Global Research

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, President Barack Obama portrayed himself and the US government as the preeminent defenders of international law and diplomacy. He did so even as the catastrophic consequences of the illegal wars of aggression he has overseen continued to send waves of refugees fleeing the ruins of entire countries—including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen—and as Washington took new steps to turn Eastern Europe into a militarized zone for eventual war against Russia.

With his trademark hypocrisy and contempt for the intelligence of his audience, Obama hailed “an international system that imposes a cost on those who choose conflict over cooperation.” He proclaimed his support for the “international principles that helped constrain bigger countries from imposing our will on smaller ones,” and denounced those who maintain “that might makes right; that strong states must impose their will on weaker ones; that the rights of individuals don’t matter; and that in a time of rapid change, order must be imposed by force.”

This from a man who asserts the right of his government to launch “preemptive” wars against any country or group deemed hostile to Washington’s drive for hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East and the rest of the world; who has killed untold thousands in drone missile assassinations; waged an unprovoked war against Libya and murdered its leader, Gaddafi; and armed and financed a sectarian civil war using Al Qaeda-linked killers as its proxy force, turning Syria into a chamber of horrors.

The main focus of Obama’s remarks was Syria, where the debacle of US policy had become so pronounced that Obama was obliged to pull back from his previous demand for the immediate removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He has proposed talks with the Baathist regime’s main allies, Russia and Iran, on a “managed transition” that would likely retain elements of the current government while eventually easing Assad out of power.

Later on Monday, Obama met with Russian President Putin to discuss the possibility of engineering such a settlement of the four-and-a-half-year war. It was the first formal face to face meeting between the two since 2013, when the White House cancelled discussions with Putin in retaliation for Moscow’s decision to grant NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden temporary asylum. That was followed by a freeze on all high-level talks after the US-sponsored and fascist-led coup last year that overthrew Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Since it installed the ultra-nationalist and fascistic regime in Kiev, Washington has backed a brutal assault on pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine that has killed thousands and devastated entire cities.

The US finds its position in Syria and the broader region severely weakened, despite the mass killing in the country—estimated at 200,000 deaths in a country with a population of 23 million—caused by the sectarian civil war instigated by Washington and its regional allies, Turkey and the semi-feudal sheikdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Iraq’s announcement Sunday that it had signed an agreement with Syria, Iran and Russia to share intelligence and coordinate security in the battle against Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq appeared to take Washington by surprise.

It was preceded by a series of developments exposing Washington’s failure to create a non-jihadist “moderate” force to fight both ISIS and Assad. These included the resignation of the top US commander in the anti-ISIS war; congressional testimony by a leading general admitting that after more than a year and the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, the US had trained “four or five” fighters; reports that the ranks of ISIS fighters were rising despite months of US and coalition bombing; and other reports that forces trained by the US in Turkey had defected or turned over their weapons to Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the al-Nusra Front.

Moreover, recent weeks have seen an increase in Russian military support to the Assad regime, which Washington has been unable to block.

The net result of Washington’s reckless and murderous war for regime-change in Syria has been to turn the country into yet another geopolitical flashpoint where US and allied military forces face off against those of Russia, raising the very real danger of an armed clash and the eruption of a wider war between nuclear armed powers. On the eve of the UN assembly, France began its own bombing campaign in Syria, making clear that it was prepared to attack forces allied with Assad, potentially including Russian forces, as well as ISIS. Britain is lining up to begin bombing the country later this year.

It would be a dangerous mistake to believe that Washington’s decision to seek talks with Russia and Iran means the US is backing off from the use of military violence. On the contrary, with its economic and diplomatic position weakening, the response of American imperialism will be to ratchet up its bullying and military aggression.

This was clear from Obama’s speech. He denounced the main targets of US aggression, calling Assad a “tyrant,” accusing Russia of violating “the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Ukraine, implied that China was attacking “the basic principles of freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce” in the South China Sea and singled out Iran for continuing to “deploy violent proxies to advance its interests.” The chief backer of tyrants in the Middle East, violator of national sovereignty and territorial integrity in Ukraine, threat to freedom of navigation in East Asia and deployer of violent proxies is, of course, the United States.

In the midst of his cynical paean to the international law and diplomacy, Obama issued an unambiguous threat to any nation that dared to get in America’s way, declaring: “I lead the strongest military that the world has ever known, and I will never hesitate to protect my country and our allies, unilaterally and by force where necessary.”

The preparations for a US military escalation against both Syria and Russia are well underway. Last week, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that discussions are being held between US military officials and leaders of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria for Washington to step up its military support, including close air support for YPG fighters on the ground.

Powerful factions within the US ruling elite and state are opposed to any talks with Russia or Iran and are demanding the creation of so-called “safe havens” policed by US and allied forces in Syria and an all-out drive for regime-change.

At the same time, the Pentagon and CIA are stepping up their war preparations against Russia. The upcoming US-NATO Trident Juncture 2015 war games, the largest held since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, are designed to prepare Western forces to engage in hybrid warfare operations in the Baltic region and beyond.

Last week, an article appeared in Foreign Policy magazine with the title: “The Pentagon is Preparing New War Plans for a Baltic Battle Against Russia.” The article stated, “For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US Department of Defense is reviewing and updating its contingency plans for armed conflict with Russia.”

Finally, the US is planning to upgrade its nuclear arsenal in Europe with highly sophisticated B61-12 guided nuclear bombs, each one of which is more than three times as powerful as the atomic bomb that killed over 130,000 people in Hiroshima.

For decades, US imperialism has sought to overcome the decline in its global economic position by relying on its military supremacy. In response to its latest setbacks in the Middle East, this tendency will only be expressed with greater brutality and recklessness.

Seymour Hersh has risked much over his decades of journalism. He is a true journalist who has been attacked, slandered, and shunned by all sides simply because he seems to resist taking any side. 

When he reported on US atrocities in Vietnam, he was first attacked and denounced as a traitor or worse. In time, both the truth and Hersh were vindicated and the importance of what he did as a journalist to both inform the public and serve as a check and balance against the special interests of ruling power were recognized with a Pultizer Prize.

In 2007, when he exposed the then Bush-administration’s plans to use the Muslim Brotherhood and militant groups linked to Al Qaeda to overthrow the government of Syria – the result of which is unfolding today – the New Yorker gladly welcomed his work as a message they perceived would resonate well with liberal audiences.

But then in 2013, when Hersh brought forward information contradicting the West’s official narrative regarding a chemical attack on the outskirts of Damascus, the New Yorker decided not to publish it. His report, “Whose Sarin?” instead found itself published in the London Review of Books.

The story of Hersh bringing this information forward to the public and how the Western media attempted to first discourage it, then bury it, before attempting to discredit both the report and Hersh himself is a microcosm of the dying Western media.

The Final Nail 

Hersh’s  report went on in detail covering the manner in which Western leaders intentionally manipulated or even outright fabricated intelligence to justify military intervention in Syria – eerily similar to the lies told to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the escalation of the war in Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

And not only did the report punch holes through the official narrative, it helped hobble what little momentum was left for Western military aggression against Syria based on the lies told by the US and its allies regarding the chemical attack.

In Hersh’s follow up report, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” also published by the London Review of Books, he revealed information not only further exposing the lies told by the US and its allies, but suggested NATO member Turkey and close US-ally Saudi Arabia may have played a role in supplying those responsible for the attack with the chemical weapons.

Should Hersh’s reports reach wider audiences and the idea of a West capable of conceiving, carrying out, then trying to exploit a crime against humanity to justify expanded, unjust war, Western foreign policy would irrevocably be disfigured and perhaps begin to unravel.

Outsourcing Trust

The methods of augmenting an increasingly discredited and distrusted Western media have become very creative. With the advent of the Internet and social media, attempts to produce viral content and seemingly outside sources to help guide the public back who are turning away from the mainstream media in droves was actually the subject of an entire policy paper by former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein. The paper was covered in a Salon article titled, “Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal,” which stated (emphasis added):

Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).

It would be these – what are essentially government-paid liars – who the West would turn to in an attempt to bury Hersh and the remnants of real Western journalism with him.

The “Independent Credible Voices” 

UK-based unemployed government worker Eliot Higgins began and maintained a popular blog amalgamating online photos and videos from the Syrian conflict. Journalists and analysts from all sides used his resource as a sort of “wartime encyclopedia.” While Higgins possessed no qualifications or background in warfare, geopolitics, or weapons specifically, what he did possess was a great amount of time. In this time he was able to accurately look up and catalog the media on his blog.

However, it wasn’t long before the Western media approached him to fulfill the role of “independent credible voice.” Whether Eliot Higgins was the recipient of “secret payments” at that time or not, it is clear now that he was both approached by and sought those willing to pay him for his services and that his work from then on was decidedly both biased and dishonest.

Higgins was furnished with his own “weapons expert,” Dan Kaszeta, who either owns or is an associate of multiple dubious “consulting” firms. Together from the beginning Higgins and Kaszeta bolstered the West’s narrative that the Syrian government was responsible for using munitions filled with nerve agents right in front of UN inspectors in Damascus.

Using what they collectively called “open source intelligence” – watching YouTube videos and looking at Google Earth – they claimed the type of rocket and nerve agent used could only have been deployed by the Syrian government.

Hersh contested these claims in both of his reports and in additional interviews pointing out that the rockets were crude and could just as easily be homemade, while the production of nerve agents – certainly the work of a state actor – could have been done in either Turkey or Saudi Arabia or with either nations’ assistance, then deployed by militants in Syria.

To this day, the UN’s official conclusion is that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that rockets containing nerve agents were launched at Damascus suburbs – assigning no blame, nor indicating from where either the rockets or the nerve agents originated.

Higgins and Kaszeta, featured in the London Guardian and Foreign Policy Magazine, would directly attack Hersh’s claims citing YouTube videos and UN reports as evidence that the Syrian government possessed the type of rockets used in the attack and the type of nerve agent contained in the rockets – omitting one very important question – what if the attack was meant to look like the work of the Syrian government?

In reality, all Higgins and Kaszeta proved was that whoever carried out the attack – designed solely to grant the US and its allies justification for direct military intervention – spent a lot of time and effort to make the attack appear as if the Syrian government carried it out. They predicate their entire argument upon claiming the West would not – for some reason – fabricate an attack to justify a war they sought to wage but lacked any justification to do so.

Along side Higgins and Kaszeta’s rebuttal was a scathing indictment of not only Hersh, but traditional journalism in general. The London Gaurdian’s Brian Whitaker would pen a piece titled, “Investigating chemical weapons in Syria – Seymour Hersh and Brown Moses go head to head,”claiming (emphasis added):

While seeking to re-ignite the “whodunnit” debate about chemical weapons, Hersh’s article unwittingly revealed a lot about the changing nature of investigative journalism. Hersh is old-school. He operates in a world of hush-hush contacts – often-anonymous well-placed sources passing snippets of information around which he constructs an article that challenges received wisdom. 

The Hersh style of journalism certainly has a place, but in the age of the internet it’s a diminishing one – as the web-based work of Higgins and others continually shows.

It is a talking point that Higgins himself would again make in the space afforded to him by Foreign Policy magazine – that traditional journalism with real sources is out, and Cass Sunstein’s army of paid “independent credible voices” are in.

Vindication 

A Russian-brokered deal that saw the entirety of Syria’s chemical weapon stockpiles removed from the country under the supervision of the United Nations means that there are neither chemical weapons for the Syrian government to use (or be blamed for using), nor chemical weapons left for terrorists fighting the Syrian government to pilfer and use.

Yet now along Turkey’s border – the nation Hersh has suggested was behind the 2013 gas attack – terrorists from the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) are allegedly deploying chemical weapons.

Initial reports indicate the use of mustard gas – a blistering agent. Like nerve agents, the production and deployment of these weapons requires state resources.

The Western media, in a bid to explain how ISIS has acquired these weapons, has begun spinning theories that Syria’s weapons on their way out of Syria somehow ended up in ISIS’ hands. The presence of chemical weapons in northern Syria and Iraq indicates that just as Hersh suggested, chemical weapons are being passed on to terrorists operating in Syria from either Turkey or Saudi Arabia, or both.

With this recent development, literally years of Higgins and Kaszeta’s lies have been exposed, vindicating award-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh and the traditional methods of journalism he employed to draw his conclusions. It also exposes Sunstein’s army of “independent credible voices” as just another facet in the echo chamber of discredited, now widely distrusted lies of the Western media.

In an attempt to get Higgins’ and Kaszeta’s opinion on who they believed were supplying ISIS with chemical weapons, Kaszeta replied by saying, “lizard men.” Higgins refused to comment. When asked if either would like to extend an apology to Hersh, Kasezta would inexplicably reply, “Hersh owes me an apology, now get lost you useless sack of sh*t.“

One might expect a higher degree of professionalism and civilized debate from “experts” regularly deferred to by the Western media not only in regards to the Syrian conflict but also in Ukraine, where Eliot Higgins is now offering his “independent credible voice” to the MH17 disaster. However, admittedly employed by Western think tanks and consultancy agencies, Higgins no longer possess an “independent” voice, and considering his intentional and unrepentant deceit regarding Syria, he no longer possess a “credible’ voice either.

Sunstein’s Failed Experiment 

Using chemical weapons has never been an effective means of fighting war. Beyond their psychological effects, conventional weapons have proven a vastly superior means of waging and winning war.

During the deadly 8 year war between Iraq and Iran, chemical weapons were used including nerve agents. Yet a document produced by the US Marine Corps, titled, “Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War” under “Appendix B: Chemical Weapons,” revealed less than 2-3% of all casualties were the result of chemical warfare.The report concluded that even large scale use of chemical weapons offered little advantage to either side and suggests that attacks carried out with such weapons required almost perfect weather and geographical conditions to be of even limited benefit. On a smaller scale, the use of chemical weapons would be tactically and strategically useless – unless of course used as a means of implicating your enemy and justifying wider war.

Likewise, shooting down a civilian airliner over Ukraine offers no benefit to a warring party unless of course they did it to implicate their enemies and justify wider war. Discerning this is a product of critical thinking – which is what drove people away from the Western media in the first place. Sunstein’s mistaken belief that somehow those drifting away from the Western media were as easily fooled as those still watching it is why people like Higgins have ended up chased out of the independent media and back, deeply within the system that co-opted and used him in the first place.

For Hersh, he proves that dedication to the truth when it is unpopular is a small price to pay to keep one’s dignity. The ridicule and accusations of those without dignity fades, but the truth is everlasting. When the truth Hersh has pointed out beneath the lies finally surfaced for all to see, vindication exposed people like Higgins and Kaszeta for all to see.

With the veils of legitimacy and professionalism yanked from them, they are reduced to vulgar, miniature versions of the rotting system that created them. Without realizing their very creation as “consultants” lies in the decline of those who sought them out, not because of their talent, but because of their willingness to do what those with dignity refuse to do, they will likely go on with their ignoble work. But like the media houses that desperately needed their “independent credible voices” to begin with, fewer will be listening and reading.

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

Today is the 70th anniversary of the UN. It is not clear how much good the UN has done. Some UN Blue Hemet peacekeeping operations had limited success. But mainly Washington has used the UN for war, such as the Korean War and Washington’s Cold War against the Soviet Union. In our time Washington had UN tanks sent in against Bosnian Serbs during the period that Washington was dismantling Yugoslavia and Serbia and accusing Serbian leaders, who tried to defend the integrity of their country against Washington’s aggression, of “war crimes.”

The UN supported Washington’s sanctions against Iraq that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked about it, Clinton’s Secretary of State said, with typical American heartlessness, that the deaths of the children were worth it. In 2006 the UN voted sanctions against Iran for exercising its right as a signatory of the non-proliferation treaty to develop atomic energy. Washington claimed without any evidence that Iran was building a nuclear weapon in violation of the non-proliferation treaty, and this lie was accepted by the UN. Washington’s false claim was repudiated by all 16 US intelligence agencies and by the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran, but in the face of the factual evidence the US government and its presstitute media pressed the claim to the point that Russia had to intervene and take the matter out of Washington’s warmonger hands. Russia’s intervention to prevent US military attacks on Iran and Syria resulted in the demonization of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. “Facts?!, Washington don’t need no stinkin’ facts! We got power!” Today at the UN Obama asserted America’s over-riding power many times: the strongest military in the world, the strongest economy in the world.

The UN has done nothing to stop Washington’s invasions and bombings, illegal under international law, of seven countries or Obama’s overthrow by coup of democratic governments in Honduras and Ukraine, with more in the works.

The UN does provide a forum for countries and populations within countries that are suffering oppression to post complaints—except, of course, for the Palestinians, who, despite the boundaries shown on maps and centuries of habitation by Palestinians, are not even recognized by the UN as a state.

On this 70th anniversary of the UN, I have spent much of the day listening to the various speeches. The most truthful ones were delivered by the presidents of Russia and Iran. The presidents of Russia and Iran refused to accept the Washington-serving reality or Matrix that Obama sought to impose on the world with his speech. Both presidents forcefully challenged the false reality that the propagandistic Western media and its government masters seek to create in order to continue to exercise their hegemony over everyone else.

What about China? China’s president left the fireworks to Putin, but set the stage for Putin by rejecting US claims of hegemony: “The future of the world must be shaped by all countries.” China’s president spoke in veiled terms against Western neoliberal economics and declared that “China’s vote in the UN will always belong to the developing countries.”

In the masterly way of Chinese diplomacy, the President of China spoke in a non-threatening, non-provocative way. His criticisms of the West were indirect. He gave a short speech and was much applauded.

Obama followed second to the President of Brazil, who used her opportunity for PR for Brazil, at least for the most part. Obama gave us the traditional Washington spiel:

The US has worked to prevent a third world war, to promote democracy by overthrowing governments with violence, to respect the dignity and equal worth of all peoples except for the Russians in Ukraine and Muslims in Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan.

Obama declared Washington’s purpose to “prevent bigger countries from imposing their will on smaller ones.” Imposing its will is what Washington has been doing throughout its history and especially under Obama’s regime.

All those refugees overrunning Europe? Washington has nothing to do with it. The refugees are the fault of Assad who drops bombs on people. When Assad drops bombs it oppresses people, but when Washington drops bombs it liberates them. Obama justified Washington’s violence as liberation from “dictators,” such as Assad in Syria, who garnered 80% of the vote in the last election, a vote of confidence that Obama never received and never will.

Obama said that it wasn’t Washington that violated Ukraine’s sovereignty with a coup that overthrew a democratically elected government. It was Russia, whose president invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimera and is trying to annex the other breakaway republics, Russian populations who object to the Russophobia of Washington’s puppet government in Ukraine.

Obama said with a straight face that sending 60 percent of the US fleet to bottle up China in the South China Sea was not an act of American aggression but the protection of the free flow of commerce. Obama implied that China was a threat to the free flow of commerce, but, of course, Washington’s real concern is that China is expanding its influence by expanding the free flow of commerce.

Obama denied that the US and Israel employ violence. This is what Russia and Syria do, asserted Obama with no evidence. Obama said that he had Libya attacked in order to “prevent a massacre,” but, of course, the NATO attack on Libya perpetrated a massacre, an ongoing one. But it was all Gaddafi’s fault. He was going to massacre his own people, so Washington did it for him.

Obama justified all of Washington’s violence against millions of peoples on the grounds that Washington is well-meaning and saving the world from dictators. Obama attempted to cover up Washington’s massive war crimes, crimes that have killed and displaced millions of peoples in seven countries, with feel good rhetoric about standing up to dictators.

Did the UN General Assembly buy it? Probably the only one present sufficiently stupid to buy it was the UK’s Cameron. The rest of Washington’s vassals went through the motion of supporting Obama’s propaganda, but there was no conviction in their voices.

Vladimir Putin would have none of it. He said that the UN works, if it works, by compromise and not by the imposition of one country’s will, but after the end of the Cold War “a single center of domination arose in the world”—the “exceptional” country. This country, Putin said, seeks its own course which is not one of compromise or attention to the interests of others.

In response to Obama’s speech that Russia and its ally Syria wear the black hats, Putin said in reference to Obama’s speech that “one should not manipulate words.”

Putin said that Washington repeats its mistakes by relying on violence which results in poverty and social destruction. He asked Obama: “Do you realize what you have done?”

Yes, Washington realizes it, but Washington will not admit it.

Putin said that “ambitious America accuses Russia of ambitions” while Washington’s ambitions run wild, and that the West cloaks its aggression as fighting terrorism while Washington finances and encourages terrorism.

The President of Iran said that terrorism was created by the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and by US support for the Zionist destruction of Palestine.

Obama’s speech made clear that Washington accepts no responsibility for the destruction of the lives and prospects of millions of Muslims. The refugees from Washington’s wars who are overflowing Europe are the fault of Assad, Obama declared.

Obama’s claim to represent “international norms” was an assertion of US hegemony, and was recognized as such by the General Assembly.

What the world is faced with is two rogue anti-democratic governments—the US and Israel—that believe that their “exceptionalism” makes them above the law. International norms mean Washington’s and Israel’s norms. Countries that do not comply with international norms are countries that do not comply with Washington and Israel’s dictates.

The presidents of Russia, China, and Iran did not accept Washington’s definition of “international norms.”

The lines are drawn. Unless the American people come to their senses and expel the Washington warmongers, war is our future.

 

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 are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada served as Cuba’s permanent representative to the United Nations for nearly 30 years and later served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1992-1993. Subsequently he was President of the National Assembly of People’s Power from 1993-2013. He was a Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba until 2013.

He wrote the Foreword, titled The Long Road to Utopia, for the Cuban Spanish edition of Arnold August’s Cuba and its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion (Cuba y sus vecinos: Democracia en movimiento) that was launched at the Havana International Book Fair on February 22, 2015

We are pleased to present the English translation of Alarcón’s Foreword here.

Foreword: The Long Road to Utopia

by Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada

It is all too frequent for books published about Cuba and its Revolution to be devoid of academic rigour and professionalism even as they draw favourable reviews and sales, thus conferring the reputation of specialists on their authors. Many “Cubanologists” have no in-depth knowledge of the history and the tangible experience of what they judge, let alone the Spanish language, yet, mystery of mysteries, some of them earn fame (and wealth) from books turned out after a couple of quick trips to Havana. They feel comfortable interpreting Cuba from the outside, from an arbitrary perspective incrusted with prejudices and dogmas that channel their thinking along narrow, well-traveled paths, even though they do not generally notice the blinders they are wearing.

Cuba and its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion is completely different, and so is its author, Arnold August. Like others of August’s studies,1 this one is the fruit of diligent, systematic work based on field research that was conducted during lengthy periods spent in Cuba. August participated alongside ordinary Cubans in the meetings and activities of the communities who hosted him, as well as holding interviews with dozens of individuals, including academics, politicians, and most importantly average citizens, the key protagonists of our democratic project.

The result is an objective vision, from within, of a reality that is (like reality in general) shifting and changing, making gains and making mistakes, proud of its strengths and grappling with its deficiencies. Readers may agree or disagree with one or another of the author’s views, but this is something that happens constantly between Cubans in daily life. This book makes a contribution to a necessary discussion about our political system, and as such it is a useful tool that will help to refine this system, making it ever more authentically democratic.

August was able to achieve this because he comes to the topic without the Eurocentrism, not to say “U.S.-centrism,” that characterizes a broad swath of Western academic thinking. Authors of the latter type have tended to address the subject of democracy with an assumption that readers are ignorant about it and that their ignorance ought to be cultivated.

In particular, those who depict democracy as if it were the exclusive heritage and creation of developed capitalism want us to forget that the concept was actually a dirty word until relatively recent times. The Founding Fathers, in fact, would have scoffed at the notion that U.S. society is founded on the democratic ideal.

One need only read the texts collected in The Federalist2 to discover that for Madison, Hamilton, and Jay — and for the interests they embodied — the republic they were in the process of organizing was not a democracy but something different, indeed antithetical. The constitution designed by these men in an effort to accommodate the prerogatives of states within a federation, and to establish a careful balance among three supposedly separate branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial — was intended to guarantee, above all else, that the country would be governed by its large landowners. The “American Revolution” of the eighteenth century was to a decisive extent a rebellion by slave owners fearful of what contemporaneous British legal developments presaged in terms of imminent abolition, and interested in eluding restrictions that the British Crown might seek to impose on the westward expansion of slavery. As a result, slavery persisted for another century in a new republic which, on its march to the Pacific, subdued the aboriginal populations for good measure.

The twentieth century was well underway when President Woodrow Wilson believed he had discovered the nature of the problem: “The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”3

In truth, these “forms” had been envisioned by the founders for the very purpose of making sure that it would not be the people who governed, but rather “the bosses and their employers.” As John Jay was fond of saying, “those who own the country ought to govern it.”

Despite their initial aversion to the dirty word in question, over time the owners of the country strove to appropriate it and, at the same time, to truncate it, seeking to reduce the democratic ideal to a very different concept, that of “representative democracy.”

Even now, in the twenty-first century, a product is being sold under this banner that is as old as the emergence of the European nation-state. Its main weakness is in reality a “manufacturer’s defect,” and it is ironic to note that this fact was evident to certain observers from the very first.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in an analysis that remains valid to this day, argued that such a system “serves only to keep the poor in their poverty and the rich in their usurpation,” since “laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing.”4 For Rousseau, the “Citizen of Geneva,” sovereignty is not transferable, and “representation” in societies based on human inequality is necessarily a fiction. For representation to become a reality, equality would first have to be achieved, and then mechanisms would have to be instated to ensure that representatives always act in accordance with the general will and obey its “imperative mandate.” Hence Rousseau argued that democracy would become the mode of societal organization once it superseded capitalism, which was then in its infancy. Democracy, that is to say, was tantamount to utopia.

The quest for this ideal, an important point of contention between the Jacobins and other groups during the French Revolution, was also a factor in uprisings by several grass-roots sectors of the Thirteen Colonies, and it influenced the struggles of workers and artisans throughout the nineteenth century.

The political history of countries where “representative democracy” holds sway has revolved in large measure around the question of the franchise: Who has the right to vote? By whom will the representatives be elected?

What began as an exclusive privilege of feudal nobles wanting a share of their monarchs’ absolute power has traveled a prolonged path to supposed formal recognition that this right rests with the majority of citizens. However, voting restrictions have always abounded, whether predicated on gender, skin colour, education, personal income, or other considerations. In the U.S. case, for example, it is a much-discussed fact that the majority of eligible voters do not vote. But it is forgotten that a similar number of citizens do not even enjoy this right, or cannot exercise it due to barriers that they must overcome in order to get onto voter rolls or go to the polls on a work day.5

The other theme that has been a focus of discussion since Rousseau’s time is that of the reductionist thrust to limit the practice of democracy to a day known as “election day.” This leads us to a key question about the complex contradiction between representative democracy versus direct democracy: Is the latter possible at the scale of contemporary society? Or are citizens condemned to total dependency on their “representatives”?

The philosopher of law Hans Kelsen, who wrote foundational texts on this matter6 and was the principal architect of the Austrian Constitution, found the answer in the experience of the soviets during the early phase of the Bolshevik Revolution:

“Given the impracticality of implementing direct democracy in large, economically and culturally advanced states, efforts to establish the closest connection possible between the will of the People and popular representatives, whose existence is unavoidable, and the tendency toward at least an approximate form of immediacy do not lead to the elimination or even just the curbing of parliamentarism.”

Thus is dissolved the illusion of a single parliament that is supposedly the repository of popular sovereignty, whose fictitiousness irremediably condemns it to isolation from real society — more than people’s “representatives,” its members become characters in a play that the people may consider watching when no more attractive spectacle is available7 — to be “replaced by a whole system of countless parliaments, which are based upon a pyramidal structure” and must “be transformed from mere [talk shops] … into real working bodies.” In this way, the citizen goes from being “[t]he Object of administration [to] its Subject. He does not do so directly, however, but through elected representatives. The democratization of the executive is at first merely a parliamentarization.”8

Kelsen thus described what he regarded as the only solution: participatory democracy which, when fully developed, would lead to the parliamentarization of society.

August’s book examines the Cuban experience with the development of people’s power, a system of participatory democracy in which, need it be said, much remains for us to accomplish. Its roots are buried deep in the very origins of the Cuban Nation, which sprang from two essential ingredients: the slaves’ unending struggle for their freedom, and the striving to create an indigenous, autonomous school of thought based on the ideas handed down to us by Varela, Luz, Martí and other teachers. The two ingredients were merged on October 10, 1868 when, in the words of Antonio Maceo, “Cuba hoisted the flag of war in the cause of justice,”9 touching off a revolution that, after moving through countless avatars, remains committed today to its founding ideals: absolute independence and human solidarity.

To transform the spectator into a protagonist, it will take more than radical societal change and the systematic, conscientious application of socialist democracy and the mechanisms of people’s control. What is needed is a profound alteration of civic conduct that can only come from praxis and education – from a true cultural revolution. This is necessarily a process of continual movement, guided by a spirit of creativity and by dissatisfaction with what we have accomplished so far. Make no mistake, it is utopia that we are reaching for. That, after all, is the path we were set on by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the Father of our Homeland, when he proclaimed that the Cuban Republic must be based on “perfect equality.”10

Notes

1 Especially his Democracy in Cuba and the 1997-1998 Elections (La Habana and Montreal: Editorial José Martí and Canada-Cuba Distribution, 1999) and his chapter “Socialism and Elections” in Cuban Socialism in a New Century: Adversity, Survival and Renewal, ed. Max Azicri and Elsie Deal (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004).

2 The Federalist (New York: Modern Library, 1937), a collection of 85 essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution, published in The Independent Journal and other New York publications in 1787.

3 Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom: a Call for the Emancipation of the      Generous Energies of a People (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961, 36), a collection of Wilson’s speeches during the 1912 electoral campaign.

4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Essential Rousseau (New York: Penguin, 1983, 116). The same volume includes the Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (Second Discourse), another foundational text by Rousseau.

5 There is a copious literature on this subject, including the useful Why Americans Don’t Vote (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989) by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. Its authors, members of the liberal establishment, show how electoral regulations discriminate against blacks, Latinos and the poor in general, such that white, Anglo-Saxon, upper-middle-class citizens hold a de facto electoral majority.

6 Hans Kelsen wrote extensively about the problem of democracy in contemporary society. He dedicated a section of his General Theory of Law and State to what he termed “the fiction of representation.” The quotations in this paragraph are from another foundational work: Hans Kelsen,The Essence and Value of Democracy, ed. Nadia Urbinati and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, trans. Brian Graf (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, [2013).

7 The characterization of the citizen as a spectator seated in the last row who can barely hear what is happening on stage is due to Walter Lippmann, the eminent American journalist who frequently wrote in defence of liberalism. A broad selection of his work is collected in The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy, ed. Clinton Rossiter and James Lare (New York: Random House, [1963]).

8 Kelsen, The Essence and Value of Democracy, 55–6.

9 Speech to the Constituent Assembly of Jimaguayú, 30 September 1895, in Antonio Maceo, El pensamiento vivo de Antonio Maceo, ed. José Antonio Portuondo (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales).

10 Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Escritos, comp. Fernando Portuondo and Hortensia Pichardo (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1974).

Russia has taken the initiative in the Middle East. Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria have made an agreement to set a joint information center to coordinate their operations against ISIS. The center will be based in Baghdad.

The main goal of the center will be gathering, processing and analyzing current information about the situation in the Middle East – primarily for fighting IS. The Iraqi army’s joint operations command confirmed the agreement on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Syrian troops took control of the hills overlooking the Eastern Ghouta region east of Damascus, pushed the Jaish al-Islam terrorist group from there. Positions on the top hills allow to maintain supply routes in the sector.

The fight also has been going in the town of Harasta located in the area of Damascus. Pro-government sources reports that “scores of terrorists were killed and dozens more fled during the operations in the two areas”.

In Aleppo province Syrian forces have been continuing to fight against al-Nusra Front militants. 120 terrorists were reportedly killed there.
Number of military experts argue that Russian military advisers’ assistance is the main reason of the Syrian government’s gains on the battlefield.

In turn, the amin US ally in the region, Israel, fired a number of missiles into the Syrian Golan Heights. The Syrian soldiers protecting the strategic hilltops of Tal Al-Ahmar and Tal Al-Qaba’a believe that these IDF missile strikes were an attempt to propel the Islamist rebels of the Free Syrian Army and “Jabhat Al-Nusra” past their fortifications.

Thus, there are 2 different alliances on the Syrian battleground. They are the US with European allies and the Russia, Iran, Syria triangle. The Western media argue that the US regional allies participate in the US coalition, but indeed they follow own interests. The unknown feature is China. At the first sight, it’s impossible that China will participate in solving the crisis. But China has a long standing goals in the Middle East. The region is crucial for its oil supplies. And it’s evident that Beijing won’t participate in the US coalition.

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It comes as welcome news that Australia is set to abandon its opposition to Bashar al-Assad as part of a durable peace settlement in Syria.

The recent military escalation by Russia and reported sightings of Chinese war ships in the Mediterranean in the last week must come as something of an embarrassment to the war hawks in Washington, and the knives may well be out for whichever rookie secretary forgot to register the war on terror as a trademark. Still this has done little to change the tri-partisan rhetoric coming out of Canberra. “I don’t for a moment shy away from the comments that we have made in the past about the illegitimacy of the regime.” “President Assad unleashed chemical weapons on his own people, and the death and destruction in Syria is appalling and at unprecedented levels”, Ms Bishop recently said in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

In hearing these remarks I can’t help be reminded of the outrageous claims and bald faced lies which led us into war in Iraq in 2003. Whatever happened to all those weapons of mass destruction which Saddam was stockpiling? Was he able to secretly shield them from UN weapons inspectors with an invisibility cloak? Perhaps the same cloak that Dr Assad is using to hide his chemical weapons arsenal?

Or the one that Iran is evidently using to conceal its uranium enrichment program?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but when the executive director of Human Rights Watch is leading the cheer for the removal of the legitimate government of a sovereign nation state which currently enjoys the support of 80% of its people, one might wonder if we are being told the whole truth.

Having taken part what now seems like an age ago in the rallies against the 2003 invasion of Iraq – the biggest protests Australia has seen since the Vietnam War, I’m more than a little miffed at the lack of public outrage at Australia’s compliance in 2015. Perhaps the media is doing a better job of selling its lies and deception this time around, but so far I remain unconvinced. I am tired of the blatant propaganda surrounding this illegal war. I’m tired of the persistent references to “civil war” in a country which is clearly being attacked by outside forces. I’m tired of hearing the government of Syria constantly referred to as “the Assad regime”, and carnal knowledge of dead animals aside, I’m well tired of David Cameron referring to Bashar al-Assad as a butcher.

So far as Washington’s support for terrorists is concerned, there’s no putting the cat back in the bag. I have argued this extensively in other essays, but it doesn’t take a political analyst to see that Obama, Netanyahu, Ergdogan, Salman and Abdullah before him have been working hand in glove with various terror groups to destabilize and ultimately remove the Syrian government for their own nefarious ends. Washington’s war hawks have bypassed congressional appropriations by directing their client state Saudi Arabia to deploy radical anti-Syrian (and often anti-US) militants against Assad, unleashing a wave of terror on the region. Playing both sides against the middle may have some merit in games of strategy, but willingly supporting terrorists who commit atrocities against civilians by any other name is still a war crime.

