimismo, EE.UU.-OTAN planean despliegues adicionales de fuerzas terrestres en Polonia, Letonia, Estonia, Lituania, Georgia y Azerbaiyán, en la frontera sur de Rusia.

Estos despliegues militares, que ya estaban previstos desde el borrador del texto de la Ley de Prevención contra la Agresión Rusa (RAPA) (S.2277 – Congreso 113 (2013-2014)) también forman parte de la estrategia “defensiva” de la OTAN en el caso de una “invasión rusa”.

El despliegue en la frontera sur de Rusia deberá ser coordinada por medio de un acuerdo entre tres países firmado en agosto de 2014 por Turquía, Georgia y Azerbaiyán:

Luego de la reunión trilateral de los ministros de defensa de Turquía, Georgia y Azerbaiyán, Tiflis anunció que los tres países están interesados en trabajar en un plan para fortalecer sus capacidades defensivas.

“Los representantes de los gobiernos de estos tres países han empezado a pensar en un plan para fortalecer sus capacidades defensivas”, dijo [el Ministro de Defensa de Georgia Irakli] Alasania, y añadió que conviene a los intereses de Europa y de la OTAN, “puesto que esta ruta de tránsito [Baku-Tiflis-Kars] es utilizada para transportar los cargamentos de la alianza a Afganistán”.

Alasania también hizo notar que estas acciones no van dirigidas en contra de nadie.²⁹

Rusia y el “giro hacia Asia” de Obama 

Desde una perspectiva militar el “giro hacia Asia” consiste en expandir los despliegues militares de EE.UU. en Asia-Pacífico, así como aprovechar la participación de los aliados de Washington en la región, como son Japón, Corea de Sur y Australia. La preparación militar para el giro hacia Asia supone una amenaza para China, Rusia y Corea del Norte.

Los primeros han firmado acuerdos bilaterales de cooperación militar con Washington. Como aliados de Estados Unidos forman parte de los planes de guerra del Pentágono que van dirigidos contra Rusia, China y Corea del Norte.

Además, Japón y Corea del Sur forman parte del gran proyecto militar estadounidense de estacionar sistemas de misiles y tropas de despliegue rápido a escala global, como se avizoró durante el gobierno de Reagan.³⁰ 

En agosto de 2014, EE.UU. y Australia firmaron un acuerdo militar, luego del despliegue de tropas estadounidenses en Australia. Este acuerdo forma parte del giro hacia Asia de Obama.

La estrategia del Pentágono de cercar militarmente a China y Rusia requiere tanto la toma de decisiones militares centralizada (Pentágono, U.S. STRATCOM) como la coordinación con la OTAN y los varios mandos regionales de EE.UU.

La Federación Rusa es el país más grande del mundo, con fronteras marítimas en los océanos Pacífico y Ártico. Los planes de guerra de EE.UU. referentes a Rusia son coordinados desde la Sede del Mando Estratégico (U.S. STRATCOM) en Omaha, Nebraska, el cual a su vez se coordina con el Mando Europeo de EE.UU. (U.S. EUCOM), así como con los otros cinco mandos de combate geográficamente distribuidos por todo el planeta.

Aunque formalmente Rusia se encuentra dentro de la “jurisdicción” del Mando Europeo, en caso de guerra participarían los tres mandos de combate regionales (Europa, del Pacífico y del Norte). En la práctica,  el Comando Norte de Estados Unidos (U.S. NORTHCOM) es una extensión del Mando Norteamericano de Defensa Aeroespacial (NORAD). A su vez, las diferentes estructuras se encuentran en coordinación permanente con la sede de la OTAN en Bruselas.

Los peligros de una Tercera Guerra Mundial 

Si bien esta renovada confrontación este-oeste ha sido etiquetada de manera equivocada como una “nueva Guerra Fría”, no se cuenta con ninguna de las salvaguardas que existían durante la Guerra Fría.

La diplomacia internacional ha colapsado. Rusia ha sido excluida del Grupo de 8 Naciones (G-8), que ha vuelto a ser el G-7. No hay un diálogo este-oeste como sí lo hubo durante la Guerra Fría entre las superpotencias rivales y que tenía como objetivo evitar la confrontación bélica. A esto se suma que el Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas se ha vuelto un portavoz de facto del Departamento de Estado de EE.UU.

No obstante, EE.UU.-OTAN no podrán ganar una guerra convencional contra Rusia, lo cual encierra el peligro de que una confrontación militar pudiera desembocar en una guerra nuclear.

Sin embargo, en la época después de la Guerra Fría, las armas nucleares ya no son consideradas un “arma de último recurso”, como sucedió con la doctrina de “Destrucción Mutua Asegurada”. Por el contrario, las armas nucleares son ahora proclamadas por el Pentágono como “inocuas para las poblaciones civiles circundantes, debido a que la explosión es subterránea”. En 2002, el Senado de EE.UU. dio luz verde al uso de armas nucleares en un escenario de guerra convencional. Las bombas nucleares son hoy día parte de la “caja de herramientas militares” utilizadas a la par de armas convencionales.

El mundo está al revés cuando se llama paz a la guerra. Es irónico que Washington defienda ahora las armas nucleares como “instrumentos de paz”.

El público desconoce en gran medida las graves implicaciones que tienen estos planes de guerra. Además, la tecnología militar del siglo veintiuno combina un despliegue de armas sofisticadas cuyo poder destructivo supera con mucho los holocaustos nucleares de Hiroshima y Nagasaki. No olvidemos que Estados Unidos es el único país del mundo que ha utilizado armas nucleares contra poblaciones civiles.

El peligro de que estalle una Tercera Guerra Mundial no es noticia de primera plana. Los grandes medios de comunicación han excluido un análisis a fondo y siguen obviando el debate sobre las implicaciones que acarrean estos planes de guerra.

Notas

On October 6, the Syrian army and the Lebanese stormed the positions of the militant groups in the nearby areas of Tal-Ahmar and retook full control over this strategic hilltop. Arab sources further added that scores of the militant groups’ members were killed or wounded. However, it’s more likely that militants just retreated from the positions captured only two days ago.

Meantime, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Hezbollah carried out operation against the strongholds of the militant groups in Ayn al-Nuriyeh area in Quneitra province. A convoy loaded with weapons and ammunitions was destroyed near al-Hamidiyeh in Quneitra. The convoy belonged to the moderate terrorist group, Free Syrian Army.

Last night, the SAA conducted operation against positions of al-Nusra Front and its allies in the villages of Jibbata al-Khashab and Tranjeh. Reportedly, the militants’ ammunition depot was destroyed. The clashes were also observed at the village of Tranjeh.

Separately, the SAA’s special forces attacked ISIS positions in Deir Ez-zour, and regained control of several terrorists’ checkpoints in an area of Deir Ez-zour airport. The militants tried to take control of areas in Deir Ezzur province in September, but they lost the momentum and faced the government forces’ counter attack. The Syrian Air Forces conducted airstrikes around the villages of al-Mraeyeh, al-Jafrah and Hatlah targeting ISIS postions. The operation in Deir Ez-zour province has been continuing.

Large groups of soldiers from the SAA, the National Defense Forces (NDF), and other pro-government militias are concentrated in the provinces of Aleppo and Homs. They prepare for massive offensives against Jabhat Al-Nusra and ISIS.

The first wave of reinforcements was sent from the National Defense Forces stronghold of Masyaf in east Tartous to Al-Safira in the east Aleppo. These fighters joined the SAA’s “Cheetah Forces” that have already began an operation to lift the ISIS siege of the Kuweries Military Airport. According to reports, the total number of soldiers deployed at the Deir Hafer Plains is as high as 4,500 military personnel.

In the Homs Governorate’s northern countryside, over 300 additional military personnel arrived to the Hama-Homs axis in order to reinforce the soldiers that are preparing to launch a full-scale operation to capture the Al-Rastan Plains of Homs.

