The Refugee Crisis: Separating the Conspiracies from The Conspiracy

September 26th, 2015 by Eric Draitser

As the refugee crisis in Europe has come to dominate western media headlines, it has predictably given rise to a complex web of theories, analyses, and politically and ideologically charged omissions and distortions. The corporate propagandists of ‘acceptable journalism’ have presented the issue in a purely humanitarian and cultural light, with little to no political context in terms of the refugee influx as the fruit of imperial wars in Africa and Asia.

These bastions of journalistic truth have managed to flush down the memory hole nearly all evidence published in their own pages of the overlapping strategies of regional and international powers that have conspired to wage war in Syria, openly colluded in wars of aggression in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and prolonged and capitalized from seemingly endless conflicts in Somalia and elsewhere. All of these very conscious decisions by the ruling class and its political establishment in the US-NATO (plus Israel and GCC), have led directly to the “crisis” as it exists today. And yet, if they’re mentioned at all, it is merely in passing bemusement, the way one might refer to a stupid comment made after one too many tequila shots at a margarita happy hour.

The refugee issue then becomes less a product of political conflict, and more a cultural battlefield with trenches dug along racial and ethnic lines: the struggle to maintain European ‘civilization’ against the barbaric hordes of uncivilized brown-skinned invaders arriving as a “swarm,” to borrow the unintentionally honest expression used by British Prime Minister David Cameron to describe the refugees. This is of course the neocolonial, supremacist position espoused most vocally by the far right throughout Europe, from Marine Le Pen and the Front National in France, to Hungary’s conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban whose heavy-handed tactics – building fences, mobilizing troops and the unemployed, convicts, and fascists of various stripes – to block the refugee influx, have been both praised and condemned by various elements in Europe.

While there is clearly an attempt to rewrite recent history to scrub the role of imperialism in fostering this crisis, there is also a deafening silence on the role of certain regional and international actors in manipulating it for political advantage. For instance, there is virtually no discussion in mainstream (and much of the alternative) media regarding the role of Turkey in redirecting refugees from its country to Greece and into Europe. There has yet to be even one substantive investigative piece in any establishment media on the collusion between the human traffickers of the Islamic State and other terror groups and criminal gangs, and their backers in the US, Europe, and Middle East. Equally, there has been virtually zero discussion of how the strategy of manipulated migration is part of a broader effort to further the goals of the Empire in the Global South.

Indeed, such questions and debates are critical to understanding the political, economic, and socio-cultural implications of this issue. However, in asking such questions, one almost immediately encounters the virulent strains of racism, bigotry, and outright fascism whose pernicious influence has become pervasive in nominally anti-imperialist circles. Sometimes such ideology is manifested in centuries-old reactionary conspiracy theories in which cabals of Jews, Jesuits, freemasons, or reptilian overlords (as the case may be) conspire to destroy white Christendom. Other times it is simply a rehashing of the ‘barbarian invader’ trope, a product of both European history and good old fashioned Euro-supremacism.

Why are these questions critical? Simply put, the discourse on the refugee crisis is essential to undermining the entire imperialist agenda in Africa and the Middle East. Leftists must be cautious not to take the bait on the liberal versus conservative culture war narrative rooted in a neocolonial worldview, while at the same time remaining vigilant about both the real geopolitical machinations driving the crisis, and the fascistic memes that pass for “telling the truth” in the quagmire of social media and online activism.

A Conspiracy of Silence

There are two distinct ways in which the corporate media, in its role as propaganda appendage of the Empire, has deliberately confused the refugee issue. On the one hand, they have shielded the narrative from penetration by uncomfortable questions regarding the role of the West and its proxies in initiating, fomenting, and expanding the wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, and beyond. By doing so, the media removes the refugees from their politico-historical context, transforming them into so-called “migrants” – an elusive term designed to obscure the reality of who these people are, and why they’re desperately trying to get into Europe – as if they’re simply poor people looking for work, rather than victims of imperialism looking to protect their families and escape wars and destabilizations initiated by the West.

On the other hand, the media has simply refused to critically examine exactly the relationship between the flow of refugees and the policies, both overt and covert, of the countries participating either directly or indirectly in these wars. There is virtually no investigation into the facilitation of refugee travel by the Turkish government despite the literally countless reports of the Islamic State, al-Qaeda groups, and myriad criminal organizations engaging in human trafficking in Syria and Libya specifically.

With respect to Syria, Turkish intelligence is directly implicated in collusion with jihadis of the Nusra and ISIS variety, smuggling both fighters and weapons into Syria in the ongoing attempt to implement regime change against the Syrian government. According to Cumhuriyet, a popular Turkish daily:

a group of jihadis were first brought to the Turkish border town of Reyhanli on January 9, 2014 from Atme refugee camp in Syria in a clandestine operation. From there, they were smuggled into Tal Abyad, a border town used by ISIS as a gateway from Turkey, on two buses rented by the MIT [Turkish intelligence]…which it said were stopped by police a day after the operation following a tip-off that they were smuggling drugs into Syria. It was revealed that the buses had been used to smuggle jihadis after investigators found bullets, weapons and ammunition abandoned in the buses. The drivers of the buses, who were briefly arrested, said in their testimony they were told that they were carrying Syrian refugees and the vehicles were rented by the MIT.

Two important points should be immediately apparent in reading the reports. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the direct relationship and contact between Turkish intelligence and terrorist fighters intent on waging war in Syria. Secondly, and most important to this examination, is the fact that, as the bus drivers’ testimony clearly indicates, they were told by Turkish authorities that they were carrying Syrian refugees. It seems then that Turkish intelligence openly facilitates the transit of refugees throughout Turkey, and has a direct chain of custody over their movements. Taken in tandem with the knowledge that Turkish intelligence is also working with ISIS and Nusra then, it is not at all far-fetched to assume that they are also colluding in the human trafficking networks.

This is an important point because it is these smuggling organizations which are directly implicated in funding ISIS in places like Libya. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the value of refugee smuggling in Libya alone reached $323 million in 2014, “dwarf[ing] any existing trafficking and smuggling businesses in the region… [it]has particularly strengthened groups with a terrorist agenda, including the Islamic State.”

But while media has noted this important phenomenon, they have almost entirely buried the fact that those same ISIS (Islamic State) networks in Libya are being run by US-NATO asset Abdelhakim Belhadj, the man touted as a hero and great revolutionary by the imperialists in their war on Libya in 2011. Indeed, Belhadj served the US cause in Libya so well that he can be seen receiving accolades from Sen. John McCain, never one to shy away from a photo op with a terrorist or fascist. Belhadj was initially rewarded after the fall of Gaddafi with the post of military commander of Tripoli, though he was forced to give way to a more politically palatable “transitional government” which has since evaporated leaving in its wake ISIS, run by the very same Belhadj.

It must be said that the refugee issue is far bigger than just US-NATO wars in Libya and Syria. Indeed, the refugees have come from countries that have been directly impacted by other imperialist policies, such as the ongoing economic war against Eritrea. As WikiLeaks cables revealed, there has been a concerted effort by the US to promote and facilitate the migration of Eritrean youth to the West using the lure of “educational opportunities” funded by the US government. Many of these young Eritreans, duped as they are, are then sadly caught up in the same human trafficking networks, often becoming victims of kidnapping or worse.

Similarly, many of the refugees come from Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries still being devastated by US wars of aggression. They come from Pakistan where terror groups have waged genocidal campaigns against Shia muslims of the Hazara ethnic group, among others. They come from Somalia, a country still embroiled in a seemingly endless state of chaos facilitated by US policy. In short, the refugees are unmistakably victims of US-NATO (plus Israel and GCC) imperial policies. And there is almost no mention of any of this.

What does get traction in the corporate media however is the potential need for still more war, this time to “help the refugees.” In short, the political and military establishment in the US makes the insidious, and deeply cynical, argument that the only way to help the people of Syria is to bomb them and destroy their country further, just as it argued in Libya in 2011. And again, there is almost no critical debate in the major media. Essentially, the corporate press acts as the de facto public relations wing of the ruling class, setting the parameters of how the refugee issue is to be discussed. As Noam Chomsky famously said, the media acts to “strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

Racism, Refugees, and the Rothschild-Jew-NWO-Illuminati-Muslim-Freemason-Reptilian Conspiracy™

As soon as one begins to interrogate the issues by asking questions such as those above, immediately one is confronted by the most exasperatingly tiresome, hackneyed, and utterly discredited conspiracy theories which still worm their way into far too much online discourse. In fact, according to such internet buffoonery, nearly every political development and conflict in the world can be chalked up to some illusory master plan enacted generations ago by a secret cabal of [insert demonized group of choice], rather than the complex political, economic, and social factors that give rise to human phenomena; so, too, with the refugee issue.

The conversation often can sound something like, “Have you noticed that the Muslims and Africans flooding into Europe are mostly young males? It’s not a coincidence that the Jewish globalist plan is to destroy national boundaries and pervert the white Christian world with a fifth column in the quest for total global control through the destruction of nations and consolidation of the rule of Jewish bankers. #WhiteGenocide.” One could be forgiven for thinking that that is satire and hyperbole for comedic effect; sadly, no. That is taken almost verbatim from multiple memes and various written pieces circulating in the morass of social media.

Normally, one would be quick to dismiss such idiocy as simply the childish ramblings of fascist nitwits whose study of history is confined to the Alex Jones School for Racist Lunacy. However, it is important to note that such discourse has an increasingly strong presence in nominally anti-imperialist and leftist circles, where opposition to Israel’s genocidal policies, and the supremacist ideology of Zionism, provide cover for outright fascist tendencies to cloak themselves in the flag of anti-Zionism. When the unhinged blather of David Icke and Alex Jones becomes acceptable discourse, it is cause for any anti-imperialist to worry. For this reason, the refugee issue has caused many of us to worry.

The late author and journalist Alex Cockburn, a co-editor of CounterPunch for many years, in examining the allure of conspiracism generally (9-11 trutherism specifically), brilliantly wrote in 2011:

[Conspiracism has] penetrated deep into the American left…These days a dwindling number of leftists learn their political economy from Marx. Into the theoretical and strategic void has crept a diffuse, peripatetic conspiracist view of the world that tends to locate ruling class devilry not in the crises of capital accumulation, or the falling rate of profit, or inter-imperial competition, but in locale (the Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg, Ditchley, Davos) or supposedly “rogue” agencies, with the CIA still at the head of the list.

Though speaking of 9-11, Cockburn could easily have broadened that critique to include the growing number of people on both left and right, who subscribe to the Rothschild-Illuminati-New World Order worldview (if it can be called that). His argument, entirely correct in my view, is that in place of real historical-materialist analysis, or substantive analysis of any kind, be it anti-capitalist or the like, a sort of quasi-mystical belief in irrational and unseen forces has taken root in the collective imagination of many so-called activists.

Cockburn quoted philosopher and CounterPunch contributor Michael Neumann who succinctly noted that such thinking “probably comes from the decline of Western power. Deep down, almost everyone, across the political spectrum, is locked in a bigotry which can only attribute that decline to some irrational or supernatural power. The result is the ascendency of magic over common sense, let alone reason.” Indeed, it is bigotry, or perhaps more correctly a reactionary racist and fascistic worldview, that owes much to tsarist and Nazi propaganda, and the right wing extremist scribes who preserved it in the post-war period.

Such thinking is, sadly, not only alive, but thriving, in allegedly anti-imperialist circles. No doubt these memes have been wet-nursed by Zionism and Israeli policies which, in point of fact, are fascist and in many ways indistinguishable from the Nazism they allegedly abhor, as this author has argued numerous times. In effect, Zionism has contributed in no small part to the proliferation and normalization of fascist sentiment on both left and right.

And it is precisely this sort of thinking that is now coloring the debate on refugees. Suddenly, the refugee crisis becomes a conspiracy to destroy ‘White Europe,’ rather than an outgrowth of imperialist wars undertaken by the US-NATO powers. Suddenly, the refugees become invaders, while the aggressors become the victims. This inversion is at once insidious and incredibly disheartening for those activists and analysts (this author included) who dedicate much of their time and effort to exposing the machinations of the Empire and its hegemonic agenda.

To again quote Cockburn, “There are plenty of real conspiracies…Why make up fake ones?” Exactly! The conspiracy of regional and international actors needs to be unraveled, the evidence made public, the guilty prosecuted for war crimes. The conspiracy of silence in the corporate media needs to be exposed for what it is: still more evidence of how the propaganda matrix actually operates, how it serves the Empire. These are the conspiracies that matter. Let’s leave the Rothschilds, Illuminati, and lizard people to the darker recesses of internet irrelevance.

While the racists cry from the mountaintops that their precious White Europe is under siege, let us recognize that the discourse of anti-imperialism is also under siege; that the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist space must be reclaimed and must be defended, whatever the cost.

Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.org and host of CounterPunch Radio. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at [email protected].

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“Operation Karma Police”: The British Government Spied on Everyone’s Web Activity, Cell Phones. Massive GCHQ Data Bank

September 26th, 2015 by Steve Watson

GCHQ called the operation ‘Karma Police’ because they were Radiohead fans; Mammoth operation bigger than anything NSA did

Spies with GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA spied on “every visible” user’s Internet activity and called the operation ‘Karma Police’ after a song by the band Radiohead.

The new revelation comes from documents provided to journalists with The Intercept by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The report notes that the program, which enables spooks to monitor practically every facet of Internet activity, has been running for seven years.

The report states:

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 documents expose how the program is more intrusive than anything the NSA has attempted that is publically known. GCHQ itself referred to the program as the “world’s biggest” Internet data-mining operation.

The documents state that the program’s aim was to correlate “every user visible to passive SIGINT with every website they visit, hence providing 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 GCHQ program works by pulling web data from intercontinental data cables landing at Cornwall. The cables provide British spies with access to up to one quarter of all global web traffic.

It is claimed that the program scours only ‘metadata’. However, the information contains full records of websites visited, usernames, and passwords.

It appears that there is ZERO judicial oversight of the GCHQ program, meaning spooks can sift through anything they want without any legal recourse.

The genesis of the program appears to have been an operation to track individuals listening to Internet radio. The spies were undertaking research into how ‘radicals’ could “misuse” Internet radio to spread their messages.

The Intercept report notes an example where GCHQ specifically targeted any Internet radio station that was broadcasting any spoken recitations from the Quran.

The spies then used the program to bulk collect information on all listeners of the radio stations, most of which were simply music stations with absolutely no link to Islam.

The documents reveal that the spies used tracking cookie networks to trawl the Internet and discover other accounts held by the radio listeners on Skype, Yahoo, and Facebook.

That specific aspect of the program enabled GCHQ to attack the SIM card manufacturer Gemalto, giving it access to the phone data of up to 2 billion SIM cards.

The Karma Police program targeted Gemalto employees, uncovering their passwords and allowing the government spies to insert malware and gain bulk access to Gemalto’s encryption keys, compromising the data of untold numbers of smart phone users.

The documents also reveal that the program was instrumental in enabling “Operation Socialist,” a hack of the Belgian telecom company Belgacom, which provided spies with the IP addresses of individuals they were targeting.

According to the GCHQ documents, by 2009 the program had stored over 1.1 trillion web browsing sessions, referred to as “events” in what was termed a “Black Hole” database. Just one year later in 2010, the system was said to be collecting 30 billion+ records per day of Internet traffic metadata. A further GCHQ document notes that by 2012 the volume was up to 50 billion per day.

The documents note that some of the websites specifically targeted for covert cookie collection included Facebook, Microsoft Live, Amazon, YouTube, Reddit, WordPress, Yahoo, Google, YouPorn and news sites such as Reuters, CNN, and the BBC.

The operation makjes the East German Stasi look like amatuer hobbyists.

The deputy director of Privacy International, Eric King, reacted to the revelation with the following tweet:

Way back in 2008, the British government announced its intention to create a massive central database,gathering details on every text sent, e-mail sent, phone call made and website visited by everyone in the UK. The timing correlates with GCHQ’s Karma Police program.

The program, referred to then as the “Interception Modernisation Programme”, was slated to allow spy chiefs at GCHQ to effectively place a “live tap” on every electronic communication in Britain in the name of preventing terrorism.

Following outcry over the announcement, the government suggested that it was scaling down the plans, with then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith stating that there were “absolutely no plans for a single central store” of communications data.

However, as the “climbdown” was celebrated by civil liberties advocates and the plan was “replaced” by new laws requiring ISPs to store details of emails and internet telephony for just 12 months, fresh details emerged indicating the government was implementing a big brother spy system that would go way beyond the original public announcement.

The London Times published leaked details of a secret mass internet surveillance project known as “Mastering the Internet” (MTI).

Costing hundreds of millions in public funds, the system was implemented by GCHQ with the aid of American defence giant Lockheed Martin and British IT firm Detica, which has close ties to the intelligence agencies.

The stated goal was to give every internet user a unique ID code and store all their data in one place. The “Black Hole” database mentioned in the newly leaked GCHQ documents seems to be a very similar concept.

The documents expose a huge leap forward in an incremental program to implement an already exposed full scale big brother spy system designed to completely obliterate privacy on a global scale.

Steve Watson is a London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

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Gallup: 60% of Americans Want a New Political Party. But, Why? A Crisis of Legitimacy

September 26th, 2015 by Eric Zuesse

A Gallup poll issued on September 25th is headlined “Majority in U.S. Maintain Need for Third Major Party,” and it opens: “A majority of Americans, 60%, say a third major political party is needed because the Republican and Democratic parties ‘do such a poor job’ of representing the American people.”

When Gallup started polling on this matter in 2003, only 40% wanted a different major party from the two existing major parties.

The only other time when as high as 60% wanted a new major party was in October 2013, when the government shut down — something that now threatens to repeat. No other period had a percentage this high.

78% of independents want there to be another “major” party; 47% of Democrats do; 45% of Republicans do.

The way the question has been phrased is: “In your view, do the Republican and Democratic parties do an adequate job of representing the American people, or do they do such a poor job that a third major party is needed?”

Consequently, for example, these findings have nothing to do with a desire of Americans for another Ralph Nader or Ross Perot; this would instead need to be “a third major party.” It would, in other words, need to be a party not of mere protest, but instead, one that has a real chance to win the White House, and Congress: i.e., a real and serious political contender.

A substantial majority of Americans think that each of the two existing major parties does “a poor job,” “of representing the American people.”

Americans do not feel that “the American people” are represented by either of the existing parties.

When this polling started in 2003, it was not yet clear to most Americans that President George W. Bush’s repeated statements that he had seen conclusive proof that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were mere lies; it was not yet clear that Bush had not actually seen any such proof as he claimed existed; but, gradually the American public came to recognize that their government had, in fact, lied them into invading a country which actually posed no national security threat to the United States; and, so, gradually, this 40% rose to 48% in 2006, and then to 58% in 2007, as the realization that their government had lied finally sank in, gradually, among the American electorate.

By way of contrast, the 2008 economic crash seems to have had little, if any, impact upon this (in effect) repudiation of the U.S. Government, by the American people. That economic crash was, perhaps, widely viewed as having been a problem for the private economy, not primarily a governmental problem — as having been basically an “economic” instead of a “political” problem. (Whether it actually was that is another matter.) By contrast, clearly and incontrovertibly, the invasion of a foreign country on the basis of false pretenses was strictly a governmental (not at all a merely economic) problem; and, since both of the two major Parties had supported it, both of them had been responsible for this international war-crime: invasion on the basis of false pretenses.

Never before in American history had the people been so clearly abused by their Government. Even the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident which precipitated the U.S. invasion of North Vietnam had been based upon an authentic existing geostrategic threat, of communists taking South Vietnam. By contrast, the invasion of Iraq was entirely unjustified, by any real geostrategic or ideological issue. And the President, Bush, had simply lied through his teeth about it. This started the U.S. down the road to its current massive public disillusionment, that the government, which is supposedly “representing the American people,” is instead actually fraudulent — on a war-and-peace issue, no less. Both of the existing political parties participate in, rather than expose, this fraud, at the highest levels.

And, so, the American people are at a political turning-point, of seriously questioning whether they live in an actual democracy — a country in which the possibility, that the government represents the public instead of some controlling individual or group of individuals, exists. 60% now think that that possibility doesn’t exist — neither party represents it. They think that America, at the very highest governmental level, is no longer an authentic democracy. There actually exists strong evidence that it’s not an authentic democracy.

Another Gallup poll, issued on September 19th, was headlined“75% in U.S. See Widespread Government Corruption.” 75% answered “Yes” to: “Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country?” This could offer yet another explanation as to why 60% of Americans answer no to the question of “do the Republican and Democratic parties do an adequate job of representing the American people?” However, unlike the proposed Iraq War explanation, that one doesn’t possess any clear relationship to 2003. Gallup reported, in their poll of perceived corruption, that, “the percentage of U.S. adults who see corruption as pervasive has never been less than a majority in the past decade.” Gallup provided no further details, except that, when Obama came into office, the percentage was 66%. So, a decade back, in 2005, the percentage was somewhere above 50%, and then it was 66% when Obama entered the White House in 2009, and it’s 75% today.

Regardless of what the explanation is, the American people are feeling increasingly alienated from the government that supposedly represents them. If the U.S. Government is a democracy at all, it’s one whose legitimacy is increasingly being doubted by its public.

The U.S. Government thus now faces a crisis of legitimacy.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

 

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Syrian Government Forces Regain Control of ISIS Held Territories

September 26th, 2015 by South Front

The Syrian Arab Army, the National Defense Forces and Hezbollah – have quietly advanced in Palmyra’s western countryside as Syrian Air Forces pound the ISIS positions from the air.

Recently, the Syrian government recaptured the Jabal Jazal after ISIS terrorists launched a large-scale assault on their defensive positions at the numerous hilltops and oil fields inside this mountainous region of east Homs. The clashes were going last two weeks there.

After capturing Jabal Jazal, the Syrian Armed Forces are aimed to move in the direction of the city of Palmyra.

On Monday, the Syrian Air Force targeted the ISIS’ positions around the city killing an estimated 40 militants. According to the unconfirmed reports, the Syrian Air Force has become far more effective at this desert front due to the recent arrival of Russian military advisors that provided the Syrian Arab Army’s Central Command with satellite imagery regarding ISIS’ movements around the country.

Meanwhile, continuation of the ongoing US-backed media campaign aimed to prove that Russia is participating in the Syrian war has been continuing.

On September 24, Bloomberg reported that Russia was preparing to launch unilateral airstrikes against the Islamic State from inside Syria if the U.S. rejects his proposal to join forces. Two people close to the Kremlin were named as sources.

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No Brains In Washington. US-China Relations

September 26th, 2015 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Washington’s IQ follows the Fed’s interest rate — it is negative. Washington is a black hole into which all sanity is sucked out of government deliberations.

Washington’s failures are everywhere visible. We can see the failures in Washington’s wars and in Washington’s approach to China and Russia.

The visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, was scheduled for the week-end following the Pope’s visit to Washington. Was this Washington’s way of demoting China’s status by having its president play second fiddle to the Pope? The President of China is here for week-end news coverage? Why didn’t Obama just tell him to go to hell?

Washington’s cyber incompetence and inability to maintain cyber security is being blamed on China. The day before Xi Jinping’s arrival in Washington, the White House press secretary warmed up President Jinping’s visit by announcing that Obama might threaten China with financial sanctions.

And not to miss an opportunity to threaten or insult the President of China, the US Secretary of Commerce fired off a warning that the Obama regime was too unhappy with China’s business practices for the Chinese president to expect a smooth meeting in Washington.

In contrast, when Obama visited China, the Chinese government treated him with politeness and respect.

China is America’s largest creditor after the Federal Reserve. If the Chinese government were so inclined, China could cause Washington many serious economic, financial, and military problems. Yet China pursues peace while Washington issues threats.

Like China, Russia, too, has a foreign policy independent of Washington’s, and it is the independence of their foreign policies that puts China and Russia on the outs with Washington.

Washington considers countries with independent foreign policies to be threats. Libya, Iraq, and Syria had independent foreign policies. Washington has destroyed two of the three and is working on the third. Iran, Russia, and China have independent foreign policies. Consequently, Washington sees these countries as threats and portrays them to the American people as such.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will meet with Obama next week at the UN meeting in New York. It is a meeting that seems destined to go nowhere. Putin wants to offer Obama Russian help in defeating ISIS, but Obama wants to use ISIS to overthrow Syrian President Assad, install a puppet government, and throw Russia out of its only Mediterranean seaport at Tartus, Syria. Obama wants to press Putin to hand over Russian Crimea and the break-away republics that refuse to submit to the Russophobic government that Washington has installed in Kiev.

Despite Washington’s hostility, Xi Jinping and Putin continue to try to work with Washington even at the risk of being humiliated in the eyes of their peoples. How many slights, accusations, and names (such as “the new Hitler”) can Putin and Xi Jinping accept before losing face at home? How can they lead if their peoples feel the shame inflicted on their leaders by Washington?

Xi Jinping and Putin are clearly men of peace. Are they deluded or are they making every effort to save the world from the final war?

One has to assume that Putin and Xi Jinping are aware of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the basis of US foreign and military policies, but perhaps they cannot believe that anything so audaciously absurd can be real. In brief, the Wolfowitz Doctrine states that Washington’s principal objective is to prevent the rise of countries that could be sufficiently powerful to resist American hegemony. Thus, Washington’s attack on Russia via Ukraine and Washington’s re-militarization of Japan as an instrument against China, despite the strong opposition of 80 percent of the Japanese population.

“Democracy?” “Washington’s hegemony don’t need no stinkin’ democracy,” declares Washington’s puppet ruler of Japan as he, as Washington’s faithful servant, over-rides the vast majority of the Japanese population.

Meanwhile, the real basis of US power—its economy—continues to crumble. Middle class jobs have disappeared by the millions. US infrastructure is crumbling. Young American women, overwhelmed with student debts, rent, and transportation costs, and nothing but lowly-paid part-time jobs, post on Internet sites their pleas to be made mistresses of men with sufficient means to help them with their bills. This is the image of a Third World country.

In 2004 I predicted in a nationally televised conference in Washington, DC, that the US would be a Third World country in 20 years. Noam Chomsky says we are already there now in 2015. Here is a recent quote from Chomsky:

Look around the country. This country is falling apart. Even when you come back from Argentina to the United States it looks like a third world country, and when you come back from Europe even more so. The infrastructure is collapsing. Nothing works. The transportation system doesn’t work. The health system is a total scandal–twice the per capita cost of other countries and not very good outcomes. Point by point. The schools are declining . . .

Another indication of a third world country is large inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. According to the CIA itself, the United States now has one of the worst distributions of income of all countries in the world.

The distribution of income in the US is worse than in Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Guyana, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malawi, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, UK, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality 

and

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html

The concentration of US income and wealth in the hands of the very rich is a new development in my lifetime. I ascribe it to two things. One is the offshoring of American jobs. Offshoring moved high productivity, high-value-added American jobs to countries where the excess supply of labor results in wages well below labor’s contribution to the value of output. The lower labor costs abroad transform what had been higher American wages and salaries and, thereby, US household incomes, into corporate profits, bonuses for corporate executives, and capital gains for shareholders, and in the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that had made the US an “opportunity society.”

The other cause of the extreme inequality that now prevails in the US is what Michael Hudson calls the financialization of the economy that permits banks to redirect income away from driving the economy to the payment of interest in service of debt issued by the banks.

Both of these developments maximize income and wealth for the One Percent at the expense of the population and economy.

As Michael Hudson and I have discovered, neoliberal economics is blind to reality and serves to justify the destruction of the economic prospects of the Western World. It remains to be seen if Russia and China can develop a different economics or whether these rising superpowers will fall victim to the “junk economics” that has destroyed the West. With so many Chinese and Russian economists educated in the US tradition, the prospects of Russia and China might not be any better than ours.

The entire world could go down the tubes together.

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.

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Selected Articles: Geopolitical Turmoil in the Middle East

September 25th, 2015 by Global Research News

syriaWashington’s Longstanding Plans to Implement “Regime Change” in Syria

By Stephen Lendman, September 25, 2015

Washington doesn’t negotiate. It demands. John Kerry saying he’s willing to engage with Russia and Assad on Syria is smoke screen deception. Claiming the need for a political solution belies America’s rage for war. Washington undermined Geneva I and II talks despite Russia’s best efforts. Longstanding US plans call for regime change.

The Gulf State Despots: Ten Facts about Saudi ArabiaCatastrophe in Saudi Arabia, Pillar of Washington’s Middle East Policy

By Bill Van Auken, September 25, 2015

The horrific and massive death toll stemming from a stampede of Muslim pilgrims near Mecca is symptomatic of a deepening crisis of the Saudi monarchy, a lynchpin of reaction and key pillar of US policy in the Middle East.

YemenYemen as Laboratory: Why is the West So Silent About This Savage War?

By Martha Mundy, September 25, 2015

What is at stake in Yemen that far more systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions than in any of the recent wars which Western powers have supported in the Arab world (Iraq, Syria, Libya and Gaza) are met with resounding…

Two Years Ago: Israel's Deadly Offensive in the Gaza StripIsrael’s Crippling Blockade: Gaza Electricity Lines Disconnected as Energy Crisis Worsens

By SyndiGate.info, September 24, 2015

Two power lines providing electricity to the Gaza Strip were disconnected overnight Tuesday further fueling an ongoing energy crisis in the beleaguered coastal enclave. Gaza’s energy authority said that the Jabalia line feeding northern Gaza off the Israeli electricity grid…

British Labor Leader Corbyn: “ISIS Created by UK and US”British Labor Leader Corbyn: “ISIS Created by UK and US”

By Alalam, September 24, 2015

British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn has risked sparking fresh controversy after blaming the rise of ISIS on Britain and the United States. The veteran anti-war campaigner said ISIS hadn’t “come from nowhere” and was partly “a creation of Western interventions in the region.”

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Court in France Confirms Farmer Was Poisoned by Monsanto Herbicide

September 25th, 2015 by Christina Sarich

An important precedence has been set by a recent ruling in French Court. Even after an appeals court heard a case which attested that a farmer was poisoned by accidentally inhaling the fumes of an herbicide, they still sided in favor of the farmer. Considering that the herbicide, though not its best seller, was made by Monsanto – this news is even more important.

Monsanto makes an herbicide, which like Roundup, is damaging to human health. It’s called Lasso, and its main ingredient is alachlor. When a farmer was exposed to this herbicide, he became grossly disabled with severe neurological disorders.

The French court in Lyon, upheld a previous ruling that the US biotech company, Monsanto, was liable for the farmers’ poisoning when he inhaled the herbicide while attending to corn crops.

The case was originally heard in 2012, and the farmer, Paul Francois, was to be fully compensated for becoming disabled due to Monsanto’s product when he inhaled the fumes accidentally on his farm in 2004.

The appeals ruling came this last week, when the courts condemned Monsanto, even though its lawyers argued that there was not enough evidence linking the farmer’s symptoms to the herbicide.

Francois claims that after inhaling the Lasso herbicide, he became nauseated, began stuttering, and suffered dizziness, headaches, and muscular aches that rendered him unable to work for a year. The risks are not outlined on the product’s label.

Monsanto also had to answer for keeping health-impairing Lasso on the market until 2007, despite bans of the product in Canada, Britain, and Belgium.

This is another nail in Monsanto’s coffin in France, since just last June the French Ecology Minister, Segolene Royal, announced a ban on over-the-counter sales of the Monsanto weedkiller Roundup.

Even more recently, Russia announced a game-changing move in the fight against Monsanto’s GMOs, completely banning the use of genetically modified ingredients in any and all food production. This is even more important when you consider the fact that many GMO crops are specifically made to withstand copious amounts of herbicides.

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All-Out War in Ukraine: NATO’s ‘Final Offensive’

September 25th, 2015 by Prof. James Petras

GR Editor’s Note

We bring to the attention of our readers this incisive article by Prof. James Petras first published by GR in November 2014. The article points with foresight to the development of an all out civil war in Eastern Ukraine. It also points to the political complicity of Germany.

*        *        *

There are clear signs that a major war is about to break out in Ukraine [November 2014]:  A war actively promoted by the NATO regimes and supported by their allies and clients in Asia (Japan) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia).  The war over Ukraine will essentially run along the lines of a full-scale military offensive against the southeast Donbas region, targeting the breakaway ethnic Ukraine- Russian Peoples Republic of Donetsk and Lugansk, with the intention of deposing the democratically elected government, disarming the popular militias, killing the guerrilla resistance partisans and their mass base, dismantling the popular representative organizations and engaging in ethnic cleansing of millions of bilingual Ukraino-Russian citizens.  NATO’s forthcoming military seizure of the Donbas region is a continuation and extension of its original violent putsch in Kiev, which overthrew an elected Ukrainian government in February 2014.

The Kiev junta and its newly ‘elected’ client rulers, and its NATO sponsors are intent on a major purge to consolidate the puppet Poroshenko’s dictatorial rule.  The recent NATO-sponsored elections excluded several major political parties that had traditionally supported the country’s large ethnic minority populations, and was boycotted in the Donbas region.  This sham election in Kiev set the tone for NATO’s next move toward converting Ukraine into one gigantic US multi-purpose military base aimed at the Russian heartland and into a neo-colony for German capital, supplying Berlin with grain and raw materials while serving as a captive market for German manufactured goods.

An intensifying war fever is sweeping the West; the consequences of this madness appear graver by the hour.

War Signs:  The Propaganda and Sanctions Campaign, the G20 Summit and the Military Build Up

The official drum- beat for a widening conflict in Ukraine, spearheaded by the Kiev junta and its fascist militias, echoes in every Western mass media outlet, every day.  Major mass media propaganda mills and government ‘spokesmen and women’ publish or announce new trumped-up accounts of growing Russian military threats to its neighbors and cross-border invasions into Ukraine.  New Russian incursions are ‘reported’ from the Nordic borders and Baltic states to the Caucuses.  The Swedish regime creates a new level of hysteria over a mysterious “Russian” submarine off the coast of Stockholm, which it never identifies or locates – let alone confirms the ‘sighting’.  Estonia and Latvia claim Russian warplanes violated their air space without confirmation.  Poland expels Russian “spies” without proof or witnesses.  Provocative full-scale joint NATO-client state military exercises are taking place along Russia’s frontiers in the Baltic States, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

NATO is sending vast arms shipments to the Kiev junta, along with “Special Forces” advisers and counter-insurgency experts in anticipation of a full-scale attack against the rebels in the Donbas.

The Kiev regime has never abided by the Minsk cease fire. According to the UN Human Rights office 13 people on average –mostly civilians –have been killed each day since the September cease fire. In eight weeks, the UN reports that 957 people have killed –overwhelmingly by Kiev’s armed forces.

The Kiev regime, in turn, has cut all basic social and public services to the Peoples’ Republics’, including electricity, fuel, civil service salaries, pensions, medical supplies, salaries for teachers and medical workers, municipal workers wages; banking and transport have been blockaded.

The strategy is to further strangle the economy, destroy the infrastructure, force an even greater mass exodus of destitute refugees from the densely populated cities across the border into Russia and then to launch massive air, missile, artillery and ground assaults on urban centers as well as rebel bases.

The Kiev junta has launched an all-out military mobilization in the Western regions, accompanied by rabid anti-Russian, anti-Eastern Orthodox indoctrination campaigns designed to attract the most violent far right chauvinist thugs and to incorporate the Nazi-style military brigades into the frontline shock troops.  The cynical use of irregular fascist militias will ‘free’ NATO and Germany from any responsibility for the inevitable terror and atrocities in their campaign.  This system of ‘plausible deniability’ mirrors the tactics of the German Nazis whose hordes of fascist Ukrainians and Ustashi Croats were notorious in their epoch of ethnic cleansing.

G20-plus-NATO: Support of the Kiev Blitz

To isolate and weaken resistance in the Donbas and guarantee the victory of the impending Kiev blitz, the EU and the US are intensifying their economic, military and diplomatic pressure on Russia to abandon the nascent peoples’ democracy in the south-east region of Ukraine, their principle ally.

Each and every escalation of economic sanctions against Russia is designed to weaken the capacity of the Donbas resistance fighters to defend their homes, towns and cities.  Each and every Russian shipment of essential medical supplies and food to the besieged population evokes a new and more hysterical outburst – because it counters Kiev-NATO strategy of starving the partisans and their mass base into submission or provoking their flight to safety across the Russian border.

After suffering a series of defeats, the Kiev regime and its NATO strategists decided to sign a ‘peace protocol’, the so-called Minsk agreement, to halt the advance of the Donbas resistance into the southern regions and to protect its Kiev’s soldiers and militias holed-up in isolated pockets in the East.  The Minsk agreement was designed to allow the Kiev junta to build up its military, re-organize its command and incorporate the disparate Nazi militias into its overall military forces in preparation for a ‘final offensive’.  Kiev’s military build-up on the inside and NATO’s escalation of sanctions against Russia on the outside would be two sides of the same strategy:  the success of a frontal attack on the democratic resistance of the Donbas basin depends on minimizing Russian military support through international sanctions.

NATO’s virulent hostility to Russian President Putin was on full display at the G20 meeting in Australia: NATO-linked presidents and prime ministers, especially Merkel, Obama, Cameron, Abbott, and Harper’s political threats and overt personal insults paralleled Kiev’s growing starvation blockade of the besieged rebels and population centers in the south-east.  Both the G20’s economic threats against Russia and the diplomatic isolation of Putin and Kiev’s economic blockade are preludes to NATO’s Final Solution – the physical annihilation of all vestiges of Donbas resistance, popular democracy and cultural-economic ties with Russia.

Kiev depends on its NATO mentors to impose a new round of severe sanctions against Russia, especially if its planned invasion encounters a well armed and robust mass resistance bolstered by Russian support.  NATO is counting on Kiev’s restored and newly supplied military capacity to effectively destroy the southeast centers of resistance.

NATO has decided on an ‘all-or-nothing campaign’:  to seize all of Ukraine or, failing that, destroy the restive southeast, obliterate its population and productive capacity and engage in an all-out economic (and possibly shooting) war with Russia.  Chancellor Angela Merkel is on board with this plan despite the complaints of German industrialists over their huge loss of export sales to Russia.  President Hollande of France has signed on dismissing the complaints of trade unionists over the loss of thousands French jobs in the shipyards.  Prime Minister David Cameron is eager for an economic war against Moscow, suggesting the bankers of the City of London find new channels to launder the illicit earnings of Russian oligarchs.

The Russian Response

Russian diplomats are desperate to find a compromise, which allows Ukraine’s ethnic Ukraine- Russian population in the southeast to retain some autonomy under a federation plan and regain influence within the ‘new’ post-putsch Ukraine.  Russian military strategists have provided logistical and military aid to the resistance in order to avoid a repeat of the Odessa massacre of ethnic Russians by Ukrainian fascists on a massive scale. Above all, Russia cannot afford to have NATO-Nazi-Kiev military bases along its southern ‘underbelly’, imposing a blockade of the Crimea and forcing a mass exodus of ethnic Russians from the Donbas.  Under Putin, the Russian government has tried to propose compromises allowing Western economic supremacy over Ukraine but without NATO military expansion and absorption by Kiev.

That policy of conciliation has repeatedly failed.

The democratically elected ‘compromise regime’ in Kiev was overthrown in February 2014 in a violent putsch, which installed a pro-NATO junta.

Kiev violated the Minsk agreement with impunity and encouragement from the NATO powers and Germany.

The recent G20 meeting in Australia featured a rabble-rousing chorus against President Putin.  The crucial four-hour private meeting between Putin and Merkel turned into a fiasco when Germany parroted the NATO chorus.

Putin finally responded by expanding Russia’s air and ground troop preparedness along its borders while accelerating Moscow’s economic pivot to Asia.

Most important, President Putin has announced that Russia cannot stand by and allow the massacre of a whole people in the Donbas region.

Is Poroshenko’s forthcoming blitz against the people of southeast Ukraine designed to provoke a Russian response – to the humanitarian crisis?  Will Russia confront the NATO-directed Kiev offensive and risk a total break with the West?

James Petras latest book is THE POLITICS OF IMPERIALISM:THE US, ISRAEL AND THE MIDDLE EAST (CLARITY PRESS:ATLANTA)
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U.S. Special Operations Forces: A Secret War in 135 Countries

September 25th, 2015 by Nick Turse

You can find them in dusty, sunbaked badlands, moist tropical forests, and the salty spray of third-world littorals. Standing in judgement, buffeted by the rotor wash of a helicopter orsweltering beneath the relentless desert sun, they instruct, yell, and cajole as skinnier menplayact under their watchful eyes. In many places, more than their particular brand of camouflage, better boots, and designer gear sets them apart. Their days are scented by stale sweat and gunpowder; their nights are spent in rustic locales or third-world bars.

These men — and they are mostly men — belong to an exclusive military fraternity that traces its heritage back to the birth of the nation. Typically, they’ve spent the better part of a decade as more conventional soldiers, sailors, marines, or airmen before making the cut. They’ve probably been deployed overseas four to 10 times. The officers are generally approaching their mid-thirties; the enlisted men, their late twenties. They’ve had more schooling than most in the military. They’re likely to be married with a couple of kids. And day after day, they carry out shadowy missions over much of the planet: sometimes covert raids, more often hush-hush training exercises from Chad to Uganda, Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, Albania to Romania, Bangladesh to Sri Lanka, Belize to Uruguay. They belong to the Special Operations forces (SOF), America’s most elite troops — Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, among others — and odds are, if you throw a dart at a world map or stop a spinning globe with your index finger and don’t hit water, they’ve been there sometime in 2015.