Of course there are many players in this proxy war, each with their own interests: Obviously there’s the US and its allies, who in their relentless quest for world domination just can’t seem to keep their grubby hands out of other people’s business. In their latest adventure, United States Secretary of State John Kerry and the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in collusion with Wall Street insiders had contrived to control the entire region’s oil and gas reserves and to weaken Russia and Iran by selling cheap oil to China.

There’s Russia, whose soft underbelly comprises almost every country ending in ‘stan’ from which Islamist extremists might enter its borders. Already feeling the squeeze of tough trade sanctions since the shooting down of MH17, this manipulation of the oil market, despite weakening its economy, will likely strengthen its resolve.

There’s Israel, a newly created, US backed, militarised rogue state whose original British colonial design includes not just the annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza but of all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates including parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (The plan for Greater Israel involves the Balkanization of surrounding Arab states, beginning with Iraq, which is to be divided into Shia and Sunni territories and a separate Kurdish state.)

There’s China, an emerging superpower now lumbered with a stalling economy and forced to choose between a ready supply of cheap oil and the prospect of the war in Syria spilling into Iran, Southern Russia and eventually breaching its own western borders.

There’s Germany, which seems to have embraced the prospect of close to a million new low paid workers with the same enthusiasm with which it welcomed the surge of cheap skilled labour at the close of the Soviet era (an attitude perfectly consistent with EU ambitions to enforce human misery through austerity.)

And then there are the endless hordes now beating a path to Europe in what’s been called the biggest mass movement of refugees since WWII. It’s not just the Alawites, Yazidis and other religious and ethnic minorities once protected under Syria’s Ba’athist government who now face a grim future, but the entire Syrian population, of whom more than half are now internally displaced or have fled in fear for their lives. Pray tell what conceivable form of ‘regime change’ would ever allow these people to return to their homes?

Syria was and is the last secular nation state in the Middle East, and as has been argued by many, not least President Putin himself, it is for the people of Syria and nobody else to decide who will govern them. Russia is now working in concert with Iran, Hezbollah and other regional partners to end the horror brought to bear by Washington’s incessant meddling, and while Obama still condemns Russia’s strategy as “doomed to failure” and continues to demand Assad’s ultimate resignation, this outcome is looking increasingly less likely.

While China’s last minute arrival is obviously a game changer, it’s not like the US were never invited to the party. Putin’s attempts to forge an alliance of nations to deal with the growing threat of global terror have never specifically excluded US participation, but with the US demonstrably the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism, it does make things a little awkward. As well as Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab Army, the new coalition looks likely to include all members of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO); Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, and Tajikistan. This poses an obvious question right off the bat. Is Washington really afraid that Russia’s intervention will make matters worse in Syria? Or rather that putting an end to ISIS once and for all might render the US irrelevant?

What emerges from this picture is a strong sense that Washington’s war hawks are losing, or have lost, their grip over Middle East politics. The Iranian moderates who are inclined to cooperate with the West for economic reasons are naturally allied to Russia where the Syrian ISIS threat is concerned; the Gulf monarchies seem only too happy for Russia to broker a peace between warring Shi’ite and Sunni factions, and with Russia now flexing its military muscle, Netanyahu is hardly likely to be spoiling for a fight either.

Whether or not any of this could lead to a lasting peace in the Middle East it’s too early to say, and with the likes of Carly Fiorina now set to trump Trump for the GOP candidacy, and Hilary Clinton still a likely choice for the Democrats, Washington’s campaign for global hegemony is unlikely to end any time soon. It does however seem that we may have reached a turning point. Could the battle for Syria prove a victory for peace and diplomacy in an increasingly multi-polar world? Or is this how WWIII begins?

This letter was first published by Global Research in September 2014, following David Cameron’s 2014 speech to the UN General Assembly

 

Dear Mr Cameron

The Iraqi government, backed by the United Stated for years, is now taking another independent geopolitical step towards its neighbors, Iran and Syria, as well as Russia – it’s going to share intelligence without Washington’s approval.

Western countries continue to dominate in the UN, which should be reformed as soon as possible, according to Hans Christof von Sponeck, the UN’s former Assistant Secretary-General and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq.

Hans Christof von Sponeck, former UN Assistant Secretary-General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, has called for urgent reforms in the United Nations, which he said is still dominated by Western countries, including the US and the UK.

In an interview with RT, he recalled that “the UN is not a Western institution, but an international organization which provides a multilateral format.”

“The UN tries, amid very difficult conditions, to fulfill the provisions of its charter, which does not imply benefit for some and hardship for others; the charter envisages an integral approach to solving international problems,” Sponeck said.

According to him, a “very Western” approach is still in place the UN Security Council, which is in great need of anti-Westernization measures.

He said that one should not tolerate the dominance of the two Western powers, namely, the United States and the United Kingdom, in the UN.

“If we continue to follow this path, we should not be surprised when the Security Council is lethargic,” Sponeck said.

He added that the UN’s pro-Western course had previously led to a number of major military operations which resulted in a huge number of victims.

Among other things, the UN is responsible for maintaining international peace and security. But some of the largest military operations have been conducted without UN approval in the past decade.

In 1999, NATO forces began bombing Yugoslavia, in a move that was not authorized by the Security Council, which also did not give the green light to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In 2011, the Security Council approved the establishment of no-fly zones over Libya, in a resolution that failed to prevent NATO from launching air strikes on this North African country.

Also, the Saudi-led coalition currently carries out air raids on Yemen without getting a mandate from the UN.

 

On Monday, September 28^th, Cuban President Raul Castro is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly in New York.  He is expected to call on the representatives of member states to support a motion to lift the U.S. trade embargo against his country that has been in place since 1962. Two days ahead of his scheduled address, Castro held a plenary meeting at UN headquarters where he claimed that the embargo has caused an estimated $1.1 trillion in damages and identified it as the primary obstacle to the development of the Cuban economy.

In 1991, Cuba formally asked the UN for assistance in ending the blockade.  Since then, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution criticizing the impact of the embargo in each of the subsequent years. In fact, in the last vote, held in October 2014, 188 of the 193 members voted for the non-binding resolution, with only the U.S. and Israel voting against it and the three pacific island nations of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau abstaining. Over the last 23 years, no more than four countries have ever voted against this resolution, with the U.S and Israel being the constants. Meanwhile, support for the resolution has grown steadily with fewer abstentions, as members of the General Assembly, including many U.S. allies, cannot justify the devastating economic impacts on the daily lives of the Cuban people.

In December 2014, President Barack Obama announced his intent to re-establish normal diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba.  Since then, palatable progress has been made towards this objective, including the recent opening of embassies in Washington and Havana. Nonetheless, American companies are still not permitted to do business in Cuba on account of the American trade embargo, which remains intact in spite of President Obama’s calls for Congress to lift it. In fact, the embargo has actually been “further tightened under President Obama’s administration, particularly in the financial sector…The United States had historically used the enormous technological power of its recently denounced mass espionage system to persecute and monitor Cuba’s financial transactions and economic relations.  From January 2009 to September 2013, fines imposed on 30 United States and foreign entities for relations with Cuba and other countries amounted to more than $2.4 billion.”[1]

Presently, the Republican-controlled Congress represents the main obstacle to the complete elimination of the embargo, which would permit the free flow of U.S. investment into Cuba. This is evidenced by a recent interview with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, where he explicitly stated that Congress was strictly opposed to lifting the trade embargo.

However, this position faces significant opposition from many American companies that regard Cuba as a new and profitable frontier to be conquered. For example, “Cargill, Procter & Gamble, Caterpillar, and other major U.S. companies[2]” have lent their support to Engage Cuba[3], a privately funded organisation that advocates for lifting the trade embargo. This organization meets with industry and civic leaders and pressures lawmakers to lift the trade embargo. Reports published by Engage Cuba have stated that, in the event that the embargo is fully lifted, “U.S. merchandise exports to Cuba could reach $4.3 billion” and “U.S. service exports to Cuba could reach $1.6 billion”[4] per year. Engage Cuba is a profit-oriented organisation whose primary objective is to facilitate the domination of the Cuban market by major American companies.

President Raúl Castro has made it clear that Cuba will continue to support self-determination and the national sovereignty of each country regardless of any changes or improvements in U.S.-Cuba relations. However, despite President Obama’s pledge that, “On Cuba, we are not in the business of regime change”, which he made at the Summit of the Americas in April, there is evidence to suggest that the U.S. will seek certain concessions and guarantees from Cuban officials before ultimately agreeing to fully lift its economic embargo on the island. More recently, at the re-opening of American embassy in Havana, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry indicated that Washington expects changes to Cuba’s political and economic structures, when he stated: “We will continue to urge the Cuban government to fulfill its obligations under U.N. and Inter-American human rights covenants”.

Perhaps, Washington longs for a return to the scenario that prevailed before the revolution when Americans essentially managed Cuban domestic affairs in a manner that suited their own interests. Prior to the 1959 revolution, Americans supported Fulgencio Batista’s (1901-1973) dictatorial and corrupt regime, which oppressed the population and committed countless crimes against democratic principles, freedom and human rights. His ruled basically managed the Island in the interests of American businesses and organized crime.

Even though Cuba is well-known for its commitment to peace, social justice, equality and humanitarian aid since its Socialist revolution in 1959, U.S. officials have constantly criticized the Cuban government for engaging in actions against democratic principles. Washington often states that Cuba need to improve its record on free speech and human rights, release political prisoners, and institute multiparty elections. It is not surprising that Washington would make regime change a prerequisite for lifting the economic embargo[5], as the island’s regime stands as a symbol of resistance to neo-colonialism, capitalism, and Washington hegemony in the world. It appears that Washington has never abandoned the view expressed by Thomas Jefferson in his letter to President James Monroe in 1823, stating that Cuba would make “the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of states”, as it would allow the U.S. to exert control over the entire Caribbean. Despite recent developments in Cuba-U.S. diplomatic relations, it seems unlikely that Cuba would surrender its sovereignty or abandon its socialist principles, as summarized by the following statement made to the UN General Assembly by Cuba’s Minster of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriquez Parrila, in 2014: “Cuba would never renounce its sovereignty or the path chosen by its people to build a more just, efficient, prosperous and sustainable socialism.”

Next month, the U.N. General Assembly will once again vote to call for an end to the American embargo. Given recent developments, the world will be intrigued to see the vote cast by the American representative.  A vote for the resolution, or even an abstention, could serve as a powerful indication that Obama is truly committed to normalizing relations with Cuba, as he claimed last December when he publicly stated that he would go so far as to exercise his executive powers if need be.

How fast can a country deteriorate? How promptly can it lose its culture, its soul?

Japan was my home for many years. I was running there from countless war zones, to get some rest, to enjoy beautiful nature and its ancient, deep culture.

I learned all about its legends and fairytales, I knew its creeks and peaks, villages lost in time.

I came here to think and to write, on board those marvelous high-speed trains, Shinkansens.

But in just a few years, things have gone to the dogs: first slowly, gradually, and then more and more rapidly.

Several “care-free” generations, obsessed with pleasure, entertainment, individualism – generations fully influenced by the West – have finally broken the Japanese spirit, turning it into a bizarre hybrid.

The surface still remains intact, but there is hardly any depth underneath: A train conductor bows humbly to the passengers when leaving the car, but an old lady with heavy shopping bags will not get her seat from an aggressive-looking high school girl, yelling “kuso” (shit!) after every second word.

Japan of the right wing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is bellicose, racist, discriminative but also confused and full of complexes.

It is suddenly not such a great place to be, particularly if you are looking for harmony and social justice.

Only recently, Japan had the most equal distribution of wealth on earth, much better than Europe or Australia. It was easy to spot an MP eating in the same ramen noodle shop as a cleaning lady, if the ramen was good.

Now North American bad habits are infiltrating Japan: life-time employment guarantee is melting away, day by day, and unprotected millions are joining workforce as part-time or contract workers.

There are tens of thousand of homeless people in all major cities – something unthinkable in mainland China or Vietnam.

Just recently, Abe managed to pass a law allowing Japan to participate in combats abroad.

Of course, Abe’s so-called “nationalism” has nothing to do with the aristocratic patriotism of people like Yukio Mishima (one of the greatest modern writers, who publicly committed hara-kiri as a protest against the shameful Japanese collaboration with the United States).

The nationalism of Abe is nothing less than collaboration: a betrayal of both his own nation and his own continent – Asia.

Japan is now firmly on the side of oppressors.

It is openly antagonistic to both Russia and China, and it is tightening cooperation with all right wing, oppressive regimes in Asia, from Indonesia to the Philippines and Thailand.

A legendary Australian historian, Geoffrey Gunn, told me recently in Nagasaki: “Well, the fact of the matter is that China is indignant at its encirclement. China is indignant that Washington backs Japan, that Washington is ready to support Japan’s non-negotiation policy over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. So we see, in this situation, a clearly indignant China, and Japan that is taking a basically aggressive position in relation to so-called territorial integrity. So Pacific Asia is increasingly becoming more belligerent, more conflict-prone East Asia.”

Japan has gone mad. It has sacrificed its pride; and it has thrown its might behind the Western aggressors. In the past, its Western handlers allowed it to get rich through the blood spilled by Korean, Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian people – during the U.S. beastly invasions and carpet-bombing campaigns. Japan supported all of these genocides, and it was making huge amount of money.

But still, it lost! Korea now has higher Human Development Index (HDI) than Japan, while communist China has bigger economy, faster running trains and greater cultural centers.

All this selling itself to the Westerners did not pay off.

And so comes hate! So came wounded pride.

“Most Japanese people now feel antagonistic towards both Chinese and Korean people,” my film editor in Osaka told me.

Instead of changing course, Japan is plunging deeper and deeper, in fact all the way, into unsavory annals of collaboration.

It discriminates. It treats foreigners like shit. It does not even pretend to be polite, anymore.

Come to Abe’s Japan! Land at Kansai Airport and if you are a foreigner, you will be humiliated. Yesterday, I stood 63 minutes in line and observed how some deranged senior citizens armed with bit of power were yelling and bossing shocked passengers. From landing to collecting my luggage it took a full 90 minutes. Including time to be fingerprinted and photographed. It used to take 20 minutes before bloody Abe.

Today I went to Travelex, to pick up some cash sent to me by a magazine in Moscow. Again, humiliation, tons of papers, refusal, by some rude, little aggressive individual called Maki Sekiguchi … I wrote to Russia and received a prompt reply from the Chief Editor: “I have the impression that they have some secret instruction in place to make all transfers from Russia to be as painful as they could possibly be, authors are complaining about that.”

Instead of turning its back on the West, Japan is now subverting young Asian intellectuals, through grants it is giving, and through the brainwashing it calls “education”.

Japan does not have any independent media. I worked for their newspapers, and I know, precisely, that everything that is printed has to be approved. Quality of the Japanese media outlets is disgusting.

As one of the leading mainstream Western journalists based in Tokyo recently confirmed: “The NHK or any other Japanese channel would never dare to air any idea that was not previously broadcasted by the CNN, BBC or FOX TV.”

But Japan “educates” tens of thousands of Southeast Asians, and “communications” is one of the most popular subjects.

“Japan does not have its own foreign policy”, David McNeill, Professor at prestigious Sofia University in Tokyo, told me.

But it feels fit to educate Southeast Asian students in such fields as political science! One wonders, what exactly would those students learn? How to collaborate, how to bend forward, and how to kiss backsides of the West?

It is all truly shameful, pathetic end of Japan’s “glory”.

Ruling elites and their nationalism … Not Japanese nationalism, but Western!

No wonder, the U.S. occupation was based on the scrubbing and polishing of the old Japanese imperialist, fascist cadres, and putting them back to the top of the hierarchy. After all, the U.S. and Japanese imperialism have always had plenty in common.

But could any country survive, stand for decades on such disgraceful foundations!

 

 

Israel has opened fire on the Gaza Strip on “at least 696 occasions” since the August 2014 ceasefire, the UK government has told Parliament.

These incidents are in addition to 29 strikes on Gaza conducted in response to rocket fire.

The figures were provided by Tobias Ellwood, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, citing UN agency figures, and in response to a question by Labour MP Alex Cunningham.

On September 4, Cunningham asked “how many times the Israeli military have opened fire into Gaza since August 2014; and what steps his Department is taking to prevent future such incidents.”

Answering a week later, Ellwood stated.

We are aware of Israeli forces responding to illegal rocket fire from Gaza with 29 strikes since the 26 August 2014 Gaza ceasefire agreement. According to figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israeli forces have opened fire into the Gaza Access Restricted Areas on land and sea on at least 696 occasions since then.

He added that British officials in Tel Aviv have “raised our concerns over the Israel Defence Force’s use of live fire in Gaza with the Israeli Government. We are continuing to urge the parties to prioritise progress towards reaching a durable solution for Gaza.”

As described by Middle East Monitor here, Israeli forces’ attacks on the Gaza Strip are routine, targeting farmers, fishermen, and unarmed civilian protesters. Israel’s unilateral imposition of a ‘no go’ buffer zone by the border fence and at sea is an important part of the ongoing blockade.

Earlier this month, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said it had documented 82 incidents by land in 2015 to date, in addition to 88 incidents of Israeli forces opening fire on fishermen. These attacks have killed 2 and injured 54.

On September 17, Israeli forces permitted Palestinian farmers to access their land close to the border fence “for the first time in 15 years.” It remains to be seen how this works out in practice; on September 21, Israeli forces crossed the fence again and bulldozed agricultural land.

Speaking to Radio Sputnik on Sunday, independent journalist and peace activist Vanessa Beeley suggested that common sense seems to dictate that radical Islamist terror groups including ISIL are ultimately the product of Western intelligence agencies looking for “proxy armies” to be used to achieve the West’s foreign policy goals.

The journalist pondered how it could be that despite a US-led effort against ISIL for over a year now, ISIL’s operations have actually expanded. “And how come their armament stocks have also expanded, exponentially. It’s not logical. If with all the equipment that the US coalition has at its fingertips, it can’t wipe out what is supposedly a band of mercenaries, it begs the question: why not? And how come these mercenaries’ ranks are continuously expanding?”

 

Beeley attributed the terror group’s success in maintaining recruitment in part to Turkey’s enthusiastic involvement in sending fighters across the border even “as they’re being killed in their thousands.” She suggested that “the buffer zone should be in Turkey, preventing them from getting into Syria, not in Syria.”

She also attributed ISIL’s success in part to the use of Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabist ideology,  which she recalled has been used by Western countries for many decades to “achieve various strategic objectives and aims” throughout the Middle East.

More broadly, and controversially, Beeley suggested that Jihadist groups, including ISIL, are in fact “a form of proxy army, readily and easily…maneuvered and manipulated, or propagandized into existence, pretty much anywhere” to serve Western countries interventionist and imperialist foreign policy goals.

The journalist noted that a multifaceted effort by intelligence agencies, think tanks, shady ‘marketing’ agencies, Muslim organizations, and even academia has established a powerful propaganda industry, encouraging, enticing, forcing people to join radical groups and to travel to the Middle East to fight against secular governments, as in Syria.

“This is not a new thing,” Beeley emphasized. “‘Nudging’ as we call it was actually started in the UK back as far as World War I to alter the public’s perception and to push them down a particular route’.”

Beeley also pointed to the openly available evidence of Western intelligence agencies’ direct involvement in providing finances, logistical support and training to Jihadists, recalling the collapse of numerous trials against UK-based extremists following revelations that British intelligence had actually assisted them in their efforts against the Syrian government.

“We watched the Moazzam Begg trial collapse spectacularly when it was proven that the MI6 who had given the green light for his training of Syrian anti-Assad fighters,” Beeley recalled. “We also have to quote them when they said that no attempt will be made to hinder him if he returned to Syria,” she added. In her view, the backfiring of the trial against Begg and others points “very clearly to intelligence agencies’ involvement in the recruitment and training of these extremist groups.”

Beeley also suggested that the half-hearted manner in which the US-led coalition has pursued its war against ISIL has been demonstrated by the “paltry Russian involvement” in the conflict, noting that with very limited Russian support, the Syrian army has been far more effective in smashing Jihadist forces, for instance in its recent advance toward Aleppo, than the year-long US-led campaign “supposedly targeting ISIL operatives in Syria.”

Suggesting that the US might not actually be trying to completely destroy ISIL, the journalist pointed out that “we had a case in the couple of days where US satellites picked up a few Russian planes in Syria. But how come these same satellites didn’t pick up on hundreds of ISIS trucks driving to Mosul or Palmyra?” Beeley also pointed to reports “by both Iraqi and Iranian officials of the so-called mistaken arms drops to ISIL operatives in Syria,” suggesting that they may not been accidental after all.

Asked how people can fight against the radical Islamist ideologies driving groups like ISIL, supported, in her words, by Western intelligence groups and governments, Beeley suggested that the most important thing is to raise awareness –to engage with people and to encourage them to question establish narratives. “We need to train ourselves to start questioning what the distraction is, what the deflection is, and where we should be looking.”

According to a recent US intelligence report cited by The New York Times, an estimated 30,000 ISIL recruits have crossed the Syrian and Iraqi borders to join the terror group over the past several years, with this year’s rates doubling those of last year. At least 4,500 of the fighters are believed to have traveled to the Middle East from Western countries. At least 250 American citizens have joined the terror group over the past two years, 150 of them over the last year. The NYT noted that despite coalition airstrikes, ISIL has been highly successful in replenishing its ranks, drawing about 1,000 new fighters a month and, in many areas, continuing to expand the territories under its control.

The global commodity collapse is finally starting to take its toll on what China truly cares about: the employment of the tens of millions of currently employed and soon to be unemployed workers.

On Friday, in a move that would make even Hewlett-Packard’s Meg Whitman blush, Harbin-based Heilongjiang Longmay Mining Holding Group, or Longmay Group, the biggest met coal miner in northeast China which has been struggling to reduce massive losses in recent months as a result of the commodity collapse, just confirmed China’s “hard-landing” has arrived when it announced on its website it would cut 100,000 jobs or 40% of its entire 240,000-strong labor force.

Impacted by the slump in coal prices, the group saw its loss over January-August surged more than 1.1 billion yuan ($17.2 million) from the year before. In the first half of 2015, the group closed eight coking coal mines most of which had approached the end of their mining lives, due to poor production margins amid bleak sales.

Chaiman of the group Wang Zhikui said the job losses were a way of helping the company “stop bleeding.” The heavily-indebted company also plans to sell its non-coal related businesses to help pay off its debts, said Wang. The State-owned mining group has subsidiaries in Jixi, Hegang, Shuangyashan and Qitaihe in Heilongjiang province, which account for about half the region’s coal production.

According to China Daily, last year, Longmay launched a management restructuring and cut thousands of jobs to stay profitable, amid the overall industry decline. However, the company still reported around 5 billion yuan ($815 million) in losses.

It has been a dramatic fall from grace for the company, which in 2011 reported 800 million yuan in profit with annual production exceeding 50 million metric tons.

Experts said staff costs remain a major reason for the company’s continued heavy losses. That, and the ongoing collapse in met coal prices of course.

Last year its coal production stood at 49 million tons, just 10 percent that of Shenhua Group Corp Ltd, China’s biggest coal producer. But Longmay’s workforce remains well above that of Shenhua’s 214,000 in total.

The announcement came in the midst of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s ongoing tour to the United States, where he assured politicians and businessmen that China’s economy will achieve the targeted 7% growth in gross domestic product.

It gets worse, especially in a worst case scenario: Longmay also has 180,000 pensioners to take care of, with life-long payments covering pensions and medical insurance, which are also considered a huge financial burden. As China Daily notes, “Personnel is probably its largest cost,” said Deng Shun, an analyst at Shanghai-based energy consultancy ICIS C1 Energy.

Actually many traditional State-owned coal enterprises are facing the same kind of problem. It has become more severe as the industry remains on a downward trend.

Deng also cautioned on the social problems that massive layoffs may cause, suggesting a reduction in welfare or salaries might be a better way to cut back on costs.

The shocking move is a harbinger of more pain for not only the local government-backed and heavily indebted company, with an eventual bankruptcy looking increasingly probable unless met coal prices don’t stage a miraculous rebound, but China’s entire coal sector, which in recent years has been a source of millions of jobs to China’s unskilled labor force.

And as China’s commodity bubble bursts, and the fixed-investment surge mean reverts, the coal industry is set to become a source of millions of job losses.

Incidentally, far more than the Chinese stock bubble burst, or even the credit and housing bubble, the implications from mass defaults of coal companies are precisely what is keeping Beijing up at night.

As the WSJ reported in a piece earlier this week, “for decades, an army of migrant workers drove China’s boom times, flocking to its cities to sew T-shirts, assemble iPhones, or build apartment blocks and Olympic stadiums. The arrangement helped millions of poor, rural Chinese join a new consumer class, though many also paid a heavy price.

The paper of record adds:

now, many migrant workers struggle to find their footing in a downshifting economy. As factories run out of money and construction projects turn idle across China, there has been a rise in the last thing Beijing wants to see: unrest.

Because if there is one thing China’s politburo simply can not afford right now, is to layer public unrest and civil violence on top of an economy which is already in “hard-landing” move. Forget black – this would be the bloody swan that nobody could “possibly have seen coming.”

As for the future of China’s unskilled labor industries, the Fifth Element’s Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg has a good idea of what’s coming.

Goldenballs bankers and hedge-fund, casino-operation directors are even now making enquiries to emigrate to Dubai or New York, in the future, as it becomes clear that a radical reforming, British Labour government is more than likely in 2020.

Multinational companies currently protected by the Conservative government will be forced in future to pay taxes in the country where they make their profits.

Those disadvantaged, disabled and unable to work will have benefits reinstated ­ provided, of course, that they survive this administration.

Insider trading and £1million annual bonuses will be made illegal. Tax avoidance by the city will be prosecuted and those found guilty, subject to mandatory imprisonment.

Railways and mass transport systems will be nationalised and fares made affordable to all as an essential public service. Shareholders will have to find unearned profits in America or elsewhere.

Bonuses for company directors who fail will be abolished by law.

A replacement for the Trident nuclear deterrent will only be considered if it is can be proven capable of defending the United Kingdom in the future from the massive undeclared Middle Eastern, nuclear arsenal held by Israel that is outside the inspection of the IAEA. Given that is all but impossible, there would be little point in expending £100 billion of taxpayers’ money on a deterrent that would, in fact, be no deterrent at all –  instead of building new hospitals and investing in cancer research so as to bring Britain up from the bottom of cancer-care tables in Europe.

Better, by far, to support a Nuclear Free Zone incorporating Israel and Iran, instead. That way, we in Britain could be reasonably assured of being safe from Middle East terrorism.

If there is any reason for our existence, at least it should be our capacity to inform about a story while it is happening, in a way that nobody can say: “We did not know, nobody had told us anything” ~Robert Fisk

I don’t know if pain can destroy or fortify, I only know that pain changes everything. I also know that the recollection of such suffering shall remain, has to remain in my memory. At the beginning of the Israeli aggression, the first days of last July, I had promised myself not to forget the names of the children that were killed, those who I photographed horrified in the nightmare’s morgues in Gaza under fire.

In that moment I didn’t know that it would be impossible to keep that promise. More than 500 names of children, destroyed by bombs should be now pronounced by my voice, one by one. However, I do not forget, I can not nor want to forget.

The crimes and brutality do not deserve forgetfulness nor forgiveness, only rage. An unmitigated rage that drives us to act, to fight to prevent that their murders go unpunished, so that death won’t be in vain, even though the death of children always is. They are gone, we cannot bring them back to life, but we can, have to punish their executioners.

It is 10 am and several drone’s fire impact onto a house in Deir Al Balah while a Bulldozer recovers the remains of a family, buried under a one-ton bomb dropped by a F-16, those that leave craters, smoke and smell of death, where before were homes, affections, dreams, lives.

The ambulance fills with wounded persons in seconds, a man enters carrying a small body of a child about six or seven years old, the boy lacks the right calf, his foot is hanging from a tendon or a shred of skin, I don’t know, I don’t want to look, but I do.

The boy squirms and his intestines are out of his belly, I help the man to lay down the child on the floor of the ambulance – the only stretcher is already occupied by another injured person. The ambulance drives fast to the Al-Aqsa Hospital, located in the central area of the Strip, the same hospital that has been attacked by Israel leaving seven dead and over seventy injured.

At each turn the child’s blood is spilled on the floor of the ambulance, I put my hand over his eyes to prevent him seeing his own intestines, I don’t want to see them either, or step on his blood; I don’t want to see his father mourn and cry in despair. But who cares about what I want? What his father wants? With all the impotence of his anguish, with all the force of his love, everything is banal, useless, tiny compared to death.

The murderers do not care about anything nor the world. For Israel it is easy to kill, Israel is massacring children for free.

A man in the ambulance asks, demands the father to pray, and then they start to pray together, everybody who can articulate a word inside the crowded vehicle prays, I don’t do it, I don’t know how, I just hold his light head of shaved hair in my hand with the other I still cover his eyes.

I look at him and strange details are recorded in my mind, terrible and tender ones. His little face is beautiful despite the agony that deforms his face. I think he has his hand clenched into a fist because of the pain then I look again and it is not a fist – the Israeli bomb has torn all his fingers and the little bones are now protruding from his knuckles, they are fragile, white and thin, like those of a bird.

The boy stops squirming slowly and his lips turn pale, I’m relieved that he is no longer struggling, that his intestines stop escaping from his belly, I’m relieved by this calm so close to the end, it relieves me so much that I feel guilty. Till this day I do not know his name, I only know that he died minutes after arriving at the hospital.

“On the ruins of my house I hoisted the Palestinian flag, it is our symbol of resistance,” tells me Ahmed without any drama and then smiles, “now my family lives in a crowded shelter in a school”. Less than a block away, in Beit Hanoun, seven little girls are sitting on a rickety mattress under a makeshift tent, here called “Jaima”, located next to some rubble that once was their home. Through an unstable triangle of collapsing walls the girls enter into this concrete tomb to retrieve a doll, rescued from an abyss of desolation and then smile.

The joy, that bombproof joy, I think amazed, resists death in Palestine, and sometimes just sometimes wins the battle, and if it doesn’t win at least dignifies it, dignifies and saves it from brutality and impunity.

More than 100.000 people have lost their homes under the Israeli bombs that devastated Gaza during the fifty one days of cowardly attacks.

Shelling from F-16s, Apache helicopters, drones, tanks, mortars and all the machinery of war they have – thanks to the support of the so called western democracies – the occupying entity sadly known as Israel uses machinery of war that allowed them to raze entire neighborhoods from the infamous distance of their powerful ships, but did not allow them to defeat the Palestinian resistance in the field, in a man to man combat because that requires that there were men on both sides. The courage and love for the land cannot be purchased with US Dollars in the arms market.

Zionist aggression caused a real slaughter, the almost 70 years of Israeli occupation still remains and it will continue causing damages and death mainly among women, youth and children, as Israel’s military objectives are always homes, mosques, schools used as shelters, ambulances. That’s where those perish who had previously survived the cowardly brutality of Israel, to die after, to continue dying a thousand times in this slaughterhouse called Gaza.

The numbers speak for themselves but today I cannot contain human suffering into figures. Sorrow is not measurable, sorrow is just that and it is everything.

Peace in Yemen will continue to be elusive unless the United Nations shifts its mission from sponsoring an inter-Yemeni dialogue to mediating ceasefire negotiations between the actual warring parties, namely Saudi Arabia& allies and the de facto representatives of Yemenis who are fighting to defend their country’s territorial integrity and independent free will, i.e. the Huthi – Saleh & allies.

Convening its 70^th session while celebrating its 70^th anniversary this year, the United Nations is unlikely to reconsider its stand on Yemen, but it must do, at least to provide a face – saving exit strategy for Saudi Arabia if not to stop a snowballing severe humanitarian crisis in the country.

The United Nations Mauritanian special envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed will sooner than later face the fate of his predecessor Jamal Benomar, who resigned his mission last March acknowledging its failure.

The Saudi insistence on dictating a fait accompli onYemenis undermining the UN efforts to bring about a political solution, which was made impossible by the Saudi – led war onYemen.

The legitimacy controversy

The UN sponsored Yemeni – Yemeni talks in the capital of the Sultanate of Oman,Muscat, and elsewhere will continue to be deadlocked. They are a non-starter. The Saudis have held their Yemeni allies captives of their dependence on Saudi financial, political and military support without which they could not survive internally.

The UN and Arab League recognition of them as the legitimate representatives ofYemenwas counterproductive. They are viewed by most Yemenis more as Saudi puppets than legitimate delegates of their people.

Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is recognised by the UN and the Saudi – led coalition as the legitimate president of Yemen, arrived in Aden last week aboard a Saudi military aircraft and his safety was secured during his three – day stay there by military bodyguards from the United Arab Emirates. The arrival of his prime minister Khaled Bahah a week earlier was not different.

Conferring UN and Arab League legitimacy on them serves only to turn both organisations into biased parties to the conflict if not partners to it or at least accomplices and compromises their credentials as mediators.

The Huthis are portrayed by the Saudi – led propaganda as a sectarian fanatic and violent intruders into the Yemeni society or as agents ofIranwho are waging a proxy war inYemen, but the Huthis are not aliens. Their ancestors ruledYemenfor some one thousand years. They represent more than one third of the country’s population. Their role could have been strengthened by Iranian support and weakened by their religious speech, but nonetheless they are uncontroversial native integral component ofYemen’s national history and society.

Similarly, their ally in fighting off the Saudi – led war on Yemen, ex – president Ali Abdullah Saleh, is part and parcel of Yemeni political infrastructure. More than a three – decade ally ofSaudi Arabia, when Saleh resisted a Saudi transition plan he hardly survived a bombing of his Friday prayers. Despite his individual ruling style and a wide spread corruption of his governance, he is credited with building a state infrastructure, a national army, a tolerable pluralistic political life and a relatively civil freedoms that were the envy of his Arab compatriots in the north who are still living under the Middle Ages systems of government and, more importantly, making the unity of Yemen a fact of life. When his representative credentials are questioned by his former Saudi allies it is noteworthy to remind them that his “al-Mutamar” party still controls the majority of the last democratically elected Yemeni parliament.

The “external” Iranian interference in Yemen and Iran’s sectarian support for “Shiite” Yemenis, in addition to a self – proclaimed role in defence of a controversial legitimacy of a Yemeni president, are the main raison d’être cited by Riyadh as the casus belli of the Saudi ongoing six – month old war on Yemen.

However history and realpolitik facts refute such Saudi claims and render them as merely thinly – veiled justification for installing a puppet regime in Sanaa by the brutal and inhumane force of an external invasion.

The current Saudi war onYemencould be a “rite of passage” for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but not theSaudi Arabiaas claimed by Rami G. Khouri (1).

Long history of Saudi military intervention

Long before there was an “Iranthreat” or a “Shiite threat,” the Saudi ruling family never hesitated to interfere inYemenmilitarily or otherwise whenever Yemenis showed signs of breaking away from Saudi hegemony towards a free will to determine their lives independently.