The Russian Air Force is providing the Syrian Arab Army with necessary air cover against the ISIS terrorists that are located inside the Deir Tafer Plains and around the provincial capital of the Aleppo Governorate.

Separately, Russian warplanes have been continued raids against militant targets over the country. Yesterday, they destroyed an ISIS command center near the town of As Sukhnah 28 km away from Palmyra. Several pickup trucks and armored vehicles and 40 militants were also destroyed.

For the second part in this two-part series, go here.

A friend of mine told me the following curious story. In the early 1990s, while taking a course at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, he sat next to an ordinary-looking older man, a soft-spoken, pudgy fellow, who said he was from Guatemala. After a few weeks into the term, he came to class one day and found the man sitting alone, far from the other students, who seemed to be avoiding him.

Another student explained to my friend who the man was: Hector Gramajo, a former Guatemalan general and defense minister who was there on a Mason fellowship, studying for a degree in public administration. While he was Army Vice-Chief of Staff and Director of the Army General Staff, the Guatemalan army massacred more than 75,000 Mayans in what a United Nations Truth Commission later (1999) called genocide.

Otto Perez Molina, former President of Guatemala. Photo credit: Michael Wuertenberg / World Economic Forum / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)

On graduation day, while in his academic gown, Gramajo was handed court papers informing him that he was being sued in the US by eight Guatemalans who together with family members had been abused by soldiers under his command. Later, the lawsuit was joined by one from Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American nun, who had been raped and tortured by Gramajo’s men.

He didn’t contest the lawsuit; he just ignored it, and left the US for Guatemala to run for – what else! – the presidency. Before he left, however, he gave a public lecture at Harvard and, blessed by that august institution, and with his prestigious degree in hand, went to his other alma mater, the School of the Americas (SOA), which some refer to as the “School of Assassins,” at Ft. Benning, where he gave the commencement address. (More on this “educational” organization below.)

In 1995, a federal judge in Boston awarded $47.5 million to the plaintiffs. Gramajo never paid. He was back in Guatemala, where, in 2004, in a fitting twist of fate, he was killed by a swarm of Africanized bees.

Another Soft-Spoken Man, Otto Perez Molina

Secretary Kerry with Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina in 2013. Photo credit: U.S. Department of State / Wikimedia (Public Domain)

Joy erupted in the streets of Guatemala in early September, after months of demonstrations had forced the congress to strip presidential immunity from President Otto Perez Molina, who then resigned and was subsequently jailed on corruption charges.

The fraud, conspiracy, and bribery charges against Molina, 64, a former army general and intelligence chief, are dubbed “La Linea,” or “The Line,” because a network, or long line of government officials is involved. The case concerns bribes paid by businesses to customs officers and government officials in order to evade import duties. Molina is alleged to have profited handsomely, but he denies the charges. His former vice president, Roxanna Baldetti, was jailed on August 21st on similar charges.

Molina is implicated in many massacres and murders while he was an army general, and chief of military intelligence while on the CIA payroll. One of these many victims was the husband of the Harvard-trained American lawyer Jennifer Harbury.

The corruption charges were the result of an investigation conducted by the United Nations International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) in collaboration with the Guatemalan Justice Department.

The huge street demonstrations in Guatemala City and around the country, fueled by indignation at long-standing systemic corruption, put enormous pressure on the judiciary to finally arrest Molina. His September 3rd arrest brought optimism to a country sorely in need of some good news.

But then, three days later, a television comedian (shades of US election theatrics), Jimmy Morales — backed by military officers implicated in torture, assassinations, and massacres — won the first round of the presidential elections, despite widespread remonstrations to postpone an election considered rigged by corrupt oligarchs and drug lords.

The US mainstream media has reported the basics of these events. But, as usual, what they haven’t done is report on the deeper back story to all this, and how the US government is involved in nefarious ways that stretch back many years.

For example, the fact that Molina was trained at the SOA at Ft. Benning, GA, in torturous interrogation techniques, and is implicated in many killings, is never mentioned in the The New York Times story of his resignation, nor in any subsequent story, as of the date of this publication.

For a long time, the United States government has been deeply involved in the support and training of death squads, and corrupt military officers, not only in Guatemala, but throughout Latin America.

Corruption is child’s play compared with the massacres, acts of torture, assassinations, and disappearances that were carried out across Latin America by personnel trained and supported by the US. Carolyn Forche, an American poet and activist, got a rare, intimate glimpse of the kind of monster who was involved in these acts when, in 1978, she had dinner at the home of an unnamed Salvadoran colonel. This event inspired a prose poem — The Colonel — that you can listen to here. Below is an excerpt from it. It is not for the squeamish:

Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace… We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine… I was asked how I enjoyed the country… There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. May 1978

Expertise in Torture and Murder

As for Molina — like the Salvadoran death squad leader of the period of Forche’s poem, Roberto D’Aubuisson, who ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the defender of the poor — he, too, was trained by the US at the SOA.

This is where for more than half a century the US has trained Latin American and Caribbean military in the most efficient techniques for torturing and killing their own people. Trained by the US, these soldiers have returned to their countries where they have tortured and killed peasants, students, priests, nuns, opposition leaders, et al. by the thousands. Far too many Americans are blissfully unaware of what is done in their name. (In 2001, it was euphemistically renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation [WHINSEC] — pure Orwell.)

For years, Roy Bourgeois, a former US naval officer and Maryknoll priest, has led an effort to inform the American people of what is occurring at the SOA, and to have the US government shut it down.

At the website he founded, one can find extensive documentation on the people who have graduated from this “Institute” for lower learning, and on their murderous histories. In Guatemala alone, conservative estimates put the number at well above 200,000 killed. This is not simply Guatemalan history, but the secret history of the United States.

Despite its notorious and well-documented history, here is how the New York Times described the SOA on April 1, 1985:

Col. Michael J. Sierra, the commandant of the school, said that later this year courses in medicine, engineering, psychological operations and maintenance would be offered for the first time as the curriculum goes beyond standard military operations.

‘We have been been teaching military science,’ Colonel Sierra said. ‘Now we’ll start teaching courses that can contribute to national development….’

In many Latin American nations, military officers have been far more involved in political and economic development than have soldiers in the United States….

The school, the basic purpose of which is to build ties between the United States and Latin America, has sought to expose Latin American officers and their families to life in the United States,…

Build ties between the United States and Latin America? They certainly have achieved that.

Molina is implicated in many massacres and murders while he was an army general and chief of military intelligence — and on the CIA payroll. One of his many victims was Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, known as “Everado,” who fought against the US-backed government that massacred hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. Captured in 1992, he was tortured for years, then killed under Molina’s auspices. His wife, the Harvard-trained American Lawyer and activist Jennifer Harbury, has done much to publicize his case.

Other victims tied to Molina are Judge Edgar Ramiro Elias Ogaldez, and Bishop Juan Gerardi. See Francisco Goldman’s intriguing story on the Gerardi assassination. He reports that once the death squads and military killers were exposed by the UN for genocide and widespread assassinations, they mutated into the criminal mafia and drug cartels. In 2007 he published his authoritative book — The Art of Political Murder — on the Gerardi case.

Molina is currently being charged with corruption, not murder — at least not yet. As with the recent corruption charges, Molina denies all.

NEXT: Why Americans Should Closely Watch Unfolding Events in Guatemala, Part 2

The Memory Hole of Continuous Proven Fraud  over Nine Years

Canadians are within a few days of stopping or allowing the Harper regime to continue to destroy the democracy and life fabric of Canada. But the dots are taboo to connect. The PR-led opposition has joined the corporate media in a public stage ritual of forgetting. The endless lies, election cheats, and bullying abuses through nine years of PMO civil destruction go scot free.