The Wide World of Special Ops

This year, U.S. Special Operations forces have already deployed to 135 nations, according to Ken McGraw, a spokesman for Special Operations Command (SOCOM).  That’s roughly 70% of the countries on the planet.  Every day, in fact, America’s most elite troops are carrying out missions in 80 to 90 nations, practicing night raids or sometimes conductingthem for real, engaging in sniper training or sometimes actually gunning down enemies from afar. As part of a global engagement strategy of endless hush-hush operations conducted on every continent but Antarctica, they have now eclipsed the number and range of special ops missions undertaken at the height of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the waning days of the Bush administration, Special Operations forces (SOF) were reportedly deployed in only about 60 nations around the world.  By 2010, according to theWashington Post, that number had swelled to 75.  Three years later, it had jumped to 134 nations, “slipping” to 133 last year, before reaching a new record of 135 this summer.  This 80% increase over the last five years is indicative of SOCOM’s exponential expansion which first shifted into high gear following the 9/11 attacks.

Special Operations Command’s funding, for example, has more than tripled from about $3 billion in 2001 to nearly $10 billion in 2014 “constant dollars,” according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).  And this doesn’t include funding from the various service branches, which SOCOM estimates at around another $8 billion annually, or other undisclosed sums that the GAO was unable to track.  The average number of Special Operations forces deployed overseas has nearly tripled during these same years, while SOCOM more than doubled its personnel from about 33,000 in 2001 to nearly 70,000 now.

Each day, according to SOCOM commander General Joseph Votel, approximately 11,000 special operators are deployed or stationed outside the United States with many more on standby, ready to respond in the event of an overseas crisis. “I think a lot of our resources are focused in Iraq and in the Middle East, in Syria for right now. That’s really where our head has been,” Votel told the Aspen Security Forum in July.  Still, he insisted his troops were not “doing anything on the ground in Syria” — even if they had carried out a night raid there a couple of months before and it was later revealed that they are involved in a covert campaign of drone strikes in that country.

“I think we are increasing our focus on Eastern Europe at this time,” he added.

“At the same time we continue to provide some level of support on South America for Colombia and the other interests that we have down there. And then of course we’re engaged out in the Pacific with a lot of our partners, reassuring them and working those relationships and maintaining our presence out there.”

In reality, the average percentage of Special Operations forces deployed to the Greater Middle East has decreased in recent years.  Back in 2006, 85% of special operators were deployed in support of Central Command or CENTCOM, the geographic combatant command (GCC) that oversees operations in the region.  By last year, that number haddropped to 69%, according to GAO figures.  Over that same span, Northern Command — devoted to homeland defense — held steady at 1%, European Command (EUCOM) doubled its percentage, from 3% to 6%, Pacific Command (PACOM) increased from 7% to 10%, and Southern Command, which overseas Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, inched up from 3% to 4%. The largest increase, however, was in a region conspicuously absent from Votel’s rundown of special ops deployments.  In 2006, just 1% of the special operators deployed abroad were sent to Africa Command’s area of operations.  Last year, it was 10%.

A member of the U.S. Special Operations forces guides two soldiers from Cameroon’s 3rd Battalion Intervention Rapid (BIR) during a 2013 training event. (Photo by Air Force Master Sgt. Larry W. Carpenter Jr.)

Globetrotting is SOCOM’s stock in trade and, not coincidentally, it’s divided into a collection of planet-girding “sub-unified commands”: the self-explanatory SOCAFRICA; SOCEUR, the European contingent; SOCCENT, the sub-unified command of CENTCOM; SOCKOR, which is devoted strictly to Korea; SOCPAC, which covers the rest of the Asia-Pacific region; SOCSOUTH, which conducts missions in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean; SOCNORTH, which is devoted to “homeland defense”; and the ever-itinerant Joint Special Operations Command or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command (formerly headed by Votel) made up of personnel from each service branch, including SEALs, Air Force special tactics airmen, and the Army’s Delta Force that specializes intracking and killing suspected terrorists.

The elite of the elite in the special ops community, JSOC takes on covert, clandestine, and low-visibility operations in the hottest of hot spots.  Some covert ops that have come to light in recent years include a host of Delta Force missions: among them, an operation in May in which members of the elite force killed an Islamic State commander known as Abu Sayyaf during a night raid in Syria; the 2014 release of long-time Taliban prisoner Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl; the capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala, a suspect in 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya; and the 2013 abduction of Anas al-Libi, an al-Qaeda militant, off a street in that same country.  Similarly, Navy SEALs have, among other operations, carried out successful hostage rescue missions in Afghanistan and Somalia in 2012; a disastrous one in Yemen in 2014; a 2013 kidnap raid in Somalia that went awry; and — that same year — a failed evacuation mission in South Sudan in which three SEALs were wounded when their aircraft was hit by small arms fire.

SOCOM’s SOF Alphabet Soup

Most deployments have, however, been training missions designed to tutor proxies and forge stronger ties with allies. “Special Operations forces provide individual-level training, unit-level training, and formal classroom training,” explains SOCOM’s Ken McGraw.

“Individual training can be in subjects like basic rifle marksmanship, land navigation, airborne operations, and first aid.  They provide unit-level training in subjects like small unit tactics, counterterrorism operations and maritime operations. SOF can also provide formal classroom training in subjects like the military decision-making process or staff planning.”

From 2012 to 2014, for instance, Special Operations forces carried out 500 Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) missions in as many as 67 countries each year.  JCETs are officially devoted to training U.S. forces, but they nonetheless serve as a key facet of SOCOM’s global engagement strategy. The missions “foster key military partnerships with foreign militaries, enhance partner-nations’ capability to provide for their own defense, and build interoperability between U.S. SOF and partner-nation forces,” according to SOCOM’s McGraw.

And JCETs are just a fraction of the story.  SOCOM carries out many other multinational overseas training operations.   According to data from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), for example, Special Operations forces conducted 75 training exercises in 30 countries in 2014.  The numbers were projected to jump to 98 exercises in 34 countries by the end of this year.

“SOCOM places a premium on international partnerships and building their capacity.  Today, SOCOM has persistent partnerships with about 60 countries through our Special Operations Forces Liaison Elements and Joint Planning and Advisory Teams,” saidSOCOM’s Votel at a conference earlier this year, drawing attention to two of the many types of shadowy Special Ops entities that operate overseas.

These SOFLEs and JPATs belong to a mind-bending alphabet soup of special ops entities operating around the globe, a jumble of opaque acronyms and stilted abbreviations masking a secret world of clandestine efforts often conducted in the shadows in impoverished lands ruled by problematic regimes.  The proliferation of this bewildering SOCOM shorthand — SOJTFs and CJSOTFs, SOCCEs and SOLEs — mirrors the relentless expansion of the command, with its signature brand of military speak or milspeak proving as indecipherable to most Americans as its missions are secret from them.

Around the world, you can find Special Operations Joint Task Forces (SOJTFs), Combined Joint Special Operations Task Forces (CJSOTFs), and Joint Special Operations Task Forces (JSOTFs), Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOCs), as well as Special Operations Command and Control Elements (SOCCEs) and Special Operations Liaison Elements (SOLEs).  And that list doesn’t even include Special Operations Command Forward (SOC FWD) elements — small teams which, according to the military, “shape and coordinate special operations forces security cooperation and engagement in support of theater special operations command, geographic combatant command, and country team goals and objectives.”

Special Operations Command will not divulge the locations or even a simple count of its SOC FWDs for “security reasons.”  When asked how releasing only the number could imperil security, SOCOM’s Ken McGraw was typically opaque.  “The information is classified,” he responded.  “I am not the classification authority for that information so I do not know the specifics of why the information is classified.”  Open source data suggests, however, that they are clustered in favored black ops stomping grounds, including SOC FWD Pakistan, SOC FWD Yemen, and SOC FWD Lebanon, as well as SOC FWD East Africa, SOC FWD Central Africa, and SOC FWD West Africa.

A U.S. Army Special Forces soldier readies himself to jump out of a C-130J Super Hercules over Hurlburt Field, Fla., March 3, 2012. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jonathan Snyder)

What’s clear is that SOCOM prefers to operate in the shadows while its personnel and missions expand globally to little notice or attention.

“The key thing that SOCOM brings to the table is that we are — we think of ourselves — as a global force. We support the geographic combatant commanders, but we are not bound by the artificial boundaries that normally define the regional areas in which they operate. So what we try to do is we try to operate across those boundaries,”

SOCOM’s Votel told the Aspen Security Forum.

In one particular blurring of boundaries, Special Operations liaison officers (SOLOs) are embedded in at least 14 key U.S. embassies to assist in advising the special forces of various allied nations.  Already operating in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, France, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Poland, Peru, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, the SOLO program is poised, according to Votel, to expand to 40 countries by 2019.  The command, and especially JSOC, has also forged close ties with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Security Agency, among other outfits, through the use of liaison officers and Special Operations Support Teams (SOSTs).

“In today’s environment, our effectiveness is directly tied to our ability to operate with domestic and international partners. We, as a joint force, must continue to institutionalize interoperability, integration, and interdependence between conventional forces and special operations forces through doctrine, training, and operational deployments,”

Votel told the Senate Armed Services Committee this spring.  “From working with indigenous forces and local governments to improve local security, to high-risk counterterrorism operations — SOF are in vital roles performing essential tasks.”

SOCOM will not name the 135 countries in which America’s most elite forces were deployed this year, let alone disclose the nature of those operations.  Most were, undoubtedly, training efforts.  Documents obtained from the Pentagon via the Freedom of Information Act outlining Joint Combined Exchange Training in 2013 offer an indication of what Special Operations forces do on a daily basis and also what skills are deemed necessary for their real-world missions: combat marksmanship, patrolling, weapons training, small unit tactics, special operations in urban terrain, close quarters combat, advanced marksmanship, sniper employment, long-range shooting, deliberate attack, and heavy weapons employment, in addition to combat casualty care, human rights awareness, land navigation, and mission planning, among others.

From Joint Special Operations Task Force-Juniper Shield, which operates in Africa’s Trans-Sahara region, and Special Operations Command and Control Element-Horn of Africa, to Army Special Operations Forces Liaison Element-Korea and Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula, the global growth of SOF missions has been breathtaking.  SEALs or Green Berets, Delta Force operators or Air Commandos, they are constantly taking on what Votel likes to call the “nation’s most complex, demanding, and high-risk challenges.”

These forces carry out operations almost entirely unknown to the American taxpayers who fund them, operations conducted far from the scrutiny of the media or meaningful outside oversight of any kind.  Everyday, in around 80 or more countries that Special Operations Command will not name, they undertake missions the command refuses to talk about.  They exist in a secret world of obtuse acronyms and shadowy efforts, of mystery missions kept secret from the American public, not to mention most of the citizens of the 135 nations where they’ve been deployed this year.

This summer, when Votel commented that more special ops troops are deployed to more locations and are conducting more operations than at the height of the Afghan and Iraq wars, he drew attention to two conflicts in which those forces played major roles that havenot turned out well for the United States.  Consider that symbolic of what the bulking up of his command has meant in these years.

“Ultimately, the best indicator of our success will be the success of the [geographic combatant commands],” says the special ops chief, but with U.S. setbacks in Africa Command’s area of operations from Mali and Nigeria to Burkina Faso and Cameroon; in Central Command’s bailiwick from Iraq and Afghanistan to Yemen and Syria; in thePACOM region vis-à-vis China; and perhaps even in the EUCOM area of operations due toRussia, it’s far from clear what successes can be attributed to the ever-expanding secret operations of America’s secret military.  The special ops commander seems resigned to the very real limitations of what his secretive but much-ballyhooed, highly-trained, well-funded, heavily-armed operators can do.

“We can buy space, we can buy time,” says Votel, stressing that SOCOM can “play a very, very key role” in countering “violent extremism,” but only up to a point — and that point seems to fall strikingly short of anything resembling victory or even significant foreign policy success.  “Ultimately, you know, problems like we see in Iraq and Syria,” he says, “aren’t going to be resolved by us.”

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. His latest book,Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa(Haymarket Books), will soon be published. His most book is He is the author/editor of several other books, including: Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam; The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Spies, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyber Warfare;Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (with Tom Engelhardt); The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives; andThe Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan. Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. His website is Nick Turse.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, or Facebook.

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Southern Kuril Islands: New Developments in the Territorial Dispute between Russia And Japan

September 25th, 2015 by James Brown

The territorial dispute between Russia and Japan over the Southern Kurils/Northern Territories has long been in a state of impasse. In simple terms, while Russia has conceded to transfer the islands of Shikotan and Habomai after the conclusion of a peace treaty, Japan insists that its sovereignty over all four of the disputed islands be recognised. Despite lengthy bilateral negotiations over seven decades and numerous imaginative proposals by academics and diplomats, the two sides have been unable to break this deadlock.

Seemingly unperturbed by the lack of meaningful progress achieved by his predecessors, Prime Minister Abe has been proactive in pursuing a territorial deal with Russia. In particular, it has become something of a mantra of his to state that “During my time in office, I will do everything possible to resolve the territorial problem.”[Kimura, 2015]. His specific plan is to offer that, if Russia acknowledges Japan’s sovereignty over the territory, he will respond with maximum flexibility with regard to the timing and manner of the islands’ actual return. In return for accepting this deal, Russia would be provided with generous assistance in the economic development of Siberia and the Russian Far East.

The Japanese leader’s strategy for achieving this goal has been straightforward. Viewing President Putin as a politician with the power and willingness to settle the dispute, Prime Minister Abe has set about trying to meet with him as frequently as possible. This he succeeded in doing five times within little more than a year after his return to government in December 2012. Most striking in this regard was Abe’s official visit to Moscow in April 2013, the first by a Japanese leader in over a decade, as well as his appearance at the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics in February 2014, an event shunned by most Western leaders.

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the rapprochement stalled as Japan felt obliged to follow the United States in introducing sanctions (albeit toothless ones). Nonetheless, Abe continued to hold meetings with Putin on the margins of international conferences, such as at ASEM in Milan (October 2014), APEC in Beijing (November 2014), and (as seems likely) the UN General Assembly in New York (September 2015). The Japanese prime minister also refused to abandon his intention of hosting the Russian president on an official visit to Tokyo, telling G7 counterparts in June 2015 of his need to continue high-level contacts with President Putin in order to achieve a territorial breakthrough [Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 2015].

And yet, despite these committed efforts by the Japanese leader and his resolute belief that Japan can still achieve a favourable outcome, there is a growing body of evidence that the Russian side is becoming ever more uncompromising. In particular, there are strong grounds to believe that Russia is now moving inexorably towards the point at which it will no longer even consider relinquishing the two smaller islands.

The offer of two

Map of the disputed islands

(Source: CartoGIS, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University)

As those familiar with this dispute will be aware, the proposal to return two islands originates from the 1956 Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration. In the absence of a peace treaty, this was the document that officially ended the state of war between the countries and restored diplomatic relations. Although there was a failure to settle the territorial dispute at that time, not least because of US opposition, the Soviet Union offered “to transfer to Japan the Habomai Islands and the island of Shikotan, the actual transfer of these islands to Japan to take place after the conclusion of a Peace Treaty” [University of Tokyo, 1956

Although officially agreed upon in 1956, Moscow has not considered this proposal to be in effect for the majority of the time since. In fact, as early as 1960, General Secretary Khrushchev rescinded the offer in retaliation for the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty. This was how things stayed for the remainder of the Cold War with the Soviet Union adopting the position that there was no territorial dispute with Japan and that claims to the contrary were mere inventions by Japanese rightists.

In 1991, President Gorbachev finally acknowledged the existence of a territorial dispute. He refused, however, to recognise the validity of the 1956 Joint Declaration, saying that it had been “removed by history” [Sarkisov, 2009]. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Yeltsin went somewhat further but he was only willing to acknowledge the Joint Declaration indirectly. This was done via the 1993 Tokyo Declaration, which states that territorial negotiations will be “based on the documents produced with the two countries’ agreement”[MOFA, 1993]. President Putin is therefore the only Soviet/Russian leader since Khrushchev to have formally recognised the validity of the 1956 Joint Declaration, and thereby committed himself to transfer Habomai and Shikotan after the conclusion of a peace treaty. This he did in 2001 by signing the Irkutsk Statement. He has since reaffirmed this position on several subsequent occasions. There are strong signs, however, that this commitment may now once again be abandoned and that Russia may return to its pre-Putin, if not its pre-Gorbachev, policy.

Not even two?

The most obvious indication of the hardening of Russia’s position is the increased profile and frequency of official visits to the disputed territory. In particular, Prime Minister Medvedev made his third trip to the islands in August 2015, calling upon his fellow ministers to do likewise every three months. This they have dutifully done, with the agriculture and transport ministers following him to the islands in September. Perhaps the most striking ministerial visit of recent months, however, was that by Veronika Skvortsova in July. This is not because of the profile of the politician (she is health minister), but rather because she did not travel to Kunashir/i or Iturup/Etorofu like the others but instead visited Shikotan. It is also notable that the purpose of her visit was to open a new hospital. This is just one of a series of recently completed infrastructure projects on the islands and a further 70 billion roubles has been allocated for 2016-2025. The central authorities have also just unveiled a policy under which unused land in the Far East will be distributed to Russian citizens. The aim is to encourage economic development and the scheme will apply to the disputed islands. Lastly, in July 2015 Russia’s Minister for Far Eastern Development announced plans to increase the number of people living on all of the inhabited Kuril Islands to as high as 24,000 [Kuz’min, 2015]. Evidently, the fact that all of these new schemes extend, not only to Kunashir/i and Iturup/Etorofu, but also to Shikotan does not give encouragement to the idea that Russia is willing to uphold its 1956 commitment.

New hospital on Shikotan (Source)

Confirmation of this trend can be found in Russian rhetoric. In particular, at the start of September Deputy Foreign Minister Morgulov told the press, “We are not engaging in any form of dialogue with Japan on the ‘Kuril problem’. This question was solved 70 years ago” [Interfax, 2015]. It is significant that this statement came from Morgulov since it was he who was engaged in peace treaty consultations with Japan in 2013-14. He is, however, far from being the only prominent figure to make such claims of late. For example, when asked last year about the prospects of resolving the territorial problem with Japan, Foreign Minister Lavrov replied bluntly that “Russia does not consider this situation to be a territorial dispute” [MID, 2014]. Prominent Russian Japan specialists, who would once have taken a more sympathetic view, have also become dismissive of Japan’s claims. For instance, Viktor Pavlyatenko of the Russian Academy of Sciences states: “My fundamental view is that we have no territorial dispute with Japan.” Rather, Moscow’s acknowledgement of the existence of a territorial dispute was an error committed when the country was weak and undergoing political turmoil. “At that time some ‘clumsy’ steps were taken on behalf of Russia with regard to Japanese demands. This began under Gorbachev and continued into the 1990s. There was a failure in our diplomacy in relation to Japan’s claims. It is now time to finish ‘cleaning up’.” [RIA Novosti, 2015].

This mode of thinking has been on the rise since before the Crimea crisis but it has since accelerated. Above all, while government ministers have generally been measured in their response to the introduction of Japanese sanctions, this has not been the case for other Russian politicians. Nowhere is this better illustrated that in the remarks of Leonid Kalashnikov, first deputy chairman of the Duma foreign affairs committee. Leaving no doubts as to his opposition to any territorial concessions, he stated:

“Japan’s chances have been restricted by themselves to the lowest possible level in connection with the fact that, having joined Western sanctions, they have now openly become an adversary or even an enemy of Russia. If prior to the sanctions there was some logic in holding negotiations, there is not now.” [Lenta, 2015

Prospects?

Giventhese significant developments , it appears likely that relatively soon Russia will formally revoke its offer to transfer even the two smaller islands. This would surely further damage the prospects of signing a peace treaty, yet there are indications that the Kremlin is increasingly indifferent on this point. In particular, Presidential Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov has said that he does not regard a peace treaty as especially necessary [IISS, 2011]. In fact, there are signs that considerable thought has already gone into calculating how this abrogation could best be achieved. One option is to blame Khrushchev. This argument has been rehearsed in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the government newspaper, where it has been stated that his offer of two islands was “short-sighted and personal” and counter to “the international legal basis of the Yalta and Potsdam Agreements” [Sabov, 2005]. This criticism also coincides neatly with the popular denunciation of his decision to transfer Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. Rejection of the 1956 Joint Declaration could therefore be presented as correcting another of Khrushchev’s reckless decisions. An alternative proposal has been to claim that the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea represents a “fundamental change of circumstances” since it introduced the principle of the 200-mile exclusive economic zone. This is seen as a plausible excuse by some since the Vienna Convention cites a “fundamental change in circumstances” as potentially legitimate grounds for terminating a treaty.

Whatever the fig leaf used, it seems only a matter of time before the renunciation comes. This is likely to be accompanied by the discontinuation of the visa-free visits that enable Japanese former residents and their relatives to travel to the islands. Indeed, it seems that this programme is already in danger since Russia has recently cancelled several of these planned trips [Yomiuri Shinbun, 2015]. These changes may well occur during the remaining years of Putin’s leadership, but, if not, it is highly likely that the next Russian president will not commit himself/herself to the transfer of Shikotan and Habomai. This successor is almost certain to be weaker than Putin and therefore prone to eschew unpopular foreign-policy positions. There is also every chance that Putin’s replacement will be more stridently nationalist. An indication of what such a figure’s attitude to the territorial dispute might be was given in August by Dmitrii Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister. In response to Japanese complaints about Medvedev’s visit to Iturup/Etorofu, Rogozin took to Twitter to say of the Japanese, “If they were real men, they would follow tradition, commit hara-kiri and at last quiet down. All they’re doing is making noise” [Vedomosti, 2015].

Some might be inclined to think that all of this matters little since the Japanese government in 2015 has no intention of accepting the offer of only two islands. In fact, however, these recent developments are important because they demonstrate just how forlorn Japanese hopes are. While Prime Minister Abe is dreaming of using his strong personal ties with Putin to persuade the Russian leader to acknowledge Japanese sovereignty over all four islands, the Russian side is steadily progressing towards rejecting all compromise whatsoever.

James D.J. Brown is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Temple University, Japan Campus. His main areas of expertise are Japanese-Russian relations and international energy politics. His research has previously been published in International Politics, Politics, Asia Policy, Post-Soviet Affairs, Problems of Post-Communism, and Europe-Asia Studies. He has just completed a book on the Northern Territories dispute, which is to be published by Routledge. 

Related articles

• John W. Dower, The San Francisco System: Past, Present, Future in U.S.-Japan-China Relations

• Kimie Hara, Untying the Kurillian Knot: Toward an Åland-Inspired Solution for the Russo-Japanese Territorial Dispute

• Tanaka Sakai, The Northern Territories Impasse, Russia and Japanese Dependence on the U.S.

Works Cited

IISS. (2011). The Shangri-La Dialogue Report. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Interfax. (2015, September 2). V MID RF otkazalis’ vesti peregovory s Yaponiei po povodu Kuril [Russian Foreign Ministry refuses to hold negotiations with Japan regarding the Kurils].

Kimura, H. (2015, August 25). Hoppōryōdo henkan no ‘amenori’ o mate [Wait for ‘an opportunity from heaven’ for the return of the Northern Territories]. Sankei Shinbun.

Kuz’min, V. (2015, July 23). Vernut’ zhizn’ na ostrova [Return life to the islands]. Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Lenta. (2015, February 7). V Gosdume posovetovali Tokio zabyt’ o nadezhdakh na ustupki po voprosu Kuril [In the State Duma they tell Tokyo to forget about hopes for concessions on the Kuril question].

MID. (2014, February 18). Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del. Retrieved from Otvet S.V. Lavrova na vopros o rossiysko-yaponskom territorial’nom spore [Answer by S.V. Lavrov to a question about the Russian-Japanese territorial dispute].

MOFA. (1993, October 13). Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved from Tokyo Declaration on Japan-Russia Relations

RIA Novosti. (2015, August 12). Vostokoved: predlozheniye yaponskogo politika – obmen Kuril na ‘nichto’ [Orientalist: Offer of Japanese politician is to exchange the Kurils for ‘nothing’].

Rossiiskaya Gazeta. (2015, June 8). Sindzo Abe: Yaponii neobkhodim dialog s Rossiei na urovne liderov [Shinzo Abe: Japan needs dialogue with Russia at the leaders’ level]. Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Sabov, A. (2005, October 28). Za Kurily. Istoriya ostrovov preduprezhdaet: Peregovory o ‘severnykh territoriyakh’ opasny dlya zdorov’ya natsii [For the Kurils. The history of the islands is a warning: Negotiations on the ‘Northern Territories’ is a danger to the health of the nation]. Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Sarkisov, K. (2009). The territorial dispute between Japan and Russia: The ‘two island solution’ and Putin’s last years as President. In K. (. Sarkisov, Northern Territories, Asia-Pacific Regional Conflicts and the Åland Experience. Oxon: Routledge.

University of Tokyo. (1956). The World and Japan Database Project. Retrieved from Joint Declaration by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Japan

Vedomosti. (2015, August 24). Rogozin predlozhil yapontsam sdelat’ kharakiri iz-za poseshcheniya Medvedevym Kuril [Rogozin suggests the Japanese commit hara-kiri following Medvedev’s visit to the Kurils].

Yomiuri Shinbun. (2015, September 2). Hoppōryōdo bosan chūshi, ‘teishutsu shorui, kon’nan’na shūsei yōkyū’ [Northern Territories grave visit cancelled, ‘difficult revisions to submitted documents requested’].

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Markets Gone Mad: Shaking Off Six Years of the Fed’s Zero Rates and Liquidity Injections

September 25th, 2015 by Mike Whitney

Imagine your doctor put you on a daily dose of oxycontin, phenobarbital and Quaaludes for six years straight. Then he suddenly cancelled your prescription. 

Do you think your behavior might become a bit erratic?

This is what’s going on with the stock market. It’s trying to shake off six years of overmedication brought on by the Fed’s zero rates and liquidity injections. 

Let me explain: Until recently, stocks had been on a tear that pushed valuations into the stratosphere. Volatility stayed low because Bernanke’s easy money and QE made investors more placid, serene and mellow. They ventured further out on the risk curve and took more chances because they were convinced that the Fed “had their back” and that there was nothing to worry about.

Then things began to fall apart. The Fed ended its asset purchase program and started talking about “normalization”, an opaque term  the Fed uses to avoid the harsher sounding “rate hikes.” This is what began to rouse investors from their drug-induced trance. The era of cheap money was coming to an end. The punch bowl was being taken away.

Then– just as the Fed’s surging liquidity had calmed the markets for six years– the absence of liquidity and high-frequency trading sent stocks gyrating wildly for months on end. The markets became unpredictable, convulsive, topsy-turvy. And while rates remained fixed at zero throughout, the mere anticipation of higher rates was enough to ignite a sustained period of extreme volatility unlike anything traders had ever seen before.  By taking its foot off the gas pedal and trying to restore traditional market dynamics, the Fed had slammed the vehicle into reverse unleashing pandemonium across global markets.

Naturally, the pundits tried to blame the mayhem on China or emerging markets or droopy commodities prices or even deflation. But it’s all baloney. The source of the problem is the Fed’s easy money policies, that’s what created the disconnect between valuations and fundamentals, that’s what sent stock prices to the moon, and that’s what inflated this ginormous stock-and-bond bubble that is just now beginning to unwind. China might have been the trigger, but it’s certainly not the cause.

Last Thursday, the unthinkable finally happened: The FOMC issued a statement that the interest rates would not be raised after all, but that ultra-accommodative policies would remain in place for the foreseeable future. On similar occasions, the markets have always rallied in gratitude for more-of-the-same easing. But not this time. This time, the Dow Jones surged 100 points before cratering 299 into the next session.

“Ah, the Fed has lost its magic touch”, the analysts opined.  The promise of zero rates was no longer enough to push stocks higher. What does this mean?  If the Fed does not have supernatural powers, then who will keep the markets from plunging? Who will keep the bubble intact? Who will save us from a painful correction?

Nobody knows.

What we do know is that stocks are currently rising on the back of cheap credit that is being diverted into Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) and stock buybacks. Corporate debt continues to grow even while earnings and revenues shrink. In other words, the Fed’s perverse incentives (zero rates) have seduced corporations into piling on record debt for financial engineering and asset stripping, while investment in building up their companies for future growth (Capex)  has fallen to post war lows. That’s the kind of shenanigans that’s driving the markets.

Corporations have been riding the crest for the last three years, refinancing more than $1 trillion per year from 2012 to 2015. But tighter credit conditions and mounting debt servicing is expected to curb their appetite for more borrowing dampening the prospects for higher stock prices. The same rule applies to stock buybacks. When equities prices flatten  out or drift lower, and debt gets more pricey, share repurchases no longer make sense. So, you can see that –even if rates stay low– tighter credit and extra debt servicing is going to pull the rug out from under the market and put stocks into a deep freeze.

The point is, the Fed knows what’s going on but just looks the other way. They know their easy money isn’t building a strong, sustainable recovery. They know it’s being used to beef up leverage on risky bets so dodgy speculators can make a killing. They know it all, but they don’t give a rip. They just want to keep the game going a little bit longer, that’s all that matters to them.   Heck, maybe Yellen has convinced herself that she can pull a rabbit out of her hat at the last minute and save us all from disaster?  It’s possible, but I doubt it.  I think she knows we’re goners. The economy is soft, the markets are zig-zagging wildly, and the whole bloody contraption looks like its ready to blow. She must know that the game is just about over.

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

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Catastrophe in Saudi Arabia, Pillar of Washington’s Middle East Policy

September 25th, 2015 by Bill Van Auken

The horrific and massive death toll stemming from a stampede of Muslim pilgrims near Mecca is symptomatic of a deepening crisis of the Saudi monarchy, a lynchpin of reaction and key pillar of US policy in the Middle East.

Thursday’s catastrophe was reported by Saudi officials to have killed at least 717 people and injured 863 others, with warnings that the death toll would almost certainly rise. The head of Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization said that the number of deaths is expected to climb to 1,500, which would make it the worst disaster at the site in recorded history, surpassing the deaths of 1,426 pilgrims in a similar incident 25 years ago.

The Saudi monarchy’s instinctual reaction to the latest tragedy was to blame the pilgrims themselves for allegedly not “respecting the timetables,” as Health Minister Khaled al-Falih told local media. Prince Khaled al-Faisal, head of the regime’s central Hajj committee, went further, blaming the stampede on “some pilgrims with African nationalities” in a clear appeal to reactionary anti-foreign and racist sentiments.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saudi issued a statement insisting that the catastrophe in no way discredited the country’s security forces.

Aside from a general desire to deny the obvious blame that befalls those responsible for controlling the crowds—the same armed forces upon which the power of the monarchy ultimately rests—it appears there may have been a far more specific reason for King Salman’s disclaimer, one involving his son and eventual heir, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud.

The Lebanese daily Al Diyar reported late Thursday that the stampede was triggered by the arrival on the scene of a large militarized convoy transporting the 30-year-old deputy crown prince, who is also the country’s defense minister.

“The large convoy of Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, the King’s son and deputy crown prince, that was escorted by over 350 security forces, including 200 army men and 150 policemen, sped up the road to go through the pilgrims that were moving towards the site of the ‘Stoning the Devil’ ritual, causing panic among millions of pilgrims who were on the move from the opposite direction and caused the stampede,”

the newspaper reported.

The formal title of Saudi Arabia’s king is “the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques [Mecca and Medina].” Thursday’s disaster, which follows close on the heels of another 107 deaths in a September 11 crane collapse at Mecca’s Grand Mosque, inevitably is politically damaging to the monarchy. If his son played a direct role in triggering the mass slaughter, it may well prove fatally destabilizing.

Indeed, on the eve of the latest disaster, a letter surfaced written by an unnamed grandson of King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, calling on the royal family to convene an “emergency meeting” essentially for the purpose of deposing the king and his key supporters.

The letter indicts Saudi interventionism in Yemen and Syria as “totally miscalculated” acts that have “weakened the trust of our people and [incited] other people against us.”

It points to the country’s growing economic crisis, fueled by the collapse in oil prices, which in turn has been driven in large measure by the monarchy’s decision to continue full production with the aim of inflicting damage on Iran and Russia. The result has been a sharp decline in revenues, threatening to raise this year’s budget deficit to as much as 20 percent of GDP. If the monarchy is forced to implement austerity measures, cutting back on social spending, it may well trigger an explosive revolt in a country where an estimated 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, and where 40 percent of young workers, between the ages of 20 and 24, are unemployed.

The letter concludes by asking the House of Saud to “isolate the incapable King Salaman, the extravagant and vain Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and the rotten thief Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salaman.”

As defense minister, the deputy crown prince is no stranger to mass killings and contempt for human life. He has been the monarchy’s point man in the six-month-old Saudi-led war against Yemen, pitting the monarchical dictatorships of the richest countries of the Arab world against the people of the poorest.

Saudi warplanes, supplied, armed and refueled in mid-air by the Pentagon, have carried out non-stop bombings that have killed thousands of civilians while destroying schools, hospitals, factories, residential neighborhoods and world heritage sites. More than 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes, and at least 21 million, 80 percent of the country’s population, have been left in desperate need of humanitarian aid.

The war is part of a more bellicose foreign policy pursued by the Saudi monarchy since the succession of King Salman at the beginning of this year. It is directed in the first instance against Iran and all those perceived to be in its orbit. This has included not only the Houthi rebels in Yemen, but also Syria, where Saudi money and arms have been key to the war for regime change fought by Al Qaeda-linked militias, also with US coordination and backing.

War abroad has been combined with the intensification of hideous repression at home. The Saudi regime is already on track to double its number of executions compared to last year. According to an Amnesty International tally issued in late August, the regime put to death, either by beheadings or firing squads, at least 175 people over the previous 12 months. This is more than triple the number of state killings carried out during the same period in the US, which has 10 times the population of the Saudi kingdom.

In the face of international outrage, the despotic monarchy is preparing to execute Ali al-Nimr, who was arrested as a 17-year-old high school student for taking part in a 2011 protest. He is sentenced to death by beheading, with his headless corpse to be publicly crucified. Like most sentenced to die, he was convicted in a drumhead trial, based on a confession extracted through torture.

Incredibly, Saudi Arabia has recently been selected to chair a key UN human rights panel. A State Department spokesman this week said that Washington “welcomes” this grotesque move, because Saudi Arabia is a “close ally.”

As the proverb says, “by your friends shall ye be known.” That Saudi Arabia is Washington’s closest ally in the Arab world is the clearest exposure of the predatory and criminal character of US imperialism’s protracted intervention in the Middle East.

It likewise is an undeniable refutation of every propaganda claim made to justify the successive US wars of aggression. Washington has supposedly waged a “war on terrorism,” while allied with a Saudi regime that is the principal font of Islamist ideology and main paymaster for Islamist militias throughout the region. It has claimed to wage proxy wars for regime change in Libya and Syria in the name of “human rights” and “democracy”, while giving its unconditional backing to one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies, infamous for its beheadings, floggings and torture.

In the final analysis, however, that Washington counts on Saudi Arabia as a pillar for its drive for hegemony over the Middle East only underscores the fact that US imperialism’s policy resembles nothing so much as a house of cards, set to collapse into new and ever greater debacles in the face of inevitable crises and mounting social struggles.

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Washington’s Longstanding Plans to Implement “Regime Change” in Syria

September 25th, 2015 by Stephen Lendman

Washington doesn’t negotiate. It demands. John Kerry saying he’s willing to engage with Russia and Assad on Syria is smoke screen deception. Claiming the need for a political solution belies America’s rage for war.

Washington undermined Geneva I and II talks despite Russia’s best efforts. Longstanding US plans call for regime change.

Days after 9/11, retired General Wesley Clark visited then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon “No one will tell us where or when to bomb”, he was told. Military commanders said Iraq would be attacked.

On a second visit, Clark was told plans were to “destroy the governments in seven countries,” he explained. Besides ongoing war on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran would be targeted.

As a brigadier general in 1991, Clark met with then Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz after Operation Desert Storm. He was told America planned multiple premeditated wars – intending to destabilize and redraw the Middle East, changing its configuration under US-controlled puppet regimes.

“We can use our military anywhere in the Middle East and the Soviets won’t stop us,” Wolfowitz explained. “And we’ve got about five or 10 years to clean out those old Soviet client regimes.” He named Syria, Iran, Iraq and other countries – calling multiple wars essential “before the next great superpower comes along to challenge us.”

In his book, “Winning Modern Wars,” Clark discussed what’s explained above. Did Congress debate it, he asked? Did presidents explain it? Did America’s media report it? “Was there a full-fledged (public discussion)? Absolutely not, and there still isn’t.”

In his new book, titled “The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire,” Julian Assange explained US plans to topple Assad way preceded the so-called 2011 Arab Spring.

A 2006 cable from former Washington consular section chief in Damascus William Roebuck discussed plans to oust Assad, saying:

…That plan was to use a number of different factors to create paranoia within the Syrian government; to push it to overreact, to make it fear there’s a coup…so in theory it says “(w)e have a problem with Islamic extremists crossing over the border with Iraq, and we’re taking actions against them to take this information and make the Syrian government look weak, the fact that it is dealing with Islamic extremists at all.’

Key was

“foster(ing) tensions between Shiites and Sunnis. In particular, to take rumors that are known to be false…or exaggerations and promote them – that Iran is trying to convert poor Sunnis, and to work with Saudi and Egypt to foster that perception in order to make it harder for Iran to have influence, and also harder for the government to have influence in the population.”

Nothing American officials say is credible. Longstanding US plans call for toppling all independent governments. Assad must go remains unchanged US policy.

Washington shuns political solutions. They require comprises.

The Obama administration’s alleged willingness to negotiate with Russia and Assad on resolving Syria’s conflict conceals its real objective – regime change by any means possible.

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.

 

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US “Not to Deploy” Nuclear Weapons in Germany. Contradictory Report from Washington

September 25th, 2015 by Pravda.ru

The US has no intentions to deploy new nuclear weapons in Germany, Shelley Laver, deputy director of public affairs for the US National Nuclear Security Administration claimed.

Laver confirmed that according to Washington’s plans, the large-scale production of B61-12 will be started not until 2020 fiscal year. The articles referring to warheads deployment in Europe by the end of this year are not accurate, as she said.

The German media reported Tuesday that the US intended to equip the German Tornado fighter aircraft with 20 B61-12 nuclear bombs.

US not to deploy nuclear weapon in Germany. Nuclear warheads

Source: Pravda.Ru photo archive

The experts note that the US Air Force needs serious upgrade to oppose the Russian anti-aircraft systems. The American Commander used to complain of the gap given the latest development of the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces. The Russian military, in particular, managed to close the airspace of such strategically important regions as the Crimea and Kaliningrad from possible air strikes.

 

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Tactical Retreat: NATO for the First Time Criticizes Ukraine’s Government

September 25th, 2015 by Eric Zuesse

Translated from German Economic News (September 15, 2015) by Eric Zuesse

http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2015/09/22/taktischer-rueckzug-nato-kritisiert-erstmals-die-regierung-der-ukraine/

New sounds are being heard at NATO: for the first time, NATO criticizes not the arch-enemy Russia, but the Government in Kiev, which is funded by the EU, telling them to adhere to the Minsk agreements.

Whether Kiev can be trusted to adhere to anything, is another question: The country’s extreme right have imposed a blockade of Crimea [contrary to Minsk] — without the government obstructing them at all.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has called upon Ukraine to implement the peace plan for the war zone in Donbass. “It is extremely important that Ukraine continue to implement all aspects of the Minsk agreements,” he said on Tuesday in Kiev. No other solution to the conflict exists. Stoltenberg was attending a meeting of the Ukrainian Security Council, the first NATO chief to do so. He then signed an agreement on a planned NATO representative in Kiev.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko confirmed plans for a referendum on a possible NATO membership for the former Soviet republic. “De jure we are not a member of NATO, but de facto we are more than just partners,” stressed Poroshenko.

Since early September in eastern Ukraine, a ceasefire between government forces and the rebels is holding reasonably well. In fact, that is why the OSCE is concerned that the Donbass civilian population could be exposed to extreme cold during the winter, without being able to protect themselves. The water system has been destroyed virtually throughout the region, many areas are mined. The OSCE called on Ukraine a few days ago to withdraw their army, so that the residents in rebel-controlled areas with the worst damage can do at least makeshift repairs.

There is disagreement, however, over [two aspects of the Mink agreement] a desired weapons withdrawal from the front, as well as local elections according to Ukrainian law in the breakaway regions. The rebels showed a willingness to compromise, possibly to postpone their planned October 18 and November 1 elections till the end of February. In the Belarusian capital Minsk, the Ukraine Contact Group wanted to discuss on Tuesday the peace plan.

Already former Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had shown himself to be unusually confident that the war in Ukraine can be contained for the time being. Americans and Russians seem to have reached initial agreement, to co-operate in Syria. And neither of the two great powers can win much right now in Ukraine. Furthermore, EU taxpayers have taken on the financing of Ukraine, providing breathing-room for the conflict there between the U.S. and Russia.