In the 1930s the Saudis engaged in a war on the Mutawakkilite Imamate ofYemenand succeeded in annexing the Yemeni provinces of Asir, Jizan and Najran to their kingdom, thus creating a border dispute that was not settled until 2000, but the current Saudi war onYemenseems to reignite it.

Then, they occupied the YemeniportofHodeidaon theRed Seaand attacked the Yemeni capital Sanaa.Yemenat the time was a similar conservative “kingdom” bound, like the Saudis, by treaties with the British colonial power.

From 1962 to 1970 the Saudis interfered militarily on the side of the “Shiite” Yemeni “royalists” whom they fought in the 1930s against republican revolutionaries who sought to usherYemeninto the twentieth century out of the Middle Ages. The Saudi military intervention led the Pan – Arab leader of Egypt Gamal Abd al-Nasir to rush to the rescue of the Yemeni republicans, thus regionalising a Yemeni internal affair into an Egyptian – Saudi war among the “Sunnis.”

History it seems is repeating itself nowadays, but the Saudis have so far failed to embroilIraninYemenas they did withEgyptthen. Instead, the kingdom is itself plunging deeper into the Yemeni quicksand.

“In 1977, then, Saudi Arabia conspired (together with Salih) to the assassination of modernist President Ibrahim al-Hamdi, who was determined to loosen the stranglehold of the kingdom over Yemeni politics,” Tobias Thiel (2) of The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) wrote on last April 2.

In the aftermath of the emergence of the Islamic Republic of Iran into the regional scene, “the House of Saud expelled around 800,000 Yemeni guest workers to punish the newly united republic for its stance in the 1991 Gulf War (Kuwait war), plunging the country into an economic crisis” and “the kingdom simultaneously supported both sides – Sunni Islamists and Marxist separatists – in the 1994 war of secession,” Thiel added. Both those events had nothing to do with the so –called “Iran threat” or the “Shiite – Sunni” sectarian rivalry; both were inter – Arab and inter Yemeni conflicts.

“Finally,” according to Thiel, “Riyadh has backed the Salih regime against the mass protests in 2011 and has – as elsewhere – tried to stifle the democratic opening.”

Launching the Saudi war on Yemen last March had regionalised a Yemeni internal conflict, undercut short a Yemeni successful national dialogue sponsored by the United Nations, undermined the territorial unity of the country, which was then compromised only by the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that was isolated in the far south eastern part of Yemen, destroyed the infrastructure of the Yemeni state, created a snowballing severe humanitarian crisis and rendered the possibility of a Yemeni – Yemeni political solution a mission made impossible by both the mutual bloodshed and the Saudi insistence on shaping by brutal force the future ruling regime in Yemen on Saudi terms.

Riyadh intervened militarily inYemenwhen the Saudi – led GCC initiative for a “transition” on their terms inYemenbroke down in 2014. The Saudis planned the “transition” inYemento be a show case that could be replayed inSyriawhere they have been arming and financing a similar “regime change” for the past five years. The failure of their “show case” inYemendoomed their plan forSyria.

Historically, Sanaa and the northern rough mountainous provinces failed all Arab and non-Arab invaders. TheOttoman Empireat its zenith could not subjugate it. It is the bedrock ofYemen’s independence and self determination. There the hardcore of the Yemeni anti-Saudi invasion is entrenched and there this invasion will most likely meet it defeat.

The so – called “liberation” ofAdenby Saudi and UAE military intervention could serve only as a recipe for a perpetuated civil war and regional capital of a dividedYemen. Hadi is unlikely to deliver inAdenwhat he failed to achieve when he was in Sana’a.

On last March 22, the former UN special envoy Jamal Benomar, addressing the UN Security Council via video conference, warned that, “the situation is on a rapid downward spiral” that is “leading the country away from political settlement and to the edge of civil war”. The status quo is “inviting a protracted conflict in the vein of an Iraq-Libya-Syria combined scenario,” he told an emergency UNSC session. Benomar resigned his UN mission acknowledging its failure. His successor is more likely to come to the same conclusion sooner than later.

The presence now of reportedly between 5 – 10 thousand ground GCC troops in Yemen is proof that the aerial onslaught had failed and that the so-called pro-government forces are merely a Yemeni make – believe address for the thinly – veiled Saudi – led external invasion.

The introduction of GCC ground troops intoYemenis more a show of the failure of the so – called Yemeni pro – legitimacy and pro – Saudi forces than a display of GCC military prowess.

Quoted by the Qatari News Agency (QNA) on September 18, the Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, tacitly acknowledging his country’s failure inYemen, said that he “personally … suggested Israeli help as our only hope to end the status quo … His Highness King Salman put this proposal forward for further consideration.”

Ruling out any open Israeli contribution to the US-led war on Iraqi forces in Kuwait in 1991, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the US “leading from behind” in the ongoing war on Syria is an instructive strong reminder that any Israeli role in the Saudi – led war on Yemen will most likely be ruled out as well, at least in public, because it would be definitely counterproductive.

It is high time that the UN moves to facilitate an exit strategy for Saudi Arabia from Yemen.

 

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories ([email protected]).

Notes

(1) http://america.aljazeera.com/, September 16, 2015. Rami G. Khouri is a senior public policy fellow at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut and a senior fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School.

(2) Tobias Thiel is a PhD Candidate at the LSE’s Department of International History. His dissertation is about contentious politics, collective memory and violence in post-unification Yemen. He has spent the past three years in Yemen conducting field research.

 

Close ties mean Israeli pupils are being raised to be ‘good soldiers’ rather than good citizens

The task for Israeli pupils: to foil an imminent terror attack on their school. But if they are to succeed, they must first find the clues using key words they have been learning in Arabic.

Arabic lesson plans for Israel’s Jewish schoolchildren have a strange focus.

Those matriculating in the language can rarely hold a conversation in Arabic. And almost none of the hundreds of teachers introducing Jewish children to Israel’s second language are native speakers, even though one in five of the population belong to the country’s Palestinian minority.

The reason, says Yonatan Mendel, a researcher at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, is that the teaching of Arabic in Israel’s Jewish schools is determined almost exclusively by the needs of the Israeli army.

Mendel’s recent research shows that officers from a military intelligence unit called Telem design much of the Arabic language curriculum. “Its involvement is what might be termed an ‘open secret’ in Israel,” he told MEE.

The military are part and parcel of the education system. The goal of Arabic teaching is to educate the children to be useful components in the military system, to train them to become intelligence officers.

Telem is a branch of Unit 8200, dozens of whose officers signed a letter last year revealing that their job was to pry into Palestinians’ sex lives, money troubles and illnesses. The information helped with “political persecution”, “recruiting collaborators” and “driving parts of Palestinian society against itself”, the officers noted.

Mendel said Arabic was taught “without sentiment”, an aim established in the state’s earliest years.

The fear was that, if students had a good relationship with the language and saw Arabs as potential friends, they might cross over to the other side and they would be of no use to the Israeli security system. That was the reason the field of Arabic studies was made free of Arabs.

Officers in classroom

The teaching of Arabic is only one of the ways the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), as the Israeli military is known, reaches into Israeli classrooms, teachers and education experts have told MEE.

And many fear that the situation will only get worse under the new education minister, Naftali Bennett, who heads Jewish Home, the settler movement’s far-right party.

Most Jewish children in Israel are subject to a military draft when they matriculate from high school at the age of 17. Boys usually serve three years, and girls two.

However, the army and the recent rightwing governments of Benjamin Netanyahu have been concerned at the growing numbers who seek exemptions, usually on medical, psychological or religious grounds.

Nearly 300 schools have been encouraged to join an IDF-education ministry programme called “Path of Values”, whose official goal is to “strengthen the ties and cooperation between schools and the army”.

In practice, say teachers, it has led to regular visits to schools by army officers as well as reciprocal field trips to military bases for the children, as a way to encourage them to enlist when they finish school.

Although what takes place during visits is rarely publicised, the Israeli media reported in 2011 that on one simulated shooting exercise children had to fire their weapons at targets wearing a keffiyeh, or traditional Arab headdress.

Militarism is in every aspect of our society, so it is not surprising it is prominent in schools too,” said Amit Shilo, an activist with New Profile, an organisation opposed to the influence of the army on Israeli public life.

We are taught violence is the first and best solution to every problem, and that it is the way to solve our conflict with our neighbours.

Fear of being sacked

MEE has had to conceal the identities of the teachers it spoke to, because the education ministry requires pre-approval of any interviews with the media.

Most of the teachers were concerned that they might be sacked if they were seen to be criticising official policy.

All the teachers noted that schools have come under mounting pressure to actively participate in the IDF programme.

Each school is now graded annually by the education ministry not only on its academic excellence but also on the draft rate among pupils and the percentages qualifying for elite units, especially in combat or intelligence roles.

Schools with a high draft rate can qualify for additional funding, said the teachers.

Ofer, a history teacher in the centre of the country, said: “When it comes to the older children, you have to accept as a teacher that the army is going to be inside the school and in your classroom. All the time the students are being prepared for conscription.

The army is treated as something holy. There is no way to speak against the army at any point.

Rachel Erhard, an education professor at Tel Aviv University, recently warned that Israel’s schools risked becoming like those of Sparta, the city in ancient Greece that famously trained its children from a young age to be warriors.

Public hounding

There are additional pressures on principals to participate, note teachers.

Zeev Dagani, head teacher of a leading Tel Aviv school who opted out of the programme at its launch in 2010, faced death threats and was called before a parliamentary committee to explain his actions.

The public hounding of teachers who oppose the militarisation of Israel’s education system, or are simply active outside the classroom in opposing the occupation, has continued.

Adam Verete, a Jewish philosophy teacher at a school in Tivon, near Haifa, was sacked last year after he hosted a class debate on whether the IDF could justifiably claim to be the world’s most moral army.

As the new school year started this month, parents and city mayors launched high-profile campaigns against two teachers for their anti-occupation views.

Avital Benshalom, who had just taken up her new post as head of the School of the Arts in Ashkelon, was forced to issue an apology for signing a petition 13 years ago supporting soldiers who refused to serve.

Herzl Schubert, a history teacher, similarly found himself facing a storm of protest after he was filmed taking part in a West Bank demonstration in support of the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh during the summer vacation.

Notably, neither Bennett nor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intervened to support the two teachers’ right to free speech.

Racist depictions

Teachers and education experts who spoke to MEE said such incidents had created a climate of fear that was intended to intimidate other teachers.

Neve, a history teacher at a school near Tel Aviv, said: “Teachers are afraid to speak out. The pressure comes not just from the education ministry but from pupils and parents too. The principals are terrified something bad will happen to the school’s reputation.”

The education ministry declined to respond to the accusations.

Teachers and education experts point to examples of collusion between schools and the IDF in all aspects of the education system.

Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a professor of education at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said her studies of Israeli textbooks showed depictions of Arabs and Palestinians were “racist both verbally and visually”.

“They are necessary to legitimise a Jewish state, the history of massacres of Arabs, discrimination against Palestinian citizens and a lack of human rights in the occupation territories,” she told MEE.

The aim is to create good soldiers, those who are prepared to torture and kill and still think they are doing the best for the nation.

Separate studies of maps in textbooks have shown three-quarters do not indicate the Green Line separating Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories, suggesting the whole area accords with the right’s idea of Greater Israel.

Revital, an Arabic language teacher, said the army’s lesson plans were popular with pupils. “I don’t approve of them, but the students like them. They celebrate and laugh when they kill the terrorists.”

Revital said she had been disciplined for speaking her mind in class and was now much more cautious.

“You end up hesitating before saying anything that isn’t what everyone else is saying. I find myself hesitating a lot more than I did 20 years ago. There is a lot more fascism and racism around in the wider society,” she said.

Holocaust studies

Some of the close ties between the IDF and the education system are well known.

The education ministry funds several prestigious schools, such as the Reali in Haifa, whose students combine education with military training as cadets.

Ofer said many senior teachers and principals were recruited directly from the army, when they retired at 45. “They then go on to a second career instilling ‘Zionist values’ into the students,” he said.

But the examples of overtly militarised education tend to overshadow the more subtle engineering of the curriculum of ordinary schools, complain teachers.

There are particular concerns about the emphasis in the curriculum on the Holocaust, including a decision last year to extend mandatory Holocaust studies to all ages, including kindergartens.

Following objections from the small leftwing Mertz party, the then education minister, Shai Piron, instructed kindergartens that soldiers should not bring guns into the classroom to ensure children’s safety.

Meretz legislator Tamar Zandberg, however, observed that uniformed soldiers should not be in kindergartens in the first place.

“People see inserting the army into the educational system as something natural, and it’s time that the educational system internalized the fact that its place is to educate to civic values,” she said.

Neve said the students no longer learnt about human rights or universal values in history classes.

Now it’s all about Jewish history – and the Holocaust is at the centre of it.

When we take the children to the deaths camps in Poland, the message is that everyone is against the Jews and we have to fight for our survival. They are filled with fear.

The conclusion most draw is that, if we had had an army then, the Holocaust could have been stopped and the Jewish people saved.

Atmosphere of fear

The teachers said an atmosphere of fear and sense of victimhood dominated classrooms and translated into a young generation even more rightwing than their parents.

David, who teaches computer sciences in a Galilee school, said: “You have to watch yourself because the pupils are getting more nationalistic, more religious all the time. The society, the media and the education system are all moving to the right.”

A 2010 survey found that 56 per cent of Jewish pupils believed their fellow Palestinian citizens should be stripped of the vote, and 21 per cent thought it was legitimate to call out “Death to the Arabs”.

Subjects that have become particularly vulnerable to the promotion of military values, according to teachers, are Arabic, history and civics.

Naftali Bennett brought in a new head of civics in July. Asaf Malach is a political ally who believes the Palestinians should not be allowed a state.

A history lesson plan proposed last year, shortly after Israel’s 51-day attack on Gaza that left at least 500 Palestinian children dead, encouraged pupils to be “Jewish fighters”, modelling themselves on the Biblical figure of Joshua.

But Revital said most teachers were not concerned by these developments. “Out of the 100 teachers in my school, maybe two or three think like me. The rest think it’s important the army are in the school.”

Among those is Amit, who teaches Judaism in central Israel. He said: “Inviting soldiers into the classroom is not just about encouraging the students to enlist but for us to talk about the value of solidarity and the contribution every person can make to society.

Our job is to prepare them for future challenges, and that includes the army. We can’t ignore the reality that we live in a country where there are soldiers everywhere.

Neve, however, said hopes of ending Israel’s conflicts in the region depended on bringing a more civilian ethos back into schools.

If our students don’t learn about others’ history, about the Palestinians, then how can they develop empathy for them? Without it, there can be no hope of peace.

 

If you care to read the British Government’s official advice to potential or actual visitors to Libya, which as at 26th September, 2015 is “Still Current”; you will find the following bleak message:

Latest update: Summary – intense fighting continues in Benghazi, Sirte, Darnah and parts of southern Libya; the situation remains dangerous throughout the country.

More specifically the grim picture painted by the Foreign Office continues as follows:

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advise against all travel to Libya due to the ongoing fighting, threat of terrorist attacks and kidnap against foreigners (including from ISIL-affiliated extremists), and a dangerous security situation throughout the country.

British nationals still in Libya are strongly urged to leave immediately by commercial means. The British Embassy in Tripoli has temporarily closed, and is unable to provide consular assistance.

There is a high threat from terrorism. There have been a number of attacks and threats against westerners, western interests and symbolic targets throughout Libya. ISIL-affiliated groups have stated an intention to target foreigners. There is clear evidence that groups within Libya have both the intent and capability to carry out kidnappings and are specifically targeting foreign nationals.

The advice goes on with similar warnings regarding the high risk of kidnapping, of car bombs and heavy fighting in residential areas of Benghazi and elsewhere: on 27th July “a British diplomatic convoy was subject to an attempted car-jacking on the road between Tripoli and the Ras-al Jadir border crossing with Tunisia. Like many other parts of Libya, roads in this area are vulnerable to criminal gangs”. The official advice confesses that the fighting includes the involvement of major, well-known international middle-eastern extremist jihadi groups, and acknowledges, as if at last to underscore the FCO’s own remote detachment and complete ignorance: “it’s unclear in some areas which faction has control.”

Meanwhile we have a flow of refugees, gathering from across the Middle East’s or Africa’s worst war-torn or anarchic states, circuitously moving in an arc from East or South before consolidating through Libya, which discreetly funnels them from frying-pan to fire; into the hands of the operatives of the few non-hydrocarbon international trades (along with gun-running) Libya now specialises in: people-smuggling to Europe. The journey, like any war-zone taken over by criminals, has its own rate of morbid attrition for all who venture to take their chance of surviving the Mediterranean crossing or the inhumanity of the smugglers; and yet so nightmarish (we can only imagine), is the road the refugees have traversed to reach this Dantean Inferno in Libya, or so desperate their predicament; on they come, regardless. The fall of Gaddafi has brought together on the edge of Europe the worst of all possible worlds, and opened the flood-gates to exacerbate the greatest human refugee migration since World War II, and direct it toward Europe.

How did this happen? Let us begin with an examination of David Cameron’s view of the British contribution in 2011 to Gaddafi’s momentous fall in Libya, and the triumph Cameron’s government had achieved in leading the regime-change project. A quite clear statement of critical factors may be found by happenstance in the bold assertions Cameron allowed himself on BBC Radio 4, 2nd September, 2011 promoting the objectives the Libyan rebels (the National Transitional Council) had achieved, and which Cameron had directly backed with military air-strikes (and which RUSI described as “crucial air support”), simultaneously cementing Britain’s role in regime-change by the PM making bullish claims for the Libyan revolution’s success and prospects, while co-chairing a major international summit in Paris to build support for the Libyan regime that replaced Gaddafi. Supported by Britain, the new Libyan regime promised the Paris summit a speedy transition to democracy and early elections in Libya (the elections were held, but the rest proved completely illusory).

All of this British policy rhetoric, we should remember, was offered to the British people as triumphant and decisive, permanent proof of success, at a time when the disastrous example of Iraq was still raw in the public memory, even in the FCO; and both the military and political policy in Afghanistan was slowly descending into the incomprehensible political enigma it remains to this day.

Cameron said this to the British people on 2nd September, 2011 in support of the overthrow of Gaddafi, and as a scornful rebuff to the critics:

A lot of armchair generals who said you couldn’t do it without an aircraft carrier, they were wrong. A lot of people who said Tripoli is completely different to Benghazi, the two don’t get on, they were wrong. People who said this is all going to be an enormous swamp of Islamists and extremists, they were wrong. People who said we were going to run out of munitions, they were wrong. (Source: International Business Times report of the PM’s 2nd September, 2011 statement)

This much remains true: they didn’t run out of munitions, and the Libyan militias, extremists, gangsters, jihadists and terrorists haven’t run out of munitions ever since. Indeed it is now claimed that Libya is a significant source of armaments supply in this unstable area of the world, reaching as far as Mali or Syria.

The Prime Minister, however loftily claimed that Tripoli was “getting itself back together again in relatively good order” and the new regime (the National Transitional Council) was “rapidly mending” Libya. He went on:

If we have the opportunity to do the right thing and you can see that what you are about to do is achievable and doable, then there’s a very strong case for going ahead, and that was my view about Libya. It was something we ought to do and it was something we were able to do.

He also claimed that the revolution was in the UK National Interest, presented the British intervention as a “moral imperative” (now given a grand title in diplomacy, ‘Responsibility to Protect’ – R2P); with the rebel success inflated to a point that it would allow continuation of the ‘Arab Spring’: but in a moment that perhaps establishes Cameron’s authentic place in the history of British foreign policy as the most ill-judged PM since Anthony Eden; he suggested that Britain remained a “full-spectrum player” (whatever that means).

More alarmingly Cameron claimed there were “many similarities” between Libya and Syria, presumably implying that he would now wish to apply his uncanny Napoleonic talent for both intervention and for military strategy and tactics in Syria; and of course we have subsequently seen references to drone and air strikes in Syria, but no claims to quick victories, or indeed anything that looks like victory – or even a clear and distinct idea of the identity of the enemy in this labyrinthine myriad of over-lapping, interconnected, warring parties that provide a bewildering tapestry of changing alliances, dubious relationships, contradictory militias, sects, tribes, jihadists, ideologists that we are either ‘fighting’, or perhaps allied with, against some other equally uncertain ‘enemy’ who was last year’s ally, based on who knows what unreliable or shifting intelligence (or even identify who our friends are?); in a non-war that Parliament has not approved.

Notice that Cameron cannot claim now (2015) that nobody in 2011 saw the deep flaws in his Libyan regime-change campaign at the time; his case openly rested on the decisiveness and finality of the British-backed rebel triumph in producing regime-change and the promise of stability, of final victory and even democracy it ensured. All of this failed spectacularly. Yet, as Cameron’s 2nd September statement demonstrates, he could not even stop there; and in the moment of irresistible hubris to which he wretchedly succumbed, deliberately resorted to florid rhetorical devices to emphasise his heavy scorn (a derivation of symploce: here repetition of ‘people’ and ‘they were wrong’ – see quotation above), the PM dismissed with excessive relish the many dire and acutely prophetic warnings he had been given that his action would at best only produce chaos in Libya, and open the Mediterranean (and therefore both friendly North African states like Tunisia, to say nothing of Europe itself) to a variety of serious threats and refugee problems for which no single country, nor even the EU, has subsequently proved itself adequately equipped to resolve, or even face.

I do not claim to be an expert on Libya. There are many established sources for evidence of the current state of Libya (and I here carefully restrict myself narrowly to offering only those likely to be favourable to the UK, or at least not likely to be dismissed by UK Government apologists) although there are few Western sources currently operating within Libya, for it is so dangerous for correspondents, as the travel advice reveals.

Such sources of evidence include the Middle East Monitor (Samira Shackle, 5th August, 2014 tellingly titled a paper “Libya’s descent into anarchy” and went on to describe the country as “in a state of civil war; violence between rival militias is out of control; arms proliferate; and the rule of law and order is practically non-existent”); the Royal United Services Institute [RUSI] (which has been cautiously but very persistently critical of UK policy, notably of the R2P formula); the Quilliam Foundation (which has doggedly supported UK action as late as 2014, but Noman Benotman, in a briefing paper on 25th March, 2014 at the same time described Libya as facing “a disastrous lack of security and law and order”, and acknowledged a “total failure in Libya’s defence and security sectors, both of which are essential for governments to exercise their power”); or Chatham House (a supporter of UK policy as late as 2012 but which now seems curiously [?] quieter and quieter on Libya briefings since then); or best of all simply read the British Government’s Travel Advice to Libya, under the sub-heading “Security”, as I have done and there discover the stark message of black failure presented by the Government in its own words, four years after Cameron claimed to have delivered secure success – that he was right; ironically, for the British people to read now, absorb and whatever they do – in all costs avoid Libya.

It seems clear that the Libyan security position in 2015 is no better than 2014, and indeed (certainly from a UK policy perspective), much worse. None of the sources listed above now offer convincing evidence that Libya may be described as anything other than a failed state, war-torn, divided, reduced to civil war, anarchistic and overwhelmed by tribal factionalism, jihadists and criminals. The Libyan government writ does not run, and it appears it was the collapse of security and order in Libya that opened the route through the porous Libyan border for terrorists to mount their appalling attack on foreign tourists (principally from the UK) in Tunisia earlier this year. What alone surprises, is the relative lack of detailed attention that Libya (and Britain’s catastrophic intervention) has received from public ‘expert’ opinion and think-tanks since 2011, in the middle of all the ‘hand-wringing’ over the Middle East, given the nature of the current crisis and the problems for Europe that Libya presents.

All I have done here is to present the British Government’s own assessment (pre-and-post the Coalition, for Government policy has remained apparently unchanged, like the PM responsible for the policy), principally in the words of the Government or the PM, and to contrast this with the established, and generally undisputed facts, again drawn largely from Government or uncontentious sources.

The picture is no better the closer we look at the unfolding policy catastrophe, from beginning to end, that was managed as a joint-Western military-operation-of-the-willing in 2011 (including France and a notably reluctant US), but led by David Cameron; and not forgetting William Hague, who paid for his part in the blunder by being sacked. Be in no doubt: Libya was a major British blunder, led by two men (David Cameron and William Hague) who were, frankly out of their depth and far beyond their manifestly limited competence. For the avoidance of doubt my case here is not a defence of the brutal Gaddafi regime; it is an examination of an obvious British political foreign policy disaster in 2010-11 (by no means the first in our long and very chequered history in the region) that has had appalling consequences not only in Libya, but extending far beyond its borders, and affecting people throughout a widening region of the world, and in almost unimaginable numbers.

I make no claims to solve the world’s problems (and I hold that some problems cannot be solved), nor do I claim that Gaddafi was not a tyrant (only that Britain is not capable of fixing Libya – it hasn’t done so; and worse, it has effectively walked away from the mess it facilitated so ably in doing so much to remove him), but I would prefer if Britain did not make the world both a worse and more dangerous place by pursuing interventionist policies that are quite obviously both beyond its capacities and transparently doomed; and I make that claim without relying on hindsight.

Bella Caledonia published an article titled ‘Walking Away: the Formation of British Foreign Policy’ on 24th February, 2015: I attempted very carefully only to use Government sources or sources/evidence that could scarcely be challenged by Government, in order to explore the failure and self-delusion of British Foreign Policy in Libya. I believe the Government’s position on Libya was annihilated by the swiftness and the scale of the catastrophe it recklessly invited upon its botched policy; and not least by the fact that the clear and manifest opposition of wiser and more experienced judgement (or simple attention to obvious facts and bitterly earned experience) was ignored by irresponsible and too easily influenced British politicians who quite clearly lacked either judgement or experience.

Governors Rick Perry and Scott Walker were early dropouts. Expect others before theFebruary 1 Iowa caucus and primary season begins, New Hampshire first eight days after Iowa – heading toward March 1 super-Tuesdaywith 13 states up for grabs.

Does it matter? Not under money controlled one-party rule, candidates from each wing virtual cardboard cutouts of each other, in lockstep on all issues mattering most – same-old, same-old: pro-war, pro-business, anti-populist.

Don’t be fooled by demagogic rhetoric. Candidate Obama promised hope and change, peace, not war, prosperity lifting all boats, affordable universal healthcare with a public option, respect for labor rights, closing Guantanamo, ending torture, real immigration reform, prosecuting Bush administration war criminals, Palestinian sovereignty free from occupation, respect for rule of law principles and much more.

Dirty business as usual continues, including endless wars, corporate favoritism, social injustice and harsh crackdowns on nonbelievers. Instead of improving lives of ordinary Americans, they’re worse than ever – poverty and unemployment at Great Depression levels, unprecedented wealth disparity, social needs increasingly ignored, human misery a growth industry.

Think duopoly candidates will change things? Think again. No matter who succeeds Obama, business as usual will triumph like always. Democracy is pure fantasy. Voters have no say whatever.

Money power rules. Rogue governance proves it – threatening world peace, security and stability, inflicting more harm on more people at home and abroad than any previous regime in world history.

As of late September, Hillary Clinton maintains a sizable lead over Bernie Sanders (despite plunging support) – 43 – 27%, unannounced potential candidate Joe Biden at nearly 20%.

Their rhetoric differs. Their agendas are cookie-cutter similar, matching Republican meanness, why America and Israel are perhaps the world’s most hated countries.

The US agenda threatens world peace, Democrats more belligerent than Republicans. Lincoln gave us devastating Civil War, Wilson WW I, Roosevelt WW II, Bill Clinton more war than Reagan/Bush I; Bush II more than Clinton, Obama more than W, whoever succeeds him perhaps WW III unless he beats them to it.

New Republican polls show Trump waning – 21 v. 34% in July. Retired retired neurosurgeon/Muslim hater Ben Carson nearly tied at 20%, up from 10% in July.

Tea party favorite neocon Senator Marco Rubio (R. FL) and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina tied in 3rd place, each with 11%. Jeb Bush has distant single digit support.

Previous articles discussed Clinton, Sanders, Trump and Carson. Super-hawk Marco Rubio may launch WW III in his first 100 days.

His “Rubio Doctrine” prioritizes “American strength” – more military spending, belligerence and endless wars, perhaps Obama on steroids.

He supports Cuban isolation, rescinding the Iran nuclear deal, maintaining tough sanctions, imposing new ones, escalated war in Syria, more military aid for Ukrainian fascists, and perhaps direct confrontation with Russia.

He and Hillary Clinton especially represent America’s lunatic fringe – perma-hawks, most likely to launch WW III.

Carly Fiorina is a failed corporate CEO. His dismal record got her sacked. Hewlett-Packard’s stock lost half its value while most other blue-chips rose sharply.

More than 30,000 H-P employees lost jobs on her watch. It included what some market watchers called “the dumbest deal of the decade.” A risky mega-merger with Compaq failed.

She blamed the dot.com bust, sexism and board member ineffectiveness for her own shortcomings. She made a once Silicon Valley pioneer into a shadow of its former self.

Do Americans want a former CEO as president, or current one? Do they want anyone prioritizing profits over popular interests running the country?

Do they really think they have a choice in deciding? It’s preordained well before polls open on November 8, 2016. Business as usual always wins.

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 at1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

The US is stationing up to 20 of a new type of B 61-12 nuclear bombs at the Büchel air base in the Eifel region. Altogether they have 80 times the explosive power of the nuclear bomb exploded in Hiroshima. This was revealed in the German television program “Frontal 21” on Tuesday.

The stationing of these bombs is part of the renewal of the American nuclear arsenal. “Frontal 21” referred to the current US budget plan, which indirectly refers to these plans, saying that the weapons will be integrated into German fighter-bombers starting in the third quarter of 2015.

At the same time, additional nuclear weapons locations in Europe are being upgraded with new B 61-12 nuclear bombs. These include the airbases in Incirlik, Turkey and Aviano, Italy.

Der Spiegel already reported last year that the first bombs costing about $10 billion should be available in Europe in 2020. It said that the expansion of the air base in Büchel will cost an estimated $154 million and that Germany will cover one-fifth of this.

According to “Frontal 21”, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) defence policymaker Thomas Hitschler confirmed that the German government is going to invest €112 million in Büchel over the next few years. Among other things, the runway of the airfield will be fitted with a modern instrument landing system. In plain language, he said, “new, even more dangerous American nuclear bombs are due to come to Büchel and, in the case of war, would be directed to their targets by German Tornados.”

The director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, Hans M. Kristensen, described a possible horrific scenario to “Frontal 21”: “In case of war, the nuclear weapons stationed in Germany would be used at the orders of the US president. The US forces would then hand over the nuclear weapons to the German pilots and these German pilots would then attack the target with nuclear weapons.”

The stationing is “a hidden American weapons build-up,” he said. The new bombs allow “themselves to be steered to the target” and are “much more precise than the nuclear weapons that have been stationed in Germany so far.” This is “a new weapon” because the US previously had “no steerable nuclear bombs.”

Kristensen called this “a very unusual scenario for a country that had pledged never to use nuclear weapons—either directly or indirectly.”

That nuclear armament is taking place in Germany, and the fact that—after the terrible crimes of the German military in two world wars—the German military could drop nuclear bombs is horrifying. It also violates German and international laws.

Articles I and II of the nuclear weapon treaty signed by Germany in 1969 forbids the acceptance of control over nuclear weapons or the transmission of them elsewhere. In the text “Humanitarian International Law in armed conflicts,” a set of regulations for soldiers in the German armed forces from June 2008, it reads: “In particular the deployment of the following weapons by German soldiers in armed conflict is banned: anti-personnel mines, nuclear weapons, bacteriological weapons and chemical weapons (for example, poison gas).”

The renewal of US nuclear weapons in Germany is a provocation against Russia and raises the danger of a nuclear war in Europe.

Moscow’s foreign office spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told “Frontal 21”: “It disturbs us that states that actually have no nuclear weapons carry out the deployment of these weapons and, indeed, within the framework of the NATO practice of nuclear sharing.” A Russian government spokesperson warned: “That could change the balance of forces in Europe. And without a doubt, that would require Russia take retaliatory action to re-establish strategic balance and parity.”

The current edition of Spiegel Geschichte (Spiegel History), under the headline “The bomb: The age of nuclear intimidation”, is devoted to the growing danger of a nuclear war. It gives an overview of the massive build-up of arms, which has taken place “above all since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis”. In an “arms race 2.0,” the nuclear powers are modernizing their nuclear weapons “at great expense”, it says.

According to a study by the Bulletin of Nuclear Scientists, Washington wants to spend about $350 billion on nuclear armaments in the next decade alone, including a new class of nuclear U-boats, new nuclear weapon-bearing long-distance bombers and tactical fighters, a nuclear cruise missile and the building of new nuclear weapons factories and simulation facilities.

Russia is also “in the middle of a broad modernization of its strategic and non-strategic nuclear armed forces”, according to a study, which says that two new Borei U-boats loaded with intercontinental nuclear rockets are “completely operational”. Furthermore, Moscow is working on a new strategic stealth bomber and, at the same time, is developing a new intercontinental rocket called “Sarmat,” which can carry up to 15 nuclear warheads.

The buildup of nuclear weapons in Büchel is taking place with the support of the German government. This confirms that German imperialism is not a “peaceful” intermediary between the nuclear powers, as it would like to present itself, but plays an active role in a development that threatens the survival of the entire human race.

Last October, in a paper titled “The nuclear dimension of the Ukraine crisis,” the think tank Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, which is close to the German government, warned: “25 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, there is no effective crisis reaction mechanism between NATO and Russia. It became clear how important direct channels of communication would be in April and September, for example, when there were dangerous marine manoeuvre incidents in the Black Sea.”

About one year later, the largest NATO manoeuvre to take place in Europe in decades, Trident Juncture, is scheduled for the end of September and the buildup of nuclear weapons is in full swing.

With major speeches to be delivered by both U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin before the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, all eyes are on the two leaders as the content of their remarks—and an expected face-to-face meeting—could have deep implications for the ongoing civil war in Syria and the wider military campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS) that continues across the Middle East region.

In a televised interview with Putin that aired Sunday night on 60 Minutes, the Russian leader made his nation’s position clear on why the government of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad must be maintained as it battles the tide of ISIS and other armed militias, some of which have been backed by the United States.

Asked by CBS News’ Charlie Rose whether part of Russia’s plan was to “rescue” Assad, Putin acknowledged this was true, but pointed to other destabilized countries in the region that fell into chaos after their governments were forcibly removed from power by the U.S. military and their NATO allies.

“Yes, you’re right,” Putin said of his support for Damascus.

“We support the legitimate government of Syria. And it’s my deep belief that any actions to the contrary in order to destroy the legitimate government will create a situation which you can witness now in the other countries of the region or in other regions, for instance in Libya where all the state institutions are disintegrated. We see a similar situation in Iraq. And there is no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the effective government structures and rendering them help in fighting terrorism. But, at the same time, urging them to engage in positive dialogue with the rational opposition and conduct reform.”