The Harper regime has cheated or stole every election. Yet not even the Conservative robo-call fraud to deprive up to 500,000 citizens of their votes in the 2011 election has been raised in the official campaign. No-one on stage remembers any of it back to the first Harper theft of power in 2006, featuring the Harper-RCMP deal to falsely accuse the Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale in criminal investigation just prior to the election. Nor is Harper’s violation of his own Election Act in calling the 2008 election and its massive illegal spending on attacks ads filling the airwaves with public hate just before the vote. All has been proven off the campaign stage, but all has been silenced on it. The regime’s near-daily record of lies, scandals and violations has gone the memory hole of the electoral campaign, with $54 million on hand for attack ads.

Nothing sticks because public information is repressed in every form by the Harper PMO, the corporate media publish only transient details and flattering pictures, and the mainstream parties silently submit to the rule of amnesia. Yet every destruction tracks back to the Mafia-like despotism of the Harper PMO whose rule of fear, division, lies, character assassination and public sector dismantling runs free with no connection on stage. Even as I write, Harper tells more public lies that “there are no cuts at the CBC” and that “marijuana is far more dangerous than tobacco’.

The Wheat Board clause is the addition replacing the gagging clause (which comes in enough). We may recall how the proven big liars and war criminals of the US Republican party getting re-elected there despite their crimes against democracy and law. Harper is the branch-plant version with more years allowed to strip the country’s public accountability and wealth to serve the rich. Constituencies of bigotry and greed provide the energies of attack always in motion.

From Fraud, War against Science and Dispossession of the Poor to tthe Niqab Sting

Fraud, war against public knowledge, and dispossession of the poor are the hallmarks of the Harper regime exposed in many forms off stage from an aroused Canadian public. But they are amnesiac in the official campaign. They continue with impunity and the tacit support of official opposition silence. The clear majority of citizens loathe the man destroying Canada’s common life substance and identity. But the pathological meaning is taboo to name on the public stage.

In the turning point of the election campaign that Harper was losing on the ground, national  attention was suddenly diverted to the veil rights of two indoctrinated women claiming duty to Allah and the Prophet to keep their faces hidden in citizenship ceremony. How could such a red herring reverse the Harper defeat overnight when not even the Koran prescribes veils?

Yet a feudal harem duty became solemnly claimed as a public right by the politically correct even in swearing citizen allegiance to Canada. Incredibly the leader of the Quebec stronghold of the opposition NDP took  the bait. Playing against the role that had been long fit up for him by the corporate press – the angry man – he donned the image of liberal tolerance. He stood up for the symbol of an ancient, foreign right of possession of women, and predictably alienated his Quebec support. Along with the NDP’s me-too neo-liberalism of “no deficit”, the party blew the national election lead into third place within days.

Public relations and political correctness are dear to marketing men and pollsters running the NDP too. But they do not work with citizens who dislike turncoats to neo-liberal dogma and are used to seeing people’s faces as fellow citizens.

Thus dragged into a stand enabling no-one’s life in the country, the campaign for the working people of Quebec and Canada became weak and alien – a betrayal of its voter base. In truth, the stand does not even protect the veiled immigrants. Their fathers and husbands can now demand the right of their proprietorship over them as a sacred right in Canada itself against long evolved citizen norms of openness and trust. Thus the entire Harper record of perpetual lies and harms against the common life interest of Canada disappeared into the memory hole over a false right serving no-one’s better existence in the country.

Thus a total diversion to a sectarian demand in citizenship oath itself succeeded. It completely switched the life-and-death of the 2015 election to an unconscious visceral plane where emotional knee-jerk was guaranteed – the master psych-op of the Harper regime. The fact that the issue is still before the courts known to rule against Harper over-stepping laws of every kind was ignored. But Harper rule won again by appeal to the knee-jerk unconscious of the masses.

This is in fact the crypto-fascist key of all Harper public appeal. Play the primeval fear card and step up PMO command to stop the fabricated danger to the country. Transnational attack dog Lynton Crosby, “master of the dark arts of dirty politics”, was on hand to orchestrate the diversion in the midst of a losing election. Simultaneously Harper’s-re-jigged Election Commission overrode the Election Act that says no non-Canadian may “induce anyone to vote” one way rather than another. Anything goes in this regime of corruption all the way down.

The Underlying Grammar of Amnesia and Illusion

The underlying deep structure of amnesia and illusion can be formulated in one sentence. National elections are increasingly reduced to a corporate market game of propagandas to sell one product rather others to targeted private-interest groups who will behave predictably as an aggregate as buyers of commodities for sale. The first premise here is that public intelligence does not exist, and the second is that any lie and fraud you can get away with is smart. .

No-one seems to see the entailment that the common life interest of citizens is ruled out a priori. Slogan rhetoric and partisan hype is all there is for the P-R managers of the game. “Middle class” can be asserted as vehemently by one party as the other with no meaning. The health, home and literacy of all citizens, not just the middle class having more money, is repelled by the marketing mind. Here the common interest is the latest opinion poll of selves with no facts involved.

The deciding force is private money, but this too is taboo to speak on the public stage. So is is the predictable  result. Those who control more money more fund the party that wins even it cumulatively destroys the collective life capital of society and world.

The party meant to oppose this refuses to say it nd the mass media never allow it into their ad vehicles. So the ‘left’ party buys in and presses everyone on its lists to give more money to pay corporate media for more ads. One X on a card at the end decides it all in the end. Yet ever more people cannot access even that.  This is the design of Harper’s Orwellian ‘Fair Elections Act’, excluding all those without an official identification resident address – in short, the poor and native citizens. Buttressing this fix of the election, Harper rule redefines electoral boundaries at the same time so that his party picks up an extra 22 seats, compared to the NDP and the Liberals adding six and two seats respectively. The riggings and frauds never stop.

In the dominant value system, the underlying formula is that more money in private pockets is the final good. Worship of riches that contribute no life function and increasingly pollute and deplete the world are kept out of public view. That the global gold baron patron of the Munk Institute debate been featured in this election is a metaphor of this regime’s total corruption. The instant institute becomes the private corporate ground for where Harper is willing to debate. No media or even opposition party reports that the Munk institute is a special recipient of many millions from Harper’s government, lavishes Tory front-men with rich company positions when they step down, helps to reset University of Toronto to a transnational corporate propaganda site, and causes continual human rights abuses in poor countries by its world-leading gold extractions from their lands. The right-wing audience repeatedly applauded Harper alone, and no mass media reported the fix.

This is one way in which the Harper regime reduces the country to a looting basin for borderless corporate market vehicles. His “economic record” never deviates from this outcome, but this again is taboo to say in the campaign. Mass ignorance rules along with absolute power to command. But no-one names the game. What distinguishes the Harper regime, from prior administrations is its war on public knowledge and democracy at every plane  – its market-fascist logic. But who thinks through the meaning of every step?  None is seen or connected on stage. Aan Orwellian propaganda field is the ocean to the voters and citizens surrounded by it.

As always in this totalizing corporate game, images are the only reality. Corporate media carry the only common messages the majority see. The truth becomes whatever sells.

Yet which contending party does not buy in?  For the Harper regime, taxes like death are bad by definition, and the more money in private pockets is the ruling public value. One meta law governs the war of movement – to feed without limit on the public purse and expropriate all life-serving programs outside private profit and control.

The Harper Corruption of Canada Spreads by the Taboo Against Naming It.

Even the official opposition with the most progressive tradition of the three major parties has played the corporate-ad game instead of naming the proven despot, liar, and fraud in the PMO.  As in BC in 2013, the NDP snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by empty advertising logic with no life substance. And as with Jack Layton who first let the fanatic Harper in the door by attacking only Liberals in the 2006 debates, the NDP is too busy going after Liberals to expose the usurper destroying the country.

A narcissism of small differences prevails, with the Liberals now outflanking the NDP to the left. The NDP’s leader, Thomas Mulcair, has the capacities of an ace prosecuting attorney to expose the Harper regime as tyrannically corrupt. Yet there has been no mention of the Harper record of continual public lies, cheating, criminal behaviors, war-mongering, and – most lethal to democracy – stripping of public science, communications and accountability at every level.

Consequences follow. The Harper regime has not only torn up the Kyoto Protocol. It has closed down scientific monitorings of everything from freshwater fish and contaminants to unique carbon load detectors, fired 2000 federal scientists, shut down and destroyed public archives of fisheries and oceans, prohibited any public communication of scientific information by those remaining, and abolished habitat-protecting laws 99% of Canada’s waterways.

Not only Canada’s environment and environmental knowledge, laws and resources have been attacked non-stop by the Harper regime. It wages war against all life-protective intelligence and knowledge that can recognize the disastrous consequences. Its master goal is to serve the runaway global corporate juggernaut that devours the world to maximize private money demand as the only value there is.

Try to think of an exception. The long train of lies, abuses, interferences, public information destructions, criminal appointments, violations of laws, and vengeful uses of the state beggars belief in its perversion of the democratic process. Even more deeply, the collective life capital bases on which every one of us depends from the atmosphere to the ocean bottoms to the rule of life-protective law and common knowledge are exactly what are targeted and defunded to turn all of government into more private market riches at the top.

Yet the near-daily Harper outrages have already come and gone with no connected tracking of them in the official campaign. So silenced have the public positions of the opposition parties been that a complicity under partisan appearances seems hard to deny. Yet we need to know the depth of the corruption that has spread into Canada’s very metabolism and marrow. Unconscious submission to the ruling game of corporate mass sales has become the way we decide how to live even if it increasingly destroys Canada and life on earth.

Tracking the Beast Not Named

We need to recall out of the memory hole of all that has been forgotten in the 2015 election what destruction Harper has wrought on Canada’s abilities to function as a democratic society and intelligent civilisation. In fact, his meta program is to destroy everything that cannot be bought and sold for private profit – the underlying fanatic goal that is not seen.

It includes what is not publicly tracked or connected – destroying the public post delivery and financially gutting the nation’s only public broadcaster CBC; attacking the prairie family farm by dismantling the Canadian Wheat Board; continuous gaggings of elected representatives; continual appointment of criminals to office; stripping Statistics Canada and the mandatory Canada Census that are the recording memory of the nation; destroying the country’s gun registry against provincial and law-enforcement requests; continual anti-union interference in collective bargaining; smearing of veteran advocates resisting abuse and dismissal of their federal ombudsman; tax agency attacks on venerable social charities not towing the Harper line; gag orders on any federal civil servant not controlled by partisan public relations officers; lying attack ads without remission on any opposition leader who may compete against Harper; putting protestors under blanket state surveillance with black lists of their leaders; covering up torture and lawless police and armed-force killings across continents; risking the lives of Canada’s foreign troops for Harper photo-ops (he forbids any photographers but his own at press conferences); continuously false cost estimates of public money for new institutional violence, dispossession and caging policies; falsification or disappearance of documents across jurisdictions; use of Government of Canada identifiers and publication channels for party propaganda including even government cheques, altogether costing over $700 million of taxpayer funds;  implicitly accepting bribes in return for public offices on the public purse for significant donors in every possible form of partisan pay-off; public contempt of parliament twice as prime minister with endless parliamentary abuses; fixed blocking of parliamentary and individual access to public information; silencing of the public service in every domain; forced loyalty oaths to political incumbents; omnibus bills that sneak through fascist-style overwhelming of any debate; secret trade deals that ruin the productive lives of countless thousands of citizens; dismembering Statistics Canada and lying about it;  arbitrary shut-downs of Parliament when convenient for continued rule; incessant interferences in independent bodies like the National Energy Board, the CRTC, the Integrity Office  and  – for reporting vast sums of illegal spending – the Parliamentary Budget Office itself.

As for foreign affairs, Harper’s attack-dog regime has been by far the most war-mongering administration in Canada’s history. It has declared without any evidence Iran as the “greatest threat in the world” while applaudingd the continuously war-criminal actions of the Israel state. It has led the NATO  bombing of once thriving Libya to irreversible ruin. It has jumped to recognise the violent and neo-Nazi-led coup in Ukraine and blame Russia for the resulting civil war and failed state. It has constructed endless false claims of Islamic terror threats and rushed to bomb in the Middle East to “stop ISIS” in ignorance of its Saudi-CIA funding, arming and creation. It has completely reversed Canada’s tradition as a peacemaker nation, voted off even the UN Human Rights Commission.

All follows the fascist pattern not named. Harper long ago gave notice of his readiness to commit the supreme crime under law in demand that Canada join the war-criminal bombing and genocide of Iraq on completely false pretexts in 2003. Here again, however, he has been given a free pass by the opposition parties in Parliament and on the 78-day campaign.

The Cover-Up Not Seen

Marketing elections run by private money for private money can override or silence all that a society needs for its better life. Once the corporate media control all perceptions to serve self-maximizing marketers from the top down with no common life interest binding across differences, no shared life value or ground can be seen.

If corporate-market PR machinations capture opposition parties themselves, there is no centre of gravity of the common good. There are only sales pitches to targeted consumers. Nothing else gets in. Since private money alone can buy the media time to pitch political products, the competition becomes over who has more money to buy ads.  That the election is won by those with most private money backing is an underling meaning that disappears into the frenetic contest to get more of it to win.  Nothing else is defined but more-money-needed in the 2015 campaign of the NDP even after all the evidence is in.

The shared life infrastructures of air to breathe, green space to enjoy and vocations to serve disappear from the conversation. Even the continuous frauds, lies, civil society destructions, and giveaways to the corporate rich are forgotten in this cover-up process not seen. Incredibly, no-one charges Harper for his proven record to destroy the very fabric of Canada’s democracy and capacity to govern for the public. It does not exist in this field of meaning. Only the memory hole remains on the campaign stage.

Do You Trust this Man? 

The electoral opposition to the Harper regime’s decade of society destruction and transfer of public wealth to the rich has one more big lie to consider. Just 12 days before the election, it was announced that the TPP (‘Trans-Pacific Partnership’) had been rammed through before the election and before Canadians or Parliament have had a chance even to read it. No matter. Harper proclaims he “is 100% certain that it is good for Canada and all Canadians”. All the terms and details remained secret and inaccessible. Not one of the factually certain costs to Canadians is admitted as an issue. No citizen or party and knows any more than allowed to be told to them. The Trade Minister refused to be interviewed.  All the certain life sacrifices of local economies, people’s secure livelihoods, food security, and vast new transportation pollution and carbon loads  are simply erased from the ledger. They do not exist to this mind-set.

The TPP was announced the day I complete this analysis. But already one can recognize that every step follows in the tracks of Harper’s absolutely unaccountable and fraudulent rule – unlimited central control, complete secrecy, exclusion of public information in every detail, silencing of everyone else around including his own party’s elected MP’s, worship of the transnational corporate system of ever more profit as infallible, omnipotent boast of knowing the future for all citizens, and a very big-lie core of all he proclaims.

One might say Harper is a fanatic beyond all precedent in Canada’s prime ministry, and a pathological liar by demand of the corporate market doctrine of which he is a creature. This is why the life-blind inner logic of what drives him is not available to his mind. What sustains him are the corporate media barons and the extreme right-wing business roundtables from which he graduates. This is why he must always have them around in debates, as at the Munk centre. They pump him on in the CEO-despotism and greed they all bow to that destroys the world.  The same happens across oceans in different variations. The TPP organizes corporate rule across the most distant continents into global dictatorship over all sovereign governments involved, over new and old unions of organized workers who can withdraw labour, over public policy shifts to serve people instead of endless foreign profits out of their countries, and over evolved recourses of democracy and  government by collective life need.

This is the covered up meaning of Harper’s certitude of better lives for all. What life-blind doctrine has ever been so mindlessly ignorant of the facts of human life and the common life support systems of our planet?  They simply do not exist to this corruption of mind. A borderless corporate market ever larger and more unaccountable to the public, human life and the biosphere itself is the God of the world destruction.