The NATO communication is a tactical measure, as shown, above all, by the announcement that a NATO Embassy will be established in Ukraine. Furthermore, the United States have just started the deployment of new nuclear weapons in Germany, which is regarded by the Russians as a provocation. The Bundestag had expressly rejected this development some time ago. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel considers it right — thus also needlessly complicating a possible mediating role for Germany in the Ukrainian conflict.

The biggest unknown, however, in the short term, is the unstable political situation within Ukraine. A few days ago a senior right-wing extremist was killed in an explosion. The right-wing extremists are plotting revenge. The civil war might shift to the Western Ukraine.

The regional power of the right-wing is also likely to escalate the conflict with Russia again: Right-wing extremists, whom the government of Ukraine allows to move freely even in the war-zone, refuses to comply with Ukrainian law, and has blocked the highways connecting Crimea to the East of Ukraine. This blockade, which is supported by anti-Crimean Tatars outside of Crimea, could cause supply problems before winter (see the video at the beginning of the article [It’s in English!]).

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

 

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Obama’s Russian Roulette

September 25th, 2015 by Kenneth G. Eade

I probably know more about Russia than most Americans.  I have had the pleasure of visiting the “evil empire” on many occasions, since I am married to a Russian national.  The effect of the current international sanctions have been a blessing in disguise for me, because my U.S. dollar has more than double the spending power that it used to here.  It is puzzling that I have not been asked, even once, about the current efforts of our Nobel Peace Prize winning and warmongering president and the neocons, warmongers and fossil fuel kings who own him, to destabilize the Ukraine and force a showdown with Russia.

Russia’s geopolitical interests in the Ukraine are very clear and go back centuries; far beyond the Soviet Union.  The threat of a Russian invasion and takeover of the Ukraine is ridiculous.  It would have already happened if it was going to happen, without much fanfare and with little or no resistance.  The annexation of the Crimea was a logical result of the Washington backed coup of the Ukrainian government.

The Crimea provides the strategic location of a Russian naval base on the Black Sea, established in Sevastopol, a city built by the Russian Empire in 1783, before the penning of the United States Constitution.  It is this naval base that is the key to the Russia’s access to the Black Sea.  The current base, before the annexation of Crimea to Russia, was under lease from the Ukrainian government to Russia.  Unlike Crimea, Russia has no interest in annexing the Ukraine, a relatively poor country, which would only place a burden on Russia’s already heavily burdened social welfare system.

The current crisis in the Ukraine, orchestrated by the United States, only benefits the US military industrial machine and US oil and gas barons.  Gas poor Europe, their primary potential customer, has thrown its hat in (as usual) with the United States and joined it in imposing economic sanctions against Russia, which have caused billions of dollars of damage to the Russian economy.  These sanctions are tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia.  The double speak supporting these sanctions is as hypocritical as the drone-loving warmongering Obama’s Peace Prize.  The official reason cited is a response to Russia’s alleged military aggression in the Ukraine.

It is no secret that the United States is now at war in Syria, under the guise of fighting ISIS, but the real reason the US in bombing Syria is the same reason that it bombed Iraq into oblivion.  The real struggle is over oil and gas and its transmission to Europe in this critical region.  Dominance of the area is critical to the US energy barons and the continuing success and profit of the never ending US military hardware and support industry.  But to extend its reach into Russia’s rich and vast natural resources by attempting a “regime change” in Russia is the equivalent of playing Russian roulette.

Russia is not, and never has been an aggressive nation.  But, sure as Napoleon in the 19th century and Hitler in the 20th discovered, it does not take kindly to invasion, and every man and woman in Russia will join together to defeat any such attempt.  It is in their blood.  With all the experts on Russia in our government, why hasn’t our Commander-in-Chief been briefed on how suicidal it would be for the United States to pick a fight with this nation?  And to pick a fight with the strongest leader at the helm of the country since Joseph Stalin is even crazier.  Despite all the efforts to chip away at Putin’s popularity, he remains popular with the people, and for just reason.  Things are much better in Russia under his leadership.  I know.  I have seen it.  Unemployment is down, pension payments are up, corruption is down, and the quality of life is significantly better than it was before.

Joe Biden may find European critics to Russian economic sanctions “annoying,” but the people of the United States have to realize that we are not threatened by this peaceful nation which occupies the largest land mass on earth.  The threat comes from us, and, if it comes to a showdown, I for one, will not relish the thought of my American brothers shipping off hallway around the world to fight to the death against my Russian brothers, who will lay down their lives to protect their mother and fathers, sisters and brothers.  United States military aggression has reached the point of idiocracy, and it must end.  The holder of the Gold Codes and nuclear football needs to be reminded that he answers to us, not the American oligarchs he has been catering to for the past six years.

Kenneth Eade is an attorney and best-selling author of A Patriot’s Act, the fictional story of a naturalized U.S. citizen, captured in Iraq and held indefinitely at Guantanamo, and the Brent Marks Legal Thriller Series.  

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America’s “License to Kill”

September 25th, 2015 by Luciana Bohne

Let’s face it: the United States feels entitled to a license to kill.

On 23 September, Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the United Nations, insisted that the Russian veto power in the Security Council was endangering its legitimacy. Russia had vetoed four Security Council resolutions on Syria. Understandably, the US rabid dogs of war are straining at the chain to which international law constrains them. How dare Russia oppose US plans for regime change in Syria and impede a further blood bath to achieve it?

An indefatigable humanitarian warmonger, Power resents Russia’s opposition to a resolution to bomb the hell out of “atrocities” in Syria, without specifying that the main “atrocity” in her government’s eyes is President Assad.

510574771AB001_UNITED_NATIO

UN Ambassador Samantha Power

No, no—it’s her humanitarian concern over the 250,000 Syrian already dead [she means to add more by bombing in their names]; it’s the refugees’ flight she means to stem [by blocking their path with bombs].

Russia is preventing all this humanitarianism: “It’s a Darwinian universe here,” she tells The Guardian. “If a particular body reveals itself to be dysfunctional, then people are going to go elsewhere, and if that happened for more than Syria and Ukraine and you started to see across the board paralysis … it would certainly jeopardise the security council’s status and credibility and its function as a go-to international security arbiter. It would definitely jeopardise that over time.”

She’s right to say, “It’s a Darwinian universe,” but it’s one for which the US is solely responsible, set on insuring the survival of its species along a path of death, destruction, and chaos, shredding international law as it goes. Soberly (how alien feels the voice of reason compared to the screeching tantrums of American functionaries), Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s UN Ambassador, responded to Power’s allegations by pointing out the obvious:

Some countries were trying to involve the Security Council in regime change operations in Syria and we were telling them that it’s not the business of the Security Council to go into regime change mode. This is a fundamental difference and it’s not the fault of the Security Council that this difference is there.

It certainly isn’t. The task of the United Nations, as per its Charter, is “to prevent the scourge of war”; the task of the Security Council is to resolve disputes, authorizing war only after all other options for peace fail. This awesome responsibility is subject to veto. The veto is a restraining mechanism for members too fond of wars. Besides, nowhere in the Charter does it say that a single member should take it upon itself to go on humanitarian crusades for unilaterally perceived and selectively declared atrocities or genocides, but this option is what the US is beginning to argue for—an option that would permit the removal of the veto in cases of Right to Protect (R2P), the US policy which materialized out of the NATO assault on Yugoslavia. You kill a nation in order to protect it. And Russia is crazy enough to oppose this humanitarian medicine. Legalistic perverts.

Stalin was prescient at Yalta. He accepted to participate in the United Nations only if each of the five permanent members of the Security Council would be allowed veto power. His great concern was prevention of war, which, he argued, could only be achieved through unity and unanimity among the Big Three. Samantha Power’s teleprompters work her up in a lather, conveniently forgetting to tell her that the UN Charter is a treaty signed by the US in the name of the people of the United States and is, therefore, the law of the land, as per the US Constitution. Arbitrarily removing Russia from its veto rights in the Security Council violates the UN Charter and, thus, it’s unconstitutional.

But what does this lot of inept, ignorant, amoral, public-relations careerist frauds care about the Constitution—or about truth and justice and a harmonious world? They are drunk with the wine of desolation. Lies and injustice are for them signs of superior intelligence—a joke on the credulous mob. Injustice is a source of strength and happiness, and the privilege of the strong. As the Empire crumbles, only might makes right.

In Plato’s Republic, this was the view of Thrasymachus, who voiced the cynicism of a morally and politically deteriorating Athenian state and empire. Socrates counter posed the idea of justice as the bedrock of a harmonious social order, monitored by reason to keep the appetites in check. But the Empire is insatiable—it knows only appetite: more oil, more forests, water, and gas, more copper, iron, gold. As the appetite grows, reason wanes, and the result is a war against humanity and the planet, waged by moral midgets the likes of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama and the minions who descend like locusts to serve them. “The sleep of reason breeds monsters,” said Goya. These’RThem—our “public” servants outsourced to Appetite, Inc., the devouring breed.

How refreshing to think of a sensual, passionate quotation by D.H. Lawrence, embracing truth and justice, in contrast to the appetitive society’s lust for pleasure in power, a cold and death-embracing passion—a “waste of shame”:

The profoundest of all sensualities is the sense of truth and the next deepest sensual experience is the sense of justice.

Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: [email protected]

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Obama and Putin to Meet at UN

September 25th, 2015 by Stephen Lendman

On Monday, September 28, both leaders will meet on the sidelines of the General Assembly’s 70th session, an array of world leaders to address the world body.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed it, saying “(a) meeting with Obama has been coordinated.” When asked what both leaders will discuss, he responded “I’ll give you three guesses.”

Restoring peace and stability to war-torn Syria and Donbass top Putin’s geopolitical agenda – along with enlisting world community support to combat ISIS and other takfiri terrorists in Syria and Iraq and the risk of their spread without a united effort to defeat them.

Both leaders rarely speak, less often meet, the last time briefly in November 2014 at the Beijing, China-hosted APEC summit. No detailed meeting was held. Their longest discussion was a 15-minute encounter during the June 2014 D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Hostile relations persist. Putin is blamed for crisis conditions in Ukraine and Syria.

Tass reported an unnamed senior US official “confirm(ing) that the two presidents will meet in the context of the UN General Assembly.”

“Given the situations in Ukraine and Syria, despite our profound differences with Moscow, the president believes that it would be irresponsible not to test whether we can make progress through high-level engagement with the Russians,” he said.

According to The New York Times, a US official “insisting on anonymity” ahead of the White House announcement said the meeting’s “core message” was Russia observing Minsk ceasefire terms – ignoring Moscow’s commitment to peace and stability in contrast to Washington’s permanent war agenda. The Times didn’t explain.

The Washington Post cited a White House source saying Russia’s support for Assad will also be discussed.

The Wall Street Journal said both leaders will meet “amid increasing tension over Russia’s role in Syria and hopes in the White House that there might be a diplomatic resolution to the conflict” – ignoring Obama’s war, his full responsibility for mass slaughter and destruction, Putin the best hope for ending it, dedicated to world peace, polar opposite Obama’s rage for endless wars.

Discussions with Putin will accomplish nothing as long as Obama insists Assad must go – polar opposite his counterpart insisting sovereign people alone have the exclusive right to choose their leaders and officials, no outside powers, especially imperial ones for their own self-interest.

Washington’s great fear is the possibility that Putin’s peace strategy may succeed, defeating its regional war agenda. European nations increasingly can’t cope with human refugee floods caused by imperial wars.

The only viable solution is ending them. The strain of thousands of desperate people arriving in Europe daily may drive its leaders to ally with Putin’s agenda – international community unity to defeat ISIS and other terrorists.

Washington may have no effective Plan B to counter Europe’s determination to wage war on ISIS cooperatively with Russia. Angela Merkel said “many actors” must be involved, including Assad and Iran, irresponsible to exclude them from participating.

Damascus has committed Russian support in its struggle to defeat takfiri terrorists devastating Syria, Iraq, and perhaps heading cross-borders to continue their rampaging – with full US financial and military support.

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.

 

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US Blockade of Syria: A War Crime

September 25th, 2015 by Christopher Black

The news that the United States asked both Greece and Bulgaria to block Russian flights over their air space headed for Syria is a logical extension of the criminality of the aggression against Syria being conducted by the NATO powers and their allies in the region. The NATO alliance has been conducting a war of aggression against Syria since 2011 when it succeeded in destroying Libya and it was responsible for the waves of humanity who fled the NATO bombing and who now flee the Takfiri militants NATO used as their auxiliaries.

These actions are clearly war crimes of the highest order, contemptuous violations of the UN Charter, international law and of all morality. The resulting misery of the peoples of the countries under attack, who are forced to flee and become refugees in the heart of the very alliance that is attacking them, is beyond words. The images bombard us daily. But the images are not placed in the western media to create a call for peace in the region. Instead, as we see from the recent statements of the British, French and American leaders, they are used to manipulate the emotions of the citizens of the NATO countries to justify a call for more military aggression against Syria which will create more misery, more death and more refugees.

That the flood of stories in the western press about the Syrian refugees is being used as a propaganda tool to is easy to see when we compare the situation regarding refugees from Libya and Ukraine. The Libyan people have been fleeing the hell that NATO created for four years now, with thousands of people arriving in Europe, mostly on the shores of Italy. But there has been no call to attack the vicious thugs that NATO installed in place of the progressive socialist Libyan Republic, no call to bring back the civilized society that existed before Gaddafi was brutally murdered by the same forces, no call for regime change in Tripoli. Instead, chaos and gangsterism prevail, and all is well.

In Ukraine over a million people have fled the Kiev junta’s massive armed attacks on its own people, the type of attacks that NATO countries alleged Gaddafi had used on his own people to justify their attack on Libya. The US puppets in Kiev have used bombing raids on civilians, white phosphorus shells, cluster bombs and other banned weapons and they have used them not on military targets of the peoples resistance forces but on civilian houses, shops, schools, hospitals, power stations and other civilian infrastructure. Food and medical supplies are blockaded. The people of the Donbas are under siege. All these actions are war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet the western media says not a single word about them. There is no call from Washington or London or Paris or Ottawa to bomb Kiev and remove Poroshenko. Instead they supply him and his Nazi friends with weapons, supplies and money and send in their own forces to assist in these criminal attacks. The double standards applied and the deep hypocrisy and cynicism displayed by the NATO governments and the western news media that provide the information flow to the people, must shake anyone’s belief in the viability of western civilization.

In stark contrast, Russia has taken in over a million refugees so far from Ukraine without complaint while the EU countries argue bitterly amongst themselves as to who should take the refugees they have created and while they fan the flames of xenophobia among their own populations. But then the motivations are completely different. The Russians want to help the people being attacked by NATO and its puppet regime in Kiev. The Europeans only want to use the refugees as a means of creating hysteria in Europe so that their people will support a combined NATO attack on Syria.

Since these EU countries in one way or another support the forces attacking Syria they are responsible under international law for receiving and caring for the refugees they have created. They must follow certain humane standards in the treatment of them, but instead we see images of them being fed like animals or being kicked and tripped up by the very media sent to report on the crisis.

But now the situation has escalated further with the United States demanding that Greece and Bulgaria block relief supplies from Russia from using their air space, an attempt to completely block these supplies. Greece has found the courage to refuse the request. Bulgaria to its shame has decided to lick their boots.

The Americans try to justify their demand by claiming that some of those flights are used to deliver military supplies to Syria. Yes, and so what? Russia has every right to support the Syrian government in its fight against the Nato-Saudi, Israeli auxiliaries who are fighting in Syria under the acronyms ISIS or ISIL or Al Qaeda and has been openly doing so since the beginning. There is no UN approved arms embargo against Syria and the United States and its allies are daily dropping supplies to these same groups and have let it be known that their special forces are operating on the ground alongside those forces. Just the other day another story broke of the Israeli Army airlifting wounded from these groups for treatment in Israeli occupied zones and one must wonder if those selectively helped are not indeed Israeli special forces themselves. The Americans and Bulgarians are not just worried about more Russian military supplies from being delivered. They also want the Syrian people to experience the maximum state of misery and despair to punish them for their support of their government and to try to force them to turn against it.

Indeed, the Russian and Syrian governments affirm that many of those flights are delivering much needed humanitarian relief including medical supplies, generators for hospitals, food, tents for internal refugees, and related supplies to relieve the distress of the Syrian people in the face of the American provoked attacks on them. One has to ask, where are the American and European relief supplies for the Syrian people? Where are the ships and planes that should be carrying the same supplies the Russians are delivering? If they had delivered them and if they had insisted that the attacks on Syria stop there would not be any refugees. But they want the refugees to generate war propaganda and so they do not want relief supplies to get through.

The attempt to blockade the delivery of humanitarian assistance amounts to a war crime under international law, including the the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremburg Principles and the Statute of Rome that sets out the definitions of war crimes under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The attempted blockade of humanitarian assistance constitutes murder, inhuman treatment, collective punishment, an action designed to bring about the physical destruction of the population and the nation, and other related crimes committed against the Syrian civilian population. Every European leader who takes part in this criminal conspiracy should be charged with war crimes. The American president should be Number One in the dock. But international criminal law continues to be administered by criminals and we watch with disbelief the complete silence of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court who sits in her office in The Hague and twiddles her thumbs while Damascus, Aleppo and Donetsk burn.

The cartloads of the dead overflow the cemeteries. The misery of the living mounts. The hope that is left for peace and security, even for a little kindness in this life, drips out of our veins with every drop of blood shed by the victims of these NATO wars. It is very easy to despair. I despair. But we must resist. We must demand these wars stop, We must stop sitting around face booking and surfing the internet, get out of these artificial worlds they have built to turn us into zombies of the living and get back on the streets where we still count, where they still fear us and where we can shout our demands so loud they will shake the walls of the state itself.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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Yemen as Laboratory: Why is the West So Silent About This Savage War?

September 25th, 2015 by Martha Mundy

What is at stake in Yemen that far more systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions than in any of the recent wars which Western powers have supported in the Arab world (Iraq, Syria, Libya and Gaza) are met with resounding silence?

For six months there has been a blockade of food and fuel, and management of aid (even that through the UN) as part of war strategy, bombing of civilian, historical, educational, religious and medical targets, destruction of infrastructure from roads to electricity and water, and use of prohibited weapons.

All of this occurs in a country of over twenty million persons, which has no effective air defences – a country as open to aerial bombardment as Gaza. Yet as an Israeli Foreign Ministry official has pointed out, the principles of international humanitarian law systematically violated in Yemen are those invoked by UN bodies, governments, the Western media, and civil organisations when they charge Israel with the commission of war crimes in Gaza.

sanaa yemen rebels rally

In other words, by its silence and support for Coalition bombing in Yemen, the international community completes the erasure of legal reference in war.

That is a big price to pay for success in a conflict seemingly so minor it receives virtually no press coverage.

How is the conflict explained to us? Spokesmen of Western governments state that a militia movement (Ansarallah) took over the capital forcing out the legitimate government. Thus, as upholders of ‘legitimacy,’ the UNSC (minus Russia) judged it vital to reinstate the earlier government, even though the bulk of the Yemeni national army came over to the side of the mundaydomesticgovAnsarallah, itself with a substantial popular base in Sanaa and the north. This is evident. But rarely are we reminded that a year ago, under UN auspices a political agreement (‘Peace and National Participation’) was co-signed by the Ansarallah and other Yemeni parties, only for the UN representative to be fired, another appointed, political discussions with the Ansarallah movement terminated, and a military Coalition assembled to reinstate ‘legitimacy’ inside Yemen.

As the Coalition has gone on to destroy not only Yemen but law itself, surely continuing political negotiation would have been a lower price to pay?

Why was it not?

Could it really be that some words just should never be uttered? For example, Ansarallah’s slogans call for ‘death to America and Israel.’ That slogans against America and Israel resound in the streets of a capital city, even of a small, poor, peripheral Arab country, doubled by curses on the Saudi monarch since the bombing began, clearly is unacceptable to the powers concerned. (More gratuitous and offensive to this writer is the puerile call for curses on Jews, who so long formed a component of Yemeni society, and so few of whom remain there.) But are America and Israel sacred terms that no one should ever decry?

And, slogans aside, the fact remains that Ansarallah is a religio-political movement which, unlike al-Qa`idah or Da`ish, works with secular political parties, including the Yemeni Socialist Party, and time and again negotiates politically, most recently accepting the basic clauses of the UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which the Coalition gives as the basis for its attack to restore ‘legitimacy.’

So what else is at stake that the Coalition has been left to bomb for six months to the sound of world silence?

Is it just money? Obviously Saudi Arabia (with more British airplanes than the British army) and the GCC can buy a lot of media, weapons, and people. Yet the support of the US, France and the UK to the Coalition goes beyond what money can buy, even today.   So what else is at stake?

A tentative answer:

The French, who are facilitating the naval blockade, still have a base in Djibouti. It allows them to continue as players in a global network (Diego Garcia and 1400 US overseas bases) expanded from the days of the Cold War. Today, Djibouti’s major function may be not just above, but under, water: to watch the communication cables, which pass between China, Asia and the West that lie on the sea bed. Although all that visitors to Djibouti may see are French army frogmen diving to check the cables, there must be wider coordination with the Israeli submarines patrolling in the Red Sea.

The Coalition is meant to be the first exercise of a GCC ‘rapid deployment force’ advised discreetly by Israeli and American officers. Such coordination in the attack of an Arab country is novel. How has this been marketed? The rage provoked by the deaths of the invading GCC forces in Mar`ib suggests that Yemen was dreamt of as a training programme for wars modelled on recent Israeli ones – a war to be determined by aerial bombardment, but without the international outrage at war crimes that Israel suffers.

Yemen as a laboratory for new wars? It seems bizarre since, compared to Gaza, Yemen is far larger, intelligence mapping of the population far poorer, and there is still something of a ground army standing. But if one remembers how Yemen has served as a laboratory for US drones, including targeted assassination of a US citizen, perhaps it was so marketed.

Indeed there is something glossy about the way the war was sold to the GCC leaders (GCC minus Oman which refused to participate) even if we, the general public, haven’t seen the brochures. For the Emiratis it was to lead to ‘the City of Light’ (al-Noor Yemen) of booming commerce on the Indian Ocean and open to East Africa but subject to the management choices of Dubai. To the Saudi very much more was promised: unified control of ‘The Empty Quarter’ and its fabled unexploited quantities of oil and gas which the US guarded in the ground so long as the government was Yemeni; practice in making and unmaking societies and governments by precision bombing of a population dependent on food imports; and a victory so stunning, the Arabian Peninsula becoming effectively theirs, that peace with Israel could soon be publically celebrated.

In early June at a Council on Foreign Relations event, retired Major General Anwar Eshki of Saudi Arabia laid out the package. He was joined at the event by Ambassador Dore Gold of Israel. What Eshki said is not news in Saudi Arabia. But it is not often spoken out aloud, and certainly not reported with any measure of diligence in the West. Here is Eshki’s package:

In the Arabian Peninsula, there is a promising oil field in the Empty Quarter [Rub’al-Khali] that will obligate the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Yemen to cooperate to protect it and its gains. This unity will be modeled—or rather, must be modeled—on the U.S. constitution that united America and granted it its democracy. As for the promising Ogaden [oil] field in Ethiopia, it will unite the Horn of Africa under Ethiopia’s leadership. And a bridge shall be built between the African continent and the Arabian Peninsula: The Al-Noor Bridge that shall connect the city of Al-Noor in Djibouti and the city of Al-Noor in Yemen.

All this demands a number of things:

1 Achieving peace between Arabs and Israel.

2 Changing the political system in Iran.

3 Unity of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

4 Achieving peace in Yemen and revitalizing the port of Aden because this will rebalance the demographics of employment in the Gulf.

5 Establishing an Arab force with American and European blessing to protect the countries of the Gulf as well as the Arab countries and to safeguard stability.

6 The speedy establishment of the foundations of democracy with Islamic principles in the Arab world.

7 Working toward the creation of a greater Kurdistan in peaceful ways as this will weaken Iranian, Turkish, and Iraqi ambitions and would split up a third of each of these countries in favor of Kurdistan.”

Why is the West so silent about Yemen? Perhaps these seven points provide the elements of an answer.

Martha Mundy is an anthropologist, who worked in North Yemen from 1973 to 1977. Her book, Domestic Government: Kinship, Community and Politics in North Yemen (1995), is a contemporary classic. She is now working on the political economy of food in Yemen.

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Washington “Welcomes” UN Decision to Appoint Saudi Arabia as Chair of UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR)

September 25th, 2015 by Sputnik

While many expressed outrage over Saudi Arabia’s appointment as head of a United Nations’ Human Rights Council panel, one nation has given its seal of approval. Despite the Kingdom’s deplorable rights record, the US State Department “welcomes” the UN’s decision.

After it was revealed earlier this week that Saudi Arabia would chair the key UN Human Rights panel, many were shocked by the inherent hypocrisy behind the decision. Writing for the Daily Beast, Salil Tripathi pointed out that the “Saudi government is unelected and run by one large family, or clan,” which “executes prisoners with particular relish, turning their executions into a public spectacle.”

Director of the Human Rights Action Center Jack Healey also indicated his surprise. “In essence, there has to be a human rights council,” he told Sputnik. “But the human rights protection will depend upon those who are interested in promoting human rights. And the government of Saudi Arabia has a long history of not allowing human rights activists to monitor in their own country.”

One entity not particularly shocked or surprised by Riyadh’s appointment is the US State Department. During a briefing on Tuesday afternoon, Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner revealed the US position during an exchange with Associated Press reporter Matt Lee.

“Again, I don’t have any comment, don’t have any reaction to it,” Toner said. “I mean, frankly, it’s – we would welcome it. We’re close allies.”

This is, perhaps, an unsurprising position for the United States to take. Washington has a history of overlooking Riyadh’s systemic abuse, precisely because the two countries are such close allies.

“The US loves human-rights-abusing regimes and always has, provided they ‘cooperate,'” Glenn Greenwald wrote for the Intercept. “The only time the US government pretends to care in the slightest about human rights abuses is when they’re carried out by ‘countries that don’t cooperate.'”

According to Amnesty International, 102 individuals were executed by the Saudi government within the first six months of 2015, most of those by beheading. The Kingdom is also prepared to crucify a 21-year-old for taking part in pro-democracy protests.

“It’s bad enough that Saudi Arabia is a member of the council, but for the UN to go and name the regime as chair of a key panel only pours salt in the wounds for dissidents languishing in Saudi prisons,” UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer wrote for his organization’s website.

“I mean, we have an ongoing discussion with them about all these human rights issues, like we do with every country,” Toner said on Tuesday. “We make our concerns clear when we do have concerns, but that dialogue continues. But I don’t have anything to point to in terms of progress.”

“Change of subject?” the AP reporter asked, mercifully.

“Sure,” Toner replied.

 

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Occupied Palestine. Wise up, President Obama! There is No “Peace Process” under Netanayahu

September 24th, 2015 by Dr. Ludwig Watzal

How come that US President Obama thinks that Israel’s prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, and his Zionist colonial fanatics are interested in peace with the Palestinians? The different Israeli governments never negotiated in good faith with them, starting with David Ben-Gurion and ending up with Netanyahu. The so-called Oslo Accords were a trap that paved the way for further colonization, Bantustanization and land grab.

Since the “peace process” broke out in 1993, the number of Zionist colonialists rose from 100 000 to 600 000. The policy of Ariel Sharon and Benyamin Netanyahu aimed at a total surrender of the Palestinian leadership. The Palestinian people are penned in Bantustan-like Ghettos. Each time, the good intentions of the Obama administration were torpedoed by Netanyahu. He is also doing everything to bring the nuclear deal with Iran down.

The US government and the American People should ask themselves why support a country that not only sabotages peace with the Palestinians but also does everything possible to ridicule the US President and to hurt the interest of the US. Israel has no right to occupy Syrian, Lebanese (Shebaa Farms) and Palestinian land or East Jerusalem. Israel does not only scorns international law but also the human rights of the Palestinian people. Why does the United States act as Israel’s bully and prevents the international community and the United Nations from taking actions in the form of sanctions against this country?

Did Israel ever do something good for the United States of America except spying on it and sabotaging its political initiatives? Israel is an “albators like ally” and a huge strategic liability on the US. America was not attacked because of its wealth or its freedom, like Bush and its neoconservative gang claimed, but because it supports the Zionist aggression and colonization of another people’s land.

Israel’s enemies in the Middle East are not America’s enemies. Until the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, there was no trouble between Arab Muslim countries and the US. The US government should reverse this trend by saying that there does not exist a “special relationship” between Israel and the US. This is a deception of the American public by corrupt politicians. And they should not dream of it, to lead another war for Israel.

What kind of values are the American politicians talking about, while defending Zionist zealots in the Occupied Palestinian Territories? At the end of his term in office, President Obama should be doing the Palestinian people a great favor and recognize the State of Palestine. He can be sure that all the European vassals will follow suit, even the Germans.

Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany. He runs the bilingual blog “between the lines”. http://between-the-lines-ludwig-watzal.blogspot.de

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Israel’s Crippling Blockade: Gaza Electricity Lines Disconnected as Energy Crisis Worsens

September 24th, 2015 by SyndiGate.info

Two power lines providing electricity to the Gaza Strip were disconnected overnight Tuesday further fueling an ongoing energy crisis in the beleaguered coastal enclave.

Gaza’s energy authority said that the Jabalia line feeding northern Gaza off the Israeli electricity grid had failed due to a technical issue.

The authority said that another power line feeding the central Gaza Strip, line 7, had also failed. The two lines together provide roughly 24 MW.

For four days, the main power line from Egypt’s electrical grid, which provides a total of 28 MW, has also been down.

Sources inside Gaza’s energy authority said Wednesday that the total supply of energy was now covering only 30 percent of the population’s minimum needs.

Even at full capacity, the Egyptian and Israeli electricity grids, together with Gaza’s sole power plant, fail to cover the territory’s energy needs.

They provide only 230 MW of electricity, while Gaza-based think tank Pal-Think has estimated Gaza’s needs to fall between 350 and 450 MW.

In recent days, Gaza’s power station has also been struggling to maintain its output due to both fuel shortages and lack of funds.

The coastal enclave has seen a series of large demonstrations protesting the energy crisis, with Gazans calling for the resignation of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s government.

Gaza’s energy authority has blamed the power plant’s low output on taxes imposed by the PA’s petroleum authority.

An inability to cover these costs forced the power station to close for more than a month earlier this year, and it has not run at full capacity in years.

However, Israel’s crippling blockade has also severely limited fuel imports into the coastal enclave.

War has also had taken its toll, and during Israel’s 50-day offensive on Gaza last summer, the power plant was targeted completely knocking it out of commission.

Earlier this month, the UN warned that that the Gaza Strip could become uninhabitable for residents within just five years, pointing to the devastation of war and nearly a decade of Israel’s blockade.

“The social, health and security-related ramifications of the high population density and overcrowding are among the factors that may render Gaza unlivable by 2020,” the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) wrote in its annual report.

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Russia’s False Hopes: “Russia, China, and Iran are the Three Countries Which can Constrain Washington’s Unilateral Action”

September 24th, 2015 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Russia so desperately desires to be part of the disreputable and collapsing West that Russia is losing its grip on reality.

Despite hard lesson piled upon hard lesson, Russia cannot give up its hope of being acceptable to the West. The only way Russia can be acceptable to the West is to accept vassal status.

Russia miscalculated that diplomacy could solve the crisis that Washington created in Ukraine and placed its hopes on the Minsk Agreement, which has no Western support whatsoever, neither in Kiev nor in Washington, London, and NATO.

Russia can end the Ukraine crisis by simply accepting the requests of the former Russian territories to reunite with Russia. Once the breakaway republics are again part of Russia, the crisis is over. Ukraine is not going to attack Russia.

Russia doesn’t end the crisis, because Russia thinks it would be provocative and upset Europe. Actually, that is what Russia needs to do—upset Europe. Russia needs to make Europe aware that being Washington’s tool against Russia is risky and has costs for Europe.

Instead, Russia shields Europe from the costs that Washington imposes on Europe and imposes little cost on Europe for acting against Russia in Washington’s interest. Russia still supplies its declared enemies, whose air forces fly provocative flights along Russia’s borders, with the energy to put their war planes into the air.

This is the failure of diplomacy, not its success. Diplomacy cannot succeed when only one side believes in diplomacy and the other side believes in force.

Russia needs to understand that diplomacy cannot work with Washington and its NATO vassals who do not believe in diplomacy, but rely instead on force. Russia needs to understand that when Washington declares that Russia is an outlaw state that “does not act in accordance with international norms,” Washington means that Russia is not following Washington’s orders. By “international norms,” Washington means Washington’s will. Countries that are not in compliance with Washington’s will are not acting in accordance with “international norms.”

Washington and only Washington determines “international norms.” America is the “exceptional, indispensable” country. No other country has this rank.

A country with an independent foreign policy is a threat to Washington. The neoconservative Wolfowitz Doctrine makes this completely clear. The Wolfowitz Doctrine, the basis of US foreign and military policy, defines as a threat any country with sufficient power to act as a constraint on Washington’s unilateral action. The Wolfowitz Doctrine states unambiguously that any country with sufficient power to block Washington’s purposes in the world is a threat and that “our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of” any such country.

Russia, China, and Iran are in Washington’s crosshairs. Treaties and “cooperation” mean nothing. Cooperation only causes Washington’s targets to lose focus and to forget that they are targets. Russia’s foreign minister Lavrov seems to believe that now with the failure of Washington’s policy of war and destruction in the Middle East, Washington and Russia can work together to contain the ISIS jihadists in Iraq and Syria.

This is a pipe dream. Russia and Washington cannot work together in Syria and Iraq, because the two governments have conflicting goals. Russia wants peace, respect for international law, and the containment of radical jihadists elements. Washington wants war, no legal constraints, and is funding radical jihadist elements in the interest of Middle East instability and overthrow of Assad in Syria. Even if Washington desired the same goals as Russia, for Washington to work with Russia would undermine the picture of Russia as a threat and enemy.

Russia, China, and Iran are the three countries that can constrain Washington’s unilateral action. Consequently, the three countries are in danger of a pre-emptive nuclear strike. If these countries are so naive as to believe that they can now work with Washington, given the failure of Washington’s 14-year old policy of coercion and violence in the Middle East, by rescuing Washington from the quagmire it created that gave rise to the Islamic State, they are deluded sitting ducks for a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

Washington created the Islamic State. Washington used these jihadists to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya and then sent them to overthrow Assad in Syria. The American neoconservatives, everyone of whom is allied with Zionist Israel, do not want any cohesive state in the Middle East capable of interfering with a “Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates.”

The ISIS jihadists learned that Washington’s policy of murdering and displacing millions of Muslims in seven countries had created an anti-Western constituency for them among the peoples of the Middle East and have begun acting independently of their Washington creators.

The consequence is more chaos in the Middle East and Washington’s loss of control.

Instead of leaving Washington to suffer at the hands of its own works, Russia and Iran, the two most hated and demonized countries in the West, have rushed to rescue Washington from its Middle East follies. This is the failure of Russian and Iranian strategic thinking. Countries that cannot think strategically do not survive.

The Iranians need to understand that their treaty with Washington means nothing. Washington has never honored any treaty. Just ask the Plains Indians or the last Soviet President Gorbachev.

If the Russian government thinks that Washington’s word means anything, the Russian government is out to lunch.

Iran is well led, and Vladimir Putin has rescued Russia from US and Israeli control, but both governments continue to act as if they are taking some drug that makes them think that Washington can be a partner.

These delusions are dangerous, not only to Russia and Iran, but to the entire world.

If Russia and Iran let their guard down, they will be nuked, and so will China.

Washington stands for one thing and one thing only: World Hegemony.

Just ask the Neoconservatives or read their documents.

The neoconservatives control Washington. No one else in the government has a voice.

For the neoconservatives, Armageddon is a tolerable risk to achieve the goal of American World Hegemony.

Only Russia and China can save the world from Armageddon, but are they too deluded and worshipful of the West to save Planet Earth?

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

 

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British Politicians Plot A Charter for Cover-Ups – A Return to Secrecy

September 24th, 2015 by Campaign for Freedom of Information

The Government’s decision to launch a review of the Freedom of Information Act was widely condemned when it was announced back in July as likely to lead to “more secrecy, more mistakes and bad decisions”. It is effectively a review by government officials that provides the excuse to water down current transparency laws to create a charter for cover-ups and sees a return to an era of secrecy.

The unexpected move to set up a review of the law emerged just hours after a FoI request revealed how British pilots were involved in Syrian air strikes – a fact the Prime Minister and other high ranking officials had kept from the public.

Scepticism has grown that it will be biased, given that one of the commissioners, former Labour Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, is an outspoken critic of how the Act is enforced. After all, it was the freedom of information allowed in the UK, not just the act itself that saw Jack Straw miss out on a peerage recently because he was under investigation over cash-for-access claims.

TruePublica

Tony Blair, who introduced the Act, later described it as one of his “biggest regrets”. Of course he would say that given what the act has done.

Labour’s deputy leader MP Tom Watson said: “It is quite clear this isn’t a review, it’s a process to roll back the Freedom of Information Act. This is an Act which should be extended to cover more public bodies, yet the Government is going to weaken it by making changes that will render it virtually useless for people who believe in greater accountability.”

David Banisar of Article 19, a human rights organisation that champions freedom of information, criticised the move. “The Government’s proposals will lead to more secrecy, less accountability, and a more insular and unresponsive Government. It is moving the law from the right to know to the right to no information.”

The content of the letter to David Cameron clearly spells out the damning issues that the review has in mind, that it effectively challenges not just transparency of government but also of democracy itself more widely.

Amongst other things, the government is also proposing that there should be a £100 charge for appealing to the First-tier Tribunal against an Information Commissioner decision. An oral hearing would cost an additional £500. Appeals are currently free.

The nature, timing, the commission itself and speed of the review is suspicious at best, at worst, the public’s right to know is under clear threat from a government that does not believe in accountability or democratic values.

Address for response c/o

Campaign for Freedom of Information

Unit 109
Davina House
137-­149 Goswell Rd
London EC1V 7ET

The Rt Hon David Cameron MP
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London SW1A 2AA

21 September 2015

Dear Prime Minister,

We are writing to express our serious concern about the government’s approach to the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and in particular about the
Commission on Freedom of Information and the proposal to introduce fees for tribunal appeals under the Act.

It is clear from the Commission’s terms of reference that its purpose is to consider new restrictions to the Act. The Commission’s brief is to review the Act to consider: whether there is an appropriate balance between openness and the need to protect sensitive information; whether the ‘safe space’ for policy development and implementation is adequately recognised and whether changes are needed to reduce the Act’s ‘burden’ on public authorities. The ministerial announcement of the Commission’s formation stressed the need to protect the government’s ‘private space’ for policy-­making. There is no indication that the Commission is expected to consider how the right of access might need to be improved.

The Commission’s five members consist of two former home secretaries, Jack Straw and Lord Howard of Lympne (Michael Howard), a former permanent secretary, Lord Burns, a former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile of Berriew (Alex Carlile) and the chair of a regulatory body subject to FOI, Dame Patricia Hodgson. A government perspective on the Act’s operation will be well represented on the Commission itself.

One of the Commission’s members, Jack Straw, has repeatedly maintained that the Act provides too great a level of disclosure. Mr Straw has argued that the FOI exemption for the formulation of government policy should not be subject to the Act’s public interest test. Such information would then automatically be withheld in all circumstances even where no harm from disclosure was likely or the public interest clearly justified openness. Mr Straw has also suggested that the Supreme Court exceeded its powers in ruling that the ministerial veto cannot be used to overturn a court or tribunal decision under the Act unless strict conditions are satisfied. He has argued that there should be charges for FOI requests and that it should be significantly easier for public authorities to refuse requests on cost grounds. Mr Straw’s publicly expressed views cover all the main issues within the Commission’s terms of reference. Speaking in the Commons shortly before the Commission’s appointment, the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, expressly cited Mr Straw’s views with approval saying that he had been ‘very clear
about the defects in the way in which the Act has operated’.

Another member of the Commission is Ofcom’s chair, Dame Patricia Hodgson. In 2012, when she was its deputy Chair, Ofcom stated that ‘there is no doubt’ that the FOI Act has had a ‘chilling effect’ on the recording of information by public authorities. One of the Commission’s priorities is likely to be to consider whether there has been such an effect — and whether the right of access should be restricted to prevent it. Ofcom has also called for it to be made easier for authorities to refuse requests on cost grounds and for the time limits for responding to requests to be increased.

An independent Commission is expected to reach its views based on the evidence presented to it rather than the pre-existing views of its members. Indeed, in appointing members to such a body we would expect the government to expressly avoid those who appear to have already reached and expressed firm views. It has done the opposite. The government does not appear to intend the Commission to carry out an independent and open minded inquiry. Such a review cannot provide a proper basis for significant changes to the FOI Act. The short timescale for the Commission’s report, which is due by the end of November, further reinforces this impression. At the time of writing, half way towards the Commission’s final deadline, it has so far not even invited evidence from the public.

The FOI Act was the subject of comprehensive post-legislative scrutiny by the Justice Committee in 2012 which found that the Act had been ‘a significant enhancement of our democracy’ and concluded ‘We do not believe there has been any general harmful effect at all on the ability to conduct business in the public service, and in our view the additional burdens are outweighed by the benefits’. We question the need for a further review now.

We are also concerned about the government’s proposal to introduce fees for appeals against the Information Commissioner’s decisions. Under the proposals, an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal on the papers would cost £100 while an oral hearing would cost £600. The introduction of fees for employment tribunal appeals has led to a drastic decrease in the number of cases brought. A similar effect on the number of FOI appeals is likely. Requesters often seek information about matters of public concern, so deterring them from appealing will deny the public information of wider public interest. On the other hand, fees are unlikely to discourage public authorities from challenging pro-disclosure decisions, so the move will lead to an inequality of arms between requesters and authorities. Given that the Ministry of Justice and the Justice Committee have recently begun to review the impact of employment tribunal fees on access to justice we find it remarkable that this proposal should be put forward before the results of their inquiries are even known.

We regard the FOI Act as a vital mechanism of accountability which has transformed the public’s rights to information and substantially improved the scrutiny of public authorities. We would deplore any attempt to weaken it.

Yours sincerely,

See list of nearly 100 organisations which, includes news organisations but more importantly dedicated pressure groups and activists seeking more transparency and the scrutininsing of areas that government and corporate organisations do not want publicity on, such as; the arms trade, corporate corruption, democracy, unfettered corporate malfeasance, drone killings, environment, censorship, human rights, civil rights, privacy, propaganda and the like.

Campaign Against Arms Trade, Ann Feltham, Parliamentary Co-ordinator
Campaign for Freedom of Information, Maurice Frankel, Director
Campaign for Press & Broadcasting Freedom, Ann Field, Chair
Centre for Public Scrutiny, Jacqui McKinlay, Executive Director
Corporate Watch / Corruption Watch, Susan Hawley, Policy Director
Democratic Audit, Sean Kippin, Managing Editor
Drone Wars UK, Chris Cole, Director
Exaro, Mark Watts, Editor in Chief
Finance Uncovered, Nick Mathiason, Director
Friends of the Earth, Guy Shrubsole, Campaigner
Global Witness, Simon Taylor, Co-Founder and Director
Greenpeace, John Sauven, Executive Director
Index on Censorship, Jodie Ginsberg, Chief Executive Officer
Jubilee Debt Campaign, Sarah­‐Jayne Clifton, Director
Labour Campaign for Human Rights, Andrew Noakes, Director
Liberty, Bella Sankey, Policy Director
Privacy International, Gus Hosein, Executive Director
Rights Watch (UK), Yasmine Ahmed, Director
Spinwatch, David Miller, Director
Transparency International UK, Robert Barrington, Executive Director
38 Degrees, Blanche Jones, Campaign Director

1 www.gov.uk/government/speeches/freedom-of-information-new-commission

2 The Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, oral evidence before Justice Committee, Post-Legislative Scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act, 17 April 2012, Q.344.www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmjust/96/120417.htm

3 BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 14 May 2015.http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/14/court-exceeded-its-power-in-ordering-publication-of-charles-memos-straw. The Supreme Court’s ruling related to the use of the veto to block the release of Prince Charles’ correspondence with ministers in response to a request by the Guardian newspaper

4 Oral evidence to Justice Committee, 17 April 2012, Q.355 & Q.363.www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmjust/96/120417.htm

5 House of Commons, oral questions, 23.6.15, col. 754,www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmhansrd/cm150623/debtext/150623‐0001.htm#15062354000032

6 Ofcom, February 2012, Written evidence to the Justice Committee, Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act, Volume 3, Ev w176-177.http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmjust/96/96vw77.htm

7 The Government response to consultationon enhanced fees for divorce proceedings, possession claims, and general applications in civil proceedings and Consultation on further fees proposals

Visit: Campaign for Freedom of Information

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US to Station and Deploy Twenty New B61-12 Nuclear Warheads in Germany: Report

September 24th, 2015 by Press TV

The United States Air Force (USAF) is going to station 20 new B61-12 nuclear bombs in Germany, each 80 times more destructive than the one used on Hiroshima, a report says.

The nukes will be deployed to Luftwaffe’s Büchel Air Base in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, which is already host to USAF nuclear bombs stored there since 2007 under a nuclear sharing deal, Germany’s ZDF public television network reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, in the third quarter of the current year, the base will receive budget for the future storage and deployment of the new atomic weapons, which are considered to be on the borderline between strategic and tactical, as well as funding for upgrading the German Panavia Tornado multipurpose aircraft that are also stationed in the base and are capable of deploying older types of nukes.

Back in 2010, however, the German parliament (Bundestag) called on the federal government to take necessary action for the removal of the American nuclear weapons from the territory of Germany, citing public support for such a decision.

A bird’s-eye view of the Büchel Air Base in Germany (Wikipedia)

Moscow has referred to the new move to upgrade Büchel Air Base’s nuclear arsenal as a threat from NATO to Russia’s borders.

“The 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,” said Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, in an interview with ZDF on Tuesday.

“At the same time in Europe, not just in Germany, but also in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey, US tactical nuclear armaments remain deployed. The Americans are modernizing their aerial bombs, and the NATO European members are modernizing their aircraft that carry these weapons,” she further noted.

According to Zakharova, the move would be in breach of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to prevent the spread of atomic weapons. A total of 191 countries have joined the NPT, which was enforced in 1970.

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British Labor Leader Corbyn: “ISIS Created by UK and US”

September 24th, 2015 by Alalam

British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn has risked sparking fresh controversy after blaming the rise of ISIS on Britain and the United States.

The veteran anti-war campaigner said ISIS hadn’t “come from nowhere” and was partly “a creation of Western interventions in the region.”

Corbyn, 66, said attacking the fanatical group would only make things worse and instead claimed Britain would be safer it if declared that it supported the “diversity of faith and diversity of aspirations around the world.”

The remarks round off a turbulent week for Corbyn after overseeing chaotic cabinet reshuffle culminating in a public u-turn over Labor’s position on the European Union.

Corbyn was roundly condemned on Tuesday for refusing to sing the national anthem at a memorial to Battle of Britain heroes.

The veteran socialist, speaking to the obscure website ‘Middle East Eye,’ said Labor needed to stick to its ‘principles’ and vowed to stay on as Labor leader for the next five years.

But he risks a major rebellion over a proposed vote on extending the military action against ISIS into Syria.

The Prime Minister has called for a ‘political consensus’ in favor of authorizing military strikes before calling a vote in Parliament.

In 2013 Cameron was left humiliated after MPs – including Corbyn – rejected airstrikes. Speaking today, Corbyn said he would not change his position.

Corbyn said:

ISIS did not come from nowhere. They have got a lot of money that’s come from somewhere. They’ve got a huge supply of arms that have come from somewhere. They are – not in total, but in part – a creation of Western interventions in the region. What I would do is try to economically isolate them. And also try to unite the other groups in the region by supporting autonomy for the Kurdish groups and recognize the vast amount of arms that we have sold – particularly to Saudi Arabia – end up somewhere and those are now being used.

Bombing by the West in Syria now would create more mayhem. It’s very unclear who the alliances would be with and it would make the situation worse. I opposed the bombing of Syria in that historic 2013 vote and would continue that position.

Despite his position Corbyn insisted he would keep Britain safe.

He said: “We make ourselves safer by not being part of US foreign policy at every single turn. We make ourselves safer by saying we understand the diversity of faith and diversity of aspirations around the world. And also by becoming a force for human rights rather than military interventions around the world. I think that would make us safer.”

Corbyn has previously sparked fury by comparing ISIS brutality to US military action in Iraq; Daily Mail reported.

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Selected Articles: Institutional Corruption, Censorship, Neoliberalism

September 24th, 2015 by Global Research News

By Felicity Arbuthnot, September 24, 2015

The “crown jewels” have been handed to a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. Saudi Arabia will head a Consultative Group of five Ambassadors empowered to select applicants globally for more than seventy seven positions to deal with human rights violations and mandates.

images_News_2014_08_20_british_300_0Why Are Millions of Pounds Sent to Israel by British Charities, Tax-Free?

By Anthony Bellchambers, September 24, 2015

What happens to the many millions of £s collected in Britain each year and sent, tax free, to Israel by UK registered charities? Is it used to help underprivileged children in Israeli orphanages or is it used to help finance Israel’s seven year illegal blockade of 1.8 million innocent civilians in Gaza? Does the UK Charities Commission (or the Inland Revenue) know? Who checks and what controls, if any, are in place?

By Eric Zuesse, September 24, 2015

OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), which is run by the Western powers and which is the leading organization concerning security and cooperation in Europe, squelches Ukrainian Commission on Human Rights Speaker.

By Stephen Lendman, September 24, 2015

US administrations under Republicans and Democrats are the greatest threat to world peace. It’ll take more than Security Council actions to reign in their madness.

greek-flag“Neoliberal Barbarity”: There Is Nothing to Celebrate after Sunday’s Greek Elections

By Theodoros Karyotis, September 24, 2015

Skyrocketing abstention, social demobilization and an impending wave of harsh austerity measures call for critical reflection after SYRIZA’s victory.

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The First Question to Ask After Any Terror Attack: Was It a False Flag?

September 24th, 2015 by Washington's Blog

Governments from around the world admit they’ve used the bully’s trick … attack first, and then blame the victim:

—

  • Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”.   The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found:  “Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the “Incident” was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army ….”    And see this
  • A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.  Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson
  • Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War, and Putin
  • Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)
  • The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister
  • The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence
  • The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change
  • As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960′s, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
  • 2 years before, American Senator George Smathers had suggested that the U.S. make “a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro]“.
  • And Official State Department documents show that – only nine months before the Joint Chiefs of Staff plan was proposed – the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussedblowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The 3 plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals
  • The NSA admits that it lied about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 … manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for the Vietnam war
  • A U.S. Congressional committee admitted that – as part of its “Cointelpro” campaign – the FBI had used many provocateurs in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely blame them on political activists
  • The German government admitted (and see this) that, in 1978, the German secret service detonated a bomb in the outer wall of a prison and planted “escape tools” on a prisoner – a member of the Red Army Faction – which the secret service wished to frame the bombing on
  • The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him “to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident”, thus framing the ANC for the bombing
  • An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author)
  • Senior Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion)
  • According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.
  • The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings
  • As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the “war on terror”
  • Senior police officials in Genoa, Italy admitted that – in July 2001, at the G8 summit in Genoa – planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a police officer, in order to justify a violent crackdown against protesters
  • Similarly, the U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo from the defense secretary – as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war. Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime, that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction (despite previous “lone wolf” claims, many U.S. government officials now say that 9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq wasnot the state which backed the hijackers)
  • Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”
  • United Press International reported in June 2005:

U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

  • Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians
  • Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers (and see this)
  • At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence
  • Egyptian politicians admitted (and see this) that that government employees looted priceless museum artifacts in 2011 to try to discredit the protesters
  • A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat
  • U.S. soldiers have admitted that if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants
  • The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – recently admitted that the Saudi government controls “Chechen” terrorists
  • High-level American sources admitted that the Turkish government – a fellow NATO country – carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government
  • The former Ukrainian security chief admits that the sniper attacks which started the Ukrainian coup were carried out in order to frame others
  • Britain’s spy agency has admitted to (and see this) that it carries out “digital false flag” attacks on targets, framing people by writing offensive or unlawful material … and blaming it on the target

So Common … There’s a Name for It

Painting by Anthony Freda

The use of the bully’s trick is so common that it was given a name hundreds of years ago.

“False flag terrorism” is defined as a government attacking its own people, then blaming others in order to justify going to war against the people it blames. Or as Wikipedia defines it:

False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy’s strategy of tension.

The term comes from the old days of wooden ships, when one ship would hang the flag of its enemy before attacking another ship in its own navy. Because the enemy’s flag, instead of the flag of the real country of the attacking ship, was hung, it was called a “false flag” attack.

Indeed, this concept is so well-accepted that rules of engagement for naval, air and land warfare all prohibit false flag attacks.

Leaders Throughout History Have Acknowledged False Flags

Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the danger of false flags:

“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”
– Plato

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
– U.S. President James Madison

“A history of false flag attacks used to manipulate the minds of the people! “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death”.
– Adolph Hitler

“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
– Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened”.
– Josef Stalin

People Are Waking Up to False Flags

People are slowly waking up to this whole con job by governments who want to justify war.

More people are talking about the phrase “false flag” than ever before.

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The US-EU Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA): Big Business Corporate Power Grab

September 24th, 2015 by Colin Todhunter

The Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) between the US and EU intends to create the world’s largest free trade area, ‘protect’ investment and remove ‘unnecessary regulatory barriers’. Corporate interests are driving the agenda, with the public having been sidelined. Unaccountable, pro-free-trade bureaucrats from both sides of the Atlantic are facilitating the strategy (1) 

In addition to the biotech sector and Big Pharma, groups lobbying for the deal have included Toyota, General Motors, IBM and the powerful lobby group the Chamber of Commerce of the US. Business Europe, the main organisation representing employers in Europe, launched its own strategy on an EU-US economic and trade partnership in early 2012. Its suggestions were widely included in the draft EU mandate.

An increasing number of politicians and citizens groups have criticised the secretive negotiations and are demanding that they be conducted in an open way. This is growing concern that the negotiations could result in the opening of the floodgates for GMOs and shale gas (fracking) in Europe, the threatening of digital and labour rights or the empowering of corporations to legally challenge a wide range of regulations which they dislike.

One of the key aspects of the negotiations is that both the EU and US should recognise their respective rules and regulations, which in practice could reduce regulation to the lowest common denominator. The official language talks of ‘mutual recognition’ of standards or so-called reduction of non-tariff barriers. For the EU, that could mean accepting US standards in many areas, including food and agriculture, which are lower than the EU’s.

The US wants all so-called barriers to trade, including controversial regulations such as those protecting agriculture, food or data privacy, to be removed. Even the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, made it clear that any agreement must reduce EU restrictions on genetically modified crops, chlorinated chickens and hormone-treated beef.

The public in Europe does not want such things. People want powerful corporations to be held to account and their practices regulated by elected representatives who they trust to protect their interests, the public good. However, the TAFTA seems an ideal opportunity for corporations to force wholly unpopular and dangerous policies through via secretive, undemocratic means. They have been unable to do this in a democratic and transparent manner, so secret back room deals represent a different option.

Corporate demands include an “ambitious liberalisation of agricultural trade barriers with as few exceptions as possible.” Food lobby group Food and Drink Europe, representing the largest food companies (Unilever, Kraft, Nestlé, etc.), has welcomed the negotiations, with one of their key demands being the facilitation of the low level presence of unapproved genetically modified crops. This is a long-standing industry agenda also supported by feed and grain trading giants, including Cargill, Bunge, ADM and the big farmers’ lobby COPA-COGECA. Meanwhile, the biotech industry on both sides of the Atlantic is offering its “support and assistance as the EU and the US government look to enhance their trade relationship.”

New Report

If the pro-free-market bureaucrats and corporations get their way and successfully bar the public from any kind of meaningful information input into the world’s biggest trade deal ever to be negotiated, Europeans could end up becoming the victims of one of the biggest corporate stitch ups ever. Left unchallenged, it will allow huge private interests to dig their profiteering snouts into the trough of corporate greed at the expense of ordinary people.

And that’s not hyperbole. Such a view is confirmed by the release of a new report on the eve of the second round of negotiations that are due to begin in Brussels next week.

The report, published by the Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B) (2), reveals the true human and environmental costs of the proposed TAFTA. ‘A Brave New Transatlantic Partnership’ highlights how the European Commission’s promises of up to 1% GDP growth and massive job creation through the EU-US trade deal are not supported even by its own studies, which predict a growth rate of just 0.01% GDP over the next ten years and the potential loss of jobs in several economic sectors, including agriculture.

The report also explains how corporations are lobbying EU-US trade negotiators to use the deal to weaken food safety, labour, health and environmental standards as well as undermine digital rights. Attempts to strengthen banking regulation in the face of the financial crisis could also be jeopardised as the financial lobby uses the secretive trade negotiations to undo financial reforms, such as restrictions on the total value of financial transactions or the legal form of its operations.

Kim Bizzarri, the author of the report:

“Big business lobbies on both sides of the Atlantic view the secretive trade negotiations as a weapon for getting rid of policies aimed at protecting European and US consumers, workers and our planet. If their corporate wish-list is implemented, it will concentrate even more economic and political power within the hands of a small elite, leaving all of us without protection from corporate wrongdoings.”

The report also warns that the agreement could open the floodgate to multi-million Euro lawsuits from corporations who can challenge democratic policies at international tribunals if they interfere with their profits.

Pia Eberhardt, trade campaigner with Corporate Europe Observatory and author of ‘A transatlantic corporate bill of rights’:

“The proposed investor rights in the transatlantic trade deal show what it is really about: It’s a power grab from corporations to rein in democracy and handcuff governments that seek to regulate in the public interest. It’s only a matter of time before European citizens start paying the price in higher taxes and diminished social protection.”

Consumer watchdogs, digital rights and trade activists, environmentalists and trade unions are preparing to fight the corporate dystopia put forward in the EU-US trade deal.

Luis Rico of Ecologistas en Acción, a member of the Seattle to Brussels network:

“We hope that the disturbing evidence we provide will show why all concerned citizens and parliamentarians on both sides of the Atlantic need to urgently mobilise against the proposed EU-US trade deal. We have to derail this corporate power grab that threatens to worsen the livelihood of the millions of people already seriously affected by the financial crisis and by the crippling consequences of Europe’s austerity reforms.”

Do we want increasingly bad and unhealthy food, our rights at work being further eroded, the environment being damaged in the chase for profit, ever greater reckless gambling in the financial sector or our elected representatives being by-passed via international tribunals? Of course we don’t. 

Where is the democracy surrounding this proposed TAFTA? Where is ordinary people’s  protection from the ‘free’ market corporate-financial cabals that ultimately drive global economic policy and geo-political strategies? By translating corporate power into political influence at the G8, G20, WTO, NATO or elsewhere, whether it is by war, threats, debts or coercion, secretive and undemocratic free trade agreements are but one tool that very powerful corporations use in an attempt to cast the world in their own image (3,4).

The TAFTA is little more than an attempt at a corporate power grab masquerading as something that promotes growth, freedom, harmony and job creation. Those claims are bogus. It must be stopped

Please note: More concerns from environmental and consumer groups will be raised in a press conference on Monday, 7 October, 11am in the International Press Center, Résidence Palace, in Brussels. On Tuesday, 8 November, 9am, a protest stunt will take place in front of the Berlaymont building, 200 Rue de la Loi, Brussels.

Contact [email protected] for further information.

Notes

1) http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-eu-free-trade-agreement-a-corporate-stitch-up-by-any-other-name/5339789

2)  The Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B) includes development, environmental, human rights, women and farmers organisations, trade unions and social movements working together for a truly sustainable, just and democratic trade policy in Europe. Corporate Europe Observatory is one of its members.

3) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-great-eu-india-corporate-heist-uncovering-the-free-trade-agenda/5342267

4) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-eu-india-free-trade-agreement-corporate-driven-neocolonial-plunder/5338049

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European Union Adopts Plan to Keep Out Refugees

September 24th, 2015 by Martin Kreickenbaum

A summit of European Union heads of government concluded in the early morning hours of Thursday, with no details of the hours-long discussions or decisions reached given out to the press or public. The Associated Press cited a draft text as saying EU leaders had discussed long-term means to end “the dramatic situation at our external borders and strengthen controls at those borders.”

The AP reported that proposals under discussion included deploying more personnel to seal off EU borders and donating at least €1 billion to international aid agencies to keep refugees in camps near conflict zones such as Syria, while boosting support to Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, which are housing millions of people fleeing the fighting in Syria.

The heads of government meeting followed a meeting of EU interior ministers on Tuesday, at which, after 10 hours of talks, the ministers agreed on a new quota system for distributing refugees to individual member states. The quotas have been the subject of heated disputes.

Contrary to the customary procedure by which such policy matters require unanimous agreement, the interior ministers came to a majority decision. The Polish government, which had originally opposed the quota plan, agreed to support it in the course of the meeting in exchange for certain concessions.

Contrary to the initial proposal put forward by the EU Commission, there will be no fixed quotas determined on the basis of population, economic power and unemployment levels. Instead, every government will adopt an admission allotment on a voluntary basis. In addition, individual states will be able to choose which refugees they agree to accept.

The meeting centered on the distribution of a total of 120,000 refugees out of the hundreds of thousands already seeking to enter Europe. Within the next two years, 15,600 refugees currently in Italy and 50,400 currently in Greece are supposed to be taken in by other countries.

Some 54,000 refugees originally designated for resettlement in Hungary will instead be resettled in Italy, Greece and other countries, since most of the refugees registered in Hungary have already left the country and the Hungarian government refuses to either accept more or abide by a redistribution scheme.

Given that the EU expects at least 1 million refugees this year alone, the number of 120,000 to be resettled over two years is a token figure. With an average influx of 6,000 refugees a day, the two-year maximum will be reached in just 20 days.

Contrary to official claims, the purpose of the quota system is not to “justly distribute” the burden across Europe. Rather, a new mechanism is being put in place to bring the flow of refugees under control, expedite their deportation and seal off the EU’s external borders.

The interior ministers of Germany and Austria were most insistent on the quotas. Although Berlin and Vienna are committed to taking in additional refugees, they hope the regulations will lead to a dramatic decrease in refugee numbers.

After the meeting, Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner made clear that the new rules were intended to have a deterrent effect. “The quite decisive thing today was that we brought about the beginning of the end,” she told the television channel ORF .

“Because if 120,000 are evenly distributed, including to so-called ‘unattractive countries,’ that is a double strike and a signal in two respects. First, it is an easing of the burden along the route through the Balkans and an easing of the burden on Austria. Second, the refugees will no longer be able to decide where they seek asylum.”

Mikl-Leitner indicated that the quota system was only a first step in bringing the influx of refugees to a halt. She emphasized that “control over the external borders and the setting up of hotspots are quite decisive in diminishing the flow of refugees.”

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière made similar comments. “What we need is an end to the influx,” he said. He added in a press release that the purpose of the measures was the “protection of the external borders of the EU, the consistent repatriation of immigrants who are not in need of protection, and attention to and use of the rules of the Common European Asylum System by all member states.”

Contrary to the claims of several refugee organizations, the quota rules do not invalidate the Dublin agreement. According to that agreement, the first European country that a refugee enters is responsible for taking the refugee in and initiating asylum proceedings. The EU decision is quite explicit that the distribution mechanism of the Dublin rule has not been replaced, but only expanded to deal with an emergency.

Furthermore, the 42-page EU document bluntly and in minute detail lists the repressive measures refugees will face. The refugees will have no right to determine where they are sent. Moreover, only refugees from countries with an average recognition rate of 75 percent will be distributed. At the moment, primarily refugees from Syria and Eritrea meet these criteria.

In addition, the affected refugees will receive no internationally valid travel documents. This, in practice, means an expansion of the residence requirements in Germany to all of Europe. In effect, refugees will be kept captive in their assigned country. They must report regularly and will receive only non-cash benefits.

The central component of the agreement is the rapid establishment of so-called “hotspots” in EU border states. This is a synonym for concentration camps where arriving refugees will be registered in an accelerated procedure and their asylum applications subjected to a preliminary review.

The registration of the refugees will be carried out by the border protection agency Frontex, the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and the European police authority Europol. In addition to a medical checkup, the primary purpose of these procedures is to determine the country of origin, the escape route and the identities of those who helped the refugee escape. All refugees will be fingerprinted.

Anyone who falls through the cracks in the “hotspots” will be deported. Frontex, whose mandate is being broadened, will be responsible for this task. The budget for Frontex will be increased by 54 percent to €176 million, and the EU wants to make an additional €500 million available for the deportations.

The first camp is currently being built in Catania in Sicily. The plans for a second camp in the Greek city of Piraeus are far advanced.

The Dublin rule that places responsibility on Greece and Italy for the asylum proceedings of refugees arriving in those countries has virtually collapsed due to the dramatic surge of refugees. This year alone, 442,400 refugees have already traveled across the Mediterranean to the EU, including 319,000 through Greece, according to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Since August alone, the Greek authorities have registered 192,000 refugees.

The Greek and Italian authorities were neither willing nor able to carry out asylum proceedings on their own and sent the refugees on their way with temporary travel documents. This is what started the refugee trek through the Balkans, which reached as far as Germany, where the government now expects about 800,000 refugees this year.

The quota rules and the establishment of “hotspots” are aimed at regaining control over the flow of refugees and facilitating the complete implementation of the Dublin rule, whose primary purpose is to keep refugees out of the wealthy EU countries such as Germany, France, Great Britain and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). The opposition of the Eastern European states to the distribution quotas is based, in part, on their fear that in the future, masses of refugees from the richer countries in the West will be sent back to Eastern Europe in accordance with the Dublin rule.

Along with the effort to keep refugees in the EU border countries, the EU is seeking to deploy military reinforcements to the external borders. In an invitation letter for Wednesday’s EU summit of government heads, EU Council President Donald Tusk declared that keeping out refugees was the most urgent task. “We as Europeans are currently not able to manage our common external borders,” Tusk wrote, “hence some states decided to protect themselves by closing their national ones. The protection of the European community is our first duty and obligation and we have failed on this front.”

Along with erecting barbed wire fences in Bulgaria, Greece and Hungary with financial support from the EU, the border protection police will be massively armed with the help of Frontex, and the military will be stationed at the external borders in order to prevent refugees from entering the EU. Following the example of the Hungarian government, the Bulgarian government has now announced that it will station up to 1,000 soldiers on the border with Turkey.

Hungarian Minister President Victor Orban has behaved in a particularly bellicose manner, calling the flow of refugees a “brutal danger” and declaring, “They are overrunning us. They are not just banging on the door, they are kicking it down.”

Orban is by no means the only one with this outlook. The Bavarian Christian Social Union, which is part of the German federal coalition government, invited Orban to a closed-door meeting, where he was permitted to repeat these remarks and received enthusiastic applause. This demonstrates all too clearly that Orban is not a pariah. Rather, he speaks for the mainstream of European politics. This is in sharp contrast with the attitude of broad layers of the population, who have responded to the refugee crisis with demonstrations of solidarity and a readiness to help the desperate migrants.

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Muhajireen Brigade: CIA Spawned Chechen Terror Group Joins Nusra Front in Syria

September 24th, 2015 by Kurt Nimmo

Image Credits: Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar.

Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, aka Muhajireen Brigade, has joined al-Nusra, the jihadi terror organization linked to the Islamic State.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a one-man operation run by an anti-Assad activist from Britain, the Muhajireen Brigade made the pledge in a statement distributed by supporters online.

From Reuters: “The pledge is a boost for Nusra Front against its rival Islamic State, an ultra hardline jihadist group which has seized territory in Syria and Iraq.”

This is clearly not the case.

In August Infowars.com reported on the close alliance between ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra.

In addition to pledging allegiance to the Islamic state, al-Nusra, according to to its leader, Abu Mussab al-Makdessi, considers ISIS fighters “brothers” and the “ideological bond between us is stronger than anything. We are ready to fight by their side … our blood is their blood.”

In November the last purportedly “moderate” Syrian rebel group, the Syrian Revolutionary Front, handed over bases and weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra in the Idlib province.

Additionally, thousands of fighters, many formerly aligned with the Free Syrian Army and other groups supported by the United States and its Gulf Emirate partners, have defected to ISIS and al-Nusra.

Muhajireen Brigade: An Element of the CIA’s War in Chechnya

Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar is comprised primarily of Chechen and other Russian-speaking foreign fighters. It was led by an ethnic Chechen, Abu Omar al-Shishani, aka Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili.

Batirashvili and two other amirs assumed leading positions in the Syrian jihad and were backed by Chechen warlord Doku Umarov.

Umarov, described as “Russia’s Bin Laden,” at one time ran a propaganda clearinghouse, the Kavkaz Center, that was funded by the US State Department and various fronts including the National Endowment for Democracy-funded Russian-Chechen Friendship Society. “The former currently supports US efforts to overthrow the Syrian government,” writes Tony Cartalucci.

Research shows the conflicts in Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan were engineered by NATO and the CIA to destabilize Russia.

“Ethnic Muslim populations in this region of Russia and of the former Soviet Union, including Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and into China’s Xinjiang Province, have been the target of various US and NATO intelligence operations since the Cold War era ended in 1990,” writes F. William Engdahl.

“Washington sees manipulation of Muslim groups as the vehicle to bring uncontrollable chaos to Russia and Central Asia. It’s being carried out by some of the same organizations engaged in creating chaos and destruction inside Syria against the government of Bashar Al-Assad.”

Rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab, who vowed to establish a Wahhabist the Caucasian Emirate, were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army. The ISI also played a role in supporting the Afghan Mujahideen, a Muslim paramilitary force that would eventually mature into the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The CIA also worked to destabilize the Balkans, a fact documented by the media in Europe but largely ignored in the United States. The effort to convert the Balkans into a “safe haven” for fanatical jihadists was aided by the CIA and the Pentagon. In 1993, CIA asset Osama bin Laden reportedly installed his number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to run the organization’s operations in the Balkans.

The CIA, British and Turkish intelligence, with ample funding from Wahhabist fanatics in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, created the jihadist menace in Syria as part of an effort to overthrow al-Assad and establish a Sunni caliphate in Syria.

In May Judicial Watch obtained DIA documents showing the U.S. has supported the Islamic State from its inception as an al-Qaeda offshoot in Iraq and is working with the Wahhabists to establish an Islamic principality or princedom in Syria.

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U.S. and Its Coalition of Mid-East Dictators Kill 13 Times More Yemeni Civilians than Al Qaeda

September 24th, 2015 by Washington's Blog

Armed U.S. Drones Alone Killed Twice As Many As Al Qaeda …

A new  report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNCHR) documents the number of civilian deaths in Yemen over the year-long period between July 1, 2014 to June 30 of this year.

The UNCHR report states:

At least 24 civilians were killed and 65 injured in attacks claimed by Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, mainly in Sana’a, Aden and Taizz. [all cities in Yemen.]

We all know that Al Qaeda are bad guys … but let’s compare that with civilian deaths caused by the U.S. and the “coalition” partners of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and various other Mid-East dictatorships .

The U.N. report documents:

Allegations of violations committed by coalition and joint government forces

  • Information gathered by OHCHR indicated that, on 30 March 2015, the coalition forces launched a number of air strikes that hit the al-Mazraq camp for internally displaced persons in Harad. At least19 civilians were reportedly killed and 35 others injured, including 11 children. The camp, which shelters some 4,000 people, was established by the United Nations in 2009 and, at the time of the attack, hosted at least 300 families recently displaced from Sa’ada. Information provided to OHCHR did not identify the presence of any military objectives in the area.
  • At least 20 civilians were killed and 59 others injured when a dairy factory was directly hit in four air strikes in Hudaydah city (Al Hudaydah Governorate), on 31 March 2015. The people killed inside the factory were personnel. On 12 May, at least 43 civilians, including eight women and 12 children, were killed, while an additional 135 were injured as a result of four air strikes that directly hit the Al-Wajeeh building located in a busy commercial hub in Zabeed (Al-Hudaydah Governorate). The majority of the casualties belonged to Al-Muhamasheen community. The information received by OHCHR did not clarify whether the building was deliberately targeted.
  • On 20 April 2015, at least 87 civilians were killed, including six children and two women, and at least 647 others injured as a result of airstrikes that appeared to be directed at the Faj Attan military base in Sana’a. Hundreds of homes and private businesses in the vicinity of the base (as far as Al-Tahrir Square) were damaged.
  • On 21 April 2015, 40 civilians were killed, including seven children, and 70 civilians were injured as a result of air strikes that hit the Al-Dhaleel bridge (Ibb Governorate). Reports indicated that the connection bridge between Ibb and the main route to Sana’a Governorate was hit twice by air strikes, causing a large number of civilian casualties. People were arriving to assist those injured by the first explosion when missiles were launched in a second round of air strikes.
  • OHCHR received reports alleging that, in late April 2015 in Sa’ada Governorate, cluster munitions were used by the coalition forces in several air strikes, which resulted in at least six civilian casualties, including children. Owing to the continuing airstrikes, OHCHR was unable to collect any further information.
  • … Although OHCHR was unable to obtain detailed information on affected cities and resulting casualties, it was informed that coalition air strikes hit at least six residential homes and five markets in Sa’ada, reportedly with no evidence of Houthi military deployment.
  • On 6 May 2015, 15 civilians were killed, including four children and three women from the same family, when two homes collapsed while the families were inside. The homes were hit by two air strikes in Al-Dhaid, Sa’ada.
  • OHCHR gathered information indicating that, on 7 June 2015, coalition forces conducted air strikes against an area hosting a high concentration of internally displaced persons in Duaij village (Hajjah Governorate), allegedly killing four civilians, including three women, and injuring 41 civilians, including 12 women and 16 children. Four makeshift homes for displaced persons were allegedly destroyed in that incident. On 14 June, a family of 10, including four women and two children, were allegedly killed in Al-Hamza as a result of an air strike by coalition forces that struck their vehicle travelling from Al-Jawf to Sana’a.
  • OHCHR documented allegations that, on 17 June 2015, two buses transporting displaced families were hit by air strikes conducted by coalition forces in Al-Alam (Abyan Governorate). It found that 17 civilians had been killed in the incident, including five women and five children, while 10 others, including two women and three children, had been injured. The victims were reportedly fleeing the violence from Al-Mansoura district (Aden Governorate), and were on their way to Hadramout.

Next, the U.N. report discusses murder by armed drones:

  • OHCHR was informed of reports of drone strikes in parts of the country with allegations of civilian casualties. The attacks are believed to have been conducted by joint forces of the United States of America and Yemen as part of a campaign against Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. OHCHR received reliable information indicating that as many as 40 civilians, including a child, may have been killed during the period under review as a result of drone attacks in Al-Baida, Al-Jawf, Marib and Shabwah. According to a Yemeni non-governmental organization, a one-year-old boy and two adults were killed on 26 January 2015 after a Yemeni Air Force drone struck a vehicle at Huraib (in Marib Governorate).

The U.S. is the only nation flying armed drones in Yemen.

Adding up the numbers, approximately 304 civilians were killed by the U.S. and other coalition members in the past year … 13 times more than killed by Al Qaeda during the same period.

And there were twice as many civilians killed by armed U.S. drones alone than by Al Qaeda during this period.

Whew!   Good thing we’re the good guys.

Postscript: The above quotes come from the footnotes to the UNCHR report (namely, footnote 28 and 44 through 54).  For the sake of readability, I deleted the footnote numbers.

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Understanding the UN Security Council Veto Power. America Threatens Russia

September 24th, 2015 by Stephen Lendman

Article 27 of the UN Charter states:

1. Each member of the SecurityCouncil shall have one vote.2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members.

3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.

Five countries were granted special status: America, Britain, China, France and the former Soviet Union – now the Russian Federation. They’re permanent Security Council members with special voting power known as the “right to veto” SC measures.

During the post-Soviet era, Washington used its veto power scores of times, Russia only eight “no” votes. Ahead of the UN’s 70th anniversary next month, US-installed Ukrainian fascists want Moscow stripped of its right to dissent during this month’s General Assembly session. It’ll take more than a GA vote to alter the UN Charter. It requires a two-thirds majority of member states – including all P5 countries with veto power. It’s unlikely any will choose to limit their own authority.

Washington nonsensically claims Russian vetoes threaten the Security Council’s legitimacy. It  challenges its hegemonic agenda, blocking efforts to authorize war on Syria among  other important actions.

US UN envoy Samantha Power is one of numerous neocons infesting the Obama administration, an advocate of endless wars dressed up as humanitarian intervention.

She criticized Russian vetoes, saying they force America to “forum-shop” to further its agenda. “If a particular body reveals itself to be dysfunctional, then people are going to go elsewhere,” she claimed.

And if that happened for more than Syria and Ukraine and you started to see across the board paralysis…it would certainly jeopardize the security council’s status and credibility and its function as a go-to international security arbiter. It would definitely jeopardize that over time.

Russia’s veto power is an important tool able to prevent Washington from getting legitimacy for its imperial wars. “The Security Council will lose its relevance” without it, Moscow’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin explained.

It would “simply…rubber-stamp decisions…made in Washington, Paris, London, (and) Brussels…(It would prevent SC members from) do(ing) the important work of bringing about consensus decisions.”

Putin is expected to meet with Obama when both leaders address the General Assembly later this month. Churkin expects no major breakthroughs. If agreement is reached on anything, it’ll be an achievement, he explained.

He dismissed the hype about alleged Russian military buildup in Syria as baseless Western propaganda. Russia fully observes international law. “There’s no secret about” its legitimate activities.

Putin’s initiative for world unity to confront Islamic State terrorists is the most effective way to defeat it, Churkin explained – impossible as long as Washington wants war.

US administrations under Republicans and Democrats are the greatest threat to world peace. It’ll take more than Security Council actions to reign in their madness.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PMCentral time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

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General Petraeus’ Recipe for Battling ISIS: US-Protected Rebel Enclaves in Syria, Surge in Iraq

September 24th, 2015 by RT

To achieve victory in the Middle East, the US needs to establish and protect rebel enclaves in Syria, and launch another “surge” in Iraq, former CIA director and retired US Army general David Petraeus told a Senate panel.

This was the first public appearance for the retired general and former spymaster, following his April sentencing for revealing classified information to his mistress.

Former CIA director David Petraeus © Chris Keane

Former CIA director David Petraeus © Chris Keane / Reuters

Describing Syria as a “geopolitical Chernobyl… spewing instability” all over the Middle East, Petraeus urged the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) to endorse a policy that would “stop the Syrian air force from flying” and establish safe areas where civilians and anti-government rebels could be protected by US airpower and advisers. Meanwhile, all the elements of the surge were once again required in Iraq, but this time around the Iraqis would have to provide the ground troops, he said.

 

Petraeus echoed the official position of the State Department that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was to blame for the rise of Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL), blaming the government’s “barrel bombs” rather than IS for most of the civilian deaths in Syria. The general pushed for the creation of US-backed protected areas where civilians and militia opposed to the government could shelter under the coalition air umbrella. Eventually, he said, US advisers could be deployed there as boots on the ground. “This is a very complicated military activity, but it is doable,” Petraeus told lawmakers.

 

Petraeus resigned as director of the CIA in November 2012, following the revelations that he had shared classified information with his biographer – and lover – Paula Broadwell. As part of a plea bargain with the government, he was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $100,000 fine. The ex-general began his testimony with an apology, calling what he did a “serious mistake” and a “violation of the trust placed in me.”

The panel, chaired by Arizona Republican John McCain, repeatedly thanked Petraeus for his military service and commended him on the apology. Without bringing up the Broadwell scandal at all, McCain praised Petraeus as a “distinguished” leader and argued his 2007 testimony was critical to securing Senate support for the ‘surge’ strategy that “defeated al-Qaeda in Iraq, brought security to the Iraqi people, and created the possibility for meaningful political reconciliation.” Both Republicans and Democrats on the panel were eager to hear Petraeus’s prescriptions for salvaging the US war effort against Islamic State. A yearlong air campaign by the 60-nation coalition, at the cost of $4 billion, has not dislodged the self-proclaimed Caliphate, while the handful of US-trained Syrian fighters were ambushed and scattered by Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate.

 

Petraeus argued that the “train and equip” program was impossible to abandon, since the US strategy in the region absolutely depended on having a Sunni Arab fighting force. Asked whether there was anyone inside Syria actually available to train, he said that many moderate rebels “drifted” to Islamist groups like Al-Nusra, because they had resources and were fighting against the Assad government. Peeling off these low-ranking members could work, he said, just as it did in Iraq.

 

Arguing that working with the government in Damascus would damage US credibility among the Sunnis, Petraeus called for lawmakers to resist Russian effort to “force” the US into an alliance with president Bashar al-Assad. If Russia really wanted to fight ISIS, it could have joined the US-led coalition and asked to be integrated into the air war, Petraeus said. Russian president Vladimir Putin recently proposed a coordinated international effort against IS, but rebuffed speculation that Russian forces would engage in combat operations in Syria. “We are providing Syria with quite strong support in terms of equipment, training of military servicemen and weapons,” Putin said. “We are considering various options, but so far what you are talking about is not on the agenda.” Petraeus did caution against the rush to overthrow Assad, noting that Syria “could actually get worse” if there was no plan for the aftermath.

 

During Petraeus’s testimony before the SASC, it was reported that retired Marine General John Allen, head of the anti-IS coalition, would be stepping down in November. Sources within the Obama administration told Bloomberg that Allen made the decision out of concern for his wife’s poor health.

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“Neoliberal Barbarity”: There Is Nothing to Celebrate after Sunday’s Greek Elections

September 24th, 2015 by Theodoros Karyotis

Skyrocketing abstention, social demobilization and an impending wave of harsh austerity measures call for critical reflection after SYRIZA’s victory.

There is nothing to celebrate, really. The European leftists that arrived in Athens to support Tsipras are justified to celebrate, since they have a vision of Syriza that is external and more often than not romanticized. As far as Greeks are concerned, no one can doubt that there are honest and well-meaning left-wing people who have voted for Syriza or are even (still) members of Syriza. But after the developments of the last few months the last thing they want to do is celebrate.

How can they celebrate, when tomorrow the new Syriza-led government has to enforce and oversee the implementation of a harsh attack on nature and the popular classes, having given up its capacity to legislate without the tutelage of Brussels and Berlin, and being under constant financial blackmail by the creditors?

Left-wing pragmatism and social demobilization

Tsipras’ new “selling point” is his fight against corruption and the oligarchy, since his newly-adopted “pragmatism” dictates that he cannot anymore fight against austerity and neoliberal restructuring. Thus, the horizon of left-wing politics in Greece has become an “austerity with a human face”, a “less corrupt” and “more just” enforcement of neoliberal barbarity.

Unfortunately, in the coming months we are going to witness Tsipras’ “political maturity” and “pragmatism” extending to ever new areas: Pragmatism dictates that you cannot fight against those who own all the wealth and the mass media in Greece, that you cannot shut down the mine in Skouries, that you have to privatize the water companies after all, that you cannot permit worker occupations like VIOME to challenge private property, that you have to deal with protest and dissent deploying the forces of public order.

In short, left-wing pragmatism is going to achieve everything that right-wing arrogance could not, that is, to subdue a population that has been fighting against neoliberal barbarity for 5 years.

All the while, the social movements have been tricked into standing by and waiting for Syriza to fullfil the role it assigned for itself: that of the mediator between social resistances and political power. The government is gaining political time, while movement demobilization means that struggles are defeated one by one: The self-managed workers of ERT banished by the new management, the anti-mining movement in Halkidiki seeing the destruction of its land… Who is next? Maybe self-managed VIOME, struggling to legitimize its activity in adverse conditions? Maybe Thessaloniki’s water movement, which fiercely fought and stopped privatization, only to see it back on the table according to the terms of the new memorandum?

The failure of SYRIZA’s splinter “Popular Unity” to mobilize voters comes as no surprise: despite the anti-memorandum rhetoric, the new party repeated some of the more objectionable practices of SYRIZA: It was constituted in a top-down process, solely on party cadres, built around flamboyant and self-centred personalities, projecting a hegemonism towards movements and other political forces, seeking followers rather than allies, projecting its state-centric program of national capitalist reconstruction outside the euro as the holy grail of transformatory politics. It failed to mobilise ex-SYRIZA voters, most of whom preferred to stay at home rather than go out to vote for Popular Unity; it also failed to convince the disenchanted movement-friendly party base of SYRIZA, which to this moment remains politically homeless. It thus allowed Tsipras to emerge as the absolute winner of the electoral game.

Electoral abstention and the “lesser evil”

Someone could argue that Syriza retaining its electoral percentage on Sunday’s elections is a sign that the bulk of the population consents to the party’s “pragmatism”. Two points should be stressed here:

Firstly, it is a perfectly respectable stance to vote for Syriza as the lesser neoliberal evil. Voting by definition involves complex calculations, political blackmail and a host of ethical dilemmas that the Greeks have faced three times in less than 8 months. Those who abstain for political reasons cannot claim moral superiority over those who use their vote instrumentally in this fluid and complex political situation. But let’s not assume either that all the people who cast an instrumental vote for Syriza in order to prevent the reinstatement of the hated New Democracy are going to stand by with their arms crossed when the government begins its raid against people and nature in the next few months.

Secondly, and most importantly, while the political system is designed to maintain appearances and guarantee the continuity of power, no one can deny that the most significant aspect of Sunday’s elections was the abstention skyrocketing to 45% from 36% in January and from 29% in 2009. It is easy to calculate that in a country of 10 million registered voters this translates to over 4 million people who do not vote, or about 1 and a half million people who have lost their faith in the political system since the start of the crisis. This last figure represents about as many people as those who vote for either of the two major political parties.

We shouldn’t hasten to claim all these people for the forces of social emancipation and self-determination, as some anarchists would have it. Certainly a critical mass of people refrains from voting because it has a conception of politics as an embodied collective process, not as a ritual stuffing of the ballot box -even of one does not necessarily preclude the other. Nevertheless, a wide range of motives and circumstances can lead to this disenchantment, which can include apathy, helplessness, individualism and resignation.

While the political system could not care less about this huge mass of disenchanted citizens –as long as they stay at home and they do not vote for protest parties that could cause disruption, it is all the same to them. Indeed, the ones that should be really concerned about this part of the population should be the social movements and the ideological movements that feel closer to the grassroots, namely the libertarian movement and the extra-parliamentary left. How can we break through the wall of apathy and individualism, connect with the desires and aspirations of the disenchanted population, cultivate collective spirit, social organization and creativity, desire for change and emancipation?

The inadequacy of political practices

Unfortunately large chunks of the libertarian and leftist movements are more concerned about preserving their own identity than connecting with the disenchanted classes. We circulate our indecipherable manifests, largely for internal consumption; we cling to our ideological purity and our maximalist rhetoric; we shout out our angry slogans and cradle our flags; we boast when we have a handful of protesters more in our marches or when our parties get a few thousand votes more in the elections. All the while, millions of people out there are hungry for social change, but are probably resigned into an individualistic existence, and we have no means of getting through to them.

While many would interpret the 45% of abstention as a healthy rejection of the pointless simulacrum that is representative democracy, it can as well be interpreted as a failure, or rather as a chain of failures: The failure of a social order to incorporate large chunks of the population in the mainstream of social life; the failure of a political system to offer effective avenues of changing said social order; the failure of the social movements and the left to create a new imaginary of transformation of this political system.

An opportunity to reflect

The politics of “there is no alternative” promoted by our left-wing government are sure to heighten resignation and apathy; nevertheless a society under extreme pressure for so many years is definitely bound to explode sooner or later. The social movements in Greece have produced admirable responses towards self-emancipation in the last few years, but they have failed to articulate these responses into a coherent voice, a proposal for overcoming the present political and economic order. They have idealised partiality and fragmentation, they have not addressed the issue of political organization, and have thus been tricked into submission by the hegemonic project of SYRIZA.

The pyrrhic victory of the left in last Sunday’s elections should initiate a process of critical reflection, both in Greece and throughout Europe. We have ahead of us difficult moments of resistance, and the social movements, however small and insignificant, constitute at present the only remaining antagonistic force against capitalist barbarity.

The speech of Theodoros Karyotis (in English) minute 32 to 40.

http://adwa.ru/watch/M-O8sFKRR7U
Licenced under Creative Commons, copyright note below not applicable
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Human Beings: The Omnicidal Species. There is Nothing They Won’t Kill

September 24th, 2015 by John Kozy

Human beings comprise an omnicidal species. Apparently there is nothing they won’t kill. Yet some claim to value life and say that all lives matter. But if all lives matter, Palestinian lives matter, Syrian lives matter, Iraqi lives matter, Afghan lives matter, Libyan lives matter. If all lives matter, Osama bin Laden’s life mattered. So did Al Awlaki’s and his fifteen year old son’s. So did Gaddafi’s and the lives of every member of the armed forces who died on a Middle Eastern battlefield, including the Americans who died there. But they are dead now, gone forever, and George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all the neoconservatives who advocated going to war in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring nonexistent weapons of mass destruction murdered them as surely as Dr. Palmer murdered Cecil the lion.

A few weeks ago, my wife came in from the back yard yelling, “John, John, a snake. There’s a snake in the back yard. Get something to kill it. Kill it.”

I was in no mood to do any killing and didn’t have anything handy to kill it with anyhow so I calmly went outside to have a look around. Sure enough, there it was. A beautiful, completely benign, about 18 inches long, orange and black, western ribbon snake sunning itself.

Not only was there no reason to kill it, there was no reason to even disturb it. Yet in the interests of domestic tranquility, a little nudging induced it to slither into some underbrush and disappear. But my wife had really wanted it dead even though she’s a kind compassionate person who generally loves animals. She contributes to local animal shelters and is always horrified when she hears stories of animal cruelty. Neither she nor anyone else I know would have considered killing that snake animal cruelty. Why? Was it because of the story they all were told when they were young about Eve’s tryst with a serpent in the Garden of Eden or because of a wild imagination based on ignorance of what snakes might be capable of doing like swallowing the whole house, for instance? I don’t know.

A few days later I read about a hiker’s being mauled by a bear in Yellowstone. A sow was spotted and although no one had witnessed the mauling, the assumption was made that she was the mauler. She was captured and put down. Why? For having offended human sensibilities? She may not even have been guilty, and no other bear in the park could have been prevented from mauling anyone because of her death. Her killing had no purpose whatsoever. It was purely gratuitous, an act of vengeance.

Then the news of Dr. Palmer’s killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe hit the air. Palmer, an exceedingly rich American wanted the pleasure of killing a lion so he could hang its head on a wall. He wanted a trophy! He claims to have done no wrong but he tried to hide the killing. Cecil’s collar was hidden in a tree before his head was removed for mounting. It was all perfectly innocent, of course. Except for Cecil’s special status, being a lion with a name and a collar, Dr. Palmer, the lion slayer, would have been delighted with the kill. I suspect a celebration would have been in order.

Of course, a vast difference exists between people like my wife and Dr. Palmer. My wife would be horrified at the thought of mounting even a beautiful dead snake on the wall of her living room, but Dr. Palmer would be delighted with it. Yet Dr. Palmers are not rare. In my neighborhood, a barber has a shop adorned with mounted fish all of which he has gleefully murdered. They were beautiful fish. Why would anyone want them dead? And Sarah Palin posted a video of her shooting a superb elk to demonstrate how firm she would be dealing with the Russians had he been elected to the office of Vice President. What shooting a clueless elk standing still in a clearing on a hill says about how aware Russians armed, hidden, and willing to shoot back would react eludes me.

When Osama Bin Laden was assassinated by navy seals, the President and his advisors, keeping track of the event electronically, are said to have cheered when the fatal shot was fired. But is there any essential difference between their glee and Dr. Palmer’s when he killed Cecil? I don’t know. Readers can judge for themselves. What kind of human being is cheered by a killing? Perhaps a very normal one.

Maybe a psychological malady exists that describes such people—Dr. Palmer, the barber, and all the President’s men. Do they all suffer from some gross inadequacy that causes them to over compensate by killing animals that pose no danger to them? If there is one, psychologists certainly don’t emphasize it. Are normal people natural killers and are the healers deranged? Is the Grim Reaper a member of this species? Is there anything human beings won’t find a way to kill?

Think about it? Life is an oxymoronic activity. Some living things must kill other living things to endure. A mathematician would recognize that as a reductio ad absurdum, an absurdity that cannot be sustained. But few human beings are mathematicians. Some killing may have to be done to subsist, but gratuitous killing does not.

People sought ways to kill bacteria that are deadly. Antibiotics were discovered. A good and necessary thing. But immediately people began feeding antibiotics to chickens, cows, horses, none of whom exhibited any signs of being infected. Whether bacteria were benign or malign made no difference. People were going to kill them. And ways of killing other things have been developed too. There are herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, insecticides, every kind of cide. There are bullets, bombs, missiles, hooks, snares, traps, spears, and nets to kill animals and sea life of all kinds. People also kill each other and even themselves. Children kill parents, parents kill children, neighbors kill each other and strangers, strangers kill strangers. Is there anything human beings won’t kill?

Apparently not. Scripture exists that describes the killing of even God. Worse, humans glorify His murder by hanging amulets of an effigy of the God hanging from a cross around their necks. Is this essentially different from hanging the head of an animal on a wall? Why do these human beings glorify the murder of God rather than His birth or resurrection? What does the fascination with death consist of? Human beings seem to enjoy and be entertained by it. (Bill Nye the science guy who searches for life forms in the sky—why? Do you want to kill them?)

Since long before motion pictures and television, a literary genre called the murder mystery has entertained people. These people say they enjoy solving the conundrums. But writers can concoct similar conundrums about things other than killing. But no robbery mysteries exist. No who started the nasty rumor mysteries exist either. The killing seems to be a necessary ingredient of the story. Why this fascination with death? Why are people so quick to turn to killing?

Yet despite this ubiquitous killing, a group exists that calls itself pro life. It seeks to stop the aborting of fertilized human fetuses but gives no evidence of any concern about the killing that goes on around them every day. These people claim to value life. Mike Huckabee, in reacting to the Black Lives Matter movement has said “white lives matter; all lives matter” but he doesn’t mean it and neither does anyone else in the pro life movement. They don’t seem to understand that if all lives matter, Palestinian lives matter, Syrian lives matter,

Iraqi lives matter, Afghan lives matter, Libyan lives matter. If all lives matter, Osama bin Laden’s life mattered. So did Al Awlaki’s and his fifteen year old son’s. So did Gaddafi’s and the lives of every member of the armed forces who died on a Middle Eastern battlefield, including the Americans who died there. But they are dead now, gone forever, and George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all the neoconservatives who advocated going to war in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring nonexistent weapons of mass destruction murdered them as surely as Dr. Palmer murdered Cecil. They cannot avoid the guilt.

No person express how much s/he values life by trying to save the nonexistent lives of the unborn but by how the living are treated. The living are not being treated well when the homeless go unsheltered, the hungry go unfed, and the sick go untreated which may explain why those interred in cemeteries are commonly described as being in a better place. What a bitter judgment that expression is on the quality of the human condition. We all aught to be ashamed!

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

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California Freeway Battleground. Sniper on Police Helicopter Opens Fire on Vehicle

September 24th, 2015 by Andrew J. Santos

Snipers shooting enemy combatants from a helicopter is a normal occurrence for soldiers engaged in a combat zone, but this is exactly what occurred on September 18,2015 in San Bernardino County in California. Police were pursuing a suspect on the 215 freeway who was traveling against traffic.
That is when a sniper aboard a police helicopter opened fire on the vehicle which resulted in the suspect’s vehicle colliding head first onto an oncoming vehicle. [1] San Bernardino County Sheriff Department’s spokeswoman stated that the suspect was “threatening the public” which served as justification for the shooting. However, there has not been a “published legal decision testing officers’ ability to use that specific tactic” according to law enforcement legal counselor, Deputy Ed Obayashi. [2] 
 
The San Bernardino Sheriff Department has not yet stated how many shots were fired from the helicopter. The lack of transparency from this event is appalling. Although it has been rare for police to shoot from a helicopter, this situation must be viewed in the context of the United States’ increasingly militarized police force. With recent revelations about police drone surveillance in conjunction with high profile cases of police shootings of unarmed black people and its subsequent militarized response (e.g. Ferguson), the public should be skeptical of such police activities.
If similar events occur, there will be a debate around such actions, especially when standard police tactics generate much controversy. Surely a debate would include its legality, safety, and accuracy. The fact that President Obama has authorized the drone killings of U.S. citizens, it is possible that these war zone techniques will be used here domestically. [3]
It is likely that helicopter assisted sniper shootings would be used during civil unrest situations. However, officer safety and accuracy would be a concern to police departments. Therefore, the use of drones to subdue suspects instead of helicopter snipers seems naturally plausible . A soft-launch of such police tactics would utilize drones that fire non-lethal projectiles, such as the Skunk Riot Control Copter,  in order to justify its legality. [4] Consequently, it is imperative that the public reject the use of helicopter assisted shootings from becoming standard procedure because of its potential use for abuse and militarized state-oppression of protest movements.

Notes

[1] Melissa Pamer, Chip Yost, and Rick Chambers,“Gunshots Fired From Sheriff’s Helicopter Kills Pursuit Suspect; NB 215 Fwy Shut” September 18, 2015 http://ktla.com/2015/09/18/pursuit-crash-and-fatal-shooting-leads-to-closure-on-northbound-215-in-san-bernardino/
[2] Richard Winton and Garrett Therolf,“Police shooting from helicopters–rare but not unheard of” September 19, 2015http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-police-shooting-from-helicopters-rare-but-not-unheardof-20150919-story.html
[3] Sue Owen, “Four U.S. citizens killed in Obama drone strikes, but 3 were not intended targets” March 19, 2014http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2014/mar/19/kesha-rogers/four-us-citizens-killed-obama-drone-strikes-3-were/
[4] Sarah Gray, “Terrifying riot drone is equipped to shoot paint balls, plastic bullets and pepper spray” June 19, 2014http://www.salon.com/2014/06/19/terrifying_riot_drone_equipped_to_shoot_paint_balls_plastic_bullets_and_pepper_spray/
 –

Andrew J. Santos holds a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Riverside

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The West Suppresses Report on Ukraine’s Suppression of Journalists

September 24th, 2015 by Eric Zuesse

OSCE Squelches Ukrainian Commission on Human Rights Speaker

At a 21 September 2015 meeting of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), which is run by the Western powers and which is the leading organization concerning security and cooperation in Europe, a couragous speech against Ukraine’s imprisonment and killing of independent journalists was made by Alexey Tarasov, the Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Commission on Human Rights.

Nearly halfway through the prepared text of his intended 6-minute summary description of the main cases, his speech was terminated by the Chairperson. It was cut off at 2:31 in this video:

However, in this video of it, the termination is at 2:38:

Here, then, is the complete printed text, as it was posted at Fort Russ on September 22. I have additionally placed a mark at the point where Tarasov’s speech was cut short:

——

Dear colleagues,

Please allow me to welcome this meeting.

Probably everyone knows that today’s Ukraine is the most problematic European country in terms of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Especially where it concerns the tragic situation with the freedom of speech and freedom of expression, the situation of access to information, limitation of journalists’ activity and the mass media in general.

According to information by the Institute of Mass Media, since the beginning of 2015 in Ukraine, there has been recorded 224 violations of the rights of journalists. According to the Institute’s reports, almost every day journalists in Ukraine are beaten or intimidated.

The worst thing is the continuation of journalists’ murders. For example, last year the talented journalist Oles’ Buzina was killed right near the entrance of his house. He was a consistent supporter of the Ukraine’s unity, at the same time fundamentally opposing to the war in the Donbass, which contradicted the official doctrine. The suspects of the murder of Buzina were arrested. They are under investigation. Human rights defenders are very concerned with the political pressure on the investigation and law enforcement agencies. They are afraid that the real killers will escape  punishment.

In Kiev this year, journalists Sergei Sukhobok and Margarita Valenko, were killed in Cherkassy region – Vasily Sergienko.

In Ukraine there is political pressure on opposition media, harassment, illegal criminal searches and arrests of journalists became a reality. There are varied forms of violence against dissent in the Ukrainian media.

State officials are trying to illegally shut the license of the popular opposition 112 TV channel and of the metropolitan newspaper “Vesti”. There were a great number of provocations, criminal searches, etc. Ukrainian authorities are forcibly trying to substitute owners of the mass media. Employees of the Odessa opposition website “Timer” for “prevention” were summoned for questioning at the office of the Ukrainian security service (SBU). There were some searches in journalists’ houses.

Ukrainian authorities always have standard charges on “separatism” with following arrests for those media professionals who are disagree with the state policy. The Chief Editor of the Internet newspaper “Vzapravdu” Artem Buzila, for the last five months has been imprisoned in Odessa on such fabricated accusations.

The Editor of the newspaper “Rabochiy class”, Alexander Bondarchuk has been illegally jailed for the last six months in the Kiev prison. And I can continue this list. There are dozens of journalists who are jailed or are in the wanted list of the SBU for their opposition publications.

Also, I want to draw your attention to the problem with the freedom of expression and regulation of the rights of conscientious objectors (COs) in Ukraine. They are individuals who have claimed their right to refuse to take military service, who have special ideological and moral convictions. …

[CUT SHORT HERE BY CHAIRMAN]

… This is a normal practice for the European countries to protect rights of conscientious objectors, but not for the Ukraine. Nowadays the position of Ukrainian COs, who are not members of any religious organization, violates the law of the country. Authorities criminally prosecute even those journalists who are COs.

A striking confirmation of this problem is the prosecution of journalist Ruslan Kotsaba, who is CO. For his public conscientious objection, Ruslan Kotsaba has been jailed and his case has been considered for several months by the Ivano-Frankivsk City Court. The authorities consider the open position of the honest journalist as “obstruction of the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations during the special period.” Such behavior of the authorities is difficult to imagine in a normal democratic society. Now, according to the information of Ukrainian prosecutors thousands of COs have been prosecuted, and hundreds of them have been jailed. Therefore, in our country there is a total process of transformation of ideological Ukrainian COs into real prisoners of conscience.

In addition, there is another issue. Between Ukraine and the European Union the Association Agreement was signed, which was simultaneously ratified in September 16, 2014 by the European Parliament and the Parliament of Ukraine. According to the Agreement, particular attention is paid to the observation of human rights. Article II (two) states: “Respect for democratic principles, human rights and fundamental freedoms, as defined in particular in the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975) and the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (1990) …”.

This Agreement has not yet entered into force, and the Parliament of Ukraine on May 21, 2015 has adopted a resolution “On the withdrawal from certain obligations, certain International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.” This resolution also violates Helsinki Final Act obligations. Ukrainian Deputies motivated their decision to adopt the resolution by the tragic events in Donbass.

By the way, our Ukrainian Human Rights Commission issued a report “Undeclared war at the center of Europe”. It concerns the observance of human rights during the so called «anti-terrorist operation» in Donbass by Ukraine’s state officials. You can see and have it near the conference hall.

So, the Ukrainian state instead of focusing on the implementation of international humanitarian law and the protection of civilians during the armed conflict in Donbass, has substituted these concepts and instead withdrew itself from the obligations of the state to respect international human rights, to protect them, and the exercising of  rights of millions of inhabitants of Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

By the adoption of such a decision, the Ukrainian state has applied to a part of its citizens discriminatory measures based on their residence, and has restricted their human rights and fundamental freedoms, including their right to liberty and security, freedom of residence and movement, the right to fair trial and effective means of legal protection, social protection etc.

There is a question to the EU countries, who ratified the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, the main elements of which are based on international and European standards of human rights without any exceptions:

Will these countries suspend the entry into force of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU before the termination of the violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of millions of citizens in Ukraine? Or will they want to support Ukraine’s position of double standards, and not to extend the requirements of this Agreement to particular regions of Donetsk and Lugansk?

We hope that the international community will stop the ignorance of massive and systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Ukraine, first of all, in matters of freedom of speech and the rights of journalists, and will put pressure on the Ukrainian authorities in order to force them into complying with their international obligations in the field of human rights.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

 

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My Name is Nobody: Religious Fanaticism is a Western Tradition

September 24th, 2015 by Dr. T. P. Wilkinson

Amidst all the handwringing across the political spectrum, commentators of every type decry the deplorable conditions that prevail in the parts of the world that have been under attack by the US, NATO, and the historic colonial powers of Europe: Britain and France. That is to say the actions for which the wealthiest countries on Earth, concentrated in the North Atlantic region, are jointly and severally responsible. However, the vast majority of the text generated on this subject is truly tiresome.

While nearly everyone is willing to say that the nature of the violence prevailing in the Middle East and various parts of the “Dark Continent” (the ignorance displayed with respect to Africa only verifies that whites still consider Blacks next to worthless) is horrible, it is conspicuous that nobody is willing to face a fundamental fact. Religious fanaticism is essentially a European and Anglo-American tradition.

The French colonised Algeria and deliberately gave the archconservative Islamic clerics the job of policing Algeria’s native population.[1] That was an essential part of their control over the country. The British colonisers historically sought out the peoples in Africa who were most susceptible to their puritan form of Christianity and educated them to dominate the rest of the ethnic groups in their colonies. This was in fact the main function of missionaries throughout the Euro-American colonial enterprise.[2] Europe itself was created by the process of imposing Christianity with the sword and the Inquisition. The Roman pontiff extorted money and manpower for over three centuries to subdue the Eastern Christian (Orthodox) church and dominate the Middle East. A militarised bureaucracy emerged from a Greco-Roman sect and declared itself the universal church. Based upon all manner of forged documents and brute force, the Roman Catholic Church undertook to drive adherents of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula, southern France and the Levant. The more honest historians of those periods admit that Islam was more tolerant of other religions than Roman Catholicism ever was. The institution of anti-Semitism became part of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies’ enrichment strategy after the Islamic rulers were expelled.[3]

This is by no means ancient history. Thus US regime, in particular, sponsored missionaries to destroy the culture of Native Americans while the US Army was annihilating any that dared to resist. The US oil dynasties, e.g. Rockefeller, Pew, Mellon, have spent billions funding reactionary Protestant missionaries throughout the world whose job it has been to depopulate areas for Christ (help the indigenous get closer to the Christian god by dying early) so as to seize land and mineral rights.[4] Various Pentacostalists were notorious supporters of military dictatorships in Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and elsewhere– not only preaching but collaborating with the secret police.[5] South African apartheid could not have been so enduring without the Christian missions who helped soften resistance and even helped expropriate land from Blacks throughout the country. As one wag said, the Christian missionaries brought us the Bible and took everything else.[6]

In the great wave of national liberation that started in Ghana and Egypt and Mesopotamia after World War II, movements were born that comprised all the religious groups in those countries.[7] Their models were the “enlightened” secular states anticipated by their leaders– many of whom had been educated in Europe and North America. Without exception secular states were formed throughout Africa and the Middle East– with the exception of the European settler-colonial regime in what is now called Israel. Of course whites in South Africa imitated this move by Black Africans but instead created states whose official religion was white supremacy.

From the very beginning the West– mainly Britain, the US and France– did everything in their power to destroy these newly independent states or to burden them with ethnic dictatorships. The latter were simply a result of re-creating the indirect rule regime of colonial days and installing a quasi-remote control mechanism: arms supplies for the old favourite clique so that it could suppress the rest of the population. Where ethnic division was not so easy, religion used.

Only ethnic or religious fanaticism– an essential trait of the imperial elite– could endow a minority in any of these countries with the capacity to rule other ethnic or religious groups as ruthlessly as the colonisers had done.

There is a guiding principle for the use of extremists to enforce imperialism today. It is based on a division of labour. A small group of religious fanatics, take the Saudis and their like, can be cheaply bought.[8] Then by arming them to the teeth and granting them every conceivable immunity it is possible to continue the exhaustive exploitation of the country and its population. Truly pious fanatics are only interested in enough money to satisfy their immediate passions. Therefore they have no interest in “economic affairs”. This was especially true when the British and US oil cartel installed the house of Saud to rule the populations wandering about the massive oil fields. In return for fanatical religious tyranny (and loads of cash for a tiny family), the entire Arabian Peninsula was surrendered to Aramco. In the case of Iran, Britain got control over all the oil by arming a dictator who pretended to be a monarch. The US continued this legacy by usurping Iran’s democratic aspirations. Carter and Reagan secretly supported the reactionary Islamic clerics in 1979 as a means of preventing– or so they thought– a resurgent nationalist movement with the fall of the Shah. (Sometimes plans do not work perfectly.)

At the same time Carter– at least the people who actually ran his administration– started the wave of fanatical reactionary Islam in Afghanistan– to crush a secular regime there and indirectly attack the Soviet Union.[9] This campaign continues unabated. The Anglo-American elite together with their vassals and the settler-colonial regime in Palestine have been using the tried and true tradition of religious fanaticism to promote their own religion: fanatical capitalism. One cannot function without the other because they are in essence two sides of the same historical coin.

Since threat manufacture is the main function of the mass media– even on the so-called Left– even those who write for the progressive (no one can say the “c” or “s” words) media have to maintain some illusions, distortions or misconceptions. Whether they go by the name Islamic fundamentalists or Islamicists or Al Qaeda or ISIS or (Wahhabist is rarely used because that would directly implicate Western vassal Saudi Arabia) whatever name is fashionable, nobody seems ready to call these forces what they are: mercenaries and missionaries for capitalist fanaticism, the global extremism that the US Empire now forces everyone to accept as universal, esp. since 1989. Instead of the real names, the media gives us pseudonyms to disguise the lies and to help us lie to ourselves.

It would take too long to cite all the supposedly well-meaning articles that try to tell us that the threat to Syria is a somehow uncontrollable “Frankenstein” or even an independent force, which we must all oppose. Of course people who work in the well-paid or otherwise privileged elements of the digital and analogue propaganda machines would at least suffer professionally if they called things by their right names. Others avoid stating the obvious because they are simply too ignorant or uninformed to write or say more than what everyone else is writing and saying. Truth be told, if you read the “liberal press” every day it does soften your brain– if only because to speak differently would make you very odd at most parties.

Many years ago I watched a film that was considered at the time slightly pornographic, Last Tango in Paris (1972). In this film an older man and a young woman meet regularly in an empty flat for sex. In fact the sex is often quite rough– which was probably why it had an adult rating at the time. In Bertolucci’s film the man, Paul, is played by Marlon Brando. Maria Schneider plays Jeanne. The two meet regularly and anything is allowed except to ask the names. That is to say they meet anonymously. One day the rule is broken and the names said. The next time they meet Jeanne comes with her father’s revolver and kills Paul.

What is the moral of the story? Paul and Jeanne lived those hours in that Paris flat and anything was possible, except identification. When Jeanne learned that the man with whom she had had sex so often, often even painfully, had a name and could name this man. Everything else that she had experienced became nameable. The choice became clear continue to suffer or destroy that which was causing the suffering. It was no longer possible to simply walk away.

This is the situation in which we find ourselves when we follow the continuous circular complaints of our current condition. (Alliteration intended.) As long as those we allow to describe our world and the supposed reality in which we live are permitted to anonymise the facts; to suppress the identities at the root of the violence being done in the name of this universal fanatical religion– capitalism— with its current fanatical manifestations in the imperial mercenary armies of Africa and the Middle East– we will be held in awe, held unable to contemplate action.

By action I do not presume to know what the best course is. I do not know if there is enough protest to stop things– but we haven’t protested enough. I do not know if things are so difficult that we have to cower before the almighty military, psychological and economic war machine, euphemistically called the 1%.

However, I am sure that as long as names are not named, we will not get to the root of the problem that threatens us more than CO2 or greenhouse gas. Given the gravity of the real threat– the threat posed by this fanatical “economic religion” and its masked mercenaries– it seems clear to me that the refusal to name names is not accidental.

Notes

[1] See the discussion of the Algerian War of Independence by the French officer who wrote the textbook on counter-insurgency there. David Galula, Pacification in Algeria 1956-1958, originally published by RAND Corporation in 1963.

[2] See Church Clothes: Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid, 2004, for a discussion of mission, especially in Africa.

[3] See inter alia Alexandre Herculano, History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, trans. John C. Branner, 2003

[4] Gerald Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, 1996.

[5] Rubem Alves, Protestantism and Repression, 2007

[6] A similar quote is attributed to Desmond Tutu: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

[7] Upon assuming the leadership of the newly independent Republic of Ghana (1960), Kwame Nkrumah initiated meetings in Accra, which were intended to form a “united states of Africa” by helping to found the Organisation of African Unity. Nkrumah was deposed in 1966 with the aid of the CIA. See inter alia John Stockwell In Search of Enemies, 1984. Gamel Abdel Nasser sought a similar approach through the United Arab Republic (with Syria 1958-1962) and support for pan-Arab unity—essentially based on unity of the Arabic-speaking peoples. The Arab Socialist Ba’ath parties (Iraq and Syria) in what had been British Mesopotamia since 1918 were founded in 1947 as Arab nationalist, socialist and anti-imperialist parties. Muammar al-Gaddafi was also a younger member of this generation of nationalists who led a bloodless coup, which expelled the British-sponsored King Idris (1969) and expelled both US and British troops from the country.

[8] Wahhabism became the political ideology of the house of bin Saud when it adopted Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792). The Saudi state promotes the teachings of Wahhab not only its official religion but as the only legitimate form of Islam. The domination by the house of bin Saud of the entire Arabian Peninsula was established in the 1930s with the help of the British and Americans, with the Americans promoting the new Saudi state with the formation of the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO). See John Blair, The Control of Oil, 1976.

[9] Carter’s national security advisor and CFR member Zbigniew Brzezinski is on record as saying how proud he still is of that policy.

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A Short History of British Military Coups and Conspiracies

September 24th, 2015 by Adeyinka Makinde

Preamble

Recent comments in a recent edition of the Sunday Times attributed to a serving British army general contained the not so veiled threat of mounting a military rebellion in the event of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government getting close to exercising the levers of power. The anonymous general painted a scenario which would involve “mass resignations” by high level officers in the British armed forces in what he claimed would “effectively be a mutiny.”

Although a source for the Ministry of Defence sought to dampen the remarks by issuing a condemnation of the comments, they have caused much alarm.

The comments come in the midst of a concerted media campaign aimed at discrediting the leader and proposed policies of the Labour opposition party. While there is some room for treating words expressed anonymously with some caution, events in the recent political history of Britain suggest that they should not be readily dismissed.

There is much evidence that elements within the British military and the security services have acted against serving governments which the Establishment have viewed as threatening the interests of the United Kingdom as they perceive it. Targeted were the Labour administrations headed by Harold Wilson in the 1960s and 1970s. Threats of coups and efforts geared towards destabilising Wilson’s government have been credibly corroborated over the years.

It was also reported that Tony Benn, the late Labour figure whose Left wing positions inspired great revulsion on the British political Right was threatened with assassination in the event of his ever assuming the leadership of an elected Labour government. The source of that threat is said to have emanated from the late Airey Neave, an Establishment figure in the Conservative Party who was well-connected to the British military and the security services.

Those who are aware of the manner in which state intelligence organisations can feed information to the public for the purpose of creating alarm as well as carving out what the powers that be perceive to be a threat to the well-being of society, may conclude that recent media activity seeking to discredit Labour’s lurch to the Left culminating with the threat of a military rebellion, bear the unmistakable hallmark of the implementation of a ‘strategy of tension.’

This is an excerpt from a wide-ranging essay that I wrote in early 2013 entitled ‘Democracy, Terrorism and the Secret State’ covering plots which were engineered by the military and security services.

*       *      *

In Britain the ‘secret state’ was active during this era of the communist threat, reaching the stage where at two distinctive points in history, the possibility of a military takeover of the country became mooted and later heightened to the extent that plans for action were substantively laid out.

Both coups were to have been directed against the socialist administrations led by Harold Wilson, the first plot occurring in the late 1960s and the second, a culmination of intrigues perpetrated by Right-wing operatives in British military intelligence and the domestic security service, MI5.

The latter part of the 1960s witnessed certain events and trends which caused certain members of the British elite to be alarmed at the direction in which the former imperial power was heading.

One key event was the devaluation of the pound in 1967, a symptom of the continuing perceived ‘degradation’ of a waning nation-empire still traumatised by the humiliation of the Suez debacle of 1956.

Another was the deteriorating situation in Northern Ireland, where the bourgeoning civil rights movement of the Roman Catholic community was being transformed into a militarised struggle led by a revived Irish Republican Army (IRA).

There was also the perception of Wilson and the Labour Party being tolerant of the ‘Ban the Bomb’ movement and a drift towards a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, fears about the increasing power of trade unions and controversies related to the uneasiness felt about non-white immigration may have added to the sense of a nation in perpetual crisis.

In 1968, meetings were held at the instigation of the newspaper baron and M15 agent, Cecil King who took the lead in an enterprise which proposed that the army would depose the elected government and install a military alternative with Lord Louis Mountbatten at the helm.

Wilson’s electoral victory in 1964 signified a lurch to the Left, a direction in which elements in the United States government looked upon balefully. The CIA’s ‘spy-hunter’, James Jesus Angleton, believed that Wilson was a Soviet-plant. The thesis went along the lines that Wilson had been compromised years before by Soviet agents when as chairman of the Board of Trade, he made several trips behind the ‘Iron Curtain’.

What is more is that the sudden death in January 1963 of Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, came to be believed by Angleton and some in the British intelligence community to have been engineered by the KGB in order to pave the way for Wilson to succeed him as the leader of the party.

Gaitskell was on the Right of the Labour Party, and he had proposed the then radical measure of ditching Clause Four of the party’s constitution on common ownership. Wilson, on the other hand, was identified with the Left-wing of the party.

What followed was a dirty-tricks campaign mounted by British intelligence operatives. Code-named ‘Operation Clockwork Orange’, its remit was to smear a number of British politicians including not only Wilson, but significantly, Wilson’s political rival from the Conservative Party, Edward Heath.

Heath’s brand of ‘One Nation’ Toryism and perceived weakness in his handling of the increasingly belligerent trade unions did not meet with the approval of members of the Establishment who wanted a more Right-wing leader and agenda from the Conservatives.

This sort of thing was not without precedent in British political history. The infamous ‘Zinoviev Letter’, a 1924 forgery which came by way of an asset of MI6, was purportedly a communication from Grigori Zinoviev, the president of the Comintern, enjoining British communists to stimulate “agitation-propaganda” in the armed forces.

Thus, four days before the British General Election, the Daily Mail had as its banner headline the following: “Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters: Moscow Orders To Our Reds; Great Plot Disclosed.”

The Labour Party lost the election by a landslide.

The early part of the 1970s, a period which on the European continent was marked by an intensification of the ideological polarisation of the political Left and Right with malcontents on the Left favouring the use of urban violence in favour of the ‘ineffectual’ results of mass street demonstrations, saw the birth in Britain of an organisation calling itself the Angry Brigade.

The Angry Brigade, an anarchist group, temporarily provided Britain with a taste of continental-style guerrilla warfare which involved targeting figures of the state such as government ministers and judges as well as the bombing of foreign embassies and establishments of those states which its members considered as ‘imperialist’ or ‘fascist’.

The “law and order issue” became the short-handed appellation of choice in referring to the battles between the radicalised forces of the Left and the apparatus of state authority which permeated the political and cultural discourse.

The question of how these deep-rooted tensions were going to be resolved were framed in terms ranging from a revolution which would profoundly alter the status quo to that involving the state preserving its authority through the implementing of  extreme measures.

The sentiments representing one version of a possible resolution to society’s discordant drift, namely one providing the template of the ‘strategy of tension’, even made its way into the public eye through the realm of popular entertainment.

In 1971, the ITV network aired an episode of the TV series, ‘The Persuaders!’’ entitled ‘The Time and The Place’ wherein the playboy heroes stumble upon a plot to carry out a coup d’etat by members of the British establishment which is being co-ordinated by a member of the aristocracy.

The idea is to have the prime minster assassinated during a live TV debate on a contentious law and order bill, which according to its opponents and proponents represents either a “death to democracy” or a “return to sanity”.

The assassin, who appears to be a subdued and detached figure nestled in the audience, is to be activated Manchurian Candidate-style with a gun hidden in the compartment of what on the outside is a book. The murder would then present itself as the justification for a takeover of the government and the imposition of martial law.

As one of the foot soldiers of the eventually failed conspiracy explains, “the public will be outraged, and when Croxley (the Lord leading the coup) makes an impassioned plea for strong action, the people of this country will not only approve of a new government, they’ll demand it.”

The aforementioned fiction from early evening light entertainment nonetheless did reference one consistent aspect of the prevalent understanding among the mass of Britons about the nature of their governance: namely its alluding to the existence of the Establishment; a group of powerful people who although unelected and unseen, consistently influence the direction of the country.

It also followed that any plan to effect any radical change in society such as by a military coup would find its conception and execution from persons belonging to such Establishment.

Traditionally, the British Establishment referred to those of high-born status and usually with an old school tie/Oxbridge background, who along with others in high government positions of the judiciary, the armed forces, civil service, courtiers within the royal family, the police and security services, have a tendency to form coteries within the exclusive enclaves of gentleman’s clubs.

The fictional Lord Croxley meets with establishment figures in the grandiose settings of a club to finalise the details of the coup which bears traces of reality to the claimed influence of the real life Clermont Club at which some argue that a plot to overthrow the Labour government in the 1970s was hatched.

It is useful to note that the Establishment does not necessarily merge with the concept of the ‘Deep State’, i.e. the ‘state within a state’ of which the Turkish derin devlet is considered the standard.

This other aspect of the secret state; that of a parallel government manipulating events in the background without the knowledge of the incumbent, visible elected power, has, unlike in the case of Turkey and Italy, never been specifically identified in the British context, although her majesty the Queen is once believed to have alluded to the “powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge.”

However, what is not disputed is the existence of an influential establishment alongside at least a sizeable element of the secret service which plotted against the Labour government in the 1970s with the aim of destabilising it. Wilson himself had made intimations to the reporters Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour of “dark forces threatening Britain.”

There are historian-experts in the field such as the author Rupert Allason who assert that the intelligence services in the United Kingdom, unlike some of their European counterparts such as in Italy, is not composed overwhelmingly of individuals of a Right-wing bent. Those with Leftist tendencies, he has argued, were always represented.

While the personnel of the British secret service have tended to come from the elite of society, they did, after all, produce the notorious Cambridge set consisting of the likes of Burgess, McClean, Philby and Blunt, who indoctrinated earlier in their student days by the communist ideology, would later turn traitors against their country.

By the mid-1970s during Wilson’s second tenure as prime minister, the nation had already been through a three-day working week during Heath’s confrontation with the powerful miners union. Militant unions and a Left-wing agenda which could compromise Britain’s commitment to the free market economic system as well as to NATO was a cause of great concern.

Thus it was that in this noxious atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia of the existence of pro-Soviet subversive elements within the political classes, the intelligence services and the powerful labour unions that a group of MI5 agents led by Peter Wright, the author of Spycatcher, “bugged and burgled” their way across London, he claimed, “at the behest of the state.”

Harold Wilson was convinced that he was being watched and that insidious information about him was being disseminated from sources within the security services; part of the executive branch of the government which he was supposed to control.

Apart from the troublesome spooks who were lurking in the shadows, he was also of the mindset that waiting in the wings were high-ranking figures of the military, both serving and retired, who were ready for the signal to overthrow his government.

Not since 1648, when Colonel Thomas Pride strode into the august precincts of the English legislature one December day to bring an end to the ‘Long Parliament’, had anything of the semblance of a military coup d’etat taken place in the ‘mother-nation’  of democracy.

It seemed then to be a most unlikely development.

But Wilson, who privately complained of being undermined by the security services, also took note of a “ring of steel” mounted by the army around London’s Heathrow Airport, first in January and again in June of 1974. The first occurred on the eve of the February general election in which Labour was returned to power after a narrowly contested result.

Although explained as security measures in response to unspecified terrorist threats, Wilson considered these manoeuvres to be clear warnings pointed in his direction.

Warnings came from elsewhere. General Sir Walter Walker, a retired former high echelon figure within the command structure of NATO, expressed dissatisfaction over the state of the country and wrote to the Daily Telegraph calling for “dynamic, invigorating, uplifting leadership…above party politics” which would “save” the country from “the Communist Trojan horse in our midst.” He was involved with Unison (later renamed Civil Assistance) an anti-Communist organisation which pledged to supply volunteers in the event of a national strike.

Another military figure, Colonel David Stirling, the founder of the elite SAS regiment, created ‘Great Britain 75’. Composed of ex-military men, its task would be to take over the running of government in the event of civil unrest leading to a breakdown of government functioning.

These two, however, were red herrings according to Peter Cottrell, author of Gladio: NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe, who claims that these public utterances were a distraction from “what was really going on.”

But the Rubicon was not crossed. There would be no tanks rolling down Whitehall along with the probable modus operandi of solemn martial music preceding the presumed clipped upper class tones of a lord or general proclaiming a state of national emergency and the establishment of a junta.

In the end, however, the British Right won. Wilson abruptly resigned in March 1976, thoroughly exhausted by the campaigns directed at him, while Edward Heath lost the Conservative Party leadership to Margaret Thatcher, the choice of the Right.

Adeyinka Makinde is a law lecturer with an interest in security and intelligence matters.

 

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Why Are Millions of Pounds Sent to Israel by British Charities, Tax-Free?

September 24th, 2015 by Anthony Bellchambers

What happens to the many millions of £s collected in Britain each year and sent, tax free, to Israel by UK registered charities?

Is it used to help underprivileged children in Israeli orphanages or is it used to help finance Israel’s seven year illegal blockade of 1.8 million innocent civilians in Gaza? Does the UK Charities Commission (or the Inland Revenue) know? Who checks and what controls, if any, are in place?

If such tax-free tranches of money are used for military or political purposes; for illegal blockades or illegal settlement programs then Britain would be colluding in criminal behaviour by a foreign government against a persecuted minority – subsidised by the British taxpayer – and that would make it an accessory to such criminality as well as being a prima facie violation of the Geneva Conventions, and also illegal under UK legislation.

Note

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/how­dangerous­is­nuclear-israel­a­short­independent­film­report/5477549

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United Nations Farce: Saudi Arabia to Head UN Human Rights Council

September 24th, 2015 by Felicity Arbuthnot

All victims of human rights abuses should be able to look to the Human Rights Council as a forum and a springboard for action. (Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General, 12 March 2007, Opening of the 4th Human Rights Council Session.)

Article 55 of United Nations Charter includes: “Universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”

In diametrical opposition to these fine founding aspirations, the UN has appointed Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the United Nations Human Rights Council to head (or should that be “behead”) an influential human rights panel. The appointment was seemingly made in June, but only came to light on 17th September, due to documents obtained by UN Watch (1.)

… Mr Faisal Bin Hassan Trad, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador at the UN in Geneva, was elected as Chair of a panel of independent experts on the UN Human Rights Council.

As head of a five-strong group of diplomats, the influential role would give Mr Trad the power to select applicants from around the world for scores of expert roles in countries where the UN has a mandate on human rights.

Such experts are often described as the “crown jewels” of the HRC, according to UN Watch.

The “crown jewels” have been handed to a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. Saudi Arabia will head a Consultative Group of five Ambassadors empowered to select applicants globally for more than seventy seven positions to deal with human rights violations and mandates.

In a spectacular new low for even a UN whose former Secretary General, Kofi Annan, took eighteen months to admit publicly that the 2003 invasion of, bombardment and near destruction of Iraq was illegal, UN Watch points out that the UN has chosen: “a country that has beheaded more people this year than ISIS to be head of a key Human Rights panel …” (2)

In May, just prior to the appointment, the Saudi government advertised for eight extra executioners to: “ … carry out an increasing number of death sentences, which are usually beheadings, carried out in public” (3.)

Seemingly: “no special qualifications are needed.” The main function would be executing, but job description: “also involves performing amputations …”

The advert was posted on the website of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of the Civil Service.

By 15th June this year executions reached one hundred “far exceeding last year’s tally and putting (the country) on course for a new record” according to The Independent (15th June.) The paper adds that the Kingdom is set to beat it’s own grisly, primitive record of one hundred and ninety two executions in 1995.

The paper notes that: “ …the rise in executions can be directly linked to the new King Salman and his recently-appointed inner circle …”

In August 2014, Human Rights Watch reported nineteen executions in      seventeen days – including one for “sorcery.” Adultery and apostasy can also be punished by death.

In a supreme irony, on the death of King Salman’s head chopping predecessor, Salman’s half bother King Abdullah in January (still current decapitation record holder) UK Prime Minister David Cameron ordered flags flown at half mast, including at the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, leading one MP to question: “On the day that flags at Whitehall are flying at half-mast for King Abdullah, how many public executions will there be?”

Cameron apparently had not read his own Foreign and Commonwealth Office Report citing Saudi as “a country of concern.”

Reacting to a swathe of criticism, a spokesperson for Westminster Abbey responded: “For us not to fly at half-mast would be to make a noticeably aggressive comment on the death of the King of a country to which the UK is allied in the fight against Islamic terrorism.”

The Abbey’s representative appears to have been either breathtakingly ignorant or stunningly uninformed. In December 2009 in a US Embassy cable (4) the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton wrote that:

While the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) takes seriously the threat of terrorism within Saudi Arabia, it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.

Moreover:

 … donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide … engagement is needed to … encourage the Saudi government to take more steps to stem the flow of funds from Saudi Arabia-based sources to terrorists and extremists worldwide.

At home women are forbidden: “from obtaining a passport, marrying, traveling, accessing higher education without the approval of a male guardian.” (HRW Report, 2014.) Saudi is also of course, the only country in the world where women are forbidden to drive.

The country is currently preparing to behead twenty one year old Ali Mohammed al-Nimr. He was arrested aged seventeen for participating in anti-government protests and possessing firearms – the latter charge has been consistently denied. Human rights groups are appalled at the sentence and the flimsy case against him, but pointing out that neither “factors are unusual in today’s Saudi Arabia.”

Following the beheading, al-Nimr’s headless body will be allegedly mounted: “on to a crucifix for public viewing.”(5)

What was that mantra issued unceasingly from US and UK government Departments in justification for blitzkriegs, invasions and slaughters in countries who “kill their own people”?

Numerous Reports cite torture as being widespread, despite Saudi having subscribed to the UN Convention Against Torture.

There are protests at Saudi embassies across the world highlighting the case of blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to a thousand lashes – fifty lashes a week after Friday prayers – and ten years in prison for blogging about free speech.

Since March, Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen – with no UN mandate – destroying schools, hospitals, homes, a hotel, public buildings,  an Internally Displaced Persons camp, historical jewels, generating: “a trail of civilian death and destruction” which may have amounted to war crimes, according to Amnesty International. “Unlawful airstrikes” have failed to distinguish between military targets and civilian objects. “Nowhere safe for civilians”, states Amnesty (6, pdf.)

Further, the conflict … has killed close to 4,000 people, half of them civilians including hundreds of children, and displaced over one million since 25 March 2015.” There has been: “ … a flagrant disregard for civilian lives and fundamental principles of international humanitarian law (killing and injuring) hundreds of civilians not involved in the conflict, many of them children and women, in unlawful (disproportionate and indiscriminate) ground and air attacks.”

It is alleged that US-supplied cluster bombs have also been used. One hundred and seventeen States have joined the Convention to ban these lethal, indiscriminate munitions since December 2008. Saudi Arabia, of course, is not amongst them.

Saudi was also one of the countries which bombed Iraq in 2003, an action now widely accepted as illegal. It is perhaps indicative of their closeness to the US that the bombardment of Yemen is mirror-named from the Pentagon Silly Titles for Killing People lexicon: “Operation Decisive Storm.” Iraq 1991 was of course: “Operation Desert Storm”?

Saudi is also ranked 164th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. All in all Saudi leading the Human Rights Council at the UN is straight out of another of George Orwell’s most nightmarish political fantasies.

Oh, and of course we are told that nineteen of the hijackers of the ‘plane that hit the World Trade Centre were Saudis – for which swathes of Afghanistan and region, Middle East and North Africa are still paying the bloodiest, genocidal price for the “War on Terror”– whilst Saudi’s representatives stroll in to the sunlight of the UN Human Rights body.

On the UN Human Right’s Council’s website is stated:  “The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) represents the world’s commitment to universal ideals of human dignity. We have a unique mandate from the international community to promote and protect all human rights.” Way to go, folks.

Notes

1.  http://yournewswire.com/outrage-as-saudi-arabia-is-chosen-to-head-key-human-rights-panel/

2. http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2015/09/20/saudi-arabia-wins-bid-to-behead-of-un-human-rights-council-panel/

3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32791233/saudi-arabia-advertises-for-eight-new-executioners-as-beheadings-rise

4. http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/242073

5. http://qz.com/506932/saudi-arabia-is-preparing-to-behead-and-crucify-a-21-year-old-activist/

6.  https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde31/2291/2015/en/

 

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The Obama Two-Step on Syria

September 24th, 2015 by Ajamu Baraka

President Obama is disavowing his failed strategy to train “moderate” rebels to fight ISIS, claiming the Republicans made him do it. Under Washington’s plan for regime change in Syria, radical jihadists would be used as the ‘boots on the ground’ for the U.S. in Syria,” as they were in Afghanistan. The West’s plans for ISIS and al Qaeda have gone awry, as have U.S. schemes to deploy “moderates” proxies of imperialism.

http://blackagendareport.com/the_obama_two-step_on_syria

It was a pathetic spectacle, another black face in a high place in the person of General Lloyd J. Austin III, head of the United States Central Command, came before the Senate’s Armed Services Committee to report to incredulous members that the 500 million dollar program to train 5000 so-called moderate rebels in Syria had only resulted in the training of a few dozen.

He went on to report that of that number, half had already been either captured, or some say “integrated,” into the al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, the al-Nusra Front, leaving just four or five individuals in what must be a record for the most expensive training process in human history.

With howls of criticism coming from right-wing Democrats and Republicans, the impression developing in Congress and the general public is that similar to the debacle that Iraq and Afghanistan became for George Bush, Syria is Obama’s foreign policy disaster.

Strangely however, while General Austin was falling on his sword in front of the Senate committee, spokespersons for Barack Obama were busy telling anyone who would listen that President Obama could not be blamed for the calamity unfolding in Syria.

The White House claimed that it is not to blame for the training issue. In what some are calling his “the devil made me do it” defense, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary argued that the finger should be pointed at those who convinced President Obama to get directly involved in training Syrian rebels, including by implication the former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And on the general Syrian issue, the Administration appears to be trying to put distance between itself and its own policies.

But facts can be stubborn things, even when the interpretative framework for assessing facts is different. For many of us, the historical record is clear – this war was/is Mr. Obama’s. And what we are witnessing in Syria today is the human and political consequences of his administration’s decision to embrace a policy of regime change in Syria.

Plan A- Regime Change, Plan B – The Destruction and Dismembering of the Syria State and Society:

This notion that Obama was a reluctant warrior who only got involved in Syria recently is a fiction.

From the very beginning of the phony Arab Spring actions in Syria, it was not even necessary for former general Wesley Clark to reveal that Syria was on a hit-list of governments slated for subversion to see the reactionary presence of U.S. intelligence agencies in the “rebellion” in Syria.

Former French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas blew the whistleon Western war plans against Syria, long before the first “spontaneous” protests erupted in 2011. While Dumas told a story of British and French intrigue, it was always clear that those two sub-imperialist nations would not have been engaged in anything of that magnitude and sensitivity without a green light from the U.S. hegemon.

WikiLeaks conformed those plans when it released over 7000 secret diplomatic cables that documented that from 2006 to 2010, the US spent 12 million dollars in order to support and instigate demonstrations and propaganda against the Syrian government.

Millions were spent to support dissident groups and for disinformation campaigns targeting the corporate media in the U.S. and Western Europe.

Once the destabilization plan was launched reports in the alternative press immediately emerged of CIA involvement with illicit arms being funneled to Syria opposition fighters, including tons of equipment from Libya that had been destroyed by NATO forces.

“From 2006 to 2010, the US spent 12 million dollars in order to support and instigate demonstrations and propaganda against the Syrian government.”

Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter,revealed that President Obama and the Turkish PM, Erdogan concluded a secret deal in the beginning of 2012 in which the CIA and the British M16 would move heavy weapons out of Libya to supply the Free Syrian Army. This was the activity that Chris Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, was providing political cover for in Benghazi when the CIA annex and diplomatic compound was attacked by one of the disaffected armed groups that the U.S. was dealing with.

Those reports became so wide-spread in media outlets globally that finally even the New York Times could no longer avoid the reports and ran a story that essentially corroborated reports of CIA involvement in support of Syrian opposition forces.

But clearly the most damaging information that revealed the extent of the Obama’s administration moral complicity with the carnage that it unleashed in Syria was the report from the Defense Intelligence Agency ( DIA) written in 2012 that clearly documented that “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al- Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” being supported by “the West, Gulf countries and Turkey.” And like the report that exposed that white terrorist organizations represented a major threat to domestic security in the U.S., this report was also ignored by the administration.

When retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was asked why the Obama administration didn’t act on his agency’s concerns, his response was that the administration apparently decided to ignore the findings, “I think it was a willful decision.”

The DIA report was ignored because the Obama Administration had already decided on its course of action. The strategy that the administration was implementing was detailed in another piece ofreporting by Seymour Hersh. Hersh revealed that the strategy first formulated in the latter years of the Bush administration and carried over into the Obama Administration, was that radical jihadists would be used in a manner similar to how they were used in Afghanistan in the 80s, as the “boots on the ground” for the U.S. in Syria.

“Obama is now taking a familiar position that European imperialists have taken for years after committing unspeakable crimes against humanity – they feign innocence.”

Embracing this strategy was not a very difficult one for the Administration, especially since Obama and many others in his administration believed that the creation of a “moderate” force of what Obama divisively referred to as former doctors, farmers and pharmacists capable of dislodging Assad was a fantasy.

The geo-strategic objective for the Obama Administration was regime change, therefore, the plan implemented for that objective had nothing to do with wanting to liberate Syrians. In their cynical calculations, eliminating al-Assad outweighed any considerations for the longer term interests of the Syrian people. For the cold-hearted strategists of the Obama Administration, the talk of a people’s revolution was only a ploy to obscure their real intentions and confuse liberals and even some leftists.

The Administration peddled the outrageous fiction that there was a viable force of so-called moderates in Syria that they were supporting at the same time that they knew that the al-Nusra Front, and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) had emerged as the central forces in the anti-Assad insurgency.

And by early 2013 when it became clear that the al-Assad government would not surrender, the destruction and dismemberment of the Syria State became the goal of U.S. policy. The impact that this decision would have on the people of Syria was of no concern for U.S. planners.

It would not be an exaggeration to argue that despite whatever contradictions existed in Syria, and there were many, without the subversion by the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination and its allies, it is highly unlikely that any social upheaval that might have developed in the country as part of a pro-democracy movement would have reached the scale of suffering experience by the people of Syria today.

No, the devil did not make Obama engage in the incredible cynicism that sacrificed an ancient culture and the lives of so many. It was the imperatives of empire and the ethical position that Westerners have the right to determine the leadership of states and what lives have value.

Being the self-centered narcissist and operating from a colonialist, Eurocentric mindset, Obama is now taking a familiar position that European imperialists have taken for years after committing unspeakable crimes against humanity – they feign innocence.

But this is Obama’s war and while he may escape prosecution as the war criminal that he is, the consequences and moral condemnation that it has generated is inescapable. It is his legacy, a legacy written in blood that no amount of slick public relations will be able to erase from the pages of history.

Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist, organizer and geo-political analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. He is a contributor to “Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence” (Counterpunch Books, 2014). He can be reached atwww.AjamuBaraka.com

 

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EUA e Colômbia vs Venezuela: conspiração, trama e complot

September 24th, 2015 by Nil Nikandrov

O Comando Sul do exército dos Estados Unidos – [SOUTHCOM para a região sul do continente americano] – fechou um contrato com a companhia Airtec para a condução de aviões de inteligência e informação em áreas fronteiriças da Colômbia, trabalho esse estipuladas para até 2018. O jornalista venezuelano José Vicente Rangel disse que o tipo de avião usado para essa missão seria o avião de bombardeio DH C- 8/200, o qual possui instrumentos eletrônicos avançados que permitem um total controle das cidades fronteiriças na Venezuela.

Os serviços de inteligência dos Estados Unidos propuseram um maior empenho dado ao agravamento da situação nas tradicionais zonas de conflitos fronteiriços entre a Venezuela e a Colômbia. Certos círculos políticos e militares próximos do governo colombiano pronta, voluntária, ansiosa, e alegremente ofereceram-se para assistir Washington nas operações subversivas dos mesmos contra o que percebem como o maior adversário regional da Colômbia, ou seja, a Venezuela.

O presidente Juan Manuel Santos da Colômbia, o porta-voz de grandes famílias oligárquicas, já muitas vezes disse que ele é a favor de um aprofundamento das “relações especiais” com Washington, entre essas estando então as relações militar-estratégicas. A presença das sete (7) bases militares dos Estados Unidos na Colômbia são vistas por Santos, assim como por suas equipes e esquadrões, como etapas intermediárias numa fase de engajamento do exército colombiano nas atividades da OTAN. Washington por sua vez usa Bogotá para subverter o processo de integração dos países latinoamericanos e do Caribe, entre si. Esse é para os Estados Unidos um ponto essencial quanto a um restabelecimento da sua posição de domínio na região.

É impressionante a paciência do governo de Nicolás Maduro em relação as demonstrações hostis da Colômbia. A oposição interna na Venezuela tenta mostrar que o governo de Nicolás Maduro não consegue estabilizar a vida econômica do país, sendo até incapaz de manter ar prateleiras dos mercados bem providas para satisfazer os requisitos legais dos consumidores. Tem-se aqui então que uma sabotagem interna na Venezuela faz por onde esconder, ou até mesmo por onde fazer desaparecer produtos de primeira necessidade no país. Tudo é sustentado pela, ao mesmo tempo em que também sustenta, a sabotagem estrangeira, a qual faz com que os produtos e mercadorias desaparecidas na Venezuela, em uma boa parte, reapareçam na estrutura de contrabando no território da Colômbia.

Uma resolução do problema exigiria um esforço das duas partes, mas as autoridades colombianas minimizaram a guarda das fronteiras para possibilitar um espaço livre para as atividades de grupos criminosos, os quais em muitos casos são constituídos de grupos armados dos “destacamentos de autodefesa” da extrema direita (AUC na sigla estrangeira do original). Por dados dos serviços de inteligência da Venezuela os comandantes desses grupos colaboram com as forças de segurança da Colômbia.

Recentemente grupos armados dos “destacamentos de autodefesa” da Colômbia prepararam uma armadilha na qual caíram patrulheiros venezuelanos do contra-contrabando. Como consequência do tiroteiro levantado três militares venezuelanos ficaram gravemente feridos. O presidente Maduro anunciou estado de emergência na fronteira com a Colômbia, no estado de Tajira, assim como o fechamento dessa fronteira por um tempo indeterminado. Forças militares e policiais foram dirigidas para lá.

Iniciou-se um trabalho para identificação dos pontos fortes dos paramilitares contrabandistas. Procuraram-se os bunkers e depósitos onde se guardariam as mercadorias roubadas destinadas para a compra de elementos susceptíveis de alistamento, ou outros usos. Foram feitos prisioneiros (até agora 35). Interrogatórios, assim como descobertas de aterramento e dumpings secretos revelaram a escala dos crimes dos paramilitares contra a Venezuela. Maduro disse que a Venezuela estava descobrindo a terrível verdade quanto a ação criminosa dos grupos armados. Ele declarou também que era sobre ele, Nicolás Maduro, que caia a obrigação de livrar a Venezuela de tudo isso.

A severa posição de Maduro é totalmente justificada. Essa guerra econômica contra a Venezuela adquiriu uma tal amplitude que nas cidades fronteiriças tem-se um sumiço de produtos de primeira necessidade, assim como de higiene, de alimentação e medicamentos. Tudo foi retirado dessas cidades, indo de roupas a sapatos, peças de reposição para reparação de autos, pneus,e até mesmo máquinas de gasolina, de quando da demolição de um posto de gasolina.

Na Venezuela a gasolina é muito barata. Encher o tanque de um carro não deveria custar mais do que $2 (dois dólares). Tem-se aqui o porque do levar-se extremas quantidades de gasolina da Venezuela para a Colômbia, ao longo da fronteira conjunta. A cidade de San Cristóban na Colômbia, a pequena capital de Tajira, “exigiu” de acordo com a estatística oficial, muito mais gasolina do que a capital do país, Caracas. Chegou-se até ao ponto do contrabando de gasolina ter se tornado num negócio mais lucrativo para os paramilitares do que o tráfico de narcóticos.

O contrabando estimula uma grande diferença nos preços de bens de consumo de maior necessidade para o consumidor. Na Venezuela esse tipo de produto é subvencionado. Na fronteira tem-se também uma grande manipulação quanto ao curso da moeda venezuelana, o bolivar. O centro das operações econômico-financeiras subversivas é a cidade de Kukuta, na Colômbia. Nela encontram-se mais do que três mil (3.000) casas e locais de câmbio, trabalhando na desvalorização da moeda venezuelana, o que no total mostra-se no empobrecimento dos venezuelanos e num mal estar social no país.

Na fronteiriça Kukuta os seviços americanos da DIA e da CIA trabalham ativamente. DIA sendo a agência de defesa, e CIA, mais conhecida, a agência central de inteligência. Ambas instruem células radicais da oposição venezuelana. Lá também em estado permanente são mantidas consultações com os dirigentes de três especialmente construídas organizações de subversão contra a Venezuela: Centro de Pensamento Primero Colombia, FTI Consulting e Fundacão Internacionalismo Democrático.

Dirigindo a conspiração contra a Venezuela tem-se o ex-presidente da Colômbia Álvaro Uribe, recrutado pela CIA nos meados dos anos oitenta, em situações comprometedoras; Na lista de narcotraficantes feita pela DEA (direção da luta contra narcótica) ele recebeu o nr 82. Durante todos os seus oito anos no cargo de presidente da Colômbia Uribe fez seu trabalho subversivo contra Hugo Chávez, construindo as condições para um isolamento do regime bolivariano no Continente das Américas. Os serviços de contra-espionagem da Venezuela vêem Uribe como uma figura-chave usada pelos serviços secretos dos Estados Unidos para uma derrubada de Nicolás Maduro.

O atual governo de Santos na Colômbia usufrui da ajuda propagandística da mídia ocidental. Em primeiro plano entra aqui o “The New York Times” e o “Washington Post”. Na redação dos diversos artigos encontra-se sempre em ambos conteúdo similar. Persistente, insistente e agressivamente apresentam-se sempre temas em que os problemas fronteiriços não passam de fabricações de Nicolás Maduro para com fins publicitários conseguir um necessário apoio nas eleições parlamentares.

Aqui não se vê nem uma palavra a respeito dos cinco milhões e meio de refugiados indo da Colômbia para a Venezuela por causa da guerra civil na Colômbia, das formações paramilitares, do tráfico de narcóticos e do contrabando na Colômbia. O Ministério do Interior da Venezuela claramente determinou o ponto de partida dos ataques da guerra de informação contra si:- “Isso é resultado dos meios de comunicação de massas dos Estados Unidos contra a Venezuela, e sua revolução bolivariana”.

O embaixador da Venezuela na OEA – Organização dos Estados Americanos, Roy Chalerton da Venezuela, comentando os acontecimentos nas fronteiras chamou a atenção para o tom hostil da mídia colombiana – no Jornal El Tiempo, na Rádio e TV RCN, e também na CNN em espanhol, entre outras, publicando material que divulgava ódio e racismo contra o povo venezuelano e seu país. Roy Chaderton disse que “essa campanha de ódio” poderá levar a uma guerra, caso os líderes venezuelanos não encontrarem uma mistura sensível e subtil nessa situação melindrosa. Ele disse então que recomendaria aos diplomatas na OEA – que tomassem tudo isso com um pouco de sal. A mídia colombiana está ainda, antes de mais nada, engajada numa guerra. Essa seria então uma guerra já de quarta geração.

O Departamento de Estado dos EUA numa declaração quanto ao fechamento da fronteira concentrou-se no problema humanitário e recomendou para a normalização da situação o recorrer-se a ajuda das organizações regionais. Foi também dito que a diplomacia dos EUA estaria pronta a participar na regularização do diálogo. Entretanto, diplomatas nem sempre vem da mesma forma, ou seja, eles apresentam peculiaridades específicas, ou em outras palavras, são diferentes uns dos outros. Por ex., Kevin Whitaker, ex-embaixador dos Estados Unidos na Colômbia, trabalhou em 2006 como residente da CIA na Venezuela. É muito duvidoso que esse tipo de diplomatas venham a “estabelecer” o pretendido.

A sua frente verão sempre coisas completamente diferentes do oficialmente pretendido.

Nil Nikandrov

Referências e notas.

Nil Nikandrov, ЗАГОВОР США И КОЛУМБИИ ПРОТИВ ВЕНЕСУЭЛЫ – НИЛ НИКАНДРОВ, 09.09.2015 – http://www.fondsk.ru/news/2015/09/09/zagovor-usa-i-kolumbii-protiv-venesuely-35259.html

Tradução do original russo por Anna Malm – https://artigospoliticos.wordpress.com –

 

 

 

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Guatemala: Revolução, Golpe, Mudanças e Reviravoltas na América Latina

September 24th, 2015 by Nil Nikandrov

A administração de Obama leva a frente uma incansável, implacável, impiedosa e cruel guerra contra os presidentes dos países latinoamericanos que não levem a cabo uma política que tenha sido arranjada e organizada por poderes em Washington, ou que não satisfaça aos mesmos. As tarefas relacionadas com uma derrubada dos por Washington indesejáveis líderes latinoamericanos,sobre toda a extensão de seus termos em ofício, é determinada nas Embaixadas dos Estados Unidos na Venezuela, Equador, Bolívia, Brasil e Argentina. Os intensivos ataques contra Nicolás Maduro, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega, Dilma Rousseff e Cristina Fernandes de Kirchner aumentam constante e sucessivamente. Washington conta com que a caída de um deles leve a um dominó efeito na América Latina que acabe por esmagar com os “populistas” [populistas para nós significando o poder popular].

Nesse cenário de fundo a operação especializada da Embaixada dos Estados Unidos para retirar do poder o presidente da Guatemala Otto Peres Molina não se apresenta como nenhuma surpresa. Depois tem-se também que sempre se esteve contando com o fato de que ele seria uma uma aposta certa do Pentágono e do Departamento do Estado dos Estados Unidos. Nos anos oitenta, de quando Washington estava a instigar uma repressão sangrenta para esmagar o movimento guerrilheiro na Guatemala, e na América Central, o general Peres Molina foi o homem a dirigir as operações de represália feitas pelo conjunto de esquadrões particulares especializados, os quais eram conhecidos como “Caibiles”. O general Molina tornou-se depois, através das pressões da CIA, o diretor dos serviços secretos do país. Em Washington não havia dúvida de que ele no cargo de presidente da Guatemala iria executar todas as diretivas dadas a ele.

Entretanto dentro de pouco tempo Peres começou a dar sinais de pretender estabelecer sua independência e autonomia conquanto ignorando ordens diretas da Embaixada. Ele começou também a demonstrar de muitas maneiras que na Guatemala quem mandava era ele, e daí chega, basta. Alguém de dentro dos seus círculos começou a falar que ele estaria querendo declarar o embaixador dos Estados Unidos como “persona non grata”. A Embaixada de quando ouvindo esses planos decidiu tomar a liderança. O pretexto usado para a sua derrubada do poder foi o estabelecimento de uma guerra contra a corrupção. Quem formalmente tomou a direção dessa guerra foi a Comissão Internacional Contra a Impunidade na Guatemala (CICIG), padronizada pela OTAN. Na verdade essa comissão era dirigida pelo Departamento do Estado dos Estados Unidos e pela CIA, e usada  para propelar o campo político na Guatemala para estabelecimento de uma pro-americana “nova geração” no poder.

Peres compreendeu muito bem que informações comprometedoras quanto a ele e seus funcionários e associados tinham sido dadas à CICIG pela Embaixada dos Estados Unidos onde funciona o sistema de espionagem e escutas [ilegais]. Sem fazer muito estardalhaço quanto ao seu mal-estar frente as atividades da CICIG ele tentou terminar com o trabalho da comissão dizendo que a tarefa poderia ser dada por concluída e que essas poderiam ser encerradas no final do ano. Entretanto a pressão americana fez-se sentir e Peres recapitulou anunciando o prolongamento do mandato da CICIG por mais dois anos.

Em fevereiro de 2014 CICIG estava sendo dirigida pelo colombiano Ivan Velasquez, membro do Supremo Tribunal do seu país, onde também se fazia o mesmo que na Guatemala: “Limpava-se” com os dados comprometedores fornecidos pela CIA e pelos serviços militares de inteligência dos Estados Unidos. Diga-se de passagem que esses fazem parte dos métodos habituais de trabalho da estrutura de poder dos EUA. Quanto a mídia pro-americana na Guatemala essa apresentava Velasquez como um herói. Publicações a respeito dele se dão com títulos como “O colombiano que derrubou Peres”. Ele mesmo sabe como calar-se quanto ao envolvimento da Embaixada dos Estados Unidos nos inquéritos e mais ainda sobre seus próprios contactos com os centros de atividades da CIA.

A manipulação da informação, frequentemente no nível do fuxico e da fofoca, faz acusações sem escrúpulos e sem provas numa tarefa de “estufar as linguiças”. Entretanto, esse trabalho foi suficiente para convencer o povo da Guatemala que no seu país existiam dois grupos mafiosos armados. Um deles apresentava-se com a denominação? El Sindicato, que apresentava-se como dirigido por Peres, o próprio presidente da Guatemala. O outro apresentava-se como a “Confradaria” [?] – no original “Cofradía” – que dizia-se ser dirigido por Roxana Baldetti, a vice-presidenta. Frequentemente acusações semelhantes são alinhavadas/cozidas/construídas no decorrer das discussões ao vivo. Tudo fica destruido antes mesmo de qualquer análise e avaliação seriosa seja feita. Tem-se  – da maneira que tudo se desenrolou, e depois de muitas águas terem passado – que o resultado obtido, visto da perspectiva deles, só possa ser considerado como um grande sucesso. Muitos foram os que cairam depois das primeiras tarefas de comprometer e tirar do poder políticos indesejáveis para os Estados Unidos na América Latina terem sido dadas aos serviços secretos norteamericanos.

Abaixo da pressão da para ele total necessidade de apaziguar e silenciar as manifestações de rua nos protestos contra a corrupção, Peres começou a fazer concessões: Para começar retirou a vice-presidenta Roxana Baldetti do seu posto. Depois vieram a perder os seus postos ainda umas dezenas de funcionários. Muitos deles foram acusados de pertencer uma estrutura de corrupção denominada como “La Linea” [A Linha?] – ativa na alfândega e nos orgãos das autoridades fiscais. A mídia acusava Peres de ser a figura chave nessa estrutura, e de que a sua inimizade contra a CICIG vinha do fato dele não querer perder a sua parte desse mercado negro e obscuro, feito nas sombras.

Peres começou a perder o controle da situação no país. Ele tentou manobrar, deu garantias ao embaixador americano Todd Robinson de que tinha tomado providências para a instalação de reformas políticas e jurídicas. Entretanto já era tarde demais. Chegando quase ao seu auge as demonstrações de rua e outras ações de protesto continuavam a crescer incontrolavelmente. Em 5 de junho ativistas de uma organização pouco conhecida denominada como “Aliança Cristã dos Trabalhadores”, chamada assim como na melhor das tradições da CIA, bloquearam a via central da capital da Guatemala. No final de agôsto começou uma greve-geral, a primeira em dezenas de anos, na qual tomaram parte não menos que 100.000 pessoas [observe-se que aqui já se trata de um novo conceito de democracia – não a das urnas, mas a dos gritos e berros e das desordens dos arruaceiros… Canja de galinha chamar 2-5 milhões de pessoas as ruas num país de 100.000.000 de habitantes, não é verdade? No caso da Guatemala ca de 15.000.000 / 100.000. Foi tudo contra seu voto? Cale a boca ou lá vem porretada da nova ordem assim estabelecida].

O parlamento reagiu a esse [democrático?] protesto e tirou a imunidade de Peres. O presidente se viu obrigado a deixar o seu cargo em 2 de setembro. No dia seguinte, no 3 de setembro então, o Tribunal da Guatemala apresentou a ordem de prisão de Peres, por corrupção.

Foi dito que “dada a gravidade das acusações” o ex-presidente tinha sido levado a uma prisão militar. Numa entrevista com a CNN Otto Peres Molina acusou principalmente Washington, sublinhando que a “Comissão Internacional Contra a Impunidade na Guatemala” era controlada pelos americanos. Peres disse então que:- “Isso me foi dito em pelo menos três ocasiões (e numa delas) pelo vice-presidente Biden, que também me pediu, durante minha visita em Washington, que eu prolongasse a credencial da CICIG”. Peres disse que não tinha se decidido quanto a isso porque a direção militar do país via essa comissão como um órgão repressivo, construída com o dinheiro americano para assédio, perseguição, busca, acusação e repressão, além de retaliação contra cidadãos da Guatemala, e isso não só por motivos, suspeitas, ou pretextos de corrupção, mas também para a perseguição dos que tinham “protegido o país” nos anos da guerra civil.

De acordo com a Constituição o posto presidencial foi ocupado pelo vice-presidente Alexandro Maldonado, 79 anos. Ele é um indestrutível político, entendido como “o homem de Washington”. Maldonado ocupará esse cargo até o 14 de janeiro de 2016, de quando o novo presidente fará seu juramento e tomará posse. A Embaixada dos Estados Unidos publicou o seguinte pronunciamento no seu site, em 3 de setembro: “Nós notamos o fato da saída do poder pelo presidente Otto Peres Molina e iremos trabalhar com o novo presidente Alexandro Maldonado Aguirre, com o seu programa de reformas que continua a luta contra a corrupção e desenvolve a segurança na Guatemala. Nós cumprimentamos o povo da Guatemala e suas instituições pela pacífica abordagem graças a qual essa crise foi superada. Confirmamos também nosso apoio para os processos democráticos na Guatemala e entre esses o das eleições programadas para o 6 de setembro”.

As rápidas eleições sairam no prazo determinado. Entretanto ninguém conseguiu vencer no 1º. Turno. Em 25 de outubro virá o 2º. Turno. De acordo com a mídia, Jimmi Morales, 46 anos, apresentador de televisão, regissor cinematográfico e ator do gênero cômico tem as melhores chances. Ele se candidatou pelo partido FCN, Frente/Fronte Nacional de Convergência. Ele apoia uma direção militar- conservativa- nacionalista e os grupos da burguesia. Seu grito de guerra:- “Sem Corrupção e Sem Ladrões”. Incerto quem será seu concurrente. Poderá ser Sandra Torres, UNE- União Nacional de Esperança, ou Manuel Baldison do partido “Líder” – LDR. Nenhum desses três levanta medo, apreensão, receio ou preocupação no Departamento de Estado [dos Estados Unidos].

Porque teria os Estados Unidos derrubado Peres? A corrupção no continente é muito grande e para os Estados Unidos de onde viria a maior e mais perigosa escala de corrupção senão de seu vizinho, o México? Será que estariam planejando algum tipo de combinação geopolítica como uma futura “Aliança em nome da prosperidade” (incluindo Guatemala, Honduras e Salvador)? Será que Peres recusou-se a liderar uma “oposição regional” contra a construção do canal interroceânico na Nicaragua? Será que terá rejeitado propósitos do Pentágono quanto a construção de uma grande base de referência/apoio na Guatemala?

Teria tudo simplesmente sido para mostrar aos centro-americanos quem é o dono da casa, partindo do princípio “bata nos seus, para que lutem melhor/façam medo ao inimigo”? Estou inclinado a pensar nessa variante, porque tudo que os Estados Unidos estiveram fazendo nos últimos 25 anos pode ser concentrado na fórmula “Use Muita Força- Raciocínio Não Necessário” ou alternativamente “Muitos Poderes- Não Mente”.

Teria o presidente da independente e soberana Guatemala podido imaginar o que acabaria por cair nas mãos de “uma comissão internacional contra a impunidade” – da CICIG?

Nil Nikandrov

Referências e Notas:

Título original “Певеворот в Гватемале” = Reviravolta na Guatemala

(Певеворот significando também quando se tratando de uma entidade política um golpe de estado. Implica sempre um virar, revirar, por em desordem, revolucionar, mudar. Para finns pedagógicos a manchete do título ficou como apresentado acima do título original).

Nil Nikandrov, Певеворот в Гватемале, Нил Никандров –

http://www.fondsk.ru/news/2015/09/16/perevorot-v-gvatemale-35428.html

Nota da Tradução – Otto Peres Molina – nascido em 1950 em Guatemala City. Pertencendo ao Partido Patriota e General. Presidente da Guatemala de Janeiro de 2012 até 3 de setembro de 2015.

Traduzido do russo por Anna Malm* – https://artigospoliticos.wordpress.com

Phil.Lic. – Risk Research. Stockholm School of Economics

 

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Democracia OTAN na Ucrânia

September 24th, 2015 by Manlio Dinucci

“Histórica” visita do secretário geral da OTAN, Stoltenberg, na Ucrânia 21-22 de setembro onde ele participa (pela primeira vez na história das relações bilaterais) no Conselho Nacional de Segurança, assina um acordo para a abertura de uma embaixada da OTAN em Kiev, e tem duas conferências de imprensa conjuntamente com o presidente Poroshenko.

Esse é um passo decisivo para a integração da Ucrânia na Aliança. Tendo começado em 1991, de quando apenas tinha vindo a ser um estado independente a seguir a desintegração da URSS, a Ucrânia entrou primeiro no “Conselho de Cooperação Norteatlântica” e depois em 1994 na “Parceria para a Paz”. Em 1999 – enquanto a OTAN estava a demolir a Iugoslávia com a guerra e a encorpar ex-países do Pacto de Varsóvia (Polônia, República Tcheca e Hungria) – foi inaugurado em Kiev o “Gabinete de Ligação da OTAN” e formado um batalhão polaco-ucraniano para as operações de “Manutenção de Paz”, em Kosovo. Em 2002 o presidente Kuchma, da Ucrânia, declarava a disponibilidade do país para uma sua entrada na OTAN. Em 2005, nas águas da “revolução laranja” organizada e financiada por Washington, ou seja o governo dos EUA, através de uma especializada Organização Não Governamental financiada pelo oligarca Poroshenko o presidente de então, Yushenko, foi convidado à cimeira da OTAN em Bruxelas.

Entretanto, em 2010 o então recentemente eleito presidente Yanukovich anunciava que uma adesão da Ucrânia a OTAN não fazia parte da sua agenda. No meio tempo a OTAN foi tecendo suas redes no interior das forças armadas ucranianas, e treinando grupos de neo-nazistas (como pode ser comprovado por uma documentação fotográfica de militantes da Uno-Unso sendo treinada por instrutores da OTAN na Estônia, em 2006. Os neo-nazis foram usados como forças de ataque no golpe de estado da “Piazza Maidan” que veio a derrubar Yanukovich em fevereiro de 2014, enquanto o secretário geral da OTAN ordenava as forças armadas da Ucrânia a “manterem-se neutras”, sem reagir. Poroshenko toma logo depois a posse da presidência e a OTAN declara que abaixo de sua direção a Ucrânia está a se tornar “num estado soberano e independente, firmemente empenhado a democracia e ao direito”.

Quanto a soberania e a independência da Ucrânia o demonstra as denominações de cidadãos estrangeiros escolhidos por Washington e Bruxelas para encargos ministeriais na Ucrânia: o ministério das finanças foi dado a Natalie Jaresko, cidadã norteamericana que trabalhou no Departamento de Estado dos Estados Unidos; o ministério do comércio e do desenvolvimento econômico foi dado a Abromavicius, da Lituânia, que trabalhou, por sua vez, para grupos bancários europeus; o ministério da saúde foi dado ao ex-ministro georgiano Kvitashvili. O ex-presidente da Geórgia, Saakashvili, o homem da confidência de Washington, foi denominado governador da região ucraniana de Odessa. Para completar o quadro Kiev confiou sua própria Receita Federal a uma companhia particular britânica.

Quanto a Ucrânia estar impregnada pela democracia e a justiça o demonstra o fato que os batalhões neo-nazistas responsáveis pelas atrocidades cometidas contra os civis de etnicidade russa na Ucrânia do leste foram enquadrados na Guarda Nacional treinada por instrutores americanos e britânicos. Essa sua impregnação também é demonstrada pela proibição do grupo do partido comunista ucraniano, assim como a de toda a ideologia comunista, em um clima de perseguições similar aquele do advento do fascismo na Itália dos anos 20. Depois tem-se que para evitar testimônios incômodos para si, Kiev decidiu-se, em 17 de setembro, a impedir a entrada no país de dezenas de jornalistas estrangeiros, entre esses então três da BBC, decisão essa que foi definida como determinada por “uma ameaça a segurança nacional”.

A Ucrânia de Poroshenko, o oligarca enriquecido com o saqueio da propriedade estatal, e ao qual o Primeiro-ministro Renzi da Itália elogia a “sábia direção”, contribuiria até mesmo para a nossa própria “segurança nacional” de quando participando como um parceiro nos exercícios militares da OTAN denominados como “Trident Juncture” – 2015 [TJ 15]  desenrolando-se na Itália.

Manlio Dinucci

 Artigo original : http://ilmanifesto.info/democrazia-nato-in-ucraina/

Traduzido do italiano por Anna Malm, artigospoliticos.wordpress.com para Mondialisation.ca  

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What the British Are Really Laughing About. The Cameron Dead Pig’s Mouth Saga

September 23rd, 2015 by Lawrence Richards

The rituals and secret-keeping of Britain’s privately educated elites are a cornerstone of Conservative Party unity.

Whether or not it’s true, the Internet has decided for the time being that British Prime Minister David Cameron probably put his private parts into the mouth of a dead pig when he was at Oxford. The allegations have been made by extremely well-connected Establishment figures, former Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Lord (Michael) Ashcroft, and former Sunday Times political editor Isabel Oakeshott, and the story is published in the Daily Mail, which makes this the highest possible tier of character assassination in British politics.

Ashcroft’s goal is, according to the Mail, “revenge”. In the years leading up to Cameron taking office in 2010, the tax-dodging billionaire had donated over £8 million to the Conservative Party, bailing them out of debt after their disastrous election defeat in 2005. He had worked as Treasurer and later Deputy Chairman of the party, helping to manage them back to an electable public image under Cameron. Yet Ashcroft had expected that he would be given high office in exchange for this, and Cameron didn’t pay up when the time came. It now appears Ashcroft has spent the last five years compiling his new book, Call Me Dave, in which the pig story and other damning allegations about the Prime Minister are made.

Outsiders to the British cultural landscape are focusing on the central detail that a leader of a G8 country screwed a dead pig, because it’s hilarious. But the howling laughter of the British themselves goes deeper than just schadenfreude at a man doing something disgusting and getting caught – this is about class.

When Cameron was at Oxford, he was a member of several secret societies of rich young men. The most famous of these is the Bullingdon Club, after which Yale’s infamous Skull and Bones is fashioned. The aim of the Bullingdon Club is ostensibly to dress up fancy with the chaps, get blind drunk at an expensive restaurant or private dining room, and trash the place – because they can afford to pay for the damages without doing a day’s work. Among their known initiation rites, they are said to have to burn a £50 bill in front of a homeless person.

And that leads to the other side of what the Bullingdon Club (and societies like it) is about: upper class right wing team-building. The friendships and alliances forged in the secret drinking societies of powerful rich kids go on to define their careers, and these young men all have access to the highest rungs of British society. Threeprominent members of Cameron’s cabinet were members, whilst many others went on to run the banks that crashed the economy in 2008 and the media empires that protect them.

Burning money in front of a homeless person isn’t just intended to be a nasty prank, it serves to train a Bullingdon boy’s senses, to make other humans seem somehow less. That David Cameron and his allies George Osborne and Boris Johnson have all done this, and that they have all presided over a sharp spike in homelessness in London and throughout the UK, are not coincidental. The MP who provided Lord Ashcroft with the details of the pig story attended one meeting of the expensive club but left in disgust because ‘it was all about despising poor people’.

And thus part of the reason why the British are so ready to believe Lord Ashcroft’s story, aside from the fact that Ashcroft is a top-tier Establishment figure in a country with absurdly plaintiff-friendly libel laws, is that Cameron’s ideological training is already well understood by the public. There is nothing likable about such a background, particularly when the ruling class it produces is waging a war on the poor and disabled that would have made Thatcher blush.

So to then hear that the guy at the top of that pyramid was peer-pressured into putting his dick in a pig’s mouth or risk not being included in a club of nasty, entitled people, it creates a much more satisfying reaction than mere laughter. A figure of terror becomes a figure of ridicule, a reversal like the boggarts in Harry Potter, who impersonate your worst nightmares until you can cast a spell on them that makes them look absurd.

The pig scandal that now has the world laughing at Cameron wasn’t from the Bullingdon Club but the Piers Gaverston, less well-known (until this week), but with a reputation for bizarre sexual rituals and initiation rites. Where the Bullingdon boys built their fraternity around shared values of hating the poor, the Piers Gaverston was about sexual humiliation and the creation of shared secrets. Its structural function is as an agreement of mutually assured destruction between the rulers of tomorrow – I know your secret and you know mine, so let’s stay on the same side, yeah?

This forms one of the core mechanics of the British ruling class – why reveal someone’s dirty little secret when you can keep schtum about it and control them? This forms the basis of the parliamentary whipping system, where the Chief Whip of each respective party is expected to have an arsenal of dirt locked away in their office so that when the time comes, their party leader can ‘whip’ rebellious backbenchers with threats that sometimes include leaking that story about you that you really don’t want to be leaked.

In this elite culture not all corruption is financial. When it comes to the top of British politics, sound character and a clean record do not make you an asset. You’ll have a hard time joining unless they can confirm that you are scum – and can make sure that the public don’t know about it.

An interesting example of this is the role Margaret Thatcher played in the elevation of certain members of her government and its allies. Recent allegations in the growingparliamentary child abuse scandal arose that Thatcher “turned a blind eye” to pedophiles that she promoted, including the provision of knighthoods to known serial child abusers Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith. Her own Home Secretary, the now deceased Leon Brittan, is still being investigated.

In each case, Thatcher is now thought to have been warned by security services about the deviancy of these men, but is alleged to have studiously ignored it. When it comes to secret-keeping and elite power, it is not out of the question that in knowing they were child abusers, Thatcher would have had political leverage over these allies of hers, and so promoting them would have helped her strengthen her own power while in office.

The parliamentary child abuse scandal is horrifying enough on its own terms, but beyond that it has also further undermined public trust in Westminster, already increasingly despised for being out-of-touch and unaccountable after financial crises and expenses scandals turn in a unsatisfyingly low number of scalps for voters to collect.

Where this relates to Cameron’s little mishap is that the public are already exhausted to the point of raw antipathy with the way Westminster power works, as a marketplace of secrets among unaccountable elites. Our politicians might be screwing children, but the ones who could help us to find out about it are making sure that story is blocked. When that kind of behavior is the norm, the British public can’t really be blamed for believing that their PM put his knob into a pig to join a secret society. This, too, is probably normal to these people.

Something grievously misunderstood by many members of the British ruling class is that they believe hatred of the ‘Bullingdon boy’ archetype comes from mere jealousy. The vast majority of the privately educated men who run the country really think that everyone wants to be more like them, and that therefore any criticism of elites comes first and foremost from envy.

This is in large part because one of the core beliefs instilled into the 7% of pupils who attend Britain’s divisive independent schools is that of meritocracy. This despite the fact that not only can most people not afford to send their children to these fee-paying schools, the ones who do attend them end up getting an easy ladder up to high society. They make up a third of MPs, nearly half of all newspaper columnists, a majority of Lords, diplomats and senior civil servants, and over 70% of senior judges. It is common knowledge that the old boys’ network looks after its own.

This doesn’t stop them from telling the public that the system is fair. Alumnus of Eton and former Bullingdon boy Boris Johnson said in a speech to the Centre for Policy Studies that the people with the highest IQ have the best jobs because they’re smart. Not only was this not even remotely true, Boris then ‘failed’ a live IQ test on air, yet persisted in the notion that kids who go to independent schools do well because they’re brilliant. He has served variously as a cabinet minister, Mayor of London, newspaper columnist, and magazine editor, enjoying each job with the support of powerful people with whom he went to school.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne (also of the Bullingdon Club), was criticized by charities representing poor and disabled people whose economic and household security was ruined by his reforms. He dismissed them as “anti-business” and gave tax breaks to millionaires (half of whom, incidentally, went to independent schools) in the name of “fairness”.

And David Cameron himself often likes to talk about the supposed existence of meritocracy in the United Kingdom. He, too, went to Eton before joining the Bullingdon Club and the Piers Gaverston. He is one of the most vocal Conservatives when it comes to championing the ideology of meritocracy, telling poor people and ethnic minorities that their lack of social climbing is because they lack “aspiration”, and that ‘free’ markets (that is, unregulated financial bonanzas, by his allegiances) “can make you a better person”.

Separate from what he says, however, his government has significantly increased inequality and decreased social mobility, making it even harder for people outside of his privileged background to fulfill the meritocratic values he regularly trumpets.

The wound of that hypocrisy was already festering before Lord Ashcroft punished him this week for breaking the rules of the ritual: that you will obey the people who made you, or you will be humiliated. This wasn’t, as some have said, young men being silly. Not if the secrets being kept are designed by powerful men to keep other powerful men under control. That kind of arrangement is the antithesis of democracy.

And it is also the antithesis to the meritocracy they proclaim. Not just because it’s rich boys getting an easy ride to the top – we already knew that – but because David Cameron’s nasty little scandal speaks to a suspicion many people already have: that in British society, you don’t get to become Prime Minister because you’re talented or because you work hard. You don’t even get there just because you’re rich. You get there by traumatizing the homeless and skull-fucking a dead pig, and that ritual gives you power because you have demonstrated utter, pathetic submission to your fellow oligarchs.

That is why we’re laughing.

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Health Impacts of Wireless Radiation on Children

September 23rd, 2015 by Global Research News

Italian State of Tyrol Also Calls for Curbing Wireless in Schools

by Environmental Health Trust
Sep 22, 2015

Teton Village, WY — (SBWIRE) — As of this fall, Israel and Italy are officially recommending schools reduce children’s exposures to wireless radiation.

The Israeli Ministry of Health has initiated a major public awareness effort to reduce wireless and electromagnetic radiation exposures to children. In similar action, the Italian State Parliament of South Tyrol voted to allow the application of the precautionary principle to replace existing wireless networks whenever possible with wired networks or those that emit less radiation.wifi-children-cell

The Israeli Ministry of Health (MoH) recommendations are published in the Environmental Health in Israel Report 2014 which states that

“Precautions should be strictly enforced with regard to children, who are more sensitive to developing cancer.”

The Report makes the following points:

Cell Phones: “The MoH recommends sensible use of cellular and wireless technology, including: considering alternatives like landline telephones” MoH recommendations include: use a speaker or hands-free phone accessory or (non-wireless) personal earphone in order to distance the telephone from the body, reduce the amount and duration of calls, and in areas of weak reception reduce calls because of higher radiation.

Children: MoH recommends: “refraining from installing the base of wireless phones in a bedroom, work room, or children’s room.”

Schools: Levels of non-ionizing radiation were measured in 25 schools nation-wide and “based on these findings, the MoEP recommends that students remain at a distance of at least 1.5 meters from electrical cabinets and that use of wireless communication networks in schools be reduced.”

Reduce Exposure in Cars: The MoH recommends not using cellphones in closed places like cars or elevators, buses, and trains unless there is an external antenna “due to amplified radiation in such places.” “When driving, a hands-free device should be used for calls. It is recommended to install an antenna outside the vehicle and to use a line connection between the telephone and the speaker as opposed to using Bluetooth.”

Research: Previous research findings in Israel “clearly indicated a link between cellphone use for more than 10 years and the development of tumors in the salivary glands.” Israel is currently a partner in two additional international studies: (1) MOBI-Kids, a multi-center study involving experts from 16 countries who are examining potential associations between use of communication devices and other environmental factors and risk of brain tumors, and (2) the GERoNiMO (Generalised EMF Research using Novel Methods) project, which uses an integrated approach and expertise from 13 countries to further the state of knowledge on EMF and health.

The Report concludes with a chapter by Linda S. Birnbaum, Director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program, who states, “Israel is a world leader in research on the health effects of non-ionizing radiation. If some of the studies turn out to be harbingers of things to come, we may have major health consequences from the nearly ubiquitous presence of wireless equipment.”

The recently published ISRAEL 2015 RF Safety Report details current actions on EMFS such as:

New Public Education Website: The Israeli government launched the public education website TNUDA (http://www.tnuda.org.il) of the National Information Center for Non-Ionizing Radiation to guide the public and decision-makers on the educated use of technology.

Guidelines for the installation and operation of Wi-Fi networks in schools: Following a petition seeking an outright ban on Wi-Fi in Schools, the government is banning Wi-Fi in kindergartens and restricting hours of use in schools, installing equipment with exposures to be set as low as possible, and monitoring radiofrequency (RF) radiation levels.

Government Testing Finds that Mobile Phones Violate Manufacturers’ Reported SAR: In a study conducted by the Ministry for Environmental Protection and the Holon Institute of Technology, the SAR of 10 models of mobile phones was measured using phantoms. The measured SAR exceeded the SAR declared by the manufacturer, when the phone was held close to the head and in bad reception mode (100% of the maximum power).

ELF EMF limits are recommended at numbers far below international limits. These recommendations were set to account for research showing links to leukemia. “The Ministry of Health (MoH) jointly recommend a threshold of two milligauss on an average annual basis when planning an electrical facility or four milligauss on a daily average.” A study performed by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and by the Education Ministry has found that in more than 60% of the schools in Israel at least one classroom had magnetic fields exceeding 0.4 ?T. Action was taken to reduce exposure in these schools.

Headsets and safety information required with every new mobile phone: According to a settlement agreement accepted by the Tel Aviv-Yafo District Court in February 2014, cellular operators must inform buyers of new mobile phones about the radiation safety instructions as formulated by the manufacturer, provide a hands-free kit with every new mobile phone, and provide information on the safe use of mobile phones on its website.

National radiofrequency monitoring program: The Ministry of Environmental Protection is operating a national RF monitoring system with stations that continuously measure the entire range of RF and transmit the data to a central computer that analyzes and displays online the results of measurements.

On June 10, 2015, the Italian State Parliament of South Tyrol voted to allow the application of the precautionary principle to cell phones mandating the state government to:

1. To replace existing wireless networks whenever possible with networks that emit less radiation at schools, preschools, hospitals, nursing homes, and other public facilities.

2. Establish a working group whose mandate it is to assess these new technologies and their exposure levels. With regard to wireless communication technologies, mobile Internet access, and public health, the working group shall clarify which technologies emit less radiation and provide sustainable technology options and

3. To start an education and awareness campaign that informs about possible health risks, especially regarding the unborn, infants, children, and adolescents and that develops guidelines for a safer use of cell phones, smartphones, and Wi-Fi.

Environmental Health Trust (EHT) educates individuals, health professionals and communities about controllable environmental health risks and policy changes needed to reduce those risks. Currently EHT is raising health concerns about wireless in schools and recommending safer hardwired internet connection installations. The foundation’s website is the go-to place for clear, science-based information to prevent disease.

Please visit EHtrust.org and on Facebook.

Copyright EHTrust.org, 2015

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Turkish-Uyghur Terror Inc. – America’s Other Al Qaeda

September 23rd, 2015 by Tony Cartalucci

It is no longer tenable for the United States and its regional allies in and near the Middle East to claim they are backing “moderate rebels” in the proxy war raging in Syria, Iraq, and parts of Lebanon. There is the Syrian government on one side, and terrorists including Al Qaeda and its various franchises such as the Al Nusra Front and the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL) on the other.

If one is not supporting the Syrian government, it is very clear they are supporting Al Qaeda. So obvious is this fact, that the Western press and the corporate-financier think tanks that produce for them their talking points, have begun a campaign to re-brand Al Qaeda as a lesser evil vis-a-vis ISIS. In reality, there is virtually no difference, with the US and its regional allies clearly arming, funding, and supporting both.

The most recent and obscene manifestation of this re-branding was US Army General and former CIA Director David Petraeus’ open calls to use Al Qaeda to “fight” ISIS. In the Daily Beast’s article, “Petraeus: Use Al Qaeda Fighters to Beat ISIS,” it was reported that:

Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus. 

The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast.

Within this rhetorical shift we find an admission that there is indeed no “moderate rebel” force to speak of. All that exists, admittedly, are extremists operating under the various banners of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Revelations of America’s support behind Al Qaeda may not have ever been so overt, but are certainly nothing new. It is admitted that the US and its Saudi allies first created Al Qaeda as a proxy mercenary force to fight the Soviet Union in a proxy war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 2007, long before the current war in Syria broke out, it was warned by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh in the pages of the New Yorker that under the then Bush administration, support already began to flow to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and other extremists groups including Al Qaeda for the purpose of violently undermining the Syrian government in Damascus.

Hersh’s article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” it is explicitly stated:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Past and present, it is clear that Al Qaeda was and still is a central instrument of the United States in achieving geopolitical objectives – particularly where Western forces cannot immediately or in any practical sense intervene directly.

But Al Qaeda and its various affiliates are only one faction among many terrorist groups minding the vast interests of American global hegemony. A recent bombing in the heart of  Bangkok, capital of Southeast Asia’s nation of Thailand, and ongoing violence in China’s Xinjiang region expose another vast network of US-sponsored terrorism operating in tandem with Al Qaeda and in fact stretching from Asia all the way to frontiers of America’s proxy war with Syria.

Turkish-Uyghur Terror – the Other Al Qaeda 

Because it relatively poorly understood and under-reported in comparison to other more notorious terrorist groups, the Turkish-Uyghur terror network is perhaps more dangerous and of greater utility to the United States and its allies presently versus their increasingly exposed Al Qaeda legions.

The genesis of modern Turkish-sponsored terrorism, like Al Qaeda, also originates from the Cold War. Part of the wider stay-behind networks known as “Gladios” created by NATO to allegedly fight Soviet forces in the event of a Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, these terrorist groups were instead turned against the population of NATO member states and engaged in violence, terrorism, mass murder, and assassinations. A group of ultra-nationalists known as the “Grey Wolves” would be cultivated for this task within Turkey.

In a 1998 LA Times article titled, “Turkish Dirty War Revealed, but Papal Shooting Still Obscured,” it would be reported that (emphasis added):

In the late 1970s, armed bands of Gray Wolves launched a wave of bomb attacks and shootings that killed hundreds of people, including public officials, journalists, students, lawyers, labor organizers, left-wing activists and ethnic Kurds. During this period, the Gray Wolves operated with encouragement and protection of the Counter-Guerrilla Organization, a section of the Turkish Army’s Special Warfare Department. Working out of the U.S. Military Aid Mission building in Ankara, the Special Warfare Department received funds and training from U.S. advisors to establish “stay behind” squads of civilian irregulars who were set up to engage in acts of sabotage and resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion. Similar Cold War counter-guerrilla units were created in every member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But instead of preparing for foreign enemies, these operatives often set their sights on domestic targets.

Another LA Times piece titled, “Turkey’s Gray Wolves Nip at Heels of Power,” would reveal the extent of the Grey Wolves reign of terror (emphasis added):

At the height of the Cold War, the army used the Gray Wolves as a violent counterweight to Turkish Communists. The party’s coffers swelled with secret contributions from the government. 

By the late 1970s, the Gray Wolves had spun out of state control. Their paramilitary wing fought a campaign against leftist rivals that killed nearly 6,000 people. Ali Agca, who shot Pope John Paul II in a 1981 assassination attempt, is alleged to have been affiliated with the party.

The article would also reveal that despite this horrific past, the Grey Wolves and their political allies were still a very potent political force in Turkey. Today, the Grey Wolves function as a paramilitary wing of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which holds the third largest number of seats in Turkey’s parliament.

As troubling as this should be to Turks who may find themselves on the receiving end of a politically powerful terrorist organization apparently tolerated, even sponsored by NATO for decades and in particular, supported by the United States, the Grey Wolves’ terrorism has branched out far beyond Turkey’s borders.

NATO Gladio Goes Global 

According to a 2009 New American Media report titled, “Behind the China Riots — Oil, Terrorism & ‘Grey Wolves’,” Turkey’s Grey Wolves have established militant training camps as far as China’s western Xinjiang region, helping produce violent terrorists who have carried out a series of deadly attacks across China. The report would state (emphasis added):

Enter the Grey Wolves, one of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations. Founded in the 1960s, the Wolves are a pan-Turkic paramilitary group with 1 million followers across the Near East, Central Asia and inside Xinjiang. During the decade of political violence in Turkey in the 1980s, the military-backed activists launched a wave of assassinations, massacres of ethnic minorities, and extortions of businesses. By official count, the Turkish government holds the Wolves responsible for more than 600 murders, while leftists estimate the victims numbered in the many thousands. 

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Grey Wolves set up training camps in Central Asia for youths from Turkic language groups, including Uighur. Their indoctrination program embraces the goal of establishing Turan, a Turkish empire across Euro-Asia, subjugating non-Turkish races and unleashing violence to achieve their ends. Out of the limelight, the Wolves provided commando training and material support for the East Turkestan Independence Movement.

In essence, NATO’s stay-behind networks had become NATO’s “go-abroad” networks, projecting the same sort of violence, terrorism, and political coercion abroad after the Cold War that these networks carried out domestically during the Cold War.

The alleged “struggle” by the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, referred to by the terrorists and their foreign sponsors as “East Turkistan,” consists of two essential components – a foreign harbored political front including the Washington D.C. and Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and a militant front clearly backed by the US and NATO through intermediary groups like Turkey’s Grey Wolves.

Like the Grey Wolves, the World Uyghur Congress is a creation and perpetuation of Western special interests. WUC is directly funded by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) over a quarter of a million dollars (on record) a year. The NED admittedly organizes and underwrites all of WUC’s events, and their annual meetings usually feature almost exclusively US representatives reaffirming their commitment to support WUC’s objectives which, as stated on their official website, include:

The WUC declares a nonviolent and peaceful opposition movement against Chinese occupation of East Turkestan and an unconditional adherence to the international accepted human rights standard as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and adherence to the principals of democratic pluralism and rejection of totalitarianism, religious intolerance, and terrorism as an instrument of policy.

And while WUC claims to stand for a “peaceful opposition” to resist what it calls “Chinese occupation,” it regularly justifies, defends, or covers up violence. Perhaps the most appalling example of this was when it failed to condemn the 2014 brutal murder of prominent Uyghur imam, 74 year old Jume Tahir, in front of China’s biggest and oldest mosque. WUC would denounce him as a “tool” of the Chinese government and even go as far as denounce China for sentencing his killers – Uyghur terrorists – to death for the horrific murder.

Clearly WUC not only finds it impossible to denounce terrorism, it willfully serves as rhetorical cover for it.

Looking at a map of China it is clear that this campaign of separatism directly serves the long-standing plans of the United States to encircle and contain China’s rise – a campaign that has been openly and repeated outlined in US policy papers for decades – the most recent of which was published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and was titled, “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China.” It states in no uncertain terms:

Because the American effort to ‘integrate’ China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to U.S. primacy in Asia—and could result in a consequential challenge to American power globally—Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy.

Encouraging separatism in China’s western Xinjiang region, if successful, would carve off a substantial amount of territory. In conjunction with US-backed separatism in China’s Tibet region, an immense buffer region stands to be created that would virtually isolate China from Central Asia. And while the Grey Wolves and their Uyghur proxies are working hard to create this barrier to China’s west, with their involvement in a recent bombing in Bangkok, it appears the US is now using them to augment efforts to create a similar encirclement across Southeast Asia.

NATO Terror Expands into Southeast Asia

The Turkish-Uyghur terror network, in addition to fomenting violence across China, has more recently been trafficking terrorists from Xinjiang, through Southeast Asia, and onward to Turkey where they are staged, armed, trained, and then sent to fight NATO’s proxy war in Syria. This trafficking network apparently snaked its way through Thailand – exposed when Thailand detained over 100 Uyghurs which it then deported upon Beijing’s request back to China in July.

On the same day the deportations occurred WUC and NATO’s Grey Wolves organized violent protests in Turkey both in Ankara and at the Thai consulate in Istanbul during which the consulate was invaded and destroyed.

A month later, a devastating bomb would detonate in the heart of Bangkok, killing 20 mostly Chinese tourists and injuring over 100 more. In addition to the BBC already being on site before the blast, the British network would conclude even before bodies were cleared from the site that Uyghurs were likely behind the blast. This was done specifically to deflect blame from another US proxy, Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been attempting for years to regain power in Thailand.

In reality, Shinawatra and the Uyghur terrorists are both functions of the same Westesrn agenda to encircle and contain China by building up a “wall” of proxy states around Beijing, and if nothing else, to create chaos in which Beijing finds it nearly impossible to prosper.

What is perhaps most concerning regarding these two Western proxies is the fact that many past bombings associated with Shinawatra’s terrorist networks – networks which are extensive – match the methods used by Turkish-Uyghur terrorists making it likely that NATO’s extraterritorial networks New American Media reported on in 2009 being set up in China, are likely now dotting Uyghur trafficking routes throughout Southeast Asia as well.

The blast in Bangkok likely took place for a number of reasons. Not only did Thailand ignore US demands to release the detained Uyghurs to Turkey, as well as oust a long-cultivated US proxy – Thaksin Shinawatra – but it has been cultivating unmistakably closer ties to Beijing including the signing of major joint-infrastructure development projects, closer military cooperation, and even the potential procurement of 3 Chinese-made submarines – all of which US policymakers have been decrying with increasing indignation.

Turkish-Uyghur Terror Beyond Asia

And while the US is using Turkish-Uyghur terror to extort concessions from Southeast Asia and to destabilize China, it is likely that this “other Al Qaeda” will turn up still in other regions – most predictably, Russian Crimea.

Crimea rejoined Russia after a NATO-backed, violent Neo-Nazi coup overthrew the government of Ukraine, creating a cascade of anti-Russian violence across the country. Eager to avoid the fate of many cities across Ukraine, the people of Crimea overwhelmingly voted in a referendum to rejoin Russia. Since then, Crimea has enjoyed peace and prosperity just across the border from a Ukraine now mired in civil war and economic catastrophe, all compounded by an illegitimate regime beholden to the US and NATO who thrust it into power.

The fact that the border between Russian Crimea and Ukraine also represents the border between peace and pandemonium highlights the criminal chaos fostered by US-NATO meddling in Ukraine. A peaceful, stable Crimea serves as a constant reminder to all in Eastern Europe that where ever NATO goes, chaos follows.

If the US and its NATO allies could destabilize Crimea, thus creating chaos within newly repatriated Russian territory, the West could make a compelling case that dealing with Russia is at least as undesirable as dealing with NATO.

US-NATO backed Turkish terrorism would be the key to accomplishing this. Crimea’s proximity to Turkey and a sizable Turkish Tatar minority serves as a potential medium for the West to carry this out. Already the Western media has invested heavily in a narrative centered around “disenfranchised Tatars” and has begun working with opposition groups to stir up confrontations. Like in Xinjiang, those willing to participate in such an opposition constitute a fractional minority – but through the power of Western media, are inflated in the minds of impressionable audiences.

The US State Department’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty media outlet in an article deceptively titled, “Putin Warns Crimean Tatars Not To Seek Special Status,” indicated that Russia was well aware of the ruse:

Putin suggested that foreign countries were funding rights activists in an effort to “destabilize the situation” by playing up problems faced by Crimean Tatars, the third-largest ethnic group after Russians and Ukrainians on the peninsula, and said that Moscow would not allow this. 

“You and I know full well who we are talking about. There are a number people who consider themselves professional fighters for rights,” he said, adding that “they want to receive foreign grants and acknowledgement and realize their ambitions, including political ambitions.” 

Already in Kiev, these Tatar opposition fronts have begun organizing and attempting to fan the flames of conflict in Crimea. This includes ATR – a Tatar media channel with opaque funding, now based in Kiev and now what US NED funded “Human Rights in Ukraine” (KhPG) calls fighting “to counter the psychological and propaganda influence from Russia.”

Understanding the scope of Turkish-Uyghur terrorism, their rhetorical supporters, and the function both serve toward maintaining US global hegemony helps disarm the West of its various volatile narratives and criminal conspiracies aimed at creating and leveraging terrorism. If when each bomb goes off, or when any consulate is attacked, the public points the finger not at America’s proxies, but directly at the special interests upon Wall Street and lining Washington instead, all benefits of carrying out a proxy campaign of global terrorism to begin with will evaporate before the West.

As is already happening in Syria where Western plans have been frustrated by growing global awareness of the West’s true involvement in the conflict and its role behind groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, by exposing their “other Al Qaeda,” their plans elsewhere around the globe will likewise be confounded.

And while the US has attempted for years to galvanize the world behind its global agenda through the use of terrorism, it is ironic that now China, Russia, and even nations like Thailand all now find themselves on common ground, having reason to cooperate closer together in facing a common threat – America’s global terror enterprise.

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

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US Counterterrorism Envoy John R. Allen Responsible for the Alleged “War against ISIS” Resigns

September 23rd, 2015 by Press TV

The US special envoy for the alleged war on Daesh terrorists in Iraq and Syria, is stepping down, officials say.

John R. Allen, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, will leave his position in early November, four US State Department officials told Bloomberg on condition of anonymity.

According to the officials, who were not prepared to publicly announce Allen’s departure, he has already let his superiors know he will step down.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen

Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen

Allen’s chief of staff, Karin von Hippel, will also quit to join a British think tank.

U.S. officials familiar with Allen’s decision say he has been frustrated with White House micromanagement of the war and its failure to provide adequate resources to the fight. He unsuccessfully tried to convince the administration to allow U.S. tactical air control teams to deploy on the ground to help pick targets for air strikes in Iraq,” said the Tuesday report.

Apart from support for the militants, the US military has also been leading a coalition to conduct airstrikes allegedly aimed at Daesh militants in Syria as well as Iraq since last year, despite which the Takfiris have gained ground in some of the regions.

This September 23, 2014 US Air Forces Central Command file photo shows a US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle flying over northern Iraq after conducting airstrikes in Syria. (AFP)

Last month, the incoming Marine Corps Commandant, Lieutenant General Robert Neller, testified that the situation of the US fight was at a “stalemate” and the program to train militants there had yielded not more than four or five militants.

“John Allen has put his heart and soul into trying to make the president’s strategy work,” said Derek Harvey, a former senior military intelligence official who worked with Allen at US Central Command. “I have sympathy for the hard task he was given because I do not believe the president’s team was fully on board and he was never empowered to bring the leadership necessary to achieve the mission.”

Initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012, the Takfiri militants have been carrying out horrific acts of violence, including public decapitations and crucifixions in areas under their control in Iraq, Syria and more recently Libya.

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Greece and Its Creditors: A new Paradigm – Front of Resistance

September 23rd, 2015 by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

Introduced by Peter Koenig

“It is [….] a triumph of the empire to have the victims elect their executioners.”

These are the words of Dimitris Konstantakopoulos this Monday morning, 21 September, the morning after the Greek ‘snap’ elections, when the Greek people re-elected Syriza and their leader Alexis Tsipras, who betrayed them with impunity and on several occasions in the last eight months – yes, when the people of Greece re-elected their hangman with more than 35%, almost the same percentage of votes as on 25 January 2015; not an absolute majority, but a majority all the same that will allow them to form the next government and to call the shots on the already signed-off austerity package – against another debt of 86 billion euros, of which not one euro goes to Greece’s vital social programs – only to the banks, which are bleeding the country to death.

If the Parliament re-confirms the new debt which it already approved before Tsipras resigned on 20 August 2015, the debt to GDP ratio will climb to above 210% – completely unmanageable – and illegal, as debt acquired under duress and blackmail which is the case in Greece – is illegitimate under all international standards and laws – as also stated in Zoe Konstantopoulou’s (former  President of the Greek Parliament) speech at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on 3 September 2015 –

http://cadtm.org/Zoe-Konstantopoulou-s-speech-at.

The bulk of this article was written about 3 weeks before the elections. THE NO FRONT is an essay on how to build a Front of Resistance, including remarks on moral and national aspects of politics, on left and right, on left and nationalism, and on euro versus drachma. In the author’s own words, it

“represents the views its writer has supported in a lot of political talks and deliberations which have taken place in Greece between the 20th of August and the 3rd of September. But the question of how to build a front will remain very much in the agenda after the elections.”

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos is a renowned Greek journalist, writer, philosopher, and he is the cofounder of The Delphi Initiative, a group of international intellectuals called to meet in Delphi, the birthplace of Democracy, at the end of June 2015 to formulate ideas for the government to extricate itself from the debt dilemma, the dictate of the troika and the colonization of Brussels. To no avail. In today’s globalized neoliberal world, Democracy is not worth the breath it takes to pronounce it.
—–

How to build a Front of Resistance (some remarks on moral and national aspects of politics, on left and right, on left and nationalism, on euro and drachma) (*)

While Greek politicians travel around the country telling nonsense and narratives, Greece is disintegrating at an appalling pace. Only God knows what is going to happen this winter. Neither the first Memoradum nor the second can be compared with the third one. It may lead Greece towards a “low intensity” civil war or police state or even to major losses of sovereignty abroad, or it may contribute to the dismantling of the Republic of Cyprus.
Old and new supporters of the Memorandum agree in supporting the program agreed between the Greek government and the creditors, in spite of all the fighting between them, in reality about who will be the best, elected Gaulaiter of the foreigners in the country. But at the same time, everybody knows that this program will not work. Every single Greek knows this, those who signed it know it, all serious economists around the world also know it. It is as clear as that the Earth orbits around the Sun and not the opposite. But on this basic fact, on this major question for the destiny of the nation, the two main parties claiming now our vote either remain silent or they lie blatantly.
While the country is in a process of decomposition and the nation is being threatened with death, as an organized entity, our TV news are full of no news, like the coincidental meeting of Tsipras and Meimarakis at Heraclion airport. Tomorrow, it is not excluded that we will see the two participating in the same government, ruling the country on behalf of its creditors.

A memorandum aiming at destroying Greece
It is unbelievable and this is exactly the reason many people refuse to believe it. But the program applied in Greece is not a mistake. If it was it would have been long ago corrected.

It is aiming exactly at what it achieves, that is our destruction. It has already provoked by far the biggest economic, social, moral-psychological and demographic disaster in post-1945 capitalist Europe. This is not subject to argument, as most economic, social or political questions. The climax of the disaster is clearly reflected in all objective indicators (GDP, unemployment, especially unemployment of the young, dramatic deterioration of living standards and health levels, sovereign and private debt as percentage of GDP etc.)

Only Kafka or Orwell could name this a program of “help” to Greece! It is indeed a program for destroying Greece. It aims at what it is really achieving. And by provoking economic and social disaster, those who engineered it, aim – and so far they succeed – at our enslavement and promote their political, or rather “regime change” agenda, first in Greece, then, if the experiment proves successful, to all of Europe.

Only by causing such a catastrophe could they oblige a European people to accept the unbelievable terms (translated from English with the help of an automatic translation program) that the Parliament has voted in an all-night humiliating parody of a debate, under the blackmail of immediate “bankruptcy of the state”. It is through a new form of financial and political “war” that they are pushing their aim and this aim is to destroy bourgeois democracy, the social welfare state and the Greek nation, as a coherent institutional, political and cultural structure.

It is exactly because they need absolutely our complete destruction, in order to promote their extremely radical agenda, that they refuse and kind of concession. Not just to Tsipras, which after all could be considered more or less normal, but also to Samaras before him, who was their man and he was very close, politically and ideologically, to the forces now dominating Europe.
For political-geopolitical reasons they decided to write off much of the debt of the occupied Iraq or of the US-friendly government in Kiev. But they insist on Greeks paying the debt until the last euro. Even if they will alleviate a little bit the terms of its repayment, they will keep it at unsustainable levels, in order exactly to continue its use as a weapon against the country!

Greece has experienced its dependence from the US and its tragic consequences after 1947. But even the Americans have not aimed at our complete destruction. They threw us a carrot in the form of the Marshall Plan. Now the threat is complete annihilation!

The program imposed on Greece is not an accident. It reflects the strategy and the ultimate goals of the most extremist segment of the global financial oligarchy, which is now using Greece and Europe in order to implement its European and global agenda. This oligarchy estimates that, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it has a historical, unique opportunity to impose a global dictatorship, a global totalitarianism, which, they think, is the only way to keep their present hegemonic position. If you have any doubts, just see what has happened in Iraq or Libya, Ukraine or Yugoslavia.

The financial, social and psychological-moral disaster caused by the program itself is exactly the weapon used to effectively abolish democracy and the welfare state, free health care and the right of citizens to a pension and to a decent living, which are the most important conquests of human civilization until today.

A «Greece without Greeks» (and also a Cyprus without Greeks) may be the end-result of it. The mechanism is already in place and working: massive emigration of the best educated young people, demographic crisis as a result of the Memorandum policies, serious deterioration of the health situation of the population predictably leading to a serious decline of life expectancy. If the Republic of Cyprus is dissolved, by accepting to become a post-modern protectorate through a new version of the “Annan plan”, which was rejected in the 2004 referendum, the loss of state protection will also force Greeks to emigrat in large numbers.
There is no more vital task for all Greeks than to stop this program. This is not linked to the facility or difficulty of trying to stop it, nor to the risks and dangers associated with that. Obviously it will be very difficult and dangerous to stop it. Simply we don’t have any other choice. A very intelligent and competent leadership could, maybe, I say maybe, achieve a compromise, but even to achieve a compromise, you should have an iron determination to go all the way. By compromise I mean a stabilization of the situation where it is, that is to stop the work of the “death spiral” in which Greece is now found. (The term “death spiral” is quite exact if one wishes to describe the situation in Greece. It was introduced in the debate by George Soros who knows better than anyone else what is all about, as he himself has greatly contributed to the launching of this vicious circle!).

The upcoming elections

The September elections will take place under conditions of brutal violation of the constitutional and democratic order, as the Greek people, after deciding by an overwhelming majority in the referendum to reject the policy imposed to them, are now called to decide who will implement the policy they rejected! In such circumstances, there can be no democratic political solution uniting the nation. Although formally legal, the elections and their result cannot be considered as a legitimate and genuine expression of the will of the people.

The social and political forces that supported the “No” vote are still in a state of cataplexy, of deep shock after the sudden transformation of the leader of the anti-memorandum struggle into the main spearhead of the Creditors and the Americans.

Large sections of the Greek people, angry with the whole political class, are now thinking of abstaining. But such an attitude, perfectly understandable from a certain point of view, will not help in the end but will only precipitate the collapse of democracy. The entire Greek and international historical experience is pointing to this conclusion, first of all our own experience of abstention of the Left in the 1946 elections.

Such attitudes will contribute to facilitate the victory of a political system and a government, which will rule in opposition to the people. Umable to protect the most vital interests of the Greeks citizens, they will have lost their legitimacy to govern, even if they win the elections.

The most probable result in the short or medium term is a sort of formally legal -but not legitimate- “low intensity” police state of a “selective character”.

What is to be done

In such conditions, what is really required is the creation of a broad and credible national and popular front for the defense of the Greek people and the economic and national rebirth of the country. Such a front should assimilate, in the way it is constituted, the many and hard lessons from the total bankruptcy of SYRIZA and AN.ELL., as well as the ease with which their leaders joined, almost without resistance, the opposite camp.

This, for a number of reasons, is impossible to achieve in the little time left until the elections. But if the various “anti-memorandum” personalities and organized forces realize to a sufficient degree that Greece faces the specter of a national disaster of incalculable proportions, if their consciousness of the risk to the homeland will prevail in their thoughts and dominate other, micro-personal and micro-party interests and considerations, then what they have to do is to unite and provide the population at least with the prospect of such a front in the form of a common ballot in the next elections.

Five personalities, who have a nationwide appeal, everyone of them with his own advantages and disadvantages, have disagreed with the capitulation of the government and with its transformation into an instrument of the Creditors-colonialists. They are, in alphabetical order, Yanis Varoufakis, Manolis Glezos, Mikis Theodorakis, Zoe Konstantopoulou and Panagiotis Lafazanis

Why can’t these persons cooperate and support such a ballot in circumstances of a looming national disaster? In the past the Communist Party was able to cooperate with New Democracy (under the leadership of Mitsotakis) against PASOK. SYRIZA was able to cooperate with Independent Greeks (An.Ell.) or the Bolshevik Lenin with Russian Old Believers (“Beat together, march separately” was the formula).What are the colossal differences that prevent such a temporary, even partial, cooperation, respecting all other differences, when the country is in decomposition and the most vital interests of the Greek people are threatened?

There are many others in Greece, whο are distinguished for the integrity of their character, their selflessness and their seriousness. Those are the properties we need desperately. These people have distinguished themselves by their participation in the struggles of society and of ideas in the most diverse domains of social life, thus expressing existing social currents and sensitivities in a society which, being often amorphous, is better expressed in some cases by individuals and less by social institutions, organizations etc. We know them and we can find them, if we put aside our enormous -but really so small- egos, our selfishness and opportunism. These should be the candidate MPs on the ballots of the front.

Only a caricature of a Front could be formed on the basis of party and parliamentary hierarchies, or by supposedly uniting organizations devoid of a genuine social dynamic or serious ideas, thus perpetuating the “mediocracy” which characterizes our social fabric in the most diverse areas.

It is unfortunately impossible within 15 days to elaborate a credible economic program. The lack of such a program is one more of the things for which the SYRIZA leadership bears enormous, we should say criminal, responsibility. The absence of such a comprehensive program has been the Achilles heel of the “anti-memorandum” movement in all its forms and wings. But, still, there is at least the possibility of outlining in the remaining time the main principles and guiding ideas of such a program and of an alternative vision for our country.


Left or Right?

The Front we need to create should stand, somehow, “over” and “above” the classical division between left and right. This has to be done not because such a difference does not bear any significance, as some people claim. This has to be done because we should try to unite all Greeks, if possible, in an effort to save and “regenerate” our country.

In Greece, we don’t face just a neoliberal counter-reform program which provides for the violent deterioration of the situation of the poorer classes. If we had to confront such a program, it would only be natural to try to create a class-based, not a national and social front.

An ultra-neoliberal program of course is imposed in Greece. But it is part of and a consequence of a project of destroying the fundamental conditions of reproduction of the Greek social formation and of the Greek nation-state, of establishing a form of “self-destroying debt colony”. It is also a project leading to the rapid and violent deterioration of the terms under which Greece participates in the international division of labor.

This is not happening by accident, as we emphasized above. The nation-state in Europe represents an embedded institutional identity, a strong ideological identity, but also the only framework in which there can be some exercise of democratic control and some level of social protection. All these qualities make the nation-state a huge obstacle to the forces that wish to impose a global dictatorship in the concrete, real conditions we are now facing in Europe and the world.

In such conditions, the defense of the nation is not nationalism. On the contrary, it is the only way to maintain the dignity of people and the most basic human, social and political rights and conditions of existence of all citizens, and in particular the poor and working classes of society.

No one of course can defend the nation without defending the people, which we consider more or less identical with the nation, as well as the other way round. The forces that organize the economic warfare against Greece, taking advantage, needless to say, of the pre-existing serious crises of its internal structures, are in fact destroying the nation-state in the form we have known it, because only in this way can they finish with democracy and the social welfare state.

It is the (form of the) problem we are confronting that has to define the means and the tools of addressing it. Communists created in Greece the largest resistance movement in Hitler’s Europe. They did not name it a “class”, or “workers’ and peasants’”, or “socialist” front. They named it the National Liberation Front.

Those who want to fight for the hegemony of their leftist or rightist ideas, can do so and try to prove within such a front that their ideas are the most suitable to help organize and constitute the identity of the struggling nation and the people.

Drachma or Euro

This issue has now become the main issue dividing the country, but also the “anti-memorandum” forces.

The “No” front cannot be a “front for the drachma”, but it should not also preclude, in all circumstances, the need to resort to a national currency, a national means of payment, if the necessities of the struggle and the need to resist foreign pressure and war so requires.

The “No” camp consists of social forces that, at present either want to stay in the eurozone or want to exit from it. If one were to adopt a categorical position on this subject, the only result would be to split apart the unity of the antimemorandum social forces.

But this is not just a political tactic, which someone could criticize as opportunistic. We need indeed the dialectical synthesis of the two views, keeping in the arsenal of Greece all weapons available. We can’t predict now under what conditions, in Greece and in Europe, the Greek question will be raised again. There is no reason to decide now what will be our negotiating position in the future. On the opposite, it is extremely important to study very seriously, prepare ourselves and prepare the country for all options.

And this has not to do only with the choice of currency. It has to do with the whole international orientation of Greece, which probably will have to change, if the need of saving our nation will impose such a fundamental change. We should say all this very clearly. Greece should not be taken for granted by anyone.

But if we should leave open all possibilities, we don’t need to define as of now and in a categorical way what we will do at a given moment.

Sometimes, the discussion on the currency seems like talking to someone who had a heart-attack and telling him that he needs to quit smoking and start eating normally. He should of course do this, but he should first be saved from the attack!

We must remember that the weapons used against Greece by its“Creditors” are not only -or even mainly- the euro.

Economically, Greece has been attacked through debt. Legally it was attacked through the imposition of British colonial law and the jurisdiction of foreign courts, in conjunction with the clearly colonial terms of the loan agreements it was obliged to sign. Politically, it has been attacked through a “communication war”.

It is on all these fronts that the country needs to organize its defense and its counterattack. And at the same time, it has to organize and struggle for its internal redressing. Without at least the beginning of efforts and struggles to redress the internal situation, it will be impossible to resist external pressure and vice-versa. The choice of a currency has to derive from global strategy, not substitute for its lack.

Along the way, of course, we may need to change everything, including the currency and the entire international orientation of the country. But this has to be done when the need clearly demands it and the Greek people understands it.

Maybe we are wrong in all that we have said so far. Still we would like to ask the supporters of the national currency, is the opponent making a mistake here? Why are the pro-Memorandum forces so anxious to limit the whole discussion in Greece to the “Euro or Drachma” question and to portray the entire opposition to the Memoranda and loan agreements, as the “party of drachma”?

The discussion about what and how we produce, how we survive in conditions of economic warfare, how we create consumer, production, small business cooperatives, how we set society again on the path of production, cooperation, solidarity and assertion, has to be organized at all levels of society. It has barely started. It certainly precedes the absolutely necessary debate on the currency. The Greeks know that the euro is a bad currency and the EU is a very spiteful environment. But they have no confidence in themselves and in their country, nor in us. That’s why the majority in the polls say they prefer the euro!
We should all, to the extent that our forces and influence permit, also propose an electoral-political solution to the Greek people, despite the enormous difficulties of this task. Mere talk and blaming each other simply won’t do. The responsibility for the tragic situation we are experiencing lies not only with the leader of SYRIZA and his associates, nor only with the old parties and servants of foreign interests. We all bear a part of the responsibility, each according to the role he has played, his power and influence. These responsibilities are very different for all of us but they exist. And everyone will be judged and very severely indeed.

Athens, September 3, 2015

(translated from Greek)

(*) The decision to call an early election, announced on the 20th of August by Alexis Tsipras, with the encouragement of the Creditors and Washington, has found the political forces which still are against the capitulation in a dire state. Not unity between them, not clear perception of what is to be done, internal antagonisms for “power”, inside their camp, no new credible message for the continuation of the struggle.

The “Left Platform” tendency of SYRIZA, afraid that they would simply be kicked out of the SYRIZA party lists, decided to form a new party “Popular Unity”. They formed the (over-centralized) structure of the party, they wrote the outlines of its program and then called on other people to cooperate. Such a method provoked a lot of protests and remorse, but nobody else was really ready or had the will and the mechanism necessary to participate in the elections. Leaders of “Popular Unity” decided also that the electoral lists of the new party would be comprised essentially of the SYRIZA deputies who have disagreed with the Memorandum, thus excluding a possibility of political and social enlargement. And they have insisted on adopting a strong position on the introduction of a national currency for Greece, a point which divides the anti-memorandum camp.

All this provoked a rather negative atmosphere inside the “No” camp. The very probable consequence will be a rather low electoral result for “Popular Unity”, which has proven that it cannot by any means represent, even a significant part of what was the “No” camp in July.

This article represents the views its writer has supported in a lot of political talks and deliberations which have taken place in Greece between the 20th of August and the 3rd of September. But the question of how to build a front will remain very much in the agenda after the elections.

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The European Monetary System (EMS): Let’s Develop a Plan B for Europe!

September 23rd, 2015 by Oskar Lafontaine

Many in Europe had put great hopes in the election of Alexis Tsipras as Greek Prime Minister. When, after long and exhausting negotiations, the Syriza leader signed the European diktat, the disappointment was great. It would be unjust and presumptuous to want to give moral lessons to Alexis Tsipras and Syriza. After these experiences for the European left, it would be better to reflect on the conditions in which a democratic and social politics (and thus a left politics) is possible in Europe. We have learned one thing: while the European Central Bank, which claims to be independent and apolitical, can turn off the financial tap to a left government, a politics that is oriented toward democratic and social principles is impossible.

The old investment banker Mario Draghi is neither independent nor apolitical. He was with Goldman Sachs when this Wall Street bank aided the Greek government to distort its spreadsheets. And this is how it was able to enter the Euro.

In the past few months, many discussions have been held to try to work out if the drachma should have been reintroduced. But that led to nothing, and to reduce the debate to this question is a bad option. Not only in Greece, but in the whole South of Europe, youth unemployment is indecently high, and deindustrialization affects many countries in the Eurozone. A Europe in which the youth have no future is at risk of collapse and could fall prey to the forces of a resurgent nationalist extreme right.

Return to EMS

This is why the question for us cannot be, “The drachma or the euro?” Instead the left must decide if it will continue to defend the maintenance of the euro despite catastrophic social consequences, or if it will apply itself to a progressive transformation toward a flexible European monetary system.

For my part, I plead for a return to a European Monetary System (EMS), taking into account the experiences that we have had with this system and ameliorating its construction in the interests of all the participating countries. The EMS functioned for many years, certainly not without frictions, but better than the single currency.

Despite inevitable tensions, it continually permitted compromises that served to re-establish the equilibrium between different rates of economic development. Since the central banks of the member countries were required, and unfortunately only for a curtailed period, to stabilize the course of changes between the partners of the EMS.

But in the euro, the Spanish, Greek or Irish workers and retirees are alone in bearing the brunt of the internal devaluations through lowering of their salaries and their pensions, and the augmentation of their taxes. In contrast to the euro, the EMS favoured, and this is what counts, the cooperation between the people of Europe.

The successive re-evaluations and devaluations prevented too large of a gap between the economies of the European countries from emerging. The dominance of the Bundesbank has certainly always been a large problem, but this was incomparably less than the current tutelage exercised by the economy and government of Merkel, Schäuble and Gabriel toward the rest of Europe.

It is now only a question of time until a government in Italy, for example, recognizes that it cannot for much longer participate in the rampant de-industrialization of its country.

Necessity of Decentralization

In this context, in particular on the German left, an error of structural thinking has appeared that leads the debate on the future of Europe in a bad direction. Every demand to re-transfer a particular European authority to a national level is accused of nationalism or hostility to Europe. With such commentaries, the big media corporations chime in, in the interests of the large corporations and German banks, with musical accompaniment. And much of the left falls into the trap.

Already in 1976, the master of this ideology, Friedrich August von Hayek, demonstrated in a seminal article that the transfer of authority to the international level clears open the way for neoliberalism. And this is why the Europe of the free market and of non-regulated exchange of capital is never a left project. And since the European Commission and European Parliament are at the beck and call of the economic lobby, a new transfer of authority toward the European level signifies the deconstruction of the democratic and social state.

This – and in saying this I make a self-criticism, because, as a convinced European, I had long supported the politics of a growing transfer of tasks toward the European level – we should have been able to understand before. It is regrettable that the influential German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, and many political figures and economists having participated in these discussions continue to stick to this path, even while from one year to the next it seems more and more to lead to error and set the people of Europe against each other.

Thomas Mann dreamed of a European Germany: his wish has turned into its opposite. Today we have a German Europe. Democracy and decentralization are mutually conditioning. The larger a unity, the more opaque it is, the more removed it is, the less controllable it is.

What can be managed at a lower level, that of the level of the commune (local government), should be managed there, at the level of the canton, of the region, at the national level and that of the EU or the UN, it is necessary to hold to the same principle. One should not transfer to a higher level those things that can better manage themselves. The examples of bad transfers are now standard fare. We do not need those casinos of speculators who act globally, but instead savings banks that can still be controlled.

The banks of the Länder, who at the beginning were regulated with severity, have for a long time satisfied great financial interests. We don’t need energy giants acting across all of Europe with their large power stations and their grids, but instead city technical services and renewable energies and local storage capacities.

The national issuing banks have been put under pressure in a situation where exchange of capital is deregulated and where the door is wide open to global speculation. The issuing banks should once again do what they were initially founded for: financing states.

The passage to a renewed European Monetary System should be done step by step. When the drachma is reintroduced, for example – and this would be the first step – the ECB should support its course. Perhaps the Greek government should have encouraged Schäuble to develop his project of temporary exclusion of Greece from the Eurozone. He promised a restructure of the debts and human and technical support for the development of growth.

Develop a Plan B

If this offer had been sincere and if monetary support from the ECB had been agreed, then all the catastrophic scenarios developed by the partisans of the euro against the return of the drachma would have lost all foundation. Then Greece would have been able to, like Denmark with its krone, participate in the existing mechanism of the exchange rate (EMS II).

It is striking to see the degree to which economists and monetary experts of international reputation coming from conservative milieus and from the liberal left have recommended a Greek exit from the euro system. The courageous Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who already met with difficulties with his European counterparts because he truly made himself heard in political economy, had projected a scenario for returning to the drachma.

He wanted a plan B in case Draghi cut them off, thus using the “nuclear option,” as the specialists say. Effectively the ex-investment banker did make use of this weapon. With Schäuble, he is the real thug of the eurozone. From the moment Syriza arrived in power in Athens, he used the torture instruments of the European Central Bank to force Tsipras to his knees.

It is now necessary for the European left to develop a Plan B for the case where a member party arrives in a comparable situation. It is necessary to transform the European mechanism to remove from the ECB, which has no democratic legitimacy, the power to render democracy ‘out of order’ with a simple press of the button. The progressive introduction of a renovated EMS opens the way to this. Even the German left should discover the trap of Angel Merkel’s mantra of “If the euro dies, Europe is dead.”

This euro has become the instrument of domination of the German economy and of the German government over Europe. After the Greek experiences, a left that wants a democratic and social Europe must modify its European politics and set out upon new paths. •

Oskar Lafontaine is a former co-chair of Germany’s Die Linke (The Left). This article is reposted from Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

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Israel’s Left Is Finally Bringing Its Racism out of the Closet

September 23rd, 2015 by Jonathan Cook

With the announcement that Barack Obama will soon host Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, it is time to brace for the resumption of a tired debate about whether the Israeli prime minister seriously wishes to revive the peace process. Few now believe Netanyahu can change his right-wing spots, but many still wonder whether the Israeli left can exert an influence for good.

There is much speculation about whether opposition leader Isaac Herzog, head of the Zionist Union party, can be enticed into Netanyahu‘s government and encourage it towards peace. But a deeper truth about the Israeli left was exposed this month by the introduction of a draconian terrorism bill.

The measure, called “wildly authoritarian” by one Israeli analyst, lets the government define any group it dislikes, including civil ones, as a terrorist organisation. Offering non-material support, such as a “like” on Facebook, could land you three years in jail. “Abetting terror”, even unwittingly – say, by selling a car to someone who later carries out an attack – can earn you 30 years.

It is no surprise that Netanyahu and his right-wing partners rallied behind the legislation. But so too did the supposedly centre-left Zionist Union.

Lined up almost alone against the bill were the parliament’s small number of Arab legislators. Those chiefly targeted by the bill will be Israel’s 1.5 million Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the population, as well as Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Afterwards, Arab MPs berated the Israeli left. Jamal Zahalka accused his so-called opposition partners of being “the mother of all racism” in Israel.

An icon of the young left, Stav Shaffir, who led Israel’s social justice protests before becoming a Zionist Union MP in 2013, came in for especial scorn. She had failed even once to acknowledge Zahalka when their paths regularly crossed. “The extreme right are at least human beings – they say hello to you and smile at you,” he noted.

Many Israelis assumed he was grandstanding. But his assessment of a hypocritical left is widely shared by Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories – and for good reason.

The peace industry’s mistake has been to assume that there is a clearly delineated political spectrum in Israel from right to left, with the latter’s positions favouring human rights and peace. In fact, in contrast to perceptions abroad, Palestinians often point out that in admittedly limited ways Netanyahu has offered them more than his centre-left predecessors did.

His policy of “economic peace” – maybe better characterised as pacification – at least dismantled many of the hundreds of checkpoints that for a decade choked ordinary life for occupied Palestinians.

In recent years he has even opened small sections of the Israeli economy to the Palestinian minority.

Where Israel’s right distinguishes itself from the left is not on the question of justice for Palestinians. It is in its ready resort to fear-mongering and, alarmed by its own rhetoric, in its desperate need for the comfort blanket of anti-democratic legislation.

This difference is more superficial than it sounds, however.

The terrorism bill, for example, is designed to supersede emergency regulations devised by the British and readily adopted by Israel’s “leftist” founding fathers.

These regulations operated in the dark and were hard to challenge in the courts. The new terror legislation at least brings Israel’s medieval security apparatus into the daylight.

It is part of a pattern. One of Netanyahu’s early laws effectively barred the large Palestinian minority from living in hundreds of rural communities. Israel’s version of apartheid, screamed headlines.

Widely overlooked was the fact that these vetting committees were set up by Israel’s founders and quietly enforced by the communist-orientated kibbutz movement for decades. Netanyahu was simply putting a long-standing practice on the statute books.

And so too with his centrepiece legislation to define Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people – that is, of Jews around the world – rather than Israel’s own citizens.

Critics have accused him of outrageous ethnic chauvinism, ignoring the fact that the law will not change the Palestinian minority’s legal status. The bill only consolidates the mess of laws and administrative practices established in Israel’s first years to ensure degraded citizenship for Palestinians.

In fact, Netanyahu may be doing Palestinians a favour by making the state’s racist foundations and its occupation policies far more visible.

For Zahalka and other Palestinian leaders, it is easier to grapple with an Israel that grows ever less sophisticated, ever less capable of concealing its central goals. It looks uglier, not simply because things are getting worse but because they are finally out in the open.

The popular shift rightwards in Israel means that even the left can no longer afford to keep its racism hidden from view. That is why it is past time for the international community to admit there is no prospect of an Israel, of either the left or right, becoming a partner for peace.

As the left loses the battle for votes to Netanyahu and the right, paying lip-service to Palestinians’ rights and peace – or even smiling at an Arab MP – simply carries too heavy a price.

 

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“By Means Fair or Foul”: The British Army versus Jeremy Corbyn

September 23rd, 2015 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

There would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny. Unnamed British General, Sunday Times, Sep 20, 2015

Having stirred the soup of British politics sufficiently to make it interesting again, UK Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn finds himself exciting one conservative grouping after another. The pacemakers are refusing to work. Cardiac arrest in some circles, it seems, is imminent. The “security thesis” against him, entailing, for instance, that he would pose a threat to Her Majesty and country, continues to inflate.

This thesis takes the form of a double headed eagle: on the one hand, what he will do in the context of Britain proper, be it military deployments or, as it may turn out, non-deployments; on the other, what his approach to Israel might be. Regarding the former, the weekend offered a few unhappy surprises with the remarks of a senior serving general, who contended that the Army would initiate a mutiny if a Corbyn government tried to shrink their numbers should he win the elections in 2020.[1]

In true masculine reflex, the unnamed general claimed a few immutable points, already suggesting how his view of true authority is distinctly at odds with the idea of civilian control. Leave Trident alone, he was saying. Stay deep and buried in Nato. Do not announce “any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.” In short, going against a long understood rationale, leave war, and even peace, to the generals.

The general evidently found it difficult to forgive Corbyn for not taking a strong stance against the IRA, which managed to kill 730 British troops and injure 7,000 more during the Troubles. (He is said to have served in Northern Ireland during the 1980s and 1990s.) To even suggest that IRA members might be honoured, including the hunger strikers lead by Bobby Sands, was something that stirred the blood.

The statement made to the Sunday Times is a measure of how Corbyn has gotten under the skin of various branches of officialdom. “The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible fair or foul, to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.”[2]

The statement comes on the heels of a growing war lust within Labour’s own ranks. Corbyn is facing a good deal of jingo from the shadow cabinet, which is gradually moving into Caesarean assassination mode. Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn has simply decided to refuse any idea that nuclear disarmament might be affected, let alone a withdrawal from NATO. Case closed.

A primary topic of consideration is the embrace of airstrikes on Syria that Prime Minister David Cameron has been pressing for. As long as the plan to target ISIS targets in Syria is “coherent”, Cameron is guaranteed that a good number of the shadow cabinet will cross the floor.

What, then, about this general? Tory MEP, Daniel Hannan, has reminded the general, in the same breath as calling him an “idiot” that, “We’re not Bolivia for God’s sake.” A campaign of sorts has begun to out him, with a Change.org petition started by Left Unity securing over 5,000 signatures. It calls upon the prime minister to sack the general in question. “It is a direct interference in Britain’s democratic process.”

Ben Griffin, a former member of the Special Air Service in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hawk turned dove, has argued that such generals pose an obvious menace to democratic process. “He should go public with his statement. He is threatening the democratic will of the British people and he exposes the lie that the armed forces exist to protect our freedoms.”[3]

A Ministry of Defence source did note that such political commentary on any “future government” was unacceptable. “No one thinks that it is a good idea for a senior serving officer to undermine a potential future government.”[4] But a good deal of foot dragging was also in order, with the MoD telling theIndependent that launching an investigation into who actually spoke out would be nigh impossible – they would be, it was suggested, too many generals to investigate.

The rebuff would have been unthinkable if the matter had concerned another Edward Snowden like scenario. The big, threatening fish must be left alone, with the MoD reluctant to go through the dirty laundry of the higher-ups. As Griffin noted, “GCHQ could tell the MoD today which general it was.” They, after all, “collect the metadata of all phone calls and emails so they will have a record of which generals have been in touch with the journo who wrote the story.”

Now that would be a turn up for the books and tabloid headlines: GCHQ, grand surveillance bugbear, protects democracy by disclosing the identity of potentially mutinous, leaking general.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html

[2] http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1609597.ece

[3] https://www.rt.com/uk/316116-sas-corbyn-coup-general/

[4] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ministry-of-defence-condemn-army-general-behind-jeremy-corbyn-mutiny-threat-10510353.html

 

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Selected Articles: GMOs, Quantitative Easing & American Exceptionalism

September 23rd, 2015 by Global Research News

gmo_basf_735_350Genetically Modified Mustard in India: Monumental Fraud and Regulatory Delinquency

By Colin Todhunter, September 23, 2015

The approval and planting of large-scale field trials of genetically modified (GM) mustard in India is currently taking place. According to environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues, this is completely unconscionable. It is occurring even as the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Report awaits adjudication in India’s Supreme Court, which expressly recommends a bar on herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops. As a result, Rodrigues is mounting a legal challenge as the lead petitioner in a Public Interest Litigation.

gmo_africa_seeds_735_350-735x350Kenyan Farmers Suing Government to Uphold GM Crop Ban

By Christina Sarich, September 23, 2015

First Kenyans demonstrated to try to get through to their government for ‘encroaching on constitutional rights’ and reversing a GM crop ban, and now a small group of farmers has taken their plea to the courts.

central-banks-economyTime for “Quantitative Easing for People instead of Banks” (PQE): Raining Money on Main Street

By Ellen Brown, September 23, 2015

Predictions are that we will soon be seeing the “nuclear option” — central bank-created money injected directly into the real economy. All other options having failed, governments will be reduced to issuing money outright to cover budget deficits. So warns a September 18 article on ZeroHedge titled “It Begins: Australia’s Largest Investment Bank Just Said ‘Helicopter Money’ Is 12-18 Months Away.”

drapeau usDebunking the Myth of American Exceptionalism

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, September 23, 2015

The myth of American Exceptionalism is widely, but perhaps insincerely, believed by most American thought-leaders and political and economic elites, whether they are radical Republican Party members/voters or are members/voters of the moderate “Republican” wing of the Democratic Party.

putin-obamaWill US Grasp Putin’s Syria Lifeline?

By Robert Parry, September 23, 2015

Russian President Vladimir Putin has thrown U.S. policymakers what amounts to a lifeline to pull them out of the quicksand that is the Syrian war, but Official Washington’s neocons and the mainstream U.S. news media are growling about Putin’s audacity and challenging his motives.

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The US Has a Duty to the Syrian Refugees

September 23rd, 2015 by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

Many of us are familiar with the Emma Lazarus poem on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

These words, written in the late 19th century, depicted the United States as a refuge for people who had crossed the Atlantic seeking a new home and a better life than they experienced in the places they left behind. The current massive humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, which has created a flood of refugees exiting Syria, obliges our country to live up to the welcome promised in that poem.

With George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, which led to the birth of Islamic State, the U.S. government played a significant role in destabilizing the Middle East. The United States and its allies—including Saudi Arabia and Turkey—have trained, financed and supplied weapons to forces fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. This has exacerbated the refugee crisis we are now witnessing.

History professor and author Juan Cole wrote that the U.S. invasion of Iraq created 4 million refugees, about one-sixth of Iraq’s population. But “the U.S. took in only a few thousand Iraqi refugees after causing all that trouble,” he noted. The United States must do better with the Syrian refugees.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, famously said, “If you break it, you own it.”

Yet President Barack Obama pledged to lift the U.S. lamp to only 10,000 of the 4 million refugees fleeing Syria. After fielding criticism of the United States for taking so few, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the U.S. would accept 185,000 refugees over the next two years. But this figure reflects the total number from many countries; there is no indication the administration will accept more than 10,000 from Syria.

The United States has a moral obligation, and perhaps a legal one, to accept many of the Syrian refugees. Evolving international norms suggest that all the countries of the world have a duty to provide refuge to those who have fled their homeland to escape persecution or war. Because the United States has 28 percent of the world’s wealth, we should take at least 28 percent of the refugees, according to Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies. That would amount to about 350,000 people. And she says the United States should immediately pay 28 percent of the United Nations’ refugee relief request, about $5.5 billion, to support nearly 6 million refugees from Syria and nearby countries through the end of 2015.

The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol define a refugee as someone outside his or her country who has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. Due to the fear of persecution, he or she is unable or unwilling to remain in his or her country of origin.

Although many Syrian refugees may meet this definition, many others don’t because they fled to escape the violence of the armed conflict ravaging their country, not necessarily to avoid persecution.

Some scholars, however, think a much broader definition of “refugee” is evolving under conventional and customary international law. For example, William Thomas Worster wrote in the Berkeley Journal of International Law that a refugee could be a person who has a well-founded fear of “a threat to life, security or liberty due to events seriously disturbing public order” throughout his or her country—and because of that fear is unable or unwilling to remain or return.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has defined “temporary protection” of refugees as “a means, in situations of large-scale influx and in view of the impracticality of conducting individual refugee status determination procedures, for providing protection to groups or categories of persons who are in need of international protection.” Temporary protection “is primarily conceived as an emergency protection measure of short duration in response to large-scale influxes, guaranteeing admission to safety, protection from non-refoulement and respect for an appropriate standard of treatment.” The first time the UNHCR formally recommended the granting of temporary protection involved “persons fleeing the conflict and human rights abuses in the former Yugoslavia.”

The principle of international law called non-refoulement is the prohibition of forced return. This means a country has a duty not to return an individual to a country where he or she will face persecution. Article 33(1) of the Refugee Convention provides, “No Contracting State shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Even if a country is not a party to the Refugee Convention, it is bound by the customary international law norm of non-refoulement.

As reported in a recent New York Times editorial, immigrants provide many more benefits than burdens, including paying more in taxes than they claim in government benefits and doing jobs that are hard to fill. As the Congressional Budget Office concluded in 2013, gross domestic product would rise by 5.4 percent and the federal budget deficit would fall by $897 billion over the next 20 years if undocumented workers are given a path to citizenship and more work-based visas are made available to foreigners.

In accordance with its legal and moral duty, the United States should step up to the plate and welcome significant numbers of refugees. More than 20 former senior Democratic and Republican officials are urging the Obama administration to accept 100,000 Syrian refugees, and to contribute up to $2 billion to finance their resettlement and help international refugee efforts. The United States has already accepted 1,500 Syrian refugees since the beginning of the hostilities and has contributed more than $4 billion in humanitarian aid for them.

Instead of demanding regime change in Syria, the United States and its allies must stop providing weapons, training and funding to the violent opposition forces. They should enlist Russia and Iran in pursuing a diplomatic solution to this tragic conflict.

Up to this point, some of Syria’s immediate neighbors—Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt—have taken in 95 percent of the refugees, according to Amnesty International. Turkey has accepted nearly 2 million, followed by Lebanon, which has taken over 600,000. Jordan has taken half a million. Iraq has accepted almost 250,000. Egypt has accepted more than 130,000.

Germany agreed to take 800,000 refugees. Britain will take in 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020, at the rate of 4,000 per year. Canada will take 10,000; Australia will take 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees; Venezuela will take 20,000.

But Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait—the wealthiest nations in the region—have taken none of the refugees. Likewise, Iran and Russia, which support the Assad government, have refused permanent residency or asylum to the refugees.

Some of the Syrian refugees are Palestinians who first became refugees after the 1947-48Nakba, when 80 percent of historic Palestine was ethnically cleansed to create Israel. They are “double refugees.” But Israel has refused to take in any Syrian refugees.

Israel has apparently forgotten that in 1939, 937 Jewish refugees seeking to escape the Nazis made the perilous ocean voyage on the SS St. Louis, but the United States turned them away. Forced to return to Europe, hundreds of them were then killed by Hitler’s forces. The nations of the world, and particularly the United States, must ensure the current refugees obtain the shelter to which they are entitled.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her latest book is, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Previous books include: Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd); and an anthology, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse.

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America: The World’s Greatest Threat

September 23rd, 2015 by Stephen Lendman

All US presidents at least since WW II were unindicted war criminals, Obama the latest in a long line of rogue leaders, reflecting America’s odious history, systematically pursuing empire, ravaging and destroying one country after another, remaining unaccountable for his high crimes.

Whoever succeeds him in 2017 will continue the same reckless policies, maybe overstepping enough to launch WW III, potential armageddon if occurs.

All presidential aspirants from both parties favor endless wars of conquest. Peace is anathema. Maintaining America’s menacing military global footprint is prioritized, its empire of bases, its alliances with other rogue states, its rage to dominate unchallenged – the greatest threat to world security and stability.

No nation threatens them more than America, none more likely to start global war, none more greatly endangering humanity’s survival.

Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick co-authored “The Untold History of the United States” – now made into a 10-part Showtime documentary, covering US history since the FDR era.

In discussing the series, Stone said when he studied untold US history, “one thing that really hit (him) hard was (America’s) nefarious involvement in the Middle East” – beginning before WW II, exploding with GHW Bush’s 1991 Iraq invasion and subsequent endless wars.

“We never got out of there,” said Stone. “Once we were in, we’re in forever.” The curse of oil cost millions of lives. America “destabilized the entire region, created chaos. And then we blame ISIS for the (horrors) we created.”

“It’s all about the oil,” Kuznick explained. “You remember the bumper sticker: ‘What is our oil doing under their sand?’ “

“We created” violence and chaos throughout the region – “then have a grand military plan…(M)ilitary solutions just don’t work.”

Americans don’t get it, Stone explained. They live in a bubble – spoon-fed what government, academia and supportive media want them to know. Reagan touted a “shining city on a hill.”

“It’s very comforting to be an American,” Stone said. “You get the sense that you are safe and have prosperity of material goods, and that you have enemies everywhere – Russia, China, Iran, North Korea.”

“You get into this cocoon where you have a big country, two (protective) oceans, but you’re always under threat.” Stone served in Vietnam, returned home “puzzled, completely confused about what was going on there. But I did get a heavy dose of the doublespeak, the militarese talk,” he said.

He began asking questions, read “progressive history” when studying filmmaking. New ideas influenced his work since the 1980s. His films include Salvador, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Nixon and Wall Street among others – challenging the official narrative.

His film about Edward Snowden was delayed until 2016. His “Untold History of the United States” collaboratively with Peter Kuznick presents an alternative perspective from the FDR era to today – far different from mainstream propaganda.

The documentary’s last episode is called “Bush & Obama: Age of Terror,” covering the following topics:

— The Project For A New American Century, the neocon think tank calling for a new Pearl Harbor to enlist popular sentiment for endless wars, notably in the Middle East;

— The tyranny of neocons responsible for pushing America to war with Iraq, using fabricated intelligence;

— The repressive Patriot Act, the first of a series of post-9/11 police state laws heading America toward full-blown tyranny;

— The destructive War on Terror at home and abroad;

— Using 9/11 as a pretext to invade and destroy Afghanistan;

— Unconstitutional torture and other forms of abuse at Guantanamo and other US black sites;

— Mainstream media’s support for US wars of aggression;

— Obama selling out to Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma and other corporate interests;

— Bailing out bankers responsible for causing financial and economic crisis conditions;

— The rise of unprecedented CEO compensation at the expense of a disappearing middle class;

— Obama’s betrayal – his failure to deliver hope, change, or transparency, his prosecution of government whistleblowers, his continuation of Bush’s national security state; and

— His drone wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia – including his appalling Big Lie claiming “(u)nlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources…We do it because it’s right.”

Stone calls his book and documentary an antidote to “educational crime. American exceptionalism has to be driven out of our curriculums,” he said. We’re not under threat. We are the threat” – to world peace, stability and security.

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.

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Fears Mount that the USDA’s Organic Certification Process Is Being Hijacked by Corporate Interests

September 23rd, 2015 by J. D. Heyes

Some organic food experts are worried that the term used to describe non-genetically modified crops and produce may soon become nearly meaningless, thanks in large part to undue (readcorporate) influence on the Department of Agriculture.

According to Jerome Rigot, PhD, writing in a blog posted at the Cornucopia Institute, which promotes food safety backed by science, it may no longer be accurate to rely on the USDA’s “organic” labeling as remaining “true to its mandate of assuring consumers that food under this label is truly healthy and grown or raised with minimal impact to the environment,” as well as respecting “the health and well-being of the workers and animals involved.”

Rigot notes that, among other concerns, Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, recently downgraded its rating of the Agriculture Department’s organic seal and label. The director of the Consumer Safety and Sustainability Center for the magazine, Dr. Urvashi Rangan, testified to the National Organic Standards Board in late 2014: “Organic is slipping. And as a result, we have downgraded its rating from highly meaningful to meaningful.” He further noted that the rule of the magazine “is to help educate people about what organic means as well as what it doesn’t mean.”

Regarding these concerns, Rigot wrote:

As an example, the Cornucopia Institute filed formal legal complaints with the USDA in December 2014 against 14 giant poultry and dairy CAFOs (read: concentrated animal feeding operations or “factory farms”) for allegedly violating the USDA organic regulations requiring outdoor and pasture access. Each complaint was summarily dismissed, withoutan investigation, by the enforcement division of the National Organic Program (NOP), which stated, “The NOP has reviewed these complaints and has determined that investigation is unwarranted.”

Inept, corporatists or lobbyists

The determination was odd, says Rigot, because literally hundreds of high-res photos, satellite imagery and state regulatory documents were submitted as evidence to the NOP which, together, should have produced more than enough doubt to motivate someone to launch an investigation.

A former NOSB board member who manages the country’s first certified organic dairy farm, Kevin Englebert, was clearly disappointed by the NOP decision, seeing it as a lapse of the organization’s responsibilities.

“For the NOP to not even investigate these facilities means one of three things: 1) the personnel who made that decision are inept, 2) they are too close and friendly with corporate lobbyists and multimillion-dollar certifiers that are involved in the process, or 3) the most likely scenario, corrupt politicians are preventing them from enforcing the law,” he said, as quoted by Rigot, who intimated that elements of all three reasons might be at play.

He noted that the National Organic Program is a very small part of the Agriculture Department. However, many large corporations have a significant vested interest in organic foods, especially the processed foods industry (including General Mills, Smuckers, Coca-Cola, etc.), and similar to GMO corporations, they’ll do whatever it takes to expand their bottom line.

“Circumstantial evidence makes it reasonable to conclude that the same type of undue industry influence that appears to have prevented Vilsack and the USDA from acting quickly to end the Salmonella outbreak [in 2014] and limit the health toll is behind efforts to dilute the federal organic standards, control the NOP leadership, and limit or obstruct the ability of the congressionally authorized National Organic Standard Board from doing its job efficiently and with integrity,” Rigot wrote.

For more breaking news regarding organic agriculture, check out Organics.news, powered by FETCH.news.

Compromised board members

In September 2014, we reported that the Cornucopia Institute had conducted a study to examine the voting records and backgrounds of the 15 members of the NOSB.

The board is an advisory body created by the secretary of agriculture to make recommendations aimed at preserving and protecting the organic farming industry. What’s more, the board is also required to maintain and update the National List of Approved and Prohibited Substances – a list that identifies substances and other compounds that cannot be used in organic crop and livestock production.

The NOSB’s seats are supposed to be filled with members representing farmers, environmentalists, public interest advocates, handlers, retailers, scientists and a USDA certifying agent. However, Cornucopia found in its study that corporate representatives were filling seats intended for farmers and other independent organic industry stakeholders, often leading to decisions that were not beneficial to the organic food and livestock industry.

Details surrounding that study are posted here.

Sources:

Cornucopia.org

NaturalNews.com

AMS.USDA.gov

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Ahmed Mohamed and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki: Obama’s Kill List Hypocrisy

September 23rd, 2015 by Margaret Kimberley

The president that expanded U.S. wars throughout the Muslim world thinks he can make himself appear Muslim-friendly by inviting a kid to the White House. President Obama “makes a mockery of principles such as the right to trial when his agenda finds democracy too inconvenient,” calmly placing people on his weekly Kill List, then pretends to empathize with a teenager victimized by Texas-style Islamophobia.“Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”

Those words came from president Obama’s twitter account after a 14-year old Texan named Ahmed Mohamed became world famous. The high school student brought his homemade clock to school but was later escorted out in handcuffs after a teacher reported that he had a bomb. Racism, Islamophobia, draconian “zero tolerance” policies, and base ignorance all played a role in the disgraceful turn of events.

When social media turned Mohamed’s name into a household word the president weighed-in with his words of support. But unlike other individuals who felt genuine empathy or outrage about this case, the presidential tweet came with doses of hypocrisy and opportunism. Obama is no protector of the rights of Muslim teens, as Abdulrahman al-Awlaki’s family can attest.

Abdulrahman and his father Anwar were murdered on the president’ orders in 2011. Both American citizens, they ran afoul of the never ending “war on terror” and Obama’s political ambitions in the year before his re-election campaign.

In the absence of legislation, judicial precedent or any case law, Barack Obama declared that he had the right to assassinate anyone in the world, including American citizens like the Awlakis. Anwar al-Awlaki was never even charged [3] with a crime. Like his predecessors, Obama makes a mockery of principles such as the right to trial when his agenda finds democracy too inconvenient. His acolytes love to point out that the president once taught constitutional law. That fact doesn’t count for much in reality but neither do any of the claims that justify continuing a war of terror against the Muslim world.

The Obama administration made quite a big show of announcing the “kill list” policy which ended the Awlakis lives. The New York Times was happily used as the messenger [4]when the administration eagerly revealed the inner workings of the assassination decision making process. There was precious little outrage about the president of the United States acting like a mafia boss, even after Anwar al-Awlaki was rubbed out like a rival gangster. When his son was killed in another drone strike two weeks later the White House pretended it had all been a mistake and tried to cover their crime by claiming that the 16-year old was 21.

Needless to say there were teenage victims of the United States and NATO in Libya in 2011. That was not just a bad year for the Awlakis, but for millions of people first in Libya and then Syria who had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of the regime change line.

These aggressions should not be forgotten because the president decided to jump on the #istandwithahmed bandwagon. He may have Ramadan Iftar dinners at the White House or speak Arabic words at the opportune moment, but his policies against the Muslim world are even more ruthless than those of his much more reviled predecessor George W. Bush.

The president cannot be let off the hook because of a social media post. He bears a great deal of responsibility for the continued animus against Muslim people. By criminalizing an entire region he gives credence to the belief that its people are criminals and unworthy of being thought of as human beings. If the Awlakis can be killed, if Syrians and Libyans can have their countries torn asunder and Pakistanis and Afghans can be victims of drone strikes on presidential whims, then a precocious teenager can be hauled off by the police.

Obama has always gotten too much credit and too little scorn because he is disliked by racist, dead ender Republicans. Of course, if Fox news and Sarah Palin criticize the president’s response to the Ahmed Mohamed case he is again seen as the bulwark of enlightenment when he is in fact just the more effective evil.

Ahmed was released without being arrested and no charges were filed against him. He has been embraced by people all over the world and the White House is not alone in rolling out the red carpet of welcome. But the effects of the traumatic experience have apparently not left him. His father reported that his son has lost his appetite and isn’t sleeping well. Ahmed added that the family is now “torn and confused” by their experience.

There are thousands of Ahmeds all over the country, reliving the terror of interactions with police. There are Ahmeds in the Middle East and north Africa who have survived America’s attempts to take their lives. Unfortunately that will all be forgotten when Obama gets his photo opportunity with this teenager. He is lucky to live in Texas and not Syria. In this country the president isn’t trying to kill him.

Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. [5]Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Notes:
[1] http://www.blackagendareport.com/ahmed_mohamed_and_abdulrahman_al-awlaki
[2] http://www.blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/war-against-islam
[3] https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-obama-constitutional-challenge-proposed-killing-us-citizen?redirect=national-security/al-aulaqi-v-obama
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html
[5] http://freedomrider.blogspot.com/

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