Asked about those who hold the position that Assad must go before a diplomatic solution can be forged in Syria, Putin said he had this message for the U.S. State Department and others who hold that view: “It’s only the Syrian people who are entitled to decide who should govern their country and how.”

Asked to account for the human rights abuses and alleged war atrocities committed by the Assad regime as he wages a military campaign against those forces opposed to him, Putin would not take responsibility for those charges, but said,

“Well, tell me, what do you think about those who support the opposition and mainly the terrorist organizations only in order to oust Assad without thinking about what will happen to the country after all the government institutions have been demolished? Today, you have repeatedly said that Assad is fighting against his own population. But look at those who are in control of 60 percent of the territory in Syria. It’s controlled by either ISIS or by others.”

Putin said that though there are military personnel and trainers on the ground in Syria, he has no immediate plans for any Russian troops to be engaged in combat operations there. “But we are,” he said, “considering intensifying our work with both President Assad and with our partners in other countries.”

With that statement in mind, the Iraqi government announced over the weekend that it will begin sharing intelligence regarding ISIS with the Assad government as part of a new agreement that also includes Iran and Russia. As Reuters reports:

A statement from the Iraqi military’s joint operations command on Saturday said the cooperation had come “with increased Russian concern about the presence of thousands of terrorists from Russia undertaking criminal acts with Daesh (Islamic State).”

The move could give Moscow more sway in the Middle East. It has stepped up its military involvement in Syria in recent weeks while pressing for Damascus to be included in international efforts to fight Islamic State, a demand Washington rejects.

Watch Putin’s complete interview with 60 Minutes:

In the run-up to today’s meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama, New Delhi and Washington have taken significant steps to enhance their burgeoning military-security ties. In doing so, the Obama administration has ignored repeated warnings from Pakistan that the US’s strategic embrace of India has upset the “balance of terror” between South Asia’s nuclear-armed states.

The US and India inaugurated a new “Strategic and Commercial Dialogue” at a meeting in Washington last Wednesday between US Secretary of State John Kerry, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and India’s External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, plus Commerce and Industry Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman.

The “Joint Statement” issued at the meeting’s conclusion claimed that, “ties between the United States and India have never been stronger.” It reaffirmed previous commitments for a five-fold increase in India-US trade, as well as the “Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region” that Modi and Obama issued last January when the US president visited New Delhi. US officials view “the Vision” statement as a major diplomatic coup for the US, not least because it contains US-drafted language regarding the conflict between China and the US and its allies over the South China Sea.

Last Wednesday’s “joint statement” also outlined a series of steps to further enhance Indo-US strategic ties, including multilateral cooperation with US allies.

Also Wednesday, in an action clearly timed to coincide with the initial “dialogue” meeting, India’s Bharatiya Janarta Party (BJP) government announced approval of a major weapons deal with US-based Boeing. India is spending $2.5 billion to buy 22 Apache attack helicopters and 15 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters. The Apaches and Chinooks were selected in preference to Russian-made helicopters. Their purchase is a major step towards the US displacing Russia as India’s principal arms supplier.

According to Reuters, the Chinooks will be used to strengthen India’s military capabilities along its contested border with China.

Issued under Kerry’s and Swaraj’s signatures, the “Joint Statement” lauded India’s decision to invite Japan to participate in “Malabar,” the annual bilateral Indo-US Indian Ocean naval exercise. Japan participated in the 2007 Malabar exercise, but after China objected strenuously, India’s government did not repeat the invitation till this summer.

The US has been pressing New Delhi to join tri- and quadrilateral military-security exercises and planning with its principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

The statement issued Wednesday, announced that for the first time ever the Indian, Japanese, and US foreign ministers will hold a joint meeting. It is to be held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly later this week.

No less significant was the statement’s announcement that India and the US will “enhance cooperation in peacekeeping capacity building” with “a focus on training aspects for UN peacekeepers, especially in identified African countries.” The statement did not name the African countries involved, but Kerry later said that there are potentially six. It is speculated that the “joint” initiative may involve providing training to military forces from Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Ghana—all countries where US Special Forces troops are already acting as “trainers” and “advisors.”

Even if initially it is being done in the name of UN peacekeeping, India’s commitment to working jointly with the US military in Africa marks a qualitative change in Indo-US strategic ties. It goes far beyond the ad hoc Indo-US cooperation seen in various disaster-relief missions since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

In recent years the US has mounted a major push to expand its military capabilities in Africa, so as to offset growing Chinese influence. India also views China as a major competitor for African oil and other resources. Next month Indian Prime Minister Modi is to host a summit of African government leaders—an initiative the Indian media is openly touting as a significant step in countering Beijing.

For the past decade, a central objective of US world strategy has been to transform India into a “frontline state” in its drive to strategically isolate, encircle, and if necessary wage war on China. As part of its campaign to harness New Delhi to its strategic agenda, Washington has offered New Delhi numerous blandishments and perks, including a “global strategic partnership” and pledges to support India in becoming an Indian Ocean and south-east Asian power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Recently the Pentagon revealed that it has established an India Rapid Reaction Cell (IRRC), the only one of its kind dedicated to a single country. According to IRCC head Keith Webster, its mission is to facilitate the expansion of India-US military ties, especially the implementation of the plans outlined in the recently negotiated Defence Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI) to develop joint production of weapons and weapon systems.

In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the head of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry B. Harris, declared that, “India presents a wonderful opportunity for us.” He praised the DTTI, saying that it was enabling the US to make a significant contribution to the development of India’s “aircraft carrier capability.” Like Admiral Harris, David Shear, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, emphasized the role India could play in shoring up the US strategic dominance of the high seas, “because we have very strong common interests.”

The US views control of the Indian Ocean—across which almost half of all world sea-borne trade passes—as vital to its global power and especially, in the event of open conflict, its ability to sever China’s crucial trade routes.

Led by the Hindu supremacist Narendra Modi, India’s 16-month-old BJP government is seeking to leverage New Delhi’s rapidly expanding strategic partnership with Washington to pressure and bully India’s arch-rival Pakistan. Modi and his government have repeatedly spurned talks with Pakistan, demanding that it “change its behaviour” as the precondition to any resumption of the long-stalled India-Pakistan comprehensive peace dialogue. The BJP government has also instructed India’s military to assume a more aggressive posture in border skirmishes.

Earlier this month, Indian and Pakistani military leaders exchanged war threats. Moreover, there continue to be frequent, often fatal, artillery exchanges across the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the former princely state that is claimed by both countries.

In recent weeks, Pakistani officials have issued repeated and increasingly alarmed warnings about the dangers of a full-scale military conflict. There have been two recurring themes in these warnings. First, that India is seeking to derail the recent Chinese announcement of plans to build a $46 billion economic corridor from western China to Gwadar, a Pakistani Arabian Sea port. Second, that the US’s embrace of India is dramatically tilting the strategic balance in South Asia in India’s favour and consequently forcing Pakistan to build up its military capacities. This includes both its thermonuclear arsenal and its plans to develop and deploy tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons.

In a September 17 special briefing to the Senate, the upper house of the Pakistan’s parliament, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs and National Security Sartaj Aziz underscored the destabilizing impact of what he called the “US tilt towards India.”

“It is becoming clear,” said Aziz, “that America is preparing India to reduce the influence of China in the region.” He added that Pakistan has repeatedly without success cautioned Washington that the “conventional and non-conventional” military-strategic “imbalance” in the region must be taken into account when the US enters into “any sort of defence cooperation with India.”

Aziz claimed that Pakistan has prepared a “formal dossier regarding Indian interference in Pakistan,” including the intelligence agency RAW’s support for Baluchi separatists and other “terrorist groups,” and that Islamabad plans to submit this dossier to the UN.

In a recent interview on Food Sleuth Radio, Dr. Hansen exposes Monsanto’s latest contrivance – that Bt toxic corn is ‘safe’ to eat. Dr. Hansen provides ‘clean’ science through Consumer Reports that has no private backing, and certainly none by the GM industry.

Hansen states that biotechnology allows you to move genetic traits from any possible source – viruses, bacteria, animals, humans, etc. and put them into plants. This is what allowed scientists to make Bt corn and other Bt crops, and then patent them. 

Bt crops are created by inserting a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringienesis into a plant, thereby creating a pesticide that lives within the plant from roots to stems. The plant itself, in fact, becomes a pesticide, and when insect pests eat them, their guts are altered, and the insect dies.

The first Bt corn variety made by Monsanto, MON 810 (which was submitted to the FDA with research only done by Monsanto itself), is promoted by the company as being safe; however, the FDA has never declared that BT crops were safe, and in fact, no solid safety testing has been done on Bt toxins.

Conversely, eating Bt toxins can “turn your gut into a living pesticide.” The FDA, like other agencies, has turned a blind eye to Monsanto’s shenanigans, but never made a statement that GM crops were safe, only that based on studies supplied by the industry, they seem to be equivalent to their non-GM counterparts.

Hansen explains that Cry proteins (the Bt toxins inserted into GM corn, sugar beets, etc.) are likely allergenic. A Dutch study conservatively states that they “found sequence homology between inserted proteins in GE products that are on the market and known human allergens,” but Hansen thinks this is shying away from the truth.

How Cry-Proteins in GMOs are Human Allergens, and Health-Damaging

To counteract this study (and other industry studies which show no correlation to Bt toxins and allergies at all) and to show that there is suggestive evidence that the Cry proteins (but especially Cry1Ab/Cry1Ac) associated with the Bt crops may be human allergens and may have adverse effects on the human gut, Hansen argues:

“In 1999, an EPA-funded study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives and titled “Immune responses in farm workers after exposure to Bacillus thuringiensis pesticides,” pointed out that “In 1992 the use of Bt in an Asian gypsy moth control program was associated with classical allergic rhinitis symptoms, exacerbations of asthma, and skin reactions among exposed individuals reporting possible health effects after the spraying operation (7).

Unfortunately, there was no follow-up to determine whether these events were Bt-induced hypersensitivity or toxic reaction or merely due to common aeroallergens coincidental to the season during which the spraying occurred (8). Similar findings occurred during another Bt spraying in the spring of 1994 (8)” (Bernstein et al., 1999: pg. 575). Since there was no follow-up, how can one say that Cry proteins weren’t the source of the allergic reactions? This clearly looks like an example of “don’t look, don’t find.”

The Institute for Responsible Technology explains that pesticide-producing crops (Bt) contaminate nearby streams, possibly affecting aquatic life. The bt toxin produced by these GM crops are far stronger than any found in nature, and are produced throughout the plant.

They may also harm beneficial insects, which is completely the opposite of what Monsanto claims. It has been found that previously-insignificant insects which are not targeted by the GM varieties develop into pests. Then pesticide spraying resumes, on top of the potential build-up of the extra strong Bt toxin in the soil. This has occurred in China, India, and the US.

Even farm workers that have been exposed to Bt pesticide-sprays exhibit skin sensitization and presence of IgE and IgG antibodies with those responses being more numerous in those workers with higher levels of exposure. Both skin sensitization and IgE antibodies are components of an allergic response.

Hansen also points out that an additional series of 5 studies published in the last 7 years and carried out by a team of scientists from two Mexican universities (Universidad Autonoma de Mexico and Cinvestav-IPN) and from Cuba have suggested that the Cry1Ac protein (found in Bt cotton) in both the full-length form (protoxin) and the truncated form (soluble form)-have immunogenic and allergenic properties.

Finally, a recent 91-day study published in the Journal of American Science explained that Bt corn is toxic to rats. According to researchers at Suez Canal University in Egypt, GM corn diet resulted in increased or decreased organs or body weight in lab rats. They also found that the GE corn-fed rats endured changes in blood biochemistry that indicated possible toxicity.

Yep – Bt Toxins are Toxic

Bt toxins, in summary, might very well be the reason we are seeing more food allergies than ever before – more gut disorders, more immunity problems, and other health issues as well. Cry proteins are not safe. The evidence is apparent, so why does Monsanto’s website say:

“Regulatory authorities and other third parties have conducted extensive analysis demonstrating that MON810 [a Bt variety of corn] is safe to humans, animals, non-target organisms and beneficial insects.”

Further studies that support Dr. Michael Hansen’s assertions:

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. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19007233

Bernstein IL, Bernstein, J.A., Miller,M., Tierzieva, S., Bernstein, D.I.,Lummus, Z.Selgrade, M.K., Doerfler, D.L., and Seligy,V.L. (1999) Immune responses in farm workers after exposure to Bacillus thuringiensis pesticides. Environmental Health Perspectives. July; 107(7):575582. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1566654/

 

The first radioactive material from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has now been detected in the coastal waters of North America, according to a study conducted by researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

“Radioactivity can be dangerous, and we should be carefully monitoring the oceans after what is certainly the largest accidental release of radioactive contaminants to the oceans in history,” researcher Ken Buesseler said.

In March 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami caused three separate nuclear meltdowns at Japans’ Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The explosion ejected massive amounts of radioactive material into the air, much of which ended up in the Pacific Ocean.

Findings “expected”

Among the radioactive elements released during the Fukushima disaster were cesium-134 and cesium-137, both of which occur on earth only as a result of human activity. Because of its long half life, much of the cesium-137 detected in the environment actually originates with nuclear tests conducted decades ago. Cesium-134, in contrast, has a half-life of only two years. That means any cesium-134 in the environment (especially when detected at large distances from likely sources of nuclear contamination, such as power plants, dumps or weapons factories) stems from the Fukushima meltdowns.

The Woods Hole researchers tested water samples collected on February 19 from various locations off the coast of Ucluelet, British Columbia, a small town on Vancouver Island. They detected cesium-134 at levels of 1.4 Becquerels per cubic meter, and cesium-137 at levels of 5.8 Becquerels per cubic meter.

A Becquerel is a unit of radioactivity. Shortly after the Fukushima meltdowns, Japanese coastal waters tested at 50 million Becquerels per cubic meter.

According to Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Pacific Ocean typically contains cesium-137 levels of “only” about one Becquerel per cubic meter, making the levels near Ucluelet nearly six times higher.

In November 2014, another Woods Hole study found radioactive elements from Fukushima about 100 miles off the California coast. Until now, that was the closest the contamination had traveled to North American shores.

The new findings are “kind of to be expected,” Buesseler said. “We knew four years later it would be reaching our shoreline, and we had seen it offshore.”

Levels likely to get worse

The researchers insisted that the levels detected so far are not high enough to be particularly dangerous to humans or marine life. “As an example, even if they were twice as high and I was to swim there every day for an entire year, the dose I would be exposed to is a thousand times less than a single dental X-ray,” Buesseler said.

“So the risk [from radiation exposure] is never zero, but when I think of health risk, I always think of the Japanese side of the Pacific instead of ours.”

Radioactive cesium from the Fukushima disaster is likely to keep arriving at the North American coast, he said. “Predicting the spread of radiation becomes more complex the closer it gets to the coast.”

According to a 2013 study by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway, the main part of the radioactive ocean plume from the Fukushima disaster is likely to hit the North American west coast in 2017, with maximum concentrations of radioactivity arriving in 2018. The model showed the bulk of the radioactive material from the disaster remaining concentrated along the North American coast at least through 2026.

Meanwhile, radioactive material continues to pour into the sea by the Fukushima plant. According to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), at least 2 trillion Becquerels worth entered the Pacific just between August 2013 and May 2014.

In addition, TEPCO has deliberately released even more radioactive material into the ocean, in an attempt to slow the rate at which radioactive water builds up on the Fukushima site.

The demonizing of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin appears to know no bounds, with the White House and The New York Times going out of their way to mock his request for a meeting with President Barack Obama and then ladling on insults about Putin’s looks and posture

Indeed, what is perhaps most remarkable about the Times publishing an article bristling with such crude insults toward a world leader is that it almost passes without notice these days in Official Washington. One can only hope that Putin has an extraordinarily thick skin and doesn’t stoop to the level of the White House – and the Times – in dishing back insults about Obama and America’s newspaper of record.

If he did, there would surely be hell to pay with renewed demands from prominent American pols and pundits for “regime change” in Moscow. It’s as if everyone in Official Washington wants to play games with the possibility of thermonuclear war – to look really, really tough.

The article on Friday was co-written by Michael R. Gordon, the Times’ neoconservative national security correspondent who helped promote the Iraq War by peddling a bogus story in 2002 (co-written with Judith Miller) about Iraq obtaining aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges – though it turned out the tubes were unsuitable for that purpose. Miller later left the Times but Gordon is still there, pushing for evermore “regime changes.”

It is in that context that Gordon and White House correspondent Peter Baker produced an article in which Obama’s spokesman went to extraordinary lengths to distance the President from Putin – all the better to shield the timid Obama from a hail of criticism for deigning to meet with Putin.

Rather than simply defend the principle of meeting with foreign leaders with whom the U.S. has policy differences, Obama dispatched press secretary Josh Earnest to disparage and insult Putin, portraying the Russian leader as “desperate” for a meeting with Obama.

“It is fair for you to say that based on the repeated requests we’ve seen from the Russians, that they are quite interested in having a conversation with President Obama,” Earnest said. But he did not stop there. He commented in a derogatory fashion about Putin’s appearance in a meeting this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As the Times wrote:

“the White House seemed to go out of its way on Thursday not to show deference. At one point during his daily briefing, Mr. Earnest noted Mr. Putin’s habit of slouching while meeting with counterparts, pointing to a recent photo of him with Israel’s prime minister. ‘President Putin was striking a now-familiar pose of less-than-perfect posture and unbuttoned jacket and, you know, knees spread far apart to convey a particular image,’ he said.”

Clearly, such a casual posture in Netanyahu’s presence is shocking to U.S. officials who normally take on the appearance of trained seals, sitting at rapt attention waiting for Netanyahu to toss them some rhetorical tidbit and then jumping up to applaud. So, perhaps, the White House was just stunned not to see Putin acting in a similar way.

But what the photos of the meeting actually show is that both men had their suit coats open and both sat with their legs apart at least for part of the time. Putin also doesn’t appear to be “slouching.” Yet, the White House directed its Miss Manners’ finger-waving about proper posture only at Putin, not at Netanyahu.

Fear of Criticism

The White House wanted to make a public point by insulting Putin, the leader of a major nuclear power, because Obama is scared of criticism from neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks for agreeing to any kind of face-to-face meeting with the Russian president.

Yet, even during Josef Stalin’s brutal reign and during the height of the Cold War, American presidents regularly met with their Soviet counterparts. They did so in a mature and respectful way despite serious disputes between the two nations. From Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, presidents recognized the need to coordinate on important geopolitical issues whatever their personal feelings about the Soviet leaders.

Given the fact that both nations still have vast nuclear arsenals, one might think there should still be at least a modicum of decorum between the two sides. But Obama apparently feels that the Putin demonization in Official Washington is so powerful that he must insulate himself from attacks for just talking to Putin.

In a Times editorial on Monday, Obama’s team let it be known that Obama considers Putin a “thug.” For his part, Putin has refrained from returning this name-calling in kind, even continuing to describe American and European officials as his “partners.”

Though Obama has spoken with Putin on the sidelines of some recent international conferences, their last formal meeting was in June 2013. That fall, Obama canceled a summit meeting because Putin gave refuge to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, who had revealed legally questionable bulk collection of data about Americans. Obama wanted Snowden prosecuted and imprisoned for the disclosures.

U.S.-Russian relations worsened in February 2014 when neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland helped orchestrate a coup d’etat in Ukraine, on Russia’s border, overthrowing democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing a regime hostile to Russia and to ethnic Russians living in Ukraine.

The coup – and the resulting Ukrainian nationalist violence directed against ethnic Russians – sparked a referendum in which the residents of Crimea voted by 96 percent to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia, a development that was treated by the Obama administration and The New York Times as a “Russian invasion.”

When ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine also resisted the new order in Kiev, the coup regime announced an “Anti-Terror Operation” and dispatched troops including neo-Nazi, Islamist and other irregular militias to crush the rebels. Some 8,000 or more people were killed, mostly ethnic Russian civilians. When Russia supplied help to this resistance, the Obama administration and the Times deemed the assistance “Russian aggression.”

So, according to the latest “group think” of Official Washington, the current Ukrainian regime is a paragon of virtue, reform and human rights – despite its continued corruption and its deployment of neo-Nazis and Islamists to kill ethnic Russian Ukrainians – and Putin is the fount of all evil for not permitting the slaughter to go on unchallenged.

Though I’m told that Obama understands how inaccurate this black-and-white depiction is, he feels that he must go with the flow to avoid being denounced by the neocons and liberal interventionists as “weak.” Thus, Press Secretary Earnest was dispatched to describe Putin as “desperate” and lacking good posture.

Update: For their part, the Russians denied that Putin was “desperate” for a meeting with Obama and added that the Obama administration on Sept. 19 proposed the meeting between the two heads of state either on Monday or Tuesday.

According to Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy adviser to Putin, the Kremlin opted for Monday when Putin was scheduled to be in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. “We do not refuse contacts that are proposed,” Ushakov said. “We support maintaining constant dialogue at the highest level.”

(The Kremlin’s statement included no insults about Obama’s appearance.)

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.

Noam Chomsky (33:30 point on the video) tells us that in the November 2014 Congressional elections, US voter participation was at the level of 1830 when only white male property owners had the vote.

A September 25 Gallup Poll tells us why: http://www.globalresearch.ca/gallup-60-of-americans-want-a-new-political-party-but-why-a-crisis-of-legitimacy/5478211

These are hopeful signs. They mean that the American people are beginning to see through the propaganda that confines them within The Matrix. A majority now understands that the US government represents a small oligarchy and not the citizens of the United States. Change requires awareness and knowledge of reality, and this awareness is now forming.

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 are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

France is part of the problem, not the solution, in Syria. It supported Obama’s war from inception. It partners in all US imperial wars, a key member of NATO’s killing machine, smashing one nation after another.

On Saturday, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius lied, blaming Assad for four-and-a-half years of war, ignoring Obama’s full responsibility and French complicity, backing his aggression on another independent country, using ISIS and other takfiri terrorists to do his dirty work.

“There has been a lot of comment in the last few days on the role of Assad and whether he can or should be a stabilizing element in Syria,” said Fabius. He lied calling him “the main person guilty of the current chaos. If we were to say to the Syrians that the future of Syria lies in Assad, then we’ll expose ourselves to failure.”

“We have to redouble our efforts” to oust him – ignoring his overwhelming popularity along with core international law, prohibiting interfering in the internal affairs of other nations for any reason, except in self-defense if attacked.

Syria doesn’t threaten its neighbors. Assad wants peace, not war. He responsibly defends his country and people against foreign invaders – disgracefully bashed for doing his job.

On Sunday, France partnered with America, Britain, Canada, and Australia in bombing Syria. The objective: support ISIS terrorists. Ravage the country into submission.

Continued war assures more harm to long-suffering civilians than already, exacerbating, not diminishing human floods fleeing for safe havens.

A Hollande government statement lied, saying: “Our country thus confirms its resolute commitment to fight against the terrorist threat represented by Daesh (the Islamic State). We will strike each time that our national security is at stake.”

France is using the refugee crisis as an excuse to continue terrorizing Syrians, forcing more to flee for their lives, using the tired old national security canard, a phony reason to pursue its regional imperial interests along with America.

The way to insure regional and European security is by ending wars, not continuing them endlessly, creating an endless cycle of violence, chaos and instability, the opposite of good policy – except for hegemons wanting things their own way unchallenged, no matter the cost in human lives and suffering.

Putin’s agenda is polar opposite, criticizing Western “double standards and selfishness,” urging world leaders to unite against ISIS, go all-out to eliminate its scourge.

Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria established Baghdad-based a joint information center. According to an unnamed military-diplomatic source, the initiative’s “main goal…will be gathering, processing and analyzing current information about the situation in the Middle East – primarily for fighting IS.”

An official from each country will head the center on a three-month rotating basis. Its objective is coordinating plans to defeat IS, waging legitimate war on terrorism, polar opposite US policy.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said “Moscow is acting within the framework of international law, respecting the sovereignty of our county…”

We do not hide anything under the table. We regard Russia as our friend and strategic ally which is honest in its actions.

Its commitment to defeating IS and restoring regional peace and stability runs counter to Washington’s imperial agenda.

Expect no change in its permanent war policy. Ignore meaningless rhetoric claiming a commitment for regional peace.

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 at1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Ten Years Ago, September 2008, Wall Street Financial Meltdown. 

The following text is an excerpt of the Preface of  The Global Economic Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI Century, Montreal, Global Research, 2010.

Click here to buy the book!

In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the United States of America and its NATO allies. The conduct of the Pentagon’s “long war” is intimately related to the restructuring of the global economy.

We are not dealing with a narrowly defined economic crisis or recession. The global financial architecture sustains strategic and national security objectives. In turn, the U.S.-NATO military agenda serves to endorse a powerful business elite which relentlessly overshadows and undermines the functions of civilian government.

This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve and the Council on Foreign Relations, behind closed doors at the Bank for International Settlements, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken from computer terminals linked up to major stock markets, at the touch of a mouse button.

Each of the authors in this collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people’s lives. Our analysis focuses on the role of powerful economic and political actors in an environment wrought by corruption, financial manipulation and fraud.

Despite the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives presented within this volume, all of the contributors ultimately come to the same conclusion: humanity is at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history.

The meltdown of financial markets in 2008-2009 was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation. The “bank bailouts” were implemented on the instructions of Wall Street, leading to the largest transfer of money wealth in recorded history, while simultaneously creating an insurmountable public debt.

With the worldwide deterioration of living standards and plummeting consumer spending, the entire structure of international commodity trade is potentially in jeopardy. The payments system of money transactions is in disarray. Following the collapse of employment, the payment of wages is disrupted, which in turn triggers a downfall in expenditures on necessary consumer goods and services. This dramatic plunge in purchasing power backfires on the productive system, resulting in a string of layoffs, plant closures and bankruptcies. Exacerbated by the freeze on credit, the decline in consumer demand contributes to the demobilization of human and material resources.

This process of economic decline is cumulative. All categories of the labor force are affected. Payments of wages are no longer implemented, credit is disrupted and capital investments are at a standstill. Meanwhile, in Western countries, the “social safety net” inherited from the welfare state, which protects the unemployed during an economic downturn, is also in jeopardy.

 The Myth of Economic Recovery

The existence of a “Great Depression” on the scale of the 1930s, while often acknowledged, is overshadowed by an unbending consensus: “The economy is on the road to recovery”.

While there is talk of an economic renewal, Wall Street commentators have persistently and intentionally overlooked the fact that the financial meltdown is not simply composed of one bubble – the housing real estate bubble – which has already burst. In fact, the crisis has many bubbles, all of which dwarf the housing bubble burst of 2008.

Although there is no fundamental disagreement among mainstream analysts on the occurrence of an economic recovery, there is heated debate as to when it will occur, whether in the next quarter, or in the third quarter of next year, etc. Already in early 2010, the “recovery” of the U.S. economy had been predicted and confirmed through a carefully worded barrage of media disinformation. Meanwhile, the social plight of increased unemployment in America has been scrupulously camouflaged. Economists view bankruptcy as a microeconomic phenomenon.

The media reports on bankruptcies, while revealing local-level realities affecting one or more factories, fail to provide an overall picture of what is happening at the national and international levels. When all these simultaneous plant closures in towns and cities across the land are added together, a very different picture emerges: entire sectors of a national economy are closing down.

Public opinion continues to be misled as to the causes and consequences of the economic crisis, not to mention the policy solutions. People are led to believe that the economy has a logic of its own which depends on the free interplay of market forces, and that powerful financial actors, who pull the strings in the corporate boardrooms, could not, under any circumstances, have willfully influenced the course of economic events.

The relentless and fraudulent appropriation of wealth is upheld as an integral part of “the American dream”, as a means to spreading the benefits of economic growth. As conveyed by Michael Hudson, the myth becomes entrenched that “without wealth at the top, there would be nothing to trickle down.” Such flawed logic of the business cycle overshadows an understanding of the structural and historical origins of the global economic crisis.

 Financial Fraud

Media disinformation largely serves the interests of a handful of global banks and institutional speculators which use their command over financial and commodity markets to amass vast amounts of money wealth. The corridors of the state are controlled by the corporate establishment including the speculators. Meanwhile, the “bank bailouts”, presented to the public as a requisite for economic recovery, have facilitated and legitimized a further process of appropriation of wealth.

Vast amounts of money wealth are acquired through market manipulation. Often referred to as “deregulation”, the financial apparatus has developed sophisticated instruments of outright manipulation and deceit. With inside information and foreknowledge, major financial actors, using the instruments of speculative trade, have the ability to fiddle and rig market movements to their advantage, precipitate the collapse of a competitor and wreck havoc in the economies of developing countries. These tools of manipulation have become an integral part of the financial architecture; they are embedded in the system.

The Failure of Mainstream Economics

The economics profession, particularly in the universities, rarely addresses the actual “real world” functioning of markets. Theoretical constructs centered on mathematical models serve to represent an abstract, fictional world in which individuals are equal. There is no theoretical distinction between workers, consumers or corporations, all of which are referred to as “individual traders”. No single individual has the power or ability to influence the market, nor can there be any conflict between workers and capitalists within this abstract world.

By failing to examine the interplay of powerful economic actors in the “real life” economy, the processes of market rigging, financial manipulation and fraud are overlooked. The concentration and centralization of economic decision-making, the role of the financial elites, the economic thinks tanks, the corporate boardrooms: none of these issues are examined in the universities’ economics programs. The theoretical construct is dysfunctional; it cannot be used to provide an understanding of the economic crisis.

Economic science is an ideological construct which serves to camouflage and justify the New World Order. A set of dogmatic postulates serves to uphold free market capitalism by denying the existence of social inequality and the profit-driven nature of the system is denied. The role of powerful economic actors and how these actors are able to influence the workings of financial and commodity markets is not a matter of concern for the discipline’s theoreticians. The powers of market manipulation which serve to appropriate vast amounts of money wealth are rarely addressed. And when they are acknowledged, they are considered to belong to the realm of sociology or political science.

This means that the policy and institutional framework behind this global economic system, which has been shaped in the course of the last thirty years, is rarely analyzed by mainstream economists. It follows that economics as a discipline, with some exceptions, has not provided the analysis required to comprehend the economic crisis. In fact, its main free market postulates deny the existence of a crisis. The focus of neoclassical economics is on equilibrium, disequilibrium and “market correction” or “adjustment” through the market mechanism, as a means to putting the economy back “onto the path of self-sustained growth”.

 Poverty and Social Inequality

The global political economy is a system that enriches the very few at the expense of the vast majority. The global economic crisis has contributed to widening social inequalities both within and between countries. Under global capitalism, mounting poverty is not the result of a scarcity or a lack of human and material resources. Quite the opposite holds true: the economic depression is marked by a process of disengagement of human resources and physical capital. People’s lives are destroyed. The economic crisis is deep-seated.

The structures of social inequality have, quite deliberately, been reinforced, leading not only to a generalized process of impoverishment but also to the demise of the middle and upper middle income groups.

Middle class consumerism, on which this unruly model of capitalist development is based, is also threatened. Bankruptcies have hit several of the most vibrant sectors of the consumer economy. The middle classes in the West have, for several decades, been subjected to the erosion of their material wealth. While the middle class exists in theory, it is a class built and sustained by household debt.

The wealthy rather than the middle class are rapidly becoming the consuming class, leading to the relentless growth of the luxury goods economy. Moreover, with the drying up of the middle class markets for manufactured goods, a central and decisive shift in the structure of economic growth has occurred. With the demise of the civilian economy, the development of America’s war economy, supported by a whopping near-trillion dollar defense budget, has reached new heights. As stock markets tumble and the recession unfolds, the advanced weapons industries, the military and national security contractors and the up-and-coming mercenary companies (among others) have experienced a thriving and booming growth of their various activities.

 War and the Economic Crisis

War is inextricably linked to the impoverishment of people at home and around the world. Militarization and the economic crisis are intimately related. The provision of essential goods and services to meet basic human needs has been replaced by a profit-driven “killing machine” in support of America’s “Global War on Terror”. The poor are made to fight the poor. Yet war enriches the upper class, which controls industry, the military, oil and banking. In a war economy, death is good for business, poverty is good for society, and power is good for politics. Western nations, particularly the United States, spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to murder innocent people in far-away impoverished nations, while the people at home suffer the disparities of poverty, class, gender and racial divides.

An outright “economic war” resulting in unemployment, poverty and disease is carried out through the free market. People’s lives are in a freefall and their purchasing power is destroyed. In a very real sense, the last twenty years of global “free market” economy have resulted, through poverty and social destitution, in the lives of millions of people.

Rather than addressing an impending social catastrophe, Western governments, which serve the interests of the economic elites, have installed a “Big Brother” police state, with a mandate to confront and repress all forms of opposition and social dissent.

The economic and social crisis has by no means reached its climax and entire countries, including Greece and Iceland, are at risk. One need only look at the escalation of the Middle East Central Asian war and the U.S.-NATO threats to China, Russia and Iran to witness how war and the economy are intimately related.

Michel Chossudovsky,  Montreal,  May 2010

The book can be ordered directly from Global Research

The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century

Contents of this Book

The contributors to this book reveal the intricacies of global banking and its insidious relationship to the military industrial complex and the oil conglomerates. The book presents an inter- disciplinary and multi-faceted approach, while also conveying an understanding of the historical and institutional dimensions. The complex relations of the economic crisis to war, empire and worldwide poverty are highlighted. This crisis has a truly global reach and repercussions that reverberate throughout all nations, across all societies.

In Part I, the overall causes of the global economic crisis as well as the failures of mainstream economics are laid out. Michel Chossudovsky focuses on the history of financial deregulation and speculation. Tanya Cariina Hsu analyzes the role of the American Empire and its relationship to the economic crisis. John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff undertake a comprehensive review of the political economy of the crisis, explaining the central role of monetary policy. James Petras and Claudia von Werlhof provide a detailed review and critique of neoliberalism, focusing on the economic, political and social repercussions of the “free market” reforms. Shamus Cooke examines the central role of debt, both public and private.

Part II, which includes chapters by Michel Chossudovsky and Peter Phillips, analyzes the rising tide of poverty and social inequality resulting from the Great Depression.

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With contributions by Michel Chossudovsky, Peter Dale Scott, Michael Hudson, Bill Van Auken, Tom Burghardt and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Part III examines the relationship between the economic crisis, National Security, the U.S.-NATO led war and world government. In this context, as conveyed by Peter Dale Scott, the economic crisis creates social conditions which favor the instatement of martial law.

The focus in Part IV is on the global monetary system, its evolution and its changing role. Andrew Gavin Marshall examines the history of central banking as well as various initiatives to create regional and global currency systems. Ellen Brown focuses on the creation of a global central bank and global currency through the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Richard C. Cook examines the debt-based monetary system as a system of control and provides a framework for democratizing the monetary system.

Part V focuses on the working of the Shadow Banking System, which triggered the 2008 meltdown of financial markets. The chapters by Mike Whitney and Ellen Brown describe in detail how Wall Street’s Ponzi scheme was used to manipulate the market and transfer billions of dollars into the pockets of the banksters.