Masked in the absurd slogan of “free trade” which is free for none but transnational corporations – and why they always love it – no media challenges this deranged mind-set any more than its big advertisers. And the two mainstream parties are always funded by its agents.  This is why the evil consequences are always ignored even though they follow necessarily from these one-sided treaties of transnational corporate rights. These are the real certainties that even the money masters and  their servants cannot deny – that big transnational foreign corporations will always displace and ruin small and local businesses in every sphere they enter; that jobs and wages will always be lost, lower and less secure in the aggregate; that organized workers in unions will always be smashed or reduced further; that environmental restraints and regulations will always be eliminated if they do not conform to corporate rights to the profits they expect;  that no-one except corporate lawyers will be able to judge by secret tribunal operations accountable to no one or no international law whether a public policy is valid if a private corporation sues it at public expense; and that every penalty for not conforming to this corporate treaty mechanism, with no non-profit public body allowed to dispute it, is without upper limit of money punishment to be paid by the taxpayers of the country that has disobeyed the new global corporate rights as judged by the private and unelected corporate-lawyer tribunal made up of the same people who wrote the treaty in secret and without public debate.  

This is the already established format of the ‘Trans-Pacific Partnership’ which no-one can truthfully deny, and this what Stephen Harper is “certain is good for Canada and Canadians” as he gives away Canada’s sovereignty and imposes still secret foreign terms on the country in the middle of an election. Official Opposition leader Thomas Mulcair has for the first time in this election stood against the job-destroying, hollowing-out system that Harper leads with big lies – just as Brian Mulroney did before him with NAFTA promising “jobs, jobs, jobs” when 500,00 secure manufacturing  jobs with living salaries and benefits were soon destroyed in fact.

The Harper regime has already lost 400,000 jobs under its watch. But the TPP will disemploy more than that when race-to-the-bottom Asian wages, safety, financial and environmental regulations are available to transnational corporations and banks to feed on at the expense of Canadian society, sovereignty, family security, youth opportunities and natural life and resources. This is the competition to the lowest denominators of life and life ruin that Harper adores as his ideal, ‘the free market’ of private corporate money sequence that override all else. .

Yet the real Canada beneath corporate-money functions sees through the endless lies and betrayals that are masked as “Conservative”. This worse-than-Mulroney despot and quisling of money power might come unstuck in his latest destruction of the common life bases of the country. Recall that this party of sell-out to private and transnational money powers ended up with two seats once the people caught on to the fraud.

Professor John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada whose work is translated from Latin America to Japan. He is the author of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his last book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism/ from Crisis to Cure.

Editor’s note: This article was first published in 2014.

Eventually the tired game will exhaust itself.  Beneath the billions of dollars U.S. elections are lifeless events. The predictable flopping from Democrat to Republican and back again, with voters given no real choice but to punish the party in power — by electing the party that was punished previously. This endless, irrational dynamic is the foundation of the U.S. electoral system.

The motor force pushing this logic is money, billions worth per cycle. The richest 1% threw nearly $4 billion to influence voters and to prepay for political favors from the winning candidates.

U.S. Elections have become corporate PR campaigns, with corporations doling money out equally to both parties. This bi-partisan vote buying guarantees that, aside from a couple of fervently debated social issues, a consistent, core economic agenda is firmly in place that favors the 1%.

This is why voters always punish the party in power. The ruling party earns the hatred of working-class voters by proving their love for the corporations and billionaires. The economy — and specifically jobs — has always been a priority for voters, but the economy is used by politicians to enrich the already-rich, who under Obama have received 95 percent of wealth created since he began as president.  Such brazen inequality doesn’t happen by accident, but by policy, and no politicians are complaining about it.

During the “heated” debates of the midterm election, there was virtually no discussion of the economy. The two parties have nothing to debate about on this issue; they’re in total agreement. The same is true about foreign policy and the $700 billion dollars annually spent on the military.

Neither party complains that U.S. taxpayers have spent, according to a reputable study, $4-6 trillion dollars on the ongoing wars of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bi-partisan consensus prevented the topic from reaching the campaign trail, while guaranteeing that the insane and completely futile war policy continues.

Most Americans understand that U.S. politics equals legalized corruption.  And consequently voter turnout sank to a new historic low of 38 percent. But even this number is highly misleading. One need only imagine if national congressional elections were voted on separately, instead of sharing the ballot with state elections and local ballot initiatives that voters actually care about. If this happened voter turnout would plummet to the teens, or lower, and could not be mislabeled “democracy.” The popularity of the U.S. Congress hovers around 10 percent, which means that 90 percent of the population consistently views this body as an alien entity, serving the interests of the parasitic super-rich.

The money that has stolen U.S. elections still provokes quite the fight between the Democrats and Republicans, who have their individual self-interests to protect. This is because the election winners get to reward their party campaigners with government positions and their donors with for-profit legislation. And after “following through” with passing legislation, the politician is rewarded yet again.

For example, when the politician inevitably becomes hated by everyone except the rich, the big money injects millions into the politician’s re-election campaign. And if the politician ends up losing he is rewarded for being loyal and is hired and paid millions as a “consultant” for the corporation, in effect a glamorized lobbyist.

What can we expect from the new Republican-controlled Congress? Many people will likely be surprised at the high level of cooperation between Obama and the Republicans, who have much in common. Most likely, a quick bi-partisan consensus will be reached on continuing and expanding the wars in the Middle East, with the ultimate and insane goal of toppling the Syrian and Iranian governments.

A new consensus will be reached regarding the U.S. economy, as both parties will “work together” to lower the U.S. corporate tax rate and give other “incentives” to the corporations and rich investors to actually invest their money in something productive other than their Wall Street gambling.

Obama and the Republicans will continue to work on their bi-partisan public school agenda, which aims to privatize the public schools through charters schools, an idea first proposed by the Reagan administration.

And while Republicans moan about Obamacare, they agree with its central feature, that “the market” should determine who gets health care and of what quality, based on what you can afford. The Republicans will loudly crow about this or that aspect of Obamacare they want eliminated, but the central logic is bi-partisan.

Ironically, as Obama continues to act in favor of the very wealthy, the Republican-controlled congress will give the president a chance to regain his lost popularity among Democrats. The Republicans are likely to use their control of the House and Senate to put forward legislation to appease their Christian fundamentalist base, targeting either abortions, immigrants, homosexuals, etc.

Obama will then get a chance to act as a “progressive” by using his veto power. After doing nothing for working people during his six years as president, Obama can become a “hero” again over a couple of social issues, just in time to re-energize Democratic voters for the 2016 election, which will falsely be labeled “the most important election of our lifetime.”

The veins of the U.S. body politic are too clogged with cash to be cleansed. Many progressive activists are demanding the repeal of the Supreme Court decision Citizens United, which opened the floodgate to corporate cash into elections. But in reality this floodgate already existed, Citizens United merely legalized what was happening on a hundred different levels. Massive accumulation of money will find its way into politics, one way or another.

Labor unions have an unfortunate role in propping up this two party dynamic of corporate cancer, since unions give undeserved legitimacy to this process by funding Democrats and telling their millions of union members to campaign and vote for a party that has participated along with the Republicans in attacking unionized and non-unionized working people for the last 30 years.

Third parties don’t spring out of the air. They are built by organizations with pre-existing resources and large memberships, like labor unions and other large community organizations. The various failed attempts at creating third parties in the U.S. can be blamed on the lack of any large national working class organization investing in them.

A workers’ party financed and co-organized by the unions has that ability to smash the two-party system. Such a party can’t compete with the Wall Street cash, but it can use its resources and membership to rally the broader country around a progressive platform of green job creation to fight climate change, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and taxing the rich and big corporations to pay for better schools and other vital social programs. Such demands would reverberate across the country in a political landscape where working people’s aspirations are complete ignored.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).  He can be reached at [email protected] 

Russian Drone Films ISIS Militants Hiding Weapons, Munitions near Syrian Mosques

By RT News, October 07 2015

The Russian Ministry of Defense has released a video showing Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants moving their military hardware to residential areas, including one near a mosque, in an apparent attempt to save it from airstrikes.

Parcialidad de las pruebas

Russia’s sovereign independence sticks in Washington’s craw, long-term US policy determined to replace it with governance it controls – even at the risk of WW III.

Putin’s policies are bashed, notably his forthright efforts to end conflicts in Ukraine and Syria diplomatically – now his real war on terrorism, polar opposite Washington’s phony one, a pretext for ravaging one country after another.

Deputy State Department spokesman Mark Toner lied saying the Obama administration “welcome(s) a constructive role for Russia if it takes the fight to ISIS” – precisely what it’s doing as Toner knows.

Instead of acknowledging and praising its effort, he lied saying “we’ve not seen that that’s the case. We’ve seen no indication that they’re actually hitting ISIL targets.”

He persists in the Big Lie about Moscow targeting nonexistent anti-Assad moderates. Sergey Lavrov explained clearly what Russia has been doing for the past week, saying if it walks and talks and squawks like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist vital to eliminate – to keep its danger from spreading.

Lunatics like presidential aspirant Carly Fiorina wants Washington enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria – even if it means shooting down Russian aircraft, claiming:

“Russian jets have been basically conducting dangerous and unpredictable maneuvers around our (sic) water and our (sic) borders and our (sic) territory.”

Does she means planet earth, its oceans, airspace and outer space? Does she consider Russian territory “ours?”

Would anyone want this woman’s finger on the nuclear trigger? Would you trust her with safeguarding life on earth? Would we avoid WW III with her in the White House?

Marco Rubio supports establishing so-called safe and no-fly zones in Syria – enforcing them “against anyone who would dare intrude on” them, including Russia. He’s willing to risk nuclear war to enforce US policy.

Last May, Ben Carson said he would not rule out military confrontation with Russia. “I would do whatever is necessary,” he said.

Earlier, Ted Cruz said he’d ramp up tensions with Russia and China if he became America’s commander-in-chief – risking nuclear war to pursue America’s hegemonic agenda.

All Republican and Democrat candidates support endless US wars of aggression. All might risk direct confrontation with Russia. Don’t let Trump’s rhetoric fool you, saying “(l)et Russia fight ISIS.”

Separately, he calls himself “the most militaristic” presidential aspirant. Hillary Clinton supports establishing safe and no-fly zones in Syria.

Bernie Sanders is militantly anti-Russian. “The entire world has got to stand up to Putin,” he blustered. Would he risk direct confrontation, possible nuclear war?

In a Financial Times op-ed, former Carter administration national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski irresponsibly said Russia “launched air attacks at Syrian elements that are sponsored, trained and equipped by the Americans, inflicting damage and causing casualties.”

“At best, it was a display of Russian military incompetence; at worst, evidence of a dangerous desire to highlight American political impotence.”

Washington has “only one real option,” he claimed, to protect its regional interests – “to convey to Moscow the demand that it cease and desist from military actions that directly affect American assets.”

He stopped short of explaining they’re ISIS and other imported terrorists, not moderate Syrian opponents, one of many Big Lies about Obama’s war, systematically destroying another country. Putin wants Syria saved. He wants the scourge of terrorism eliminated.

Instead of applauding his righteous efforts, Brzezinski urged “prompt US retaliation.” Is he suggesting possible nuclear war?

He’s one of many neocon lunatics infesting Washington. His call for “strategic boldness” sounds like a declaration of war, madness at a time cools heads are desperately needed.

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. 

Un arsenal que no presagia nada buenoPara justificar la desmesurada violencia contra Gaza, Israel invariablemente pone de relieve el arsenal de cohetes que supuestamente acumuló Hamas. Amnistía Internacional (AI) se hace eco de esta argumentación y así el lector aprende en Unlawful and Deadly que ya en 2001 Hamas había hecho acopio de cohetes de corto alcance, que después “desarrolló los cohetes Qassam de mayor alcance”, que “más recientemente grupos armados de Gaza han producido, modernizado o comprado de contrabando miles de cohetes BM- 21 Grad de diferentes tipos de alcances que van 20 a 48 kilómetros, y ha adquirido o producido cantidades menores de cohetes de largo y medio alcance” incluidos “el Fajr 5 iraní y el M-75 fabricado localmente (ambos de un alcance de 75 kilómetros), y los cohetes J-80 de fabricación local con un alcance de 80 kilómetros”, y que “durante la Operación Margen Protector (OMP) la Brigadas al-Qassam afirmaron haber disparado cohetes R-160, una versión de fabricación local del M-302, también con un alcance de 160 kilómetros” [1]. “La mayoría de los 8.3 millones de habitantes de Israel y todos los 2.8 millones de palestinos de la ocupada Cisjordania”, concluye de forma alarmante AI, “se encuentran dentro del alcance de al menos algunos de los cohetes que tienen los grupos armados palestinos en la Franja de Gaza. […] El círculo del miedo se ha ampliado”. Pero, ¿hasta qué punto ha sido real la amenaza que supone para Israel el arsenal de cohetes de Hamas? (Por caridad dejamos de lado la extraña conclusión de AI de incluir a los palestinos de Cisjordania en el “círculo del miedo”).

Según se informó, Hamas lanzó 5.000 cohetes y 2.000 proyectiles de mortero contra Israel durante la OMP [2]. Se suele atribuir al maravilloso sistema de defensa antimisiles de Israel denominado Cúpula de Hierro la discrepancia entre las miles de armas lanzadas por Hamas contra Israel y la muerte y destrucción mínimas que infligieron. Así, AI informa que “el sistema de defensa antimisiles de Israel, Cúpula de Hierro, contribuyó a limitar las víctimas civiles en muchas zonas” y se utilizó “para proteger las zonas civiles de los proyectiles lanzados desde la Franja de Gaza”. Pero esta explicación es poco convincente. Israel afirma que Cúpula de Hierro interceptó 740 cohetes, mientras que el Departamento de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas (citado por AI) da la cifra de 240. Extrañamente, AI omite las críticas conclusiones de una de las principales autoridades mundiales en defensa antimisiles, Theodore Postol del MIT [3] (anteriormente Postol había desacreditado las triunfantes afirmaciones acerca del sistema de defensa antimisiles Patriot durante la Primera Guerra del Golfo en 1991 [4]). Postol concluyó que Cúpula de Hierro logró interceptar un 5 % de los cohetes lanzados por Hamas o, según los datos de Israel, solamente 40 de estos cohetes [5]. En general, Cúpula de Hierro ha servido de accesorio polivalente en las diferentes campañas hasbara (propaganda) de Israel. Tras la Operación Pilar Defensivo (OPD, 2012), Israel promocionó el éxito de su sistema de defensa antimisiles para compensar los magros resultados del ataque [6]. Pero Israel minimizó la eficacia de Cúpula de Hierro en su informe oficial postmortem sobre OMP, The 2014 Gaza Conflict, 7 July-26 August 2014, de la misma manera que exageró la vulnerabilidad de su frente interno para justificar la muerte y destrucción que Israel había provocado durante la operación. Este informe, que se publicó en 2015 para adelantarse a las críticas conclusiones de la investigación del Comité de Derechos Humanos de la ONU y que no es sino repetitivo, solo dedica dos de los 460 párrafos a Cúpula de Hierro y pone el énfasis no en los brillantes resultados de Cúpula de Hierro sino en el hecho de ser “falible” e incapaz de impedir “amplios daños a vidas y propiedades civiles” [7].

Incluso, según los cálculos oficiales israelí según los cuales interceptaron 740 cohetes, sigue siendo sorprendente que los cientos de cohetes no interceptados por Cúpula de Hierro causaran tan pocos daños. En efecto, antes incluso de que Israel desplegara por primera vez Cúpula de Hierro durante la Operación Pilar Defensivo, apenas se registraron proyectiles de Hamas. Cuando Hamas disparó 13.000 cohetes y proyectiles de mortero contra Israel entre 2001 y 2012, murieron un total de 23 civiles israelíes o un civil cada 500 proyectiles disparados [8]. Durante la Operación Plomo Fundido (2008-9), el ataque más violento de Israel con Gaza antes de la OMP y antes de Cúpula de Hierro, Hamas lanzó 900 proyectiles [9] aunque hubo un total de solo tres civiles muertos. Por otra parte, durante OMP, 2.800 proyectiles de Hamas o un 40 % de la cantidad total cayó en las regiones fronterizas de Israel [10] en las que no se había desplegado Cúpula de Hierro, a pesar de lo cual solo murió un civil israelí a causa de un proyectil [11] (la mayoría de los israelíes habitantes de las zonas fronterizas “permanecieron en sus comunidades de origen” durante al OMP [12]).

Postol achaca las escasas muertes de civiles israelíes durante la OMP fundamentalmente (pero no exclusivamente) al sistema de alerta precoz y de refugios de Israel [13] que ha ido mejorando considerablemente en los últimos años [14]. Pero esto sigue sin servir para explicar el reducido número de víctimas civiles antes de las mejoras de la defensa civil y, lo que aún es más elocuente, no puede explicar los daños materiales mínimos. Durante la OMP una página web del ministerio israelí de Asuntos Exteriores inventarió diariamente los daños materiales causados por los cohetes de Hamas [15]. En la Tabla 2 se resumen sus entradas:

TABLA 2 Daños materiales en Israel causados por ataques con cohete de Hamas

Unlawful and Deadly informa de que “decenas de cohetes y proyectiles de mortero caídos en zonas construidas dañaron propiedades civiles, incluidas viviendas, infraestructuras, edificios públicos e instituciones educativas”, mientras que 2014 Gaza Conflict afirma que “varias comunidades residenciales en la frontera con la Franja de Gaza […] fueron acribilladas por los disparos de cohetes y de proyectiles de mortero” [16]. Sin embargo, ¿no es algo extraordinario y digno de ser contado que los miles y miles de cohetes de Hamas causaran un daño insignificante, incluso admitiendo que determinado porcentaje de proyectiles cayera en zonas abiertas? ¿Cómo pudo quedar destruida nada más que una casa israelí y otras 11 afectadas o dañadas por un descomunal aluvión de cohetes? [17]. La respuesta obvia y más plausible es que la mayoría de estos llamados cohetes no eran más que fuegos artificiales mejorados. AI hacer surgir unos escenarios de pesadilla a partir de los cohetes de larga distancia de Hamas. Pero los cohetes de larga distancia de Hamas lanzados durante Pilar Defensivo carecían de explosivos; un alto cargo israelí los ignoró calificándolos de “tubos, básicamente” [18]. Es poco probable que Hamas mejorara de forma significativa la tecnología de sus cohetes en el lapso de tiempo de solo 20 meses que separa Pilar Defensivo de OMP y probablemente no pudo comprar de contrabando una cantidad significativa de cohetes más sofisticados (ocho meses después de Pilar Defensivo, en julio de 2013, se produjo el golpe de Estado en Egipto y uno de los primeros actos del autor del golpe fue sellar casi todos los túneles entre el norte del Sinaí y Gaza, que era la ruta principal de contrabando). Al hacer suyo el guión de Israel acerca de que Hamas poseía un arsenal letal de cohetes y aunque los proyectiles causaran algo de miedo entre la población civil israelí, Amnistía Internacional se convirtió, deliberadamente o no, en altavoz de la propaganda de Estado.

Norman G. Finkelstein

Fuente : https://www.byline.com/project/13/article/163

Traducido del inglés para Rebelión por Beatriz Morales Bastos

Notas 

[1] Aunque AI no proporciona la fuente de sus datos, casi con toda seguridad provienen de fuentes oficiales israelíes. Resulta difícil decir cuánta credibilidad se puede otorgar a estas fuentes. El informe 2014 Gaza Conflict afirma que en vísperas de la Operación Pilar Defensivo (OPD, 2012), Hamas “había almacenado más de 7.000 cohetes y proyectiles de mortero” mientras que antes de OMP “había adquirido 10.000 cohetes y proyectiles de mortero” (párrafos 51, 54). También proporciona un desglose detallado de estos cohetes (“6.700 de alcance superior a 20km, 2.300 de alcance superior a 40km…”). Es una incógnita cómo logró Israel esta información y por qué, dado que la poseía, no actuó militarmente para evitar que Hamas usara estos proyectiles ya que si sabía cuantos proyectiles había acumulado Hamas, también debía de saber dónde los almacenaba. El informe israelí también afirma que Hamas “hizo una fuerte inversión en armamento tras la operación en Gaza de 2008-2009 y los compromisos de Gaza de 2012 que redujeron sustancialmente sus reservas de armas” (p. 61n186). Pero si había acumulado 7.000 proyectiles justo antes de Pilar Defensivo y disparado 1.500 de ellos durante Pilar Defensivo (párrafo 51), su arsenal solo se había reducido un 20 %. La deducción razonable de esto es que Israel se saca la mayoría de las cifras de la manga. 

[2] Departamento de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas (UNDSS, por sus siglas en inglés), citado en Addendum to Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights(A/HRC/28/80/Add.1, 26 December 2014), p. 8. Gaza Conflict 2014 informa de que Hamas lanzó 4.000 cohetes y proyectiles de mortero a Israel, y otros 500 proyectiles que cayeron dentro de Gaza (párrafos 103, 112).

[3] Theodore Postol, “The Evidence That Shows Iron Dome Is Not Working”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (19 de julio de 2014; http://thebulletin.org/evidence-shows-iron-dome-not-working7318); “Iron Dome or Iron Sieve?”, Democracy Now! (31 de julio de 2014; http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/31/iron_dome_or_iron_sieve_evidence,http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/7/31/part_two_theodore_postol_asks_is).

[4] Theodore A. Postol, “Lessons of the Gulf War Patriot Experience”, International Security (Invierno de 1991/92).

[5] Israel afirmó que se había interceptado el 90 % (740) de los cohetes de Hamas lanzados contra zonas pobladas en las que estaba desplegada Cúpula de Hierro, lo que haría ascender la cantidad total de cohetes lanzados contra estas zonas a 820. Yoav Zitun, “Iron Dome: IDF intercepted 90 percent of rockets”, Ynetnews.com (15 de agosto de 2014;http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4558517,00.html).

[6] Finkelstein, Method and Madness, pp. 128-29.

[7] 2014 Gaza Conflict, párrafos 189-90 (cf. párrafos 4, 113, 190).

[8] Basado en 2014 Gaza Conflict, que informa de que Hamas lanzó 13.000 proyectiles contra Israel entre 2001 y el inicio de Pilar Defensivo (párrafos 44, 51, p. 58n174). B’Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), Attacks on Israeli Civilians by Palestinians (http://www.btselem.org/topic/israeli_civilians).

[9] 2014 Gaza Conflict, p. 58n174.

[10] Ibid., párrafo 114, p. 122n361. Este informe afirma que “más del 60 %” de los proyectiles de Hamas cayeron en zonas fronterizas, pero afirma que la cantidad total de proyectiles de Hamas lanzados durante la OMP fue de 4.000, mientras que la cifra del UNDSS, utilizado en esta monografía, es de 7.000.

[11] Otros cinco civiles murieron en Israel a consecuencia de proyectiles de mortero (ibid., pp. 112-13nn328-32).

[12] Ibid., para. 210.

[13] Algunas pruebas circunstanciales dan credibilidad a la postura de Postol. Aunque los ataques con cohetes de Hamas solo mataron a un civil en dos de las regiones fronterizas israelíes que carecían de Cúpula de Hierro, los proyectiles de mortero mataron a otros cuatro. El resultado diferente puede que se deba al hecho de que el sistema de avisos de Israel proporciona un plazo de 15 segundos a quienes buscan refugio en caso de un cohete pero de solo 3-5 segundos en el de un ataque con mortero. Postol también menciona como factor el modesto tamaño de las ojivas de los cohetes de Hamas.

[14] 2014 Gaza Conflict, párrafo 183, p. 111n327; Itay Hod, “The Israeli App Red Alert Saves Lives”, Daily Beast (14 julio 2014).

[15] http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Pages/Israel-under-fire-July-2014-A-Diary.aspx.

[16] 2014 Gaza Conflict, p. 65.

[17] Lo mismo era válido en el pasado. Solo una casa israelí fue “destruida casi por completo” durante Plomo Fundido y antes de esa operación prácticamente tampoco hubo daños materiales. Norman G. Finkelstein, “This Time We Went Too Far”: Truth and consequences of the Gaza invasion, edición en bolsillo revisada y aumentada (New York: 2011) p. 63; Human Rights Watch,Indiscriminate Fire: Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli artillery shelling in the Gaza Strip(June 2007), pp. 24-28.

[18] Dan Williams, “Some Gaza Rockets Stripped of Explosives to Fly Further”, Reuters (18 de noviembre de 2012).
Fuente: https://www.byline.com/project/13/article/163 http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=202332

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.” (Walter Scott, 1771-1832, “Marmion.”)

How speedily the lies of the “international community” in general and those of the US and UK in particular about the Syrian situation are unraveling since the participation of Russia.

Take UK Prime Minister David Cameron. On 24^th September last year he addressed the United Nations, committing British aircraft to targeting IS/ISIL/ISIS in Iraq adding unequivocally that there would be no similar action in Syria and absolutely no “boots on the ground.”(1)

Referring to Iraq he added that the West should not be frozen by “past mistakes.” If Iraq is a “mistake” Heaven alone knows what a catastrophe would look like.

Cameron of course was being economical with the truth. In 2013 Parliament voted not to be involved in Syria, making Cameron the first Prime Minister in 200 years to lose a Parliamentary war vote. It would anyway have been another illegal action, since they had not been invited by the Syrian President or government and had no UN mandate. However, in July this year it transpired that pilots of Britain’s Air Force have been “embedded” with US and Canadian Air Squadrons and been involved in flying: “intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike missions …” according to the Ministry of Defence. (2)

On 7^th September Cameron also announced that a British drone strike in Syria had killed two UK citizens fighting with ISIS. What an irony, the UK has enjoined wiping out entire nations having accused their leaders of “killing their own people”, terrorists or not, now Cameron kills his “own people” in what Michael Clarke, Director General of London’s hawkish Royal United Services Institute has called a “targeted assassination.”

Those killed were : “… targeted in an area that the UK does not currently regard, legally, as an operational theatre of war for UK forces”, Clarke commented, adding: “The government insisted that, unlike CIA drones, they were never used for targeted assassinations in territories where we were not militarily engaged.” (3) Another government lie pinned.

As for “no boots on the ground”, another seemingly whopping untruth. As Stephen Lendman has written (4): “On 2^nd August The Sunday Express revealed: ‘SAS dress as ISIS fighters in undercover war on jihadis’ expanding that:

“ ‘More than 120 members belonging to the elite regiment are currently in the war-torn country’ covertly ‘dressed in black and flying ISIS flags’ engaged in what is called Operation Shader – attacking Syrian targets on the pretext of combatting ISIS.”

A mirror image of Basra, Iraq, exactly ten years ago, September 2005, when British Special Forces, dressed in Arab clothing, were arrested by Iraqi police in an explosive laden car. Had the car detonated, “Iraqi insurgents” would, of course, have been blamed. The British military demolished the police station in order to free the would-be bombers. (5) How many were not caught and “insurgency” for which Iraqis were blamed, killed, tortured, was actually “made in Britain” and the US, as Syria now?

In August it was reported that SAS troops in Syria “dressed in US uniforms, joined US special forces” in the assassination of alleged ISIS financier Abu Sayyaf and the kidnapping of his wife (Independent, 10^th August.) It appears the British government only ever acts with, or at US behest, whilst sidelining it’s own Parliament.

Moreover: “Around 800 Royal Marines and 4,000 US counterparts were on standby to intervene on short notice if ordered”, wrote Lendman.

No wonder the Russians are being castigated for targeting the wrong kind of terrorists. In addition to being non-discriminatory and regarding a terrorist as simply that, they might also take the black flag waving SAS soldiers in fancy dress as terrorists. A “tangled web”, indeed.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is anything but selective about the head chopping, culture erasing monsters besieging Syria – CIA trained or not – stating last week: “If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?” (6)

In a response which stunningly illuminated Washington’s selective stance towards terrorism US Secretary of State, John Kerry stated: “What is important is Russia has to not be engaged in any activities against anybody but ISIL”, he said: “That’s clear. We have made that very clear.” Breathtaking, it is for the Syrian government to specify the parameters.

The US and UK of course are both bombing and supporting insurgents entirely illegally in Syria, having no UN mandate and no request from the country’s governing body. Did Kerry even blush when Lavrov remarked – over the unspoken questions as to whether Russia would extend it’s air coverage to terrorist groups in Iraq – that they had no such plans: “We are polite people, we don’t come if not invited”, he said.

Vladimir Putin had said: “We have … an invitation and we intend to fight against terrorist organizations and them only”, possibly referring to allegations that the US has been targeting Syrian government sites and military personnel.

Russia’s diplomatic envoys were reasonably polite to the US too. Before embarking on air strikes, according to US State Department spokesman John Kirby: “A Russian official in Baghdad this morning informed US Embassy personnel that Russian military aircraft would begin flying anti-ISIL missions today over Syria.

“He further requested that US aircraft avoid Syrian airspace during these missions.” Russia had, in effect given the US one hour’s notice to leave Syria. The US speedily responded with a report of Russian attacks causing civilian casualties. Sadly it transpired that at the time of the reported attacks, Russian ‘planes had not yet left the ground. By 2^nd October, it seems panic has set in amongst the “US led coalition” which: “ … released a joint statement calling on Moscow to immediately cease attacks on the Syrian opposition and to focus on fighting ISIS.” (Guardian 2^nd October 2015.)

The statement was issued by France, Turkey, the United States, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Britain.

However the US cat had already escaped from the Pentagon bag and made it’s way to no less than the Wall Street Journal which, the previous day had a header: “Russian Airstrike in Syria Targeted CIA-Backed Rebels, U.S. Officials Say.

“One area hit was location primarily held by rebels receiving funding, arms, training from CIA and allies.” Oooops.

Michel Chossudovsky has succinctly unraveled (7) the unholy morass of the various groups coupling his piece with the WSJ story:

“Affiliated to Al Qaeda, Al Nusra is a US sponsored  “jihadist” terrorist organization which has been responsible for countless atrocities. Since 2012, AQI and Al Nusra — both supported by US intelligence– have been working hand in glove in various terrorist undertakings within Syria.

“In recent developments, the Syrian government has identified its own priority areas for the Russian counter-terrorism air campaign, which consists essentially in targeting Al Nusra.  Al Nusra is described as the terrorist arm of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

“While Washington has categorized Al Nusra as a terrorist organization (early 2012), it nonetheless provides support  to both Al Nusra and it’s so-called ‘moderate rebels’ in the form of weapons, training, logistical support, recruitment, etc. This support is channeled by America’s Persian Gulf allies, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia as well as through Turkey and Israel.

“Ironically, The UN Security Council in a May 2012 decision’, namely the ISIL …”

At the Russian intervention, US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power took to Twitter, stating: “We call on Russia to immediately cease attacks on Syrian opposition and civilians.” Such action, she warned: “will only fuel more extremism and radicalization.” Chutzpah outdone – until 2003 and the US-UK blitzkrieg there were no US sponsored organ eating, dismembering lunatics. Syria and Iraq were of the most secular countries in the region.

Syria, from lies, to heartbreak, to cultural destruction has become a microcosm of the demented, ridiculous “war on terror.” The lies and subterfuge to justify the horror have become more desperate but only the most obtuse can avoid noticing that terrorists R US.