Avions larguant des bombes sur des civils, population exsangue, assiégée et affamée, enfants déchiquetés, routes, ponts, écoles, hôpitaux, zones résidentielles, cimetières, aéroports détruits, patrimoine archéologique dévasté. Non, cette fois, ce n’est pas de la Syrie qu’il s’agit mais d’une nation oubliée, le Yémen.

Depuis le 25 mars dernier, le Yémen est agressé et envahi par l’Arabie saoudite, ce pays ami qui nous livre du pétrole et qui achète nos armes.

D’après l’ONU, en moins de 200 jours de guerre, le régime wahhabite a tué près de 5.000 fois au Yémen dont près de 500 enfants.

Le nombre de victimes civiles de la guerre du Yémen est proportionnellement supérieur au nombre de civils tués dans la guerre de Syrie.

En effet, la moitié des morts sont civils au Yémen pour moins d’un tiers de victimes civiles en Syrie.

Pourtant, personne parmi les humanistes professionnels conspuant Assad n’élève la voix contre le Roi Salmane.

La Syrie s’est vue imposer une guerre par terroristes interposés, une politique d’isolement et de sanctions économiques. En revanche, l’Arabie saoudite reçoit nos salamalecs et nos satisfecits.

« Notre ami le Roi » Salmane ne fait pas que détruire par ses bombes. Il impose un blocus terrestre, maritime et aérien qui selon Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) tue autant les civils que la guerre. 20 millions de Yéménites risquent en effet de mourir de faim et de soif à cause de la guerre et de l’embargo saoudiens.

On a rarement vu une politique de deux poids deux mesures aussi contrastée entre une Syrie qui déchaîne les passions et un Yémen qui laisse de marbre.

Cette politique de deux poids de mesures ressemble à un match de boxe entre un poids lourd et un poids mouche où le poids lourd peut frapper le poids mouche sous la ceinture mais pas l’inverse.

Le pot de fer contre le pot de terre

L’agression saoudienne contre le Yémen revêt une dimension mythique.

C’est l’histoire du pays arabe le plus riche du monde en guerre contre le pays arabe le plus pauvre du monde.

Une fois encore, nous nous sommes soumis à la loi du plus fort.

Nous avons laissé notre ami le Roi Salmane fabriquer une guerre sunnite/chiite au Yémen alors que la plupart des musulmans du Yémen prient ensemble dans des mosquées dépourvues d’étiquette confessionnelle.

Nous avons diabolisé et interdit le mouvement rebelle Ansarullah en le qualifiant de « chiite » ou de « houthi » pour faire plaisir à notre ami le Roi Salmane alors qu’Ansarullah est une coalition patriotique qui compte de nombreuses personnalités sunnites comme le mufti Saad Ibn Aqeel ou des formations non religieuses comme le parti Baath arabe socialiste du Yémen.

Nous avons exclu Ansarullah des pourparlers de paix alors que le mouvement rebelle négociait avec ses adversaires politiques y compris avec Abderrabo Mansour al Hadi, agent saoudien qui était alors assigné à résidence.

Nous avons laissé le Yémen redevenir l’arrière-cour du Roi Salmane alors que cette nation rêvait d’indépendance.

Nous avons détourné le regard quand les hommes de main du Roi Salmane (Al Qaeda et Daech) ont brûlé l’église Saint-Joseph à Aden et bombardé la mosquée chiite d’Al Moayyad à Jarraf.

Nous n’avons pas versé une seule larme pour les enfants du Yémen brûlés vifs par les bombardiers de notre ami le Roi Salmane.

Le Yémen est un pays si lointain que ses réfugiés ne nous atteignent pas.

Le Yémen est un pays si méprisé que ses complaintes ne nous atteignent pas.

Si Jean de la Fontaine avait été témoin de la guerre du Roi d’Arabie saoudite contre son misérable voisin, il aurait peut-être repris l’extrait suivant de la fable du pot de fer contre le pot de terre :

« Que par son Compagnon il fut mis en éclats,

Sans qu’il eût lieu de se plaindre ».

Voilà près de 200 jours que le mouvement international pour la paix laisse faire le pot de fer contre un pays fragile comme un pot de terre.

C’est comme si un pot de fer nous était tombé sur la tête.

Le Yémen d’aujourd’hui, c’est le Vietnam d’hier

Durant les années 60 et 70, le Vietnam connut à peu près le même scénario que le Yémen aujourd’hui.

Ngo Dinh Diem était l’homme de paille des USA à l’instar d’Abderrabo Mansour al Hadi.

Le Vietcong (FNL) d’hier, c’est Ansarullah aujourd’hui.

Que le premier ait une coloration communiste et le second soit d’inspiration chiite importe peu. Les mouvements nationalistes vietnamien et yéménite ont tous deux pour objectif l’unification de leur pays et son émancipation du joug étasunien.

A l’époque, le mouvement international pour la paix a défendu la résistance du peuple vietnamien sans pour autant être communiste et malgré le fait que le Vietcong était soutenu par l’URSS et la Chine.

Aujourd’hui, le mouvement international pour la paix refuse non seulement de défendre le droit du peuple yéménite à la résistance entre autres sous prétexte qu’il est soutenu par l’Iran et la Syrie mais en plus, il ne défend même plus ce qui constitue sa raison d’être, à savoir la paix.

Pas de sang pour du pétrole

Il n’y a pas si longtemps, en 1991 et en 2003, les USA ont utilisé le sol saoudien pour mener leur guerre contre l’Irak.

A l’époque, nous étions des millions à crier « Pas de sang pour du pétrole » (No Blood for Oil).

Aujourd’hui, ni l’Empire US, ni l’Arabie saoudite, ni les motifs de la guerre n’ont changé.

Qui plus est, le sang continue de couler pour du pétrole.

Seul le mouvement pour la paix a changé.

Il n’est même plus un mouvement, juste une masse inerte et silencieuse bercée par des illusions comme la « révolution arabe », le « droit d’ingérence » et la « responsabilité de protéger »… à coups de bombes de l’OTAN.

Entre-temps, le peuple du Yémen est victime d’une guerre, une guerre qui ne nous est pas étrangère, une guerre bien saignante à laquelle nos gouvernements ont donné leur feu vert pour une gorgée d’or noir.

Bahar Kimyongür

25 septembre 2015

 

It is important what you do for your country, not the names you are being called, Russian President Vladimir Putin told CBS’s ‘60 Minutes,’ saying that the nickname ‘tsar’ does not fit him.

As Saudi government launches diplomatic blitz against human rights probe, Obama administration remains silent

The Saudi Arabian government is unleashing a vigorous diplomatic campaign to block a United Nations proposal for a human rights investigation into the country’s six-month-old military assault on Yemen—waged with the backing of international powers including the United States.

President Barack Obama has so far remained silent on the resolution, which was submitted by the Netherlands Thursday and calls for the UN Human Rights Council to launch a probe into abuses committed by all parties.

The Dutch proposal requires the UN High Commissioner to “dispatch a mission, with assistance from relevant experts, to monitor and report on the human rights situation in Yemen.” In addition, the resolution calls for players to grant access to humanitarian aid, in a clear reference to the Saudi-led and U.S.-backed naval blockade that is choking off food and medical aid.

The proposal follows the call, earlier this month, by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein for an “international, independent, and impartial” investigation into human rights violations. Groups including the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, the Gulf Center for Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch have also urged the international community to end the “impunity that fuels humanitarian crisis” in Yemen.

“With no end to this deadly conflict in sight and a spiraling humanitarian crisis, civilian suffering is at an all-time high,” James Lynch, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Amnesty International, warned in a statement released Friday. “The international community must seize this moment to establish a credible, international inquiry that offers hope for accountability and justice for victims of serious violations and abuses in Yemen.”

However, the Saudi government and some of its key allies appear determined to prevent such a probe.

“Saudi diplomats have robustly lobbied Asian, African and European states through their capitals or missions in Geneva,” Nick Cumming-Bruce reports in the New York Times.

“Gulf countries Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have argued for shelving plans for an independent inquiry into rights abuses in Yemen,” writes Foreign Policyjournalist Colum Lynch, citing notes obtained from a September 17 intergovernmental meeting. “They maintained that a commission of inquiry established by the Saudi-backed Hadi government should be given a chance to demonstrate whether it has the capacity to do the job.”

What’s more, Saudi Arabia submitted a competing resolution on Monday excluding any reference to an independent investigation and focusing solely on abuses committed by “Houthi militias against the government.”

Despite its role in the war, the U.S. has yet to weigh in on the debate.

“The United States, which has provided extensive support to the Saudi-led coalition, has been surprisingly discreet on whether a U.N. mission should be dispatched to investigate crimes in Yemen,” said Philippe Bolopion, the U.N. and crisis advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “This stands in sharp contrast to U.S. support for international inquiries and missions in Syria, North Korea, Libya, Sri Lanka, and Eritrea.”

The Obama administration’s muteness is in keeping with its larger silence about the Saudi-led military campaign, which the U.S. is arming, politically backing, and directly participating in through logistics and intelligence support.

At least 2,100 civilians, including more than 400 children, have been killed—the vast majority by the Saudi alliance, which stands accused of war crimes. The coalition has also fired cluster bombs produced in the United States and launched deadly air strikes on humanitarian aid warehouses, internally displaced persons camps, factories, densely populated residential neighborhoods, schools, shelters, and water infrastructure.

The Saudi government’s efforts to prevent a probe come amid growing concern over the petro-monarchy’s recent appointment to head a UN human rights panel, a development that was welcomed by the U.S. State Department.

The United Nations has disgraced itself immeasurably over the past month or so.

In case you missed the following stories, I suggest catching up now:

The UN’s “Sustainable Development Agenda” is Basically a Giant Corporatist Fraud

Not a Joke – Saudi Arabia Chosen to Head UN Human Rights Panel

Fresh off the scene from those two epic embarrassments, the UN now wants to tell governments of the world how to censor the internet. I wish I was kidding.

From the Washington Post:

After 25,000 people asked, Senator Bernie Sanders added a few words to his presidential campaign website about the 96% of humanity he’d been ignoring.

He did not, as his spoken comments heretofore might have suggested, make this statement entirely or at all about fraud and waste in the military. He did not even mention Saudi Arabia, much less declare that it should “take the lead” or “get its hands dirty” as he had been doing in interviews, even as Saudi Arabia bombs Yemeni families with U.S. cluster bombs. While he mentioned veterans and called them brave, he also did not turn the focus of his statement toward glorification of troops, as he very well might have.

All that to the good, the statement does lack some key ingredients. Should the United States be spending a trillion dollars a year and over half of discretionary spending on militarism? Should it cut that by 50%, increase it by 30%, trim it by 3%? We really can’t tell from this statement insisting on the need for major military spending while admitting the harm it does:

And while there is no question our military must be fully prepared and have the resources it needs to fight international terrorism, it is imperative that we take a hard look at the Pentagon’s budget and the priorities it has established. The U.S. military must be equipped to fight today’s battles, not those of the last war, much less the Cold War. Our defense budget must represent our national security interests and the needs of our military, not the reelection of members of Congress or the profits of defense contractors. The warning that President Dwight David Eisenhower gave us about the influence of the Military-Industrial Complex in 1961 is truer today than it was then.

That warning, of course, might be interpreted by some as suggesting that investing in preparation for “today’s battles” is what produces today’s battles.

And which of today’s battles would Sanders like to end? Drones are not mentioned. Special forces are not mentioned. Foreign bases are not mentioned. The only hint he gives about future action in Iraq or Syria suggests that he would continue to use the military to make things worse while simultaneously trying other approaches to make things better:

We live in a dangerous world full of serious threats, perhaps none more so than the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda. Senator Sanders is committed to keeping America safe, and pursuing those who would do Americans harm. But we cannot combat international terrorism alone. We must work with our allies to root out terrorist funding networks, provide logistical support in the region, disrupt online radicalization, provide humanitarian relief, and support and defend religious freedom. Moreover, we must begin to address the root causes of radicalization, instead of focusing solely on military responses to those who have already become radicalized.

Would he end the U.S. war on Afghanistan?

Sen. Sanders called on both Presidents Bush and Obama to withdraw U.S. troops as soon as possible and for the people of Afghanistan to take full responsibility for their own security. After visiting Afghanistan, Sen. Sanders spoke-out against the rampant corruption he saw, particularly in regards to elections, security and the banking system.

From that, an American suffering under the delusion that the war had already been ended would be enlightened not at all, and one really can’t tell whether Sanders would choose to take any sort of action to end it in reality. Of course, he is a U.S. Senator and is not attempting to cut off the funding.

Sanders’ statement is a very mixed bag. He supports the Iran agreement while pushing false claims about “Iran developing nuclear weapons.” He criticizes “both sides” in Palestine, but says not one word about cutting off free weaponry or international legal protection for Israel — or for any other governments. The Pope’s call to end the arms trade, which the United States leads, goes unmentioned. He mentions nuclear weapons, but only the nonexistent ones belonging to Iran, not those of the United States or Israel or any other nation. Disarmament is not an agenda item here. And how could it be when he declares, in violation of the U.N. Charter, in his first paragraph that “force must always be an option”?

Sanders offers no details on a shift away from serving as weapons supplier to the world, to serious investment in aid and diplomacy. But he does say this:

However, after nearly fourteen years of ill-conceived and disastrous military engagements in the Middle East, it is time for a new approach. We must move away from policies that favor unilateral military action and preemptive war, and that make the United States the de facto policeman of the world. Senator Sanders believes that foreign policy is not just deciding how to react to conflict around the world, but also includes redefining America’s role in the increasingly global economy. Along with our allies throughout the world, we should be vigorous in attempting to prevent international conflict, not just responding to problems. For example, the international trade agreements we enter into, and our energy and climate change policies not only have enormous consequences for Americans here at home, but greatly affect our relations with countries around the world. Senator Sanders has the experience, the record and the vision not just to lead on these critically important issues, but to take our country in a very different direction.

Sanders claims, however, absurdly, that he has only supported wars that were a “last resort.” He includes among those, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, despite neither having been remotely a last resort. Sanders admits as much, saying, “I supported the use of force to stop the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.” Set aside the fact that it increased the ethnic cleansing and that diplomacy was not really attempted, what he is claiming is a philanthropic mission, not a “last resort.” Sanders also says, “And, in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, I supported the use of force in Afghanistan to hunt down the terrorists who attacked us.” Set aside the Taliban’s offer to transfer Osama bin Laden to a third country to be tried, what Sanders is describing is hunting and murdering people in a distant land, not a “last resort” — and also not what he voted for, and Rep. Barbara Lee voted against, which was a blank check for endless war at presidential discretion.

All of this obviously leaves open the possibility of endless global war but suggests a desire not to eagerly seek it out. Also obviously it is far better than Hillary Clinton would say, less than Jill Stein would say (“Establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights. End the wars and drone attacks, cut military spending by at least 50% and close the 700+ foreign military bases that are turning our republic into a bankrupt empire.

Stop U.S. support and arms sales to human rights abusers, and lead on global nuclear disarmament.”), and a bit different from what Lincoln Chafee would say (the latter actually admits the U.S. wars created ISIS and are making us less safe, says he’d end drone strikes, etc.). And of course the whole lot of them are a distraction from the struggle to reduce and end militarism and prevent wars in 2015, a year with no election in it. Still, it’s encouraging that a leading “socialist” candidate for U.S. president finally has a foreign policy, even if it hardly resembles Jeremy Corbyn’s.

Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria have agreed to establish a joint information center in Baghdad to coordinate their operations against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIL/ISIS) militants, according to sources.

“The main goal of the center will be gathering, processing and analyzing current information about the situation in the Middle East – primarily for fighting IS,” a military-diplomatic source told Russian news agencies on Saturday.

The information center in the Iraqi capital will be headed by an officer of one of the founding countries on a rotating basis. Rotation will take place every three months. According to the source, Iraq will run the center for the next three months.

Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria may also use the information center to coordinate anti-IS combat plans, the source said, adding that the agreement is a milestone for uniting the region’s countries in the war on terrorism – primarily on Islamic State militants.

The Iraqi army’s joint operations command confirmed the agreement on Saturday, saying that it came with “increased Russian concern about the presence of thousands of terrorists from Russia undertaking criminal acts with Daesh [Islamic State],” Reuters reported.

READ MORE: Upper House: No request from Putin to dispatch troops in Syria

Meanwhile, Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim Jaafari announced in New York on Friday that Iraq has not received any Russian military advisers to assist Baghdad’s operations.

On Friday, the US TV-Channel Fox News reported the four countries were establishing a “coordination cell” in Baghdad, but Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Vladimir Putin, denied this. “We have already said there are many reports which are not true,”he told news agencies.

Recent media reports indicate Russia is boosting its cooperation with Syria and other Middle East countries in the fight against terrorism.

Western media say Russia is sending warplanes and tanks to Syria and building a military base in Latakia, but Russian officials deny this, saying Moscow is continuing to supply Syria with weapons in accordance with bilateral contracts.

“Russia has never made a secret of military-technical cooperation with Syria. Our country has long been supplying weapons and military equipment to Syria under the existing bilateral contracts,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on September 9.

LISTEN MORE:

Syria hopes that Russia’s counter-terror policy will be more effective than the US-led anti-IS coalition.

“Moscow is acting within the framework of international law, respecting the sovereignty of our country and in coordination with Syria,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told RT. “We do not hide anything under the table. We regard Russia as our friend and strategic ally which is honest in its actions.”

Russia has long insisted on the creation of an international anti-terrorist coalition, to coordinate the efforts with the Syrian Army in combating the jihadists on the ground.

READ MORE: No talks with Russia over anti-ISIS military action in Syria – Fallon

America, Israel and Britain are the developed world’s most unequal countries. Wealth disparity in all three are extreme and widening – government-sponsored hellishness for their ordinary citizens, finding it increasingly harder to get by on stagnating low incomes, reduced benefits and rising cost of food, shelter, healthcare and other essentials.

Western governments overall are dismissive of their needs – serving monied interests exclusively.

Corbyn’s economic vision is polar opposite, promoting equity, fairness and justice entirely absent in today’s Britain. Labour leadership will “build a strong, growing economy that works for all, not by increasing poverty,” he said.

Austerity is a political choice not an economic necessity. There is money available. After all, the government has just given tax breaks to the richest 4% of households.

Where there are tough choices, we will always protect public services and support for the most vulnerable.

But in an economy that works for all, we will be able to ask those with income and wealth to spare to contribute a little more.

You just cannot cut your way to prosperity so Britain needs a publicly-led expansion and reconstruction of the economy, with a big rise in investment levels.

We must ensure that those with the most, pay the most, not just in monetary terms but proportionally too.

Britain needs a serious debate on how wealth is created, Corbyn stresses. Discount the myth about tax cuts and other incentives for wealthy investors and corporate interests benefitting everyone.

Ending the austerity “straightjacket” is vital. Britain must focus on building a “rebalanced economy based on growth and high quality jobs” – assuring workers share equitably in wealth creation, Corbyn stresses.

It’s time to end a system harming working households, unemployed or underemployed people, the disabled, Britain’s youths with no future prospects, public sector workers and services, he explained.

Closing the deficit and austerity policies are tired old excuses for one-sided business as usual, favoring privileged elites exclusively.

“This is why I stood in this race,” said Corbyn – “(b)ecause Labour shouldn’t be swallowing the story that austerity is anything other than a new facade for the same Tory plans,” endorsed by Labour leadership under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, hardline hawkish conservatives masquerading as pro-labor.

Deficits aren’t reduced by cutting vital services. Bringing them down to manageable levels requires fostering balanced, equitable, sustainable economic growth – featuring high-pay, good benefits jobs creation, benefitting everyone in society equitably and fairly.

Since Tony Blair’s destructive agenda, Britain saw the longest period of inflation adjusted falling wages since the 19th century, disastrous investment policies, a higher balance of payments deficit, offshoring high-pay, good benefit jobs, replaced by fewer numbers of rotten ones.

Main Street Depression conditions affect ordinary Brits – like their American counterparts, victims of out-of-control greed, benefitting wealth and power interests exclusively.

“If there are tough choices, we will always protect public services and support for the most vulnerable,” Corbyn stressed. “(W)e will ask” well-off Brits to contribute more – working for a more equitable society, including “an economy that works for all.”

It’s fundamentally unbalanced, inequitable, unfair, unjust and unsustainable longterm. “You cannot cut your way to prosperity,” Corbyn explained.

He urges quantitative easing for people instead of banks and large investors. End policies favoring corporate subsidies and tax breaks. Use the tens of billions of pounds saved for public investment – in infrastructure, transportation, education, healthcare and other vital services.

Establish a National Investment Bank for this purpose, a public bank for a better future for all Brits. Taxation should be progressive. Corporate and wealthy interests should pay their fair share.

“At a time when schools and hospitals are struggling for funds, it is grotesque that some of the richest individuals and most profitable businesses are dodging their responsibilities,” said Corbyn. “Paying tax is not a burden. It is the subscription we pay to live in a civilised society.”

“Our tax system has shifted over the last generation from taxing income and wealth to taxing consumption; and from taxing corporations to taxing individuals.”

A race to the bottom followed. “Labour must make the tax system more progressive,” said Corbyn. Businesses and individuals earning the most should pay the most proportionately to their incomes.

Unenforced tax avoidance must change. It’s costing Britain around 120 billion pounds annually – enough to double the National Health Service budget or give every Brit two thousand pounds. Corbyn’s tax policy includes:

• “The introduction of a proper anti-avoidance rule into UK tax law.

• The aim of country-by-country reporting for multinational corporations.

• Reform of small business taxation to discourage avoidance and tackle tax evasion.

• Enforce proper regulation of companies in the UK to ensure that they file their accounts and tax returns and pay the taxes that they owe.

• Lastly, and most importantly, a reversal of the cuts to staff in HMRC (revenue & customs) and at Companies House, taking on more staff at both, to ensure that HMRC can collect the taxes the country so badly needs.”

Corbyn concludes, saying Britain’s society and economy are hugely imbalanced. A strategy “for a more highly skilled, productive economy” working for everyone is essential. Government leadership is required to assure it.

Otherwise, “we have the casino economy and the chaos of underinvestment, debt bubbles, and grotesque inequality between rich and poor, and a widening regional inequality.”

Our vision is of an economy that works for all, provides opportunity for all, and invests in all – rich and poor, north, south, east and west.

It means we judge our economy not by the presence of billionaires but by the absence of poverty; not only by whether GDP is rising, but by whether inequality is falling.

Labour must become the party of economic credibility AND economic justice” – a “more equal and more prosperous society that only a Labour government in 2020 can deliver.

Corbyn’s voting record since entering Parliament in June 1983 reflects his rhetoric. Bernie Sanders is polar opposite – talking like Corbyn, voting with Democrats 98% of the time, supporting their pro-war, pro-business, anti-populist agenda.

Corbyn as British prime minister in 2020 would offer real change, benefitting all Brits equitably and fairly.

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.

 

Anfang 2015 hat der kanadische Ökonom Michel Chossudovsky eine Untersuchung zum Zusammenhang zwischen der Globalisierung und den Kriegen der letzten 15 Jahre in englischer Sprache vorgelegt. Schon als Professor für Ökonomie an der Universität von Ottawa – heute emeritiert – forschte er im Bereich Globalisierung. Er gründete das Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal, dem er heute vorsteht. Zudem ist er Herausgeber von Global Research.

Dank seiner Unbestechlichkeit und Gradlinigkeit in der Analyse genießt Chossudovsky international hohes Ansehen. Dazu schrieb Paul Craig Roberts, ehemaliger stellvertretender Finanzminister unter der Reagan-Regierung: «Er ist ein Vorbild an Integrität in der Analyse; sein Buch liefert eine ehrliche Einschätzung der extremen Gefahr, welche der hegemoniale US-Neo-Konservatismus für Leben auf unserer Erde darstellt.»

Die «Globalization of War» («Die Globalisierung des Krieges»), wie sie von den USA seit dem Angriffskrieg der NATO gegen Jugoslawien bis heute verfolgt wird, dient der Ausweitung der amerikanischen Hegemonie – so Chossudovsky.

Zur Verfolgung dieses Zieles führt die westliche Militärallianz Kriege oder destabilisiert mit geheimdienstlichen Operationen souveräne Staaten. Bis heute ins Fadenkreuz genommen sind der Nahe Osten, Osteuropa, Afrika, Zentralasien sowie der Ferne Osten. Anvisiertes Fernziel ist die Einkreisung von Russland und von China.

Die Arroganz der USA

Diesen Plänen entspricht auch die Arroganz der USA, unsere Erde in sechs «areas of responsibility» («Gebiete der Verantwortung») einzuteilen, über die sie die militärische Kontrolle beanspruchen. Diese Hybris zeigt, dass den USA der Bezug zur Realität in unserer heutigen Welt fehlt: Diese besteht in einer gleichwertigeren Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Ländern weltweit.

Destabilisierung von Finanzmärkten und von nationalen Währungen

Eng verbunden mit dem militärischen Vorgehen ist das Vorgehen im wirtschaftlichen Bereich. Freihandelsabkommen zugunsten transnationaler Konzerne sowie die Destabilisierung von Finanzmärkten und von nationalen Währungen sollen die nationalen Volkswirtschaften zerrütten. Chossudovsky charakterisiert diesen Vorgang mit dem Begriff «economic warfare» («ökonomische Kriegsführung»). Anhand sorgfältiger Fallanalysen zu Afghanistan, dem Irak, Syrien oder Libyen zeigt Chossudovsky, wie die USA seit dem 11. September 2001 unter dem Vorwand der «Selbstverteidigung» mit dem «Krieg gegen den Terrorismus» ihre Hegemonie auszuweiten versuchen. Das Beispiel Libyen macht deutlich, dass es darum ging, Chinas National Petroleum Corporation als Konkurrent aus dem Feld zu schlagen und die Hand auf die libyschen Ölfelder zu legen.

Die Rolle der USA im Zusammenhang mit “Rebellengruppen”

Gleichzeitig soll Libyen als Zugang zum Sahel und zu Zentralafrika dienen, was Chossudovsky wie folgt charakterisiert: «Redrawing the Map of Africa» («Die Karte Afrikas neu zeichnen»). Thema ist auch die heutige verhängnisvolle Rolle der USA im Zusammenhang mit den verschiedenen Rebellengruppen und dem IS-Staat in Syrien und im Irak. Das ermöglicht dem Leser, Nachrichten aus dem Gebiet entsprechend zu gewichten und sinnvoll einzuordnen.

Mit diesen Ausführungen sind nur einige Aspekte der reichen Fülle an geo­politischen Fakten, die dieses Buch enthält, angesprochen. Der ehemalige kanadische Minister für die nationale Verteidigung, Paul Hellyer, empfiehlt das Buch wie folgt: «Michel Chossudovskys Buch ist ein Muss für jeden, der Frieden und Hoffnung den Vorzug gibt gegenüber ständigem Krieg, Tod, Entwurzelung und Hoffnungslosigkeit.» Dieser Empfehlung kann man sich nach der Lektüre des Buches nur anschliessen. (PK)

Michel Chossudovsky: The Globalization of War America’s «Long War» against Humanity, 2015, ISBN 978-0-9737147-6-0

Dr. phil. Henriette Hanke Güttinger hat diese Rezension bei Seniora.org veröffentlicht, die sie uns dankenswerterweise angeboten hat.

 An Asian state aggressively expanding its military, bullying its neighbors, illegally fortifying islands, and bent on regional, then global domination – sound familiar? Are you thinking it’s China 2015? No, it is Japan 1937-1944.

So shockingly similar is American propaganda regarding Japan during World War II to the propaganda being leveled against Beijing today that it seems almost intentional. Or perhaps those on Wall Street and Washington think so little of the general public’s ability to discern fact from fiction, they see no reason to revise the script and are going ahead with a remake faithful to the original with only a few minor casting twists.

This US government production is titled “Why We Fight: A Series of Seven Information Films” with this particular part titled, “The Battle of China” released in 1944.

It describes Japan almost verbatim as how the US today describes China.

China is depicted as a righteous victim – but as the film elaborates – it is clear that any affinity shown toward the Chinese people is only due to the fact that the US held significant economic and geopolitical interests there. Admittedly, the US military was already occupying China after extorting through “gunboat diplomacy” concessions from China’s subjugated, servile government – not unlike US troops occupying Japan today, hosted by a capitulating government in Tokyo.

Japan in the film is depicted as a “blood crazed” race of barbarians, while the Chinese are depicted as noble resistors. Of course, this narrative shifted immediately as soon as US interests were ousted from China and US troops began occupying and shaping the destiny of conquered Japan after the war.

The Warning Then are Warnings Now

US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler in his book “War is a Racket” would specifically warn about a military build up aimed at Japan for the jealous preservation of American conquests in Asia Pacific. Speaking specifically about these conquests, General Butler would say:

What does the “open door” policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000. 

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war — a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men. 

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit — fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well. 

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn’t they? It pays high dividends.

Of provoking Japan, he would state specifically that:

At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don’t shout that “We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation.” Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. 

Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh. 

The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.

The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon’s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

 An Asian state aggressively expanding its military, bullying its neighbors, illegally fortifying islands, and bent on regional, then global domination – sound familiar? Are you thinking it’s China 2015? No, it is Japan 1937-1944.

So shockingly similar is American propaganda regarding Japan during World War II to the propaganda being leveled against Beijing today that it seems almost intentional. Or perhaps those on Wall Street and Washington think so little of the general public’s ability to discern fact from fiction, they see no reason to revise the script and are going ahead with a remake faithful to the original with only a few minor casting twists.

This US government production is titled “Why We Fight: A Series of Seven Information Films” with this particular part titled, “The Battle of China” released in 1944.

It describes Japan almost verbatim as how the US today describes China.

China is depicted as a righteous victim – but as the film elaborates – it is clear that any affinity shown toward the Chinese people is only due to the fact that the US held significant economic and geopolitical interests there. Admittedly, the US military was already occupying China after extorting through “gunboat diplomacy” concessions from China’s subjugated, servile government – not unlike US troops occupying Japan today, hosted by a capitulating government in Tokyo.

Japan in the film is depicted as a “blood crazed” race of barbarians, while the Chinese are depicted as noble resistors. Of course, this narrative shifted immediately as soon as US interests were ousted from China and US troops began occupying and shaping the destiny of conquered Japan after the war.

The Warning Then are Warnings Now

US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler in his book “War is a Racket” would specifically warn about a military build up aimed at Japan for the jealous preservation of American conquests in Asia Pacific. Speaking specifically about these conquests, General Butler would say:

What does the “open door” policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000. 

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war — a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men. 

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit — fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well. 

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn’t they? It pays high dividends.

Of provoking Japan, he would state specifically that:

At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don’t shout that “We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation.” Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. 

Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh. 

The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.

The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon’s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

In the wake of the September 20 Greek election SYRIZA has once again formed a coalition government with a small right-wing party, ANEL. Both parties lost votes and seats but their standing, like those of most other parties, was not very dissimilar to the results in January, when SYRIZA was first elected.

SYRIZA’s 35.46% and ANEL’s 3.69%, combined, were sufficient to give them a majority of 155 seats in the 300-seat parliament under Greece’s electoral law, which gives 50 additional seats to the party with a plurality, in this case (as before) SYRIZA. However, voter turnout was at an all-time low, 44% of the electorate abstaining although voting is mandatory in Greece. This means that SYRIZA was supported by only 20% of eligible voters.

And this is a very different party, and government, than the one elected in January.

SYRIZA received the highest vote of any party in January on the basis of its promise to end the brutal austerity Greece has suffered in recent years at the hands of its creditors – the other countries that use the euro, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), referred to collectively as the “Troika.” But this time neither SYRIZA nor ANEL could credibly promise opposition to austerity. They are committed to enforcing the harsh austerity terms imposed on Greece in July when Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras capitulated to the Troika only days following a national referendum in which 61% of the voters had strongly affirmed their opposition to austerity.

Moreover, SYRIZA will now govern without its left wing, which opposed submission to the new memorandum. The SYRIZA dissidents, previously grouped as the party’s Left Platform, joined recently with a number of small anti-austerity parties to found Popular Unity, a self-described “social and political front to overturn the memoranda, predatory austerity, the negation of democracy, and the transformation of Greece into a European colony by means of indebtedness.” However, Popular Unity, with only 2.86% of the popular vote, fell short of the 3% required for representation in parliament.

Troika the Big Winner

Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister in the previous SYRIZA government,accurately described the election result:

“The greatest winner is the troika itself. During the past five years, troika-authored bills made it through parliament on ultra-slim majorities, giving their authors sleepless nights. Now, the bills necessary to prop up the third bailout will pass with comfortable majorities, as SYRIZA is committed to them. Almost every opposition MP (with the exception of the communists of KKE and the Nazis of Golden Dawn) is also on board.

“Of course, to get to this point Greek democracy has had to be deeply wounded (1.6 million Greeks who voted in the July referendum did not bother to turn up at the polling stations on Sunday) – no great loss to bureaucrats in Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington DC for whom democracy appears, in any case, to be a nuisance.

“Tsipras must now implement a fiscal consolidation and reform programme that was designed to fail. Illiquid small businesses, with no access to capital markets, have to now pre-pay next year’s tax on their projected 2016 profits. Households will need to fork out outrageous property taxes on non-performing apartments and shops, which they can’t even sell. VAT rate hikes will boost VAT evasion. Week in week out, the troika will be demanding more recessionary, antisocial policies: pension cuts, lower child benefits, more foreclosures.

“The prime minister’s plan for weathering this storm is founded on three pledges. First the agreement with the troika is unfinished business, leaving room for further negotiation of important details; second, debt relief will follow soon; and third, Greece’s oligarchs will be tackled. Voters supported Tsipras because he appeared the most likely candidate to deliver on these promises. The trouble is, his capacity to do so is severely circumscribed by the agreement he has already signed.

“His power to negotiate is negligible given the agreement’s clear condition thatthe Greek government must ‘agree with the [troika] on all actions relevant for the achievement of the objectives of the memorandum of understanding’ (Notice the absence of any commitment by the troika to agree with the Greek government.)”

It was the third promise – to fight the oligarchs who got Greece into this mess in the first place – that was key to Tsipras’s re-election, says Yaroufakis.

“Having accepted a new extend-and-pretend loan that limits the government’s capacity to reduce austerity and look after the weak, the surviving raison d’être of a leftwing administration is to tackle noxious vested interests. However, the troika is the oligarchs’ best friend, and vice versa. During the first six months of 2015, when we were challenging the troika’s monopoly over policy-making powers in Greece, its greatest domestic supporters were the oligarch-owned media and their political agents. The same people and interests who have now embraced Tsipras. Can he turn against them? I think he wants to, but the troika has already disabled his main weapons (for example by forcing the disbandment of the economic crime fighting unit, SDOE).”

Tsipras’s Election Maneuver

The September election was a consequence of fundamentally undemocratic maneuvers by Tsipras designed (in the words of the DEA, a Popular Unity component) to “confirm the balance of political forces and reestablish the viability of the SYRIZA-led government before workers and popular classes realize through their own bitter experience the actual content of the agreement that was signed with the creditors on July 13.” A second objective was “the purging of the left wing of his party, even if the price that he had to pay for that was the organizational disintegration of SYRIZA.”

Tsipras was supported fully in this by the vast majority of the mass media in Greece, “which played a decisive role in organizing and promoting a pre-electoral public discussion where there was almost complete silence on the issue of the new Memorandum – which is the main issue of the political struggle!” The media

“slandered the Left Platform ruthlessly, while hiding the extent of the wave of resignations and withdrawals of a huge number of activists who had built SYRIZA all those years – among them, the secretary of the party, half of the elected members of the Political Secretariat, a big part of the members of the Central Committee, and leading cadre from lots of local and working-place branches.”

“The main precondition for the success of the SYRIZA leadership’s strategy,” says the DEA in its post-election analysis, “was the spreading disappointment and weariness among the people who were active in the social movements, including SYRIZA’s base of political support.”

“That was the point and the goal of the ‘There Was No Alternative’ argument to justify the new Memorandum. This message was repeated constantly, like a mantra, by leading members of SYRIZA, along with the five-party coalition – including SYRIZA, New Democracy, PASOK, the Independent Greeks and Potami – that was built in parliament around the consensus to ratify the new shameful Memorandum….

“A large part of the population, seeing that the anti-austerity project of SYRIZA was collapsing, started to believe that the overthrow of the Memorandum is impossible. It has started to accept that trying to implement Memorandum policies ‘with a human face’ is the only realistic alternative.

“It was this retreat, along with the recent memory of the ferocity of the politics of New Democracy and PASOK while in control of the government, that produced the political and electoral victory of Alexis Tsipras on September 20.”

The events since mid-July mark “a change in the political mood and – at least temporarily – in mass consciousness,” says the DEA.

“Facing this prospect, our only possible response is the struggle from below: Strikes, demonstrations, occupations and more to defend workers’ rights and social rights. In order to crack the image of the SYRIZA government’s popular legitimacy created by the electoral result on September 20, these struggles must be decisively supported by activists of the left.

“Recent experience shows us that in order for such struggles to prevail, they will need a political expression. They must coalesce around a political current that aims to organize a challenge to austerity. In this, the section of the left that resisted and stood against the maneuvers of Tsipras has very special tasks.”

Popular Unity

In these difficult conditions, Popular Unity (PU) was founded in August to attempt to carry forward the best traditions of SYRIZA, the acronym for the original Coalition of the Radical Left. Popular Unity encompasses some 15 organizations ranging from left social democrats and social movement activists to far-left currents. They are described in the introduction to the Jacobintranslation of the Popular Unity election platform.

The PU platform, while adopted hastily for the snap election, illustrated the broad agreement among these forces on the “prerequisites for a radical alternative solution to the disaster of the memoranda.”

“The basic features of the alternative route have already been mapped out by numerous leftist groupings, radical movements, and progressive scholars. The alternative solution we embrace seeks to provide answers to all the key problems of the economy, society, the state, and foreign policy. Naturally it is not confined to monetary policy, as is asserted by the swindlers and slanderers who speak of a ‘drachma lobby’.”

And the platform modestly added:

“The problem with this alternative proposal is not its supposedly inadequate ‘technical’ elaboration but its inadequate political preparation: namely, the fact that it has not been discussed as much as it should have been among the people and the social organizations – among those, in other words, who will be called upon to put up a tough struggle against colossal vested interests in order to implement it. We plan to fill this gap immediately, through a great campaign of public dialogue….”

The platform goes on to propose a series of “immediate emergency measures”: abolition of the memoranda “and the accompanying loan agreements that mortgage our future”; suspension of debt repayments, “with a view to effecting an overall annulment of the debt, at least the greater part of it”; an “immediate end to austerity and implementation of a policy of redistribution of social wealth to the benefit of working people and at the expense of the oligarchs”; “support for wages and pensions, and social expenditures for free public education, popular health care, and culture”; nationalization of the banks and their operation under a regime of social control,” etc.

In addition, “radical reforms will be promoted to change the bankrupt developmental model and overturn the balance of social forces to the advantage of the people and to the detriment of the oligarchs of crony capitalism.”

These include

• radical changes in labour legislation;
• establishment of “a permanent, socially just, and redistributive taxation system”;
• an end to “predatory privatizations”;
• restoration of the national health system and public hospitals;
• a new emphasis on industrial and agricultural production based on “democratic central and regional planning, with participation and joint decision-making from local communities and a distinct environmental dimension”;
• strengthening of the social economy (cooperatives, self-managing enterprises that have been abandoned by their owners, solidarity networks, etc.);
• and “a policy of solidarity and humanism for refugees and economic immigrants.”

The platform acknowledges that “cancellation of the memoranda in itself – and even more so the radical structural changes we have described – will face fierce resistance from the dominant forces in the EU.”

“They will immediately try to throttle our effort, using as their basic instrument the cutting off of liquidity to the banks by the ECB. We have already experienced this in the last six months, even with the much more moderate policies of the SYRIZA-ANEL government.

“Therefore, the question of an exit from the eurozone and of a break with the neoliberal policies and choices of the EU… will be placed on the agenda not as the product of some ideological obsession but in terms of basic political realism.”

The establishment of a national currency, the platform explains, is not an end in itself. “It is one of the necessary instruments for the implementation of the radical changes we have outlined, for which, indeed, the ultimate guarantor will be not the currency but the struggle of the popular classes.”

“Whatever the inevitable difficulties of the first months, nothing justifies the stance of those Cassandras who equate such a move with economic disaster and national ruin. In the course of the twentieth century, sixty-nine monetary unions collapsed on this planet without this signifying the end of the world. The introduction of a national currency as a prerequisite for implementation of a progressive program for reconstruction and a way forward is not only a viable option; it is an option of hope, with the potential to launch the country on a new developmental trajectory.”

Popular Unity orients toward

“a new independent multi-dimensional international relations policy, in the domains of energy, economics, and politics. International relations that will not be imprisoned in the straitjacket of the EU. We aspire to an energy policy of collaboration in the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Middle East. A policy that will take advantage of the new opportunities for mutually beneficial collaboration with the emerging economies of the BRICS nations, Latin America, and other regions of the planet.

“We are against the new ‘Cold War’ and a new division of Europe with the erection of new walls against Russia. We oppose the imperialistic options and the military adventurism of NATO. We are pledged to the exit of Greece from this coalition, a war machine that disintegrates states, tyrannizes peoples, and destabilizes the wider geopolitical arc of our region from eastern Ukraine to the Middle East. We campaign for the removal of the American-NATO bases, for non-participation of Greece in any imperialist organization.”

The platform also calls for termination of military collaboration with Israel, immediate recognition of Palestine, and opposition to the EU’s Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) “now being hatched.”

And it calls for radical transformation of the state, the judiciary and public administration, including disbandment of Greece’s notorious “riot police” (many of whom are Golden Dawn members or supporters).

“We will moreover launch wide-ranging social consultation for in-depth revision of the Constitution and the political system by a new constituent assembly to emerge from subsequent elections. A central objective of this new revision will be establishment of a new, much more advanced democracy, conjoining representative with direct democracy, with provision of a significant margin for popular initiative and self-activation, popular participation and direct popular decisions, on the basis of the international best practices and experience.”

Not a Finished Product

This was a strong platform, addressed to meeting the key challenges in the period ahead. But Popular Unity is not a finished project, says DEA leader Panos Petrou.

“The main objective at the moment for Popular Unity is to avoid the Italian scenario – that is to say, to avoid what happened to the Italian left after the collapse of the Romano Prodi center-left government and the subsequent collapse of the Party of Communist Refoundation that supported Prodi (PRC by its initials in Italian). PRC support for Prodi led to a fragmentation on the left, which continues to this day. Those who continue on in very small groups are trying to rebuild.

“We are trying to create, as we put it, a refuge for all left-wing activists betrayed by SYRIZA who want to keep up the fight that SYRIZA began. Our main objective is to keep the flame of resistance alive, especially for those who voted ‘no’ in the referendum and are now faced with a new Memorandum.

“We need a left voice to speak against this new Memorandum, just as we spoke up against the old ones. We need the left to continue this fight – a fight which was cut short by the SYRIZA leadership.”

In its post-election analysis, the DEA leadership drew attention to what it termed “important subjective, political mistakes” in the Popular Unity campaign.

“Faced with the pressure from our political opponents, who argued that obedience to the European leadership is obligatory, we overemphasized support for an exit from the eurozone. At some point, this necessary part of our overall argument was singled out and raised above a more general program of organizing a united class movement against austerity and an anti-capitalist program toward socialist emancipation. That was a gift to Tsipras and the mass media, who looked for every opportunity to slander us as ‘drachma left’.”

Overall, however, the analysis was positive:

“Despite all this, Popular Unity received 155,000 votes, and it has already rallied an organized layer of thousands of activists and experienced veterans of the working-class movement and the left. This gives us the strength, despite losing the first battle, to engage in the war that is coming.

“Of course, for this to happen, we need to resolve, in an effective and democratic way, all the organizational, political and programmatic questions about Popular Unity that were naturally left aside during the brief period before the elections.”

The Sectarian Left

The one left party that outpolled Popular Unity in this election was the Communist Party, known as KKE in its Greek acronym. Historically, it was the pro-Moscow CP that remained after a Eurocommunist faction broke to form Synaspismos, later a founding component of SYRIZA. (The Eurocommunist current, which developed in several southern European countries, generally held out the perspective of “democratizing the apparatus of the capitalist state, transforming it into a valid tool for constructing a socialist society without needing to destroy it radically by force.”)

The KKE vote increased marginally, from 5.47% in January to 5.55% this time. “But the fact that this happened in a situation where SYRIZA was in crisis and split, and after Tsipras had just signed a new Memorandum of harsh austerity, shows that there is no cause for celebration,” says the DEA.

“The politics of the leadership of the KKE failed to capitalize a rare opportunity. During the pre-election period, the KKE aimed its attacks almost exclusively against Popular Unity, in the hopes of claiming all votes of left-wing opposition to SYRIZA for itself. This tactic leaves all the promises on the front page of the party’s newspaper about initiatives to form some sort of popular alliance in doubt.”

As for the smaller anti-capitalist alliance ANTARSYA, its vote likewise increased marginally, from 0.64% in January to 0.85% this time.

“In its statement after the elections, the New Left Current (NAR), one of the main components of ANTARSYA, set as its goal ‘a broad militant front to overthrow the coming storm of anti-worker measures…the commitment to joint action from all the parts of the militant left, including the Communist Party and Popular Unity.’

“The problem is that this statement was issued a day after the election and not three weeks before it. In the electoral battle of September 2015, the ‘forces of the militant left’ failed to provide a common response, which was necessary.”

Had ANTARSYA overcome its refusal to join the Popular Unity (echoing its earlier sectarian refusal to join the old SYRIZA as a recognized platform), it is conceivable that Popular Unity could have won enough votes to be represented in parliament. Some currents within ANTARSYA did in fact join Popular Unity.

The Witch-Hunt Against Zoe Konstantopoulou

Among those “activists and experienced veterans of the working-class movement and the left” who joined Popular Unity, reports Panos Petrou, were well-known public figures, such as Zoe Konstantopoulou, a SYRIZA deputy “who served as president [speaker] of the parliament… before she resigned in protest of the new Memorandum, and Manolis Glézos, the 93-year-old Greek resistance fighter.”

Zoe Konstantopoulou was in my own opinion the authentic heroine of the first six months of the SYRIZA government. Among her progressive initiatives, she got the parliament to establish the Truth Committee on Public Debt, coordinated by Eric Toussaint, president of the Belgian-based Committee for the Abolition of the Third World Debt. Its preliminary audit, as I reported in my earlier article, provided documentary proof that most of Greece’s foreign debt claimed by the EU and IMF creditors should be considered illegitimate, illegal and odious, and its repayment unsustainable. It urged the adoption of a series of measures that could have been taken in response to the financial blackmail of the Troika, but were rejected by the Tsipras leadership.

When Tsipras moved to force the new Memorandum terms through parliament without even the minimal debate required, Konstantopoulou was one of the strongest voices in opposition and in defense of the institution’s own democratic procedures and the sovereignty of Greece. Since then, she has continued to fight austerity and the Troika’s violation of Greece’s sovereignty, both in Greece and abroad.

This has earned her the hatred of the mainstream media in Greece, described with appalling examples by Sonia Mitralias: See “In Greece, sexist rampage against resistance to memoranda – The case of the former President of the Greek Parliament and the new witch hunt.” Writes Mitralias:

“From the moment Zoe K. stepped up to become an important figure of the opposition to the Memoranda that have ruined Greece, she was denigrated, vilified, humiliated, slandered … in short, demonized by those that are on the Troika bandwagon. The attacks against her are so persistent, organized, coordinated and systematic that they can only be perceived as a real strategy of warfare aimed at her political elimination from the public arena.

“It would be wrong to attribute this ‘extremely sexist phenomenon’ to phallocratic or random individual behavior or anachronistic mentalities, as is claimed by the feminist politics section of the (old) SYRIZA in a statement entitled ‘The sexist attacks against Konstantopoulou are anachronistic stereotypes’. This is a modern-day witch hunt!”

And it is a foretaste of the campaign that will be waged with increasing ferocity in the media and in legislative repression against all movements fighting the implementation of the new austerity under the current Memorandum.

A Provisional Balance Sheet

Addressing a conference in Switzerland in mid-September, Popular Unity (and DEA) leader Panos Petrou summarized the experience to date in building a radical left alternative to capitalist austerity in Greece in the following words:

“Despite its bitter ending, the existence of SYRIZA itself was a victory for Europe and the Greek working class. It was this that opened the door to important advances in the Greek class struggle, of which the most important was the historic July 5 referendum – with the great victory for the ‘no’ vote of 61 per cent, despite all the blackmail and threats. That was a tremendous political moment in Greek history, and it would not have been possible without SYRIZA’s victory on January 25.

“The pain suffered during these seven months of government have also raised the political consciousness of a large part of the Greek working class in terms of how to fight for the end of austerity and against the limits of the eurozone. This rise in consciousness could not have been brought about without the years of revolutionary propaganda on the part of various groups. But then, it might not have happened with just the years of revolutionary propaganda alone – without the living experience of these seven months.

“This bitter ending was not predetermined. It was not a given. Things might have gone in another direction, and there were many other alternatives to the official line. We did not have the strength to impose a different course on the government. A different course depended on forces much broader than DEA and other left-wing currents – it required broader social forces from within the working-class movement. That is how we must evaluate the past months’ course in order to try to change the future course.”

And it required massive solidarity from the European left as a whole, a solidarity that was sadly lacking.

International Solidarity

In a recent article, Leo Panitch argues that the current crisis of world capitalism:

“has fully exposed how far the world’s states are enveloped not just in the American state’s internal contradictions but even more so in global capitalism’s deeper irrationalities. And it has also shown that the salient conflicts in the world today are class conflicts within states, including the American ones, rather than conflicts between them.”

In my opinion, the Greek events point us to a necessary caveat to the second sentence I have quoted. Panitch is correct to exclude the likelihood of national struggles by capitalist ruling classes comparable to the inter-imperialist conflicts of early 20th century imperialism; as he says, the rapid emergence of some of the largest countries of the formerly underdeveloped third world (such as China) “requires that their states [i.e. their national bourgeoisies] play a more active role in the management of global capitalism.”

But on the other side of the ledger, the radical left forces that develop within the individual capitalist countries – especially those that manage to form the government – are confronted not only with their national bourgeoisies but – as Greece’s recent experience shows so clearly – with the enormous economic, financial and political clout of the imperialist institutions that are so integral to the structures and management of global capitalism.

As a consequence, the class struggle within a country like Greece is not purely economic, and directed solely or even primarily against its ruling class (most of the working-class struggles Panitch cites are economic – strikes and labour mobilizations from China and India to the United States, struggles within these states), but also national, in defense of state sovereignty and thus profoundly international in content, dependent for their success on the active solidarity of working-class and progressive forces in other countries; in Greece’s case, starting within the European Union. This is a defining feature of anti-capitalist resistance in contemporary imperialism, as the Memorandum’s neocolonial trusteeship over Greece so egregiously illustrates.

Some Sage Advice and Solidarity from Bolivia

Speaking in Athens in June, shortly before the referendum on the Troika’s draconian terms, Bolivian vice-president Álvaro García Linera eloquently addressed this problematic.

There is an adverse correlation of continental forces, you are alone today, he told his audience. In Latin America in the 1980s, we were confronted with demands by the IMF and World Bank to pay external debts amounting in some cases to more than the annual GDP. But unlike you Greeks, we had multiple creditors and we were able to divide them, settling with some but not others. The major debtor countries were able to form a bloc strong enough to renegotiate our payments to the international agencies, often on terms as favourable as 10 cents on the dollar. Unfortunately, the countries with similar debt problems in Europe, such as Spain, Portugal, Italy or Ireland, have refused to support your effort.

But it is precisely in such difficult conditions, said García Linera, that the left can demonstrate its capacity to lead. Had they not managed to cope with an imperialist world war, famine, and similar problems, “Lenin and the Bolsheviks would have continued to be a group of semi-clandestine activists.”

“When everything is going well a left is not needed; when things go very badly, the left is needed and if we are not prepared to lead when things are going badly we are not leftists.”

Secondly, he said, all EU countries have lost their capacity to control their economy over the last 15 years. They have mortgaged Europe to a cloud called the European Union which is “basically a coalition of bankers and some firms that define the fate of the Europeans, and that is very sad.” He contrasted this with the situation of Bolivia, “where we are able to ourselves define the exchange rates, the monetary mass, to force banks to lend money to the state,” etc. But you can’t, because everything is under the control of the European Bank.

Thirdly, “the Troika want to destroy you, don’t have illusions that the Troika is acting in good faith, or that it is flexible.” They want to foreclose you as a good example for other countries. So you get “exemplary punishment.”

Acknowledging that the Greek people seemed to be showing signs of fatigue with the incessant stalemate in the negotiations with the Troika (“People have to work, look after their homes, attend to personal matters”), the Bolivian vice-president reminded his audience that the left, as Marx said, had to know how to measure the varying tempos of social mobilization, both collective action and retreat. This puts a premium on direct contact of the government and its leaders with society through the media, meetings with the unions, and with the various social movements. “A revolutionary government of the left must always ensure that its decisions are based on informed consultation and discussion with the people.”

In conclusion, he said, “I do not know how it can be done, but it is essential that the Greek government, the Greek people, have the minimal economic power to make decisions… a capacity for economic management, economic resources that allow you to gain more time, to adopt measures of a social character that benefit people, to resolve this or that problem independently of what the banks and the Troika do.”

And lastly, you need solidarity. “Europe must wake up.” In Latin America we are watching closely, and “we place our hopes of a rebirth of Europe in you, not the banks; in the Europe of the peoples, not the Europe of the Troika….

“People have to understand that Greece cannot be left alone. Greece cannot approach these negotiations as a purely administrative matter; it is a political question, a social question. Time is running against us, it is in favour of the Troika.”

European Responses

European left responses to the Greek events have varied widely. Gregor Gizi, outgoing president of the German left party Die Linke, has supported Alexis Tsipras and attacked Popular Unity. Similarly, Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Spain’s Podemos, gave full support to SYRIZA, even speaking at its closing election rally.

However, these parties are divided. The Die Linke section in Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, has sharply criticized the Greek government’s decision to sign on to the Memorandum and has characterized Popular Unity as the “best expression of the NO of the Greek people.” Sarah Vagkenknecht, who is expected to become co-chair of Die Linke, has called on the new Greek government not to apply the Memorandum.

Moreover, Oskar Lafontaine, the historic founder of Die Linke, has co-signed a statement calling for “A Plan B in Europe” with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, co-founder of France’s Parti de Gauche, Stefano Fassina of Italy, and Zoe Konstantopoulou and Yanis Varoufakis of Greece. The statement, issued September 11, declares in part:

“We live in extraordinary times. We are facing an emergency. Member-states need to have policy space that allows their democracies to breathe and to put forward sensible policies at the member-state’s level, free of fear of a clamp down from an authoritarian Eurogroup dominated by the interests of the strongest among them and of big business, or from an ECB that is used as a steamroller that threatens to flatten an ‘uncooperative country’, as it happened with Cyprus or Greece.”

Most European governments, it says, “representing Europe’s oligarchy, and hiding behind Berlin and Frankfurt,” had a plan A: Not to yield to the European people’s demand for democracy and to use brutality to end their resistance…. and a plan B: To eject Greece from the Eurozone in the worst conditions possible by destroying its banking system and putting to death its economy.

“Facing this blackmail, we also need a plan B of our own.”

“Our Plan A for a democratic Europe, backed with a Plan B which shows the powers-that-be that they cannot terrorise us into submission, is inclusive and aims at appealing to the majority of Europeans. This demands a high level of preparation. Debate will strengthen its technical elements. Many ideas are already on the table: the introduction of parallel payment systems, parallel currencies, digitization of euro transactions, community based exchange systems, the euro exit and transformation of the euro into a common currency.

“No European nation can work toward its liberation in isolation. Our vision is internationalist. In anticipation of what may happen in Spain, Ireland – and potentially again in Greece, depending on how the political situation evolves – and in France in 2017, we need to work together concretely toward a plan B, taking into account the different characteristics of each country.

“We therefore propose the convening of an international summit on a plan B for Europe, open to willing citizens, organisations and intellectuals. This conference could take place as early as November 2015.”

An earlier joint statement, issued September 5, calls for an “Austerexit,” an exit from austerity, referencing the threat of a Greek exit from the eurozone. It is signed by Olivier Besançenot of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste in France; Antonis Davanellos, a leader of Popular Unity in Greece, and Miguel Urbán Crespo, a Podemos member of the European Parliament.

“From this point forward, we know just how antithetical membership in the euro currency system is with a policy of emancipation in the Greek case.

“For us, what is most critical is to end the policy of austerity, be it within the framework of the euro if the situation permits it, or outside it, if the people cannot achieve their aspirations. We do not confuse the means with the ends – we are not partisans of this or that currency because the real question before us is to know who controls the monetary system. Whether the credit system is based on a national or European currency does not change much as long as either of these remain under the influence of the traditional groups of the financial speculators who make up their own banking laws.”

The signers likewise call for “the organization of a great European-wide conference of social and political resistance in the coming weeks… to debate the meaning we can give to this campaign for an ‘Austerexit’.”

It is to be hoped that the various leading activists of the European left can coordinate their efforts and reach agreement on common action in defense of Greece and for a far-reaching debate on a new approach to the European Union that points the way to “a new Europe” free of domination by capital.

 

Richard Fidler is an Ottawa member of the Socialist Project. This article first appeared on his blog Life on the Left.

Notes

1. SYRIZA is the acronym of the Coalition of the Radical Left, a reference to the combination of parties that founded it in 2004. ANEL stands for Independent Greeks-National Patriotic Alliance.

2. See also “Eurozone’s enforcer ready to keep Greece’s new leader in line.”

3. The International Workers Left (DEA, by its initials in Greek) was a main voice in the Left Platform within SYRIZA.

4. The earlier history is described in my article “Greece: Was, and Is There, an Alternative?”

5. Spanish CP leader Santiago Carrillo in his book Eurocommunism and the State (1977). Quoted by Alan Thornett in “Greece & Europe: The capitulation of the Tsipras leadership and the role of ‘left europeanism’,” www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article4217.

6. See “The complete subordination of a democratic country to the will and demands of other governments is not an agreement,” cadtm.org/Zoe-Konstantopoulou-s-speech-in.

7. See “Zoe Konstantopoulou’s speech at the United Nations Headquarters in New York,” cadtm.org/Zoe-Konstantopoulou-s-speech-at.

8. See also “Greece: Violence against women, a strategic weapon in the hands of the rulers in a time of class war,” www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article35890.

9. “Rethinking Marxism and Imperialism for the Twenty-first Century,” 23 New Labor Forum 2, 2014, pp. 22-28.

10. See “En Grecia se está definiendo la historia y el futuro de Europa,” Cambio, 21 June 2015, Discurso presidencial, pp. 24-32.

11. See SARAH VAGKENKNECHT: “I find it hard to congratulate SYRIZA.”

GR Editor’s Note

This report largely provides information pertaining to civilian casualties. It does not however address the underlying causes of the war, nor does it name the foreign powers which instigated the bombings.

*        *        *

Yemen is the worst country for civilian deaths and injuries from explosive weapon use in the first seven months of 2015, says a new publication produced by UK-based charity AOAV and UN OCHA.

In March 2015, a complex and long-running political crisis in Yemen rapidly escalated into all-out conflict. President Hadi fled the country after Houthi rebels took control of the capital city Sana’a, and on 26 March a coalition led by Saudi Arabia began an operation of air strikes in Yemen at the request of the Yemeni Government [in exile]. The fighting in the country since March has been characterised by the use of heavy explosive weapons in populated areas by all parties to the conflict, with civilians suffering from near-daily bombing and shelling in their towns and villages.

As of 10 September 2015, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had registered 2,204 civilian deaths and 4,711 civilian injuries from all forms of armed violence in Yemen. Millions more have suffered from additional devastating consequences in the country, including poverty, malnutrition, insecurity, and limited access to health and sanitation.

Much of this chaos is due to the use of explosive weapons with widearea impacts in populated areas across the country.

In State of Crisis, AOAV and OCHA investigate the humanitarian impacts of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas in Yemen during the conflict up to 31 July 2015.

Key findings

Between 1 January and 31 July 2015 AOAV recorded:

• 124 incidents of explosive violence in Yemen resulting in 5,239 deaths and injuries;
• 86% of those killed and injured were civilians (4,493);
• More civilian deaths and injuries from explosive weapons were recorded in Yemen during the first seven months of 2015 than in any other country in the world;
• When explosive weapons were used in populated areas, civilians made up 95% of reported deaths and injuries;
• 13 separate incidents in Yemen each killed and injured more than 100 civilians. Eight of these incidents were air strikes;
• Air strikes have killed and injured the most civilians, with 2,682 civilian deaths and injuries (60%).

The impact of explosive weapons in Yemen goes far beyond the immediate deaths and injuries recorded by AOAV. The report uses testimonies and experiences of victims and witnesses to illustrate some of the long-term impacts that can cause extensive suffering far into the future, even after the fighting ends.

Robert Perkins, author of the report, says: “Our findings show Yemen is the worst country in the world this year for civilians affected by explosive violence, more devastating even than the crisis in Syria and Iraq. An already vulnerable population is now faced with a country reduced o rubble by falling bombs and rockets. Their homes destroyed, their families torn apart, it will take a many years to recover from the last few terrible months in Yemen. 

The crisis in Yemen shows exactly why explosive weapons with wide-area effects have no place being used in populated areas. All parties to this conflict must immediately stop the bombing of civilians and civilian areas.” 

To read the full report please click here.

For more information please contact [email protected].

“Once a nation parts with control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nation’s laws, Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.” — William Lyon Mackenzie King, prime minister of Canada, August 2, 1935  (quote courtesy of Canadian Monetary Reform News) [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Length (59:09)

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In the midst of the Canadian election campaign, the federal liberal leader and would-be Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau has made some comments, controversial in the current cultural context, about the merits of deficit-spending in order to finance critical infrastructure spending. During the Globe and Mail-sponsored Leaders’ Debate he explained in a dialogue with rival candidate Thomas Mulcair of the NDP:

“…And the fact of the matter is that we have a situation right now where interest rates are low so borrowing has never been cheaper for the Federal government, our debt to GDP ratio is low and getting lower, our economy has been flat for 10 years. So my question is, now that there are thousands upon thousands of skilled Canadians for work in construction and in growth, if this isn’t the time to invest, when would be?” [2]

Mr. Trudeau has a point. However, what is missing in his argument, and the wide-spread assumptions among main-stream economists, is that Canadian governments always had the option of borrowing at low to no rates of interest by borrowing through the Bank of Canada.

Groups such as the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER) have been trying to not only raise awareness about this hidden tool in the the country’s fiscal toolbox, but actually have leveled a legal case against the Bank of Canada compelling the BOC to fulfill its legal mandate to function as the Federal government’s lender of choice.

It is remarkable, (but then again perhaps not really) that this case has gotten so little attention in the current political debate where economics is said to be a key, if not THE key issue.

Herb Wiseman, COMER’s Information officer will join us in the first half hour to explain the need for monetary reform, the historic role of the Bank of Canada, and why it was abandoned by the feds.

Global Research News Hour contributor Kellia Ramares-Watson completes the hour with a previously recoded interview with Ellen Brown on the theme of banking as a public utility. Ellen Brown is founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of Web Of Debt: The Shocking Truth about our Money System and How we can Break Free, and her more recent From Austerity to Prosperity: The Public Bank Solution.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Length (59:09)

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

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

1) http://www.monetaryandeconomicreform.ca/Dialogue/dialking.htm

2) Globe and Mail Leaders’ Debate 2015 (43 minute mark); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbnMz7tsXjo

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair should be arrested and indicted for war crimes in the Middle East.

The following petition has recently been registered on the UK Parliament’s website.

This Petition can be signed by British citizens and British residents. 

British citizens living overseas are eligible to sign the petition.

Our message to the British government: Tony Blair is a war criminal under international law.

THE CAMERON GOVERNMENT IS COMPLICIT IN SUPPORTING A KNOWN WAR CRIMINAL IN DEFIANCE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW (NUREMBERG). 

Click here to sign (or click image below) 

Background

• In March 2003, Mr. Blair, while Prime Minister, likely participated with several high-ranking United States leaders in committing the crime of aggression against Iraq.
• The crime of aggression is the “supreme international crime,” as declared by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946.
• In addition to being prohibited by international law, the crime of aggression is a crime also defined by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, over which it may have the opportunity to exercise jurisdiction in the coming years. “Resort to a war of aggression is not merely illegal, but is criminal.” United States v. Hermann Goering, et al., 41 AM. J. INT’L L. 172, 186, 218-220 (1946); see also Charter Int’l Military Tribunal, art. 6(a), Aug. 8, 1945, 59 Stat. 1546, 82 U.N.T.S. 279.
• In 2004, Secretary General Kofi Annan declared the Iraq War illegal and in contravention of the United Nations Charter.1
• In 2006, a former prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Benjamin Ferencz, stated that the Iraq War was a “clear breach of law.”2 “There’s no such thing as a war without atrocities, but war-making is the biggest atrocity of law.”
• In 2010, a Dutch inquiry concluded that the Iraq War had no basis in international law.3
• In 2010, Hans Blix, the former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, stated that it was his “firm view” that the Iraq War was illegal.4
• In 2012, judges empanelled before the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, an independent commission headed by former judges and involving input from several international law scholars, concluded that a prima facie case existed that Mr. Blair committed the crime of aggression against Iraq. The tribunal reported its findings to the International Criminal Court in the Hague and entered the name of Mr. Blair in its “Register of War Criminals.”
• In 2012, Archbishop Desmond Tutu summarized that the “immoral” invasion, “premised on a lie,” has “destabilized and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history,” and questioned why Mr. Blair was not “made to answer” for his actions in the Hague.5
• In May 2014, former Prime Minister John Major urged Mr. Blair to seek publication of all his pre-war communications concerning the Iraq War. To this day, the Iraq War Inquiry headed by Sir John Chilcot has been forced to negotiate as to what communications it can and cannot release in its report.6

Excerpt from Inder Comar, Esq’ Letter to Save the Children, demanding that the STC Rescind the Global Legacy Award to Tony Blair , December 2014

This letter was send on behalf of  Felicity Arbuthnot, Michel Chossudovsky and Denis Halliday in response to the Global Legacy Award (the “Award”) given by Save the Children to former Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 19, 2014, formally requesting that Save the Children rescind the Award forthwith. 

Lawyer’s Letter to “Save the Children” (STC): Rescind the “Global Legacy Award” to Alleged War Criminal Tony Blair

6 “Chilcot Inquiry: John Major urges Blair to get Bush conversations published,” Lizzie Dearden, The Independent, May 30, 2014, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chilcot-inquiry- john-major-urges-blair-to-get-bush-conversations-published-9459173.html (last accessed December 5, 2014).

7 “Ask ‘Save the Children’ To Revoke Their Annual Global Legacy Award Given To Tony Blair,” available at https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-save-the-children-charity-from-giving-tony-blair-their- annual-global-legacy-award (last accessed December 5, 2014).

Guantanamo is the tip of America’s global torture prison network, operating covertly in dozens of countries, subjecting victims to brutalized treatment.

They include Shaker Aamer, one of 52 Guantanamo prisoners cleared for transfer to countries willing to accept them.

Aamer is the last British detainee, approved for release by the Bush administration in 2007. Obama officials refused to send him home to his wife and four children, despite repeated UK requests – until today, September 25. Word came. He’s going home. More on his case below.

Straightaway in office, Obama promised closure. An Executive Order authorized it. Guantanamo remains open – a blight on the national conscience.

On March 7, 2011, his Executive Order promised “Periodic Review of Individuals Detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station Pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force.”

It said in part:

This order is intended solely to establish…a process to review on a periodic basis the executive branch’s continued, discretionary exercise of existing detention authority in individual cases.

Detainees at Guantanamo have the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and nothing in this order is intended to affect the jurisdiction of Federal courts to determine the legality of their detention.

The Secretary of Defense shall coordinate a process of periodic review.

In consultation with the Attorney General, The Secretary of Defense shall issue implementing guidelines governing the process….

For each detainee, an initial review shall commence as soon as possible but no later than one year from the date of this order.

No follow-up action was taken, no effort to end gross injustice – 114 detainees remain. Most are innocent victims, perhaps all, arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time or sold for bounty. They committed no crimes, including Aamer, a Saudi-born British national.

In December 2001, Afghanistan bounty hunters sold him to US forces. He remains uncharged and untried. His wife Zinneera wrote British Prime Minister David Cameron, saying:

Thirteen years ago my family was ripped apart when my husband, Shaker Aamer, was sold for a bounty and taken to Guantanamo Bay.

He has never been charged with a crime. He has never faced a trial. He was cleared for release – told he could come home, in other words – by President Bush’s administration. He was then cleared for release a second time by President Obama’s administration.

We had such hope, when Mr Obama said he would close the prison – finally, we thought, our family’s ordeal will be over. It is hard to describe the crushing despair of having such hopes dashed.

Over 117,000 supporters signed a petition to release him. Ahead of his election as Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn issued a statement, saying:

(F)ollowing a meeting of the Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group yesterday, which I attended, as the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, it was decided that an Early Day Motion would be submitted by Andrew Mitchell MP (Con., Sutton Coldfield), calling for the Obama administration to release Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantanamo, from the prison, and to return him to the UK, to rejoin his family in London.

Aamer was unjustly abducted, hooded, shackled and taken to Guantanamo on the same day his youngest child was born.

The UK-based Reprieve human rights group represents him. Its founder attorney Clive Stafford Smith says “we provide free legal and investigative support to some of the world’s most vulnerable people: British, European and other nationals facing execution, and those victimised by states’ abusive counter-terror policies – rendition, torture, extrajudicial imprisonment and extrajudicial killing.”

Aamer was doing volunteer charity work in Afghanistan when abducted and sent to Guantanamo. He was brutally tortured and held under appalling conditions.

In protest, he hunger struck many times. In retaliation, guards brutally beat and isolated him in solitary confinement. Reprieve lawyers said he’s “unrecognizable” from his healthy state prior to abduction.

Reprieve’s Smith believes he remained imprisoned because he witnessed other detainees being tortured – able to explain their ordeal and his own.

As this article was being written, good news was announced. After 13 years of unlawful detention without charges or trial, British media reported Aamer will be released. London’s Guardian said Obama informed David Cameron during a Thursday phone call.

A British government spokesman said he’ll be released after a period of notice lasting around 30 days, then returned home to his family. Why not immediately wasn’t explained.

The Guardian said he was “detainee number 239,” well-known for his eloquence and leadership. “He was instrumental in leading one hunger strike and then ending it, and according to one senior US officer he was greeted like a rock star by fellow detainees.”

US allegations about his ties to bin Laden were fabricated. He was never found guilty or formally charged. He committed no crimes – one of many victims of US barbarism, Guantanamo symbolizing its dark agenda.

Reprieve’s Smith issued a statement following the good news, saying “(t)his is great news, albeit about 13 years too late.”

But they only just gave notice to congress, so that means that without robust intervention, Shaker and his family have to wait until October 25th at the earliest for their reunion.

The UK must demand of President Obama that he should be on a plane tomorrow, so that Shaker’s family does not have to endure more of the agony of waiting, uncertain every time a phone rings.

British politicians may bombasticate about our ‘robust and effective systems to deal with suspected terrorists’ but Shaker is not and never has been a terrorist, and has been cleared by the Americans themselves for 8 years.

I hope the authorities will understand that he has been tortured and abused for more than a decade, and what he wants most is to be left alone with his family to start rebuilding his life.

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.

 

Author’s Note

Intro, 26 September 2015: I wrote this thirteen years ago and on rereading it now I think it deserves a fresh airing given as how things have just gone downhill since then with the total demonisation of the Muslim/Arab in the so-called civilised world.

And, it must be me that’s changed because I’m even more appalled today by the repellent racism of Kevin Toolis’s muck in the Independent than when I first read it all those years ago.

This is a kind of followup to the piece entitled “Let the reader be aware” about the way

*       *       *

The media repeats lots of small lies to make one Big Lie, predicated on the approach that swallowing a lot of small lies is a lot easier to do than swallowing one Big One.

But there is one Big Lie that has to be addressed and that’s the racist and sexist dehumanisation of the ‘Arab’, in particular, the desperate young women, who lacking F-16s, tanks and helicopter gunships that deal death from a distance and in total impunity, feel it necessary to sacrifice themselves, only we find that they have been transformed into inhuman caricatures, devoid of any self-conscious action or control over their own lives. They are transformed into ‘victims’ of ‘honour codes’ and other ‘alien’ practices, that set them apart from humanity in a disgusting parody of the Western anthropological ‘method’.

I came across an article in the Observer (12/10/03) called “The revenger’s tragedy: why women turn to suicide bombing” about the young woman, Hanadi Darajat who blew up a restaurant, killing 19 people and herself and which exemplifies the problem of dealing with an event and how the Big Lie is woven into the truth of an event by stereotyping a people and culture to conform to all the small lies we’ve been fed by our racist and sexist media. Attitudes that reinforces the separation of ‘us’ from ‘them’, out there, in the jungle.

The introduction sets the scene,

“As the honour codes that bound Palestinian familes unravel, Islamic Jihad has stepped up its recruitment of women. Kevin Toolis reports from the West Bank on the cycle of slaughter that drove an ambitious female lawyer to become a human bomb”

But before launching into his ‘explanation’ of what makes a young woman sacrifice herself, the writer sets the scene so to speak with the following melodramatic intro worthy of a Gothic novel,

“The blood red fruit was just beginning to ripen on the pomegranate tree when Israeli undercover soldiers came for Fardi and Salah Darajat in Jenin, the besieged ‘city of martyrs’, in the occupied West Bank. After a burst of gunfire the cousins lay dying on the dusty track outside the family home. Their bodies were bundled into a Jeep and driven off. For Israeli special forces it was another successful hit against militants from Islamic Jihad. Another notch in the war against terror.”

Purporting to be an explanation of why a young Palestinian woman (sister to the two young men murdered by the Israelis) should become a ‘martyr’ – itself a word loaded with significance for the Western ear, as opposed even to your common or garden ‘terrorist’, or God forbid, soldier or guerrilla – the piece presents a series of ‘explanations’ that revolve around a number of key words designed exclusively for Western consumption.

Revenge, martyrdom (now with the sub-text of being a “bride of the Haifa martydom operation”), suicide bomber – but now it’s a “descent into a suicide bomber war” with all that that implies, and the changing ‘role’ of women in ‘traditional’ Muslim society or “honour codes”. This is how the writer describes it,

Two years ago Hanadi’s ‘martyrdom’ operation would have been unthinkable. In traditional Palestinian society a woman is the responsibility of her male relatives. Terror organisations could not recruit women as would-be suicide bombers without transgressing the honour codes that require women to seek permission for every action they take outside the family home. To secretly recruit a woman would be seen as an insult to the family’s male honour.

Previous female suicide bombings were carried out by Fatah, the secular movement loyal to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. But the women were either divorced or rejected by their immediate family group.

This is a particularly insidious piece of racist propaganda. Note the separation between ‘traditional’ ‘honour codes’ and the ‘secular’ Al Fatah movement, but even here, the women recruited we are told, “were either divorced or rejected by their immediate family group”.

The writer could have been describing the social interactions of a tribe of baboons instead of human beings, as implicit in the description is the notion of a fixed hierarchy of behaviour, that for anyone to step outside of, implies a kind of sociopathology, where only the “rejected” are considered suitable candidates for “martyrdom”.

And contradicting his previous assertions on the ‘traditional role of women’, the writer goes on to tell us that,

Hanadi was unusually independent. She was the oldest girl in a family of five girls and two boys, and had studied for a law degree in Jareesh University in Jordan.

Note too, that the writer only calls her by her first name, another signifier that diminishes her. Would he say Tony, when referring to Blair I wonder? And quoting Ms Darajat’s brother, we learn that,

“She was always ambitious even as a child. She said she wanted to be a lawyer even then. And she refused to get married because she wanted to continue her studies. She turned down a few suitors,’ says Rahmeh.’

So it appears that Ms Darajat was very much a modern woman, independent and ambitious but living in a society not unlike our own, as the following example illustrates. A woman seeking to be nominated as a candidate for political office as an MP was subjected to the following by a (male) member of the selection committee, who asked her, “What would her husband do for sex when she was away during the week at Westminster?” Ah, the ‘honour code’ of the white, western male, that is so difficult to do away with.

“Bride of death?”

The most outrageous assertion is when the writer manages to introduce the sexuality of Palestinian women into the equation when he quotes from the video Ms Dajarat made prior to her mission,

‘By the will of God I decided to be the sixth martyr who makes her body full with splinters in order to enter every Zionist heart who occupied our country. We are not the only ones who will taste death from their occupation. As they sow so will they reap.’

This bride of death’s language is suffused with sexuality but the real woman in the video timidly puts her face in her hands out of embarrassment and blushes as her set piece ends. The camera pulls back to show she is standing under her brother’s martyrdom poster. And thus is the blood red fruit of martyrdom complete.

Perhaps she was embarrassed at making a video, as anyone unused to such a process would be, especially knowing she was shortly going to die. How he makes a connection between her statement and her sexuality, is beyond me, especially as firstly, in being translated from the Arabic, much of the sense of what it means to an Arabic speaker is lost and secondly, it conforms to all the prepared statements I’ve read before. This is cheap and tawdry journalism at its worst with its corny references to “the blood red fruit of martyrdom” echoing his opening remarks. “[B]ride of death,” Mr Toolis? Come off it!

The final paragraph pretty well sums up Mr Toolis’s racist attitudes when he tells us,

But no wall or checkpoint search will ever be able entirely to stop a wounded creature like Hanadi Darajat, with revenge in her heart, from killing herself and as many Israelis as she can. In the Middle East another terrible harvest of martyrdom and death is just beginning.

No longer a woman or even a human being, Ms Darajat is now a “wounded creature”, perhaps a baboon, now reduced to animal actions by Mr Toolis? Shame on you Mr Toolis. I despair, I really do.

Russia Returns to the Middle East

The rationale of seeing, in conscientious Texan-based 14-year old Ahmed Mohamed, a fledging terrorist, has a good number of followers. This takes the form of denial that this has anything to do with Islam, and everything to do with being sensible about security in the name of the homeland. Such logic demands that terrorists come in all forms, though even that assumes a clipped, selective form.

Given that the US school can be a dangerous place to learn, let alone teach in, the fear mongering apparatus has become as indispensable as debates about curricula. It all makes truancy or home schooling a far more attractive option. Ahmed may well have thought so when his home made clock was thought by school and police authorities as a terrorist device.

The New York Post, in first claiming this was not an issue of race, decided to make it just that, channelling fears of white anxieties and fantasies. One way of dealing with a problem is finding another one. “When is America going to get serious about the problem of white kids getting suspended from school for nothing?”

This tactic is a fundamental part of dog-whistle politics in education, of which no side is exempt.After conceding that the police overreacted to the treatment offered Ahmed, the apologia gathered steam: “the device did look like something Ethan Hunt would lob out of a helicopter at the last minute in ‘Mission: Impossible.’”[1]

This fantasy of mass, incendiary violence, with its good Hollywood trimmings, takes shape in defiance of any empirical logic. In fact, there is an underlying sense that we should forget such irritating logic altogether.False analogies would follow. One child’s mistreatment could be compared with that of another. But underlying such a response was a calculus: which child could have posed a graver threat? Charles Cooke, for instance, could only see wires in the clock that “looks a lot more like a bomb tan a pop tart looks like a gun.”

Sarah Palin made the most direct, unvarnished point of all. This was the clarion call for white victimhood. “Yep, believing that’s a clock in a school pencil box is like behaving Barack Obama is ruling over the most transparent administration in history. Right. That’s a clock, and I am the queen of England.”

Palin’s remarks, more to the point, even suggest that the American playground is not only justifiably violent but morally appropriate in being so. Children should hardly be disciplined, she suggests, for being out on the deer hunt with the dad who forgot “he had ammo in his truck when he parked in the school’s lot later that day.” We then find ourselves in a semantic world of anticipated violence.

Much of the resentment stemmed from the sanctification of Ahmed, the liberal political stuffing that subsequently pillowed him. His mistreatment had assumed poster boy proportions. This is not what is done in America, a violation of its core values – and so forth. It also allowed for another form of orgiastic commemoration to take place, suggesting that change has to assume a public spectacle crowned by a single event.A person who endures a certain unjust fate becomes, as Alex the protagonist in A Clockwork Orange does, a victim of the political, moral parade. In Anthony Burgess’ work, the violent Alex is subjected to the remorseless Ludovico technique administered by Dr. Brodsky to cure him of his “ultra-violent” tendencies. Beethoven’s music becomes an accessory to forcibly curing him as his eyes are held open, thereby eviscerating freewill. Then come opponents of the technique, who also feature.Alex finds himself in the middle of an ideological scrum – one that has been read as a symbolic tussle between the views and writings of the more liberal monk Pelagius, and the doctrinaire and austere St. Augustine.

The public relations complex, seeing a chance to place boy with clock on a pedestal, went running. Perceived bleeding heart liberals stormed the bastions of their opponents by showing how cheesy tolerance and finger pointing will get you anywhere. But for all of that, the structural changes needed to affect such reform are never entertained. The agitprop of grievance, however, is the mother of necessity.The conservatives, in their own aggrieved responses, entertain suggestions of denial: there is no racial divide, and in heaven’s name, do not bring the school into this context, except to perhaps chide the authorities for an understandable miscalculation. Kevin Williamson huffed at what he perceived to be a “phony case of Islamophobia”. “If it’s a comment on anything, it’s on the astonishing deficit of common sense at MacArthur High School and among local authorities.”[2] But if such assumptions are not battled in a school, where supposedly learning is forged, then where?

All in all, it did look frightfully disingenuous. As Robby Soave, writing for Reason explained: “I stand with Ahmed, too. But I also stand with Alex Stone.” It meant that every child wrongly sent down for a misunderstanding would need a ticket to the White House with the accompanying fan fare and trinkets. At the very least, none should have to be there in the first place to deal with such a problem.

This has little to do with Ahmed so much as an establishment (or counter-establishment) that turns a dilemma into a fetish; and a case of humanity into celebrity tartdom. When it comes to the publicity divide, everyone needs manufactured heroes to exploit.

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

Notes

[1] http://nypost.com/2015/09/19/how-ahmeds-clock-became-a-false-convenient-tale-of-racism/

[2] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/424202/ahmed-mohamed-clock

 

There was a simple aim at the heart of the top-secret program: Record the website browsing habits of “every visible user on the Internet.”

Before long, billions of digital records about ordinary people’s online activities were being stored every day. Among them were details cataloging visits to porn, social media and news websites, search engines, chat forums, and blogs.

The mass surveillance operation code-named KARMA POLICE — was launched by British spies about seven years ago without any public debate or scrutiny. It was just one part of a giant global Internet spying apparatus built by the United Kingdom’s electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

The revelations about the scope of the British agency’s surveillance are contained in documents obtained by The Intercept from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Previous reports based on the leaked files have exposed how GCHQ taps into Internet cables to monitor communications on a vast scale, but many details about what happens to the data after it has been vacuumed up have remained unclear.

Amid a renewed push from the U.K. government for more surveillance powers, more than two dozen documents being disclosed today by The Intercept reveal for the first time several major strands of GCHQ’s existing electronic eavesdropping capabilities.

One system builds profiles showing people’s web browsing histories. Another analyzes instant messenger communications, emails, Skype calls, text messages, cell phone locations, and social media interactions. Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps.

The surveillance is underpinned by an opaque legal regime that has authorized GCHQ to sift through huge archives of metadata about the private phone calls, emails and Internet browsing logs of Brits, Americans, and any other citizens  all without a court order or judicial warrant.

Metadata reveals information about a communication  such as the sender and recipient of an email, or the phone numbers someone called and at what time  but not the written content of the message or the audio of the call.

As of 2012, GCHQ was storing about 50 billion metadata records about online communications and Web browsing activity every day, with plans in place to boost capacity to 100 billion daily by the end of that year. The agency, under cover of secrecy, was working to create what it said would soon be the biggest government surveillance system anywhere in the world.

Radio radicalization

The power of KARMA POLICE was illustrated in 2009, when GCHQ launched a top-secret operation to collect intelligence about people using the Internet to listen to radio shows.

The agency used a sample of nearly 7 million metadata records, gathered over a period of three months, to observe the listening habits of more than 200,000 people across 185 countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Germany.

A summary report detailing the operation shows that one aim of the project was to research “potential misuse” of Internet radio stations to spread radical Islamic ideas.

GCHQ spies from a unit known as the Network Analysis Center compiled a list of the most popular stations that they had identified, most of which had no association with Islam, like France-based Hotmix Radio, which plays pop, rock, funk and hip-hop music.

They zeroed in on any stations found broadcasting recitations from the Quran, such as a popular Iraqi radio station and a station playing sermons from a prominent Egyptian imam named Sheikh Muhammad Jebril. They then used KARMA POLICE to find out more about these stations’ listeners, identifying them as users on Skype, Yahoo, and Facebook.

The summary report says the spies selected one Egypt-based listener for “profiling” and investigated which other websites he had been visiting. Surveillance records revealed the listener had viewed the porn site Redtube, as well as Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Google’s blogging platform Blogspot, the photo-sharing site Flickr, a website about Islam, and an Arab advertising site.

GCHQ’s documents indicate that the plans for KARMA POLICE were drawn up between 2007 and 2008. The system was designed to provide the agency with “either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the Internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the Internet.”

The origin of the surveillance system’s name is not discussed in the documents. But KARMA POLICE is also the name of a popular song released in 1997 by the Grammy Award-winning British band Radiohead, suggesting the spies may have been fans.

A verse repeated throughout the hit song includes the lyric, “This is what you’ll get, when you mess with us.”

The Black Hole

GCHQ vacuums up the website browsing histories using “probes” that tap into the international fiber-optic cables that transport Internet traffic across the world.

A huge volume of the Internet data GCHQ collects flows directly into a massive repository named Black Hole, which is at the core of the agency’s online spying operations, storing raw logs of intercepted material before it has been subject to analysis.

Black Hole contains data collected by GCHQ as part of bulk “unselected” surveillance, meaning it is not focused on particular “selected” targets and instead includes troves of data indiscriminately swept up about ordinary people’s online activities. Between August 2007 and March 2009, GCHQ documents say that Black Hole was used to store more than 1.1 trillion “events”  a term the agency uses to refer to metadata records  with about 10 billion new entries added every day.

As of March 2009, the largest slice of data Black Hole held  41 percent  was about people’s Internet browsing histories. The rest included a combination of email and instant messenger records, details about search engine queries, information about social media activity, logs related to hacking operations, and data on people’s use of tools to browse the Internet anonymously.

Throughout this period, as smartphone sales started to boom, the frequency of people’s Internet use was steadily increasing. In tandem, British spies were working frantically to bolster their spying capabilities, with plans afoot to expand the size of Black Hole and other repositories to handle an avalanche of new data.

By 2010, according to the documents, GCHQ was logging 30 billion metadata records per day. By 2012, collection had increased to 50 billion per day, and work was underway to double capacity to 100 billion. The agency was developing “unprecedented” techniques to perform what it called “population-scale” data mining, monitoring all communications across entire countries in an effort to detect patterns or behaviors deemed suspicious. It was creating what it saidwould be, by 2013, “the world’s biggest” surveillance engine “to run cyber operations and to access better, more valued data for customers to make a real world difference.”

HERE WAS A SIMPLE AIM at the heart of the top-secret program: Record the website browsing habits of “every visible user on the Internet.”

Before long, billions of digital records about ordinary people’s online activities were being stored every day. Among them were details cataloging visits to porn, social media and news websites, search engines, chat forums, and blogs.

The mass surveillance operation — code-named KARMA POLICE — was launched by British spies about seven years ago without any public debate or scrutiny. It was just one part of a giant global Internet spying apparatus built by the United Kingdom’s electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

The revelations about the scope of the British agency’s surveillance are contained in documents obtained by The Intercept from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Previous reports based on the leaked files have exposed how GCHQ taps into Internet cables to monitor communications on a vast scale, but many details about what happens to the data after it has been vacuumed up have remained unclear.

Amid a renewed push from the U.K. government for more surveillance powers, more than two dozen documents being disclosed today by The Intercept reveal for the first time several major strands of GCHQ’s existing electronic eavesdropping capabilities.

One system builds profiles showing people’s web browsing histories. Another analyzes instant messenger communications, emails, Skype calls, text messages, cell phone locations, and social media interactions. Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps.

The surveillance is underpinned by an opaque legal regime that has authorized GCHQ to sift through huge archives of metadata about the private phone calls, emails and Internet browsing logs of Brits, Americans, and any other citizens — all without a court order or judicial warrant.

Metadata reveals information about a communication — such as the sender and recipient of an email, or the phone numbers someone called and at what time — but not the written content of the message or the audio of the call.

As of 2012, GCHQ was storing about 50 billion metadata records about online communications and Web browsing activity every day, with plans in place to boost capacity to 100 billion daily by the end of that year. The agency, under cover of secrecy, was working to create what it said would soon be the biggest government surveillance system anywhere in the world.

Radio radicalization

The power of KARMA POLICE was illustrated in 2009, when GCHQ launched a top-secret operation to collect intelligence about people using the Internet to listen to radio shows.

The agency used a sample of nearly 7 million metadata records, gathered over a period of three months, to observe the listening habits of more than 200,000 people across 185 countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Germany.

A summary report detailing the operation shows that one aim of the project was to research “potential misuse” of Internet radio stations to spread radical Islamic ideas.

GCHQ spies from a unit known as the Network Analysis Center compiled a list of the most popular stations that they had identified, most of which had no association with Islam, like France-based Hotmix Radio, which plays pop, rock, funk and hip-hop music.

They zeroed in on any stations found broadcasting recitations from the Quran, such as a popular Iraqi radio station and a station playing sermons from a prominent Egyptian imam named Sheikh Muhammad Jebril. They then used KARMA POLICE to find out more about these stations’ listeners, identifying them as users on Skype, Yahoo, and Facebook.

The summary report says the spies selected one Egypt-based listener for “profiling” and investigated which other websites he had been visiting. Surveillance records revealed the listener had viewed the porn site Redtube, as well as Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Google’s blogging platform Blogspot, the photo-sharing site Flickr, a website about Islam, and an Arab advertising site.

GCHQ’s documents indicate that the plans for KARMA POLICE were drawn up between 2007 and 2008. The system was designed to provide the agency with “either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the Internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the Internet.”

The origin of the surveillance system’s name is not discussed in the documents. But KARMA POLICE is also the name of a popular song released in 1997 by the Grammy Award-winning British band Radiohead, suggesting the spies may have been fans.

A verse repeated throughout the hit song includes the lyric, “This is what you’ll get, when you mess with us.”

The Black Hole

GCHQ vacuums up the website browsing histories using “probes” that tap into the international fiber-optic cables that transport Internet traffic across the world.

A huge volume of the Internet data GCHQ collects flows directly into a massive repository named Black Hole, which is at the core of the agency’s online spying operations, storing raw logs of intercepted material before it has been subject to analysis.

Black Hole contains data collected by GCHQ as part of bulk “unselected” surveillance, meaning it is not focused on particular “selected” targets and instead includes troves of data indiscriminately swept up about ordinary people’s online activities. Between August 2007 and March 2009, GCHQdocuments say that Black Hole was used to store more than 1.1 trillion “events” — a term the agency uses to refer to metadata records — with about 10 billion new entries added every day.

As of March 2009, the largest slice of data Black Hole held — 41 percent —was about people’s Internet browsing histories. The rest included a combination of email and instant messenger records, details about search engine queries, information about social media activity, logs related to hacking operations, and data on people’s use of tools to browse the Internet anonymously.

Throughout this period, as smartphone sales started to boom, the frequency of people’s Internet use was steadily increasing. In tandem, British spies were working frantically to bolster their spying capabilities, with plans afoot to expand the size of Black Hole and other repositories to handle an avalanche of new data.

By 2010, according to the documents, GCHQ was logging 30 billion metadata records per day. By 2012, collection had increased to 50 billion per day, and work was underway to double capacity to 100 billion. The agency was developing “unprecedented” techniques to perform what it called “population-scale” data mining, monitoring all communications across entire countries in an effort to detect patterns or behaviors deemed suspicious. It was creating what it said would be, by 2013, “the world’s biggest” surveillance engine “to run cyber operations and to access better, more valued data for customers to make a real world difference.”

KARMA POLICE, for instance, works by showing the IP addresses of people visiting websites. IP addresses are unique identifiers that are allocated to computers when they connect to the Internet.

In isolation, IPs would not be of much value to GCHQ, because they are just a series of numbers — like 195.92.47.101 — and are not attached to a name. But when paired with other data they become a rich source of personal information.

To find out the identity of a person or persons behind an IP address, GCHQ analysts can enter the series of numbers into a separate system named MUTANT BROTH, which is used to sift through data contained in the Black Hole repository about vast amounts of tiny intercepted files known as cookies.

Cookies are automatically placed on computers to identify and sometimes track people browsing the Internet, often for advertising purposes. When you visit or log into a website, a cookie is usually stored on your computer so that the site recognizes you. It can contain your username or email address, your IP address, and even details about your login password and the kind of Internet browser you are using — like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

For GCHQ, this information is incredibly valuable. The agency refers to cookies internally as “target detection identifiers” or “presence events” because of how they help it monitor people’s Internet use and uncover online identities.

If the agency wants to track down a person’s IP address, it can enter the person’s email address or username into MUTANT BROTH to attempt to find it, scanning through the cookies that come up linking those identifiers to an IP address. Likewise, if the agency already has the IP address and wants to track down the person behind it, it can use MUTANT BROTH to find email addresses, usernames, and even passwords associated with the IP.

Once the agency has corroborated a targeted person’s IP address with an email address or username, it can then use the tiny cookie files associated with these identifiers to perform a so-called “pattern of life” analysis showing the times of day and locations at which the person is most active online.

the agency was extracting data containing information about people’s visits to the adult website YouPorn

In turn, the usernames and email and IP addresses can be entered into other systems that enable the agency to spy on the target’s emails, instant messenger conversations, and web browsing history. All GCHQ needs is a single identifier — a “selector,” in agency jargon — to follow a digital trail that can reveal a vast amount about a person’s online activities.

A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people’s visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.

Other websites listed as “sources” of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.’s Channel 4.

In one six-month period between December 2007 and June 2008, the document says, more than 18 billion records from cookies and other similar identifiers were accessible through MUTANT BROTH.

The data is searched by GCHQ analysts in a hunt for behavior online that could be connected to terrorism or other criminal activity. But it has also served a broader and more controversial purpose — helping the agency hack into European companies’ computer networks.

In the lead up to its secret mission targeting Netherlands-based Gemalto, the largest SIM card manufacturer in the world, GCHQ used MUTANT BROTH in an effort to identify the company’s employees so it could hack into their computers.

The system helped the agency analyze intercepted Facebook cookies it believed were associated with Gemalto staff located at offices in France and Poland. GCHQ later successfully infiltrated Gemalto’s internal networks, stealing encryption keys produced by the company that protect the privacy of cell phone communications.

Similarly, MUTANT BROTH proved integral to GCHQ’s hack of Belgian telecommunications provider Belgacom. The agency entered IP addresses associated with Belgacom into MUTANT BROTH to uncover information about the company’s employees. Cookies associated with the IPs revealed the Google, Yahoo, and LinkedIn accounts of three Belgacom engineers, whose computers were then targeted by the agency and infected with malware.

The hacking operation resulted in GCHQ gaining deep access into the most sensitive parts of Belgacom’s internal systems, granting British spies the ability to intercept communications passing through the company’s networks.

Cryptome surveillance

In March, a U.K. parliamentary committee published the findings of an 18-month review of GCHQ’s operations and called for an overhaul of the laws that regulate the spying. The committee raised concerns about the agency gathering what it described as “bulk personal datasets” being held about “a wide range of people.” However, it censored the section of the report describing what these “datasets” contained, despite acknowledging that they “may be highly intrusive.”

The Snowden documents shine light on some of the core GCHQ bulk data-gathering programs that the committee was likely referring to — pulling back the veil of secrecy that has shielded some of the agency’s most controversial surveillance operations from public scrutiny.

KARMA POLICE and MUTANT BROTH are among the key bulk collection systems. But they do not operate in isolation — and the scope of GCHQ’s spying extends far beyond them.

The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as:SOCIAL ANTHROPOID, which is used to analyze metadata on emails, instant messenger chats, social media connections and conversations, plus “telephony” metadata about phone calls, cell phone locations, text and multimedia messages; MEMORY HOLE, which logs queries entered into search engines and associates each search with an IP address;MARBLED GECKO, which sifts through details about searches people have entered into Google Maps and Google Earth; andINFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums.

GCHQ has other programs that it uses to analyze the content of intercepted communications, such as the full written body of emails and the audio of phone calls. One of the most important content collection capabilities isTEMPORA, which mines vast amounts of emails, instant messages, voice calls and other communications and makes them accessible through a Google-style search tool named XKEYSCORE.

As of September 2012, TEMPORA was collecting “more than 40 billion pieces of content a day” and it was being used to spy on people across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, according to a top-secret memo outlining the scope of the program. The existence of TEMPORA was first revealed by The Guardian in June 2013.

To analyze all of the communications it intercepts and to build a profile of the individuals it is monitoring, GCHQ uses a variety of different tools that can pull together all of the relevant information and make it accessible through a single interface.

SAMUEL PEPYS is one such tool, built by the British spies to analyze both the content and metadata of emails, browsing sessions, and instant messages as they are being intercepted in real time.

One screenshot of SAMUEL PEPYS in action shows the agency using it to monitor an individual in Sweden who visited a page about GCHQ on the U.S.-based anti-secrecy website Cryptome.

Domestic spying

Partly due to the U.K.’s geographic location — situated between the United States and the western edge of continental Europe — a large amount of the world’s Internet traffic passes through its territory across international data cables.

In 2010, GCHQ noted that what amounted to “25 percent of all Internet traffic” was transiting the U.K. through some 1,600 different cables. The agency said that it could “survey the majority of the 1,600” and “select the most valuable to switch into our processing systems.”

Many of the cables flow deep under the Atlantic Ocean from the U.S. East Coast, landing on the white-sand beaches of Cornwall in the southwest of England. Others transport data between the U.K. and countries including France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway by crossing below the North Sea and coming aground at various locations on England’s east coast.

According to Joss Wright, a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, tapping into the cables allows GCHQ to monitor a large portion of foreign communications. But the cables also transport masses of wholly domestic British emails and online chats, because when anyone in the U.K. sends an email or visits a website, their computer will routinely send and receive data from servers that are located overseas.

“I could send a message from my computer here [in England] to my wife’s computer in the next room and on its way it could go through the U.S., France, and other countries,” Wright says. “That’s just the way the Internet is designed.”

In other words, Wright adds, that means “a lot” of British data and communications transit across international cables daily, and are liable to be swept into GCHQ’s databases.

GCHQ is authorized to conduct dragnet surveillance of the international data cables through so-called external warrants that are signed off by a government minister.

The external warrants permit the agency to monitor communications in foreign countries as well as British citizens’ international calls and emails —for example, a call from Islamabad to London. They prohibit GCHQ from reading or listening to the content of “internal” U.K. to U.K. emails and phone calls, which are supposed to be filtered out from GCHQ’s systems if they are inadvertently intercepted unless additional authorization is granted to scrutinize them.

However, the same rules do not apply to metadata. A little-known loophole in the law allows GCHQ to use external warrants to collect and analyze bulk metadata about the emails, phone calls, and Internet browsing activities of British people, citizens of closely allied countries, and others, regardless of whether the data is derived from domestic U.K. to U.K. communications and browsing sessions or otherwise.

In March, the existence of this loophole was quietly acknowledged by the U.K. parliamentary committee’s surveillance review, which stated in a section of its report that “special protection and additional safeguards” did not apply to metadata swept up using external warrants and that domestic British metadata could therefore be lawfully “returned as a result of searches” conducted by GCHQ.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, GCHQ appears to have readily exploited this obscure legal technicality. Secret policy guidance papers issued to the agency’s analysts instruct them that they can sift through huge troves of indiscriminately collected metadata records to spy on anyone regardless of their nationality. The guidance makes clear that there is no exemption or extra privacy protection for British people or citizens from countries that are members of the Five Eyes, a surveillance alliance that the U.K. is part of alongside the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

“If you are searching a purely Events only database such as MUTANT BROTH, the issue of location does not occur,” states one internal GCHQ policy document, which is marked with a “last modified” date of July 2012. The document adds that analysts are free to search the databases for British metadata “without further authorization” by inputing a U.K. “selector,” meaning a unique identifier such as a person’s email or IP address, username, or phone number.

Authorization is “not needed for individuals in the U.K.,” another GCHQdocument explains, because metadata has been judged “less intrusive than communications content.” All the spies are required to do to mine the metadata troves is write a short “justification” or “reason” for each search they conduct and then click a button on their computer screen.

Intelligence GCHQ collects on British persons of interest is shared with domestic security agency MI5, which usually takes the lead on spying operations within the U.K. MI5 conducts its own extensive domestic surveillance as part of a program called DIGINT (digital intelligence).

We think and behave differently based on the assumption that people may be watching.

GCHQ’s documents suggest that it typically retains metadata for periods of between 30 days to six months. It stores the content of communications for a shorter period of time, varying between three to 30 days. The retention periods can be extended if deemed necessary for “cyber defense.”

One secret policy paper dated from January 2010 lists the wide range of information the agency classes as metadata — including location data that could be used to track your movements, your email, instant messenger, and social networking “buddy lists,” logs showing who you have communicated with by phone or email, the passwords you use to access “communications services” (such as an email account), and information about websites you have viewed.

Records showing the full website addresses you have visited — for instance, www.gchq.gov.uk/what_we_do — are treated as content. But the first part of an address you have visited — for instance, www.gchq.gov.uk — is treated as metadata.

In isolation, a single metadata record of a phone call, email, or website visit may not reveal much about a person’s private life, according to Ethan Zuckerman, director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Civic Media.

But if accumulated and analyzed over a period of weeks or months, these details would be “extremely personal,” he told The Intercept, because they could reveal a person’s movements, habits, religious beliefs, political views, relationships, and even sexual preferences.

For Zuckerman, who has studied the social and political ramifications of surveillance, the most concerning aspect of large-scale government data collection is that it can be “corrosive towards democracy” — leading to a chilling effect on freedom of expression and communication.

“Once we know there’s a reasonable chance that we are being watched in one fashion or another it’s hard for that not to have a ‘panopticon effect,’” he said, “where we think and behave differently based on the assumption that people may be watching and paying attention to what we are doing.”

Light oversight

A GCHQ spokesman declined to answer any specific questions for this story, citing a “longstanding policy” not to comment on intelligence matters. The spokesman insisted in an emailed statement that GCHQ’s work is “carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight.”

It is unclear, however, whether there are sufficient internal checks in place in practice to ensure GCHQ’s spies don’t abuse their access to the troves of personal information.

According to agency’s documents, just 10 percent of its “targeting” of individuals for surveillance is audited annually and a random selection of metadata searches are audited every six months.

When compared to surveillance rules in place in the U.S., GCHQ notes in one document that the U.K. has “a light oversight regime.”

The more lax British spying regulations are reflected in secret internal rules that highlight greater restrictions on how NSA databases can be accessed. The NSA’s troves can be searched for data on British citizens, one document states, but they cannot be mined for information about Americans or other citizens from countries in the Five Eyes alliance.

No such constraints are placed on GCHQ’s own databases, which can be sifted for records on the phone calls, emails, and Internet usage of Brits, Americans, and citizens from any other country.

The scope of GCHQ’s surveillance powers explain in part why Snowden toldThe Guardian in June 2013 that U.K. surveillance is “worse than the U.S.” In an interview with Der Spiegel in July 2013, Snowden added that British Internet cables were “radioactive” and joked: “Even the Queen’s selfies to the pool boy get logged.”

In recent years, the biggest barrier to GCHQ’s mass collection of data does not appear to have come in the form of legal or policy restrictions. Rather, it is the increased use of encryption technology that protects the privacy of communications that has posed the biggest potential hindrance to the agency’s activities.

“The spread of encryption … threatens our ability to do effective target discovery/development,” says a top-secret report co-authored by an official from the British agency and an NSA employee in 2011.

“Pertinent metadata events will be locked within the encrypted channels and difficult, if not impossible, to prise out,” the report says, adding that the agencies were working on a plan that would “(hopefully) allow our Internet Exploitation strategy to prevail.”

———

Documents published with this article:

• TDI Introduction
• TINT External July 2009
• Social Anthropoid Briefing
• Sensitive Targeting Authorisation
• QFD BLACKHOLE Technology Behind INOC
• Pull Steering Group Minutes
• Access: Vision 2013
• Op Highland Fling Event Log
• Operational Engineering November 2010
• NGE BLACK HOLE ConOp
• Next Generation Events
• Events Analysis
• Legalities
• JCE UK Legalities Context
• HRA Auditing
• GCHQ Analytic Cloud Challenges
• Events
• Demystifying NGE Rock Ridge
• Data Stored in BLACK HOLE
• Cyber Defence Operations Legal Policy
• Crypt Discovery Activity
• Content-Metadata Matrix
• Cloud Developers Exchange July 2011
• Broadcast Analysis
• Blazing Saddles Tools
• Architecture Risk 2012
• ADD SD BLACK HOLE
• 200G Iris Access

America is a warrior state, waging direct and/or proxy wars at home and abroad throughout its entire history – today on a global scale, with an arsenal of weapons of unimaginable destructive power able to end life on earth, and lunatics in charge perhaps planning to use them.

In September 2010, Stop NATO editor Rick Rozoff said the Pentagon is using the Baltic states as “training grounds for Afghan and future wars.”

After NATO expanded from 16 – 28 members from 1999 – 2009 by adding all former Warsaw Pact countries, including former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Washington used their territory for military bases, troop and weapons deployments, regional “air patrols and the initial stages of a continent-wide anti-ballistic missile system beyond” NATO plans for an Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence Programme.

Positioning US and other NATO forces near Russia’s border violated the 1991 (ratified) Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), limiting “several categories of conventional military equipment in Europe,” Rozoff explained.

New NATO members Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland were “transformed into training grounds for the Pentagon’s and NATO’s wars abroad” – including potential confrontation with Russia, regular large-scale military exercises conducted for this purpose, literally readying for possible WW III.

Large numbers of US-led NATO troop deployments and provocative military exercises close to Russia’s borders should scare everyone. Last spring, US-installed NATO Secretary-General Jens Stolenberg said dealing with Russia requires “a strong collective alliance” – code language for preparing for military confrontation?

He, US officials and other Western ones consistently lie about nonexistent “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, as well as deploying troops and warplanes in Syria.

Moscow threatens no one. It’s the continent’s leading peacemaker. Washington threatens world peace, security and stability. Its permanent war agenda risks the unthinkable – possible nuclear armageddon.

On September 25, Sputnik News and RT International both discussed German newspaper Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten’s (DWN) report about Washington preparing for possible hybrid war with Russia in the Baltics region – focusing on irregular troop deployments, destabilization, provocative rallies and cyber attacks.

Former US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy was quoted, saying “Russia’s (nonexistent) invasion of Eastern Ukraine urged the US to dust off its emergency plans. They were pretty outdated.”

Washington’s coup followed by orchestrated Kiev aggression on Donbass is used as a pretext to blame Moscow for their crimes – the Big Lie repeated ad nauseam by Western officials and media scoundrels, knowingly and willfully turning truth on its head as part of a longstanding plan to marginalize, weaken, contain, isolate, destabilize and weaken Russia, America’s key rival along with China.

DWN said hyping a “Russian threat” is used to justify deploying large numbers of heavily armed US troops in Eastern Europe, hold large-scale provocative war games near its borders and get NATO nations to increase military spending.

German ZDF television reported US plans to position powerful B61 thermonuclear bombs at the Luftwaffe’s Buchel Air Base. It’s Germany’s only military base with US nuclear weapons already – 20 since 2007.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded, calling Washington’s intention a “violation of the strategic balance in Europe…And without a doubt, it would demand that Russia take necessary countermeasures to restore the strategic balance and parity.”

An unnamed Russian “military-diplomatic” source said Moscow may respond by deploying Iskander-M tactical missiles in Kaliningrad, its Eastern European enclave bordering Lithuania and Poland.

“The issue is being studied,” the source said. “A final decision will be made after a detailed analysis of the potential threats.”

In 2010, Bundestag opposition members called for removing US nuclear weapons from German territory entirely. At the time, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said “(t)he time is right for a new beginning on nuclear disarmament.” Polls show strong anti-nuclear public sentiment.

Former German Defense Ministry Parliamentary State Secretary Willy Wimmer told ZDF television Washington’s plan to deploy B61s to Buchel gives it “new attack options against Russia.” It’s “a conscious (anti-Russian) provocation…”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told ZDF “(t)he comprehensive analysis of the situation points to the threat posed by the increasing military capability of NATO and its endowment with global functions, which it performs in violation of the international law, as well as the encroachment of the military infrastructure of NATO members on the borders of the Russian Federation.”

America positioning nuclear weapons on European territory breaches NPT’s letter and spirit – prohibiting the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states.

Washington’s claim about them being under US control doesn’t wash. Most important is their potential use, the risk of nuclear war, the top priority for world leaders to avoid at all costs.

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.

 

Jeremy Corbyn has a huge mandate from Labour members to oppose British bombing in the Middle East, a new poll showed yesterday.

Results of a Labour List survey of 2,453 supporters found that 63 per cent support the party leader’s opposition to air strikes in Syria.

Just 29 per cent said they wanted the party to support Tory PM David Cameron’s plan to use “hard military force” against Isis in Syria.

Stop the War Coalition chair Lindsey German said it showed most Labour members were “in tune with new leader Jeremy Corbyn.”

She told the Star: “The solution to every problem in the Middle East seems to be bombing, if you listen to the Prime Minister.

But the proposed bombing of Syria will only worsen the problem it is supposed to solve. It will worsen the refugee crisis and would help to create more terrorism. Most people understand this better than the politicians.

The poll will give confidence to Mr Corbyn and left activists before a possible vote on Syria air strikes at Labour conference next week.

An emergency motion is set to be debated that demands Labour MPs vote against bombing in Parliament unless it is authorised by the UN.

Not only do Labour members oppose a new intervention, they also want an end to British bombing in Iraq.

A squadron of more than 80 RAF Tornado jets are already bombing Isis targets in Iraq and the strikes are scheduled to continue until at least 2017.

But 56 per cent of Labour supporters polled are opposed to those air strikes, compared with 39 per cent who support the intervention.

The US government has been relying on its standard narrative that the Syria crisis emerged spontaneously after an “Arab Spring” inspired protest was violently suppressed by the Syrian government. The entire US intervention was justified on these grounds. Thus the Obama Administration, as it did in Ukraine, has attempted to disavow any role in fomenting the uprising and thus any responsibility for the violence that ensued.

But like much else in US foreign policy the narrative is wholly false, constructed to propagandize the American people in favor of US intervention and shield the US government from any fallout.

In fact the US government had long had its sights on regime change in Syria, starting at least with the Project for a New American Century’s plan peddled to George W. Bush to overthrow five countries in five years and remake the entire Middle East. The neocons always like to think big, but like any slimy salesman they never deliver as promised. Their Iraq “cakewalk” proved a deathwalk.

In 2006, according to a secret State Department cable made public by Wikileaks, US Embassy Damascus drafted an extensive memo outlining nine “vulnerabilities” of the Syrian government with corresponding “possible actions” on how the US can exploit these “vulnerabilities” to destabilize the government of Syria.

The State Department cable was authored by William V. Roebuck, who was at the time the Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Damascus. Roebuck has since been rewarded for his “good work” on destabilizing Syria and now serves as US Ambassador to Bahrain, where one presumes his role is rather the opposite of what it was in Syria.

Roebuck’s bio suggests he has been somewhat of a regime change rock star: He managed the fallout from US regime change operations in Egypt, Libya, and Iraq, with a stint at the US Embassy in Israel as well.

What did Roebuck advise the US to do to Syria in 2006? Exploit the Syrian government’s fight against Islamist extremists in attempt to undermine Assad’s position in the region.

That’s right: use Syria’s fight against al-Qaeda against it.

Perhaps it’s best to let Roebuck speak for himself. The Syrian government’s “vulnerability” is:

Extremist elements increasingly use Syria as a base, while the SARG (ed: Syrian government) has taken some actions against groups stating links to Al-Qaeda. With the killing of the al-Qaida leader on the border with Lebanon in early December and the increasing terrorist attacks inside Syria culminating in the September 12 attack against the US embassy, the SARG,s policies in Iraq and support for terrorists elsewhere as well can be seen to be coming home to roost.

How to exploit that vulnerability? In Roebuck’s own words:

Possible Actions: — Publicize presence of transiting (or externally focused) extremist groups in Syria, not limited to mention of Hamas and PIJ. Publicize Syrian efforts against extremist groups in a way that suggests weakness, signs of instability, and uncontrolled blowback. The SARG,s argument (usually used after terror attacks in Syria) that it too is a victim of terrorism should be used against it to give greater prominence to increasing signs of instability within Syria. (emphasis added).

The US had long planned to overthrow Assad well before 2011 and had obviously spent a great deal of time, effort, and money cooking up plans to exploit whatever “vulnerabilities” he may have had to help make that overthrow happen. Roebuck captures that essence in the summary of his 2006 US Embassy Damascus secret cable:

The bottom line is that Bashar is entering the new year in a stronger position than he has been in several years, but those strengths also carry with them — or sometimes mask ) vulnerabilities. If we are ready to capitalize, they will offer us opportunities to disrupt his decision-making, keep him off-balance, and make him pay a premium for his mistakes.

If we are ready to capitalize…

Yes, they were ready to capitalize. And more than 200,000 people have been killed as the US “capitalized” on vulnerabilities produced by Assad’s fight against terrorists unleashed on his country by the US attack on Iraq. At this point, US foreign policy toward Syria has become too grotesque to even contemplate. In another time there would be a Nuremberg readying the dock for Roebuck and anyone else associated with this mass murder. These days the media just keeps churning out a steady diet of US regime propaganda.

These autumn days are the most important in the Middle East calendar. The Muslims celebrate Eid al Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice; the Jews fast at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement; and the Eastern Orthodox Christians rejoice at Nativity of Our Lady Mary. It appears, surprisingly, the best place to be at this time is Moscow, where Putin received in quick succession the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Turkish ruler Recep Erdogan.

They did not come for the lovely Indian summer that blessed Moscow this week, not for the yellow and red leaves covering the maple and birch trees, though this sumptuous new Xanadu is quite fetching this time of the year; its streets refashioned at enormous expense, parks tended by best gardeners; bicycle paths and sidewalks repaved and even its feared traffic jams abated somewhat.

Ostensibly, Abbas and Erdogan came to unveil, together with Putin, the grand new Cathedral Mosque of Moscow, a vast and opulent structure where ten thousand worshippers can pray at once. This city has more Muslims than many a Muslim city has; about two millions of its 14 million dwellers are nominal Muslims.

They unveiled the mosque all right, and used this occasion for a good lengthy talk with Putin. So did Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, who gave a miss to the mosque. And he came with his top brass: the head of staff and the head of military intelligence, after a long-time no-see.

This sudden interest to Moscow is a sign that the Russian entry into the Syrian fray has been playing to a full house. When, some three weeks ago I reported on this decision of Kremlin, my report has been met with great doubt, to say the least. Could it be that Russia, after being licked in the Ukraine, will venture that far from home? They were supposed to sulk in the Kremlin under the heavy load of sanctions, not roam around. Now the facts on the ground had justified my previous report. Russian soldiers and marines, Russian weapons, jets and boats are seen on the shore; they are building a new base and fighting the enemy, giving a new lease of life to the embattled Syrian state.

The rumours of Russian demise and of Syrian collapse has been somewhat premature. Putin’s push for peace in the Ukraine (so condemned by hotheads) allowed him to stabilise Donbass. Half a million refugees poured back into this fertile and developed region, the Russian Ruhr. After calm in Donbass was established, Putin’s hands were free to act elsewhere, and he did.

Resilient Russia came back into the Middle East, and that’s an unexpected fact. Unexpected, as for a few years it seemed that the Russians lost interest in the Middle East. They were busy elsewhere: trying to make friends with Europe, staging the Olympics, and then keeping out of the Ukrainian trouble as much as they could. And then the US troops and tanks were stationed on the Russian border in the Baltic states, a few hours’ drive to St Petersburg. Only in the last moment, when the Syrian collapse seemed a matter of weeks if not days away, the Russians woke up and rode to save their ally Bashar al-Assad.

This move has changed the rules of the game. The US became interested in Russia again, and President Obama asked for a meeting with President Putin during his visit on September 28, 2015 to New York for the UN General Assembly Jubilee 70th Session. Just a few days ago such a meeting was completely out of consideration.

The US plans to dispose of Syria as they find fit were thrown to disarray by the Russian involvement. So were plans of Qatar and the Saudis. A new reality began to be informed, not a moment too early.

Turkey

Putin’s meeting with Recep Erdogan of Turkey came in a crucial moment. Turkey is a net victim of the Syrian crisis, despite being a contributor to its gravity. Erdogan believed the Americans and the Europeans who told him that Bashar Assad will fall in a few weeks. He accepted and invited Syrian refugees to his country, established huge camps for refugees, provided for them. Now Turkey has 2 million Syrian and Iraqi refugees and has spent eight billion dollars caring for them. This burden is a main reason for recent electoral defeat of Erdogan and his party: the refugee operation is just too costly and ruinous for the not-too-robust Turkish society.

The US proposal for Turkey to join the US-led coalition has been hesitantly accepted, but quickly it became clear that this road leads nowhere. The Turkish plans to establish a no-fly zone near the Syrian-Turkish border triggered the Russian involvement, for after its implementation, Bashar Assad and the Syrian state would be beyond saving. After the Russian decision, the Turks lost any way out.

They reacted by letting loose the wave of refugees upon Europe. The Europeans were rather upset, but they have to regret their own actions. They pushed for removal of Bashar Assad, supported anti-Assad fractions, and did not want to pay for the refugee stay in Turkey. The Turks could not keep all two million refugees pent up in their country without considerable support of Europe, and such support was not forthcoming. So the Turks allowed the Europeans to feel the stream of refugees on their own skin.

Probably we can add that the US did not object to the Turkish letting off the steam. The US ruling elites always thought that European countries are too homogeneous, and some dilution by immigrants will make them more similar to the US in their composition.

While in Moscow, President Erdogan called President Putin his “dear brother”, a title usually reserved to the kings of the region and close allies. His officials for the first time ever mouthed the main idea of Putin: any arrangement in Syria should be made with President Bashar Assad. Please remember that even a few days ago, before the Russians stepped in, the Turks were adamantly sticking to the American mantra “Assad must go”.

Now this important mental barrier was taken; Erdogan and Putin renewed their discussion of the South Stream gas pipeline that was frozen for a few months. The negotiations weren’t completed, but it seems that things began moving.

Israelis and Palestinians

For Israel the Russian involvement meant that their old freedom of bombing whomever they feel like is over, or at least has been restricted. It is one thing to bomb practically defenceless Syrians, as Israelis did a dozen times for last year, and quite a different thing to operate jets within lidless eyesight of the S-300 radar and Su-27 interceptors with the Russian aces in the cockpits. That’s why Netanyahu took himself to Moscow on the eve of Yom Kippur.

Netanyahu came to deliver an ultimatum of his own. The Russians, and their allies, Assad, Iran and Hezbollah have to choose whether they intend to save Bashar Assad or to fight Israel. Both missions can’t be accomplished. If they fight Israel, Israel will destroy Assad.

Putin said that they do not intend to fight Israel. Assad is in such a poor shape that he can’t fight Israel. Even saving him alone is hard enough as he controls between 20% and 30% of the national territory, though it is most populated part of Syria, while the rest of the territory is mainly desert.

Netanyahu claimed his freedom to bomb Iranians and Hezbollah wherever it suits him. He is still obsessed with Iran, as Iranians, in his view, re-arm Hezbollah, modernise Hezbollah’s weaponry, and plan to open a second front against Israel on the Golan Heights. While first two claims may be true, the third one is a sheer invention.

Netanyahu is worried that the advanced Russian weapons may find its way to Lebanon, and this will limit Israel’s God-given right to bomb Lebanon. The Russians do not want their advanced weapons to leak out of Syria, either, so there is no great disagreement between them and the Israelis. However, while Israelis say such leakage occurs, the Russians deny that vehemently. Now, and at their previous encounter, the Israeli leader claimed he knows (“trust me!”) that the most advanced Russian weapons found its way to Lebanon, while Putin dismissed the claim as an unproven one.

It seems that Netanyahu still smarts for a fight. The American president refused him his innocent wish to destroy Iran and made the agreement with his archenemy. Even worse, as we learned from his former Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Netanyahu’s generals also rebelled against Bibi’s plans to attack Iran. But Netanyahu does not give up. He seeks to destroy Iran or at least Hezbollah, the most potent fighting force in the area.

Israel is much stronger than Hezbollah, and it has no reason to be afraid of Hezbollah’s attack. If Israel does not attack, nobody attacks Israel. But this MAD-like equation is not acceptable for Netanyahu: he seeks immunity and impunity for his strikes. Hezbollah denies him this impunity and can demand a heavy price for a new bombing campaign.

A Hotline

At Netanyahu’s request, the Russians and the Israelis agreed to establish a hotline between their militaries in order to minimise the chance of their hostile encounter. This is a normal practice: such a hotline functioned in 1974 between warring Israel and Egypt during the cease-fire so a local shoot-out will not escalate into an unwanted general conflagration.

This is not cooperation, not joint planning, not an arrangement between the allies. Just a device to prevent unwanted firefights. And it is a good thing. Israel and Russia can’t be allies: they pursue mutually opposing aims and their allies are quite different. Israel befriended Jabhat an Nusra, a Syrian branch of al Qaeda, an extremist Sunni group. Two thousand Nusra fighters received medical treatment in Israel and returned to fight Assad. Israel is moderately hostile to Bashar Assad, bombed the Syrian Army’s positions and attacked their bases with the help of the Nusra. Israel is implacably hostile to Russia’s allies in Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, and is quite indifferent to Da’esh (ISIS). That’s why the talk of Russian-Israeli alliance in Syria is just an attempt to mislead you.

However, President Putin is very friendly to Israel and to Jews. His friendship will not cause him to surrender Syria or to break up with Iran, but even the greatest friend of Israel on this planet, the US, is mindful of its own interests. At many occasions Putin promised to save the Jews if things will go utterly wrong for them. It seems he has in mind a mass evacuation of Israeli Jews to Russia as the last resort, like Russia did for the Polish Jews in 1939 thus saving millions of them from the Nazi fury. Needless to say we are very far away from such an apocalyptic scenario.

It seems Putin has some close personal friends among the Russians in Israel, for he often stresses that the 1.5 million strong Russian community in Israel (actually, about 0.5 million at the best) is the bridge and the guarantee of their friendship. He made a generous present of some 5 billion roubles (90 million dollars) per annum to the Russian Jews in Israel for their pension fund. (The US gives much more, but mainly for weapons, and it goes to Israeli generals).

Putin received Netanyahu warmly, as his old-time friend. So was Netanyahu, who indicated that he is tired of Americans. Putin did not take this ball: he did not believe Netanyahu is likely to ditch the US and run away with the Russkies to the hayloft. But both enthused in their friendly vibes. Putin wished Bibi to be inscribed in the Book of Life, showing an unexpected knowledge of Jewish customs.

Putin and Jews

Putin is so friendly with the Jews in Russia that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said the Russian Jews never had it that good. He allows the Chabad Hassids to build anew the Jewish community in Russia, as the old one disintegrated after mass emigration to Israel and as a result of assimilation and intermarriage. In Moscow alone, they build thirty synagogues (comparing with just two mosques and some three hundred churches), though there are just a few hundred synagogue-going Jews in the whole of Moscow, at best.

The Chabad imports Jewish families from Israel, from the US and from Europe, and they are frequently seen around town in their distinctive garb. It remains to be seen whether they plan to establish a new Jewish community, or use it for a big-time real estate grab, as some people claim. Practically in every Russian city there is a synagogue and a community centre on the most desirable and expensive plot of land established and run by the Chabad, while traditional Jewish communities were dispossessed by the Chabad and disappeared.

Is Putin so Jews-friendly because he thinks it is a good strategy? Perhaps. Even now he is often described in the Western media as a new Hitler, how much worse it would be if the Jews in Russia or Israel would consider him an enemy. On the other hand, he can be sincere, as he read law in St Petersburg U and had had many Jewish friends. He also worked with the mayor of St Petersburg who had many Jews in his entourage. His choice of Chabad is not so easy to justify, but perhaps they were prepared to build Jewish life while staying away from politics.

Judo Master

His good relations with Netanyahu cause him no harm, either. Netanyahu is still a very powerful man, able to summon a majority in the US Senate, and an ally of Saudi Arabia, the strongman of the Arab world. Putin’s manners are non-confrontational; a Judo master, he does not argue with his opponent, rarely voices his disagreement. Thus he agreed with Netanyahu’s proposal of the hotline, or a joint commission of the military. I doubt this commission will be fruitful. If Bibi will forewarn the Russians of his planned attacks on the Syrian positions, the attacks will be useless; still the commission and the hotline will reduce the danger of unintentional confrontation.

Almost immediately after meeting with Netanyahu, Putin also met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This meeting was also very friendly. Abbas told him of the trouble around Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, where Jewish religious fanatics play havoc and cause confrontations. He mentioned the seizure of Christian lands near Beit Jalla and other multiple troubles, including new Israeli licence to shoot Palestinian children with live fire of 0.22 calibre. Abbas encouraged Putin to save Syria from disintegration, and heard Putin’s explanation of Russian plans. It appears that Mahmoud Abbas will not retire and return the keys of the PNA at the UN General Assembly in a few days, as some observers expected, though this is not final yet.

This double meeting raised the Russian diplomacy to a new level. Until now, only American presidents were able to meet both Israeli and Palestinians in a friendly way and extend their patronage. Now Russia graduated to this supreme position, and that is certainly a great achievement of Putin, already justifying his decision to engage in Syria.

In the follow up, we shall deal with Russian-American discussion of Syrian crisis and see what they say to each other.

Israel Shamir can be reached on [email protected]

After repeated denials, CENTCOM says it learned that US-trained rebels did in fact give weapons to al-Nusra in exchange for safe passage 

The Pentagon on Friday said a group of US-trained Syrian rebels had handed over ammunition and equipment to al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the country, al-Nusra Front, purportedly in exchange for safe passage.

The startling acknowledgement contrasted with earlier Pentagon denials of reports that some fighters had either defected or handed over gear.

“Unfortunately, we learned late today that the NSF (New Syrian Forces) unit now says it did in fact provide six pickup trucks and a portion of their ammunition to a suspected al-Nusra Front (group),” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.

Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for Central Command (CENTCOM), which is overseeing efforts against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria, said the fighters had handed over the gear in exchange for safe passage in the al-Nusra operating area.

“If accurate, the report of NSF members providing equipment to al-Nusra Front is very concerning and a violation of Syria train-and-equip programme guidelines,” Ryder said.

Ryder added that the pickup vehicles and ammunition represented about 25 percent of the equipment issued to the group by the US-led coalition.

“We are using all means at our disposal to look into what exactly happened and determine the appropriate response,” Ryder said.

A defence official told AFP that according to the rebels, there had not been any defections, but he stressed: “We only know what they have told us.”

CENTCOM says it learned around 1pm on Friday that the weapons and supplies had been handed over to al-Nusra. Ryder had reiterated earlier in the day that no supplies had been handed over, despite reports, according to Reuters.

The initial denial had come on Wednesday, when CENTCOM issued a statement, saying: “All Coalition-issued weapons and equipment are under the positive control of NSF [New Syrian Forces] fighters.”

A new setback

The development is another embarrassing setback for the US effort to “train and equip” moderate Syrian rebels to fight IS in Syria.

The $500mn programme originally aimed to ready around 5,400 vetted fighters a year for three years, but problems finding suitable candidates have seen only a fraction getting trained.

The first graduates, who made up a group of 54 fighters, were attacked by al-Nusra in July and the Pentagon isn’t sure what happened to them all. At least one was killed.

The second group, consisting of about 70 rebels, were sent back to Syria last weekend and reports began circulating on Twitter soon after that they had either defected or handed over equipment.

Last week, before the insertion of the new fighters, the US general overseeing efforts against IS drew disbelief from senior lawmakers when he told them only “four or five” US-trained rebels were on the ground fighting in Syria.

And on Monday, reports surfaced that a group of US-trained rebels had been arrested by another group of Syrian rebels, the Shamiya Front (also known as the Levant Front), a mostly Islamist coalition backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

“They were investigated and then released,” Shamiya Captain Mohammad Ahmad said in a statement. “The Shamiya Front has no problem fighting alongside any group that wants to fight IS. But 30th Division [the US-trained group that was arrested] aren’t fighting IS. Their war is just in the media.”

Unwilling to commit US ground troops in the region, the Obama administration in January launched the train-and-equip mission for Syrian opposition fighters as part of a broader push to work with locals there and in Iraq.

The programme has faltered, with many would-be fighters failing the strict screening process. The troops are being trained as part of the US-led fight against IS in the region.

 

The army of Bashar al-Assad has reportedly started crushing Islamic State militants that had previously seized the cities of Palmyra and Homs. Western experts and journalists believe that the Syrian troops receive substantial military assistance from Russian military men at the base in Latakia.

In addition, Russia has deployed modern weapons, including air defense, missile systems and aviation, having turned the area of the Russian base into a strong fortress. To crown it all, Russia still ships weapons to the government of Bashar Assad under previously concluded contracts.

Russia’s TV channel “Zvezda” (“Star”) reports that the Syrian army forced ISIS militants to retreat from Palmyra, although they hide in residential areas and use ancient monuments as a cover.

“The militants, who had been keeping the city under control and destroying priceless ancient monuments for months, are being killed in the air raids of the Syrian Air Force. During the most recent attack, 40 terrorists were destroyed in the province of Homs,” Zvezda reporters say. It was also said that many militants of the Islamic State lay down their arms and surrender.

“On September 20, in the village of Kanaker (province of Damascus) more than 500 fighters of the Islamic State and so-called moderate opposition laid down their arms,” Syrian agency SANA reports, adding that there is a video of ISIS militants yelling to government troops. The militants were said to be mercenaries from Iran, Turkey and Sudan. They received weapons from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon. There are also many US-made weapons and heavy equipment,  reporters say.

The US does nothing to destroy ISIS in Syria. Why?

Representatives of the central command of US armed forces said that there were 70 fighters sent to Syria to fight against Assad and the Islamic State together with selected opposition groups. Previously, it was reported that the United States was providing military assistance to the Syrian opposition and ISIS militants to overthrow the Assad regime, similarly to how the US was supporting al-Qaeda during Soviet times to suppress Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Many experts and journalists say that ISIS is a “product of the USA.” Many recall the notorious reply that President Obama gave to the question of “Who are we bombing in the Middle East?” “That’s not quite right, but that’s OK,” Obama said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also wonders why the USA does not destroy ISIS, even though the US knows everything about the whereabouts of ISIS bases.

“The Russian military have deployed a layered defense system and continue fulfilling contracts for the delivery  of modern weapons to Syria. That’s all I can say officially. I have no right to either deny and confirm whether the Russian aviation is involved in the military actions,” a high-ranking source in the General Staff of the Russian Federation told Politonline.ru. He added that Russian troops have already repulsed terrorists’ attacks before, quite successfully.

Russia has already deployed multi-purpose Su-30CM fighter aircraft, Pantsir-S1 mobile missile complexes, Mi-24 attack helicopters, multi-purpose Mi-17 helicopters, as well as Sukhoi Su-24M bombers to Syria.

Over the past few weeks, a large number of military advisers have arrived in Syria. Syria has received six MiG-31 jets – these are the best interceptor aircraft in the world. For the first time, the Russian army has provided satellite intelligence data to Syria.

Previously, Jihadists managed to avoid attacks from government forces because NATO was providing them with satellite information on time. Now, it appears that NATO no longer shares the intelligence data with the Islamic State, although the alliance still continues providing this information to Frente al Nosra, Russian publications said.

Russia and Iran have achieved agreements on joint activities in Syria. Should Iran officially start a  military operation in Syria for the destruction of the Islamic State, many predict complete destruction of the terrorists and mass destruction of Syrian opposition fighters.

Israel has already held high-level talks with Russia to exclude possible collisions between Russian and Israeli troops. To crown it all, US officials declared readiness for immediate negotiations with Russia on Syria, although they previously excluded such a possibility.

Politonline.ru

Read article in Russian on politonline.ru

VIDEO (ENGLISH)

Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s most ruthless regimes, a crime family dictatorship masquerading as legitimate governance. It’s notorious for public beheadings, whippings, torture, wars of aggression and other lawless actions.

Despotic rule is absolute, no opposition tolerated, no civil or human rights afforded ordinary Saudis – no freedom of expression, assembly, association, internal movement, foreign travel, or religion.

No right to choose their government or have easy access to education, healthcare, public housing, legal services or social ones. Political parties are forbidden. So are collective bargaining rights. Internet and academic freedom are prohibited.

Arbitrary arrest and detention are commonplace. So are state-sponsored kidnappings and disappearances – due process and judicial fairness denied. Torture and other abuses substitute.

Since March, US orchestrated Saudi terror bombing and blockade continue mass slaughtering Yemenis, mostly civilians, committing willful genocide, millions of people at risk.

None of this matters. It’s swept under the rug, ignored. In June, Riyadh’s UN ambassador in Geneva, Faisal bin Hassan Trad, was quietly chosen head of a five-member UN Human Rights Council panel charged with reporting on abuses worldwide – mocking the legitimacy of the initiative.

In 2013, Saudi Arabia disgracefully became a UN Human Rights Council member. Its bid to head HRC failed. Perhaps choosing Trad to chair the five-member panel was a consolation prize – maybe arranged by Washington.

Its other members include Algeria, Chile, Greece and Lithuania – all human rights abusers.

With rare exceptions, the Human Rights Council serves US and other Western interests. Michel Chossudovsky calls it “a mouthpiece for NATO’s ‘Humanitarian Interventions’ under the doctrine of ‘Responsibility to Protect (R2P).”

Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay (2008 – 2014) was a reliable imperial tool, one-sidedly supporting US-led Western interests.

Her successor, Jordanian prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein represents business as usual, continuing the same policies as Pillay, paying lip service to human rights, ignoring horrendous abuses committed by Western and allied countries – including naked aggression against nations threatening no others.

Appointing human rights violating countries like Saudi Arabia to head a panel judging the records of other nations mocks the legitimacy of the initiative.

 

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

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War 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

In this final week before Vladimir Putin addresses the UN General Assembly, there has been a flurry of contact between Washington and Moscow. And by that I don’t just mean the Sept. 18 telephone call between the defense ministers of Russia and the US. Russia’s beefed up military presence in Syria has clearly sparked a whole series of informal consultations, the culmination of which should be a meeting between the leaders of Russia and the United States on the sidelines of the General Assembly. The key topics during their talks will undoubtedly be the refugee crisis and the fight against the Islamic State, the latter having about as much to do with Islam as ‘Russian dressing’ has to do with Russia.

The “war” refugees

There is no question that it is the US and her NATO allies who must provide the refugees from Syria and other destabilized regions with political and economic refuge within the borders of those Western nations – even if their numbers grow to tens of millions. That means providing them with what they need to survive, including a roof over their heads, appropriate health care, and any other assistance they may need.

But meanwhile there is also the issue of the approximately one million people who are fleeing the wars and armed conflicts that have erupted as a result of various “color revolutions” that have been staged and sponsored by Washington and many other Western capitals. As soon as this group of countries stops supporting and expediting terrorism in the Middle East and Africa, the wave of “war” refugees converging on Europe will immediately subside.

The United States and her NATO allies should spend less money on large-scale military training, introducing surplus nuclear and conventional weapons throughout Europe and other regions of the world, and deploying a global missile-defense system, as well as supporting Kiev’s undeclared but ongoing war – which includes the use of heavy weapons – against its own citizens in the Donbass. The large sums of money that could be saved by following this advice could be used to provide shelter for refugees from the Middle East and North Africa within the borders of those states that are both EU and NATO members.

The US has announced her readiness to raise her own refugee quota to 100,000 in 2017, which seems unachievable. Throughout the many years of the Syrian conflict, the United States has only taken in about 1,500-2,000 refugees, which is approximately how many arrive each day on the Greek island of Lesbos. In 2014, 105 of these “lucky ones” made it to the US. Washington also takes far too long to make a decision about whether to grant or deny refugee petitions for asylum – from 18 to 24 months. But one must keep in mind that nearly 12 million people have already fled Syria, and this torrent continues unabated. Importantly, the US budgetary spendings for asylum seekers are constantly decreasing (e.g. down to $2,45 billion in fiscal year 2015 from $3,05 billion in 2014) and there is no indication the federal government would ever comply with its commitment to receive extra refugees from the Middle East.

Russia was the first country to organize a large-scale evacuation – without considering the nationality of the displaced – from war-torn Syria and Yemen, at times even putting the lives of Russian flight crews at risk. According to immigration officials in Moscow, approximately 12,000 Syrian refugees have found a haven in Russia. In addition, Russia has taken in over a million Ukrainian citizens who have fled the genocide and civil war that have been unleashed by the new regime in Kiev. Furthermore, Russia has not asked anyone to provide outside assistance with these tasks and is dealing with that problem on her own.

The “coalition” vs. ISIS?

There are many reasons to question whether the US would prove a reliable partner in a viable, effective, anti-terror coalition.

The fact is that Washington itself created this terrorist pseudo-caliphate, actively arming andgenerously funding it and sending its “fighters” to do battle against the elected Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. In addition, the White House has openly advocated for the armed overthrow of the current Syrian regime, and has never renounced that goal. It would be interesting to know how the current US administration intends to both utilize jihadists to depose the Syrian president while also battling against them.

Washington’s “contribution” to this matter has been laughable: at first, the Pentagon planned to train 75 fighters to battle IS, and then reduced its proposal to 60, eventually managing to instruct no more than five, which was recently acknowledged at a US Congressional hearing. On Sept. 16, General Lloyd Austin admitted to the Senate that a special military program with a budget of $500 million to train more than 5,000 Syrian fighters has ended up with only “four or five” combatants who are actively battling IS. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain, called the program “an abject failure” and also pinned the blame on the Pentagon for the refugee crisis that has erupted in Europe.

The frenzy of activity on the part of Washington and the members of NATO, criticizing Russia for fulfilling her military and technical contracts with Syria, has also attracted notice.

Furthermore, one must take into account Russia’s previous negative experiences with the US and Great Britain on the anti-terror front. Russia has discovered that her Western counterparts in the quest to fight terrorism have not been nearly as willing as she is to fully share “sensitive” information, often providing Moscow with only outdated information about terrorist activity and under various pretexts reducing the number of meetings between counter-terrorism experts, even (as was the case with Great Britain) completely severing those contacts.

One gets the impression that the primary, secret purpose of Washington’s interest in talking to Moscow about ways to resolve the Syrian conflict is actually to block any expansion of the military-technical cooperation between Russia and Syria, thus depriving Russia of some of her best leverage in her efforts to defeat ISIS.

Prof. Vladimir Kozin is the leading Russian expert on disarmament and strategic stability issues, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW.