Global Research

Eric Zuesse, commenting about Thad Beversdorf’s article about Sanders’s record

On August 19th, the brilliant Thad Beversdorf opened by posting a five-minute-long 2003 video of Vermont’s then-congressman Bernie Sanders, who was interrogating the deified Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, and ripping to shreds Greenspan’s record — and Sanders pointed out Greenspan’s falsely opening his response by Greenspan’s saying then, “Congressman, we have the highest standard of living in the world.” Bernie immediately shot back against that, “No, we don’t,” and he promptly cited several nations whose standard of living is, in fact, higher than ours. And that’s just for starters.

Beversdorf followed this video by his own documentation, which showed that everything which was being cited by Sanders in this exchange with Greenspan was true, including what Sanders was predicting would become the increasing problems for the U.S. economy up until the present time, now under both  a Republicanand  a Democratic President.

Beversdorf then pointedly observed, “essentially every accusation Sanders lays on Greenspan could be repeated today to our subsequent central banking gods.”

However, Sanders there is implicitly ripping to shreds not only Greenspan, and the current Fed chief Janet Yellen, but the two Presidents who appointed them both. Sanders was doing this back in 2003, partly as a historian about the past, and partly as a prophet about the future — the present that we’re experiencing today. It’s today’s news, but described twelve years ago by Sanders.

This is the type of person America needs in the Oval Office: someone who not only recognizes what the nation’s real problems are in the present, but whose diagnosis of where the current policies are taking this country has already been confirmed by the subsequent 12 years of American history following the prediction. Unlike other politicians who are basically poll-driven blather, Sanders is a proven progressive leader, somebody with both insight and guts, which is exactly what this nation needs.

After watching that brief video, all the ‘progressives’ who complain that Sanders isn’t 100% in accord with the views that those particular individuals hold, and who say that this supposed progressive imperfection of Sanders is reason they won’t vote for him, will just be displaying their arrogance, because they think they’re so ‘progressive,’ and so  correct in everything they believe, so that only someone who is 100% in agreement withthem  is ‘adequate’ to vote for. Let such perfectionist ‘progressives,’ then, go off to some dictatorship, where a ‘progressive’ fool who suits them because he or she is 100% in agreement with them, is trying to ram down everyone else’s throats their particular ideas and policies and calling this ‘democracy’ instead of dictatorship — which it would be. Nobody has an overall record of actions, not mere words, that’s better than Sanders’s. He is so real, in both words and deeds, that he has always said what he believes, and believed what he said, and done what he promised — even up till today. It’s an authentically remarkable political record.

I say this though I’ve often disagreed with Sanders’s deference to many of President Obama’s international policies that I consider to be atrocious. But I also understand the political reasons why it might be an unconstructive waste for Sanders to take issue with those policies until he is inside the White House and in a very different position, where he can change Washington, and not merely complain about it (which isn’t his objective; he has never pandered). On all matters where Sanders has supported Obama’s wrong foreign policies, almost 100% of Congress also did. Sanders would have achieved nothing by either speechifying or voting against it. He did vote against our invading Iraq. Hillary Clinton voted for that catastrophic invasion. But that’s the smallest of the differences between his record and Hillary’s. (After all, Obama in 2002 spoke out against invading Iraq, but as President, he has actually invaded, and perpetrated coups and attempted coups, in perhaps more countries than any other President. Hillary participated eagerly in this.)

Sanders isn’t merely a bit  better than any Democratic Presidential candidate in a very long time; he’s enormously  better, and it’s shown in his record in public office, not by mere words. But it has also been shown in words.

Sanders has always said: after the 2008 crash, all the bailouts should go, and should have gone, to Main Street (consumers and workers), not to Wall Street. Beversdorf, in his explanation of America’s continuing economic malaise up to the present time, noted especially the soaring consumer debt that has accompanied the soaring stock market, which are the two opposite sides of the Obama-Bernanke-Yellen continuation of the Bush-Greenspan-Bernanke policies of trickle-down instead of percolate-up economics. Beversdorf said: “The above chart depicts that every worker in America today has increased their consumer debt levels by about 40% since the ‘end’ of the credit crisis [in 2009]. Think about that for a moment.” The more that the rich have become rich, the more that everyone else has gone into debt to the rich. The Fed’s low-interest-rate policies haven’t reduced interest-rates for consumers, but have instead boosted corporate profits and the stock market, and CEO pay. (The entire theory behind it is trickle-down.)

Meanwhile, wages have declined. Where will the money come from to pay those soaring consumer debts? Beversdorf concludes: “There is no other end than a bad one and I’m sorry my friends but that is a (simple) mathematical certainty.” Bernie was predicting all of this back in 2003. Furthermore, even Warren Buffett, long in contention for being the world’s wealthiest person, admitted on 26 November 2006, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” With a little help from their friends. And, even some insiders have admitted that the people at the top are gangsters. Books have even been written about it. And yet it’s the people at the top who received the bailouts. The result has been a $7 trillion increase in the U.S. federal debt since 2009. So: not only consumers’ debts have soared, but so has the debt that future Americans will be paying in their taxes — all going to today’s mega-gang.

As Jeffrey Sachs said (12:30 on the video):

“I meet a lot of these people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now. I’m going to put it very bluntly. I regard the moral environment as pathological. And I’m talking about the human interactions that I have. I’ve not seen anything like this, not felt it so palpably. These people are out to make billions of dollars and nothing should stop them from that. They have no responsibility to pay taxes. They have no responsibility to their clients. They have no responsibility to people, counterparties in transactions. They are tough, greedy, aggressive, and feel absolutely out of control, you know, in a quite literal sense. And they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent, and they have a docile president, a docile White House, and a docile regulatory system that absolutely can’t find its voice. It’s terrified of these companies.”

And that’s why people like Greenspan and Yellen are at the Fed. After all, gangsters were even able to hire a hit-team with impunity to murder a retired CIA chief. If Sanders will get the bodyguards he needs, who will pay them? He’s an incredibly courageous person, and needs the public’s support — our votes, if not also donations of time and/or money.

At least (as shown in that video which Beversdorf presented) Greenspan later acknowledged that the views that he had championed while he was the Fed chief were wrong. But will those of today’s ‘progressive’ voters that are rejecting Sanders, come to recognize they too were wrong? Or, are their views even more set in cement than Greenspan’s libertarian views were? Sanders needs all of them to join his battle, because Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Ag, etc., will be supporting the other candidates. Sanders is not for sale; he’s for serious. We, the people, will be make-or-break for him, because he has always been, and is, make-or-break for us, in this extremely corrupt country.

Here is that superb and thought-provoking article from Beversdorf:

http://www.firstrebuttal.com/an-almost-perfect-predictor-of-gdp-growth-and-bernie-lays-the-boots/

If you’re going to leave a reader-comment that objects to something said here, please click on the links first. Too many people don’t do that, and so leave objections that were already answered. The links are the documentation, which is intended to respond to any possible objections. If you haven’t read the links, please don’t waste the time of the readers of comments here.

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

 

 

There have been several good films and videos about 9/11. But the film by award-winning film-maker Massimo Mazzucco Released in 2013 is in a class by itself.

For those of us who have been working on 9/11 for a long time, this is the film we have been waiting for.

Whereas there are excellent films treating the falsity of particular parts of the official account, such as the Twin Towers or WTC 7, Mazzucco has given us a comprehensive documentary treatment of 9/11, dealing with virtually all of the issues.

There have, of course, been films that treated the fictional official story as true. And there are films that use fictional stories to portray people’s struggles after starting to suspect the official story to be false.

But there is no fiction in Mazzucco’s film – except in the sense that it clearly and relentlessly exposes every part of the official account as fictional.

Because of his intent at completeness, Mazzucco has given us a 5-hour film. It is so fascinating and fast-paced that many will want to watch it in one sitting. But this is not necessary, as the film, which fills 3 DVDs, consists of 7 parts, each of which is divided into many short chapters.

These 7 parts treat Air Defence, The Hijackers, The Airplanes, The Pentagon, Flight 93, The Twin Towers, and Building 7. In each part, after presenting facts that contradict the official story, Mazzucco deals with the claims of the debunkers (meaning those who try to debunk the evidence provided by the 9/11 research community).

The Introduction, reflecting the film’s title, deals with 12 uncanny parallels between Pearl Harbor and September 11.

The film can educate people who know nothing about 9/11 (beyond the official story), those with a moderate amount of knowledge about the various problems with the official story, and even by experts. (I myself learned many things.)

Mazzucco points out that his film covers 12 years of public debate about 9/11. People who have been promoting 9/11 truth for many of these years will see that their labors have been well-rewarded: There is now a high-quality, carefully-documented film that dramatically shows the official story about 9/11 to be a fabrication through and through.

This is truly the film we have been waiting for.

Part I

Part II

Part III

 

 

Availability: The film is freely available to the world at:

1. The film-maker’s own website, complete with detailed index: http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=167

Independent German financial journalist Lars Schall talked with Adnan Zuberi, the director / producer of the documentary movie “9/11 in the Academic Community.“ Zuberi says: “Critical perspectives on 9/11 are systematically excluded from universities.” 

I hope that this material will be made available to the wider international academic community in order to foster a wider, fact-based discussion among researchers and students alike.

Friedrich Steinhäusler
Professor of Physics at Salzburg University
Former Co-Director of the NATO ARW on Catastrophic Terrorism
Past Chairman, US/German Transatlantic Expert Group on Terrorism

This documentary confronts the academy’s uncritical response to the defining event of our times. It is an essential viewing for everyone in academe.

Lance deHaven-Smith
Professor of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University
Former President of the Florida Political Science Association

Academic freedom protects scholars who report inconvenient truths from the uninformed, but, as Adnan Zuberi reminds us, academic freedom is also the responsibility of scholars to pursue the truth.

Dr. Roger W. Bowen
Served as General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors,
Professor of Political Science and President of the State University of New York.

“9/11 in the Academic Community”, awarded for “Documentary Achievement” at the University of Toronto Film Festival, can be ordered through its website.

“9/11 in the Academic Community” takes a critical look at the academic community’s treatment of critical perspectives on 9/11 by exploring the taboo that shields the American government’s narrative from scholarly examination. Its director / producer Adnan Zuberi is 26 years old and graduated from the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo (theoretical physics). He lives as an independent filmmaker in Toronto, Canada.

Preview: 9/11 in the Academic Community

TRANSCRIPT

Lars Schall: Why did you become interested in the topic of 9/11 in general?

Adnan Zuberi: Of the many ways I became interested, I was most interested in academia’s treatment of critical perspectives on 9/11. During my time as a university student, I noticed that there was a much larger picture that required intellectual attention. For example, Maj. Gen. Mark O. Schissler, who served as the Pentagon’s Deputy Director for the War on Terrorism, said to the Washington Times that this War on Terror is a generational war that will last 50 to 100 years. Schissler emphasized that politics should not interfere with this and the public needs to be committed to this long-duration war. (1) I became interested in documenting how many professors are harsh critics of various aspects of the War on Terror but most unusually, they accept without any critical examination, the narrative serving as the foundation for this war. No thinking person would ever commit to a vague 100 year war, or even a 5 year war, without examining its foundation. More importantly, how can one conclude that the War on Terror will last this long? As to how they arrived at these large numbers is itself suspicious as they indicate more of a geostrategic plan for expanding an empire for this century in view of scare resources and competing regional powers. How can professors not question the foundation of such a suspicious long-duration war? So I began studying the mechanisms that structure intellectual thinking in this manner, exploring the nature and dimensions of the taboo surrounding critical perspectives on 9/11 within universities.

LS: Why did you develop an interest in the specific topic regarding 9/11 that your movie is dedicated to?

AZ: To expand on my answer above, I became interested and astonished at the specific ways in which the taboo against a critical examination of 9/11 works within academic institutions. I began documenting the phenomena in my film. If a professor verbally expressed his or her view that the events of 9/11 require a critical examination as to whether they serve as a justification for this generational War on Terror, the professor would incur social punishments from the university community. Additionally, local politicians would denounce the professor and in one stance, the political community threatened the funding of a university if it didn’t fire the professor. Universities have to make difficult alliances with the government.

Since verbal expression didn’t work, the film documents how professors then pursued the scholarly practice of engaging in a rigorous gathering and presentation of facts in a paper submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. Despite the attitudes of journal editors serving as a barrier, there are over twenty peer-reviewed papers published in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and engineering. All of these papers have major implications as they show the official narrative of 9/11, as told to use by the Bush Administration, does not meet scholarly expectations. (2) And most interestingly, there is no response to or discussion of these papers within the larger academic community. These documentations show how critical perspectives on 9/11 are systematically excluded from universities.

Universities should be concerned about how the 9/11 narrative’s construction exemplifies anti-scholarship. For example, the crux of the official 9/11 Commission Report, which concerns how these alleged hijackers organized, was entirely derived from torture testimony. The CIA tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), over 180 times in one month. KSM later said that he made up a story in trying to escape the torture and the CIA also destroyed many of the tape recording crucial to the 9/11 narrative. So they based a story of that fateful day around on such testimony that is used to change domestic and foreign policy around the world in the worst of ways.

LS: How did you choose your interviewees?

AZ: As the film’s focus was on academia’s treatment of critical perspectives on 9/11, I chose to interview professors who have published papers or taught official courses on this subject from this particular angle. I also pursued other professors who felt that there is nothing wrong with the academic community’s discourse on 9/11. They politely declined because they felt the film’s focus was not within their expertise. However, I am happy to report that many of the professors who declined to be interviewed did watch the film and are now very supportive.

LS: What did you learn by producing that movie?

AZ: I learned that the film has an extraordinary potential in rationally persuading the academic community to seriously reflect on the intellectual discourse on 9/11 and the War on Terror.

In terms of approach, I departed from all activists in the movement towards an honest investigation of the events of that fateful day. For example, if there was an environmental hazard (i.e., industrial pollution hurting wildlife) occurring across the nation, many people may attempt to resolve this by gathering into groups that would directly speak or write to politicians, media personalities, and so forth. However, there wasn’t much of a change in the approach of activists who were tackling the subject of investigating 9/11 which was different by several orders of magnitude than say, an environmental issue, in terms of its political implications. There was a series of communication failures among activists as traditional methods were failing and this can be probably attributed to an absence in formal training in the educational curriculum. Students around the world, whether young or old, are taught about the countless dates and events of how the Nazis committed horrific crimes, but students are not taught how to formally detect, organize, and prevent radical parties that may jeopardize the nation. Such topics are orders of magnitude above average issues (i.e., economy and healthcare) that dominate daily discourse.

In recognizing this, I learned that taboo subjects cannot be discussed directly and publicly with people, especially professors. The art of communicating taboos, that have unprecedented political ramifications, is essentially through private methods that promotes a comfortable atmosphere that protects the identity and views of people holding important positions in society. As a result, I have been able to engage intellectuals that would otherwise never respond to civil society’s concerns about deeply important issues. The film has received positive and supportive reviews from several academics, some at very high levels, including a former President of the State University of New York, an Officer of the Order of Canada and award-winning former Director of the CBC (the Canadian crown corporation broadcasting national public radio and television), and a former Director of the NATO Advanced Research on Catastrophic Terrorism. The film is also making its way into curriculum, as students in university classes are very supportive of the film.

LS: One academic whose views on 9/11 are widely discussed in the internet is Noam Chomsky. Your take?

AZ: Professor Noam Chomsky wrote in his book, 9-11, an international best-seller, „… evidence about the perpetrators of 9-11 has been hard to find…. Nevertheless, despite the thin evidence, the initial conclusion about 9-11 is presumably correct.“ (3) This phenomena, where professors „presume“ something to be true despite evidence to the contrary or without sincerely investigating evidence to the contrary, comes under the field examining „impairments in professional inquiry“. Charles E. Lindblom, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University, wrote extensively about impaired inquiry among professors. I think we should still appreciate Chomsky’s past contributions to the study of propaganda and war crimes. Activists attending presentations by Chomsky or participating in online forums about his paradoxical position on 9/11 should realize their energies can be better spent elsewhere.

LS: Do you consider it as ironic that some features of the official narrative of the events unfolding on 9/11 hardly stand the test of a real rigorous and sober scientific approach to them? If so, could you give us an example, please?

AZ: I receive e-mails from professors every week that agree that it is ironic that elements within the official narrative do not pass basic scholarly criteria. A most basic principle of scholarship is to verify sources of information. I can give four examples of information crucial to the 9/11 narrative that was destroyed by government officials. Academics should reflect on how this is a serious violation of scholarship.

[A] Some of the crucial tape recordings of communications among Federal Aviation Agency workers, concerning the hijackings that were occurring, were destroyed by a FAA supervisor. (4) [B] Some of the tape recordings of the torture testimony crucial to how 9/11 was organized were destroyed by the Central Intelligence Agency. [C] Despite an agreement to maintain Securities and Exchange Commission stock market information, critical data regarding the high probability of insider trading in the days leading up to 9/11 were destroyed. [D] Most academics in civil engineering are quite disturbed when they learn of a third skyscraper, WTC7, that came down on 9/11 that was not even hit by a plane. A computer model was used by NIST, a scientific institute funded by the U.S. government, to explain WTC7’s demise. However, civil engineers trying to verify the computer model have been denied and the details of the computer model have been classified.

LS: Do you think that academics shy away from the subject of 9/11 in order to avoid to be scorned per se by their colleagues as „conspiracy theorists“? In other words, is this also a matter of timidity and the lack of courage in the sense as Robert F. Kennedy once put it: „Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.“ (5)

AZ: Academics who have taught for over 30 years in top universities said during the film interviews that the main reason why academics do not critically examine 9/11 is because of timidity and laziness. Kenneth Westhues, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo, stated in his endorsement of the film: „Canadian academic historian Michiel Horn has observed that as a rule, professors are milquetoasts. Here is documentary proof of Horn’s observation, on the subject of this century’s first great day of infamy. This film also documents exceptions to Horn’s rule: professors with guts enough to raise critical questions. Highly recommended, especially for provoking reasoned political discussion and debate“. Westhues‘ statement concurs with Robert Kennedy’s observation regarding timidity. Professors have a unique profession because they have academic freedom. What’s also unfortunately unique is that most professors don’t make use of academic freedom. However, I am optimistic as I receive frequent e-mails from academics wanting to work together to bring to a halt this fraudulent 100-year war on terror.

LS: Thank you very much for taking your time, Mr. Zuberi!

REFERENCES:

(1) “General foresees ‘generational war’ against terrorism”, Washington Times, December 13, 2006, here.

(2) Peer-reviewed Papers on Critical Perspectives on 9/11, published at the web site of “9/11 in the Academic Community” here.

(3) Noam Chomsky: “9-11” (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), pp. 120-121.

 (4) Matthew L. Wald: “F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers‘ Statements”, New York Times, May 6, 2004, here.

(5) Robert F. Kennedy: „Day of Affirmation,“ speech delivered at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, June 6th, 1966, published here.

The German Defence Ministry announced on Sunday that 100 of its soldiers are going to receive training from the Israeli army.

A spokesman for the ministry said that the exercises will last three weeks and come within the framework of Germany-Israel military cooperation.

According to Welt am Sonntag newspaper, the German troops will develop their urban warfare tactics at a special training centre in Israel. This will include fighting against terrorists sheltering behind civilians in populated areas and fighting an enemy which uses tunnels in combat.

 

Haitians in Brooklyn say they’re sure Bill and Hillary probably paid for Chelsea Clinton’s lavish wedding out of the kind of monies that came with the Haiti power her parents wielded.

US Imperialism Fuels Itself on Plausible Deniability and Flagrant Impunity

Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State helped impose the Martelly dictatorship. US Ambassador to Haiti, Pamela White and US Ambassador to UN Samatha Powers, daily maintain the Haiti terror with UN guns and the NGO charitable fronts

Watch Ezili Dantò’s selected video response to the flurry of news coverage regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails on Haiti. Especially Chelsea Clinton who wrote to Bill and Hillary -“Mom, Dad, Cheryl, Doug, Justin” – about being profoundly disturbed by the US-led international earthquake response in Haiti.

 

Haitians were the victims of well heeled predators.

Chelsea Clinton was and still is profoundly silent about the US-led occupation and oppression in Haiti. Haitians were hurt, dying and shut out by the Internationals holding meetings after meetings they were not allowed into. It still goes on. It’s not the past. It’s not the past.

Chelsea Clinton wrote that the international “incompetence was mind numbing.” But, Haitians in Brooklyn say they’re sure Bill and Hillary probably paid for Chelsea Clinton’s lavish wedding, out of the kind of monies that came with the Haiti power her parents wielded.

It’s not the Crisis Caravan’s incompetence that’s mind numbing. It’s their fake innocence. It’s the deliberate disaster capitalism and its destructiveness. It’s the constant Clintonesque plausible deniability and flagrant impunity. That, is what’s mind numbing to Haitians.

Chelsea, Hillary, Bill, Cheryl, Doug, Justin and Obama – all, murderers of Haiti sovereignty. And yes, believe it: Haiti is freestyling to murder these Tarzans, Janes & their Uncle Toms. Ginen Poze.

Freestyling, alone. But we’re still here telling the world that Haiti is occupied and terrorized by the United States behind a UN multinational facade and the NGO poverty pimps.

To tell them the earthquake was an opportunity for the racist Euro-US ruling class to feed on Haiti hurt and rob Haiti blind with Michel Martelly decrees taking all of Haiti’s offshore islands for foreign business interests; with Bill and Hillary Clinton presiding over fake cholera democracy and elections while amending the Haiti Constitution to give a 25-year mining contract to Chelsea’s uncle.

Tell them it was murder and neglect wrapped in racist Clinton-Obama disdain sold as white supremacy’s good intentions.

Tell them Ezili Dantò said that, even before the process began. Said it, after Bill Clinton and Paul Farmer’s disturbing $3billion failures in Gonaives during the four back-to-back storms in 2008. Where did that money go? We said the Poverty Pimps had turned Haiti into a plantation and penal colony and were masturbating on Black pain in 2010 as today. Since 1503! Said, vengeance is we. Said, we’re Desalin descendants, not invisible prey. White narcissism can’t soothe and absolves itself in selected email releases. We’ve been Haiti freestyling to murder Tarzan, Jane and their Uncle Toms.

And, please someone tell all the white liberals living off grants to write the Haiti truth they’ve water down, make themselves Haiti so-called “experts” to quote themselves and their ilk while pushing aside the Haiti voices, tell them, we’re not invisible. Chelsea, Hillary, Bill, Cheryl, Doug, Justin and Obama – all, murderers of Haiti sovereignty. And yes, believe it. Haiti is freestyling to murder these Tarzans, Janes & their Uncle Toms. (See below- Ezili’s comment regarding this piece of Clinton propaganda on the Chelsea visit to Haiti.)

This is a war cry, tell massah I coming back. Carrying FIRE in my knapsack. Tell him. I am Patrice Lumumba, Steven Biko, Fannie Lou Hamer. Tell him they have been born again in me. Tell him I’ve found my mother tongue buried in the rubble…Tell him this is the result of segregation. Tell him this is the result of integration. Tell him…I’ve never been invisible. Tell him, he has never been invincible. Tell him. I am melting the barb wire and steel bars of prison yards. Their going to flow over him like lava…I am returned. I am bloodthirsty…Tell massah I coming back. I coming back. –Karma by Dominique Christina.

Barack Obama & Bill Clinton did not “build Haiti back better.” Where did the money go? Haiti recovery was about US land grabbing, privatization of Haiti assets, militarizing Haiti police, amending Haiti Constitution to better dominate and tightening the occupation further with Martelly puppet government

Ezili Dantò, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) and Free Haiti Movement.

No two nations sacrificed more to defeat the scourge of Nazi and imperial Japanese fascism than Russia and China.

No one knows for sure how many from both countries perished. Estimates of Russian deaths ranged from 26 – 40 million.

From Japan’s invasion and occupation of Manchuria in 1931 to WW II’s end in 1945, 30 million or more Chinese died. Many more in both countries suffered serious injuries. Large parts of their land mass were devastated.

Without Sino/Russian contributions to the war effort, Hitler and imperial Japan might have prevailed. War didn’t touch US soil. Americans old enough to remember recall minor inconveniences only – including rationing goods needed for the war effort.

Except for loved ones away at war, life was mostly normal. Conflict raged out of sight and mind. The only awareness most people had came from print and radio reports – no television at the time.

Victory of the Chinese people against Japanese aggression was commemorated in Beijing on the 70th anniversary of WW II’s end – an impressive ceremony featuring thousands of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, invited ones from 16 other countries including Russia, parading across Tiananmen Square, a dazzling air show, a display of new Chinese weapons seen publicly for the first time, accompanied by a PLA band and 2,400-strong choir – in front of around 30 foreign leaders, lower-level delegations from numerous countries, and a world audience able to access the event online or television where available.

President Xi Jinping affirmed Beijing’s commitment for world peace and stability. “Prejudice and discrimination, hated and war can only cause disaster and pain,” he said.

He announced plans to reduce China’s military from its current 2.3 million strength to around two million – part of what he calls longterm reform.

During a meeting with Xi, Putin affirmed Sino/Russian ‘unit(y) by a strategic relationship and, as we say, a comprehensive partnership.

Both countries won’t ever forget “the cruel actions of invaders on the temporarily occupied territories, which resulted in innumerable victims.”

But we must remember this to make sure that nothing like this happens again in the future. I listened carefully to your speech at the parade.

“I believe that was (your) main message addressed to the people of China and the peoples of the entire world, namely: everything must be done to prevent large-scale military conflicts in the future and to minimize military conflicts in general,” Putin stressed.

Obama and Western leaders were noticeably absent. So was Japan – an unforgivable snub for an event demanding their presence, refusing to honor China’s enormous sacrifice, beginning years before Hitler invaded Poland and America’s involvement in WW II.

Czech President Milos Zeman was the only European head of state attending besides Putin. Some Western states sent low-level delegations. America sent no one.

Beijing strongly condemned Japan for refusing to acknowledge its horrendous atrocities committed against the Chinese people. After 70 years, it still won’t officially admit guilt.

Renmin University Professor Wang Yiwei called Western leaders’ refusal to attend China’s commemorative event “unacceptable.”

Beijing’s enormous contribution to defeating imperial Japan “has been (greatly) underestimated at home and abroad.” Its resistance began in September 1931 – “last(ing) almost 14 years, the first and the longest fight against fascist forces.”

Yiwei estimates “35 million (Chinese) casualties.” Its forces were responsible for “nearly 70% of Japanese troops…injured or killed,” he said.

More than 45 million Chinese people participated in the enduring resistance, which involved a total of about 1.7 billion people from 61 countries.

Thanks to the Chinese people, the Japanese troops were not able to proceed further to attack the eastern part of the Soviet Union, or make inroads into India, Australia and perhaps the Middle East, as the then US president Franklin D. Roosevelt feared in a worst scenario.

“On the other hand, Japan’s failure to colonize China boosted the morale of anti-fascist fighters across the globe, and united them into a massive force” for victory over a deadly scourge wanting everyone enslaved.

Failure of Obama, other Western leaders and Japan’s Shinzo Abe to honor China’s enormous contribution to world peace is an unforgivable affront – typical of how these nations operate, politicizing an important event at a time global war again remains a major threat.

A Final Comment

Ahead of China’s Victory Day commemoration and President Xi’s upcoming state visit to Washington, reports indicate the Obama administration intends imposing sanctions on Beijing for alleged cyber theft – despite no verifiable evidence proving anything.

If Xi responds in kind, maybe another sanctions war will erupt before he arrives.

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.

No two nations sacrificed more to defeat the scourge of Nazi and imperial Japanese fascism than Russia and China.

No one knows for sure how many from both countries perished. Estimates of Russian deaths ranged from 26 – 40 million.

From Japan’s invasion and occupation of Manchuria in 1931 to WW II’s end in 1945, 30 million or more Chinese died. Many more in both countries suffered serious injuries. Large parts of their land mass were devastated.

Without Sino/Russian contributions to the war effort, Hitler and imperial Japan might have prevailed. War didn’t touch US soil. Americans old enough to remember recall minor inconveniences only – including rationing goods needed for the war effort.

Except for loved ones away at war, life was mostly normal. Conflict raged out of sight and mind. The only awareness most people had came from print and radio reports – no television at the time.

Victory of the Chinese people against Japanese aggression was commemorated in Beijing on the 70th anniversary of WW II’s end – an impressive ceremony featuring thousands of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, invited ones from 16 other countries including Russia, parading across Tiananmen Square, a dazzling air show, a display of new Chinese weapons seen publicly for the first time, accompanied by a PLA band and 2,400-strong choir – in front of around 30 foreign leaders, lower-level delegations from numerous countries, and a world audience able to access the event online or television where available.

President Xi Jinping affirmed Beijing’s commitment for world peace and stability. “Prejudice and discrimination, hated and war can only cause disaster and pain,” he said.

He announced plans to reduce China’s military from its current 2.3 million strength to around two million – part of what he calls longterm reform.

During a meeting with Xi, Putin affirmed Sino/Russian ‘unit(y) by a strategic relationship and, as we say, a comprehensive partnership.

Both countries won’t ever forget “the cruel actions of invaders on the temporarily occupied territories, which resulted in innumerable victims.”

But we must remember this to make sure that nothing like this happens again in the future. I listened carefully to your speech at the parade.

“I believe that was (your) main message addressed to the people of China and the peoples of the entire world, namely: everything must be done to prevent large-scale military conflicts in the future and to minimize military conflicts in general,” Putin stressed.

Obama and Western leaders were noticeably absent. So was Japan – an unforgivable snub for an event demanding their presence, refusing to honor China’s enormous sacrifice, beginning years before Hitler invaded Poland and America’s involvement in WW II.

Czech President Milos Zeman was the only European head of state attending besides Putin. Some Western states sent low-level delegations. America sent no one.

Beijing strongly condemned Japan for refusing to acknowledge its horrendous atrocities committed against the Chinese people. After 70 years, it still won’t officially admit guilt.

Renmin University Professor Wang Yiwei called Western leaders’ refusal to attend China’s commemorative event “unacceptable.”

Beijing’s enormous contribution to defeating imperial Japan “has been (greatly) underestimated at home and abroad.” Its resistance began in September 1931 – “last(ing) almost 14 years, the first and the longest fight against fascist forces.”

Yiwei estimates “35 million (Chinese) casualties.” Its forces were responsible for “nearly 70% of Japanese troops…injured or killed,” he said.

More than 45 million Chinese people participated in the enduring resistance, which involved a total of about 1.7 billion people from 61 countries.

Thanks to the Chinese people, the Japanese troops were not able to proceed further to attack the eastern part of the Soviet Union, or make inroads into India, Australia and perhaps the Middle East, as the then US president Franklin D. Roosevelt feared in a worst scenario.

“On the other hand, Japan’s failure to colonize China boosted the morale of anti-fascist fighters across the globe, and united them into a massive force” for victory over a deadly scourge wanting everyone enslaved.

Failure of Obama, other Western leaders and Japan’s Shinzo Abe to honor China’s enormous contribution to world peace is an unforgivable affront – typical of how these nations operate, politicizing an important event at a time global war again remains a major threat.

A Final Comment

Ahead of China’s Victory Day commemoration and President Xi’s upcoming state visit to Washington, reports indicate the Obama administration intends imposing sanctions on Beijing for alleged cyber theft – despite no verifiable evidence proving anything.

If Xi responds in kind, maybe another sanctions war will erupt before he arrives.

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.

British MP Jeremy Corbyn has proposed a “People’s QE” that has critics crying hyperinflation and supporters saying it’s about time.

Dark horse candidate Jeremy Corbyn, who is currently leading in the polls for UK Labour Party leadership, has included in his platform “quantitative easing for people.” He said in a July 22nd presentation:

The ‘rebalancing’ I have talked about here today means rebalancing away from finance towards the high-growth, sustainable sectors of the future. How do we do this? One option would be for the Bank of England to be given a new mandate to upgrade our economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects: Quantitative easing for people instead of banks.

As his economic advisor Richard Murphy further explains it:

People’s quantitative easing is . . . a highly directed process where the debt that is . . . repurchased has been deliberately created and issued either by a green investment bank or by local authorities, health trusts and other such agencies for the specific purpose of funding new investment in the economy at the time when big business and financial markets are completely failing to deliver the scale of investment that is needed to get the UK working again and to restore our financial prosperity.

According to the Positive Money group:

Ideas in a similar vein have been advocated or at least suggested by notable economists including J M Keynes (1), Milton Friedman (2), Ben Bernanke (3), William Buiter (4) and Martin Wolf (5).  Most recently, Lord Adair Turner (6) has proposed similar ideas, highlighting that ‘there are no technical reasons to reject this option’.

Perhaps, but critics have found plenty to criticize. Peter Spence writes in the UK Telegraph:

A victory for Jeremy Corbyn in the next general election would put Britain on a collision course with Brussels and condemn the UK to “Zimbabwe-style ruin”, experts have warned.

. . . Tony Yates, a former Bank economist and now a professor at the University of Birmingham, said: “Down that road leads monetary policy ruin. . . . That’s what Zimbabwe was doing, where they ended up paying all their bills by printing new money.”

Spence also quoted Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who said, “The reason why one doesn’t even start on this conversation is the removal of any discipline on fiscal policy that comes from that.”

The Bogus Hyperinflation Threat

Dire warnings of Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation have been leveled against quantitative easing (QE) ever since the Federal Reserve embarked on it in 2008. When the European Central Bank announced in January 2015 that it, too, would be engaging in QE – along with the US, the UK and Japan – alarmed commentators warned of currency wars, competitive beggar-thy-neighbor devaluations and hyperinflation. But QE has been going on since the late 1990s, and it hasn’t happened yet. As Bernard Hickey observed in the New Zealand Herald on August 30^th:

The US Federal Reserve cut its Official Cash Rate to almost 0 per cent in 2008 and has left it there. It launched three rounds of so-called quantitative easing and has only just stopped printing money to buy Government bonds.

The Bank of Japan has been printing for years and only recently ramped that up to try to lift its economy out of decades of perma-recession. The European Central Bank has cut its deposit rate to minus 0.2 per cent to try to force savers to invest. That means savers have to pay the bank to mind their money. . . .

China has blown $310 billion propping up a stock market that has fallen at least 43 per cent from its peak. It pushed the Chinese yuan lower and spent another US$200b to stop further falls.

This week the People’s Bank of China cut its main lending rate to 4.6 per cent and loosened lending rules for banks.

Yet there is no sign of the threatened hyperinflation:

All this rate-cutting and money printing has made it attractive to buy stocks, property and bonds that produce a regular income greater than the near-zero interest rates. . . .

But, curiously, all this money printing and 0 per cent interest rates have yet to unleash the inflation dragon, at least for goods and services. Asset prices are pumped up and juicy, but goods manufactured in factories and in cloud services are firmly in deflationary mode.

Why? According to conventional economic theory, increasing the money in circulation has only one effect: when the quantity of money goes up, more money will be chasing fewer goods, driving prices up. Why hasn’t that happened with the massive rounds of QE now gone global?

A Flawed Theory

Conventional monetarist theory was endorsed until the Great Depression, when John Maynard Keynes and other economists noticed that massive bank failures had led to a substantial reduction in the money supply. Contradicting the classical theory, the shortage of money was affecting more than just prices. It appeared to be directly linked to a massive wave of unemployment, while resources sat idle. Produce was rotting on the ground while people were starving, because there was no money to pay workers to pick it or for consumers to buy it with.

Conventional theory then gave way to Keynesian theory. In a March 2015 article in The International New York Times called “Keynes Versus the IMF,” economist Dr. Asad Zaman writes of this transition:

Keynesian theory is based on a very simple idea that conduct of the ordinary business of an economy requires a certain amount of money. If the amount of money is less than this amount, then businesses cannot function — they cannot buy inputs, pay labourers or rent shops. This was the fundamental cause of the Great Depression. The solution was simple: increase the supply of money. Keynes suggested that we could print money and bury it in coal mines to have unemployed workers dig it up. If money was available in sufficient quantities, businesses would revive and the unemployed labourers would find work. By now, there is nearly universal consensus on this idea. Even Milton Friedman, the leader of the Monetarist School of Economics and an arch-enemy of Keynesian ideas, agreed that the reduction in money supply was the cause of the Great Depression. Instead of burying it in mines, he suggested that money could be dropped from helicopters to solve the problem of unemployment.

And that is where we are now: despite repeated rounds of QE, there is still too little money chasing too many goods. The current form of QE is merely an asset swap: dollars for existing financial assets (federal securities or mortgage-backed securities). The rich are getting richer from bank bailouts and very low interest rates, but the money is not going into the real economy, which remains starved of the funds necessary to create the demand that would create jobs. To be effective for that purpose, a helicopter drop of money would need to fall directly into the wallets of consumers. Far from being “undisciplined fiscal policy,” getting some new money into the real economy is imperative for getting it moving again.

According to Social Credit theory, even creating more jobs won’t solve the problem of too little money in workers’ pockets to clear the shelves of the products they produce. Sellers set their prices to cover their costs, which include more than just workers’ salaries. Chief among these non-wage costs is the interest on money borrowed to pay for labor and materials before there is a product to sell. The vast majority of the money supply comes into circulation in the form of bank loans, as the Bank of England recently acknowledged. Banks create the principal but not the interest necessary to repay their loans, leaving a “debt overhang” that requires the creation of ever more debt in an attempt to close the gap. The gap can only be closed in a sustainable way with some sort of debt-free, interest-free money dropped directly into consumers’s wallets, ideally in the form of a national dividend paid by the Treasury.

As Keynes pointed out, price inflation will occur only when the economy reaches full productive capacity. Before that, increased demand prompts an increase in supply. More workers are hired to produce more goods and services, so that demand and supply rise together. And in today’s global markets, inflationary pressures have an outlet in the excess capacity of China and the increased use of robots, computers and machines. Global economies have a long way to go before reaching full productive capacity.

Running Afoul of the EU

A more challenging roadblock to Corbyn’s proposal may simply be that there are rules against it. Peter Spence writes:

Key parts of the Labour leadership frontrunner’s plans would fall foul of EU laws intended to avoid runaway inflation, and consign the UK to a three-year legal battle with the European Court of Justice (ECJ). . . .

Mr Corbyn’s proposals would clash with Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty, which forbids central banks from printing money to finance government spending.

Perhaps; but the ECB has already embarked on a QE program involving the purchase of government securities. What are government securities but government debt used to finance government spending? The rule has already been bent. Why not bend it in a way that actually benefits the economy, the people, and the nation’s infrastructure? Corbyn’s proposal is needed, it will work, and it is an idea whose time has come.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.

Political and business circles across Asia face a shifting geopolitical environment driven by the inevitable rise of China. Several fundamental factors are driving this shift  that if fully understood should help established political orders, business interests, and ruling elite across Asia position themselves for a peaceful, stable, prosperous future. Failure to position oneself carefully as this shift takes place, can see a political dynasty or business empire swallowed whole in the fissures of geopolitical tectonic change.

What Asia Looked Like and Why It’s Changing 

For centuries Asia was dominated by first European colonial hegemony, then for nearly a century, American hegemony. The United States itself admits that it possesses “primacy” over Asia and that its primary geopolitical objective in Asia is to maintain that “primacy.”

For the better part of a century, maintaining that primacy was enabled by vast economic and military disparity between Washington and the collective resources of Asia. Victory in World War 2 and America’s subsequent involvement in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War allowed the United States to maintain an immense military, political, and economic footprint in the region.

In the wake of the Vietnam War, however, an exhausted American Empire began its slow and inevitable retreat. In the void left by this expanding retreat, nations across the region, not the least of which is China, have built themselves up socioeconomically, militarily, and geopolitically.

US Admits It is a Losing Proposition  

American efforts to contain China have proven futile – points made in the US’ own policy papers who have attempted on multiple occasions to reformulate their antiquated concept of “primacy” and impose it upon Asia. The most recent of which was published by the influential Council on Foreign Relations – a corporate-funded think tank that represents the collective interests of some of the most powerful Western corporate-financier interests on Earth.

Their report, “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China,” 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.

Political and business circles across Asia face a shifting geopolitical environment driven by the inevitable rise of China. Several fundamental factors are driving this shift  that if fully understood should help established political orders, business interests, and ruling elite across Asia position themselves for a peaceful, stable, prosperous future. Failure to position oneself carefully as this shift takes place, can see a political dynasty or business empire swallowed whole in the fissures of geopolitical tectonic change.

What Asia Looked Like and Why It’s Changing 

For centuries Asia was dominated by first European colonial hegemony, then for nearly a century, American hegemony. The United States itself admits that it possesses “primacy” over Asia and that its primary geopolitical objective in Asia is to maintain that “primacy.”

For the better part of a century, maintaining that primacy was enabled by vast economic and military disparity between Washington and the collective resources of Asia. Victory in World War 2 and America’s subsequent involvement in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War allowed the United States to maintain an immense military, political, and economic footprint in the region.

In the wake of the Vietnam War, however, an exhausted American Empire began its slow and inevitable retreat. In the void left by this expanding retreat, nations across the region, not the least of which is China, have built themselves up socioeconomically, militarily, and geopolitically.

US Admits It is a Losing Proposition  

American efforts to contain China have proven futile – points made in the US’ own policy papers who have attempted on multiple occasions to reformulate their antiquated concept of “primacy” and impose it upon Asia. The most recent of which was published by the influential Council on Foreign Relations – a corporate-funded think tank that represents the collective interests of some of the most powerful Western corporate-financier interests on Earth.

Their report, “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China,” 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.

At a commemorative celebration in Beijing on Thursday September 3rd, marking the 70th Anniversary of China’s freedom from the aggressor Japan ending World War II in China, the United States conspicuously avoided siding with its former WW II ally China, which had been one of the pro-democracy Allies during that war, and instead retrospectively switched sides, to the former fascist Axis powers, Japan itself, and also Germany. 

International diplomacy is heavily focused upon historical symbolism, something which everyone who is involved in international diplomacy understands. International diplomacy is constantly about history, and about the making of history; this is the very nature of that profession; and the historical symbolism in this particular diplomatic event was clear: the U.S. has retrospectively left the anti-fascist Allied side, and switched to the fascist Axis side; the U.S. now identifies with WW II’s Axis nations — the aggressors. The U.S. no longer identifies with the side of the nations that were being aggressed against.

The BBC in its report on China’s preparations for the event referred to «the notable absence of Western leaders» from the list of people who had accepted the invitations. The BBC’s news-report went on, in this vein of remarkable if not stunning candor: «The parade thus serves a dual role: a reflection of the past and a signal for the future. China’s official narrative of the horrors of China’s wartime past — historical humiliation at the hands of colonial powers — is directly linked to China’s current concerns over sovereignty and territorial integrity including the East and South China Seas. At a visceral level within Chinese society, it is impossible to detach the past from the present».

The report even closed by recognizing the resolve of Chinese President Xi Jinping «to protect China’s core interests». That is a sympathetic, not at all a hostile, reference, at the end of such an article. The BBC’s caption to a photo there was similarly honest, and without any added propagandistic coloration of the then-planned event: «The parade commemorates what China calls ‘the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression’». That’s what China does call it, and that’s what it actually was; and the BBC was honestly presenting the Chinese perspective on a momentous part of China’shistory. The common anti-Chinese and anti-Russian Western ‘news’-slant wasn’t present in this admirable news-report by the BBC.

Then, on Thursday September 3rd, the day of the event, China’s official news-agency Xinhua (now called «New China News Agency», in order to emphasize China’s break from the Marxist-Maoist Cold War position) bannered, «Xi calls on countries to remember war history, pursue peaceful development», and their news-report opened:

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Thursday that all countries should draw lessons from the history of World War II and stick to peaceful development.

Xi made the remarks while addressing a reception after a grand military parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

«It is our sincere hope that all countries will draw wisdom and strength from history, pursue peaceful development and work together to open up a promising future for world peace», he told more than 800 Chinese and foreign guests.

China’s victory of the war was a great triumph won by the Chinese people fighting shoulder to shoulder with their anti-fascist allies and the people throughout the world, he said.

«As the main Eastern theater of the anti-fascist war, China’s war of resistance made a critical contribution to its worldwide victory», Xi added.

No force is greater than working together with one mind», he said, noting that during the war, people from anti-fascist allies and other forces across the world joined hands in the fight against their common enemy.

We the Chinese will never forget the invaluable support given by the peace-loving and just countries, peoples and international organizations to our fight against Japanese aggressors.

The report went on to describe Xi’s vision for China’s future:

With a painful memory of the past, Xi said, the Chinese people have persistently committed themselves to a path of peaceful development and a win-win strategy of opening-up.

«A stronger and more developed China will mean a stronger force for world peace», the president said.

German Economic News, in its report on the event, noted:

Many leaders refrained from participating in the military parade — so as not to offend the Americans among other allies of Japan. Germany and the United States sent only their Ambassador. The only EU leader there was Czech President Milos Zeman. The much-criticized-in-China, right-wing conservative Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, had turned down an invitation to the «memorial to the victory in the Chinese people’s war against the Japanese invasion and the struggle against fascism».

So, who was there? Who did attend?:

Among the approximately 30 state guests were Russian President Vladimir Putin, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, which had also suffered from Japan’s aggression. In the parade also marched around 1,000 soldiers from 17 countries such as Russia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Pakistan and Serbia.

In other words, this event, which concerned World War II, had an attendance-list which reflected instead the «Cold War» — the war between capitalism and communism — even though communism (other than in North Korea) is dead and gone except for vestigial and declining remains in China and Cuba. The ideology against which the U.S. waged the Cold War should therefore now be ignored, no longer treated as if the Cold War were still continuing, and were still the central focus of American foreign policy. This Cold War focus by the United States on a WW II event is sick, especially in this era of rising real threat from Islamic jihadists around the world, a real threat that’s both East and West. This Cold War II might produce a World War III, global nuclear war. For what? About what? Not about Islamic terrorism. But this is nonetheless what U.S. leaders are seeking: a restoration of a «Cold War», after all decentsense for such a thing is long past.

An accompanying article from Xinhua was headlined, «Few in West remember China’s role in World War II: Oxford expert», and it opened: «Few in the West remember the fact that China was the first country to enter what would become World War II, and it was an ally of the United States and Britain from just after Pearl Harbor in 1941 till Japan’s surrender in 1945, an Oxford expert said».

CCTV America headlined, on August 25^th, «China releases list of world leaders attending V-Day parade», and noted: «Reporters at the news conference showed interest about the leaders who will not attend the celebration».

The BRICS Post reported that, «Apart from Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff who is battling domestic opposition, the leaders of the BRICS states are expected to attend China’s parade next month to bolster ties».

The South China Morning Post, in the most thorough of all reports about the attendance-list, bannered, «Only China’s ‘true friends’ attending 70th anniversary parade as key western leaders and Kim Jong-un won’t be there». This report said: «The only head of state or government from the EU is Czech President Milos Zeman. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan will not be attending, though former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama will. Pyongyang [North Korea] will send its Politburo member Choe Ryong-hae. The United States, Canada and Germany will send representatives from their diplomatic missions in China [somebody from their embassy], while France and Italy will send foreign ministers». However, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair also attended, as did Russian President Vladimir Putin and South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye.

In other words: U.S., Canada, Germany, and North Korea, sent the lowest-level representatives; Czech Republic, South Korea, and Russia sent the highest; and France, Italy, Britain, and Japan, were in the middle. China is one of the BRICS countries, so on this account alone it’s natural that the BRICS sent high-level representatives. North Korea’s having sent only a member of the Politburo indicates Pyongyang’s profound dissatisfaction with the degree of support that China has been providing them recently. Japan’s having sent a former Prime Minister shows that the Japanese government really doesn’t want there to be another war between Asia’s two economic giants: it’s an extraordinary concession from the country whose defeat was actually being celebrated at this event.

That guest-list is an entire book of information about where things now really stand in the structure of international relations. It’s a historical statement, about the present, as well as about the past. The symbolism might not be as blatantly clear as words, but it is far more meaningful, because it is the raw reality, which words can only represent (or may even misrepresent). Clearly, the Obama Administration has done everything they could to support the former fascist powers Japan and Germany against China, retrospectively, on this occasion. Japan is less willing than Germany to go along with America’s effort to reconstruct world affairs on a WWII foundation with the U.S. having turned 180 degrees to become now the leading fascist power (replacing what Germany was). Italy too is unwilling to bend entirely to embrace America’s new role as fascism’s global leader. So, too, is UK unwilling to bend entirely to it. (The U.S.-UK alliance is fraying.) North Korea is with the U.S. on this matter only because of its souring relations with China. South Korea is more interested in not offending China than it is in continuing to tow the line 100% as being a vassal-state of the now clearly fascist U.S. That’s extraordinary, but it goes along with North Korea’s weakening relationship with China.

In order to understand more deeply this turn of the U.S. to fascism in international affairs, the following reports are, I think, especially relevant, because they describe earlier developments in the same general direction — the U.S. as being now the world’s fascist leader:

«U.S. Among Only 3 Countries at U.N. Officially Backing Nazism & Holocaust-Denial; Israel Parts Company from Them; Germany Abstains».

«The U.S. Is Destroying Europe».

«Jimmy Carter Is Correct that the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy».

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

At a commemorative celebration in Beijing on Thursday September 3rd, marking the 70th Anniversary of China’s freedom from the aggressor Japan ending World War II in China, the United States conspicuously avoided siding with its former WW II ally China, which had been one of the pro-democracy Allies during that war, and instead retrospectively switched sides, to the former fascist Axis powers, Japan itself, and also Germany. 

International diplomacy is heavily focused upon historical symbolism, something which everyone who is involved in international diplomacy understands. International diplomacy is constantly about history, and about the making of history; this is the very nature of that profession; and the historical symbolism in this particular diplomatic event was clear: the U.S. has retrospectively left the anti-fascist Allied side, and switched to the fascist Axis side; the U.S. now identifies with WW II’s Axis nations — the aggressors. The U.S. no longer identifies with the side of the nations that were being aggressed against.

The BBC in its report on China’s preparations for the event referred to «the notable absence of Western leaders» from the list of people who had accepted the invitations. The BBC’s news-report went on, in this vein of remarkable if not stunning candor: «The parade thus serves a dual role: a reflection of the past and a signal for the future. China’s official narrative of the horrors of China’s wartime past — historical humiliation at the hands of colonial powers — is directly linked to China’s current concerns over sovereignty and territorial integrity including the East and South China Seas. At a visceral level within Chinese society, it is impossible to detach the past from the present».

The report even closed by recognizing the resolve of Chinese President Xi Jinping «to protect China’s core interests». That is a sympathetic, not at all a hostile, reference, at the end of such an article. The BBC’s caption to a photo there was similarly honest, and without any added propagandistic coloration of the then-planned event: «The parade commemorates what China calls ‘the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression’». That’s what China does call it, and that’s what it actually was; and the BBC was honestly presenting the Chinese perspective on a momentous part of China’shistory. The common anti-Chinese and anti-Russian Western ‘news’-slant wasn’t present in this admirable news-report by the BBC.

Then, on Thursday September 3rd, the day of the event, China’s official news-agency Xinhua (now called «New China News Agency», in order to emphasize China’s break from the Marxist-Maoist Cold War position) bannered, «Xi calls on countries to remember war history, pursue peaceful development», and their news-report opened:

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Thursday that all countries should draw lessons from the history of World War II and stick to peaceful development.

Xi made the remarks while addressing a reception after a grand military parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

«It is our sincere hope that all countries will draw wisdom and strength from history, pursue peaceful development and work together to open up a promising future for world peace», he told more than 800 Chinese and foreign guests.

China’s victory of the war was a great triumph won by the Chinese people fighting shoulder to shoulder with their anti-fascist allies and the people throughout the world, he said.

«As the main Eastern theater of the anti-fascist war, China’s war of resistance made a critical contribution to its worldwide victory», Xi added.

No force is greater than working together with one mind», he said, noting that during the war, people from anti-fascist allies and other forces across the world joined hands in the fight against their common enemy.

We the Chinese will never forget the invaluable support given by the peace-loving and just countries, peoples and international organizations to our fight against Japanese aggressors.

The report went on to describe Xi’s vision for China’s future:

With a painful memory of the past, Xi said, the Chinese people have persistently committed themselves to a path of peaceful development and a win-win strategy of opening-up.

«A stronger and more developed China will mean a stronger force for world peace», the president said.

German Economic News, in its report on the event, noted:

Many leaders refrained from participating in the military parade — so as not to offend the Americans among other allies of Japan. Germany and the United States sent only their Ambassador. The only EU leader there was Czech President Milos Zeman. The much-criticized-in-China, right-wing conservative Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, had turned down an invitation to the «memorial to the victory in the Chinese people’s war against the Japanese invasion and the struggle against fascism».

So, who was there? Who did attend?:

Among the approximately 30 state guests were Russian President Vladimir Putin, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, which had also suffered from Japan’s aggression. In the parade also marched around 1,000 soldiers from 17 countries such as Russia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Pakistan and Serbia.

In other words, this event, which concerned World War II, had an attendance-list which reflected instead the «Cold War» — the war between capitalism and communism — even though communism (other than in North Korea) is dead and gone except for vestigial and declining remains in China and Cuba. The ideology against which the U.S. waged the Cold War should therefore now be ignored, no longer treated as if the Cold War were still continuing, and were still the central focus of American foreign policy. This Cold War focus by the United States on a WW II event is sick, especially in this era of rising real threat from Islamic jihadists around the world, a real threat that’s both East and West. This Cold War II might produce a World War III, global nuclear war. For what? About what? Not about Islamic terrorism. But this is nonetheless what U.S. leaders are seeking: a restoration of a «Cold War», after all decentsense for such a thing is long past.

An accompanying article from Xinhua was headlined, «Few in West remember China’s role in World War II: Oxford expert», and it opened: «Few in the West remember the fact that China was the first country to enter what would become World War II, and it was an ally of the United States and Britain from just after Pearl Harbor in 1941 till Japan’s surrender in 1945, an Oxford expert said».

CCTV America headlined, on August 25^th, «China releases list of world leaders attending V-Day parade», and noted: «Reporters at the news conference showed interest about the leaders who will not attend the celebration».

The BRICS Post reported that, «Apart from Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff who is battling domestic opposition, the leaders of the BRICS states are expected to attend China’s parade next month to bolster ties».

The South China Morning Post, in the most thorough of all reports about the attendance-list, bannered, «Only China’s ‘true friends’ attending 70th anniversary parade as key western leaders and Kim Jong-un won’t be there». This report said: «The only head of state or government from the EU is Czech President Milos Zeman. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan will not be attending, though former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama will. Pyongyang [North Korea] will send its Politburo member Choe Ryong-hae. The United States, Canada and Germany will send representatives from their diplomatic missions in China [somebody from their embassy], while France and Italy will send foreign ministers». However, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair also attended, as did Russian President Vladimir Putin and South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye.

In other words: U.S., Canada, Germany, and North Korea, sent the lowest-level representatives; Czech Republic, South Korea, and Russia sent the highest; and France, Italy, Britain, and Japan, were in the middle. China is one of the BRICS countries, so on this account alone it’s natural that the BRICS sent high-level representatives. North Korea’s having sent only a member of the Politburo indicates Pyongyang’s profound dissatisfaction with the degree of support that China has been providing them recently. Japan’s having sent a former Prime Minister shows that the Japanese government really doesn’t want there to be another war between Asia’s two economic giants: it’s an extraordinary concession from the country whose defeat was actually being celebrated at this event.

That guest-list is an entire book of information about where things now really stand in the structure of international relations. It’s a historical statement, about the present, as well as about the past. The symbolism might not be as blatantly clear as words, but it is far more meaningful, because it is the raw reality, which words can only represent (or may even misrepresent). Clearly, the Obama Administration has done everything they could to support the former fascist powers Japan and Germany against China, retrospectively, on this occasion. Japan is less willing than Germany to go along with America’s effort to reconstruct world affairs on a WWII foundation with the U.S. having turned 180 degrees to become now the leading fascist power (replacing what Germany was). Italy too is unwilling to bend entirely to embrace America’s new role as fascism’s global leader. So, too, is UK unwilling to bend entirely to it. (The U.S.-UK alliance is fraying.) North Korea is with the U.S. on this matter only because of its souring relations with China. South Korea is more interested in not offending China than it is in continuing to tow the line 100% as being a vassal-state of the now clearly fascist U.S. That’s extraordinary, but it goes along with North Korea’s weakening relationship with China.

In order to understand more deeply this turn of the U.S. to fascism in international affairs, the following reports are, I think, especially relevant, because they describe earlier developments in the same general direction — the U.S. as being now the world’s fascist leader:

«U.S. Among Only 3 Countries at U.N. Officially Backing Nazism & Holocaust-Denial; Israel Parts Company from Them; Germany Abstains».

«The U.S. Is Destroying Europe».

«Jimmy Carter Is Correct that the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy».

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

Important Updates: Friday September 4th, more than 98,000 British citizens and residents have signed the petition. (see below)

Saturday September 5th, we reached more than 100,000 signatures calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon his official state visit to the United Kingdom scheduled for September.  

Sunday: More than 104,000 have signed the petition. 

Upon reaching the 100,000 signatures, the petition will be considered for debate in the House of Commons.

Our message to Netanyahu: you are a war criminal under international law. We call upon the people of Israel to initiate legal procedures within Israel against Prime Minister Netanyahu for the crimes committed against the people of Palestine.  

OUR GOVERNMENT IS COMPLICIT IN SUPPORTING A KNOWN WAR CRIMINAL IN DEFIANCE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW (NUREMBERG). 

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION (or click the image below)

September 4, 2015, at 11.06 GMT 

It demands Netanyahu’s arrest upon his arrival:  

Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes when he arrives in London

Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the U.K for the massacre of over 2000 civilians in 2014.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION (or click the image below) UPDATE: MORE THAT  62,000 HAVE SIGNED (16/08)

OBJECTIVES:

CONFRONT PRIME MINISTER CAMERON FOR PROTECTING A WAR CRIMINAL

UNDER THE UK  “LAW OF UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION” –AMENDED BY THE CAMERON GOVERNMENT–, NETANYAHU COULD HAVE BEEN BE ARRESTED. THE AMENDMENT IS MEANT TO PROTECT WAR CRIMINALS (INCLUDING TONY BLAIR) AND THEIR CRONIES.

DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,

PERSONA NON GRATA IN U.K. AND EU

CANCELLATION OF NETANYAHU’S STATE VISIT TO U.K. 

This petition can be signed by UK citizens as well UK residents. British citizens living overseas are eligible to sign the petition.Earlier scan, August 14, 2015

As a British citizen born in Wales, I signed the petition this afternoon (EST). 

Since then the petition has received another one thousand signatures. At the time of writing it was in excess of 55,000. It is currently running at about 170 an hour.  If it reaches 100,000, it will be considered for debate in the House of Commons. (See procedures). If that happens, Netanyahu may decide to postpone his visit to the United Kingdom. Of course, the parliament could be pressured to delay the debate until AFTER Netanhayu’s visit.

We call upon British citizens and British residents who are committed to Human Rights and the Rule of Law to sign this petition. Amply documented, Netanyahu is a war criminal. His Western political partners in the US, Britain, France and Germany are complicit in supporting a war criminal.   Forward this article to friends and family, post the petition on Facebook, This will send a clear message to Netanyahu that if and when he sets foot in the U.K., he could potentially face a citizens’  arrest.

Crimes of Genocide: Judgement against the State of Israel

In  November 2013, the State of Israel was indicted on “crimes of genocide” (Judgement of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, November 25, 2013).  “The Prosecution provided evidence of facts which, examined as a whole, show that the perpetrators had committed acts against the Palestinians, with intent to kill, cause serious bodily or mental harms and deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinians as a whole or in part”.

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ANNEX

Petitions which reach 100,000 signatures are almost always debated. …MPs might consider your petition for a debate before it reaches 100,000 signatures….

The Petitions Committee

The Petitions Committee can: …

• ask for evidence from the Government or other relevant people or organisations
• press the government for action
• ask another parliamentary committee to look into the topic raised by a petition
• put forward a petition for debate

The Petitions Committee is set up by the House of Commons. It comprises up to 11 backbench Members of Parliament from Government and Opposition parties. The number of committee members from each political party is representative of the membership of the House of Commons as a whole.

«Les professeurs ouvrent la porte, mais vous devez entrer par vous-même.»

 Proverbe chinois

 

Encore une fois, nous assistons à des tentatives de déstabilisation de ceux qui «osent» remettre en cause le modèle néo-libéral occidental. Nous connaissons la croisade contre la Russie attaquée de différentes façons pour la faire rentrer dans le rang ou pour annihiler sa puissance. On se souvient comment la conjonction de la CIA qui alimentait les taliban afghans contre l’armée russe, du pape Jean-Paul II avec ses prêches pyromanes: «N’ayez pas peur!», du syndicat polonais Solidarnosc et enfin, de l’arrivée providentiel de Gorbatchev, avec sa glassnost et sa perestroïka qui- sous prétexte louable de moderniser l’Union soviétique, a jeté, le bébé avec l’eau du bain -ont eu raison de l’empire soviétique.

Poutine coupable d’aimer son pays, de le défendre, contre des Occidentaux qui l’assiègent, résiste. L’Empire et ses vassaux décident de le punir…en vain. L’âme russe donne des leçons de force tranquille. Justement, une autre force tranquille est l’objet d’attaques sournoises du grand capital occidental, qui on l’aura compris, est téléguidé par l’Oncle Sam. Pourquoi? Tout simplement parce que les économies occidentales sont sur le déclin accélérées. Les pays du Brics s’organisent et projettent de sortir de l’orbite occidentale. Ils ont créé leur propre banque. Leurs économies sont florissantes malgré une situation économique mondiale morose et toutes les tentatives de les abattre.

Les derniers chiffres publiés par la Banque mondiale recensant le PIB montrent que la Chine figure désormais devant les Etats-Unis au premier rang mondial. Avec une croissance annuelle de 7%, indépendamment des turbulences qui ont secoué la Bourse chinoise, la Chine a su s’imposer pour devenir le premier producteur de richesse de la planète. La Russie passe à la cinquième place devant l’Allemagne, première puissance économique européenne, tandis que l’Inde garde une confortable 3ème place, loin devant le Japon. Un quatrième pays des Brics, le Brésil se situe à la 7ème place,. La France et le Royaume-Uni sont à la 9e et 10e place. Les quatre pays méritent-ils encore d’être qualifiés d’émergents? «Si l’on tient absolument à marquer la différence, «pays volants» leur conviendrait mieux, ou alors il faudrait appeler les anciens pays développés les «pays plongeants». (1)

Le roi dollar : Une hégémonie remise en cause par les Brics

David Victoroff nous rappelle à juste titre, la façon dont les Etats-Unis ont renié leur promesse: «Avec la suspension de la convertibilité du dollar en or, il n’y a plus de frein physique à la création de monnaie et les États-Unis devinrent libres de toute obligation de rééquilibrer leurs comptes. En ce 15 août 1971, au moment où Richard Nixon prend la parole à la télévision: «[…] J’ai demandé au secrétaire au Trésor, John Connally, de suspendre temporairement la convertibilité du dollar en or…» Pour la première fois la monnaie perdait toute référence à un support physique réputé neutre, incorruptible, intangible: l’or».(2)

«Le 22 juillet 1944, la conférence de Bretton Woods jette les bases d’une nouvelle ère. L’Europe est anéantie et les États-Unis détiennent l’essentiel du stock d’or mondial. C’est donc le dollar qui sera le pivot du système monétaire international. Seule la monnaie américaine sera convertible en or, au prix de 35 dollars l’once. En 1945, toutes les richesses du monde sont aux États-Unis (…) Au milieu des années 1960, grâce à l’aide américaine, l’Europe et le Japon ont reconstruit leurs économies. Les exportations allemandes et surtout japonaises commencent à envahir les États-Unis, (..)La balance des paiements américaine est fortement déséquilibrée. Personne ne demandant la conversion des dollars en or, rien ne contraint les Américains à limiter l’émission de monnaie et ils peuvent continuer à dépenser sans rembourser leurs dettes. (…) »

« Cependant, les Européens et les Japonais commencent à s’inquiéter devant l’amoncellement de leurs créances sur les États-Unis. Et si les Américains étaient incapables d’assurer la convertibilité de leur monnaie en or? Conseillé par l’économiste Jacques Rueff, le général de Gaulle réclame le retour à l’étalon-or. (…) Peu à peu, l’économie américaine perd de sa compétitivité par rapport à ses partenaires européens et japonais. Il s’agit de la restaurer tout en protégeant le stock d’or stratégique entreposé à Fort Knox. En détachant le dollar de l’or et en le faisant flotter par rapport aux autres monnaies, les Américains organisaient sa dévaluation de fait. Les réactions indignées des Européens n’y changeront rien. «Le dollar est notre monnaie et votre problème», leur répondra John Connally. (…) Quel jugement porter sur la décision américaine quarante ans après? Pour les uns, c’est le casse du siècle, suite logique de l’abandon de l’étalon-or, à l’origine de tous les maux dont nous souffrons aujourd’hui: la création débridée de monnaie a entretenu une succession de bulles spéculatives qui ont déstabilisé l’économie mondiale» (2)

La déstabilisation de la Chine: un plan ancien.

Steve Hanke professeur d’économie appliquée à l’université John Hopkins à Baltimore en parle:

«(…) Ce ne serait pas la première fois que l’Amérique utilise la monnaie comme une arme secrète pour déstabiliser la Chine. Au début des années 1930, la Chine fonctionnait encore à l’étalon-argent, et pas les États-Unis. En conséquence, le taux de change entre le dollar US et le yuan chinois était déterminé par le prix de l’argent exprimé en dollars US. (…) Usant de l’autorisation accordée par l’Amendement Thomas de 1933 et le Silver Purchase Act de 1934, l’administration Roosevelt, acheta de l’argent. Cela, en plus de rumeurs très optimistes au sujet des politiques américaines vis-à-vis du métal argent, contribua à faire flamber le prix de l’argent de 128% (calculé en moyenne annuelle) sur la période 1932-1935. (…) » (3)

«  Les intérêts coalisés dans la production d’argent affirmaient que les prix plus élevés de l’argent – qui mèneraient à une appréciation du yuan par rapport au dollar US – pourraient bénéficier aux Chinois en augmentant leur pouvoir d’achat… Les choses ne fonctionnèrent donc pas comme ce que Washington avait annoncé publiquement, mais bien comme cela avait été secrètement «prévu». Alors que le prix du métal argent exprimé en dollars flambait, le yuan s’appréciait face au dollar. En conséquence, la Chine fut jetée dans la gueule de la Grande Dépression. Sur la période 1932-1934, le PIB de la Chine s’écroula de 26% et les prix de gros chutèrent de 20%. (…) Se rendant compte que tout espoir était perdu, la Chine dut abandonner l’étalon argent le 14 Octobre 1934. Cela sonna le début de la fin pour le gouvernement de Tchang Kaï-Chek. Le «plan» américain fonctionna comme un charme: le chaos monétaire chinois s’ensuivit. Cela donna une ouverture aux communistes – ouverture qu’ils exploitèrent et qui contribua puissamment au renversement des nationalistes.» (3)

La manipulation délibérée  de la Bourse de Shanghai: une stratégie diabolique.

Les médias occidentaux n’ont pas boudé leur plaisir  en parlant de chaos et du début de la fin pour l’économie chinoise qui va péricliter. Curieusement, on dit que l’économie chinoise est en panne, et ceux qui le disent ont une croissance proche du zéro voire, sont  en récession depuis plusieurs années. Une économie qui est à 7 % est en panne alors que l’on parle de retour de la croissance en France en présentant le futur 1 % en 2016 comme une prouesse exceptionnelle !d’autant que l’Europe a été sauvé par un transfert de plus de 100 milliards d’euros dus au gain suite à la débâcle du baril , des poches des pays de l’Opep- dont l’Algérie qui a perdu dans cette affaire près de 25 milliards d’euros  -dans celles des pays européens Ce hol up de manipulation des prix du baril a permit à la France , d’éviter les admonestations de Bruxelles, Les 25 milliards de dollars économisés lui ont permis de stabiliser son déficit  autour de 4 %,

Ce qui s’est passé en Chine  n’est, donc  pas  seulement un problème de  croissance mais de manipulation  des cours de la bourse. Une explication proche de la réalité nous est donnée, justement,  par le professeur Michel Chossudovsky. Pour lui, le marché n’a rien à voir, c’est une conspiration diabolique. Il écrit:

«L’effondrement spectaculaire de la Bourse de Shanghai a été présenté à l’opinion publique comme le résultat d’un «mécanisme du marché» spontané, déclenché par la faiblesse de l’économie de la Chine. Les médias occidentaux (WSJ, Bloomberg, Financial Times, etc.) ont repris en choeur que la dégringolade du cours des actions chinoises était due à «l’incertitude» en réponse à des données récentes «laissant présager un ralentissement dans la seconde économie en importance dans le monde». (4)

«Cette interprétation, poursuit le professeur Michel Chossudovsky est erronée. Elle déforme la façon de fonctionner des marchés financiers, qui font l’objet d’opérations de nature spéculative à tout moment. Par exemple, un déclin de l’indice Dow Jones créé de toutes pièces peut se produire de plusieurs façons, notamment en vendant à découvert, en misant sur une telle baisse sur le marché des options, etc. De manière amplement documentée, les méga-banques manipulent les marchés financiers. Des institutions financières très puissantes dont la JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, Goldman Sachs et Citigroup, ont la capacité de «pousser à la hausse» le marché boursier, puis de le «tirer vers le bas». Cela leur permet de faire d’énormes gains aussi bien pendant la montée des cours que lorsque le marché est à la baisse. Cette façon de faire s’applique aussi aux marchés du pétrole, des métaux et des produits de base. Il s’agit d’une fraude financière, que l’ancienne initiée de Wall Street et sous-secrétaire du département du Logement et du Développement urbain des USA qualifie «d’opération de gonflage et de largage», qui consiste à «gonfler artificiellement le cours d’une action ou d’une autre valeur mobilière en faisant sa promotion, afin de vendre à prix élevé», puis à faire encore plus de profit pendant le repli en vendant à découvert. «Cette pratique est illégale en vertu des lois sur les valeurs mobilières, mais elle est particulièrement répandue.» (4)

Le Pentagone, l’Otan et Wall Street

Le professeur Michel Chossudovsky n’écarte pas lui aussi un complot géopolitique:

«La possibilité d’une manipulation du marché a fait l’objet d’une enquête des autorités chinoises en juillet 2015, à la suite de l’effondrement de la Bourse de Shanghai du 21 juin (….) Des considérations géopolitiques sont aussi en jeu. Pendant que le Pentagone et l’Otan coordonnent des opérations militaires contre des pays étrangers souverains, Wall Street mène des actions de déstabilisation sur les marchés financiers, y compris la manipulation des cours du pétrole et de l’or ainsi que du marché des changes, qui visent la Russie et la Chine. (…) Il convient de noter que des méthodes spéculatives (manipulation) ont également été employées sur le marché du pétrole et le marché des changes contre la Fédération de Russie. De pair avec le régime des sanctions, l’objectif était de tirer vers le bas le prix du pétrole brut (ainsi que la valeur du rouble russe), dans le but d’affaiblir l’économie de la Russie.» (4)

Les méthodes mises en oeuvre pour déstabiliser la Chine

Réagissant contre les méthodes permanentes de désinformation contre la Chine: Jean-Pierre Dubois cite l’affaire Apple.

«La charge menée dans les médias contre les conditions de travail des ouvriers chinois d’Apple tourne au fiasco.» Tout a commencé par le témoignage d’un acteur américain, Mike Daisey, qui s’est rendu à l’été 2010 dans les usines chinoises où sont fabriqués l’iPhone d’Apple. Mike Daisey explique sur les ondes d’une radio publique très populaire comment les usines des sous-traitants d’Apple sont protégées par des gardes armés et qu’il y a vu travailler des enfants de 12, 13 et 14 ans. Les médias occidentaux s’empressent aussitôt de colporter le témoignage accablant de Mike Daisey. (…).Derrière ce «coup médiatique» se profile une question: comment un simple amuseur public a-t-il pu, du jour au lendemain, bénéficier d’une tribune sur une grande radio et dans la presse des États-Unis. C’est que les médias occidentaux nourrissent une telle hostilité envers la Chine qu’ils sont prêts à diffuser toute «information» pouvant, d’une manière ou d’une autre, ternir l’image de ce pays – y compris, comme on le voit, en recourant aux mensonges purs et simples. (…) «L’une des plus grandes réussites de l’humanité à la fin du XXème siècle est passée quasiment inaperçue en Europe: les Chinois mangent pratiquement tous à leur faim. Actuellement 1,2 milliard de Chinois sur 1,3 ne connaissent plus la famine, dans un pays où les terres cultivables sont limitées et où les problèmes liés à l’eau représentent un défi…».(5)

La « vraie » vérité sur le Tibet,

Tout est bon pour déstabiliser, l’Occident donne des leçons sur tout  et ne se donne pas de leçon à lui même , appliquant le fameux adage du curé de compagne : « Faites ce que je vous dis, mais ne faites pas ce que je fais ! » Le documentariste américain Chris Nebe parle de la méthode d’ingérence à propos de l’affaire du Tibet dans laquelle, l’affaire des droits de l’homme est mise en avant. Sans rien connaître du Tibet, ni même savoir où se trouve cette région, il suffit de voir le traitement médiatique qui lui est consacré pour deviner ce qu’il en est. Et il se trouve que des documents existent, et ces documents officiels des Etats-Unis nous livrent, sans surprise, la vérité sur ce «peuple opprimé» et son «saint» dalaï-lama «en fuite pour échapper à la dictature chinoise». Cette vérité, c’est avant tout que le Tibet a subi exactement le même scénario que subit aujourd’hui la Syrie, et qu’ont subi les pays de l’Amérique latine: des mercenaires entraînés par la CIA, lâchés ensuite dans le pays pour créer le chaos. «J’ai fait Tibet: la vérité parce que j’étais agacé de voir constamment des informations négatives sur le Tibet dans les médias occidentaux», résume avec simplicité le documentariste américain Chris Nebe dans un entretien à Xinhua. Pour lui, «les médias occidentaux font preuve de partialité et ne disent pas la vérité sur le passé et le présent du Tibet». «J’ai aussi découvert d’autres images filmées par la CIA montrant que les autorités ont laissé partir le dalaï-lama et qu’il ne s’était pas enfui du Tibet», dit le réalisateur à Xinhua.» (6)

La coexistence pacifique plutôt que l’interventionnisme.

La Chine a toujours prôné la coexistence pacifique:

«À l’approche de la commémoration du 70e anniversaire de la création de l’Organisation des Nations unies, un vif débat met en avant deux conceptions opposées de l’avenir des relations internationales. D’un côté, l’ambassadrice des États-Unis à l’ONU, Samantha Power, répète à l’envi que le respect des droits de l’homme est un préalable à la paix; de l’autre, Wang Yi, le ministre chinois des Affaires étrangères qui a présidé le débat du 23 février dernier au Conseil de sécurité, est persuadé qu’une nouvelle vitalité de la Charte des Nations unies ne peut être garantie qu’en respectant l’indépendance et l’intégrité territoriale de chaque pays. En clair, la souveraineté comme fondement de l’ordre international. (…) Une autre voie, méconnue du plus grand nombre parce que tue par les médias dominants(…) Pourtant, elle ne date pas d’hier.

C’est en 1954 en effet que la Chine, l’Inde et la Birmanie ont proposé ce que l’on appelle les «cinq principes de la coexistence pacifique»: ceux-ci sont le respect mutuel de l’intégrité territoriale et de la souveraineté, la non-agression mutuelle, la non-ingérence mutuelle dans les affaires intérieures, l’égalité et les avantages réciproques et la coexistence pacifique. (…) « Nés au cours de la Guerre froide, ces cinq principes prônent la justice, la démocratie et le règne de la loi. Depuis leur entrée sur la scène historique, ils ont permis de dépasser les limites des idéologies et des systèmes et représentent les intérêts vitaux des pays en développement », nous explique le vice-président de l’association du peuple chinois pour l’amitié avec l’étranger (APCAE), Xie Yuan. Ces principes ont dans les faits permis à de nombreux pays de changer l’attitude hostile de nombreux pays envers la Chine et permis à cette dernière de sortir de sa situation autrefois isolée.

Aujourd’hui, sur la base de ces cinq principes, la Chine a réglé plusieurs conflits territoriaux et établi des relations diplomatiques avec plus de cent cinquante pays dans le monde. Les cinq principes se manifestent dans quantité de traités bilatéraux et sont confirmés dans quantité de conventions internationales multilatérales et de documents internationaux tels que la déclaration sur l’inadmissibilité dans les affaires intérieures des États et la protection de leur indépendance et de leur souveraineté [résolution 2131 (XX) de l’assemblée générale des Nations Unies en date du 21 décembre 1965] et la déclaration concernant l’instauration d’un nouvel ordre économique international approuvée en 1974 par la sixième assemblée générale spéciale des Nations Unies ».(7)

« Le droit applicable ne peut avoir de double standard. Nous nous opposons à la déformation délibérée du droit international, à la violation des intérêts d’autres pays ainsi que la destruction de la paix et de la stabilité », a concrètement souligné Xi Jinping lors de la conférence commémorant le soixantième anniversaire de la publication des cinq principes de la coexistence pacifique. Dans l’ère actuelle de la mondialisation, ces grands principes devraient avoir une plus grande portée encore dans les relations internationales, loin de l’appropriation de la politique et de la stratégie par la morale publicitaire, son verbiage, sons sentimentalisme primaire et son affirmation terroriste. Loin de la propension de l’Occident de faire dépendre la liberté des autres d’une définition de la liberté qu’il a su arranger à sa sauce. (7).

La politique de défense et de coopération avec la Russie.

Malgré son désir  ardent de paix, il est évident que la Chine ne se laissera pas faire. Avec ses moyens et le développement de son armement sans grande publicité, la Chine met en oeuvre ses capacités de défense. Ainsi, d’après les experts, la Chine possédait le missile balistique DF-21D pour faire face aux porte-avions américains. Elle a également des sous-marins à propulsion nucléaire dans la classe Type 092 armés de 12 missiles balistiques nucléaires de moyenne portée, les JL-1. La Chine exploite en plus 12 sous-marins classiques d’attaque de classe Kilo et 17 autres de classe Type 035 qui ont la capacité de lancer 6 missiles balistiques» (8).

La coopération multiforme  russo-chinoise et notamment militaire,  est aussi un motif de colère des Européens et surtout des Américains qui imposent l’Otan(30 pays) qui n’a plus lieux d’être depuis la dissolution du Pacte de Varsovie, et qui font tut pour ceinturer ces deux pays militairement  Ces deux pays ne se laissent pas faire : « Avec ces grandes manœuvres communes, nous sommes en train d’assister à la création, non pas d’une grande armée commune, mais d’une grande force militaire faite de deux armées complémentaires pour une défense commune. La complémentarité va encore plus loin que le simple contenu de ces exercices, elle concerne également les échanges technologiques qui ne sont plus à sens unique (Russie vers Chine) comme par le passé, mais dans les deux sens, comme le montre la création du drone russe de haute altitude, équivalent de l’Aigle Divin chinois qui rend obsolète le F-35 américain qui n’est même pas encore sorti. C’est que, pour les deux compères, les choses sont claires : ils ont un ennemi commun, les États-Unis » (9)

A bon entendeur… Car l’histoire de la déstabilisation programmée est loin d’être finie!

 Professeur Chems Eddine Chitour

Ecole Polytechnique enp-edu.dz

 

1.http://www.agenceecofin.com/investissement/2008-31529-le-fmi-n-integrera-pas-le-yuan-dans-son-panier-de-devises-de-reference-avant-septembre-20162.D. Victoroff

2.http://www.valeursactuelles.com/economie/1971-nixon-garde-son-or-297013.

3.http://www.libreafrique.org/ Hanke_plan _USA_Chine_0111104.

 4.Prof Michel Chossudovsky. http://www.mondialisation.ca/destabilisation-economique-effondrement-financier-et-manipulation-de-la-bourse-de-shanghai/5472586 28 août 2015.

5.Jean-Pierre Dubois     http://www.legrandsoir.info/desinformation-contre-la-chine-l-enquete-sur-apple-en-chine-entachee-par-un-bidonnage.html

6.http://french.xinhuanet.com/2015-08/30/c_134569677.htm

7. http://www.legrandsoir.info/la-coexistence-pacifique-plutot-que-l-interventionnisme-de-l-otan.html

8.http://reseauinternational.net/porte-avions-vs-missiles-balistiques-antinavires/

 9.http://reseauinternational.net/une-cooperation-militaire-sans-precedent-rt-temoigne-des-exercices-navals-russo-chinois/

 

Article de référence :

http://www.lexpressiondz.com/chroniques/analyses_du_professeur_ chitour/224425-le-dragon-paisible-peut-se-reveiller.html

 

 

The insidious relationship between Washington and the Islamic State (ISIS) is at the centre of current news and analysis.

Is Washington going after the terrorists? If so why are these terrorists receiving money and weapons?  

Other important topics covered in today’s GR E- Newsletter include the role of Hollywood in justifying US led wars. It’s called “perception management”,  “The Rise of the Inhumanes” (Dr. Paul Craig Roberts), the use of  “police drones” in the US and Hillary Clinton’s  “Email Problem”.

Send your feedback and suggestions to [email protected].

To access today’s most popular articles click here

“Cablegate”: Hillary Clinton’s Email Problem. “Classified Info on Her Secret Server” By Binoy Kampmark, September 03, 2015

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are carrying out a secret drone missile assassination program in Syria, the Washington Post reported late Tuesday.

The existence of the so-called targeted killing program has come to light in the wake of last month’s assassination of a British citizen identified as 21-year-old Junaid Hussein, a hacker who is described as a cyber expert for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Hussein is alleged to have had some connection to one of the two armed men who were shot and killed outside a “Draw Mohammed” contest staged by right-wing anti-Muslim groups in Texas last May. He is also said to have been responsible for hacking the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US Central Command, the Pentagon command responsible for the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. He was sentenced to six months in jail in Britain in 2012 for hacking and publishing information from an address book of former prime minister Tony Blair.

US officials who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity claimed that the drone assassination program in Syria was directed exclusively at “high-value targets.” They insisted that Hussein fell into that category because of his alleged involvement in “recruitment,” which may mean little more than his postings on social media.

The Post report, citing an unnamed senior US official, also referred to “others killed in a recent weeks” in strikes carried out under the CIA-JSOC assassination program.

The extension of the drone killing operation into Syria marks a further expansion of a practice of assassinations that has been found illegal by United Nations agencies and which the Obama administration had previously claimed it was scaling back.

It moreover involves the CIA, a civilian agency which by definition cannot claim that its killings are carried out in accordance with the laws of war.

The White House indicated last April, after President Barack Obama’s admission that a January CIA drone strike in Pakistan had killed two Western hostages, US and Italian aid workers Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, that the administration would take the drone killings out of the hands of the CIA and centralize them under the command of the Pentagon. At the time, Obama stressed the need for “transparency” in the assassination program.

Instead, yet another front in the secret drone war has been uncovered, and the CIA, instead of being removed from it, has joined in a seamless operation with the US military’s special forces.

The Post cited unnamed officials as stating that this “hybrid approach” involved the CIA “finding and fixing” those targeted for assassination, while JSOC was responsible for “the ‘finish’”, i.e., the actual killings. The officials went on to indicate that “the cooperation between the CIA and JSOC in Syria is increasingly viewed as a model that could be employed in future conflicts.”

JSOC, it should be pointed out, has been involved in atrocities equal to or surpassing those of the CIA. In December 2013, it targeted a convoy of vehicles carrying people to a wedding in Yemen, killing between 12 and 17 of them.

The Post article did not make clear how those targeted for assassination in Syria were being selected. Earlier reports established that Obama had personally chosen the individuals to be incinerated by Hellfire missiles in regular White House sessions known as “terror Tuesdays.” These assassinations amount to arbitrary executions in which charges are not presented against those to be killed, much less proven through any kind of judicial process.

Syria has now joined Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries where drone strikes have been launched. The reference to “future conflicts” makes clear that Pentagon’s planned expansion of its drone fleet (with the number of daily flights to be increased by up to 50 percent over the next four years) will see illegal killings introduced into other parts of the world with all of the attendant slaughter and terrorization of civilian populations.

The CIA-JSOC drone attacks amount to only a small fraction of the 2,450 air strikes carried out by US-led regular military forces against ISIS over the past year. This public campaign of airstrikes has had little effect in terms of dislodging ISIS from the broad swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory that it has occupied.

The CIA-JSOC operation appears to have a different purpose, which may be tied to the CIA’s earlier function in Syria, which was funneling arms and aid to the so-called “rebels,” the Islamist sectarian militias that serve as proxies for the West, Saudi Arabia and the other reactionary Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf in a war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

An effective assassination campaign against “high-value targets” in ISIS would decapitate the Islamist group, while leaving its fighters to be recruited into a new front deemed acceptable by the CIA to receive US arms and assistance.

The extension of the drone killing program into Syria represents another escalation of a US-led intervention that has turned the country into a vast killing field, while destroying its economy and infrastructure

More than 3,000 refugees—the majority of them families with children—have been held at the Budapest East Train Station in miserable conditions since the Hungarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban blocked the access of refugees to the station.

Hundreds of refugees participated in a demonstration Wednesday demanding the right to continue their journey to Germany. They shouted slogans such as “freedom, freedom!” Jeering could be heard outside the station as angry refugees shouted at the hundreds of heavily armed police blocking the main entrance.

Since Tuesday, refugees have been camping outdoors since they are no longer permitted on the grounds of the station from which trains leave for Austria. A few found shelter in the neighboring subway station.

The hygienic conditions are disastrous. Only four portable toilets have been provided. The refugees have received no public assistance or accommodation. Help has come only from small organizations and private individuals who have distributed donated food and clothing and provided basic medical care. A reporter for the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel called the situation a “fundamental violation of human rights.”

The clearing of refugees from the train station was abrupt and harsh. Departures from the station were completely halted. Then, after a few hours, the station was reopened to passengers, but refugees were no longer permitted to enter, even though many had already bought tickets.

“The police came and told the Syrians: the trains are open,” a refugee told the German television news program Tagesschau. “Then they all bought a ticket here, 200 euro per person. Then the police came back when they had blocked everything off and said: ‘The trains are closed for you.’ We have not gotten our money back.”

The Hungarian police had unexpectedly allowed refugees to travel on Monday. The trains out of Hungary were stopped at the Austrian border, however, and the passengers had to wait for hours in extreme heat. According to the Austrian police, refugees who had already been registered in Hungary had to return to Budapest. The others would be permitted to seek asylum in Austria. The “aid” promised by the government for refugees in Budapest is contemptible given the situation. A tent camp is supposed to be erected beside the station within two weeks. With a capacity of between 800 and 1,000, it will barely accommodate a third of the immigrants.

Though EU countries such as Germany shed crocodile tears over the brutal treatment of refugees by Eastern European governments, the measures being carried out have their full support.

The heavy influx of refugees from Syria and other countries that have been devastated by the military and political interventions of the Western powers has led to the breakdown of the so-called Dublin Rule, which requires refugees to register and be processed in the first EU member country they enter. The authorities in Greece and Hungary are unable and unwilling to deal with the large numbers passing through their territories.

Berlin, in particular, has exerted pressure on the government in Budapest to prevent the refugees from traveling. As asylum seekers left for Germany on Monday, a spokesman for the German Interior Ministry declared, “Germany has not suspended Dublin.” In other words, the refugees should stay in Hungary and not seek better conditions by travelling to the north and west.

One can assume that the German government is frantically working behind the scenes to ensure that the Hungarian government prevents the onward journey of more refugees. This may well be the reason why the Orban government cordoned off the train station again.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is also exerting pressure on Orban to stop the stream of refugees. The two will meet on Thursday in Brussels to discuss the crisis.

In spite of the dramatic scenes unfolding in the Hungarian capital, Orban announced that he would treat refugees more harshly in the future. Chancellery Minister János Lázár said the police would be mobilized at the border and equipped with water cannon and rubber bullets. The security forces would not actively prevent refugees at the border from entering the country, “But the time for that will arrive,” Lázár declared.

Lázár confirmed media reports that the right-wing government in Budapest wants to deploy the army against refugees. The parliament will create the necessary legal framework in the coming week, he said. The government plans to use 13 new emergency laws to reduce the flow of refugees, starting in the middle of the month.

Hungary has erected a 175-kilometer fence on its border with Serbia. Most refugees travel through Greece and the Balkans until they get to Serbia. From there, they cross into the so-called Schengen area, the contiguous territory of 28 EU member-states where there is free movement across internal borders.

According to press reports from the German federal police, between 750 and 800 refugees a day travel to Hungary by land from Greece, through Macedonia and Serbia. The refugees originate predominantly in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

At a meeting of the Visegrád countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), Orban and his counterparts discussed plans for treating refugees even more harshly.

Twenty-five years after the collapse of Stalinism in these countries, the false promises of democracy and freedom have been replaced by chauvinism and police repression. Capitalism is revealing its ugly and inhuman face. Refugees who have been on the road for weeks are being greeted by the authorities with hostility and rejection.

Czech Republic Finance Minister and Vice President Andrej Babis is demanding a NATO deployment to keep refugees out of the EU. “We must close the Schengen area from the outside,” the millionaire businessman and founder of the right-wing liberal party ANO declared Tuesday on Czech radio. The flow of refugees is “the biggest danger for Europe,” he added.

Czech President Miloš Zeman echoed these remarks and accused countries such as Greece and Italy of a “lack of will power” when it came to protecting their borders. At the beginning of August, he said in an interview: “No one has invited refugees here.” He added that his country would rather take Ukrainian refugees because they “integrate themselves better in society than Muslims.” Social Democratic Minister President Bohuslav Sobotka spoke against the required quotas of refugees announced by the EU.

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico denounced the refugees and said it was impossible to determine for certain that there were no terrorists among them. Before that, Ivan Metik, spokesperson of the Slovakian Interior Ministry, said that Slovakia would accept only Christian Syrians.

Polish President Andrzej Duda spoke in favor of closing the border to refugees, adding that Poland wanted to take only Ukrainian refugees. “Other European countries should take that into account when we talk about readiness to help,” Duda told the German Bild newspaper.

The right-wing Polish government has already explained to Brussels that it is willing to accept only 2,000 refugees from Syria and Eritrea. Even this token number has prompted harsh criticism from Duda’s national conservative camp, which refers to the “Islamization” of Poland.

The Balkan countries Macedonia and Serbia, which are not EU member-states, are likewise taking harsh action against refugees. Macedonia blocked the border with barbed wire for two days and fired tear gas and rubber bullets on refugees.

The xenophobic attitude of the Eastern European governments, which are highly unstable and lack significant public support, is encouraging attacks on refugees by the most right-wing forces in the region.

On August 27, the fascist “64 Burgkomitate” held a demonstration in front of the Budapest East train station. Ahead of the demonstration, a group of neo-Nazis attacked several refugees who were waiting for their train. When the police arrived, they left the attackers alone and detained the refugees, including children, and took them to provisional refugee lodgings.

Refugees and Hungarian supporters at the train station in Szeged faced a similar situation when refugees were attacked by fascist gangs with close ties to the ultranationalist Jobbik party. Here as well, the police did not intervene. Various groups publicly and repeatedly boasted on social networks that they were hunting refugees on the Serbian border and “maintaining order.”

In Slovakia, the government campaign against refugees has led to riots. On Tuesday, several hundred right-wing extremists from the Our Slovakia party of Marian Kotleba demonstrated in the village of Gabcikovo, where some 500 refugees have been taken.

What was in it for Tony Blair when he conducted talks with Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in Doha? 

Of all the bizarre encounters the Palestinian conflict has generated, Tony Blair’s four meetings in Doha with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal must surely rank as among the oddest.

Here was the Quartet’s Middle East envoy breaking the Quartet’s own rules about not talking to Hamas until it recognises Israel – rules that Blair and Jack Straw enforced as prime minister and foreign secretary by pressing the EU to declare Hamas a terrorist organisation. Two of the four meetings were held before Blair resigned as envoy.

Here was Blair, the man linked in mind, body and soul to the military coup in Egypt (he said the army intervened “at the will of the people” to bring democracy to Egypt) attempting to mediate between Hamas, Israel and Egypt – the two countries that have kept a stranglehold around Gaza’s neck. The Egyptian leader has been an even more zealous enforcer of the blockade than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a British context, Blair’s dialogue with Hamas took place as his supporters accused the left-wing candidate in the Labour leadership race, Jeremy Corbyn, of making Labour unelectable if he became leader. Corbyn had advocated talks with Hamas and Hezbollah – a crime of which the man who won power three times was a repeat offender.

Blair did not just talk to Meshaal. He invited him to London, offering him a specific date in June, on which the current prime minister, David Cameron, must have agreed. This is the same prime minister who has strived and failed, so far, to publish a report branding the Muslim Brotherhood presence in Britain as extremist. Bizarre.

And yet Blair kept going, even after the existence of the talks was revealed by Middle East Eye. In the last few days he has still been pushing the deal in Cairo. Why?

His motivation is not obvious. It is surely not out of any belated humanitarian concern for 1.8 million Gazans. As prime minister and peace envoy, Blair had provided Israel with valuable international cover for one operation in Gaza after another. Nor can it be out of any love for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. He regards Islamism as an ideological enemy. To borrow Peter Mandelson’s words, Blair is intensely relaxed about helping dictators with grievous human rights records, in the Emirates, Egypt and Kazakhstan, countries that share his conviction that Islamists must be wiped off the political map.

Blair told Hamas he had secured the agreement of three of the five potential partners to a deal that would open up Gaza’s borders in exchange for an unlimited ceasefire – the Saudis, Emiratis and Jordanians. But without Israel and Egypt, no deal could be said to exist.

After four meetings, Blair and Hamas discussed the possibility of continuing the ceasefire that is currently in place in exchange for an immediate opening of all borders and the immediate payment of the salaries of all government workers in Gaza. These two steps would be followed by talks about a seaport, an airport and the reconstruction of the enclave.

Everything else was off the table: Hamas did not agree, as Blair had been pressing them, to any form of words about political negotiations being the way forward, or anything that would reanimate an Oslo process now considered to be dead. Hamas would only agree to a continuation of the ceasefire, not a hudna with a minimum stated time limit. The ceasefire would only affect Gaza, not the West Bank, where Hamas said resistance against the settlers and the Israeli army would continue; the proposed deal would have had no bearing on a prisoner exchange.

Meshaal took a rain check on the offer of a trip to London. Hamas told Blair they would only take this process forward if it had the backing of Israel and Egypt. That Blair has failed to achieve, and the process is regarded to have reached a dead end, sources told MEE on Tuesday.

In Israel itself, the talks had its backers, mainly, although not exclusively, outside the government. The most notable convert was Naftali Bennett, the head of the far-right Jewish Home party and current education minister, who said a week after fighting began last summer: “The army can wipe out Hamas. We have a strong people which is telling the leadership: ‘Do whatever it takes to get it over with’.” Now, he has changed his tune. He told Channel 2 recently: “Egypt and the Palestinian Authority [PA] want things to be bad in Gaza so that we will continue fighting; it is good for them … But at this stage I am against it. The situation is that Hamas is there.”

There were others. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin; Yisrael Katz, the transportation and intelligence minister; Yuval Diskin, the former head of Shin Bet; Shaul Mofaz, former defence minister; Yair Naveh, the former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army; and Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, have all expressed support for talks with Hamas, direct or indirect.

Netanyahu and the government itself remain staunchly opposed. This can either be because Netanyahu cannot accept a deal in which Hamas remains as an active combatant in the West Bank, or because he never intended to reach a deal in the first place. The process of reaching a deal with Hamas was always going to be more inviting to him than the result. The process would mean Hamas having an incentive to keep things quiet, and Netanyahu also would be responding to pressure from citizens in southern Israel. The result would mean abandoning a policy to isolate and weaken Hamas, of which he has been one of the most effective enforcers.

On this, Netanyahu cannot be accused of inconsistency. He makes no distinction here between which brand of Palestinian leader he is dealing with – one who recognises Israel or one who does not. Netanyahu’s record on the national issue is clear: talks never reach a conclusion. They are never anything more than a way of buying time.

He is not alone. If a deal were to be secured that allowed Hamas’s 50,000 government workers to be paid, it would be over Mahmoud Abbas’s dead body. As the International Crisis Group argues in its latest report, the PA has much to lose from ending the blockade and little to gain.

Since mid-2013 when nearly all the tunnels under the Rafah border with Egypt were closed, the PA’s revenue that Israel collects on goods going into Gaza on its behalf has greatly increased. The report quotes a minister in the national consensus government – appointed by Fatah and involved in Gaza’s reconstruction – who attributes primary responsibility for the stasis to the Palestinian president’s office, which, he said, “has no intention of rebuilding Gaza or taking responsibility for it”.

The signals from Egypt are just as bleak. In June, the head of the Egyptian intelligence was all smiles as he met a delegation from Hamas, and the Rafah border remained open for that week. That was before the attack on 1 July by Sinai fighters, for which Egypt blamed Hamas. The latest signal was the abduction of four members of Hamas’ al-Qassam brigades travelling through North Sinai, which Hamas blames on the Egyptian military – not the Islamic State (IS) group.

Who gains from this brief interlude of talks? Obviously, the Quartet’s conditions for excluding Hamas from negotiations have now been breached, as has the EU declaration on Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Blair irritated the Swiss, who see themselves as the chief conduit for negotiations with Hamas, even more than he did Mahmoud Abbas.

However it styled its war on Gaza last year, the Blair talks are a sign that Israel does not want to repeat the experience, at least any time soon. Hamas has become the address to go to in Gaza, and preferable to any available alternative, certainly preferable to the chaos of militias competing with each other to fire rockets off at Israel and the prospect that one day IS could inherit Hamas’ mantle. Exiled Fatah strongman Mohamed Dahlan’s efforts to buy himself back into favour in Gaza by funding weddings has largely been at Abbas’s expense.

For Netanyahu, Blair may have been useful in testing the waters, but it looks as if he has reached his limits as a go-between. For Egypt, the opening of the Rafah border would mean surrendering its chief foreign policy card. There are no signs it is prepared to do this.

Which brings us back to Blair. What was in it for him? This has everyone scratching their heads. But there are some clues.

Last year months before the start of the Doha talks, an academic with access to Khaled Meshaal was approached by Israelis at a conference in Europe. They wanted him to pass on a specific request. If British Gas developed the gas field in Gaza Marine, (a field between 27 and 33 km off the coast of Gaza thought to contain a trillion cubic feet of gas) would Hamas attack it? The academic wanted to know who was asking the question – the Israeli government? No, the reply came: “It was Tony Blair.” The academic refused to pass the message on and told them Tony Blair should contact Meshaal himself.

How curious. Blair privately claims he got involved in the talks at Hamas’ request – as a result of a letter Hamas sent to UN peace process envoy Robert Serry. But his interest in the gas off Gaza’s coast predates that. British Gas Group are clients of JP Morgan, for which Blair was paid as a senior advisor.

This field is, in the words of the Foreign Office, by far the most valuable Palestinian natural resource. Revenues from its output were estimated in 2007 to be worth $4bn. Ariel Sharon was always against its development, and when he pulled out of Gaza, British Gas signed a memorandum with the Egyptian company Egas to sell it there in 2005.

The deal was cancelled a year later when Blair intervened at the behest of then-Israeli premier Ehud Olmert. Thirty times as much has now been discovered in a field off Egypt. Who knows what the fields of Gaza could contain. No conflict? Plenty of interest.

David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He was chief foreign leader writer of The Guardian, former Associate Foreign Editor, European Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief, European Correspondent, and Ireland Correspondent. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

 

Protesters Plan to Begin Fast at FERC on September 8th

For more information on the Fast for No New Permits see here.

In an open letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), more than eighty health professionals urge the FERC to stop permitting oil and gas infrastructure and to move to clean sustainable sources of energy to protect the health of people and the planet. The construction of oil and gas projects such as unconventional fracking, pipelines, compressor stations and export terminals which pollute with cancer and disease-causing chemicals is akin to an uncontrolled health experiment that is destroying communities and risking lives of residents. These projects also harm the workers who build and maintain them. For the health of all who are involved, health professionals demand that this unethical ‘experiment’ stop.

Most people are unaware of the existence of the FERC, which according to its website is “an independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. FERC also reviews proposals to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals and interstate natural gas pipelines as well as licensing hydropower projects.” The FERC is independent of taxpayer dollars, but is dependant on the oil and gas industries for its funding, the very industries the FERC is supposed to regulate.

As a result of this fundamental conflict of interest, the FERC is a rubber stamp agency for new permits regardless of the danger they pose to the health and safety of communities and the future livability of the planet. A case in point is the new Liquefied Natural Gas (“natural” is an industry marketing term, the gas is more accurately called “fracked gas”) refinery and export plant being built in Southern Maryland by Dominion Resources. This huge plant will store 14.6 billion cubic feet of liquefied gas for export by tankers to Japan and India.

Dominion is building its plant in the community of Lusby, Maryland. When Dominion submitted its application to the FERC, it left out 90% of the surrounding population. There are more than 2,400 homes, 19 day care centers and 2 elementary schools within the 2.2 mile evacuation zone around the plant. This is the first time that a plant has been built in such a densely-populated area anywhere in the world. When the permit was appealed to inform FERC of the risks to the more than 8,000 people living close to the plant, some living directly across the street, the FERC refused to review the permit. Visit www.WeAreCovePoint.org to learn more.

A coalition of people and groups called Beyond Extreme Energy has been focused on the FERC for the past year to call attention to its reckless behavior but the FERC has only responded with disregard for the people’s concerns and by taking extra steps to exclude the people’s voices. For example, people from communities that are being destroyed by FERC-approved projects must sit in an overflow room during the FERC’s monthly public meeting to prevent them from speaking out at the meeting.

Members of Beyond Extreme Energy have tried to work within FERC’s tightly-controlled system without success. They used protest to call attention to the direct impact FERC-approved projects are having on their livelihoods and communities, but the FERC continues to close its eyes and ears to them. Now BXE members are taking a bigger step and will be fasting on FERC’s doorstep for three weeks beginning September 8 to demand no new permits.

Starting with this letter from health professionals, there will be a series of letters laying out the case for an end to oil and gas infrastructure and a rapid transition to clean sustainable sources. These will be posted on the Beyond Extreme Energy website. Join the action to stop the FERC from locking us into a dirty energy future and instead make the FERC responsible to the people and for the transition to the carbon-free and nuclear-free future that is so desperately needed.

OPEN LETTER: Health Professionals Call for Moratorium on Fossil Fuel Infrastructure to Protect Public Health

We, the undersigned health professionals, strongly urge the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to immediately stop issuing permits for any new fossil fuel infrastructure. Based on scientific evidence of the health and public safety risks associated with fossil fuel infrastructure such as oil and gas drilling, refineries, pipelines and compressor stations and of their contribution to the further escalation of climate change and its associated risks to public health and safety, there must be a moratorium on new permits and a hold on construction for projects that have not been completed until a plan is made to move completely to energy sources that do not cause harm. The evidence is clear that the US can transition to 100% wind, water and solar energy by 2050 [1] and, in fact, that the US can be carbon-free and nuclear-free by 2050 or sooner [2].

Although the FERC is not directly involved in permits for oil and gas drilling, the pipelines and associated infrastructure under FERC’s jurisdiction do create the conditions that make more drilling and extraction of fossil fuels possible. It is becoming overwhelmingly clear that the process of extraction, refining, transport and burning of fossil fuels for energy is harmful to people and the planet at all stages. FERC must understand its role in the bigger picture of a national energy policy which is hurting communities and worsening the climate crisis.

As fossil fuel reserves decline, more extreme measures are being taken to extract them. In recent decades there has been a boom in unconventional fracking for oil and gas. Fracking pads and associated infrastructure are being placed close to homes, daycare centers and schools without consideration of the health impacts, particularly on children who are more vulnerable to toxic effects and are more likely to live long enough to experience long term effects of some of the chemicals used such as those that are carcinogenic.

Public health studies reveal that of the hundreds of chemicals used in the fracking process, 25% can cause cancer or mutations, 37% are endocrine-disrupters, 40 to 50% can affect the nervous, immune, cardiovascular and renal systems and more than 75% irritate the skin and eyes and cause respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms [3]. Additionally, the process of fracking brings heavy metals and radioactive elements buried deep in the ground to the surface where they contaminate air, soil and water.

Humans and animals are being adversely impacted by fracking and associated infrastructure from normal day-to-day operations as well as from industrial accidents and illegal activities. There are reports of fracking well failures that leak, explosions, failures of wastewater storage ponds and direct dumping of wastewater on roads and into waterways, pipeline leaks and compressor station malfunctions [4]. There are also frequent violations of regulations by oil and gas companies [5].

Researchers Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald write, “Without rigorous scientific studies, the gas drilling boom sweeping the world will remain an uncontrolled health experiment on an enormous scale.”

And in fact, as more health studies are published, it is becoming abundantly clear that there are significant adverse health impacts on humans and animals from extraction, processing and transportation of fossil fuels. It is time to stop this unethical experiment and end the fossil fuel era.

The climate crisis is another critical reason to stop permitting fossil fuel infrastructure. A recent study by Steven J. Davis and Robert H. Socolow looks at the carbon commitment of fossil fuel plants [6]. Based on their data, if we continue to build new fossil fuel power plants globally at the current rate, we will reach the limits of the carbon budget allotted by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to maintain warming below 2°C by 2018 [7].

Methane gas is being promoted as a ‘bridge fuel,’ but in reality the methane leakage from its production, transmission and use offsets any gains that methane has in emitting less carbon dioxide than coal when it is burned [8]. Methane is a more potent Greenhouse Gas than carbon dioxide over the short term by a factor of 80 to 100 [9].

The adverse health impacts of the climate crisis are already being felt. The World Health Organization estimates that 150,000 [10] people die prematurely each year because of factors directly related to the climate crisis, and this is expected to increase over time [11]. Extreme heat, weather-related disasters, infectious diseases, lack of access to clean water and crop failure due to the climate crisis cause increased suffering and death. A review of current science shows that fetuses and children, our future generations, are at greatest risk for adverse health impacts from fossil fuel and climate change [12]. In addition to mitigating the climate crisis, ending reliance on fossil fuels and replacing them with clean sources of energy would save additional lives by reducing pollution.

For these reasons, we urge FERC to immediately cease granting new permits for fossil fuel infrastructure and to halt construction of projects that are not completed. FERC needs to define the public interest not by what makes the energy market more profitable but by what creates a reliable energy supply without hurting communities and threatening a livable future. FERC can be a leader in transitioning to the necessary sustainable energy economy. We urge you to act now.

Signed,

Margaret Flowers, M.D., Baltimore, MD

Joseph A. Adams, M.D., Baltimore, MD

Kris Alman, Portland, OR

Gina Angiola, MD, Olney, MD

Nancy Ball, DVM, Lusby, MD

Michelle Bamberger, MS, DVM, Ithaca, NY

Barbara L Blake, RN, Los Angeles, CA

Kelly Branigan, RN, Cooperstown, NY

Michael Branigan, CRNA, MS, Cooperstown, NY

Mark Braun, MD, FACP, Cape Elizabeth, ME

Richard Bruno, MD, MPH, Baltimore, MD

Daniel C. Bryant, MD, Cape Elizabeth, ME

Sheila Bushkin-Bedient, MD, MPH, Waterford, NY

Claudia Chaufan, MD, PhD, San Francisco, CA

William D. Clark, MD, Woolwich, ME

Andrew D. Coates, MD, FACP, Albany, NY

Maureen Cruise RN, Pacific Palisades, CA

Mary L. De Luca, MD, Albuquerque, NM

Jane Diefenbach, M.S., Washington, DC

Martin Donohoe, MD, FACP, Portland, OR

Gwen DuBois MD, MPH Baltimore, MD

Robert Dubrow, MD, PhD, Hamden, CT

Larysa Dyrszka, MD, Bethel, NY

Tracey Eno, LMT, Lusby, MD

Frank A. Erickson, MD, Pendleton, OR

Steven Fenichel. MD, Ocean City, New Jersey

Richard Fireman, MD, Mars Hill, NC

James S. Goodman, MD, Albuquerque, NM

Jeoffrey Gordon, MD, MPH, San Diego, CA

Kendall Hale, MA, LMT, Fairview, NC

Lea Harper, Managing Director, Freshwater Accountability Project, Grand Rapids, Ohio

Paul Hochfeld, MD, Corvallis, OR

Bill Honigman, MD, Laguna Hills, CA

Julie Huntsman, DVM, Fly Creek, NY

Dana C. Iorio, ARNP, Seattle, WA

Norton Kalishman MD, Albuquerque, NM

Jeff Kaplan, MD, Baltimore, MD

Stephen B. Kemble, MD, Honolulu, HI

Phyllis S. Kimmelman, DVM, Cherry Hill, NJ

Naomi Kistin, MD, Albuquerque, NM

Robert Klotz, Jr., P.A., South Portland, ME

Miriam Komaromy, MD, FACP, Albuquerque, NM

Larry Learner MD, Nashua NH

Eric Lerner, Climate Director, Health Care Without Harm, Reston, VA

Bruce Levine, PhD, Cincinnati, Ohio

Eric London MD, Bethel, NY

Elizabeth T. Matthews, MD, Albuquerque, NM

David McLanahan, MD, Seattle, WA

Mary Menapace RN, Skaneateles NY

Art Milholland, MD, Silver Spring, MD

Eileen S Natuzzi, MD, MPH. Encinitas, CA

Eric Naumberg, MD, MPH, Columbia, MD

Curtis L Nordgaard, MD MSc, Boston MA

Cindy L. Parker MD, MPH, Baltimore, MD

George Pauk, MD, Phoenix, AZ

Jane Pauk, BSN, Phoenix, AZ

Julie Keller Pease, MD, Brunswick, ME

Sandra F. Penn, MD, FAAFP, Albuquerque, NM

Janis Bacon Petzel, MD, Islesboro, ME

Sally M. Pinkstaff, Baltimore, MD

Edward Pontius MD, DFAPA, Portland, ME

Bertram Rechtschaffer, DDS, Garrison, NY

King Reilly, MD, Los Angeles, CA

LeeAnn Rhodes, MD, Washington, DC

Max Romano, MD, MPH, Baltimore, MD

Henry Rose, MD, Dalton, MA

Katherine M Shea MD, MPH, Chapel Hill, NC

Michael A Siegel MD, Portland OR

Stacey Smith, MDiv, Hypnotherapist,Tully, NY

Gary Stoller, DDS, Great Barrington, MA

Paul Song, MD, Santa Monica, CA

Jim Squire, MD, Seattle, WA

Jill Stein, MD, Lexington, MA

Keldwyn Teves Asheville, NC

Bruce Trigg, MD, Albuquerque, NM

Walter Tsou, MD, MPH, Philadelphia, PA

Sandra Turner, MD, New York City, NY

Deborah Wagner, RN, Brookeville, MD

Kathleen L. Webster Readfield, ME

Neil Weinberg, L. Ac, Dipl. O. M., Ithaca, NY

Richard Weiskopf MD, Syracuse, NY

Gerri Wiley, PHN, Owego, NY

Charles I. Wohl, MD, FACP, Pittsfield, MA

Endnotes

1. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/fifty-states-renewables-022414.html
2. http://ieer.org/resource/reports/carbon-free-and-nuclear-free/
3. http://cce.cornell.edu/EnergyClimateChange/NaturalGasDev/Documents/PDFs/fracking%20chemicals%20from%20a%20public%20health%20perspective.pdf
4. http://psehealthyenergy.org/data/Bamberger_Oswald_NS22_in_press.pdf
5. http://www.indyweek.com/pdf/051111/pennsylvaniashalereport.pdf
6. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/8/084018/
7. http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-carbon-age-needs-to-end-in-2018
8. http://www.usclimatenetwork.org/resource-database/report-coal-to-gas-the-influence-of-methane-leakage
9. http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/howarth/publications/Howarth_2014_ESE_methane_emissions.pdf
10. http://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/
11.  http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/
12. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/11173/

 

US dollar dominance finances Washington’s reckless spending, global militarism, its empire of bases, endless wars, corporate takeovers, as well as speculative excess creating bubbles and economic crises – at the expense of democratic freedoms and beneficial social change.

China, Russia and other nations increasingly trading in their own currencies pose a significant threat to dollar dominance. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya explained Washington’s currency war on China, saying:

The Chinese are in the process of displacing the monopoly of the US dollar. They are dropping their US Treasury bonds, stockpiling gold reserves, and opening regional distribution banks for their own national currency.

This will give them easier access to capital markets and insulate them from financial manipulation by Washington and Wall Street.

China bashing by public and private US officials is part of a campaign to denigrate its government – making inflammatory accusations without proof about hacking, defying its legitimate right to do what it wishes in its own waters, and threatening sanctions – legal only by Security Council members, never by individual countries against others, Washington’s longstanding weapon against independent governments.

“As the financial architecture of the world is being altered by China and Russia, the US dollar is gradually being neutralized as one of Washington’s weapon of choice,” Nazemroaya explained.

The post-WW II US-dominated international monetary system is threatened with unraveling. Washington is fighting back with propaganda, energy, financial, economic and currency wars against China and Russia, said Nazemroaya.

Russia sold a fifth of its $125 billion in US Treasuries holdings last March. China’s US Treasuries holdings exceed $1 trillion dollars. It’s been aggressively dumping them.

It’s gone from the world’s largest buyer to its biggest seller. Will other countries follow suit? Nations are increasingly trading in their own currencies. Weakening America’s financial strength is the best way curb its imperial ambitions.

Russia drafted legislation aimed at eliminating dollars and euros in trade between Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia, and other former Soviet republics.

A Kremlin statement said “(t)his would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domestic currency markets.”

It would facilitate regional trade and help achieve economic stability. It would reduce dependency on the world’s two dominant currencies.

China’s central bank launched a Heilongjiang Province yuan/ruble program – Russia’s currency replacing the dollar.

Both countries are increasingly trading in their own currencies – bypassing dollar transactions. If enough other countries follow suit, dollar strength will weaken. Its hegemonic ambitions will be curbed – how much, how soon remains to be seen.

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. 

On August 18, 2015, the FDA proudly announced that they had approved (after 2 previous rejections) a new drug whose generic name is flibanserin (Addyi will be the brand name when it comes to your local drug store in mid-October). The only drug that Sprout Pharmaceuticals has ever marketed, flibanserin is purported to treat a “disease” called hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD).

The drug has been approved only for premenopausal women. The company will offer the drug in a 100 mg dose, to be swallowed once per night, no matter if sexual encounter is anticipated or not. This pill is not a female Viagra!

In a related story, two days after the FDA’s formal approval to market their only drug, Sprout announced that it had sold itself to a wholly-owned subsidiary of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. for $1 billion dollars cash plus a portion of future earnings.

Below is some essential background information about the drug that hasn’t been well covered in the mass media. Every interested patient (and their prescribing practitioners) should know about this information before they ask for a prescription from their psychiatrist, OB-GYN, internist, family physician or nurse practitioner.

Some of the downsides of this new, soon-to-be blockbuster drug

For one thing, the drug will be expensive, indeed, it will unaffordable unless health insurance companies can be hood-winked to pay for it. If they do, look for premiums to rise! Cindy Whitehead, the CEO of Sprout has stated that it will be charging pharmacies $400 for a 30 pill supply [which equates to over $13 per pill!]. Nobody knows what the mark-up will be at the pharmacy.

Secondly, the drug will very likely be destructive of serotonin nerves long-term just judging from the molecular structure, which contains a  highly neurotoxic tri-fluoridated methyl group attached to an amphetamine-like benzene ring (= phenyl group). That particular moiety resulted in the banning (in 1997) of the methamphetamine-like, psycho-stimulating, appetite-suppressing, weight-loss drug fenfluramine (of Fen-Phen infamy) after it was discovered to have caused a number of cardiac deaths and serious disability, including heart valve damage, primary pulmonary hypertension, and the near total destruction of serotonin nerves in the frontal lobes of experimental monkeys who had been given only 4 doses of fenfluramine 17 months prior to their being sacrificed and their brains examined.

The dramatic brain biopsies that proved this serious outcome were published in 1975, twenty years before the drug was widely prescribed to unsuspecting over-weight patients by equally unsuspecting weight-loss physicians!

Here is the molecular structure of flibanserin:

It is important to note that the portion of the molecule at the end opposite of the tri-fluoridated phenyl group has a structure that resembles an indole ring, which is the base structure of the serotonin molecule. The drug company marketing this drug states that in the flibanserin rat studies, serotonin was found to be “decreased” in the brains of the treated rats while dopamine and norepinephrine were found to be “elevated”. Those findings are consistent with what could be predicted to occur just from looking at the molecule. The serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine receptor sites and reuptake pumps, just like all antidepressants, antipsychotics and psychostimulants, WILL be “messed with”, even poisoned, but not in brain-healthy ways.

Flibanserin has not yet been tested – even in the animal labs – for long-term safety or efficacy. That will be done in the Phase IV (post-marketing) studies, which are typically done in a haphazard fashion. Judging from the Phase III clinical trials, the drug appears, at best, to be only marginally effective at raising female libido for only some patients. The study that was submitted to the FDA claimed that the patients taking the drug experienced only approximately one additional favorable sexual experience per month, compared to the placebo group.

Pharmaceutical companies typically exaggerate, by a sneaky statistical trick, a drug’s effectiveness – the RRR (relative risk reduction). One can therefore expect flibanserin’s marketers (aiming at both to physicians and the public) to claim a 30% or 40% relative risk improvement rate (which will be the deceptive “relative risk” improvement figure and not the “actual risk” improvement figure of one incident per month). Such statistical manipulations regularly fool both doctors and prospective patients to expect dramatic results – until reality hits much later.

Significant numbers of patients may be harmed and many will be disappointed with the mediocrity of the promised results, but in the meantime, some Big Pharma corporation will be raking in $400 per patient per month and some health insurance companies will be reluctantly paying out $400 per month until the duped patients sicken or drop out because of the drug’s ineffectiveness and angrily quit the drug. Same old very profitable strategy that drug companies have used for generations, even with dangerous or ineffective drugs.

One of the published rat lab studies that I found online “suggested” that the sexually immature female rats used in the trial, after being on flibanserin for weeks, “appeared” to observers to be sexually interested in male rats, but that “suggested response” only happened after the rats had been given injections of synthetic estrogen and progesterone drugs! Reading the study made me shake my head, because the authors of the study (paid by the company) had not seen the obvious clinical inapplicability of those findings, which they regarded as good enough reasons to proceed to human studies.

It is important to realize that years earlier, this drug was thought by its original developer to be marketable as an antidepressant drug (it failed), probably because its molecular structure had some similarity to fluoxetine (Eli Lilly’s Prozac), fluvoxamine (Solvay Pharmaceutical’s Luvox) and fenfluramine (Wyeth’s Pondimin and Redux). Wyeth, incidentally, was acquired by Pfizer in 2009 for $68 billion after Wyeth settled the fenfluramine liability claims for an estimated $14 billion. Fenfluramine, it needs to be noted, is a now banned, long-acting psychostimulant (but very neurotoxic) drug because of the three highly electronegative fluorine atoms attached to its phenyl group.

When its use as an antidepressant drug failed, the original drug company gave up on it and sold its rights to Sprout.

What to do Before Taking Flibanserin

My advice to prospective patients, before submitting to an expensive, essentially untested and potentially dangerous brain-altering drug, is to first find out if your diminished libido was caused by current or previous psychiatric drug usage, since such usage (virtually epidemic in the US, especially for women) is a major root cause of sexual dysfunction in both men and women. That information is vitally important, because flibanserin WILL NOT WORK in (and the drug is not intended for) patients whose brains have been altered by prior or current psych drug usage.

Flibanserin is not indicated for use in cases of drug-induced diminished libido. Sprout Pharmaceuticals actually says, in its product information brochure, that the use of flibanserin is contraindicated in patients that are taking any of the following (CYP3A4 hepatic enzyme inhibitor)medications, which include many SSRI antidepressants. Note this partial list of commonly prescribed drugs that are CYPDA4 hepatic enzyme inhibitors):

Aminodarone, Azithromzcin, Cannabinoids, Cimetidine, Clarithromycin, Clotrimazole, Cyclosporine, Dexamethasone, Diltiazem, Disulfiram, Erythromycin, Ethinyl estradiol, Fluconazole, Fluoxetine (Prozac), Fluvoxamine (Luvox), Grapefruit juice, Isoniazid, Ketoconazole, Metronidazole, Miconazole, Nefazodone (Serzone), Paroxetine (Paxil), Propoxyphene (Darvon), Quinidine, Quinine, Ranitidine, Sertraline (Zoloft), Troglitazone, Valproic acid.

At the end of this article is another list of prescription drugs that can lower a person’s libido. Flibanserin is not intended to be used in the treatment of such drug-induced sexual dysfunction.

SSRI-induced Sexual Dysfunction can be Permanent

The amphetamine molecule-based, halogenated/fluoridated SSRI drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and Luvox, are notorious for causing high rates of sexual dysfunction in both females and males, and SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction can become permanent!

See http://www.australianprescriber.com/magazine/36/2/42/5 for a good introduction to the problem.

(Also watch this YouTube video taped by one of the victims of Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3db98NVDMw.) There is a 3,700 member support group serving victims of PSSD. Info about that group is available at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SSRIsex/info.

Sexual dysfunction symptoms can be caused by many psychiatric drugs. Symptoms include diminished libido, anorgasmia, erectile dysfunction, delayed ejaculation and inability to ejaculate – not to mention  worsening depression, suicidality, homicidality, akathisia, memory loss, insomnia, anhedonia and an “I don’t give a damn attitude” (all of which are libido killers).

Except for gradually and carefully stopping the offending drug, there is no effective treatment for the most severe forms of SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction. Logic tells us that drug-induced sexual dysfunction can’t be expected to resolve by adding another serotonergic or dopaminergic drug, all of whom cause brain problems that aren’t understood. And, just like the withdrawal symptoms that always arise after discontinuing addictive medications, such drugs must be cautiously discontinued. In the case of patients who have already become permanently sexually disabled because of SSRIs, even stopping the drug may not cure the problem.

Knowing what I do about the molecular structure of such psychoactive drugs as flibanserin, I would predict that an unknowable percentage of patients trying this medication on a long term basis will be made worse in any number of ways.

Please study the list of offending drugs immediately below and inform your healthcare provider, who may not be fully aware of these issues. The list below is excerpted from the website of the International Society for Sexual Medicine.

Flibanserin has not been approved for use in drug-induced sexual dysfunction.

(http://www.issm.info/education-for-all/sexual-health-qa/what-medications-might-lower-a-persons-libido/ )

Libido-lowering Medications

• Antidepressants.

• Antipsychotics 

• Benzodiazepines

• Beta-blockers 

• Estrogen-containing drugs (may lower libido in men)

• Finasteride (Proscar is prescribed for treating prostate enlargement. Propecia is prescribed for male-pattern baldness.)

• Opioids (like morphine and oxycodone)

• Oral contraceptives

“This is not an exhaustive list.

“Patients who think their medications are affecting their libido should talk to their doctor. Some drugs cannot be stopped abruptly and need a weaning period.

“Note:  Testosterone contributes to sex drive in both men and women, but some drugs lower libido without affecting testosterone levels.  Scientists are not exactly sure how this happens, but it likely involves specific brain centers that manipulate dopamine.”

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

Published by Global Research in September 2014 at the outset of the bombing campaign

In the wake of World War I, erstwhile propagandist and political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined propaganda as “the management of collective attitudes” and the “control over opinion” through “the manipulation of significant symbols.”[1] The extent to which this tradition is enthusiastically upheld in the West and the United States in particular is remarkable.

The American public is consistently propagandized by its government and corporate news media on the most vital of contemporary issues and events.

Deception on such a scale would be of little consequence if the US were not the most powerful economic and military force on earth.

[Image Credit: Vice News]

A case in point is the hysteria Western news media are attempting to create concerning the threat posed by the mercenary-terrorist army now being promoted as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or “ISIS.”

As was the case with the US intelligence asset and bogey publicized as “Al Qaeda,” and Al Qaeda’s Syrian adjunct, “Al Nusra,” such entities are—apparently by design—inadequately investigated and defined by major news media. Absent meaningful historical context they usefully serve as another raison d’ểtre for America’s terminal “War on Terror.”

A seemingly obvious feature of such terrorist forces left unexamined by corporate media is that they are observably comprised of the same or comparable personnel unleashed elsewhere throughout the Middle East as part of a strategy proposed during the George W. Bush administration in 2007.[2]

With the above observations in mind, ISIS is well-financed, militarily proficient, and equipped with modern vehicles and weaponry. It also exhibits an uncanny degree of media savvy in terms of propagating its message in professional-looking videos and on platforms such as YouTube and Twitter. “Western intelligence services,” the New York Times reports, claim to be “worried about their extraordinary command of seemingly less lethal weapons: state-of-the-art videos, ground images shot from drones, and multilingual Twitter messages.”[3]

Along these lines, ISIS even received a largely sympathetic portrayal in a five-part series produced and aired by the Rupert Murdoch-backed Vice News.[4] Indeed, Vice News’ “The Spread of the Caliphate” is reminiscent of the public relations-style reportage produced via the “embedding” of corporate news media personnel with US and allied forces during the 2003 conquest of Iraq.

The overt support of ISIS, combined with the fact that it is battling the same Syrian government the Obama administration overtly sought to wage war against just one year ago, strongly suggest the organization’s sponsorship by Western intelligence and military interests.

ISIS’s curious features are readily apparent to non-Western news outlets and citizenries. For example, Iran’s PressTV recently asked its readership, “Why does the ISIL have such easy access to Twitter, Youtube and other social media to propagate its ideologies?” The answer choices are, “1) Because the ISIL has very capable technicians who can best use social media, or 2) Because the US and Britain have provided the ISIL with unrestricted social media platform[s].” Note that the first choice is the overarching assumption of Western media outlets. Yet perhaps unsurprisingly, 90 percent of PressTV readers selected choice two.[5]

No such queries are so much as alluded to by major corporate media, all of which are united in the notion that ISIS is an essentially indigenous phenomenon. Yet as coverage of the events of September 11, 2001 and subsequent state-sponsored terrorism indicates, such media are essentially a component of the national security state, their reports and broadcast scripts all but overtly written by intelligence and military organizations.

In the wake of 9/11 US news media seldom asked about the origins of Al Qaeda—particularly how it was a product of US intelligence agencies. With the history of Al Qaeda omitted, the Bush administration was permitted to wage war on Afghanistan almost immediately following those staged attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Yet as is much the case with today’s manufactured ISIS phenomenon, that history was readily available, and its careful public examination might have implicated the United States intelligence community in the 9/11 attacks. “During the Cold War, but also in its aftermath,” Michel Chossudovsky observes,

the CIA—using Pakistan’s military intelligence apparatus as a “go between”—played a key role in training the Mujhadeen. In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have consistently supported the “Militant Islamic Base”, including Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, as part of their foreign policy agenda. The links between Osama bin Laden and the Clinton administration in Bosnia and Kosovo are well documented by congressional records.[6]

As the United States and world approach the thirteenth anniversary of the most momentous false flag in modern history, the American public would be well-served to remind itself that ISIS is the new Al Qaeda—in other words, the new pretext that will in all likelihood be used by to take police state measures at home and military aggression abroad to new, perhaps unprecedented, levels.

With the above in mind, it is telling that one of the US government’s greatest fears isn’t ISIS at all. “The FBI’s most recent threat assessment for domestic terrorism makes no reference to Islamist terror threats,” the Washington Free Beacon reports, “despite last year’s Boston Marathon bombing and the 2009 Fort Hood shooting—both carried out by radical Muslim Americans.”

Instead, the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency is preoccupied with what it deems “domestic extremism” exhibited by its own subjects.[7] A primary manifestation of such “extremism” is possessing the curiosity to discern and seek out truths and information amidst the barrage of manipulated symbols the government and corporate-controlled media use to undermine a potentially informed public.

Notes

[1] Harold Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1927/1971.

[2] Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s New Policy Benefitting Our Enemies in the War on Terrorism?” New Yorker, March 5, 2007; Tony Cartalucci, “Extremists Ravaging Syria Created by US in 2007,” Land Destroyer Report, May 11, 2012.

[3] Scott Shane and Ben Hubbard, “ISIS Displaying a Deft Command of Varied Media,” New York Times, August 30, 2014.

[4] Joe Bercovici, “Thanks to Rupert Murdoch, Vice is Worth $1.4 Billion. Could it be in Play Soon?” Forbes, August 19, 2014; Medyan Dairieh, “The Spread of the Caliphate: The Islamic State,” Vice News, August 13, 2014.

[5] PressTV Poll, http://presstv.ir, retrieved on August 30, 2014.

[6] Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism” Second Edition, Montreal CA: Global Research, 2005, 4.

[7] Bill Gertz, “FBI National Domestic Threat Assessment Omits Islamist Terrorism,” Washington Free Beacon, August 29, 2014.

First published in March,  2015

Reports that US and British aircraft carrying arms to ISIS have been shot down by Iraqi forces have been met with shock and denial in western countries. Few in the Middle East doubt that Washington is playing a ‘double game’ with its proxy armies in Syria, but some key myths remain important amongst the significantly more ignorant western audiences.

A central myth is that Washington now arms ‘moderate Syrian rebels’, to both overthrow the Syrian Government and supposedly defeat the ‘extremist rebels’. This claim became more important in 2014, when the rationale of US aggression against Syria shifted from ‘humanitarian intervention’ to a renewal of Bush’s ‘war on terror’.

A distinct controversy is whether the al Qaeda styled groups (especially Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS) have been generated as a sort of organic reaction to the repeated US interventions, or whether they are actually paid agents of Washington.

Certainly, prominent ISIS leaders were held in US prisons. ISIS leader, Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) is said to have been held for between one and two years at Camp Bucca in Iraq. In 2006, as al-Baghdadi and others were released, the Bush administration announced its plan for a ‘New Middle East’, a plan which would employ sectarian violence as part of a process of ‘creative destruction’ in the region.

According to Seymour Hersh’s 2007 article, ‘The Redirection’, the US would make use of ‘moderate Sunni states’, not least the Saudis, to ‘contain’ the Shia gains in Iraq brought about by the 2003 US invasion. These ‘moderate Sunni’ forces would carry out clandestine operations to weaken Iran and Hezbollah, key enemies of Israel. This brought the Saudis and Israel closer, as both fear Iran.

While there have been claims that the ISIS ‘caliph’ al-Baghdadi is a CIA or Mossad trained agent, these have not yet been well backed up. There are certainly grounds for suspicion, but independent evidence is important, in the context of a supposed US ‘war’ against ISIS . So what is the broader evidence on Washington’s covert links with ISIS?

Not least are the admissions by senior US officials that key allies support the extremist group. In September 2014 General Martin Dempsey, head of the US military, told a Congressional hearing ‘I know major Arab allies who fund [ ISIS ]’. Senator Lindsey Graham, of Armed Services Committee, responded with a justification, ‘They fund them because the Free Syrian Army couldn’t fight [Syrian President] Assad, they were trying to beat Assad’.

The next month, US Vice President Joe Biden went a step further, explaining that Turkey, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia ‘were so determined to take down Assad … they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad … [including] al Nusra and al Qaeda and extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world … [and then] this outfit called ISIL’. Biden’s admissions sought to exempt the US from this operation, as though Washington were innocent of sustained operations carried out by its key allies. That is simply not credible.

Washington’s relationship with the Saudis, as a divisive sectarian force in the region, in particular against Arab nationalism, goes back to the 1950s, when Winston Churchill introduced the Saudi King to President Eisenhower. At that time Washington wanted to set up the Saudi King as a rival to President Nasser of Egypt. More recently, British General Jonathan Shaw has acknowledged the contribution of Saudi Arabia’s extremist ideology: ‘This is a time bomb that, under the guise of education. Wahhabi Salafism is igniting under the world really. And it is funded by Saudi and Qatari money’, Shaw said.

Other evidence undermines western attempts to maintain a distinction between the ‘moderate rebels’, now openly armed and trained by the US, and the extremist groups Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS. While there has indeed been some rivalry (emphasised by the London-based, Muslim Brotherhood-aligned, Syrian Observatory of Human Rights), the absence of real ideological difference is best shown by the cooperation and mergers of groups.

As ISIS came from Iraq in 2013, its Syrian bases have generally remained in the far eastern part of Syria. However Jabhat al Nusra (the official al Qaeda branch in Syria, from which ISIS split) has collaborated with Syrian Islamist groups in western Syria for several years. The genocidal slogan of the Syrian Islamists, ‘Christians to Beirut and Alawis to the Grave’, reported many times in 2011 from the Farouk Brigade, sat well with the al Qaeda groups. Farouk (once the largest ‘Free Syrian Army’ group) indeed killed and ethnically cleansed many Christians and Alawis.

Long term cooperation between these ‘moderate rebels’ and the foreign-led Jabhat al-Nusra has been seen around Daraa in the south, in Homs-Idlib, along the Turkish border and in and around Aleppo. The words Jabhat al Nusra actually mean ‘support front’, that is, support for the Syrian Islamists. Back in December 2012, as Jabhat al Nusra was banned in various countries, 29 of these groups reciprocated the solidarity in their declaration: ‘We are all Jabhat al-Nusra’.

After the collapse of the ‘Free Syrian Army’ groups, cooperation between al Nusra and the newer US and Saudi backed groups (Dawud, the Islamic Front, the Syrian Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm) helped draw attention to Israel’s support for al Nusra, around the occupied Golan Heights. Since 2013 there have been many reports of ‘rebel’ fighters, including those from al Nusra, being treated in Israeli hospitals. Prime Minister Netanyahu even publicised his visit to wounded ‘rebels’ in early 2014. That led to a public ‘thank you’ from a Turkey-based ‘rebel’ leader, Mohammed Badie (February 2014).

The UN peacekeeping force based in the occupied Golan has reported its observations of Israel’s Defence Forces ‘interacting with’ al Nusra fighters at the border. At the same time, Israeli arms have been found with the extremist groups, in both Syria and Iraq. In November 2014 members of the Druze minority in the Golan protested against Israel’s hospital support for al Nusra and ISIS fighters. This in turn led to questions by the Israeli media, as to whether ‘ Israel does, in fact, hospitalize members of al-Nusra and Daesh [ISIS]’. A military spokesman’s reply was hardly a denial: ‘In the past two years the Israel Defence Forces have been engaged in humanitarian, life-saving aid to wounded Syrians, irrespective of their identity.’

The artificial distinction between ‘rebel’ and ‘extremist’ groups is mocked by multiple reports of large scale defections and transfer of weapons. In July 2014 one thousand armed men in the Dawud Brigade defected to ISIS in Raqqa. In November defections to Jabhat al Nusra from the Syrian Revolutionary Front were reported. In December, Adib Al-Shishakli, representative at the Gulf Cooperation Council of the exile ‘ Syrian National Coalition’, said ‘opposition fighters’ were ‘increasingly joining’ ISIS ‘for financial reasons’. In that same month, ‘rebels’ in the Israel-backed Golan area were reported as defecting to ISIS, which had by this time began to establish a presence in Syria’s far south. Then, in early 2015, three thousand ‘moderate rebels’ from the US-backed ‘Harakat Hazzm’ collapsed into Jabhat al Nusra, taking a large stock of US arms including anti-tank weapons with them.

ISIS already had US weapons by other means, in both Iraq and Syria , as reported in July, September and October 2014. At that time a ‘non aggression pact’ was reported in the southern area of Hajar al-Aswad between ‘moderate rebels’ and ISIS, as both recognised a common enemy in Syria: ‘the Nussayri regime’, a sectarian way of referring to supposedly apostate Muslims. Some reported ISIS had bought weapons from the ‘rebels’.

In December 2014 there were western media reports of the US covert supply of heavy weapons to ‘Syrian rebels’ from Libya, and of Jabhat al-Nusra getting anti-tank weapons which had been supplied to Harakat Hazm. Video posted by al-Nusra showed these weapons being used to take over the Syrian military bases, Wadi Deif and Hamidiyeh, in Idlib province.

With ‘major Arab allies’ backing ISIS and substantial collaboration between US-armed ‘moderate rebels’ and ISIS, it is not such a logical stretch to suppose that the US and ‘coalition’ flights to ISIS areas (supposedly to ‘degrade’ the extremists) might have become covert supply lines. That is precisely what senior Iraqi sources began saying, in late 2014 and early 2015.

For example, as reported by both Iraqi and Iranian media, Iraqi MP Majid al-Ghraoui said in January that ‘an American aircraft dropped a load of weapons and equipment to the ISIS group militants at the area of al-Dour in the province of Salahuddin’. Photos were published of ISIS retrieving the weapons. The US admitted the seizure but said this was a ‘mistake’. In February Iraqi MP Hakem al-Zameli said the Iraqi army had shot down two British planes which were carrying weapons to ISIS in al-Anbar province. Again, photos were published of the wrecked planes. ‘We have discovered weapons made in the US , European countries and Israel from the areas liberated from ISIL’s control in Al-Baqdadi region’, al-Zameli said.

The Al-Ahad news website quoted Head of Al-Anbar Provincial Council Khalaf Tarmouz saying that a US plane supplied the ISIL terrorist organization with arms and ammunition in Salahuddin province. Also in February an Iraqi militia called Al-Hashad Al-Shabi said they had shot down a US Army helicopter carrying weapons for the ISIL in the western parts of Al-Baqdadi region in Al-Anbar province. Again, photos were published. After that, Iraqi counter-terrorism forces were reported as having arrested ‘four foreigners who were employed as military advisors to the ISIL fighters’, three of whom were American and Israeli. So far the western media has avoided these stories altogether; they are very damaging to the broader western narrative.

In Libya, a key US collaborator in the overthrow of the Gaddafi government has announced himself the newly declared head of the ‘Islamic State’ in North Africa. Abdel Hakim Belhaj was held in US prisons for several years, then ‘rendered’ to Gaddafi’s Libya, where he was wanted for terrorist acts. As former head of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, then the Tripoli-based ‘Libyan Dawn’ group, Belhaj has been defended by Washington and praised by US Congressmen John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

Some image softening of the al Qaeda groups is underway. Jabhat al-Nusra is reported to be considering cutting ties to al Qaeda, to help sponsor Qatar boost their funding. Washington’s Foreign Affairs magazine even published a survey claiming that ISIS fighters were ‘surprisingly supportive of democracy’. After all the well published massacres that lacks credibility.

The Syrian Army is gradually reclaiming Aleppo, despite the hostile supply lines from Turkey, and southern Syria, in face of support for the sectarian groups from Jordan and Israel. The border with Lebanon is largely under Syrian Army and Hezbollah control. In the east, the Syrian Army and its local allies control most of Hasaka and Deir e-Zour, with a final campaign against Raqqa yet to come. The NATO-GCC attempt to overthrow the Syrian Government has failed.

Yet violent destabilisation persists. Evidence of the covert relationship between Washington and ISIS is substantial and helps explain what Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mikdad calls Washington’s ‘cosmetic war’ on ISIS. The extremist group is a foothold Washington keeps in the region, weakening both Syria and Iraq . Their ‘war’ on ISIS is ineffective. Studies by Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgent database show that ISIS attacks and killings in Iraq increased strongly after US air attacks began. The main on the ground fighting has been carried out by the Syrian Army and, more recently, the Iraqi armed forces with Iranian backing.

All this has been reported perversely in the western media. The same channels that celebrate the ISIS killing of Syrian soldiers also claim the Syrian Army is ‘not fighting ISIS’. This alleged ‘unwillingness’ was part of the justification for US bombing inside Syria. While it is certainly the case that Syrian priorities have remained in the heavily populated west, local media reports make it clear that, since at least the beginning of 2014, the Syrian Arab Army has been the major force engaged with ISIS in Hasaka, Raqqa and Deir eZour. A March 2015 Reuters report does concede that the Syrian Army recently killed two ISIS commanders (including Deeb Hedjian al-Otaibi) along with 24 fighters, at Hamadi Omar.

Closer cooperation between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah is anathema to Israel, the Saudis and Washington, yet it is happening. This is not a sectarian divide but rather based on some clear mutual interests, not least putting an end to sectarian (takfiri) terrorism.

It was only logical that, in the Iraqi military’s recent offensive on ISIS-held Tikrit, the Iranian military emerged as Iraq’s main partner. Washington has been sidelined, causing consternation in the US media. General Qasem Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force is a leading player in the Tikrit operation.  A decade after Washington’s ‘creative destruction’ plans, designed to reduce Iranian influence in Iraq, an article in Foreign Policy magazine complains that Iran’s influence is ‘at its highest point in almost four centuries’.

——

Select references

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya (2006) Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a ‘New Middle East’

http://www.globalresearch.ca/plans-for-redrawing-the-middle-east-the-project-for-a-new-middle-east/3882

Seymour Hersh (2007) The Redirection

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection

Al Akhbar (2011) Syria: What Kind of Revolution?

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/540

The New Yorker (2013) Syrian Opposition Groups Stop Pretending

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/syrian-opposition-groups-stop-pretending

RT (2014) Anyone but US! Biden blames allies for ISIS rise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11l8nLZNPSY

Iraqi News (2015) American aircraft dropped weapons to ISIS, says MP

http://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/american-aircraft-airdropped-weapons-to-isis-says-mp/

Washington Post (2015) Syrian rebel group that got U.S. aid dissolves

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syrian-fighter-group-that-got-us-missiles-dissolves-after-major-defeat/2015/03/01/286fa934-c048-11e4-a188-8e4971d37a8d_story.html

David Kenner (2015) For God and Country, and Iran, Foreign Policy

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/05/for-god-and-country-and-iran/

Reuters (2015) Syrian air strike kills two Islamic State commanders

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/07/us-mideast-crisis-syria-islamicstate-idUSKBN0M30F720150307

We can, and must, source our NATO defence requirements from the European Union and not from Israel, a state whose military intelligence unit supplies so-called ‘security systems’ and espionage skills to Columbia and similar repressive regimes worldwide.

 ‘In Colombia, evidence of illegal interception of communications pervades accounts of extrajudicial disappearances and killings, according to Privacy International. Colombia’s long ­running conflict with left-wing rebels has killed more than 200,000 people since 1958, most of them civilians, and Amnesty International has accused both sides of violations of human rights and international law’ 

 

---

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/105446

UK CITIZENS AND RESIDENTS. SIGN THE PETITION. 96, 000: WE SHOULD REACH 100,000 BY THE WEEKEND

---

Britain is a liberal democracy and must not do business with those who support or arm dictatorships and who are themselves documented, illegal occupiers of land and, as in this case, uniquely, an undeclared nuclear weapon state with a hidden arsenal of hundreds of nuclear warheads that denies the inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations.

“The British Government has invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as head of the Israeli Government, to visit the UK in September. Under UK and international law, certain holders of high­ranking office in a State, including Heads of State, Heads of Government and Ministers for Foreign Affairs are entitled to immunity, which includes inviolability and complete immunity from criminal jurisdiction.”

If Netanyahu arrives in London claiming immunity from criminal prosecution then he should be refused entry. David Cameron has both a declared and moral duty to retain the integrity of the electorate and government of the United Kingdom.

Israel has inaugurated its fifth Dolphin-class submarine, allegedly capable of launching cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. A German shipyard in Kiel has a contract to build a sixth sub “to ensure the security of Israel’s citizens,” the PM said.

Translated and introduced by Ethan Mark

Introduction: The People and the War

As a young historian researching prewar popular political movements in the early 1970s, Yoshimi Yoshiaki (b. 1946) became increasingly struck—and troubled—by the systematic inattention to popular experiences of the war period, along with the virtually universal silence on questions of popular war responsibility. Imbued with the progressive convictions of a scholarly generation that came of age amid the political struggles of the late 1960s, he was dissatisfied with the near-universal academic focus on elites and abstract social structures that rendered the story of the Japanese experience of the war “a history without people.” After many years of research, stops and starts, the end result was Grassroots Fascism: a radically different vantage on the wartime experience from the “bottom-up” and a bold attempt to break out of the constricted confines of “history in the passive voice.”

Taking us on a narrative journey that begins with the war’s troubled early 1930s beginnings and culminates in the disaster of defeat and the promise of a new beginning in 1945, moving adeptly and systematically between the home front and the diverse variety of “fronts” that distinguished Japan’s far-flung Asian imperium, Grassroots Fascism exposes us to a remarkable array of popular voices deftly assembled from sources such as diaries, government archives, and memoirs. Along the way Yoshimi presents a carefully nuanced and historicized portrait of everyday, non-elite Japanese in all their real-life complexity and ambiguity not only as victims of, but also as active participants in, the wartime struggle for hegemony in Asia and social renovation at home. Grassroots Fascism is also at special pains to include penetrating accounts of the experience of Japanese ethnic minorities and imperial subjects, including Okinawans, Koreans, and Taiwanese, engaged in their own complex personal and group negotiations of the wartime enterprise.

Yoshimi Yoshiaki

In taking Japan’s “common people” as protagonists and letting them in effect tell their own story of the war as it evolved, Grassroots Fascism reveals a 1930s and 1940s Japan that defies historiographical convention. Viewed from the bottom up, there unfolds before us a complex modern mass society, with a corresponding variety of popular roles and agendas. The comfortable, transparent “black and white” of conventional narratives of victims and villains is boldly exchanged for the translucent “grey” of a Japanese people cast as both victim and victimizer. In this and in its ingenious deployment of source material to evoke the wartime experience in three dimensions of vividness and diversity, Yoshimi’s study elevates scholarly discussion of the nature and dynamics of Japan’s wartime experience—and of “Japanese fascism”—to a bold new level.

Fascism and Empire at the Grassroots

Yoshimi’s narrative of the unfolding of Japanese fascism is distinguished by his identification of the crucial role played by the interaction between the metropolitan center and the imperial periphery and the link between the increasingly brutal Japanese suppression of anticolonial resistance and fascist radicalization. This innovative perspective in turn emphasizes the historicity of the Japanese wartime regime as one evolving—and intensifying—in response to the perceived demands of total war.

At the start of the Sino-Japanese war in the late 1930s,“Domestically there was not much of a crisis situation, but quite important in place of this was the great number of the people who were mobilized into the military and sent to the Chinese mainland, there having a crisis type of experience that played an extraordinarily great role in Japan’s fascistization—this is my thinking.”¹ Yoshimi’s centering of this China war dynamic in the making of Japanese fascism leads him to locate the critical moment of fascist consolidation at a time in which the savagery of the war and the tenacity of Chinese resistance prompted an increasingly radical Japanese response. He dates this moment to 1940–1941—precisely the period in which conventional, domestically-focused scholars have identified a “failure” of attempts to consolidate a genuinely fascist regime in the political center “back home.”² In turn, Japan’s unexpectedly easy and dramatic string of victories against the Western Powers in Asia and the Pacific during the first months of the Pacific War that followed soon afterward imparted a deeper solidity and legitimacy to Japan’s war, to the system supporting it, and to the sacrifices it demanded, its “success” virtually silencing all remaining domestic dissent. “Here, a true situation of wild enthusiasm had finally emerged,” writes Yoshimi, “and emperor-system fascism had crystallized.”³ In this sense this experience can be fruitfully compared with similar developments in Europe in the wake of Mussolini’s 1935 victory in Ethiopia and Hitler’s unexpectedly easy defeat of archrival France in 1940, but for two reasons its impact was all the more broad and profound: militarily, it could not have posed a more positive contrast to the inconclusive and ongoing quagmire of Japan’s war in China. Equally or more important was its matching of Japanese propaganda of “Asian liberation” with concrete and effective action. As Yoshimi observes in Grassroots Fascism, such a mission held an appeal not only for Japanese but indeed for peoples around the globe convinced of the illegitimacy of Western imperial domination, including Taiwanese, Koreans, and Southeast Asians.

What ultimately sets Yoshimi’s approach apart is his combination of an empirewide perspective with a focus on the rise of fascism from the “bottom up”: the ambivalent role of ordinary Japanese not only as victims but also as agents and conduits of fascism. In a dialectical movement between metropole and periphery, between battlefield and paddy field, and between visions of imperial prosperity and the grim reality of wartime deprivation, ordinary Japanese came to share with military and bureaucratic elites a desire for a transcendent resolution of the national crisis, producing indispensible mass support for a radical transformation of the relations of state and society along fascist lines. In the Japanese countryside, Yoshimi says, at first it was “landlords and powerful landed farmers who were the core figures at the center of the system,”reflecting a situation of social and political continuity since the Meiji period. But as the war escalated into total war, he argues, “many people were needed as supporters, and the central supporters [of fascism] become those of a slightly lower level—landed farmers and landed/tenant farmers.”⁴ For many, participation in the war effort was not simply the product of patriotism or pressure from above, but it also beckoned as a revolutionary opportunity for social and political participation and advancement in a time of crisis. From peasant recruits to small farmers to elementary school teachers to colonial settlers, we are thus confronted with grassroots fascism as an ambiguous, ambivalent product of oppression and ambition, hope and desperation, brutalization and brutality. EM

Grassroots Imperialism

When the Sino-Japanese War began on July 7^th 1937, popular calls for “imperialism externally,” a desire previously well buried, suddenly came to the fore. Along with limits on freedom of expression and the manipulation of public opinion, a number of other factors began to have a determining influence on popular consciousness. There was a manner of thinking along the lines of a fait accompli: “Now that the war has started, we’d better win it.” There was a strong sense that Japan was winning the war. And by the end of 1937, Japan had dispatched some 770,000 troops, a reality that weighed heavily.

According to a national survey of thirty-eight municipalities conducted at the end of 1937 by the Cabinet Planning Board’s Industry Section, the attitude of people in farming, mountain, and fishing villages towards the war against China, summarized in terms of a single village, was divided between “the middle class and up,” who “want the war to be pursued … to the fullest (to the point that [hostilities] will not flare up again),” and “the middle class and below,” who “want it to be brought to as speedy an end as possible.”⁵

If we examine the calls for a speedy end to the war more closely—voices mostly from “the middle and below”—the following sorts of examples emerge with particular force.

a. “We hope that it ends quickly. (We hope that overseas development will be possible. There is only one person who does not want to leave the village and emigrate to Manchuria).”

b. “In order to extend Japan’s influence in northern China, we are planning to send out two or three of my boys.”

c. “To compensate for all the sacrifices the Imperial Army has made, [(North and Central China]) should be brought under the control of the Empire.”

d. “We hope that we’ll be able to secure considerable rights and interests.”

Each of these statements represented a hope for a swift end to the war that went hand in hand with a yearning for concrete profits or rights and interests, clearly demonstrating that a “grassroots imperialism” ideology had begun to surge among the people. The people of the town of Kawashima in Kagawa Prefecture were a representative example. Reflecting the complexity of popular attitudes, it was reported here that “if the war goes on for long it will be a problem—this is what people genuinely say. Yet on the other hand, people of all classes also say that we have to keep fighting until we win.” One said that “it would be a waste to meaninglessly give back territory people have given their lives for,” another that “the people will not accept it if we gain nothing—either land or reparations. We don’t want to give back what we’ve already spent so much money getting for no reason. Northern China alone will not do. This is the second time we’ve shed blood in Shanghai.”

Here, then, is the picture of a people who, in the midst of their difficult lives, earnestly desired to cooperate in the war because it was their “duty as Japanese,” wishing simultaneously for a swift end to the conflict and to gain privileges from it.

The Profits of War

For the soldiers and their families, conscription and deployment to the front did not bring only suffering. An examination of letters from peasant soldiers who died in battle conducted by the Iwate Prefecture Farming Villages Culture Discussion Association (Iwate ken nōson bunka kondankai) makes clear that from the moment they joined the army, peasant soldiers were liberated from time-consuming and arduous farming chores. With “a daily bath,” “fairly good” food, and “fine shoes,” they led more privileged lives than they had in their farming villages. They received salaries that they could save or send to their families. They were able to enjoy “equal” treatment without regard to their social status or their wealth or poverty. They received education and were able to improve their social standing through their own talents.⁶

The army was also seen to afford peasant soldiers new prospects. If one became a noncommissioned officer—a corporal or sergeant—through service in the field, the road lay open to becoming a person of influence in one’s village upon return. Soldiers were so eager to make the rank of corporal that teasing of those who remained privates sometimes led to incidents of assault.⁷

Soldiers perceived the colonies and the occupied territories as good places to “get ahead” after they’d been discharged. Abe Katsuo, a peasant cultivator from Iwayadō in Iwate Prefecture who fought in China’s Shanxi Province, reported thinking to himself, “After this, for the sake of the development of northern China… they say you can find employment in a government office or a company, and if it’s true you can earn as much as 150 yen per month, then maybe I’ll try settling in China for a bit.”⁸ Sasaki Tokusaburō, the eldest son of an owner-cultivator from Tokiwa Village in Akita Prefecture, studied while in the army and hoped to take exams to become a forest superintendent in South Sakhalin or to become a policeman there or in Korea or Hokkaidō.⁹

Tsuchiya Yoshio, the son of a track maintenance worker and tenant farmer in Saigō Village in Yamagata Prefecture, volunteered after the Manchurian Incident and was sent to Manchuria as a military policeman (kenpei). After his discharge he intended to “make a name” for himself (hitohata ageru) by finding employment with the South Manchurian Railway Company; when he later heard the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he pondered the possibility of becoming “even the master of some island in the South Pacific.”¹⁰

Fighting in southern China in July 1939, Sergeant Murata Washirō discussed with his underlings his plan of going into business in northern China upon his discharge and, if possible, managing a newspaper or hospital or organizing a resident’s association.¹¹

These were the attempts of some men to find a way to live in the war’s midst after it had shattered their life prospects. It must be said that soldiers were cornered into this situation. At the same time, we cannot overlook this aspect: that the desire to get as much profit as possible out of the war transcended their unhappiness at being conscripted, and that soldiers supported the war in earnest.

Battles in Northern China and Soldiers from Tōhoku

Many soldiers hailing from the Tōhoku region in the north of the main island of Honshū, one of Japan’s most impoverished regions, were sent to northern China. How did the war alter the consciousness of soldiers from Tōhoku, and what was their thinking after repatriation? As an example, let us examine the case of a schoolteacher. Kimura Genzaemon, an instructor at Tōmai Ordinary/ Higher Elementary School in Akita Prefecture, received his draft notice on August 25, 1937 and participated in numerous battles throughout northern China as a stretcher bearer in the medical corps of the 108th Division.¹²

Before he departed for the front, Kimura recited a “speech on the world-historical and Japanese-historical significance of the [China] Incident.” From this salutation, we may gather that he supported the war. Yet as he crossed over the Shanhaiguan Pass and entered Northern China on September 24, 1937, he offered the following calm, candidly pessimistic observation: “Those who would sincerely welcome the chance to go to the front are, in general, only the uneducated. Children, women, (uneducated) old folks. The intelligentsia are, in general, bystanders. Is the Japanese Spirit unable to hold its own against Culture?”¹³

As Kimura witnessed Chinese people made into refugees after defeat in battle, participated in their enslavement, carried out requisitions, watched prisoners murdered, and heard about the “shooting to death of all the village inhabitants” in a punitive expedition (October 14, 1937),¹⁴ however, he came to believe sincerely in the “superiority” of the Japanese race:

When I think about the future of the Japanese race compared to the Chinese race I discover that I am all the more confident of our superiority. Of course among the ranks of Japanese youth an apathetic, utilitarian quality has recently been drawing attention, but at least so long as they retain their emotionalism, their obsession with cleanliness, and their yen for improvement, I believe it will be easy for them to overcome the animal-like prowess, the physical robustness, and the existential deep-rootedness of the Chinese masses.¹⁵

On February 18, Kimura’s Kasuya unit entered Licheng county (黎城県) in Shanxi Province. They repeatedly fought with the Eighth Route Army in Shanxi, and Kimura’s unit was gradually annihilated. Waged by a Chinese people whose solidarity extended to the elderly, women, and children, the relentless war against the Japanese far surpassed his expectations. Confronting this situation—one difficult to comprehend according to what had been Japanese popular “common sense”—Kimura found no means of overcoming his spiritual crisis other than by abnormally ratcheting up his will to battle and his hatred of the enemy.

Kimura subsequently participated in several punitive expeditions in Shanxi, during which he had such experiences as “lopping off enemy heads without a second thought when the opportunity arises” (May 10, 1939) and “beheading one” prisoner while “submitting two more for vivisection” (August 11, 1939). He received a letter of commendation for his efforts in the campaign. Within this context, his view of China became even more warped.¹⁶

Looking back over the results of more than two years of battlefield experience on the eve of his return to Japan on October 30^th, 1939, Kimura realized he’d reached a point where a “ spectacular idealism” had been conquered by an “extremely simple realism.” His realism amounted to this: In order to construct an “East Asian Cooperative Body” (Tōa kyōdōtai) and a “New East Asian Order,” the “Japanese race” itself required a “renovation and reformation of its domestic style,” but the gap between reality and what was needed was exceedingly wide, and overcoming this would be far more difficult than battling “millions upon millions of enemies.” Behind this thinking was a recognition of the fact that an anti-Japanese war of a truly popular nature was being waged, a recognition combined with a deep-seated fear. Thus Kimura ultimately hardened in his determination to see a New East Asian Order established: “No matter what the difficulties, so long as we cannot afford to evade it, we must continue to make solid progress toward it, step by step.”¹⁷

On November 25, 1939, Kimura was reunited with his family at Akita Station, and from then on he would pursue his teaching in Akita Prefecture from the standpoint he had articulated on the eve of his repatriation. YY

The above is an abridged, modified excerpt from the Translator’s Introduction and Chapter One of Yoshimi Yoshiaki’s Grassroots Fascism: The War Experience of the Japanese People, translated by Ethan Mark and published by Columbia University Press (New York: 2015). First published in Japanese by Tokyo University Press as Kusa no ne no fashizumu: Nihon minshū no sensō taiken in 1987 and still unsurpassed in its ambitious geographical, social, and chronological scope, Grassroots Fascism comprises at once both an intimate exploration of popular experiences of Japan’s war and an earnest attempt to interpret and reckon with the meaning and lessons of these experiences for the present—both in scholarly and moral terms. In both aims, the work is distinguished by its reliance upon, and faithful representation of, the voices of ordinary people. The war’s end is now seventy years behind us, and the authors of these popular testimonies are for the most part no longer with us. But in a time of unprecedented polarization regarding Japan’s wartime history and its legacies, their voices—and Professor Yoshimi’s classic study— are surely more relevant than ever. EM

Ethan Mark is a lecturer in Modern Japanese History at Leiden University. His article on “The Perils of Co-Prosperity: Takeda Rintarō, Occupied Southeast Asia, and the Seductions of Postcolonial Empire,” was published in 2014 in The American Historical Review 119(4): 1184-1206.

Excerpted from Grassroots Fascism by Yoshimi Yoshiaki. Copyright (c) 1987 Yoshimi Yoshiaki translation copyright (c) 2015 Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

Notes

¹ Personal interview with Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Tokyo, January 19, 2007.

² Scholars have typically illustrated this “failure” with reference to the experience of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRAA) established around this time, intended by its elite instigators as a vehicle for fascist-style one-party rule under Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro, but frustrated by the bureaucratic establishment. As E.H. Norman observed at the time, “experienced bureaucracy has gradually snuffed out all signs of democratic activity, but on the other hand it has blocked the victory of outside fascist forces.” E.H. Norman, cited in John W. Dower, “E.H. Norman, Japan, and the Uses of History,” in Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E.H. Norman, ed. John W. Dower (New York: Pantheon, 1975), pp. 73.

³ Yoshimi, Grassroots Fascism, p. 96.

⁴ Personal interview with Yoshimi, Tokyo, January 19, 2007.

⁵ This and the following comments from Japanese villagers are from Naikaku jōhōbu, ed., “Jihenka ni okeru nōsangyoson no shisō dōkō” (Tendencies of Thinking during the [China] Incident in Farming, Mountain, and Fishing Villages), repr. In Shiryō Nihon gendaishi, ed. Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Ikō Toshiya, and Yoshida Yutaka (Tokyo: Ōtsuki shoten, 1984), 11, pp. 310, 319-322.

⁶ Iwate ken nōson bunka kondankai, Senbotsu nōmin heishi no tegami (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1961), 226–229

⁷ Yamamoto Takeshi, Ichiheishi no jūgun kiroku (Fukui: Yasuda shoten, 1985), 192.

⁸ Senbotsu nōmin heishi no tegami, 74.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Asahi shimbun Yamagata shikyoku, Kikigaki: aru kenpei no kiroku (Tokyo: Asahi shimbunsha, 1985), 26, 152.

¹¹ Murata Washirō, Nitchū sensō nikki (Tokyo, Hōwa shuppan, 1983), 5:112.

¹² This account draws on Kimura Genzaemon’s detailed diary from the front, Nitchū sensō shussei nikki (Akita: Mumyōsha shuppan, 1982).

¹³ Ibid, 19.

¹⁴ Ibid, p. 30.

¹⁵ Ibid, p. 53. Entry of January 5, 1938.

¹⁶ Ibid, pp. 207, 233.

¹⁷ Ibid, p. 266.

Yoshimi Yoshiaki translation copyright (c) 2015 Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

Introduction by Steve Rabson

In Okinawa after three U.S. servicemen raped a 12-year-old school girl in 1995, the U.S. and Japanese governments sought to tamp down boiling outrage by promising to close a dangerous and noisy U.S. Marine airbase located in the center of densely populated Ginowan City. But there was a catch. The base would not close until completion of a new base at another location in the prefecture, Henoko in Nago City. Okinawans resoundingly rejected this plan, vigorously opposing it in local and prefectural elections, referenda, and in sustained public protests. For two decades they have stymied the governments of two powerful nationsdetermined to force the base on them.

In addition to government intimidation, arrests, and violent attacks by Japanese riot police and coast guard patrols, Okinawanshave also faced betrayals by their own elected officials. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, elected in 2009, received strong voter support in Okinawa for his promise to move the airbase out of the prefecture, only to capitulate under pressure from the U.S. and his own government a year later, acceding to its construction in Okinawa. Hirokazu Nakaima, governor 2006-2014, had supported the base, but in the days leading up to the election of November 2010, he started to call for its relocation outside of Okinawa in a bid to win re-election. Then, in December 2013, he abruptly caved in to pressure from Tokyo and signed the landfill permit to allow its construction. His broken promise became the central issue in the gubernatorial campaign of November 2014. Nakaima lost this election in a landslide to current governor Takeshi Onaga who had also changed from a previously pro-base to an anti-base position. During the election and since taking office, he has repeatedly pledged to “do everything in my power” to prevent its construction.

Governor Onaga has been in office for eight months. His most important action on the base to date has been appointment of a committee of environmental and legal experts to reassess procedures followed in filing the landfill permit. The committee’s report, filed in July, concluded that the landfill permit approved by former Governor Nakaima violates Japan’s Public Waters Reclamation Law by failing to “sufficiently take into account environmental preservation and disaster prevention” and by failing to meet the criteria for “appropriate and rational use of national land.” In short the landfill permit was legally flawed. The report was sufficiently damning that the Japanese government issued a one-month moratorium on base construction and entered negotiations with the Governor.

In January 2014 a group of over one hundred scholars, artists and peace advocates from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe issued a Statement opposing the plan to construct a new base at Henoko and demanding the swift return of the existing Marine Air Station at Futenma. Again in January 2015, a smaller group, 15 scholars and activists, wrote to Governor Onaga in the name of “No New Bases in Okinawa! Global Voices” urging the Governor to take early action to cancel the license to reclaim Oura Bay for base construction purposes. Now, August 2015, a group of 109 international scholars and peace activists has urged Governor Onaga to honor his commitment to the people of Okinawa. Their statement has received considerable attention in the Okinawan media. See the reports in the following:

Ryukyu Shimpo, August 31, 2015.

Kyodo News, August 31, 2015.

The world is waiting for Governor Onaga to act on the recommendations of the committee.

The World is Watching: International Scholars, Artists, and Activists Petition to Prevent a New U.S. Military Base in Okinawa

世界は見ている―沖縄の新基地を阻止するための世界の識者、文化人、運動家の請願

August 29, 2015 ２０１５年８月２９日（更新）

The Okinawan people for twenty consecutive years have made plain their overwhelming opposition to a proposed new U.S. Marine airbase at Henoko, on Oura Bay in the city of Nago. Since our January 2014 statement opposing construction of the planned base, local opposition has grown and intensified. People have rallied by the thousands and repeatedly picketed government offices in Okinawa and on the Japanese mainland. The sit-in tent at the Henoko fishing port is now in its 12^th year, and the protest tent at the gate to the planned construction site, which has been a 24/7 action since January 2015, has continued for more than 400 days. Protesters are engaging in non-violent civil disobedience – using sea kayaks on the bay and blocking trucks with their bodies on the land – physically interfering with the construction process. Riot police and members of the Coast Guard have attacked demonstrators, causing serious injuries. Polls in the prefecture record 80% opposition to the base. For their part, the Japanese and US governments remain adamant in their determination to thwart the will of the Okinawan people.

沖縄の人々は２０年間にわたり名護市・大浦湾の辺野古に計画されている海兵隊新基地に対し圧倒的な反対の姿勢を明らかにしてきた。我々が２０１４年１月に出した新基地建設反対声明以来、地元の反対は拡大し強化された。何千、何万の人々が集会に集まり、繰り返し沖縄や日本本土の関係省庁の庁舎前で抗議行動を行った。辺野古漁港での座り込みテントは１２年目に入る。建設予定地に続くゲートでの座り込みはすでに４００日以上続いており、１月以降は２４時間態勢を取ってきた。抗議する人々は非暴力の市民的不服従運動を行ってきており、湾内ではシーカヤックを使い陸上では自らの体でトラックを阻止するなどして、建設のプロセスを物理的に妨げてきている。機動隊や海上保安庁の人員は抗議運動をする人を襲い、深刻な負傷をもたらした。県内の世論調査では８０％が新基地に反対している。一方、日米政府は沖縄の人々の意思を妨害する決意について譲らない姿勢のままでいる。

The island prefecture of Okinawa, comprising 0.6 % of the nation’s land area and 1% of its population, already bears 74% of U.S. military bases in all of Japan. This burden represents close to 500 times that of the rest of the country. Okinawans understand this as blatant structural discrimination.

島で構成される県である沖縄は、国の０．６％の面積で１％の人口を抱えるが、日本にある米軍基地の７４％をすでに負担している。この負担はすでに県外に比べ５００倍近いものである。沖縄はこのことをあからさまな構造的差別と見ている。

Government officials in Tokyo and Washington argue that removing the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station from Ginowan City and constructing a new base at Henoko will reduce the problem of noise pollution and the danger of plane crashes in crowded areas. But the people of Okinawa, including the people of Ginowan, have made clear that they do not consider moving these problems from one part of Okinawa to another as a “solution.” Moreover, construction of this airbase would destroy the beautiful, though fragile, environment of Oura Bay, which is Japan’s finest remaining coral sea and home of the dugong, a protected species of marine mammal, and other fish and plant life.

東京とワシントンの日米政府高官たちは、海兵隊普天間飛行場を宜野湾市から撤去し、辺野古に新基地を造ることが騒音被害や人口密集地での墜落の危険性を軽減すると主張している。しかし宜野湾市の人々を含む沖縄の人々は、これらの問題を沖縄の一つの地からもう一つの地に移動させることが「解決策」だとは考えていないことを明確に表明している。さらに、この航空基地を建設することは美しくも壊れやすい大浦湾の環境を破壊する。大浦湾は、日本で残存するもっとも健全なサンゴの海であり、保護対象となっている海洋ほ乳類ジュゴンや他の魚類や植物の棲息地でもある。

In November 2014, Okinawans overwhelmingly elected Takeshi Onaga, running on a platform to prevent construction of the base, as governor. He defeated incumbent governor Hirokazu Nakaima, who, after years of promising to oppose the new base construction, had suddenly signed the landfill permit. Nakaima caved into pressure from Tokyo, directly violating his campaign promise and betraying his constituents.

２０１４年１１月、沖縄の人々は基地建設阻止の立場をとる翁長雄志氏を大差で知事として選んだ。何年も新基地に反対すると約束してきた後、突然埋め立て申請を承認した現職の仲井真弘多知事を破っての当選であった。仲井真氏は東京からの重圧に屈服し、自らの選挙公約に直接違反し有権者を裏切った。

Governor Onaga, who has repeatedly stated his intention to do “everything in my power” to stop the base, appointed a Third Party Committee, a team of environmental and legal experts to identify legal flaws, if any, of the landfill permit, with the possibility of nullification of the permit in mind.

繰り返し「あらゆる権限を駆使」して基地を阻止する意向を述べてきた翁長知事は、埋め立て承認取り消しを視野に、承認に法的瑕疵があるかないか、またあるとしたらどのような瑕疵なのか特定するために環境、法律の専門家のチーム「第三者委員会」を任命した。

In July this Committee issued its report, which concluded that the landfill permit　approved by former Governor Nakaima violates Japan’s Public Waters Reclamation Law by failing to “sufficiently take into account environmental preservation and disaster prevention” and by failing to meet the criteria for “appropriate and rational use of national land.” This accords with common sense: it does not require technical expertise to understand that the claim that you can dump three and a half million truckloads of dirt into a coral garden without causing serious environmental damage is patently absurd. Governor Onaga now has the evidence required to nullify the approval of the landfill permit that allowed Tokyo to proceed with base construction.

７月にこの委員会が出した報告書は、仲井真前知事による埋め立て承認は「環境保全及び災害防止に付き十分配慮」しておらず、「国土利用上適切且つ合理的」という基準に適合しないことにより、日本の公有水面埋立法に反すると結論づけた。これは常識とも合致している―深刻な環境破壊を起こさずにトラック３５０万台分もの土砂をサンゴの園に投げ込むことが可能であるといった主張が明らかにおかしいということを理解するのに専門知識は必要ない。翁長知事は今、日本政府に基地建設を進めることを許してきた埋め立て承認を取り消すための証拠を手にしている。

The Japanese government has responded by announcing a one-month suspension of construction work, and entered negotiations with the prefecture. However, in another slap in the face to the Okinawan people and their representatives, it insists that it will resume work on the base afterwards, regardless of the outcome of the “negotiations.”

日本政府は一か月の建設工事中断を発表するという形で対応し、県との協議に入った。しかし沖縄の人々やその代表者たちにとってもう一つの平手打ちを食らわせるかの如く、政府は「協議」の結果にかかわらず基地建設のための作業をその後続けると断言している。

Governor Onaga holds the key to preventing this with his authority, backed by the Third-Party Committee report, to nullify the landfill permit approved by former Governor Nakaima. It is likely the Japanese government’s fear of such an action that motivated its suspension of work and entrance into negotiations in hopes of pressuring Governor Onaga to end his opposition by promising huge economic development projects. But such attempts at bribery are an insult to the Okinawan people.

翁長知事は自らの権限においてこれを阻止する鍵を握る。第三者委員会報告書の裏付けを得て、仲井真前知事の埋め立て承認を取り消す権限である。このような行動を取られることに対する日本政府の恐れが、工事中断と、大きな経済振興計画を約束し翁長知事に反対をやめさせることを狙った協議に入る動機づけとなったのであろう。しかしこのような買収の試みは沖縄の人々にとっての侮辱である。

The Third Party Investigation has shown that the landfill permit issued by Governor Nakaima is legally flawed – in a word, illegal. This means that the governor is legally bound to nullify it. Such nullification was expected to come right after the Third Party Committee concluded, but to many Okinawans’ surprise, Governor Onaga instead announced a one-month delay of any decision based on the Committee Report.

第三者委員会による検証は、仲井真知事による埋め立て承認は法的瑕疵がある―要するに違法であるとの結論を出した。これが意味することは、翁長知事はこれを取り消す法的義務があるということである。第三者委員会が結論を出した直後にこのような取り消しがあると期待されていたが、多くの沖縄の人にとって驚きであったのは、翁長知事は第三者委報告を受けてのいかなる判断も一か月間先延ばしにしたことだ。

For Governor Onaga to fail to nullify the permit would make him complicit in an illegal project.Of course, the governor knows this, and he also knows that failure to act decisively would also probably trigger an explosion in Okinawan society.

翁長知事が埋め立て承認取り消しをしないようなことがあったら、それは違法なプロジェクトに加担するということになる。もちろん翁長知事はそれをわかっているはずであり、決定的な行動に出ないことが沖縄社会に爆発を引き起こすであろうこともわかっているはずだ。

The Okinawan people have made it absolutely clear that they want and expect the governor to nullify the landfill agreement unconditionally with no compromises and no deals.

We support them in this desire.

The world is watching.

沖縄の人々は、知事が無条件で妥協や取引も全く伴わない埋め立て承認取り消しを行うことを求め、期待していることを明白にしている。

我々は沖縄の人々のこの要望を支持する。

世界は見ている。

1. Matthew Allen, professor (adjunct), Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Australia　マシュー・アレン、ジェームズ・クック大学（オーストラリア）ケアンズ研究会外部教授
2. Kozy Amemiya, Independent scholar specializing on Okinawan emigration　コージー・アメミヤ　沖縄移民研究家
3. Andrea Arai, cultural anthropologist and lecturer in Japan and East Asian Studies, University of Washington アンドレア・アライ、州立ワシントン大学日本および東アジア学科文化人類学講師
4. Frank Bardacke, Labor Historian フランク・バーデキー、労働運動歴史家
5. Herbert Bix, Emeritus Professor of History and Sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton ハーバート・ビックス、ニューヨーク州立大ビンガムトン校歴史学・社会学名誉教授
6. Adam Broinowski, Japanese historical and cultural studies, Australian National University アダム・ブロイノウスキ、オーストラリア国立大学日本歴史文化学研究員
7. Daniel Broudy, Professor & Chair, Graduate School of Intercultural　Communication, Okinawa Christian University ダニエル・ブロウディ、沖縄キリスト教学院大学大学院　異文化間コミュニケ―ション学研究科教授
8. Alexander Brown, PhD Student, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong　アレクサンダー・ブラウン、ウーロンゴン大学（オーストラリア）人文社会学部博士課程
9. Michael K. Bourdaghs, Professor, University of Chicago マイケル・Ｋ・ボーダッシュ、シカゴ大学
10. Akiko Utu Cacaji, Veterans For Peace, Washington DC Chapter アキコ・ウツ・カカジ、「平和のための退役軍人会」ワシントンＤＣ支部
11. Jenny Chan, China Studies & Sociology, School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford ジェニー・チャン、オックスフォード大学学際地域研究学部、中国学と社会学講師
12. John Chappell, Professor of History, Webster University ジョン・チャペル、ウェブスター大学歴史学教授
13. Choi Sung-Hee, coordinator, Gangjeong village international team, Jeju Island, Korea　チェ・ソンヒ、韓国済州島カンジョン村国際チームコーディネーター
14. Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology ノーム・チョムスキー、マサチューセッツ工科大学言語学名誉教授
15. C. Anne Claus, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, American University　Ｃ・アン・クロース、アメリカン大学人類学助教授
16. Sam Coleman, Veterans for Peace, California State University, Long Beach　サム・コールマン、「平和のための退役軍人会」、カリフォルニア州立大学ロングビーチ校講師
17. Millie Creighton, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia　ミリー・クレイトン、ブリティッシュコロンビア大学人類学准教授
18. Bruce Cumings, Swift Distinguished Professor, History Department, University of Chicago　ブルース・カミングス、シカゴ大学歴史学部教授
19. Kelly Dietz, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Ithaca College ケリー・ディエツ、イサカ大学政治学部助教授
20. Mark Driscoll, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at the Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill マーク・ドリスコル、ノースキャロライナ大学チャペルヒル校東アジア学准教授
21. Alexis Dudden, Professor of History, University of Connecticut アレクシス・ダデン、コネチカット大学歴史学教授
22. Mark Ealey, Translator マーク・イーリー、翻訳家
23. Daniel Ellsberg, Former State and Defense Department official ダニエル・エルズバーグ、元国務省、国防総省高官
24. Cynthia Enloe, Research Professor, Clark University シンシア・エンロー、クラーク大学（米国）研究教授
25. Thomas Fazi, Writer and filmmaker (Italy), co-director ofStanding Armyトーマス・ファッツィ 著述家、映画監督（イタリア）、映画『Standing Army』(日本語版『誰も知らない基地のこと』)共同監督
26. John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus ジョン・フェッファー、「フォーリン・ポリシー・イン・フォーカス」ディレクター
27. Norma Field, Professor Emerita, University of Chicago ノーマ・フィールド、シカゴ大学名誉教授
28. Max Paul Friedman, Professor of History, American University マックス・ポール・フリードマン、アメリカン大学歴史学教授
29. James Fujii, Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine　ジェームズ・フジイ、カリフォルニア大学アーバイン校准教授
30. Takashi Fujitani, Professor of History, University of Toronto タカシ・フジタニ、トロント大学歴史学教授
31. Bruce K. Gagnon, Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space　ブルース・Ｋ・ギャグノン、「宇宙における兵器と核に反対するグローバルネットワーク」コーディネーター
32. Johan Galtung, dr hc mult Professor of Peace studies, Founder Transcend ヨハン・ガルトゥング、平和学教授、「トランセンド」創始者
33. Joseph Gerson (PhD), Working Group for Asia-Pacific Peace & Demilitarization ジョセフ・ガーソン(PhD)、アジア太平洋平和と非軍事化ワーキンググループ
34. Subrata Ghoshroy, Research Affiliate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology　シュブロート・ゴシュロイ、マサチューセッツ工科大学研究員
35. Andrew Gordon, Professor of History, Harvard University アンドリュー・ゴードン、ハーバード大学歴史学教授
36. Mel Gurtov, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Portland State University メル・ガートフ、ポートランド州立大学政治学名誉教授
37. Morton H Halperin, Former U.S. Government official ( Departments of Defense and State and National Security Council)　モートン・Ｈ・ハルペリン、元米国政府高官（国防総省、国務省、国家安全保障会議）
38. Laura Hein, Professor, Northwestern University, Chicago ローラ・ハイン、ノースウェスタン大学（シカゴ）教授
39. Edward Heinrich-Sanchez, Coordinator, Veterans for Peace, Ryukyu-Okinawa Chapter エドワード・ハインリッヒ―サンチェス、「平和のための退役軍人会」琉球沖縄支部コーディネーター
40. Julie Higashi, Professor, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto ジュリー・ヒガシ　立命館大学（京都）教授
41. Katsuya Hirano, Associate Professor of History, UCLA カツヤ・ヒラノ、カリフォルニア大学ロスアンゼルス校歴史学准教授
42. Christine Hong, Assistant Professor, UC Santa Cruz クリスティーン・ホング、カリフォルニア大学サンタクルーズ校助教授
43. Glenn D. Hook, Professor, University of Sheffield　グレン・Ｄ・フック、シェフィールド大学教授
44. Asato Ikeda, Assistant Professor, Fordham University　アサト・イケダ、フォーダム大学助教授
45. Masamichi (Marro) Inoue, Associate Professor, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures & Cultures / Japan Studies Program, University of Kentuckyマサミチ（マロ）・イノウエ、ケンタッキー大学、現代古典言語・文学・文化学部／日本研究プログラム准教授
46. Vincent J. Intondi, Associate Professor of History, Montgomery College ビンセント・Ｊ・イントンディ、モンゴメリー大学歴史学准教授
47. Rebecca Jennison, Dept. of Humanities, Kyoto Seika University レベッカ・ジェニソン、京都精華大学人文学部教員
48. Paul Jobin, Associate Professor, Paris Diderot University ポール・ジョバン、パリ・ディデロ大学准教授
49. David T. Johnson, Professor of Sociology, University of Hawaii at Manoa　デイビッド・Ｔ・ジョンソン、ハワイ大学マノア校社会学教授
50. Sheila K. Johnson (Mrs. Chalmers Johnson), writer　シーラ・Ｋ・ジョンソン（故チャルマーズ・ジョンソンの妻）、著述家
51. William Johnston, Professor of History, Wesleyan University ウィリアム・ジョンストン　ウェズリアン大学（コネチカット州）歴史学教授
52. Erin Jones, Researcher エリン・ジョーンズ、研究者
53. John Junkerman, Filmmaker, Visiting Scholar at Waseda University　ジャン・ユンカーマン、映画監督、早稲田大学客員教授
54. Kyle Kajihiro, a Board Member, Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice カイル・カジヒロ、「ハワイの平和と正義」理事
55. Peter King, emeritus professor, University of Sydneyピーター・キング、シドニー大学名誉教授
56. Jeff Kingston, Professor of History, Temple University, Japan ジェフ・キングストン、テンプル大学日本校歴史学教授
57. Joy Kogawa, author of Obasan ジョイ・コガワ　作家、『オバサン』（和訳『失われた祖国』）著者
58. Pekka Korhonen, Professor of World Politics, University of Jyväskylä ペッカ・コーホネン、ユヴァスキュラ大学（フィンランド）国際政治学教授
59. J. Victor Koschmann, Professor, Cornell University Ｊ・ビクター・コッシュマン、コーネル大学教授
60. Jeremy Kuzmarov, J.P. Walker assistant professor of history, University of Tulsa ジェレミー・カズマロフ、タルサ大学助教授
61. Peter Kuznick, Professor of History, American Universityピーター・カズニック、アメリカン大学歴史学教授
62. Thomas Lamarre, Department of East Asian Studies, McGill University トーマス・ラマレ、マギル大学　東アジア学部
63. Jon Letman, independent journalist, Lihue, Hawaii ジョン・レットマン、ジャーナリスト（ハワイ州リフエ）
64. Douglas Lummis, Visiting Professor, Okinawa Christian University Graduate School, ダグラス・ラミス、沖縄キリスト教学院大学大学院客員教授
65. Catherine Lutz, Professor, Brown University キャサリン・ルッツ、ブラウン大学教授
66. Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace laureate　マイレッド・マグワイア、ノーベル平和賞受賞者
67. Janice Matsumura, Associate professor, Simon Fraser University　ジャニス・マツムラ、サイモンフレイザー大学（カナダ）准教授
68. Gavan McCormack, Professor Emeritus, Australian National University ガバン・マコーマック、オーストラリア国立大学名誉教授
69. Jo (Yosi) McIntire, Peace Activist, Scholar of International Relations　ジョー（ヨシ）マッキンタイア、平和運動家、国際関係学研究者
70. Richard H. Minear, professor of history (emeritus), University of Massachusetts Amherst リチャード・Ｈ・ミネア、マサチューセッツ大学アマースト校歴史学名誉教授
71. Jon Mitchell, Journalist ジョン・ミッチェル、ジャーナリスト
72. Michael Molasky, Professor of Asian Cultural Studies, Waseda University　マイク・モラスキー、早稲田大学アジア文化学部教授
73. R. Taggart Murphy, Professor, International Political Economy, University of Tsukuba, Tokyo Campus　Ｒ・タガード・マーフィー、筑波大学東京キャンパス国際政治経済学教授
74. Katherine Muzik, Marine Biologist, Kaua’i, Hawaii キャサリン・ミュージック、海洋生物学者（ハワイ州カウアイ島）
75. Christopher Nelson, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillクリストファー・ネルソン、ノースカロライナ大学チャペルヒル校准教授
76. Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Editor, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus サトコ・オカ・ノリマツ、『アジア太平洋ジャーナル：ジャパンフォーカス』エディター
77. Elin O’Hara Slavick, Professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill エリン・オハラ・スラビック、ノースキャロライナ大学チャペルヒル校教授
78. Peter B. Olney, Retired Organizing Director ILWU　ピーター・Ｂ・オルニー、ILWU（国際港湾倉庫労働者組合）組織部長
79. Stephanie Ortoleva, Esq., President, Women Enabled International, International Human Rights & Women’s Rights lawyer　ステファニー・オルトレバ、「ウィメン・エネイブルド・インターナショナル」代表、国際人権および女性の権利の弁護士
80. Eiko Otake, Artist in residence, Wesleyan University エイコ・オタケ、ウエスリアン大学レジデントアーチスト
81. Koohan Paik, International Forum on Globalization, San Francisco　クーハン・パーク、グローバライゼーションに関する国際フォーラム（サンフランシスコ）
82. Enrico Parenti, Filmmaker (Italy), co-director ofStanding Army エンリコ・パレンティ 映画監督（イタリア）、映画『Standing Army』(日本語版『誰も知らない基地のこと』)共同監督
83. Charles Pellegrino, Deep Ocean Explorer/Astrobiologist/Forensic Archaeologist　チャールズ・ペレグリーノ、深海探検家、宇宙生物学者、法考古学者
84. John Price, Professor of History, University of Victoria　ジョン・プライス、ビクトリア大学（カナダ）歴史学教授
85. Steve Rabson, Professor Emeritus, Brown University スティーブ・ラブソン、ブラウン大学名誉教授
86. Betty A. Reardon, Founding Director Emeritus, International Institute on Peace Education　ベティ・Ａ・レアドン、平和教育に関する国際研究所名誉創設者
87. Simon Robinson, Okinawa Christian University, Okinawa Sudbury School サイモン・ロビンソン、沖縄国際大学、沖縄サドベリー・スクール
88. David Rothauser, Filmmaker, “Hibakusha, Our Life to Live,” “Article 9 Comes to America デイビッド・ロスハウザー、映画監督（『ヒバクシャ、わが人生』、『憲法九条アメリカに来る』）
89. Jordan Sand, Professor of Japanese History, Georgetown University　ジョーダン・サンド、ジョージタウン大学日本史教授
90. Peter Dale Scott, Prof. Emeritus of English, University of California, Berkeley ピーター・デール・スコット、カリフォルニア大学バークレー校英文学名誉教授
91. Mark Selden, Senior Research Associate, East Asia Program at Cornell University マーク・セルダン、コーネル大学東アジアプログラム上級研究員
92. Franziska Seraphim, Associate Professor of Japanese History, Boston College フランジスカ・セラフィム、ボストンカレッジ日本史准教授
93. David H. Slater, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Sophia University デイビッド・Ｈ・スレーター、上智大学文化人類学教授
94. Jeffrey St. Clair, journalist & editor, CounterPunch magazine　ジェフェリー・セントクレア、ジャーナリスト、『カウンターパンチ』誌編集長
95. Oliver Stone, Filmmaker オリバー・ストーン、映画監督
96. Roy Tamashiro, Professor of Multidisciplinary Studies, Webster University ロイ・タマシロ、ウェブスター大学学際学部教授
97. Miyume Tanji(Dr.), Australian National University ミユメ・タンジ、オーストラリア国立大学
98. Vladimir Tikhonov, Professor at Oslo University ウラジミール・チコノフ、オスロ大学教授
99. John Whittier Treat, Professor Emeritus, Yale University ジョン・ウィッティア・トリート、イェール大学名誉教授
100. Brian Victoria, Visiting Research Fellow,International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken)　ブライアン・ヴィクトリア、外国人来訪研究員、国際日本文化研究センター（京都）
101. David Vine, Associate Professor of Anthropology, American University　デイビッド・バイン、アメリカン大学人類学准教授
102. Vanessa B. Ward (Dr.), Lecturer in East Asian History, Department of History & Art History, University of Otago　バネッサ・Ｂ・ウォード、オタゴ大学（ニュージーランド）歴史学・美術史学科東アジア史講師
103. David Webb, Emeritus Professor, Leeds Beckett University; Convenor, Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space; Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament デイビッド・ウェブ、リーズ・ベケット大学（英国）名誉教授、「宇宙における兵器と核に反対するグローバルネットワーク」代表、「核軍縮キャンペーン」代表
104. Piers R. Williamson, Specially Appointed Associate Professor, Research Faculty of Media and Communication, Hokkaido University ピアス・Ｒ・ウィリアムソン、北海道大学メディア・コミュニケーション研究員特任准教授
105. James Winter, Professor of Communication, Media & Film, University of Windsor, Ontario Canada ジェームズ・ウィンター、ウィンザー大学（カナダ、オンタリオ）コミュニケーション、メディア＆映像学教授
106. Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History Emeritus, State University of New York/Albany ローレンス・ウィットナー、ニューヨーク州立大学アルバニー校歴史学名誉教授
107. Karel van Wolferen, Emeritus professor, University of Amsterdam, author カレル・バン・ウォルフェレン、アムステルダム大学名誉教授、著述家
108. Dustin Wright, lecturer of history, University of California, Santa Cruz. ダスティン・ライト, カリフォルニア大学サンタクルーズ校歴史学講師
109. Kenneth H Young CD, Service Officer, Royal Canadian Legion, Branch #256 Nanaimo BC ケネス・Ｈ・ヤング、カナダ退役軍人会２５６支部（カナダＢＣ州ナナイモ）サービス・オフィサー

(As of August 31, 2015. ２０１５年８月２９日現在。List of signers in alphabetical order of family names署名者リストは、ファミリーネームのアルファベット順。)

Steve Rabson is Professor Emeritus, Brown University and an Asia-Pacific Journal Contributing Editor. His latest book isThe Okinawan Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within, University of Hawaii Press.

 

North Dakota has just become the first state to legalize police use of drones equipped with “less than lethal” weapons, including rubber bullets, Tasers, tear gas, pepper spray and sound cannons. Now, police will be able to remotely fire on people in North Dakota from drones, much as the CIA fires on people in other countries.

Although drones in North Dakota will be limited to “less than lethal” weapons, some of these devices can cause injury or even death, according to Christof Heyns, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. He reported that rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas have resulted in injury and death. “The danger is that law enforcement officials may argue that the weapons that they use are labeled ‘less lethal’ and then fail to assess whether the level of force is not beyond that required,” Heyns wrote. The Guardian reports that at least 39 people have been killed by Tasers as far in 2015.

Heyns warned the U.N. General Assembly that the use of armed drones by law enforcement could threaten human rights. “An armed drone, controlled by a human from a distance, can hardly do what police officers are supposed to do—use the minimum force required by the circumstances,” he said.

Drone manufacturers in North Dakota lobbied hard to stymie efforts that would have required police to obtain warrants before using drones. Al Frazier, a sheriff’s deputy who pilots drones, revealed their motivation. He told The Daily Beast, “I think when you’re trying to stimulate an industry in your state, you don’t want things that would potentially have a chilling effect on [drone] manufacturers.”

When North Dakota police suspected Rodney Brossart of cattle rustling, they asked Homeland Security to use a Predator drone to fly over his land. Predator drones are also used by the CIA to conduct surveillance and drop bombs in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The police, who didn’t get a warrant to fly over Brossart’s land, used evidence gathered from the drone surveillance to prosecute him. Brossart was convicted of terrorizing, preventing arrest and failing to comply with the law for stray animals.

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether police must obtain a warrant before using drones. In California v. Ciraolo, the court upheld the warrantless use of a fixed-wing aircraft at an altitude of 1,000 feet to peer into a private, fenced backyard and identify marijuana plants because “any member of the public flying in this airspace who glanced down could have seen everything that these officers observed.” The court noted that no warrant is needed for what is “visible to the naked eye.” The justices reached the same result in Florida v. Riley, in which officers saw marijuana plants in a greenhouse from a helicopter 400 feet above.

But in Kyllo v. United States, the court held that the police need a warrant to use a thermal imaging device that measures the temperature of the roof of a house to detect the growing of marijuana inside. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority that if the government could freely collect any information “emanating from a house,” we would be “at the mercy of advancing technology—including imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home.” The majority thought it significant that the technology used in Kyllo was “a device that is not in general public use.”

It is unclear how the court will apply these cases to the use of drones, which could be used to conduct long-term surveillance of private property with imaging systems that pick up much more detail than the naked eye.

Fourteen states have enacted legislation that limits how the police can use drones. But, “in the states that don’t require warrants, it’s pretty much a Wild West,” Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, told the National Journal.

Drones are increasingly used for surveillance in the United States.

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which patrols almost half the Mexican border with drones, has loaned its drones to local agencies and other national agencies, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Drones were used 700 times for domestic surveillance between 2010 and 2012.

Stanley cautions against government use of drones for mass surveillance. In my book“Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues,” he writes:

Police and government agencies, meanwhile, are likely to seek to use this technology for pervasive, suspicionless mass surveillance. To begin with, there is a long history of government agencies seeking to engage in mass surveillance, from the Cold War spying abuses to today’s deployment of license plate scanners and surveillance cameras in our public places, to the sweeping NSA programs that were revealed by Edward Snowden.

Stanley warns about discriminatory targeting of people of color, citing the experience in Britain where black people were 1½ to 2½ times more likely to be the subject of surveillance than the percentage of their numbers in the general population would indicate.

Stanley cites the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s revelation of CBP documents that suggest the CBP will use “non-lethal weapons designed to immobilize TOIs [targets of interest].” But, he thinks, “there is good reason to think that, once current controversies subside and the spotlight of public attention shifts elsewhere, we will see a push for drones armed with lethal weapons.”

The private use of drones can also be quite threatening.

Augustine Lehecka was enjoying a San Diego County beach with friends when a drone flew a few feet above them, its four blades whirring, its camera rotating from side to side. Lehecka said, “We had like a peeping Tom. I felt threatened.”

So Lehecka threw his T-shirt at the drone, it hit the propeller and the drone fell to the ground. He was arrested for felony vandalism, and after spending the night in jail and posting $10,000 bail, Lechecka was released without charge. The incident caused a San Diego Union-Tribune columnist to write an article titled “We should pin a medal on that drone downer’s shirt.”

In response to Lehecka’s arrest, the Encinitas City Council is considering local regulation of drones. John Herron, who urged the council to take action, told a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter that his 3½-year-old son had been terrified by a low-flying drone, saying, “Once my son saw the drone, he became visibly scared . . . he told me he wanted to leave the park.”

William Merideth downed a drone with a shotgun, claiming it was flying over his property near Louisville, Ky. He said, “I had no way of knowing [if] it was a predator looking at my children.” Charged with first-degree endangerment and criminal mischief, Merideth was released on $2,500 bond and is due to return to court in September. The operator of the drone was not charged with any offense.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued proposed regulations on drone use earlier this year. Drones would not be allowed to fly over people unless they are directly involved with the flight. The rules would apply to drones that weigh 55 pounds or less. Drone flights could take place only during the daytime. They would be limited to an altitude of 500 feet and speeds of 100 mph. And they could not fly near airports or restricted airspace. The operator would have to maintain eye contact with the drone at all times.

It could take years for these regulations to be implemented. Meanwhile, the FAA has reported 700 near misses between airplanes and drones in U.S. airspace so far this year. Some of the drones have been flying at high altitudes—10,000 feet or more.

Twenty-six states have passed laws regulating the use of drones, and six more states have adopted resolutions. Issues addressed in these laws include defining what a drone is, the manner in which they can be used by law enforcement and other state agencies, how they can be used by the general public, and how they can be used to hunt game.

In February, the White House began requiring government agencies to inform the public where federal agencies fly drones, how frequently, and what information they secure from drone use.

Two federal bills are pending: in the Senate, The Protecting Individuals From Mass Surveillance Act, and in the House, Preserving American Privacy Act. The Senate bill would require a warrant before federal law enforcement officers could use drones and manned aircraft, but it carves out an exemption within 25 miles of the border, and it wouldn’t bind state or municipal agencies. The House bill would require warrants to conduct state or federal drone surveillance with some exceptions. Evidence obtained in violation of both these bills would be inadmissible in court.

Given the significant invasion of privacy occasioned by the use of drones by law enforcement, warrants should be mandatory before using them for surveillance. And weaponized drones of any sort should be outlawed.

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 most recent book is “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.”

According to German Economic News (September 1st, based on reports from ynetnews and others), Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apparently decided to establish in Syria a military base with thousands of soldiers and sufficient air power to do in Syria what the Obama Administration won’t, which is to defeat ISIS and the other jihadists.

On the same day, washingtonsblog bannered, “Former CIA Boss and 4-Star General: U.S. Should Arm Al Qaeda,” and linked to several sources indicating that not only David Petraeus favors arming Al Qaeda, but much of the American establishment (who have sponsored Petraeus’s entire career) also does. The British aristocracy likewise does. In fact, that academic propaganda-piece, The Russia Challenge, discusses “the stark choices Western governments face in their policies towards Russia,” while it says nothing about “the stark choices” that Russia now faces in its policies toward the U.S. aristocracy, and toward Britain’s and other U.S-allied aristocracies.

That British academic propaganda-piece comes from Chatham House, otherwise called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which, since early in the 20th Century, has been allied in the U.S. with the Rockefellers’ and Morgans’ Council on Foreign Relations, and, post-WWII, also with the Bilderberg group, and with the Rockefellers’ Trilateral Commission (which brought the Japanese aristocracy into the overall U.S.-led plan for global conquest).

However, there are additionally many other front-organizations for this operation, such as the Brookings Institution. Brookings has always championed American empire, and I reported even recently on a Brookings ‘study’ of this type, by headlining “Brookings Wants More Villages Firebombed in Ukraine’s ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’.”(It’s actually an operation against the residents of the part of Ukraine that had voted 90%+ for the Ukrainian leader whom the Obama Administration had just overthrown. The residents there had refused to accept Obama’s imposed regime.) The intended defeat of Russia is to come not only in the competition over oil and gas (such as between the Arabic oil potentates and Russia), but also by extending NATO right up to Russia’s borders, such as by installing next-door in Ukraine a rabidly anti-Russian government, via a coup in February 2014. (John Fitzgerald Kennedy didn’t like it when Nikita Khrushchev tried something similar against the United States in 1962. It was called “the Cuban Missile Crisis.”) The evidence is clear and overwhelming, though almost entirely absent in U.S. ‘news’ media, that America’s aristocracy place vastly higher priority upon defeating Russia than upon defeating Islamic jihad. (The implicit message to the families of America’s 9/11 victims is: “Just get lost.” But that subtle message from the aristocrats isn’t on America’s ‘news,’ either. Only their PR is.)

In fact, I provided essential background for this development, on August 16th, headlining “How & Why the U.S. Media Do Propaganda Against Russia.” This is a position by the U.S. “Establishment,” which is the entire network of think tanks and other fronts that are financed by the U.S. aristocracy (tax-free, moreover, to the aristocrats who finance these operations) so as to conquer Russia in order that the U.S. aristocracy will win unchallengeable global control, over every other nation’s aristocracy. I documented there that not only the Republican Party but the Obama-Clinton or “Establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, have been fully in agreement with Mitt Romney’s infamous 2012 statement against Russia, which Obama publicly condemned at the time, that, “this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe”; and Obama’s very public attack against that statement helped him win the 2012 election, though Obama’s second Administration has actually been carrying out Romney’s policy there.

Obama has many cheerleaders in this global-conquest program, such as his advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is proud to have helped start today’s Islamic jihad movement in order to defeat the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union ended, Brzezinski’s hatred of Russians drove him to continue on as if it hadn’t. The war against “communism” has turned out to have been just a cover-story for these aristocrats’ war for global control, somewhat like the war against Islamic jihadists later morphed into a war against the residents of Ukraine’s pro-Russian far-east. Brzezinski was born to Polish nobility, and he retains that hatred from his childhood, which is why he has been so useful to America’s aristocrats, in order to help make the defeat of Russia into a “bipartisan” issue, and not merely an issue for Romney and the great bulk of America’s aristocrats, who are Republicans.

Basically, what Putin is apparently doing here is to go beyond the theatrics of Western aristocracies, the aristocracies that are led by America’s, and finally now to lay down the gauntlet, in Syria, against Islamic jihad. As I have previously documented, Islamic jihad is financed virtually entirely by multimillion-dollar individual contributions not only by the Saudi royal family, but also by the royals of the other Arabic oil countries.

Without that constant flow of funds, the Sauds’ operation on their own side for global empire would collapse. Theirs is to be an Islamic global empire, much like America’s Dominionist Christions have (though far less successfully) aspired to creating a global Christian empire. Ever since 1945, the U.S. aristocracy and the Saudi royal family have been united together. Increasingly in the decades after the end of communism, the only thing that remains after the beast of “The Cold War” is the skeleton of expanding the American aristocracy’s empire, still married to the skeleton of the Sauds’ imperial ambitions. It could become an Earth-killing embrace: skeletons all-around and everywhere.

In one of the rare mainstream U.S. news reports about the unity between Arabic royals and the international Islamic jihad movement, America’s PBS “Frontline” documented that Islamic jihad is taught in schools that are financed by the Saudi royal family.

If the current report in German Economic News is true, then America’s President Obama will need to reassess his entire foreign policy, which has — overtly now, during his second Administration (after he had successfully fooled the American public to think that he didn’t agree with Romney) — been virtually obsessed with defeating Russia.

The U.S. regime has even bragged about its ability to stir up fear against Russia around the world.

America’s alliance with the Islamic jihad movement seems now to be directly challenged by Putin. If Obama is to continue his effort to replace the secular Shiite Syrian regime by an Islamic Sunni regime (one that will be controlled by the Sauds, and/or by the Qatari royal family the Thanis), the U.S. will then face the prospect of war against Russia, much as Obama has already built in Ukraine via his 2014 coup there, which is still prohibited from being reported about in the West — except via a few independent authentic news media (the few that aren’t controlled by aristocrats), which few (such as you are now reading) are allowed because they have only small audiences. As with the samizdat literature during the former Soviet Union, the truth is thus marginalized in the now overwhelmingly fascist-controlled, U.S.-dominated, West.

For further background on this, see my August 13th report, “Meet the ‘Moderates’ the U.S. Is Supporting in Syria: They’re al-Qaeda.”

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.

 

Is there anyone who believes that Yemeni Lives Matter?

Saudi ground forces invaded Yemen for the first time in this war on August 27. Officially, the Saudi government characterizes the invasion as an incursion that will be limited and temporary. The Saudi government made similar representations about their terror-bombing of Yemen that began March 26 and has continued on a near-daily basis to the present.

Other foreign troops have invaded southern Yemen in support of the ousted Yemeni government.

At the same time as the Saudi invasion, the ousted Yemeni government, now talking tough from the safety of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, says it won’t enter into any peace talks until the other side, which has no air force and no navy, surrenders its weapons and withdraws from disputed territory. This “demand” is consistent with the corrupt UN Security Council resolution that passed in April, with the support of the US and other countries then waging war on Yemen.

Saudi Arabia’s aggression against Yemen, the poorest country in the region, has been catastrophic for Yemen, which is all-but-defenseless. Backed by eight other Arab dictatorships and the US, the Saudi alliance has committed uncounted war crimes and crimes against humanity. The onslaught has killed more than 4,300 people (mostly civilians), subjected roughly half the Yemeni population to severe hunger and water scarcity, and laid waste to World Heritage sites among the oldest in the world.

The US-led naval blockade, an act of war, has cut food imports to Yemen, which is not capable of growing enough food to feed its population. The head of the UN World Food Program reported on August 19 that Yemen is on the verge of famine, making the US naval blockade a potential crime against humanity. The UN humanitarian chief has reported to the UN Security Council that “the scale of human suffering is almost incomprehensible.” As reported by ABC News:

He said he was shocked by what he saw: Four out of five Yemenis are in need of humanitarian assistance, nearly 1.5 million people are internally displaced, and people were using cardboard for mattresses at a hospital where lights flickered, the blood bank had closed and there were no more examination gloves.

Like most mainstream media, ABC News delivers the suffering with relish, but has a hard time telling the war story straight, resorting to euphemistic evasions such as: “at least 1,916 civilians have died in the Yemen conflict since it escalated on March 26.” [emphasis added] That’s just dishonest. On March 25, the “Yemen conflict” was primarily a civil war (with ISIS and al Qaeda thrown in).

US leadership cultivates a new generation of war criminals

On March 26, the US-backed Saudi alliance turned the “conflict” into an illegal international war, launching saturation bombing of defenseless populations in coordination with the naval blockade designed to starve the rebels into submission. The “conflict” did not, as ABC wrote, escalate itself – the US and Saudi coalition started a new, undeclared, criminal war for which the leading war criminals of eight countries (starting with President Obama) will likely never face accountability, any more than Obama was willing to hold Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the Iraq war criminals to account.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other human rights observers report war crimesbeing committed on all sides.

An Amnesty representative said: “All the parties to this conflict have displayed a ruthless and wanton disregard for the safety of civilians.” “All the parties” includes the rebels and the Yemeni-government-in-exile in Saudi Arabia, of course. But it also includes the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Senegal, Pakistan, and Somalia. If any of these countries has a peace movement, there is little evidence of it.

US sponsorship of the criminal war on Yemen also includes the provision of US cluster bombs, which have been outlawed by most of the world’s civilized nations. More than 100 countries have signed the international ban on cluster bombs, but the US – like China, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel – are not signatories. The US did not participate in negotiations at all. The primary value of cluster bombs is that they kill civilians, and go on killing them long after wars end in places like Cambodia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Iraq.

Human Rights Watch on August 26 called on the US-back Saudi coalition bombers to stop usingcluster bombs in Yemen. A human rights research said: “Cluster munitions are adding to the terrible civilian toll in Yemen’s conflict. Coalition forces should immediately stop using these weapons and join the treaty banning them.”

The reality of suffering is way ahead of the reality of US war crimes

The five-sided fighting in Yemen continues without surcease, and media coverage seems to be picking up on the suffering (perhaps following the “if it bleeds it leads” creed, though Yemen doesn’t often lead the news). On-the-ground coverage is hampered by a virtual prohibition of reporters in the country, where, if they get there, they become targets. This is Saudi alliance-enforced policy, supported by the US, along the lines first implemented in the glorious US victory over Grenada.

Alex Potter is a 25-year-old nurse and photographer from Minnesota who moved to Yemen in 2012. Her photo album of Yemen beautifully and poignantly illustrates the destruction wreaked on the people and places of an ancient part of the world. The album speaks for itself, published on an NPR website. The NPR-written text and Potter’s quotes heartrendingly describe the suffering of mostly innocent people.

But the NPR text treats the catastrophe more like a natural disaster than an actual war that actual people have decided to wage at any cost:

Yemen is at war. Rebels from the Houthi minority group took control of Sanaa and other parts of the country six months ago. Saudi Arabia backs the government that was forced out and has launched airstrikes against the Houthis. Other actors – al-Qaida and ISIS – make it even more complicated.

And in June, the unthinkable happened. The densely populated Old City [of Sanaa], where people have lived for more than 2,500 years, was attacked. Locals blamed an airstrike.

That is less reporting than it is propaganda. “Yemen is at war” is as sanitized as “Yemen had an earthquake” – and it is fundamentally dishonest. Until March 26, “Yemen” was not at war. Yemen was in the midst of the latest of its chronic civil wars over decades. The rebels were apparently winning. So the Saudis took the Yemeni government into something like protective custody and, with US connivance and several allies, started waging undeclared air war on a population and military forces with no air force and little effective air defense. NPR must know all that, and chose not to make it clear.

To say that “locals blamed an airstrike” is almost an obscenity of journalism, as if there’s some other, unmentioned possibility. It’s as if NPR is saying: what do we know, we’re only reporters, and only one of us was on the scene. You’d certainly never know from NPR that the desolation so vividly shown is the direct result of choices made by American policy makers (among others).

The people Potter’s photographs show have nowhere to go. The text mentions that “Doctors Without Borders has called this a ‘war on civilians.’” What NPR fails to tell you is that Yemenis have nowhere to go primarily because there’s a US naval blockade keeping their country contained like an open air prison, enforcing a killing ground which the Saudis and others can – and do – bomb at will.

New war, continuous war for 14 years – NOT presidential issues?

If ANY presidential candidate has said anything substantive in opposition to the US participation in the war on Yemen, it’s not easy to find. It’s not easy to find a presidential candidate in opposition toAmerica’s 14 years of continuous war in the Middle East and Africa. Years ago, Rand Paul criticized the extensive drone war Obama was waging in Yemen. Paul was correct that the US drone war was illegal and destabilizing for Yemen, but neither point was taken. Yemen’s destabilization by drone contributed to today’s reality, an illegal, multinational, interventionist war on a country in which the “wrong” side was winning a civil war.

In April 2015, when US-supported bombing of Yemen was three weeks old, Paul criticized US war policies in general, especially as advocated by other Republicans:

There’s a group of folks in our party who would have troops in six countries right now – maybe more…. This is something, if you watch closely, that will separate me from many other Republicans. The other Republicans will criticize Hillary Clinton and the president for their foreign policy, but they would have done the same thing – just 10 times over!… Everyone who will criticize me wanted troops on the ground, our troops on the ground, in Libya. It was a mistake to be in Libya. We are less safe. Jihadists swim in our swimming pool now. It’s a disaster.

Paul went on to say that he supports unspecified “military action” against ISIS, which is operational in at least three countries now (Syria, Iraq, and Yemen). Paul did not address the terror-bombing of the Houthis and others in Yemen.

Democrats appear to be no more interested in American war-making in Yemen than Republicans, even though al Qaeda has been growing stronger there as a result of the US-backed bombing weakening the Houthi government. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula now controls part of the City of Aden, parts of which are also controlled by the rebels (conflicting reports) and forces fighting for the government-in-exile in Saudi Arabia (these forces include Moroccan troops).

For anti-war activists, Bernie Sanders is generally thought to be the best bet, even though his record is fairly weak (compared to Dennis Kucinich, for example). World Socialists take a dim view of the democratic socialist candidate’s positions on war/peace issues, calling him the “silent partner of American militarism.” Even more bleakly, Black Agenda Report’s Margaret Kimberley agues that “Sanders’ candidacy is as grave a danger to the rest of the world as that of his rivals.” In CounterPunch, Sam Husseini takes Sanders to task for his support of Saudi Arabia even as it pummels Yemen. One activist group, RootsAction.org, has an online petition with 25,000 signatures so far, calling on Sanders (a longtime supporter of the F-35 boondoggle) to denounce the madness of militarism:

Senator Sanders, we are enthusiastic about your presidential campaign’s strong challenge to corporate power and oligarchy. We urge you to speak out about how they are intertwined with militarism and ongoing war.

Martin Luther King Jr. denounced what he called “the madness of militarism,” and you should do the same. As you said in your speech to the SCLC, “Now is not the time for thinking small.”

Unwillingness to challenge the madness of militarism is thinking small.

Sanders has yet to respond publicly to the current RootsAction poll. In December 2013, the senator’s “Bernie Buzz” online newsletter reported on another RootsAction poll. That one found that 81% of RootsAction’s 19,131 members were in favor of Sanders running for president (9% opposed). Currently, his presidential campaign website lists ten major issues – NONE of them are “war,” peace,” “militarism,” “military spending,” “foreign policy,” or anything of that sort.

Until at least one of the candidates for “leader of the free world” says loudly and clearly that the US will back off trying to run the world at the point of a gun, Americans will just have to continue living with presidents who think small about making war against anyone who annoys the US by challenging our elitist “national interests” for any reason. And that will mean continuing to outspend the rest of the world on weapons of war. And that will mean continuing to spend more than half the US budget on war and the consequences of war. And that will leave little room for any putatively “socialist” candidate to do much more than nibble at the core corporate socialism that is the heart of the American economy.

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

America’s descent into totalitarian violence is accelerating. Like the Bush regime, the Obama regime has a penchant for rewarding Justice (sic) Department officials who trample all over the US Constitution. Last year America’s First Black President nominated David Barron to be a judge on the First US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Barron is responsible for the Justice (sic) Department memo that gave the legal OK for Obama to murder a US citizen with a missile fired from a drone. The execution took place without charges presented to a court, trial, and conviction. The target was a religious man whose sermons were believed by the paranoid Obama regime to encourage jihadism. Apparently, it never occurred to Obama or the Justice (sic) Department that Washington’s mass murder and displacement of millions of Muslims in seven countries was all that was needed to encourage jihadism. Sermons would be redundant and would comprise little else but moral outrage after years of mass murder by Washington in pursuit of hegemony in the Middle East.

Barron’s confirmation ran into opposition from some Republicans, some Democrats, and the American Civil Liberties Union, but the US Senate confirmed Barron by a vote of 53-45 in May 2014. Just think, you could be judged in “freedom and democracy America” by a fiend who legalized extra-judicial murder.

While awaiting his reward, Barron had a post on the faculty of the Harvard Law School, which tells you all you need to know about law schools. His wife ran for governor of Massachusetts. Elites are busy at work replacing law with power.

America now has as an appeals court judge, no doubt being groomed for the Supreme Court, who established the precedent in US law that, the Constitution not withstanding, American citizens can be executed without a trial.

Did law school faculties object? Not Georgetown law professor David Cole, who enthusiastically endorsed the new legal principle of execution without trial. Professor Cole put himself on the DOJ’s list of possible federal judicial appointees by declaring his support for Barron, whom he described as “thoughtful, considerate, open-minded, and brilliant.”

Once a country descends into evil, it doesn’t emerge. The precedent for Obama’s appointment of Barron was George W. Bush’s appointment of Jay Scott Bybee to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Bybee was John Yoo’s Justice (sic) Department colleague who co-authored the “legal” memos justifying torture despite US federal statutory law and international law prohibiting torture. Everyone knew that torture was illegal, including those practicing it, but these two fiends provided a legal pass for the practitioners of torture. Not even Pinochet in Chile went this far.

Bybee and Yoo got rid of torture by calling it “enhanced interrogation techniques.” As Wikipedia reports, these techniques are considered to be torture by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, medical experts who treat torture victims, intelligence officials, America’s allies, and even by the Justice (sic) Department. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bybee

Others who objected to the pass given to torture by Bybee and Yoo were Secretary of State Colin Powell, US Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora, and even Philip Zelikow, who orchestrated the 9/11 Commission coverup for the Bush regime.

After five years of foot-dragging, the Justice (sic) Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Bybee and his deputy John Yoo committed “professional misconduct” by providing legal advice that was in violation of international and federal laws. The DOJ’s office of Professional Responsibility recommended that Bybee and Yoo be referred to the bar associations of the states where they were licensed for further disciplinary action and possible disbarment.

But Bybee and Yoo were saved by a regime-compliant Justice (sic) Department official, David Margolis, who concluded that Bybee and Yoo had used “poor judgement” but had not provided wrong legal advice.

So, today, instead of being disbarred, Bybee sits on a federal court just below the Supreme Court. John Yoo teaches constitutional law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Boalt Hall.

Try to imagine what has happened to America when Harvard and Berkeley law professors create legal justifications for torture and extra-judicial murder, and when US presidents engage in these heinous crimes. Clearly America is exceptional in its immorality, lack of human compassion, and disrespect for law and its founding document.

Now we have a West Point professor of law teaching the US military justifications for murdering American critics of war and the police state.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/29/west-point-professor-target-legal-critics-war-on-terror 

Also here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42758.htm 

The professor’s article is here:

http://warisacrime.org/sites/afterdowningstreet.org/files/westpointfascism.pdf

William C. Bradford, the professor teaching our future military officers to regard moral Americans as threats to national security, blames Walter Cronkite for loosing the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War by reporting the offensive as an American defeat.
Tet was an American defeat in the sense that the offensive proved that the “defeated” enemy was capable of a massive offensive against US forces. The offensive succeeded in the sense that it demonstrated to Americans that the war was far from over. The implication of Bradford’s argument is that Cronkite should have been killed for his broadcasts that added to the doubts about American success.

The professor claims to have a list of 40 people who tell the truth who must be exterminated, or our country is lost. Here we have the full confession that Washington’s agenda cannot survive truth.

I am unaware of any report that the professor has been censored or fired for his disrespect for the constitutionally protected right of freedom of expression.

However, I have seen reports of professors destroyed because they criticized Israel’s war crimes, or used a word or term prohibited by political correctness, or were insufficiently appreciative of the privileges of “preferred minorities.” What this tells us is that morality is sidetracked into self-serving agendas while evil overwhelms the morality of society.

Welcome to America today. It is a land in which facts have been redefined as enemy propaganda, a land in which legally protected whistleblowers are redefined as “fifth columns” or foreign agents subject to extermination, a land in which America is immune from criticism and all crimes are blamed on those whom Washington intends to rule.

Barron, Bybee, Yoo, and Bradford are members of a new species—the Inhumanes—that has risen from the poisonous American environment of arrogance, hubris, and paranoia.

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.

There is an unspoken, yet very clear, bond between Hollywood and the US government that overtly supports US foreign policy. The movie industry in Hollywood has been active in hiding US war crimes and sanitizing the US military campaigns in NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, Anglo-American occupied Iraq, and elsewhere in the world. Moreover, the dominance of Hollywood as a tool of cultural imperialism in Europe and the rest of the world make Hollywood films an excellent tool for getting Washington’s ideas out internationally and sedating global audiences with misleading narratives.

Hollywood as a Tool of Cultural Imperialism and Perception Management

Aside from news media outlets, it should come as no surprise that most the ideas and notions that the general public in the US and elsewhere have about wars come from movies, television sets, radio programs, video games, and the entertainment industry. Movies and the entertainment industry are ideal for identifying roles for audiences. In many instances movies and the entertainment industry surpass media outlets in shaping the perceptions of audiences about wars and conflicts.

Movies are used to identify which individuals, groups, peoples, and nations are heroes, victims, aggressors, and villains. In this regard Hollywood vilifies countries like Iran, China, Russia, Cuba, and North Korea while it lionizes the United States. Hollywood also warps historical narratives and reifies revisionist narratives of history. In a far stretch from the historical facts and reality, this is why most US citizens and many Western Europeans believe that the outcome of the Second World War in Europe was decided in the Atlantic by the US and not in Eastern Europe and Central Asia by the Soviet Union.

The perceptions of most people in the US and Western Europe are influenced by Hollywood and the entertainment industry and not history textbooks or scholarly works. Polls taken in France by the French Institute of Public Opinion about the Second World War demonstrate how US cultural imperialism by means of Hollywood’s influence has played out.  57 % of the French citizens polled in 1945 believed that Germany was defeated in the Second World War because of the Soviet Union whereas 20% believed it was due to the US and 12% thought it was because of the British. These views become distorted by 1994 when 25% of the French citizens polled believed that it was because of the Soviets that Hitler was defeated whereas 49% believed it was because of the US and 16% believed it was because of Britain. By 2004 only 20% of the French citizens surveyed recognized the Soviet Union as the main force for ending the Second World War in Europe whereas 58% believed it was the US and 16% thought it was Britain.

We can infer that the younger generations or birth cohorts that did not experience the Second World War are having their perceptions shaped by modern mass media, specifically movies and the entertainment industry. This is why CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was able to boldly declared on June 6, 2014 at the Seventieth Anniversary of D-Day from the Chateau de Benouville in France that «the American effort — the supremely heroic effort of the United States — under General Eisenhower and President Roosevelt during World War II has been one that the whole continent [meaning, Europe] has thanked America for the last seventy years». While taking a swipe at Russia and undermining its role in the Second World War, CNN’s Amanpour also said that the French government has emphasized «that this is a day to thank the United States» and thank the US «most particularly for turning around the course of history».

The Vertical Integration of Hollywood with the Military-Industrial Complex

The recognized establishment of ties between Hollywood and the US government began with the production of the silent war movie Wings in 1927. The silent movie was about the First World War and relied heavily on the United States Army Air Corps, which is the aerial wing of the US Army. Ever since the making of Wings in 1927 there has been a close partnership between the Pentagon and Hollywood that has expanded and blossomed to include other government bodies and agencies, including members of the sixteen-member US intelligence community, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This has led to the vertical integration of Hollywood and the entertainment industry into the military-industrial complex, which has in essence reduced Hollywood movies to tools of cultural imperialism and camouflaged US propaganda.

The US government began to increasingly manipulate the contents of Hollywood movie script and to glamorize and lionize the US military and its campaigns. The Pentagon and US government will not assist movie or television productions that reveal the true malevolent role of US wars. Financial and material assistance is only given to productions that make wars and US foreign policy look like a heroic and noble solution. The author of the book Operation Hollywood, Dave Robb, does an excellent job of documenting this. For example, the Pentagon had the entire plot and script changed in the 1961 episode of Lassie named «Timmy and the Martians». The episode was originally supposed to be about the protagonist dog Lassie howling to alert Timmy of a plane crash. The producers originally wanted to do a show where a US airplane crashed because it had a design fault that Lassie could sense due to a high pitch noise and thus identify. The US military, however, would not accept any script that would even remotely suggest that US military hardware could have a design fault. This was because the US government and Pentagon did not want children to think that US military equipment could be faulty, because it would hurt future recruitment for the US military. So the circumstances of the airplane’s crash had to be rewritten for the show to get Pentagon support.

This relationship has in effect sanitized US wars and invasions while it has justified Washington’s foreign policy. It has led to the production of historically twisted movies. At one end of the spectrum in Hollywood this has led to Hollywood self-censorship whereas at the other end of the spectrum it has led to government subsidized propaganda. Hollywood script writers draft movie scripts that are self-censored because they know that they will be asking for assistance from the Pentagon and US government which can significant reduce a Hollywood production’s budget and save its producers a lot of money. Hollywood scripts are constantly modified in this regard and the Pentagon even has an entity in Los Angeles that deals with Hollywood directors and producers called the Film Liaison Unit.

Hollywood’s Role in Hiding US War Crimes

While the US uses films like Top Gun as promotional and recruitment material it used movies like the Green Berets to distort the role of US in wars and movies like Argo, which the CIA is reported to have fact checked, to distort the perception of history. Hollywood movies like Iron Man and Lone Survivor never explain the circumstances behind the US military presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia. They merely present the US presence there as an invited one and even the US contingents there as simply peacekeepers. Movies like Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer portray the US as having a mandate to act with impunity anywhere in the world, including Russia and China, by disregarding the sovereignty of other nations and even placing US military bases on their soil.

The US military has no jurisdiction on Chinese soil nor does the Pentagon have a base in Russia’s territory. These Hollywood movies naturalize US interference in other countries and create the false impression that the US military has a right to do whatever it wants.

Aside from not addressing the darker side of US foreign policy, Hollywood movies like Forrest Gump carry subliminal messages. In the words of the US culture and entertainment magazine Rolling Stone: «The message of Forrest Gump was that if you think about the hard stuff too much, you’ll either get AIDS or lose your legs. Meanwhile, the hero is the idiot who just shrugs and says ‘Whatever!’ whenever his country asks him to do something crazy». What Rolling Stone is saying that listen to what you are commanded to do.

Then there are movies like American Sniper that collapse US foreign policy into the simplistic notion of individual characters. What this does is collapse the event and the soldiers into one, which means that if ones criticize a US war that you are attacking the soldiers and their convictions. This is hiding behind the soldiers and detracting from the real issue of an illegal invasion and occupation. Nor is there any mention of Abu Ghraib or the false weapons of mass destruction lies. Rolling Stone had this to say about American Sniper: «Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question». «It’s the fact that the movie is popular, and actually makes sense to so many people, that’s the problem,» it also adds. In fact, as a result of the movie there was an increase in hate crimes in the US and negative feelings towards Arabs and Muslims.

Nor was Chris Kyle in real life a hero protecting the US way of life as the Hollywood movie depicts him; he was part of an occupational force that should never have been in Iraq and he was fighting what he called an «insurgency» that emerged to resist the occupation of Iraq. Kyle also claimed that he was ordered to kill thirty fellow Americans in New Orleans because they were looting. He was also a known liar who also admitted that he loved killing Iraqis in his book.

Hollywood helps sanitize US war crimes and create false images. It should also come as no surprise that Hollywood movies are part of intelligence operations either. When Ben Affleck, the director of the movie Argo and an admirer of the CIA that collaborated with them in the making of Argo, was asked by Catherine Shoard if Hollywood was filled with CIA agents, his response was to say «I think that Hollywood is probably full of CIA agents».

It is worth quoting  US Senator Tom Hayden about the CIA’s involvement in Hollywood: «Think about that: it’s not that Hollywood is in bed with the CIA in some repugnant way, but that the Agency is looking to plant positive images about itself (in other words, propaganda) through our most popular forms of entertainment. So natural has the CIA–entertainment connection become that few question its legal or moral ramifications. This is a government agency like no other; the truth of its operations is not subject to public examination. When the CIA’s hidden persuaders influence a Hollywood movie, it is using a popular medium to spin as favorable an image of itself as possible, or at least, prevent an unfavorable one from taking hold. If incestuous enough, Jenkins argues, these relationships violate the spirit or letter of government laws».

The importance of movies as a tool of US foreign policy and warfare cannot be ignored. As an illustration of their importance, movies have even been censored inside the United States to hide US war crimes and reality. The 1946 movie documentary Let There Be Light, which was about the lives of US soldiers that were traumatized from war and directed by John Huston, was banned for over thirty years from being watched in the US because of the awareness it would create among the US public.

Think Hollywood is neutral or that movie like Seth Rogen’s comedy The Interview, which promotes regime change in North Korea, is innocent? Think again. Hollywood is helping Washington wage a war of perception management and to hide US war crimes.

This article was originally published by the Strategic Culture Foundation on September 3, 2015.

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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.

The heart of the idea stems from Petraeus’s experience in Iraq in 2007, when as part of a broader strategy to defeat an Islamist insurgency the U.S. persuaded Sunni militias to stop fighting with al Qaeda and to work with the American military.

Jason Reed/Reuters

The tactic worked, at least temporarily. But al Qaeda in Iraq was later reborn as ISIS, and has become the sworn enemy of its parent organization. Now, Petraeus is returning to his old play, advocating a strategy of co-opting rank-and-file members of al Nusra, particularly those who don’t necessarily share all of core al Qaeda’s Islamist philosophy.

However, Petraeus’s play, if executed, could be enormously controversial. The American war on terror began with an al Qaeda attack on 9/11, of course. The idea that the U.S. would, 14 years later, work with elements of al Qaeda’s Syrian branch was an irony too tough to stomach for most U.S. officials interviewed by The Daily Beast. They found Petraeus’s notion politically toxic, near-impossible to execute, and strategically risky.

This is an acknowledgment that U.S. stated goal to degrade and destroy ISIS is not working. If it were, we would not be talking to these not quite foreign terrorist groups

It would also face enormous legal and security obstacles. In 2012, the Obama administration designated al Nusra a foreign terrorist organization. And last year, the president ordered airstrikes on al Nusra positions housing members of the Khorasan Group, an al Qaeda cadre that was trying to recruit jihadists with Western passports to smuggle bombs onto civilian airliners.

Yet Petraeus and his plan cannot be written off. He still wields considerable influence with current officials, U.S. lawmakers, and foreign leaders. The fact that he feels comfortable recruiting defectors from an organization that has declared war on the United States underscores the tenuous nature of the Obama administration’s strategy to fight ISIS, which numerous observers have said is floundering in search of a viable ground force.

According to those familiar with Petraeus’s thinking, he advocates trying to cleave off less extreme al Nusra fighters, who are battling ISIS in Syria, but who joined with al Nusra because of their shared goal of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

Petraeus was the CIA director in early 2011 when the Syrian civil war erupted. At the time, he along with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta reportedly urged the Obama administration to work withmoderate opposition forces. The U.S. didn’t, and many of those groups have since steered toward jihadist groups like the Nusra Front, which are better equipped and have had more success on the battlefield.

How precisely the U.S. would separate moderate fighters from core members and leaders of al Nusra is unclear, and Petraeus has yet to fully detail any recommendations he might have.

Petraeus declined a request to comment on his views from The Daily Beast.

“This is an acknowledgment that the U.S. stated goal to degrade and destroy ISIS is not working. If it were, we would not be talking to these not quite foreign terrorist groups,” Christopher Harmer, a senior naval analyst with the Middle East Security Project at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, told The Daily Beast. “Strategically, it is desperate.”

Privately, U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that any direct links with al Nusra are off the table. But working with other factions, while difficult, might not be impossible.

Still, the very forces that Petraeus envisions enlisting, and who may have once been deemed potential allies when they were fighting Assad, now may be too far gone. Moreover, there is no sign, thus far, of a group on the ground capable of countering ISIS, at least without U.S. assistance.

“As prospects for Assad dim, opposition groups not already aligned with the U.S. or our partners will face a choice,” one U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast. “Groups that try to cater to both hard-liners and the West could find themselves without any friends, having distanced themselves from groups like al Qaeda but still viewed as extremists by the moderate opposition and their supporters.”

News of Petraeus’s proposal comes at a potentially opportune moment for the Obama administration as it looks toward some resolution of the civil war in Syria. On Friday, Ambassador Michael Ratney, the newly-minted U.S. special envoy to Syria, set out to meet with Russian, Saudi, and United Nations officials in search of a political settlement to the conflict.

Like Petraeus, Ratney is in search of partners. He’s “trying to come up with options for some sort of political process, a political process that we know is going to have to include opposition groups and try to work through what that means and what that’s going to look like,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters last week. Kirby stopped short of saying just which opposition groups should be part of the discussion.

The U.S. has insisted that any negotiated settlement must not include Assad, even as Russia has hinted Assad must be a part of a deal. Assad himself said in a television interview last week that he will not work with U.S. allies in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

On the ground, the two most powerful anti-Assad forces are ISIS and al Nusra, and the U.S. won’t negotiate with either.

Petraeus’s strategy depends on a number of key assumptions, chiefly that U.S. intelligence and military officials would be able to distinguish who among al Nusra’s ranks is truly moderate and doesn’t share the terrorist group’s goal of replacing Assad with an Islamist government.

The former general isn’t the only ex-official who wants to talk to jihadist-linked fighters who share some, if not all, of the United States’ goals.

Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria, has called for dialogue with Ahrar al Sham, a jihadist force he has called “probably the most important group fighting the Syrian regime now.”

In a recent article for the Middle East Institute, Ford said that the capture of the Syrian provincial capital of Idlib last March, which was attributed by some to al Nusra, really should be credited to Ahrar, which had more fighters in the battle.

“Ahrar is a key force on the battlefield, but Western media allots little space to describe it beyond saying it is hard-line or jihadi,’” Ford wrote. That label, he acknowledged, stems from Ahrar calling for an Islamic state in Syria, as well as its collaboration with al Nusra against Assad and ISIS. The group was also founded by a former deputy to the current al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

But, Ford insisted, “Ahrar is not a junior partner of Nusra; there are ideological and political differences between them.”

Some U.S. intelligence officials disputed that, and said Ahrar is currently on a charm offensive, trying to distance itself from Islamic groups like al Nusra and thus win support in Washington while it looks forward to grabbing power after Assad falls.

“Some groups will look to pave their way to a seat at the post-Assad table by seeking public support, such as Ahrar al Sham, while others will affirm their choice through their actions,” the U.S. intelligence official said.

The extent to which the U.S. opposes working with Ahrar, a group that swears it’s independent, points out just how difficult it would be to recruit members of al Nusra, which is al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria.

And yet that’s not out of the question. The more extreme ISIS becomes, the more other hard-line groups seem to soften by comparison. ISIS, with its filmed executions, organized kidnappings, and enslavement of women and girls, has become so barbaric that it has been isolated from other fighting groups on the ground, said Harmer, the military analyst.

“Alliances of convenience that would have been impossible two years are now plausible, and in some ways inevitable, because we are not willing to put boots on the ground,” Harmer said.

Al Nusra has played an arguably helpful role to the U.S. already, albeit indirectly and behind the scenes. In 2014, officials in Qatar reached out to their contacts with al Nusra to help free American journalist Peter Theo Curtis, multiple sources, including former U.S. officials familiar with the negotiations, have told The Daily Beast. Al Nusra elements were operating so closely with the American-backed Free Syrian Army at that time that American warplanes almost hit the moderate rebels as it was targeting the jihadists.

The U.S. has tried other means to field a sustainable ground force to confront ISIS. So far, none of them have worked reliably. The most successful ground force so far has been the YPG, a Kurdish element, which drove ISIS out of the northern Syrian city of Kobani and other nearby cities under the cover of U.S. airstrikes.

But since the U.S. struck a deal to allow combat flights from Turkey, which opposes emboldening Kurdish forces, doubts have surfaced over whether the U.S. would keep providing air support for the YPG as its seeks to take Syrian territory. So far, the YPG has not pushed for any more land, instead defending what it already has.

U.S. efforts to train local forces in Syria have faltered, as well. The first batch of 54 fighters trained by American military forces dissolved in August. Some fighters fled back to their homes in Syria. Others were captured by al Nusra. While the U.S. military has said it’s still training fighters, privately officials concede the group has fallen far short of expectations. At one point, the U.S. planned to train 15,000 fighters in three years.

Petraeus spoke on the record about his plans in a statement to CNN on Tuesday, after The Daily Beast published its report.

“We should under no circumstances try to use or co-opt Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, as an organization against ISIL,” Petraeus said. “But some individual fighters, and perhaps some elements, within Nusra today have undoubtedly joined for opportunistic rather than ideological reasons: they saw Nusra as a strong horse, and they haven’t seen a credible alternative, as the moderate opposition has yet to be adequately resourced.”

Petraeus said the U.S. should try “splintering [Al Nusra’s] ranks by offering a credible alternative to those ‘reconcilable’ elements of those organizations.”

Petraeus didn’t contradict any of The Daily Beast’s report.

There never was a truer example of ‘when you’re in a hole, stop digging’.   His article in the Observer today is a gift to his opponents, but it does even more damage to himself.   He reveals himself as increasingly deserted even his previous closest followers, an utterly broken man watching everything he stood for swept away before his eyes.   He has gone from opposition to delusion, from hysteria to denial.  

But what is perhaps most disturbing of all is that he can’t, as he himself candidly admits, understand why the Corbyn earthquake is happening.   He just blankly refuses to acknowledge the passionate resentment which he and New Labour created by laying the foundations for the financial crash of 2008-9 and making the squeezed middle and brutally punished poor pay for it, by taking Britain without any constitutional approval into an illegal was with Iraq, by introducing into politics the hated regime of spin and manipulation , by indulging now his squalid lust for money-making, and by clearly having no more overriding desire than to strut the world with Bush.

He describes his opponents as trapped “in their own hermetically sealed bubble”, when that applies exactly to himself.   If what he says were really true, why has the Labour electorate swelled to over 600,000, 50% larger than he managed even at the height of his pomp when so many were glad to be rid of the Tories on 1st May 1997?   Why is he so unfeeling and unapologetic about aligning the New Labour alongside the Tories in pursuit of austerity from 2010 onwards, especially since Osborne’s policy (to shrink the State) has been so dramatically unsuccessful in reducing the deficit?   Why did he urge the Blairites to support the government’s welfare bill which opposed every tenet of the real Labour Party?   Why did he push for privatisation of the NHS and other public services?   Why did his acolyte Mandelson say “New Labour is “relaxed at people becoming filthy rich”, and proved it by letting inequality balloon to even highe heights than under Thatcher?

So after doing all those things, how does he expect Labour members and the country to treat him?   After a 20-year temp;orary iruption of hi-jacking the party down a route utterly alien to its founders, in order to ingratiate himself with corporate and financial leaders on their terms, how can he imagine that anyone wants him back?   He has a lot to learn, less egoism, more humility.

The immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more

-U.S. President George Washington to General John Sullivan on May 31, 1779

Hollywood actress Natalie Portman has created a controversy among the Jewish community. The Jerusalem Post published a report on Natalie Portman’s comments regarding the Shoah (the Holocaust) from the Jewish education she received. The title of the report ‘Natalie Portman: Holocaust is no more tragic than other genocides’ from an interview with ‘The Independent’ where she questioned her Jewish education she received that was solely focused on the Holocaust, disregarding every genocide that took place in history. “In an interview with The Independent published on Friday, the American movie star questioned prominence given to Holocaust education at the expense of other mass murders” the report said. “I think a really big question the Jewish community needs to ask itself, is how much at the forefront we put Holocaust education. Which is, of course, an important question to remember and to respect, but not over other things” Portman said. Portman was not saying that the Holocaust is any more or less important than other human tragedies in history. There is no doubt that the Holocaust was a tragic crime against the Jewish people in Europe, but for an educational institution to ignore all other genocides is a disservice to its students.

Natalie Portman learned about the Rwandan Genocide when she visited a museum and was “shocked that while the Holocaust figured prominently into her education, a contemporary genocide did not”. The Rwanda Genocide was responsible for more than 800,000 deaths (according to the United Nations estimates) of the Tutsi and moderate Hutu tribes, mostly civilians. On April 6, 1994, an airplane was shot down carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira killing all on board. The next day, the genocidal killings began. It was a mass genocide with Washington’s fingerprints. Washington wanted to assert itself in Central Africa by supporting the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the military branch, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) led by Major General Paul Kagame, former head of military intelligence of the Uganda Armed Forces. Kagame was trained at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College (CGSC) located in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. According to Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research explained in a May 2000 article ‘Rwanda, Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa. The US was Behind the Rwanda Genocide’:

From the outset of the Rwandan civil war in 1990, Washington’s hidden agenda consisted in establishing an American sphere of influence in a region historically dominated by France and Belgium. America’s design was to displace France by supporting the Rwandan Patriotic Front and by arming and equipping its military arm, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA)

But that was forgotten. It was forgotten that the Rwanda genocide occurred during a civil war which began in 1990 between the Hutu-led government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) which was composed of Tutsi refugees that had fled to Uganda after violence was initiated on them by the Hutu led government with members from Rwandan army, the National Police, government-backed militias and the Hutu civilian population. “The civil war in Rwanda and the ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives” Chossudovsky wrote. But, according to Jewish education, that’s not important enough. “I was shocked that that [genocide] was going on while I was in school. We were learning only about the Holocaust and it was never mentioned and it was happening while I was in school. That is exactly the type of problem with the way it’s taught. I think it needs to be taught, and I can’t speak for everyone because this was my personal education”Portman told the Independent. “We need to be reminded that hatred exists at all times and reminds us to be empathetic to other people that have experienced hatred also. Not used as a paranoid way of thinking that we are victims. Sometimes it can be subverted to fear-mongering and like ‘Another Holocaust is going to happen.”

According to the Jerusalem Post several prominent Holocaust survivor advocates condemned Portman’s comments including Colette Avital, the chairwoman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel who said“Natalie should understand that the Holocaust which befell us cannot be compared to other tragedies – our empathy notwithstanding. It was not merely hatred, it was a policy whose aim was to systematically wipe out a whole people from the face of the world,” she explained.” Dr. Efraim Zuroff who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office who is also a Nazi hunter commented on what Portman said “with all due respect for Ms. Portman’s great acting and directing talents, her success in the movie world does not turn her into an expert in history or on genocide.” That is true. But it is never too late to learn about what happened throughout history concerning mass genocides for example, Manifest Destiny and the greatest mass extinction in human history against the Native Americans, a human genocide committed by the U.S. government. The influential Scientific American wrote earlier this year that “The atmosphere recorded the mass death, slavery and war that followed 1492. The death by smallpox and warfare of an estimated 50 million native Americans—as well as the enslavement of Africans to work in the newly depopulated Americas—allowed forests to grow in former farmlands.” There were between 19 million a (conservative estimate) to 100 million Native Americans killed in North America.

Here is a Documentary by Joanelle Romero:

Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr once said:

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations

The Jerusalem Post quoted a Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich “As human beings and especially as Jews, we need to be sensitive to all tragedies, to all genocides. As human beings and especially as Jews, we must ensure that all remember the uniqueness of the Holocaust, in it’s scope and in it’s scale.” Menachem Rosensaft, the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, who teaches genocide law at Columbia and Cornell university both agreed and disagreed with Portman’s assessment:

Of course all genocides, as well as all similar atrocities, are tragic and must be acknowledged and commemorated as such. And no one should engage in comparative suffering. I tell my students that from the point of view of the victims or their families, it really makes no difference if they were murdered in a gas chamber or with machetes. And, as World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder has emphasized, Jews must not be silent when Yazidis and Christians are persecuted and murdered by ISIS [Islamic State]

Then Rosensaft’s opposing view suggests that the Holocaust is unique. “At the same time, the Holocaust is unique – not worse and certainly not more tragic – because of its enormous, continent-wide scope, because of the complexity and systematic methodology of the annihilation and the willing participation of such an enormously broad-based part of not just German but other societies.”

Natalie Portman did recognize that the Holocaust was a tragic period in human history, but for the Jewish people to say that their Holocaust is unique and makes it more important than other genocides. In the controversial book ‘The Holocaust Industry’ written by Norman G. Finkelstein said the following:

Its central dogmas sustain significant political and class interests. Indeed, The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon. Through its deployment, one of the world’s most formidable military powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a “victim” state, and the most successful ethnic group in the United States has likewise acquired victim status

All war crimes against Jews, African’s (by various European empires), Armenians (by the Ottoman Empire), the Palestinians (under Israeli occupation), the Syrians (under the U.S. backed Syrian rebels and ISIS and every other new group created) and the Native American population by the U.S. government, all deserve equal historical recognition. I always say whether it’s one life or millions of lives lost because of racism, hatred or a government that wants land for corporate profits are a crime against humanity. The Holocaust is an important part of history that all human beings can learn from, but so are other atrocities that have occurred in the past and in our present time that deserves attention. World history is an important part of education as Natalie Portman made clear as she criticized the Jewish schools she attended in Maryland and on New York’s Long Island. She learned about the Rwandan Genocide from a museum, not from an educational institution. There were numerous genocides committed on the all continents of the world, something many Americans and Israelis alike do not know since the education they receive on the subject is usually ignored. In ‘The Holocaust Industry’ Norman G. Finkelstein, (who was a university professor) also criticized universities in America:

Most college professors can testify that compared to the Civil War many more undergraduates are able to place the Nazi holocaust in the right century and generally cite the number killed. In fact, the Nazi holocaust is just about the only historical reference that resonates in a university classroom today. Polls show that many more Americans can identify The Holocaust than Pearl Harbor or the atomic bombing of Japan

Natalie Portman just spoke the truth about her inadequate education.  Now she has to face the Jewish press, Hollywood and its criticisms. What a world we live in.

As I read the latest example of The New York Times’ propagandistic coverage of the Ukraine crisis on Tuesday, it struck me that if these same reporters and editors were around in 1953, they would have cheered the coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh as a popular “revolution” putting the beloved and benevolent Shah back on the Peacock Throne.

Similarly in 1954, these credulous journalists would have written about another people’s “revolution” in Guatemala removing President Jacobo Arbenz and restoring law and order behind well-regarded military commanders. The Times would have airily dismissed any suggestions of U.S. manipulation of events.

And, for decades, that was how the Central Intelligence Agency wanted American journalists to write those stories – and the current crop of Times’ journalists would have fallen neatly into line. Of course, we know historically that the CIA organized and financed the disorders in Tehran that preceded Mossadegh’s removal and pulled together the rebel force that drove Arbenz from office.

And, the evidence is even clearer that U.S. government operatives, particularly Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, helped orchestrate the 2014 coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Indeed, journalists knew more about the coup-plotting in Ukraine in real-time than we did about the coups in Iran and Guatemala six decades ago.

In the Ukraine case, there was even an intercepted phone call just weeks before the Feb. 22, 2014 coup revealing Nuland handpicking the new Ukrainian leaders – “Yats is the guy,” she said referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who would become the post-coup prime minister – as Pyatt pondered how “to midwife this thing” and Nuland dismissed the European Union’s less aggressive approach with the pithy remark, “F**k the EU!”

Several months earlier, on Sept. 26, 2013, Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy (a U.S. government-funded operation that was financing scores of Ukrainian activists, journalists and business leaders), stated in a Washington Post op-ed that Ukraine was “the biggest prize” and would serve as a steppingstone toward eventually destabilizing Russia and removing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After Gershman’s op-ed pronouncement, Nuland and Sen. John McCain personally cheered on anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square. Nuland literally passed out cookies, and McCain, standing on stage with right-wing extremists from the Svoboda Party, told the crowd that the United States was with them in their challenge to the Ukrainian government. Meanwhile, Pyatt advised the coup-makers from the U.S. Embassy.

The U.S. interference was so blatant that George Friedman, founder of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, called Yanukovych’s ouster “the most blatant coup in history.”

Blatant to anyone, that is, who wasn’t part of the U.S. government’s propaganda team, which included the foreign desk of The New York Times and virtually every mainstream U.S. media outlet. Following the script of the State Department’s propagandists, the Times and the MSM saw only a glorious people’s “revolution.”

Resistance to the Coup

However, ethnic Russians from Crimea and eastern Ukraine, the key bases of support for Yanukovych, resisted the new order in Kiev. The people of Crimea organized a referendum in which 96 percent of the voters favored seceding from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, ties that went back to the Eighteenth Century. When Putin and Russia agreed to accept Crimea, the Times and the MSM announced a “Russian invasion,” although in this case the Russian troops were already stationed in Crimea under the Sebastopol port agreement.

Ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine also rose up demanding independence or at least autonomy from the hostile regime in Kiev. The new government responded by labeling the dissidents “terrorists” and mounting an “Anti-Terrorist Operation,” which killed thousands and was spearheaded by neo-Nazi and Islamist militias. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists.”]

Although the Times at times would acknowledge the key role played by the neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists, that troublesome information – along with the Nuland-Pyatt phone call and other evidence of the coup – would disappear into the Memory Hole when the Times was summarizing the Ukraine narrative or was decrying anyone who dared use the word “coup.”

As far as the Times was concerned, what has happened since February 2014 was simply a glorious “revolution” with “pro-democracy” Ukrainian idealists on one side and propaganda-deluded ethnic Russian automatons on the other, depersonalized and ready for the killing. And behind all the bloodshed was the evil Putin.

The Times reprised its propagandistic narrative on Tuesday in an article by Andrew E. Kramer, who tried to put the best face possible on a violent protest by neo-Nazis and other right-wing nationalists against a proposed constitutional change that would grant more autonomy to eastern Ukraine as part of the Minsk II peace agreement reached last February between German, French, Ukrainian and Russian leaders.

Authorities identified a member of Sych, the militant arm of the right-wing Svoboda Party (John McCain’s old friends), as the person who threw a grenade that killed three police officers, but the Times made clear that the real villain was Vladimir Putin. As Kramer wrote:

“The [autonomy] measure is fiercely opposed by Ukrainian nationalists and many others, who loathe any concession to Mr. Putin and see him as the driving force behind a civil war that has claimed more than 6,500 lives. President Petro O. Poroshenko had conceded the constitutional change, which is included in the text of the Minsk agreement, with a metaphorical gun to his head: thousands of Ukrainian soldiers surrounded by Russian-backed rebels near the Ukrainian railroad town of Debaltseve.

“Supporters of the change say granting special status to the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk would co-opt the rebels’ major selling point, blunting the drive for separatism. Yet the war has angered Ukrainians to such an extent, opinion polls show, that members of Parliament are struggling to win support from voters for any concession.”

While the Times’ narrative paints Putin as the instigator of all the trouble in Ukraine, it also portrays him as a villain who is on the run because his “aggression” led to Western sanctions, which along with lower oil prices, are collapsing the Russian economy.

Kramer wrote:

“Hopes for a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis have been rising lately in Europe as oil prices have sunk, increasing financial pressure on Mr. Putin. With the Russian economy reeling, the thinking goes, he should be more willing to compromise on eastern Ukraine, the source of damaging Western economic sanctions. But that thinking was not shared by many in Ukraine. …

“As Parliament approved the concessions, protesters outside the building scuffled with police, and shouted, ‘Shame! Shame!’ The demonstrators grew more agitated. Some tore helmets from the riot police and threw them on the paving stones. ‘They are trading in our blood and our corpses,’ said a veteran of the war in the east, Volodymyr Natuta, referring to members of Parliament who supported the measure. ‘They sold out Ukraine.’…

“It [the right-wing killing of the first police officer on Monday] was the first death in politicized street violence in the capital since the 2014 revolution … Officially, the Russian government denies having any hand in propping up the two enclaves in eastern Ukraine. But Ukrainians — not to speak of virtually every Western government and NATO — universally reject that, holding Moscow responsible for all the carnage in the east.”

So, having brushed aside the evidence of a U.S.-backed coup and ignoring the role of right-wing Ukrainian nationalists in both overthrowing an elected leader and launching attacks against ethnic Russians, the New York Times has settled on the only permissible view of the crisis: that it is all Vladimir Putin’s fault. Perhaps history will know better.

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

It is, we are told, an age of bitter austerity, where belts are being tightened with dedication, and services cut with thrifty diligence. There are, however, always exceptions to the rule. The surveillance state needs succour; the intelligence services need their daily bread from the bakers in Downing Street.  The dogs of war similarly need to be fed.  And then, there is Julian Assange.

Assange would be pleased to know that he is an exception to the rules of austerity. He figures in a singular category in the book keeping of Her Majesty’s Government. The British security establishment continue monitoring him with eagle-eyes. There are three Scotland Yard officers on the task at any one time.  One is stationed at the steps to the Ecuadorean embassy, just to make sure no daredevilry is entertained.  As they do so, the bill mounts.

The site govwaste.co.uk lists the costs in live time – as at this writing, the amount is 12,173,575 million pounds.[1]  Those costs, following accounts from the Metropolitan Police, can be broken down into direct costs – those incurred in the course of normal duties; and opportunity costs, a smaller portion resulting from overtime for being stationed at the Ecuadorean embassy.

The site also lists what the equivalent amount might have funded: 60,868 vaccinations for children; 47,740 hospital beds for one night; the salaries for 558 teachers for a full year.  As for food, the figure comes to over 10 million meals for the needy.  If one is to lose a sense of priorities, join government.

This state of affairs invariably finds its way into occasional public comment. It doesn’t happen as much as it should, but it does. In July 2013 before the Home Affairs Committee, Mayor Boris Johnson blew his top off at the bill for the Metropolitan police as it then stood: 4m pounds.  “It’s absolutely ridiculous, that money should be spent on frontline policing.  It’s completely wasted.”[2]

Calls have been made to withdraw the officers.  In the first month of this year, The Daily Mail got onto the job covering the cost of the bill mounting at Knightsbridge.  Standing then at 9m pounds, the paper stated that it was “a vigil costing 11,000 pounds a day.”[3]  (That daily amount seems to fluctuate, depending on what source one consults.)

Baroness Jenny Jones, deputy chair of the Police and Crime Committee at the London Assembly, told the paper that, “The policing bill for keeping one man holed up in an embassy has reached yet more ridiculous proportions.  The Government has yet to explain why taxpayers have to pay this.  It’s time to end the stalemate and stand down the officers.”

Those who question the siege bill also do so from another perspective: Assange is being lionised as a cyber criminal par excellence, being unduly privileged by his celebrity status.  Andy Silvester of the Tax Payers Alliance, having little time for legal niceties, suggests that, despite Assange’s “legion of celebrity fans [he] should be treated like any other accused criminal… The police have better things to do than a Knightsbridge vigil.”

Former Scotland Yard royalty protection chief Dai Davies never had much time for the rising account associated with the Assange case.  Having visions of Assange on the run, his statement made in February 2013 went to lifting the police cordon, and shining the green light of temptation. “The time has come for the Met to review its strategy on Assange, and withdraw the officers currently guarding the Ecuadorean embassy.  If he went on the run, he could be hunted down like any common fugitive.”[4]

The perversions of bureaucracy, dedicated to the protection of the state, allows for some latitude in lunacy.  Everything should point to a normalisation of the abnormal circumstances – questioning of Assange by Swedish officials in the embassy itself on unplaced sexual charges, a carrot dangled then withdrawn at the last moment; the application of current laws that acknowledge the invidious nature of the European Arrest Warrant, yet are deemed inapplicable for not being retrospective.  Then there is the Australian consulate, like many a satrap, a permanent, even redundant absentee.

In reflecting on the cost of the detention, Assange does keep company, in being confined to not so luxurious surroundings, with a still new breed of cyber-publishing activist.  There are the exiles, there are the whistleblowers.  There are those exposing the Stratfor military complex and the privatised security state.  Chelsea Manning remains the most fundamental sufferer here.  The issue, as ever, remains the role of information, and where that fits into broader issues of state accountability and transparency.

There a strange irony at work here as well.  The London Met have formed what effectively amounts to a ring, not so much of steel, as bizarre protection.  But what on earth is it against?  It is true that Assange, should he step out, will be nabbed – that’s one voice of the law speaking. It is equally true that others can’t get in, be there, friend or foe, to bag and nab. No funny business allowed, thank you.

The strange business of walls, with their double meaning – whether they keep people in, or make sure people stay out – is at play.  History tends to be, not merely a register of folly and blood, but a register of inane projects.  Assange, despite his health, has little desire to leave. Ecuador, in turn, has given him indefinite residency at the embassy.  And the age of austerity continues with its exceptions.

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

Notes

Former CIA boss and 4-star general David Petraeus – who still (believe it or not) holds a lot of sway in Washington – suggests we should arm Al Qaeda to fight ISIS.

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.

He’s not alone …

As we’ve previously shown, other mainstream American figures support arming Al Qaeda … and ISIS.

Initially, Barak Mendelsohn – an Associate Professor of Political Science at Haverford College, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and a five year veteran of the Israeli army – argues in the Council on Foreign Relations’ publication Foreign Affairs  that the U.S. should support Al Qaeda … as a way to counter ISIS:

The instability in the Middle East following the Arab revolutions and the meteoric rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) require that Washington rethink its policy toward al Qaeda, particularly its targeting of Zawahiri.

***

Destabilizing al Qaeda at this time may in fact work against U.S. efforts to defeat ISIS.

Many mainstream players are suggesting that Al Nusra – the main Al Qaeda group in Syria – “re-brand”, so that it can pretend it is moderate … and so receive direct U.S. backing. See this, this, this, this, thisand this.

Not to be outdone, influential New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman asks if we should arm ISIS to counter Iranian influence.

And we actually ARE supporting ISIS to some extent:

NATO member Turkey was busted buying huge quantities of oil from ISIS (its main source of funding), and bombing ISIS’ main on-the-ground enemy – Kurdish soldiers – using its air force. Many also say that Turkey has long been directly supporting ISIS.

The Israeli air force has bombed near the Syrian capital of Damascus, and attacked agricultural facilities and warehouses (the Syrian government is the other main opponent of ISIS in Syria besides the Kurds). The Israeli military recently admitted supporting Syrian jihadis. And see this.

Mainstream U.S. writers such as Thomas Friedman have called for America to support ISIS.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz opposed U.S. military intervention in Syria, saying the U.S. military shouldn’t be “Al Qaeda’s air force.”  Similarly, former Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich  said that striking Syria would turn the United States military into “al-Qaeda’s air force.” (ISIS is just a re-branded name for Al Qaeda).

Indeed, NBC News, the Wall Street Journal, CNN and others report that the U.S. has already committed to provide air power to support Muslim jihadis in Syria.

So Turkey, Israel and the U.S. are all now acting as ISIS’ air force in order to oust the Syrian government … again. (Washington Blog, August 3, 2015)

Truly, America’s foreign policy is insane.

Noam Chomsky and other serious critics on the left often have to contend with dismissals from opponents (including most in our political and media elites) that they are conspiracy theorists, or “anti-American” and “anti-West”.

For those who have not taken the time to read Chomsky, such arguments can sound superficially plausible. Doesn’t Chomsky’s criticisms of the US and the West not rest on the assumption that their leaders act together, conspiratorially, in bad and exploitative ways against weaker nations? Can all of our leaders really be so rotten? Isn’t it more cock-up than conspiracy?

Chomsky is actually talking about structural conditions in our societies that maintain elites in power and allow them to look out for their own interests largely unchallenged.

Here Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who has been in the diplomatic wilderness since he turned whistle-blower on British collusion with torture more than a decade ago, makes a very simple observation that can help us understand what Chomsky is talking about.

Murray notes that among today’s crop of senior politicians, media editors, top diplomats and university vice-chancellors, almost all supported the Iraq war in 2003. Not only did such support not harm these individuals’ careers but it appears to have propelled them to even greater things.

The careers of prominent critics of the war, conversely, have tended to suffer. And all this despite the fact that there was huge popular opposition to the war at the time. The folly of the war was obvious to ordinary people but not, it seems, to our brightest and best.

The success of the war crowd can be explained without resorting to conspiracy theories. Chomsky’s structural critique is expressed well below by Murray:

It is that Iraq is the touchstone for adherence to the neo-liberal consensus. All these professionally successful people share a number of attitudes, of which support for the Iraq War is a good indicator. There is a very strong correlation between support for the Iraq War and fierce Zionism. But there is also a strong correlation between support for the Iraq War and support for austerity economics. The strongest correlation of all lies in support for the Iraq War and for “business-friendly” tolerance of corporatism, TTIP, multinational tax avoidance, low taxation and marketization of public services including in education and health.

In short, our key institutions are in the grasp of a set of ideological assumptions (very strange ones) popularly described as neo-liberalism. This neoliberal elite becomes self-selecting, replicating itself through the selection processes imposed by private schools, elite universities, the diplomatic service, the finance system, top legal firms, and the media. If one makes one’s way through this obstacle course, then the door may open to a political career.

By the time politicians reach Westminster, they do not need to be recruited to a cabal. They have simply proven over a long period that they have a strong ideological fit with the institutions that govern us. If not, their careers would have stalled much earlier, in the lower rungs of these institutions, or they would have “dropped out”. The same processes select those who fill top posts in the media and other influential “professions”.

This isn’t true just in Britain, of course. One can see similar processes of filtering and selection in the US and other western societies. That is why trying to tinker with the system invariably fails to bring about real change. These structures have to be overhauled.

That has happened – partially at least – in the past, following major social and economic upheavals like the Second World War. Our elites had to respond to the greater sense of entitlement and empowerment of the working classes, both the men who had been recently demobbed and the women who had gone out to work for the first time in factories to help the war effort.

That was why a Labour government was elected, in spite of the heroic standing of Winston Churchill, the Conservatives’ leader, during the war. A key victory was the establishment of free health care for everyone, in the form of the National Health Service. Hard as it is to recall today, the NHS was long presented as a radical, dangerous idea – reminding us how crazy ideological assumptions can comfortably dominate even democratic systems. The NHS’ popularity has made it difficult politically to reverse that success, but politicians of the right and left have been slowly eroding the principle of free health care for at least the past two decades.

Now the British elites are being challenged again, this time by a potential mass movement led by Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn is the last gasp of that post-war era of Labour politics, when a class divide was acknowledged and some politicians were elected precisely because they represented the working poor’s interests, often via trade unions.

It is a sign of quite how much the traditional elites have reasserted their power that Corbyn seems an isolated relic from that previous era. It is also a sign of how effectively the system locks the doors to outsiders that the young people who are so fed up with neoliberalism and our political elite have been unable to inject new blood into the system, and must rely on Corbyn instead to represent them. Expect an extremely rocky ride ahead.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/09/breaking-the-depleted-uranium-ceiling/

The US global military agenda pertains to the gas and oil rich Arctic region, says Michel Chossudovsky, from the Centre for Research on Globalization. Unlike other states with claims to the region, it doesn’t have territory extending into the Arctic Ocean, he adds.

RT: President Barack Obama attended Monday a US-led international conference on the Arctic, held in Anchorage, Alaska. The White House was promoting the trip as part of Obama’s push for climate change action. How important is the Arctic region and this meeting in particular for the US?

Michel Chossudovsky: First we have to understand that this [conference] is a US initiative which emanates from the US State Department. The organizational structure is the State Department which is not an entity concerned with environmental issues – it’s concerned with geopolitics.

The agenda has been announced as focusing on climate change and the environment. But I would suspect that the hidden agenda behind this conference is ultimately to develop the Arctic on behalf of the Anglo-American oil giants. There are extensive Arctic oil and gas reserves.  This is not the official agenda, but ultimately that is the end game and the fact that it is under auspices of the State Department, to start with, points to the nature of confrontation which may exist between the West, on the one hand, and the Russia Federation, on the other.

 

RT: How strong is the US position in the ongoing competition for the Arctic compared to the other seven members of the Arctic Council?  

MC: First of all, the US from a geographic point of view is in a difficult situation, because contrary to Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the Russian Federation – the US doesn’t have any territories extending into the Arctic Ocean. It has territories above the Arctic Circle, but the Arctic Circle is not a geographic boundary, it is a climatic boundary. And the US does not have any adjacent territories to the Arctic Ocean.

Now how does Washington proceed in that regard? Essentially it proceeds through its economic, military and strategic alliances particularly with Canada, but also with Denmark and Norway, In relation to Denmark, we are talking of course about Greenland, which extends right up to the Arctic Ocean.

And Washington already has military bases in the Northern Territories of Canada under joint command with Canada, but it also has military facilities in Greenland. I suspect that this essentially is their gateway to the Arctic.

They have another of course disadvantage – is that the US is not a member of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. And as opposed to other members – Canada or the Russian Federation- both countries have in fact made claims based on the fact that the continental shelf extends right into the Arctic Ocean. There we have a geopolitical situation. Within the Arctic region, according to the estimates something of the order of one quarter of the world’s oil and gas reserves. This is even corroborated by US sources.

And at the same time, we have environmental considerations because any kind of opening up of oil and gas exploration above or within the Arctic Ocean would have devastating environmental consequences. And we could just look at what happened in the Gulf of Mexico with the BP disaster a few years ago. This of course is contemplated, and the US has recently granted exploration rights to oil companies above the Arctic Circle in areas which are contiguous to Alaska.

RT: Arctic Council members at their recent meeting were unanimously calling on cooperation and mutual trust from all sides when it comes to the development of the region. The White House was promoting Obama’s Alaska trip and the Anchorage gathering as part of Obama’s push for climate change action. What do you make of those statements, are these real concerns?

MC: First of all, this venue is not sponsored by the Arctic Council. Although, the US this year chairs the council. This particular initiative presents the issue of climate change and environment as the central concern. At the same time there is conflict in the Arctic between the US and NATO, on the one hand, and the Russian Federation on the other. Of course this is always somewhat contradictory. At one level they are going to stress climate change, and on the other they are going to deploy military exercises in the Arctic region which in a sense is also part of the broader process of confrontation between Russia and the Western military alliance with regard to Ukraine and also in the Middle East.

In other words, the US has a global military agenda. And that global military agenda is not limited to the Middle East or Eastern Europe. It also pertains to the Arctic region. Why? Because the Arctic encompasses, according to estimates 25 per cent of the World’s oil and gas reserves. But of course for Washington to gain control over those oil and gas reserves it is threatening countries in one form or another, particularly in view of the fact that it doesn’t have any territories within, and I insist, within the region of the Arctic Ocean.

The Arctic Ocean is a geographic boundary; the Arctic Circle is in fact an irrelevant concept because it is based on climate and on sunsets, and so on. They are using the Arctic Circle as a definition when in fact we look at the map, we see that the USA (Alaska) doesn’t have any borders with the Arctic Ocean.

So there is a geopolitical play on the one hand, and then there is always global warming, climate change, which is put forth as a smoke screen.

I should mention that the environmental issues are absolutely fundamental with a view to protecting the ecology and the natural habitat of the Arctic region. That will require very strict rules on offshore drilling for gas and oil reserves and the development of other resources in that region.

 

Russian president Vladimir Putin has proposed a bill to the country’s legislature to eliminate the dollar and the euro from trade between member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

A statement from the Kremlin said that Putin submitted to the State Duma a draft federal law which seeks an integrated currency market in the CIS.

“This would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domestic currency markets,” said the statement.

 

Russian officials say they seek to drop the dollar and the euro from their exchanges with former Soviet Union countries to achieve macro-economic stability in the region. They say using Western currencies could seriously increase the risks associated with trade especially at a time when the United States and its European allies are in a political row with Moscow over the situation in Ukraine.

Russia has managed to move ahead with its plans to weaken the dollar through deals it has reached with some other countries. Members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) – including Russia, Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan – have already signed an agreement to switch to their national currencies. One such obligatory transition must take effect between 2025 and 2030.

China has also decided to use the Russian ruble in trade exchanges in its border cities.

Since the start of the Canadian election campaign a series of posts have detailed the Harper Conservatives repeated abuse of power. The Tyee published “Harper, Serial Abuser of Power”, which listed “70 Harper government assaults on democracy and the law.” But the widely disseminated list omitted what may be the Conservatives’ most flagrant – and far-reaching –lawbreaking. In 2011 Ottawa defied UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR) 1970 and 1973, which were passed amidst the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s four-decade rule in Libya.

In direct contravention of these legally binding resolutions, Canadian troops were on the ground in the North African country. On September 13, three weeks after Tripoli fell to the anti-Gaddafi National Transition Council, Canada’s state broadcaster reported: “CBC News has learned there are members of the Canadian Forces on the ground in Libya.”[i] A number of other media outlets reported that highly secretive Canadian special forces were fighting in Libya. On February 28, CTV.ca reported “that Canadian special forces are also on the ground in Libya” while Esprit du Corp editor Scott Taylor noted Canadian Special Operations Regiment’s flag colours in the Conservatives’ post-war celebration. But, any Canadian ‘boots on the ground’ in Libya violated UNSCR 1973, which explicitly excluded “a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”

 

The Conservative government also directly armed the rebels in contravention of international law. Waterloo-based Aeryon Scout Micro supplied the rebels with a three-pound, backpack-sized Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The director of field support for the company, Charles Barlow, traveled 18 hours on a rebel operated boat from Malta to the rebels training facility in Misrata. There, Barlow taught the rebels how to operate this Canadian-developed drone, which was used to gather intelligence on the front lines. In an interview after Gaddafi’s death, Barlow said: “I hope we did a little tiny part to help get rid of that man.”

According to various reports the drone was paid for out of Libyan government assets frozen in Canada.[ii] Aeryon CEO Dave Kroetsch said the company was “approached by the Canadian government.” But, in April 2011 Foreign Affairs officials advised then foreign minister Lawrence Cannon that providing military assistance to the Libyan rebels contravened UNSCR 1970. Based on documents uncovered through the Access to Information Act, Project Ploughshares reported: “A ‘Memorandum for Action’ signed by the Minister on April 11, noted that under the UN Security Council resolution that established the arms embargo against Libya, ‘Canada generally cannot permit the export of arms to Libya without the prior approval of the UN 1970 Sanctions Committee.’

The memo also stated that the arms embargo ‘encompasses any type of weapon … as well as technical assistance such as the provision of instruction, training or intelligence.’ It confirms that the UN arms embargo on Libya precluded the transfer of the Canadian surveillance drone to Libyan opposition forces. However, the memo also provided an interpretive feint for Canada by which it could allow the drone to be exported. It noted that Security Council Resolution 1973 contains language that key partners the US, the UK and France interpreted as permitting provision of arms to Libyan opposition forces as part of ‘all necessary measures … to protect civilians.’ The memo was clear that this interpretation was not shared by many other states, including NATO allies Italy and Norway.”

The government failed to inform all departments about its interpretive feint. In early 2012 a Canadian Forces website plainly stated that UNSCR 1970 “called for an international arms embargo on Libya” and “[UNSCR] 1973 of 17 March, which strengthened the arms embargo.”

Montréal-based security firm Garda World also contravened international law. Sometime in the “summer of 2011”, according to its website, Garda began operating in the country.[iii] After the National Transition Council captured Tripoli (six weeks before Muammar Gaddafi was killed in Sirte on October 20, 2011) the rebels requested Garda’s assistance in bringing their forces “besieging the pro-Qaddafi stronghold of Sirte to hospitals in Misrata”, reported Bloomberg.[iv] UNSCR 1970 specifically mandated all UN member states “to prevent the provision of armed mercenary personnel” into Libya. Resolution 1973 reinforced the arms embargo, mentioning “armed mercenary personnel” in three different contexts.

In an article titled “Mercenaries in Libya: Ramifications of the Treatment of ‘Armed Mercenary Personnel’ under the Arms Embargo for Private Military Company Contractors”, Hin-Yan Liu points out that the Security Council’s “explicit use of the broader term ‘armed mercenary personnel’ is likely to include a significant category of contractors working for Private Military Companies (PMCs).”[v]

Canadian officials probably introduced the rebels to Garda, the world’s largest privately held security firm. In fact, Ottawa may have paid Garda to help the rebels. As mentioned, the federal government used some of the $2.2 billion it froze in Libyan assets in Canada to pay Aeryon Scout to equip and train the rebels with a UAV.[vi]

After Gaddafi was killed the Conservatives spent $850,000 on a nationally televised war celebration for the troops that fought in Libya. Harper called it “a day of honour… Soldier for soldier, sailor for sailor, airman for airman, the Canadian Armed Forces are the best in the world.”

But don’t expect the Prime Minister to discuss Libya during the election. “Since Col Gaddafi’s death in Sirte in October 2011,” the BBC reported recently, “Libya has descended into chaos, with various militias fighting for power.” ISIS has taken control of parts of the country while a government in Tripoli and another in Benghazi claim national authority.

The Conservatives’ violation of international law delivered a terrible blow to Libya. If international affairs weren’t largely defined by the ‘might makes right’ principle Harper would find himself in the dock.

Yves Engler is the author of The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s foreign policy. His Canada in Africa — 300 years of Aid and Exploitation will be published in September and he will be speaking across the country in the lead up to the election. For information on speaking engagements go to Yvesengler.com

Notes

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”- Malcolm X

After four and half years of relentless propaganda being flung around western mainstream media by propagandists, NGOs and Empire serving mouthpieces, one wonders how this stream of effluent still manages to stick to the consciences of the public it serves to deceive.

Yesterday, a Facebook post caught our attention. A Palestinian person based in Gaza posted two photos of child victims in Syria. The photos were accompanied by the caption, “The massacres of Assad regime in Syria #Douma”. The subsequent barrage of comments consisting of the usual plethora of outpouring against Syrian President Bashar al Assad and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) provoked us to investigate further.

What we discovered was a highly organised, western-centric propaganda ring…

We discovered that both photos were taken by photographer Khaled Khatib, and were of “reported” Syrian Air Force ‘barrel bomb’ attacks, allegedly on unclassified areas of Aleppo. Bearing in mind, most of Khaled’s photos on Google appear to be of the immediate aftermath of such an attack, and one wonders why he does not specify the specific area and exact time, offering a verified claim of the attack being from barrel bombs, rather than the rather non committal “reported” tag.

Further investigation revealed that in reality, Khaled Khatib works for and with the ‘White Helmets’ and his photos are used extensively by the well known EU-backed and UK-based, one man propaganda band, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The SOHR is actually Mr Rami Abdul Rahman, who runs this propaganda feed from his house in Coventry, UK, and who bases the majority of his information on Skype calls to Syria.

This information, however, is unilaterally used by the Axis of Interventionism [US, Europe in particular] to justify their proxy invasion of a sovereign nation and their clumsy, murderous 4 and half year-long attempt at the “regime change” of Syria’s elected government, engendering, in the process, the widespread loss of civilian life in Syria at the hands of their proxy armies. More than any other single information source, the SOHR’s propaganda dispatches are used to justify western policy of arming and supporting the multi-headed insurgency in Syria.

Thanks Eva Bartlett for the photo below:

The White Helmets are equally suspect. This is a quote from Rick Sterling’s excellent article on the “Highly Effective Manipulators”:

“White Helmets is the newly minted name for ‘Syrian Civil Defence.’ Despite the name, Syria Civil Defence was not created by Syrians nor does it serve Syria. Rather it was created by the UK and USA in 2013. Civilians from rebel controlled territory were paid to go to Turkey to receive some training in rescue operations. The program was managed by James Le Mesurier, a former British soldier and private contractor whose company is based in Dubai.”

“The trainees are said to be ‘nonpartisan’ but only work in rebel-controlled areas of Idlib (now controlled by Nusra/Al Queda) and Aleppo. There are widely divergent claims regarding the number of people trained by the White Helmets and the number of people rescued. The numbers are probably highly exaggerated especially since rebel-controlled territories have few civilians. A doctor who recently served in a rebel-controlled area of Aleppo described it as a ghost town. The White Helmets work primarily with the rebel group Jabat al Nusra (Al Queda in Syria). Video of the recent alleged chlorine gas attacks starts with the White Helmet logo and continues with the logo of Nusra. In reality, White Helmets is a small rescue team for Nusra/Al Queda.”

“But White Helmets primary function is propaganda. White Helmets demonizes the Assad government and encourages direct foreign intervention. A White Helmet leader wrote a recentWashington Post editorial. White Helmets are also very active on social media with presence on Twitter, Facebook etc. According to their website, to contact White Helmets email The Syria Campaign which undmg
erscores the relationship.”

Now lets have a look at Mr. Khaled Khatib and his role in this propaganda chain. He appears to be exclusively embedded in Aleppo. I have been unable to locate any photos by him that are not from this region [on google search]. The majority of his photos are taken between January and June 2014. Now bearing in mind the mounting evidence of the civilian casualties and fatalities as a result of the “rebel” hell cannon, mortars, and snipers in Aleppo, it should be surprising that not one of his images records the devastation and bloodshed caused by these wildly inaccurate and lethal weapons employed by the so called opposition cells positioned all over Aleppo.

Instead every photo and every statement from this propagandist focuses only on the Syrian Government’s “reported” use of the legendary barrel bombs. “There is great danger for civiliansfrom the Syrian army, the militias who are fighting with them, and ISIS,” said Khaled Khatib, a photographer with the Aleppo branch of the Syrian Civil Defence, a volunteer rescue organization. “But the weapon that kills the most Syrians — by 90 percent — is the barrel.”

We have demonstrated that the White Helmets are an integral part of the propaganda vanguard that ensures obscurantism of fact and propagation of Human Rights fiction that elicits the well-intentioned and self righteous response from a very cleverly duped public. A priority for these NGOs is to keep pushing the ‘No Fly Zone‘ scenario which has already been seen to have disastrous implications for innocent civilians in Libya, for example.

Khaled Khatib is quoted by the Guardian as being reserved on the ‘No Fly Zone’, but vehement in calls for a radar or “early warning” system that will ensure that “civilians” can flee areas that are about to be bombed by the Syrian Government forces. Lets just examine this statement, echoed by The Syria Campaign director, James Sadri: “If we could only get warning that the planes were coming, we could warn families, tell people to run from the markets, get the children out of the schools, let the medical centers know so that they can take cover,” Khatib said. “Every airport in the world has this technology – it is common, it is civilian. Why can’t they share it with us?”

Hmmm so, this makes an assumption, regularly echoed by the HRW brigades like Annie Sparrow and Ken Roth – who have become increasingly rabid in their barrel bomb narrative, that the Syrian Government is going to deliberately target civilian areas like hospitals and schools. This seems absurd when one takes into account that most families in Syria have family members in the Syrian forces combating foreign proxy armies made up of terrorists and mercenaries. To suggest that these forces would be turned against their own families is delusional if not downright criminal and inhumane. Therefore we must assume that the Syrian forces are quite rightly targeting embedded terrorist cells, cells that are nested within civilian areas. We know that Aleppo has shrunk to one fifth of its size thanks to the infiltration of many areas by these mercenary fighters. This infiltration has driven many civilians into safe pockets within Aleppo away from terrorist strongholds. The SAA is marooned on the Acropolis Hill in the strategic centre of the Old Citadel in Aleppo and is surrounded on all sides by “rebel” encampments.

With this information in mind, we must ask the question, who would benefit most from this early warning system – the civilians or the “rebels”?

I have created a collage of the most dramatic of Khaled Khatib’s images, many of which are credited to AFP and Getty Images so we know they will be extensively used by the mainstream media to convey the “situation” in Syria. I will in no way detract from the very real suffering of the people of Syria caught up in a war not of their making and fuelled by Western arming, funding and logistic support for the “opposition” to the Government that is steadfastly resisting their interventionism.

However, I would ask anyone to view these photos with an impartial eye and to appreciate their importance as a propaganda tool. We know that Al Jazeera, for example has fabricated evidence before now and used artistic license to “create” images that pull on our heart strings. Even the BBC, the erstwhile reputed bastion of British media integrity has been caught out lying and deceiving on a terrifying scale when it comes to Syria. I leave it up to you, but here are some of Khaled’s images (graphic).

The final point that I would like to make is that during my investigation I noticed one important fact. Even when a report is written about an ISIS atrocity, we often will see Khaled Khatib’s photograph accompanying that report. I will give you an example. In March 2014, The Daily Star [Lebanon] reported on horrific mass executions carried out by ISIS throughout Syria, including Aleppo. ISIL jihadists conduct ‘mass executions’ in Syria: UN probe. Despite this article describing the hideous killings and torture of civilians by ISIS, the caption on the accompanying photo by KK reads ” The bodies of two children lie in the rubble of a residential building targeted by [yes you guessed it] barrel bombs launched by “regime” forces.

My marketing background alerts me to this insidious form of subliminal “advertising” that will ensure that the public psyche absorbs the message of “regime” atrocities in preference to the information regarding ISIS depravity. A brief check on other mainstream media reports demonstrates that this is not an isolated case. Some may argue that the media outlets have simply made a “mistake,” I would refute that argument..once maybe, ten times, twenty times is no coincidence.

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a photographer, writer, and peace activist,and a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog Will The Fall.

What has been reported on since 2007 is now confirmed by senior US military leadership. The US created and now plans to openly use Al Qaeda to overthrow the nation of Syria. 

The Daily Beast’s article, “Petraeus: Use Al Qaeda Fighters to Beat ISIS,” reveals the final piece to the “safe haven” or “buffer zone” puzzle, providing the world a complete picture of how the United States and its regional allies, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and others, plan to finally overthrow the government in Damascus, and eliminate Syria as a functioning nation state through the use of listed terrorist organizations responsible for over a decade of devastating global war.

Image: September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people would die in attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and  a downed plane over Pennsylvania. The attack was attributed to Al Qaeda by the United States government tipping off over a decade of global war against “terrorism” that would leave entire nations destroyed and millions of lives ruined.

The Daily Beast reports:

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. 

In addition to Petraeus’ alleged plans, the Daily Beast reports former US Ambassador to Syria  Robert Ford also advocated supporting terrorists linked directly to Al Qaeda, including the Ahrar al Sham faction. However this “proposed” advocacy is an afterthought – a matter of public perception management – as terrorist organizations like Ahrar al Sham and the Al Nusra Front already are receiving significant US backing either directly or laundered through one of America’s many regional collaborators. Ahrar al Sham’s extensive video documentation online shows the group even employing US anti-tank TOW missiles.

Furthermore, US corporate-financier funded policy think tanks like the Brookings Institution have already enumerated precisely this plan. In a recent publication on Brookings’ “Order From Chaos” blog titled, “Should the United States negotiate with terrorists?,” it is stated:

Ultimately, negotiation and amnesty programs with extremist groups must enter the U.S. counterterrorism repertoire if reluctance to military deployment continues.

Brookings describes almost verbatim the proposal put forth by Petraeus and Ford, indicating this plan is more deeply rooted as a matter of policy than indicated by the Daily Beast.

This Was the Plan All Along 

Indeed, the Daily Beast’s shocking admission is not the entire truth. In reality, the United States had already conspired since as early as 2007 to use the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and other hard-line sectarian militant groups to violently overthrow Syria in a bid to wage proxy, then eventually, direct war on Iran.

Image: Terrorists fighting under the banners of Al Qaeda and Ahrar al Sham whom former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford seeks to arm and back in America’s bid to overthrow the sovereign government of Syria. .

Global stock markets staged yet another selloff Tuesday following the release of negative economic data in the US and China and downbeat assessments of the global economy from officials at the Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund.

At the time of this writing, Asian markets continued to fall Wednesday morning, with China’s Shanghai Composite Index down by 3.66 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 469 points, or 2.8 percent, on Tuesday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 3 percent and the Nasdaq fell 2.9 percent. All three indexes are now down by more than 10 percent from their recent highs, placing them in correction territory.

The selloff in the US followed a 3.8 percent drop on the Japanese Nikkei and a 3 percent fall on Britain’s FTSE 100, with almost every major global stock index closing down for the day. The Shanghai index fell by over 5 percent before closing with a loss of 1.3 percent.

The renewed turbulence on financial markets follows last week’s dramatic global selloff, in which the Dow opened August 24 with a loss of nearly 1,100 points, its largest intraday fall in history, and closed down by 588 points.

Tuesday’s selloff was initially triggered by weak data from China, showing the country’s manufacturing activity hitting its lowest level since August 2012. China’s official Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 49.7 last month, indicating the first contraction in manufacturing since February.

As one trader quoted by the Financial Times put it, “People are losing confidence, with the whole situation [in China] breaking down, not just in the stock market but in [real economic] data as well.”

The same day, an index of factory activity in the US for August fell to a two-year low of 51.1, down from 52.7 in July, a decline that analysts attributed to the slump in global demand and the appreciation of the dollar.

The negative data corresponded with a downbeat assessment of the global economy by the International Monetary Fund and Federal Reserve. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said Tuesday that global growth is expected to be weaker than the IMF had predicted, reflecting “a weaker-than-expected recovery in advanced economies and a further slowdown in emerging economies, especially Latin America.”

Eric Rosengren, president of the Boston Federal Reserve, said in a speech in New York later in the day that the collapse in commodity prices and the slowdown in the global economy “might suggest a downward revision in the forecast” for economic growth in the United States.

Also Tuesday, the South Korean trade ministry said the country’s exports fell by 14.7 percent compared with a year ago, the eighth consecutive monthly decline. The figure showed the worst annual fall in exports for South Korea, the biggest exporter to China, since 2009.

This report added weight to the observation by the Financial Times over the weekend that recent data showed “world goods trade contracting at its fastest rate since the global financial crisis.”

Over the weekend the newspaper concluded, based on its own research, that “weakness in emerging market currencies is hurting global trade by reducing imports without any benefit to export volumes.” It quoted former Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian as declaring, “We risk slipping into a beggar thy neighbour, competitive spiral of currency devaluations.”

The article noted,

“Since June 2014, the currencies of Russia, Colombia, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico and Chile have fallen by between 20 per cent and 50 per cent against the dollar, while the Malaysian ringgit and Indonesian rupiah are at their weakest since the Asian financial crisis of 1998.”

The global turbulence is leading to a substantial selloff of assets by mutual funds, particularly those with exposure to emerging markets. CNBC noted that “if current trends hold, July and August will mark the first consecutive monthly net outflow from both bond and equity funds since late 2008.”

A major factor in the financial turbulence is the dramatic economic reversal in emerging market economies, whose export-led booms are collapsing amid slowing global demand, the slump in commoditiy prices and a reversal of massive capital inflows that predominated in previous years. As a result, the prices of both sovereign and corporate bonds are falling, threatening the solvency of financial institutions that speculated in these assets.

Commodity prices also slumped dramatically, with oil prices dropping by 7 percent following a three-day rally. The Financial Times cited hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand as declaring that oil prices were likely to continue falling, possibly sinking as low as $30 per barrel.

The rout on global markets took place despite renewed indications from central banks that they would respond to the weakening economic situation with a further easing of monetary policy. Boston Fed President Rosengren, in the speech noted above, suggested that the weakening of economic data “is large enough to raise concerns about whether further tightening of labour markets is likely.”

This points to the fact that the continuing flood of money from the Fed, European Central Bank, Bank of England and Bank of Japan into the financial markets does little to halt or reverse the stagnation in the real economy. While propping up the asset values of the financial elite, this policy has only exacerbated the financial parasitism that underlies the slump dominating the world economy.

The world’s governments and central banks responded to the 2008 financial crisis by blowing a massive financial bubble and transferring trillions of dollars in social wealth from the working class to the financial aristocracy. Seven years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the global capitalist crisis is once again erupting with full force.

The Arctic has in recent weeks become a focal point of geopolitical tensions between Russia and the United States. Given the present rate of global warming, scientists anticipate that the region will be ice-free by the summer of 2030. It is believed to contain a large portion of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves. It is also an important maritime route, one that is increasingly accessible due to the thawing of its ice cover.

The Arctic is one of the most resource-rich regions of the world. According to a study commissioned by the US government, some 30 percent of unexplored natural gas reserves and 13 percent of undiscovered oil and gas condensate are located there. Only Russia has a greater supply of raw materials.

The Northeast Passage, which extends beyond the Arctic, is regarded as an alternate sea route from Europe to Asia to the southern route, which runs via the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and on to India. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, traffic using the Northeast Passage collapsed, but in recent years it has significantly increased again with the progressive melting of the region’s ice.

What is a disaster from an environmental standpoint could allow for the exploitation of raw material reserves and the region’s increased use as a maritime route. Conditions for the extraction of raw materials, however, will be extremely difficult.

According to one estimate, the cost of oil production in the part of the Arctic apportioned to Alaska would be between 50 and 100 percent higher than in Texas.

Environmentalists and scientists criticize attempts to extract Arctic oil and gas. In January, in a letter to the scientific journal Nature, Christophe McGlade and Paul Ekins warned that the extraction of oil and gas in the Arctic was “incompatible” with attempts to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

Nevertheless, the bordering states––Russia, Norway, Canada, the US and Denmark (which owns Greenland)––are aggressively penetrating the Arctic and establishing military presences there.

The US, in particular, is increasingly vehement in its efforts to secure its claims in the region. Earlier this week, Barack Obama became the first sitting American president to make an official visit to the Arctic. After a long debate, the Obama administration this year issued permits for the energy group Royal Dutch Shell to undertake oil production in parts of the Arctic apportioned to the United States.

In the course of his visit, Obama announced the deployment of more icebreakers and marine vessels to the region, ostensibly to ensure “safety at sea” and to document the effects of climate change.

For weeks, the US military, assorted think tanks and numerous media outlets have been agitating for the US to act more aggressively in the Arctic.

In mid-August, the Harvard International Review called the “opening of a new sea route in the Arctic” the most significant change on the planet “since the last Ice Age.” The publication urged the US government to raise territorial claims in the Arctic and increase its military presence. It argued that energy extraction in the region was worthwhile financially because the global demand for energy resources would rise and the existing supply decline. It also noted that production sites in the Arctic would be closer to Asian markets than the gas and oil extracted in the Gulf region.

The front page lead item in Sunday’s New York Times was a long article lamenting the lack of US involvement in the Arctic and warning that Russia and China might benefit as a result of American inaction. Both China and Singapore have in recent years invested heavily in energy projects in the region. The Times spoke of a renewed Cold War with Russia in connection with a “new race to the Arctic.”

It cited a certain Admiral Zukunft, who said at a conference in Washington this year: “The United States is actually not even in this game there … When Russia sent the Sputnik into space, we sat there with our hands in our pockets, marveled, and said, ‘Good for Mother Russia.’”

In May-June, NATO held one of its largest military exercises of the year in the Arctic. It lasted for 14 days and was clearly directed against Russia. (See:NATO begins anti-Russian air drill in Arctic). More than 4,000 soldiers and over 100 planes participated in the “Arctic Challenge” exercise. In response, the Kremlin mobilized its forces in the region for unannounced military exercises.

In July, Moscow published a revised military doctrine for the navy. The most important change was a higher weighting of the Arctic in Russia’s naval strategy.

In August, Russia held military exercises on the Arctic’s Taimyr Peninsula, in the far north of Siberia. More than 1,000 soldiers and 50 special vehicles participated in the manoeuvres. A representative of the navy insisted that the exercises had a purely defensive character.

In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, the Russian military expert Viktor Litovkin explained Russia’s increased focus on the Arctic as follows:

“The shortest route for ICBMs is via the North Pole. Russia is concentrating its naval forces here in order to take out American sea-based anti-missile systems in case of conflict. Also to protect natural resources on its northern coast, and the sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, which is opened up by the warming of the seas.”

In early August, the Russian government submitted a petition to the United Nations that Russia be granted sovereign rights over an area of 1.2 million square kilometres around the North Pole. A similar petition had already been rejected by a UN commission in 2002. In February or March 2016, the UN will begin the examination of the current application.

Russia hopes to gain control over the energy resources of the region. The Russian economy has been highly dependent on income from the sale of energy on the world market since the restoration of capitalism in 1991. Nearly 50 percent of revenues in the Russian state budget are derived from energy exports. But the easily extracted oil and gas reserves in Russia are being depleted. According to the Kremlin, the parts of the Arctic to which Russia has made territorial claims would provide access to approximately 4.9 billion tons of fossil fuels.

But it is widely questioned whether Russia, whose energy businesses utilize poorly developed technology, can extract the reserves in the Arctic. The sea in the region is 500 to 2,000 metres deep. At such depths, Russian companies cannot even undertake test drilling.

In addition, US and European Union sanctions mean that Russian corporations are largely cut off from foreign companies and their technology. Recently, the American energy giant ExxonMobil had to withdraw from a joint venture with the Russian state company Rosneft to develop oil production in the Russian Arctic.

Even companies such as Shell and ENI are having technical problems with exploratory drilling in the Arctic and are not yet able to go deeper than 60 meters.

An important calculation on the part of Russia, as well as its rivals, is not only increasing its own energy holdings, but also depriving others from exploiting the Arctic’s reserves. The extraction of shale oil and natural gas in the US has already changed the structure of the world energy market to Russia’s detriment.

According to the Berliner Zeitung, the Kremlin wants to expand the Russian fleet in the Arctic. The Russian navy has been a presence in the region since Soviet times, but Moscow wants to deploy it commercially to accompany foreign freighters in the Northeast Passage.

Besides these economic and geo-strategic considerations, Russia is preparing for a possible military conflict with the US. NATO has advanced further into Eastern Europe since the Ukraine crisis and it is provoking Russia once again with its latest military exercises in the Arctic.

While the American media agitates against Russian military exercises in order to justify Washington’s own military buildup, most of the Russian Navy vessels are in a miserable condition. The Berliner Zeitung writes that most military experts believe a large part of the Russian navy operating on the oceans of the world, is “ripe for the scrap heap.” Taken together, the rival countries bordering the Arctic, all of which belong to NATO, possess a much more powerful and technically superior military presence in the region.

Had the economy been fundamentally sound in 1929 the effect of the great stock market crash might have been small…. But business in 1929 was not sound; on the contrary it was exceedingly fragile. It was vulnerable to the kind of blow it received from Wall Street.  Those who have emphasized this vulnerability are obviously on strong ground. Yet when a greenhouse succumbs to a hailstorm something more than a purely passive role is normally attributed to the storm. One must accord similar significance to the typhoon which blew out of lower Manhattan in October 1929. Extracts from The Great Crash: 1929, John Kenneth Galbraith, First Published 1955, Chapter 10: “Cause and Consequence”, Page 204.

The virus that spread to stock markets around the world and nearly destroyed the global financial system in 2008 has reemerged with a vengeance sending global equities deep into the red and wiping out more than $5 trillion in market capitalization in less than two weeks. On Tuesday, before the opening bell, major market index futures in the US plunged more than 400 points signaling another violent day of selling ahead.   Worries that a slowdown in China will impact global growth pushed Asian and European markets deep into negative territory while US futures indicate that the Dow Jones is headed for its ninth triple-digit day in ten sessions. The deluge of bad news has battered confidence in the Fed and “sent global equities to their worst monthly slump in more than three years”.  Millions of Mom and Pop investors have sold out already and are headed for the exits. Here’s a recap from Bloomberg:

Mom and pop are running for the hills. Since July, American households — which account for almost all mutual fund investors — have pulled money both from mutual funds that invest in stocks and those that invest in bonds. It’s the first time since 2008 that both asset classes have recorded back-to-back monthly withdrawals, according to a report by Credit Suisse.

Credit Suisse estimates $6.5 billion left equity funds in July as $8.4 billion was pulled from bond funds, citing weekly data from the Investment Company Institute as of Aug. 19. Those outflows were followed up in the first three weeks of August, when investors withdrew $1.6 billion from stocks and $8.1 billion from bonds, said economist Dana Saporta.

Anytime you see something that hasn’t happened since the last quarter of 2008, it’s worth noting,” Saporta said in a phone interview. ….Withdrawals from equity funds are usually accompanied by an influx of money to bonds, and an exit from both at the same time suggests investors aren’t willing to take on risk in any form.  (“Fed Up Investors Yank Cash From Almost Everything Just Like 2008“, Bloomberg)

While the slowdown in China may be the spark for recent volatility, it certainly isn’t the cause.  There’s a growing consensus that the real problem originated in 2008 when the Fed refused to write-down the debts from the insolvent banking system thus creating the conditions for another calamitous financial crisis sometime in the future. And while the Fed’s zero rates and titanic doses of liquidity might have helped to ease the symptoms by flooding the system with cash, the underlying issues remain the same. Thus, as the medication has worn off, the virus has reappeared stronger than ever revealing the ineffectiveness of the Fed’s remedies and the urgent need for alternate therapies.

Stocks are massively overpriced due to the setting of interest rates below the rate of inflation which creates a subsidy for speculators. The policy has had the precise effect that the Fed intended, it has generated a humongous asset bubble in stocks and bonds transferring trillions of dollars to Wall Street banks and financial institutions. According to Yale economist Robert Shiller, the only time stocks have been this “high or higher were in 1929, 2000, and 2007—all moments before market crashes.”

Robert Shiller: “…Bonds, and increasingly real estate also look overvalued. This is different from other over-valuation periods such as 1929, when the stock market was very overvalued, but the bond and housing markets for the most part, weren’t. It’s an interesting phenomenon.”

At the same time bankers and hedge fund managers have been raking in record profits on financially-engineered products that neither add to overall productivity or improve the broader economy, ordinary working people have seen their wages stagnate, incomes plunge and their prospects for a comfortable retirement vanish along with their ever-dwindling 401-K. According to investment guru John Hussman:

U.S. wages and salaries have plunged to the lowest share of GDP in history, while the civilian labor force participation rate has dropped to levels not seen since the 1970s. Yet consumption as a share of GDP is near a record high.

The problem is that the Fed must prevent the real economy from growing, otherwise, workers wages will improve, prices will rebound, inflation will rise, and the Fed will be forced to raise rates. And, of course, higher rates are what Wall Street fears most, in fact, the six year bull market was built entirely on cheap, plentiful liquidity that has inflated historic bubbles in financial assets across-the-board.  Even the slightest uptick in rates will bring the whole fake edifice crashing to earth, which is why any talk of “normalization” sends stocks into a nosedive.

This is why policymakers will continue to slash budget deficits and implement other austerity measures to cut off the vital flow of fiscal support to the real economy. A thriving economy with low unemployment, rising incomes and wages, and positive inflation is the death knell for zero rate shenanigans, like stock buybacks, where a company repurchases its own shares to push prices higher to boost executive compensation and reward shareholders. Buybacks are type of stock manipulation that used to be banned but are presently, all the rage. Interestingly, Barron’s attributes the recent turnaround in the market to a surge in buybacks that staunched the bloodletting on Wall Street. Take a look:

Like the Wizard of Oz, who was revealed as nothing more than a man behind a curtain working some cool special effects, stock buybacks might not be the great and powerful market force they were thought to be.

What do I mean? Two weeks ago, the Standard & Poor’s 500 began to sell off as concerns about China, commodities, and emerging markets made headlines. But just as the popular benchmark looked like it was entering free fall, it suddenly reversed. Who was the mysterious savior rescuing the markets? Articles published soon after the remarkable rebound were quick to point out that trading desks at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had seen the most corporate buying on record, suggesting it was share buybacks that kept the market afloat. (“Pushback on Buybacks,” Barron’s)

So, a surge in buybacks actually turned the markets around and stopped a selloff?

Indeed. This is how buybacks distort pricing, by countering normal supply-demand dynamics with infusions of capital that would normally be directed towards improving productivity. Weak regulations and cheap cash have changed the incentives structure so that easiest way to enrich stakeholders is by piling on more debt, raking off hefty profits, and leaving the wreckage for someone else to clean up. This is nihilistic rationale that drives buybacks. Keep in mind, the Fed’s low rates were sold to the public as a way to stimulate investment in the real economy. As it happens, hiring for full-time jobs is still at depression era levels while business investment (Capex) has collapsed. The bulk of earnings are being devoted almost-exclusively to goosing stock prices to reward insatiable CEOs and their do-nothing shareholders. Check it out:

The allocation of corporate profits to stock buybacks deserves much of the blame. Consider the 449 companies in the S&P 500 index that were publicly listed from 2003 through 2012. During that period those companies used 54% of their earnings—a total of $2.4 trillion—to buy back their own stock, almost all through purchases on the open market. Dividends absorbed an additional 37% of their earnings. That left very little for investments in productive capabilities or higher incomes for employees…

Why are such massive resources being devoted to stock repurchases? Corporate executives give several reasons, which I will discuss later. But none of them has close to the explanatory power of this simple truth: Stock-based instruments make up the majority of their pay, and in the short term buybacks drive up stock prices. In 2012 the 500 highest-paid executives named in proxy statements of U.S. public companies received, on average, $30.3 million each; 42% of their compensation came from stock options and 41% from stock awards. By increasing the demand for a company’s shares, open-market buybacks automatically lift its stock price, even if only temporarily, and can enable the company to hit quarterly earnings per share (EPS) targets…

If the U.S. is to achieve growth that distributes income equitably and provides stable employment, government and business leaders must take steps to bring both stock buybacks and executive pay under control. The nation’s economic health depends on it….” (“Profits without Prosperity“, William Lazonick, Harvard Business Review)

There’s no chance the Fed will raise rates in the current environment. Corporate earnings and revenues have been shrinking since the forth quarter of 2014 which will make it harder for CEOs to justify adding to their debtload to repurchase more shares. As the appetite for buybacks wanes, stocks are bound to dip even lower putting more pressure on bank balance sheets and forcing corporations to divert more cash to debt servicing. The Fed’s threat to raise rates is merely a bluff to attract foreign capital to US markets and to prevent the dollar from falling off a cliff.

While it’s always possible that the markets could stabilize or stocks could rebound sharply, it’s more likely that we have reached a tipping point where the excesses are about to be wrung from the system through an excruciating downturn followed by an inevitable currency crisis. We expect the six year-long fake recovery to end much like it did in 1929, where one demoralizing selloff followed the other, and where the crashing of stock prices fueled the publics distrust of the central bank, the government and all of the nations main institutions. Here’s a brief summary from Galbraith’s masterpiece:

The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to ensure that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune. The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another. In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost. The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains.  The bargains then suffered a ruiness fall. Even the man who waited out all of October and all of November, who saw the volumne of trading return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or a fourth of the purchase price in the next twenty-four months. The Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenonmemon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable.” ( Extracts from “The Great Crash: 1929″, John Kenneth Galbraith, First Published 1955, Page 130 Things Become More Serious)

As of this writing, the Dow is down 317, the S&P 500, down 37, the Nasdaq, down 71.

This Autumn may see anti-austerity coalitions gain power in Portugal, Spain and Italy, while Marine le Pen’s National Front in France presses for outright withdrawal from the eurozone. These countries face a common problem: how to resist the economic devastation that the European Central Bank (ECB), European Council and IMF “troika” has inflicted on Greece and is now intending to do the same to southern Europe.

To resist the depression and debt deflation that the troika seeks to deepen, one needs to bear in mind the dynamics that make the IMF un-reformable. Its destructive role in Greece provides an object lesson for how southern Europe must shun its horde of ideologues, as Third World countries learned to avoid it by May 2013, the year that Turkey capped the world’s extrication from IMF “advice.” Already in 2008, Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced: “We cannot darken our future by bowing to the wishes of the IMF.”[1]Greek voters have now said the same thing.

To soften resistance to the IMF’s austerity demands, a public relations drive is being mounted to rehabilitate the myth that the Fund can act as an honest broker mediating between anti-labor finance ministers and the PIIGS – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. On Friday, August 28, three Reuters reporters published a long “think piece” trying to show that the IMF is changing and that its head, Christine Lagarde, has seen the light and seeks to promote real debt relief.[2]

The timing of this report seems significant. The IMF got “back in business” in 2010 when its head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, overrode its staff and many Board members in order to join the troika and shift the country’s bad debt from French and German bankers onto the Greek people. That is the story I tell in Killing the Host, whichCounterPunch published in an e-version last week. (The hard-printand Kindle versions are now available on Amazon.)

President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner insisted that Angela Merkel and French President Sarkozy pressure the IMF to go against the opposition of its own staff and join the European Central Bank’s hardline demands that Greece impose austerity. Geithner and Obama warned that if Greek bondholders were not paid in full, some giant U.S. banks would lose heavily on the default insurance contracts and derivatives they had written, and their losses could spread “contagion” to Europe.

It was at this 2011 G8 meeting that Merkel told Greek PM George Papandreou that he had to cancel his proposed referendum on whether Greece should surrender to austerity to help foreign bondholders. As the late Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung editor Frank Schirrmacher observed at the time, this meant that “Democracy is Junk.”

Papandreou’s acquiescence led his PASOK party to be swept utterly away, having lost all credibility – the same credibility that the IMF has lost. Papandreou was replaced by a pro-bank puppet. Italy’s Prime Minister suffered the same fate later that week, in a continent-wide crisis turning the eurozone into an economic dead zone.

It took until last July, four years later, for Greek voters finally to be given their say in a referendum. And just as Merkel, Sarkozy and Obama feared, they voted by an overwhelming 61 percent (a 3:2 margin) to reject austerity.

The Reuters piece quotes the same complaints by IMF insiders that my book records – as if this is a revelation that has just came out in their “examination of previously unreported IMF board minutes.” Actually, the information has been out for a year. So the question is, why is this information being reported as if it were new?

The aim seems to be to distract attention from the political dynamics that actually were going on and the conflicts of interest that were at work – and still are. In addition to my own book published last week, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has gone public with his own sad experience with Lagarde and the European Central Bank (ECB) demanding further austerity and mass privatizations.[3] “If you were a fly on the wall watching our negotiations,” he reports, “you would see as well as I saw that Ms Lagarde, Mr Draghi, Mr Juncker, certainly Dr Schäuble, were interested in one thing: In dictating to us ‘terms of surrender’. Terms that put an end to the Athens Spring.”

By comparison, the Reuters whitewash distorts history, dumbing it down and censoring the U.S. role of Obama and Geithner, while trying to depict Christine Lagarde as urging an alleviation of Greek debt and austerity.

The world needs to know the whole story, because it will show the degree to which the IMF is under the thumb of Wall Street and European banks, and of U.S. political leaders backing hardline creditor interests. This in turn shows the impossibility of reforming the IMF (or World Bank, whose presidents traditionally are drawn from the U.S. Defense Department or its Cold War supporters).

Killing the Host discloses complaints leaked by angry IMF officials who became whistleblowers and published their complaints at Canada’s prestigious Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). These same quotes were just cited breathlessly by Reuters. What the wire service did not report was the point that the IMF’s former economists made.

Lagarde continues to insist that Greek debts can be paid by “extend and pretend,” lowering the interest rate and stretching out the maturities. This is her definition of “writing down Greek debts.” Most peoples’ definition would mean writing down the debt principal. Reading Reuters’ selective quotes, it is almost as if the seemingly detailed report was written to counter the political points Varoufakis, I and others have been making.

What Reuters excluded from its report that provides the key to unlock what is most politically embarrassing: The behavior of Obama and Geithner in protecting Wall Street’s casino bets that Greece could be arm-twisted to pay. Dominique Strauss-Kahn had two conflicts of interest: He wanted to run for the presidency of France, gaining favor by protecting French banks; and he wanted to get the IMF back into the austerity advice business, by joining the Eurozone troika. When Christine Lagarde started to repeat his refusal to back the recent IMF staff report endorsing write-down of Greek debt, the staff leaked it this spring, much to her embarrassment when the IMF signed onto a troika program with no real debt relief.[4]

The Reuters report throws up a cloud of disinformation saying that she backs debt relief, as if this means backing a writedown of unpayably high Greek debt. Quite the contrary, Lagarde has said again and again that her idea of debt relief is simply to extend and pretend – to stretch out the maturity of Greece’s debt, to lower the interest rate charged.

The real story is not simply the warnings that Reuters published so breathlessly from IMF staff members and board members that Greece could not pay its debts and that attempting to do so would bring on depression. The real story is why Strauss-Kahn overrode them in 2010. The IMF officials who resigned blamed his action on his political ambitions in French politics and his opportunism in trying to finally get the IMF “back in business” rather than being left out by the ECB for not being sufficiently pro-creditor. To override the fact that the IMF was violating its own directives, the Fund introduced a “contagion” escape clause that nullified the demand that it not endorse loans that could not be paid. (I describe the small print inKilling the Host.)

Lagarde is still adhering to the demand that Greece must repay all the debt principal, including what IMF staff members urged to be written off four years ago. Like Strauss-Kahn, she was about to override her own staff when they leaked their report on Greece’s inability to pay. An indication of her position was her statement at a May 2012 IMF meeting in Riga, where they came to celebrate Latvia’s punishing austerity model that could be exported to “serve as an inspiration for European leaders grappling with the economic crisis.”

The fact that the IMF’s head has to be a French pro-bank, pro-austerity ideologue, taking orders from Washington officials wield veto power on behalf of Wall Street bankers and bondholders, makes the IMF hopelessly compromised. The icing on the cake is its recent loan to Ukraine, money that Ukrainian President Poroshenko has said will be spent to wage war on Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine where most of the export industry was located.

By no stretch of the imagination can Ukraine pay this debt. It already has negotiated a 20 percent writedown of its debt to private bondholders, and both Poroshenko and “Yats” insist that they will default on their $3 billion debt to Russia’s sovereign wealth fund falling due this December. That alone will require the IMF to withdraw, because the terms of its Articles of Agreement prevent it from lending to countries that unilaterally default on debts owed to official institutions. (The original idea had in mind the United States, not Russia or China.)

Yet the IMF has not warned that Ukraine must either pay or see itself turned into a financial pariah Greek-style. The Fund has been pulled into the New Cold War in addition to the financial war against labor and against government ability to resist austerity.

Past Reuters reports (and those of the New York Times and other neoliberal press) have popularized the trivializing idea that the reason China, Russia and other BRICS countries have created their own alternative development banks and international currency institutions is merely because they don’t have a large enough vote within the IMF. (Congress has blocked new U.S. contributions to the IMF, preventing a renegotiation of quotas.)

This is not what the BRICS countries say. Their disagreement is that the development philosophy of the IMF and World Bank is to promote austerity to pay bondholders and sell off the public domain to U.S. and other foreign financial investors. No matter how large the foreign quota, the U.S. Government retains veto power to enforce these U.S.-centered rules. The BRICS want a different development philosophy, an alternative to austerity economics and IMF “stabilization plans” whose effect is to destabilize countries submitting to their austerity.

The tragic Greek experience should stand as a warning of the need to withdraw from the rules that have turned the eurozone into an economic dead zone, and the IMF and Troika into brutal debt collectors for European, U.S. and British banks and bondholders. This is not a story that the mainstream press is happy to popularize. And as for the academic economists trotted out as talking heads, they still don’t get it.

Michael Hudson’s new book, Killing the Host is published in e-format by CounterPunch Books and in print by Islet. He can be reached via his website, [email protected]

“In five months [of war], Yemen has been reduced to the state of Syria after 5 years”,Peter Maurer, the Director of the International Red Cross, on August 19th, 2015.

These difficult images, which put faces and names to the countless civilian victims, can help to give an idea of the magnitude of the unspeakable massacres perpetrated daily by the forces of the Saudi-US coalition against Yemen’s population, with a barbarity unexampled in recent history that overshadows even the Zionist crimes in Gaza, and of the incredible spirit of resistance of the Yemeni people despite being abandoned by the international community.

Terrorist UK and stateless Hollandian France are proud to actively participate, via their ethereal and pacifist weapons, in this “heroic butchery”.

News bulletins from the Yemeni channel Al-Masira, August 26th, 2015 (English subtitles).

Translated from French by Jenny Bright

Bulletin #1:

Transcription:

[Civilian]– All these houses were civilian homes, and they were destroyed on their heads! What had they done?

[Journalist] heinous crime, at the height of cruelty, is added to the previous, with Saudi-American bombings in the first light of dawn, the ruthless bombing of civilian homes in the city of ‘Amid à Sanhan, a suburb of Sanaa.

They killed the citizen Abdullah Khalifa and his daughter Du’a who was in 9thgrade and their neighbour, the infant Mawada Zahedwho was not even one year old. All were killed by the roof collapsing on the house they rented.

And after the bodies were evacuated, there was nothing left of the house, which had been razed to the ground, except for some toys of the child Shahina, and the desperation of the wife for whom the attack has destroyed her entire existence.

[Mother of the victims]– They come to kill children, demolish houses, kill women, they commit a great sin.

[Journalist]– Who was killed in your family?

– My husband and my daughter Du’a. You will remember, you met them on Saturday (22nd August).

– And today?

And today, God have mercy, they found martyrdom because of the air strikes. O my God, all my family have been taken by these strikes. And I am now alone in the world, with no one but God in heaven, no father, no mother, no husband, no children, no resources, with God alone.

[Father of the victims]– We are poor people, and we were in this house that we rent, me, my wife and my children, all four.

[Civilian]Where are the childrens rights? Where are the human rights? Where is the law, where are the benefits (that the Saoud claim to bring us? You kill even infants? What wrong has this baby committed?

[Father of victims] – (They killed) my child and my daughter of 19 (years), you know. Why the carnage? Where are the (military) targets? What is their sin?

[Journalist]The damage from the deadly bombing was not limited to the house which was completely destroyed on the heads of its inhabitants, but extended to all the surrounding houses and cars. As for the rescued families who buried their victims, they have vowed to honour and avenge the bloodshed, and that the crimes committed by theSaud and the United States will not go unpunished.

[Civilian]On this side, they razed two houses. And on the other side, all the houses were hit and severely damaged.And these criminal strikes by the Saud cowards are vile and despicable.

[Civil] – will never give in or forget and we will have our revenge].

[Civilian]– Woe to you dirty dog of Salman [ben Abdelaziz al Saud, King of Saudi Arabia]!

[Old woman]– We will never submit, never, never! All will carry weapons to face this aggression, even women and children.

[Civilian]– We will return two kilos for every kilo (of bombs and destruction inflicted), and two tons for each ton.

[Civilian]– God willing.

[Civilian]– We are a brave and powerful people.

[Civilian]– I swear by God, if you do not leave Yemen in peace, we will bury you all O Saoud! If they do not cease, the Yemenis will bury them all and Yemen will be their graveyard.

[Civilian] – will never give in or forget and we will have our revenge].

[Civilian]God is The Greatest! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to Saud!

[Journalist]Against the most courageous people on the face of earth, are being committed the most heinous crimes of our time, but they will not go unpunished: all the blood that was wrongfully spilled confirms the inevitable need to cut off the head of the serpent [the Saud dynasty] in the heart of its lair, to preserve from its poison the Yemenis, and all peoples of the world. Near the destroyed house in the city of ‘Amidà Sanhan to the outskirts of Sana’a, Munataf al-Mawjani for Al-Maseera TV channel.

Bulletin #2:

Transcription:

[Journalist]They were sleeping peacefully in their homes, feeling safe. They were inhabitants of theBerkal region in the prefectorat of Razih, border to the Sa’ada governorate, and they were targeted by the Saudi-US aggression yesterday, at night, by several air strikes that resulted in one martyr and 6 wounded including a woman and elderly persons in the three affected families in the region.

[Civilian]– There were three strikes last night on the Berkal region, three strikes perpetrated by the Saudi criminal regime, the enemy of God, the agent of the United States and Israel.

[Civilian]– The Yemeni people as a whole is targeted by the United States and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. And why? Are we not their neighbours, so having rights over them (Islamically)? We are their neighbours, their neighbours, are we not? They bomb after dinner, they bomb in the morning, they bomb at lunch, they bomb at any time! While people are in their houses, in their homes, safe. We can only rely on God.

[Journalist]Every day, the Saudi-US aggression perpetrates further crimes against civilians, such as strikes against the Bani Sayyah region located between the regions of Bani Alqam and Al Nadhir, up to the Berkal region, all these crimes have been committed during the last three days.

[Civilian]They are bombing the houses, destroying mosques, driving people from their houses and their homes. These are the acts ofSalman[the Saudi King] (defiling the Quran). Yesterday they targeted the mosque, and today they demolish the houses on their inhabitants, and they create victims and homeless refugees. These are the actions of the US and Israel that terrorize the population and ordinary residents.

[Civilian]We declare to the horn of the devil [Saudi Arabia]: whatever the extent of your strikes, your destruction and your bombing, all this will not make us bend, or submit, and we will never give in or ask for mercy, and we will prostrate ourselves only before God! TheSaud will discover who the Yemeni people are, you’ve already met us, and you will get to know us better you band of cowards!

[Journalist]These criminal acts are perpetrated by the Saudi-US regime against civilians, they hope to thus achieve victory if only in the media, in order to mask the humiliating defeats inflicted upon them during the last 5 months. Yeha Chehari for Al-Maseera TV channel.

Bulletin #3, July 25th, 2015:

Transcription:

[Journalist] In the shadow of an international silence that has ignored all principles and trampled over all statistics, the forces of crime and evil perpetrated a new crime in the city of Bakha, where last night, this force destroyed a residential building on its inhabitants, at 10 o’clock precisely when the conditions of this very hot region drive people to rest indoors.

[Civilian] – They bombarded us relentlessly, (though there are) no military targets here, no army, no nothing, not even the shadow of a weapon. How can I say… It is impossible to understand such barbarity. I swear by God, it is impossible. Right there, there are more than 20 victims, I had to collect the bodies myself in the rubble, with my own hands. I found more than 20 bodies in the rubble, with my own hands. What was their sin? While there is no military base nearby, no weapons, no soldiers. What can I say? They are (worse than) the Jews of Bani Nadhir (Medina tribe who conspired against the Prophet).

[Civilian] – Around 10 am, I went out and I heard the sound of a shot, [unclear remarks]. I went back to cover, and I witnessed 3 or 4 strikes.

[Journalist] – Successive (strikes)

[Civil] – Yes, successive, spaced by 5 or 10 minutes.

[Journalist] – What kind of strikes?

[Civilian] – Gunfire missiles, airstrikes.

[Journalist] Bodies reduced to a pulp and shredded members, some being charred so that it is impossible to identify them, while no trace of others can be found. The case of this child who has lost both his eyes as he pressed close to his mother reveals the tragic nature of the situation, which twists the heart and brings tears to the eyes of anyone witnessing these scenes.

[Civilian] – Hundreds of civilians. Look, nothing but civilians. Look at what (these criminals) are doing! They kill women, children, the elderly, youths… What crime had they committed? (They are all) innocents. There are no Houthis, no military bases, no weapons. God damn Salman [the Saudi King] and all the Saud dynasty.

[Journalist] The power plant which supplied the residential area was hit and reduced to pieces, and all which remains are traces of the crime that demonstrates the ruthlessness of the attack, indiscriminate and unjustifiable in its targeting of civilians. This has caused the deaths of entire families.

[Civilian] – A family of refugees from Taiz lived here, and they and the host family were all killed.

[Journalist] More than 55 martyrs and dozens of wounded: the result of the Saudi-US attacks against the residential town of Bakha, and the number of victims continues to rise due to the critical situation of the seriously injured, not to mention those still buried under the rubble whose fate we still do not know. The families of the victims are entrusted to the care of benevolent people and existing authorities, responsible for a large number of dead and wounded, who also must search for all those still under the rubble.

[Civilian] – Eight missiles… See all the victims caused by this criminal State.

It is an astonishing fact that, despite near universal recognition now that the war in Iraq was a disaster, no major British social institution is headed by a single one of the majority of the population wo were opposed to the war.

Every Cabinet Minister actively supported the war. Of the fifteen Tory MPs who rebelled and voted against the war, not one is a minister. Civil servants officially have no politics but privately their opinions are known. There is not one single Permanent Under Secretary of a UK government department who was known to be against the war and most were enthusiasts. Simon Fraser, PUS at the FCO, was an active Blairite enthusiast for the war. Though no Blairite, the Head of MI6 Alex Younger was also an enthusiast.

The BBC was of course gutted following its revealing of the truth about Iraqi WMD, and the subsequent murder of David Kelly. Following the ousting of Greg Dyke, both Governors and Directors-Generals have been known supporters of the war. Of the 107 bureaucrats in the BBC who earn over 100,000 pounds pa, insiders estimate that only five were opponents of the war. Craig Oliver – who has now left the BBC for Cameron’s media operation – and James Purnell are absolutely typical of the BBC Iraqocracy.

Every current editor of a UK national newspaper supported the Iraq war. At the time of the war there was one editor opposed – Piers Morgan – who subsequently became a derided and marginalised figure. Not only are the editors firmly from the neo-con alliance, but the high profile commentators who cheered on the war – David Aaronovich, Nick Cohen, Melanie Phillips, John Rentoul, Rod Liddle etc. – have all seen their careers flourish. None has suffered from their appalling lack of judgement. There is no similar raft of commentators who were against the war who enjoy such constant media promotion and massive salaries. Many, like Peter Oborne, have suffered unexpected career glitches. There is no head of a major TV channel in the UK who was against the war in Iraq.

The theme runs through all the public professions. Of the hundreds of academics who took firm positions against the Iraq War, I cannot find a single example who went on to become a University Vice-Chancellor or Principal. By contrast actual war criminals Richard Dearlove and Valerie Amos were parachuted into academic leadership posts. The Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces were all true believers, compared to the massive scepticism that existed among senior officers.

The Iraq test even extends into the heads of institutions apparently quite unrelated, such as City of London banks and insurance companies. There are a tiny number of heads of FTSE 100 companies who were against the war.

It is not that there is an Iraq test. It is that Iraq is the touchstone for adherence to the neo-liberal consensus. All these professionally successful people share a number of attitudes, of which support for the Iraq War is a good indicator. There is a very strong correlation between support for the Iraq War and fierce Zionism. But there is also a strong correlation between support for the Iraq War and support for austerity economics. The strongest correlation of all lies in support for the Iraq War and for “business-friendly” tolerance of corporatism, TTIP, multinational tax avoidance, low taxation and marketization of public services including in education and health.

To return to where I started, the quite extraordinary thing is that there is a near-universal recognition in wider society that the Iraq War was both completely unjustified and a dreadful strategic blunder. Yet its support is a major pre-condition for membership of the governing elite.

The answer of course lies in its value as an indicator for a broad range of neo-liberal consensus attitudes. That is why both the SNP and Jeremy Corbyn provide such a threat to the Establishment, through denying those attitudes. The fascinating thing is that the SNP and the Labour Party could be the only public institutions in the UK of any note with an anti-Iraq War leadership. The significance is that, in slightly different ways, both the prominence of the SNP and of Jeremy Corbyn are the result of a public revolt which the Establishment has been trying, absolutely desperately, to cut off.

Ed Miliband did not actually vote against the Iraq War, contrary to popular myth. Having both the Labour and SNP parties led by people who reject the raft of values symbolised by the Iraq test, who have broken through the depleted uranium ceiling, is a massive, massive threat to the meritlessocracy. Institutional control appeared to be complete and impermeable. Suddenly they face the danger of the opinions of ordinary people carrying weight. Expect the media control mechanisms to whir into still greater overdrive.

By training, I am a plant biologist. In the early 1990s I was busy making genetically modified plants (often called GMOs for Genetically Modified Organisms) as part of the research that led to my PhD. Into these plants we were putting DNA from various foreign organisms, such as viruses and bacteria.

I was not, at the outset, concerned about the possible effects of GM plants on human health or the environment. One reason for this lack of concern was that I was still a very young scientist, feeling my way in the complex world of biology and of scientific research. Another reason was that we hardly imagined that GMOs like ours would be grown or eaten. So far as I was concerned, all GMOs were for research purposes only.

Gradually, however, it became clear that certain companies thought differently. Some of my older colleagues shared their skepticism with me that commercial interests were running far ahead of scientific knowledge. I listened carefully and I didn’t disagree. Today, over twenty years later, GMO crops, especially soybeans, corn, papaya, canola and cotton, are commercially grown in numerous parts of the world.

Depending on which country you live in, GMOs may be unlabeled and therefore unknowingly abundant in your diet. Processed foods (e.g. chips, breakfast cereals, sodas) are likely to contain ingredients from GMO crops, because they are often made from corn or soy. Most agricultural crops, however, are still non-GMO, including rice, wheat, barley, oats, tomatoes, grapes and beans.

For meat eaters the nature of GMO consumption is different. There are no GMO animals used in farming (although GM salmon has been pending FDA approval since 1993); however, animal feed, especially in factory farms or for fish farming, is likely to be GMO corn and GMO soybeans. In which case the labeling issue, and potential for impacts on your health, are complicated.

I now believe, as a much more experienced scientist, that GMO crops still run far ahead of our understanding of their risks. In broad outline, the reasons for this belief are quite simple. I have become much more appreciative of the complexity of biological organisms and their capacity for benefits and harms. As a scientist I have become much more humble about the capacity of science to do more than scratch the surface in its understanding of the deep complexity and diversity of the natural world. To paraphrase a cliché, I more and more appreciate that as scientists we understand less and less.

The Flawed Processes of GMO Risk Assessment

Some of my concerns with GMOs are “just” practical ones. I have read numerous GMO risk assessment applications. These are the documents that governments rely on to ‘prove’ their safety. Though these documents are quite long and quite complex, their length is misleading in that they primarily ask (and answer) trivial questions. Furthermore, the experiments described within them are often very inadequate and sloppily executed. Scientific controls are often missing, procedures and reagents are badly described, and the results are often ambiguous or uninterpretable. I do not believe that this ambiguity and apparent incompetence is accidental. It is common, for example, for multinational corporations, whose labs have the latest equipment, to use outdated methodologies. When the results show what the applicants want, nothing is said. But when the results are inconvenient, and raise red flags, they blame the limitations of the antiquated method. This bulletproof logic, in which applicants claim safety no matter what the data shows, or how badly the experiment was performed, is routine in formal GMO risk assessment.

To any honest observer, reading these applications is bound to raise profound and disturbing questions: about the trustworthiness of the applicants and equally of the regulators. They are impossible to reconcile with a functional regulatory system capable of protecting the public.

The Dangers of GMOs

Aside from grave doubts about the quality and integrity of risk assessments, I also have specific science-based concerns over GMOs. I emphasise the ones below because they are important but are not on the lists that GMO critics often make.

Many GMO plants are engineered to contain their own insecticides. These GMOs, which include maize, cotton and soybeans, are called Bt plants. Bt plants get their name because they incorporate a transgene that makes a protein-based toxin (usually called the Cry toxin) from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. Many Bt crops are “stacked,” meaning they contain a multiplicity of these Cry toxins. Their makers believe each of these Bt toxins is insect-specific and safe. However, there are multiple reasons to doubt both safety and specificity. One concern is that Bacillus thuringiensis is all but indistinguishable from the well known anthrax bacterium (Bacillus anthracis). Another reason is that Bt insecticides share structural similarities with ricin. Ricin is a famously dangerous plant toxin, a tiny amount of which was used to assassinate the Bulgarian writer and defector Georgi Markov in 1978. A third reason for concern is that the mode of action of Bt proteins is not understood (Vachon et al 2012); yet, it is axiomatic in science that effective risk assessment requires a clear understanding of the mechanism of action of any GMO transgene. This is so that appropriate experiments can be devised to affirm or refute safety. These red flags are doubly troubling because some Cry proteins are known to be toxic towards isolated human cells (Mizuki et al., 1999). Yet we put them in our food crops.

A second concern follows from GMOs being often resistant to herbicides. This resistance is an invitation to farmers to spray large quantities of herbicides, and many do. As research recently showed, commercial soybeans routinely contain quantities of the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) that its maker, Monsanto, once described as “extreme” (Bøhn et al 2014).

Glyphosate has been in the news recently because the World Health Organisation no longer considers it a relatively harmless chemical, but there are other herbicides applied to GMOs which are easily of equal concern. The herbicide Glufosinate (phosphinothricin, made by Bayer) kills plants because it inhibits the important plant enzyme glutamine synthetase. This enzyme is ubiquitous, however, it is found also in fungi, bacteria and animals. Consequently, Glufosinate is toxic to most organisms. Glufosinate is also a neurotoxin of mammals that doesn’t easily break down in the environment (Lantz et al. 2014). Glufosinate is thus a “herbicide” in name only.

Thus, even in conventional agriculture, the use of glufosinate is hazardous; but With GMO plants the situation is worse yet. With GMOs, glufosinate is sprayed on to the crop but its degradation in the plant is blocked by the transgene, which chemically modifies it slightly. This is why the GMO plant is resistant to it; but the other consequence is that when you eat Bayers’ Glufosinate-resistant GMO maize or canola, even weeks or months later, glufosinate, though slightly modified, is probably still there (Droge et al., 1992). Nevertheless, though the health hazard of glufosinate is much greater with GMOs, the implications of this science have been ignored in GMO risk assessments of Glufosinate-tolerant GMO crops.

A yet further reason to be concerned about GMOs is that most of them contain a viral sequence called the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter (or they contain the similar figwort mosaic virus (FMV) promoter). Two years ago, the GMO safety agency of the European Union (EFSA) discovered that both the CaMV promoter and the FMV promoter had wrongly been assumed by them (for almost 20 years) not to encode any proteins. In fact, the two promoters encode a large part of a small multifunctional viral protein that misdirects all normal gene expression and that also turns off a key plant defence against pathogens. EFSA tried to bury their discovery. Unfortunately for them, we spotted their findings in an obscure scientific journal. This revelation forced EFSA and other regulators to explain why they had overlooked the probability that consumers were eating an untested viral protein.

This list of significant scientific concerns about GMOs is by no means exhaustive. For example, there are novel GMOs coming on the market, such as those using double stranded RNAs (dsRNAs), that have the potential for even greater risks (Latham and Wilson 2015).

The True Purpose of GMOs

Science is not the only grounds on which GMOs should be judged. The commercial purpose of GMOs is not to feed the world or improve farming. Rather, they exist to gain intellectual property (i.e. patent rights) over seeds and plant breeding and to drive agriculture in directions that benefit agribusiness. This drive is occurring at the expense of farmers, consumers and the natural world. US Farmers, for example, have seen seed costs nearlyquadruple and seed choices greatly narrow since the introduction of GMOs. The fight over GMOs is not of narrow importance. It affects us all.

Nevertheless, specific scientific concerns are crucial to the debate. I left science in large part because it seemed impossible to do research while also providing the unvarnished public scepticism that I believed the public, as ultimate funder and risk-taker of that science, was entitled to.

Criticism of science and technology remains very difficult. Even though many academics benefit from tenure and a large salary, the sceptical process in much of science is largely lacking. This is why risk assessment of GMOs has been short-circuited and public concerns about them are growing. Until the damaged scientific ethos is rectified, both scientists and the public are correct to doubt that GMOs should ever have been let out of any lab.

(An earlier version of this article appeared at http://nutritionstudies.org/)

References

1. Bøhn, T, Cuhra, M, Traavik, T, Sanden, M, Fagan, J and Primicerio, R (2014) Compositional differences in soybeans on the market: Glyphosate accumulates in Roundup Ready GM soybeans. Food Chemistry 153: 207-215.

2. Droge W, Broer I, and Puhler A. (1992) Transgenic plants containing the phosphinothricin-N-acetyltransferase gene metabolize the herbicide L-phosphinothricin (glufosinate) differently from untransformed plants. Planta 187: 142-151.

3. Lantz S et al., (2014) Glufosinate binds N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors and increases neuronal network activity in vitro. Neurotoxicology 45: 38-47.
Latham JR and Wilson AK (2015) Off -­ target Effects of Plant Transgenic RNAi: Three Mechanisms Lead to Distinct Toxicological and Environmental Hazards.

4. Mizuki, E, Et Al., (1999) Unique activity associated with non-insecticidal Bacillus thuringiensis parasporal inclusions: in vitro cell- killing action on human cancer cells. J. Appl. Microbiol. 86: 477–486.

5. Vachon V, Laprade R, Schwartz JL (2012) Current models of the mode of action of Bacillus thuringiensis insecticidal crystal proteins: a critical review. Journal of Invertebrate Pathology 111: 1–12.

When McKinney, TX police officer David Eric Casebolt brutally took down a teenage girl at a pool party in June, he was using a form of martial arts called Krav Maga in which he trained exclusively. These combat techniques were developed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

This is a small reflection of a larger reality that exists in U.S. law enforcement, one that helps explain the brutality and militarization that now characterizes so many police forces.  Since 9/11, cops have been traveling abroad to learn from one of the most repressive and dangerous State forces in the world today—the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus.

Political commentator John Miranda recently stated that police brutality is directly linked to the training some officers receive in Israel.

As for the increase in police brutality within the United States, I think this definitely can be pointed towards the Israeli training that the Department of Homeland Security is giving all of American police officers.

Some police officers are actually being flown to Israel for the training, not all of them but some, and then those that are flown to Israel, they come back home and they train the head officers in the training that they’ve gotten in Israel.

All these incidents, it is not just happening to African Americans. Police are literally being brutal with all Americans.

At least 300 high-ranking U.S. sheriffs and police from all over the country, as well as FBI and US Customs and Border Protection agents, have traveled to Israel to learn first-hand the most efficient means of subduing populations.  The purported reason is counterterrorism, but protests and crowd control methods are commonly discussed.

Police are not learning from the Israeli criminal law sector that deals with Jewish residents.  U.S. police are learning from Israel’s military justice system, which controls Palestinians through paramilitary and counterinsurgency tactics.  Residents of Gaza and the West Bank live in what is essentially a giant prison camp, where oppression and brutality from the IDF is a way of life.  The use of excessive or deadly force for crowd control is rarely questioned.

Three organizations are responsible for sending U.S. cops to Israel for training—the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.  The ADL insulted victims of police brutality last month when it honored the St. Louis Police Department (SLPD) just days ahead of the anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing.  The SLPD was the first department to enroll in ADL’s training program.

The St. Louis Chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace issued a scathing statement in response: “We have cringed as the ADL positions itself locally as a champion of racial profiling legislation while sending US police – including former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch – to train on population control in Israel, an apartheid police state with more than 60 years of sophisticated expertise in racial profiling, mass incarceration, settler colonialism, and ethnic cleansing targeting the non-Jewish indigenous Palestinian people.”

This occupation-style policing has made its way to U.S. cities and towns and has become standard operating procedure at any protest of government.  Also, the very same equipment used by Israeli military for crowd control—tear gas grenades, triple chaser gas canisters, and stun grenades—were used at demonstrations in Ferguson, Oakland and Anaheim.  The LRAD (long-range acoustic device) was also used by both Ferguson police and Israeli military forces.

Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, notes how militarized U.S. police reflect the training that is received in Israel and spread throughout the ranks.

If American police and sheriffs consider they’re in occupation of neighborhoods like Ferguson and East Harlem, this training is extremely appropriate – they’re learning how to suppress a people, deny their rights and use force to hold down a subject population.

To complement this Israeli military training that ramped up in the mid-2000s, the Pentagon and Homeland Security started the 1033 program which funneled billions of dollars of military-grade equipment to local law enforcement.  MRAPS and military weapons have become all too familiar on American streets.

What order-following, state-sanctioned thug is going to refuse the most advanced tactics and tool of repression?

Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, described how U.S. police tactics are “a near replica” of Israeli military crowd control tactics.

Whether it is in Ferguson or L.A., we see a similar response all the time in the form of a disproportionate number of combat-ready police with military gear who are ready to use tear gas at short notice. Whenever you find 50 people at a demonstration, there is always a SWAT team in sight or right around the corner.

This increasingly common scenario is indicative of law enforcement that views the populace as the enemy.  Peaceful protests of unjust government practices are fundamental to the progression of society.  Police with militarized tactics and gear are the progenitors of violence.

Jimmy Johnson of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions explains how the training of U.S. law enforcement by Israeli military represents a grave threat to the idea of democracy.

Israeli methods are sought out and adopted for their perceived quality, largely led by the government’s marketing of them. But the relationships established between agencies of order, whether they be drug enforcement, civil policing, customs officials, tactical police units or any other, are done entirely outside the democratic realm…This is the danger of agencies of authority going through processes of professionalization and integration with their foreign counterparts. It’s often a strictly technocratic regime that can affect the public greatly but is done without its active knowledge or participation.

If we are to end the militarization of U.S. law enforcement, one of the most important parts of that will be stopping the training of police by the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus.  We do not want their methods of repression and brutality replicated here.

SELECTED ARTICLES

 

Syrian War-Islamic State (ISIS) Creation Timeline By Kevin Borge, August 29, 2015 

The War on Syria: The Major Political Players, Humanitarian Crisis By Patrick Higgins, September 01, 2015

Demonstrations and people’s assembly calls for unified effort to end exploitation and oppression

“It not one thing, it is everything,” says Rev. Edward Pinkney of Berrien County, Michigan who is currently incarcerated for unjust felony forgery charges at the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater.

Supporters of Pinkney held a demonstration in Grand Rapids outside the state appeals court calling for the civil rights leader to be released on bond pending the outcome of his challenge to a conviction for attempting to recall the Benton Harbor mayor. Pinkney, the leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO) based in Berrien County, was sentenced to 30 to 120 months in prison after a trial that was observed and followed by thousands throughout the United States and the world.

Pinkney’s defense Attorney Tim Holloway has filed a motion for the appellate court to reconsider their ruling to deny bond in a 2-1 decision. Pinkney poses no threat to the people of Michigan and deserves to be allowed to rejoin his family and friends in Berrien County.

Judge Sterling Schrock sentenced Pinkney after admonishing him for his role in Berrien County politics. The BANCO leader was charged and convicted of changing five dates on recall petitions.

Nonetheless, there were no eyewitnesses to this alleged crime and the charges were politically motivated where the Berrien County prosecuting Atty. Michael Sepic questioned witnesses on their organizational affiliations and what was said at BANCO meetings. As a result of the conviction and sentencing of Pinkney, a nationwide movement has sprung into existence demanding his release.

The demonstration outside the appellate court in Grand Rapids was covered by Channel 8 and WOOD radio which reaches hundreds of thousands across western Michigan. Protesters traveled to Grand Rapids from Detroit, Ann Arbor, Berrien County and other areas around the state.

Detroit People’s Assembly Links Struggles Across City

A People’s Assembly and Speak Out were held on Sat. August 29 in downtown Detroit at Grand Circus Park. The event was called by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and endorsed by other community organizations.

The event lasted for over three hours with so many people requesting to speak that some were not able to state their views. Organizers had to apologize due to the constraints of time.

Speakers at the assembly included Rebeykah Larson, who co-chaired the gathering. Larson is a housing activist in Detroit and has demonstrated against the pending property tax foreclosures in Wayne County.

Jo Ann Watson, former City Council member, attended to lend her moral support to the ongoing struggle in Detroit. Attorney Vanessa Fluker, a people’s lawyer working on housing rights, urged people to fight the banks which were at the root of the foreclosure crisis.

Errol Jennings, leader of the Russell Woods Neighborhood Association called on people to organize citywide to end the forced removals underway against African Americans and other working class people in the city. Jennings spearheaded a campaign to get resolutions from community organizations to enact a moratorium on tax foreclosures earlier this year.

The neighborhood resolutions helped to prompt the City Council to pass its own language requesting the moratorium. The tax foreclosure deadline was postponed for two-and-a-half months allowing thousands to make arrangements with the Wayne County Treasurer’s Office to save their homes.

Other speakers at the assembly included Cicely McClellan of the Detroit Active and Retirees Association (DAREA); Tijuana Morris of DAREA; Attorney Matt Clark of the Detroit Eviction Defense (DED); Pat Driscoll of DED and a retired steel worker; Jack Watkins, a youth participant who spoke on the rising tide of racism in the majority African American city of Detroit; Debra Simmons of the Detroit chapter of the National Action Network (NAN) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Police Reform Campaign; Jerry Goldberg of Moratorium NOW! Coalition; Michael Shane of Moratorium NOW! Coalition; Diane Bukowski, editor of Voice of Detroit and the campaign to demand a vote on the regionalization of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD); Valerie Jean, a water and environmental rights community activist from the North End neighborhood; Martha Grevatt of the UAW and labor analyst; Cynthia Johnson, AM 1440 radio host and leader of the Community Light Walk; Maureen Taylor, co-chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO); Meeko Williams of the Detroit Water Brigade; Stephen Boyle, a videographer and environmental activist; Helen Moore of Keep the Vote, No Takeover; Erik Shelly of Michigan United and Black Lives Matter; among others.

Action Proposals Adopted at Assembly

Yet this was not enough. The Wayne County Treasurer has announced that the remaining foreclosed properties, even those that are owner-occupied, will begin to be auctioned on September 11. The People’s Assembly agreed on an action proposal to hold a demonstration outside the Treasurer’s office at 400 Monroe on September 15 at Noon.

The action proposal circulated at the assembly stressed that “Thousands of Detroiters and other Wayne County residents will be evicted from their homes in the next month, as the Wayne County Treasurer auctions their homes to investors following tax foreclosures. The first auction begins September 11 and goes until September 17.”

This same statement goes on to note “This disaster is entirely avoidable! The State of Michigan is sitting on $200 million in federal Helping Hardest Hit Funds that can be used to pay delinquent property tax bills for occupied homes. But instead of using these funds for their stated purpose, to keep families in their homes, the state and federal governments are using these funds to tear down homes and turning them over to the ‘blight taskforce’ led by billionaire Dan Gilbert.”

Other action proposals adopted included an outreach initiative for the annual Labor Day parade on September 7. Two items will be circulated to tens of thousands of union members who come out every year to participate: a statement to the labor movement from Michigan political prisoner Rev. Edward Pinkney and leaflets calling for the demonstration at the Wayne County Treasurer on September 15.

A strong emphasis was placed on the need for jobs in the city of Detroit; the restoration of full pension and healthcare benefits promised to municipal retirees; support of a Title VI racial discrimination complaint to the federal government charging extreme bias in the destruction of the Detroit Public Schools system languishing under emergency management for most of the last 15 years; the need to seek justice for those victims and their families of police violence; and the defense of residents who are facing eviction by the banks and Fannie Mae backed up by the courts.

Moratorium NOW! Coalition organizers encouraged people to attend their Monday night meetings at 5920 Second Avenue in Midtown beginning at 7:00pm. Other groups involved in social justice, anti-racist, environmental, educational and labor activities were allowed to announce their meeting times and locations.

This People’s Assembly once again tested the hard won right of community organizations to hold political meetings and demonstrations on the streets in downtown Detroit. Efforts to ban such activities were attempted by the bankers and corporate heads during 2014 prompting a legal and political struggle to guarantee free speech and assembly in the financial district and its environs.

Earlier this year the City of Detroit Law Department was forced to issue guidelines regulating the right of assembly and speech in downtown. The case remains open while the question of damages to the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and Women in Black are settled.

Events in Ukraine (and Eastern Europe) target Russia – part of Washington’s longstanding regime change agenda, wanting US-controlled puppet governance replacing Russian sovereignty, eliminating a key rival power, giving America access to a huge new source of vital resources.

Perhaps Victoria Nuland’s dirty hands were involved in Monday’s Kiev riots, previous unrest this year and likely more to come. Washington is displeased with Poroshenko. Former Ukrainian MP Vadim Kolesnichenko said US officials are considering two replacements:

Valentin Nalivaichenko, former Ukrainian security service head, or Sergei Levochkin, former Yanukovych chief of staff. A previous article explained Ukrainians overwhelmingly despise Poroshenko. Calls persist for him to step down. Replacing him won’t surprise anyone.

Meanwhile, war on Donbass rages. Western media largely ignore daily shelling by junta forces – including attacks on residential areas, hospitals, schools and other nonmilitary targets.

An unverified late August report from an unnamed source said the following:

(C)ylinders of toxic gases and containers of poisonous substances were delivered to the technological facilities of high-voltage insulators plant in Kramatorsk street, town of Slavyansk.

There’s chlorine in cylinders, not less than five covered wagons, also other containers with contents I know nothing about labeled with words and signs “poison,” “danger,” “do not touch without protection.

All of it was brought in under the guise of varnishes and paints, but I know the look of the packaging of both, and whatever was brought here last week has got nothing to do with it. It looks like a chemical weapon.

They don’t let anyone in the warehouse. There is round-the-clock guard in military uniform without insignia. All the time there’s been some strange hustle and bustle.

Soldiers “boasted that separatists will be given a big washing, from which they will puke blood. Our guerrillas have verified this information. There is understanding that the Ukrainian military and Security Service are preparing a provocation against the Novorossiya militias having intent to show them use chemical weapons against civilians.”

 Harm as many civilians as possible. Show dead bodies on TV for Europe and America to intervene. This is actually why I am calling from Slavyansk, we don’t want to be Guinea pigs and die for Poroshenko or America.

Tell everyone that Kiev is preparing a provocation with chemical weapons…This information was confirmed by at least one source in the region, an employee of a major transportation company engaged in the transshipment of cargo from rail to road.

According to this source, the dangerous cargo was jointly accompanied by intelligence services of Ukraine and military, and in full cooperation with the central and local authorities.

If a major chemical weapons attack on Donbass occurs, the source will be proved right. It won’t be the first time. Kiev used toxic substances and cluster munitions against area freedom fighters earlier. Western media ignored what happened.

On August 30, Voice of Sevastopol (VOS) headlined “ ‘Moscow Must Burn!’ Right-Wing Extremists in Ukraine Mobilize,” saying:

“(R)ight-wing volunteer militia leader Dmytro Korchynsky” has a large following in Ukraine. “I want to lead a crusade against Russia,” he said.

Our goal is not only the expulsion of the occupiers, but also vengeance. Moscow must burn.

Reuters said Korchynsky wants to create a Christian “Taliban movement.” VOS reported 40 (right-wing, ultranationalist) volunteer militia groups active in Ukraine.

Many of their members were Maidan protesters involved in ousting the former Yanukovych government. VOS said they pose a serious threat to the current regime – especially if they have US backing over dissatisfaction with Poroshenko, prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and other Kiev officials.

They demand Poroshenko’s ouster, imposition of martial law, full-scale war on Donbass, “unity” of Ukraine by any means necessary, and perhaps disruptive activities against Russia.

On Monday, Moscow’s EU envoy Vladimir Chizhov said Ukraine’s constitutional changes violate the letter and spirit of Minsk – calling for Donbass “special status” self-governance.

Poroshenko rejects it – saying constitutional amendments he proposed prohibit “special status.” Chizhov accused him of introducing changes without consulting Donbass officials as required by Minsk, excluding their rights, flagrantly violating ceasefire terms.

“I think the core of the problem is the inability, or unwillingness, or both, of the Ukrainian government and President Poroshenko to sit down and negotiate directly with representatives of Donetsk and Lugansk,” Chizhov explained.

Donetsk Parliament Speaker Denis Pushilin said “(w)e do not recognize what is going on now in the Rada (parliament) as we know for sure that the amendments proposed by Poroshenko are just an imitation of the Minsk agreements implementation.”

The rights of Donbass residents are excluded from Kiev’s parliamentary debates. Policies directed by Washington call for continued war, defeating Donbass freedom fighters and maintaining instability on Russia’s border.

America’s agenda heightens the possibility of direct confrontation – a reckless policy risking the use of nuclear weapons for the first time since WW II.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

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

 

Last Friday, Australians got a taste of what the operational nature of the Prime Minister’s Border Force might look like. It began with a 9.16am press release that was issued featuring Don Smith, the Australian Border Force Regional commander for Victoria and Tasmania warning that “ABF officers will be speaking with any individual we cross paths with”.

The purpose of such a seemingly dramatic exercise? Examining instances of visa fraud at the gates of one of Victoria’s busiest stations.

The Gestapo-styled directive, given the absurd title of “Operation Fortitude” had an effect that surprised authorities, which should itself be a suitable gauge about how estranged this government has become from its citizens. Operating outside Melbourne’s busy Flinders Street station, the impression given was that there would be random checks of individuals in and around the vicinity.

Originally, Operation Fortitude was intended to conduct what would have been spot checks of taxi driver licenses and visas. Someone had either bungled dramatically, or become a revisionist versed in the evils of totalitarian bureaucracy.

At 1.46 pm that same Friday, the ABF would have to clarify that it “does not and will not stop people at random in the streets”. There would be no effort to purposely “check people’s papers”, something which they attributed to a media spin.

The ABF commissioner Roman Quadvleig had a stab at something of an admission: the press release had “incorrectly construed what our role was… it should have been better explained, it was clumsy.” Naturally, his pristine pure outfit was exempt from what the lowers in the organisation had done. The release, like that of a bowel emission, stemmed from “the lower levels of the organisation.”

An odd thing to say, given that the statement had been cleared by Mark Jeffries, the assistant secretary for communications and the media for the ABF. In any case, the distancing from other features of the execution has been palpable, with the immigration office claiming that ministers do not have a hand in directing operational matters.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton still had to concede to the Sunday Telegraph that his own office had received a copy of the operational briefing. “There was never any intent for the ABF to conduct visa checks during this operation. It is unfortunate that the poorly written Media Release indicated otherwise.”[1]

Then comes the boiling frog phenomenon – gradually, the dial is being turned up as the unfortunate body of liberties is being cooked. According to a spokesman for Dutton, “The information provided indicated that the planned operation was routine with the ABF’s role relatively low level in support of a Victorian police activity, so the media release was not reviewed and not cleared.”

This may, on the surface, look innocuous. But is a direct admission to an institutionalised role that conjures up images of uniformed men and women treating their quarry, not as citizens, but subjects who need to be found out. This activity takes place out of the view of the minister, who has his hands at the wheel while refusing to direct the vehicle.

In the apt words of barrister Charles Waterston, this was to be “the perfect storm for perfect storm troopers.” There would be a seamless operation involving the Metro Train operators, the Yarra Train heavies and those of the Taxi Services Commission.

Freshly created, with a nationalist zeal that is fast moving into the world of pantomime, the ABF is looking scratchily incompetent even as it claims it is protecting Australian “security” and the rights of the vulnerable. The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has likened the episode to Tony Abbott’s decision to award Prince Philip a knighthood, though it is far graver than that. “It’s sort of like a uniformed version of the Prince Philip decision.”

That said, spot checks on visas are not unusual, though the nature of this operation, with its pugnacious, state mandated thuggery, was. The previous Labor government conducted scores of such checks when he was Immigration Minister, ostensibly on the grounds of protecting the welfare of foreign workers. Not that Labor can aspire to the nobility of this higher cause either.

The Migration Act itself also vests immigration officers with powers to require a person “whom the officer knows or reasonably suspects is a non-citizen” to present evidence of citizenship status or identity. Protocols governing such inspections tend to be linked with police operations, but the ABF remains virginal in many respects.

Prime Minister Abbott’s reaction was to take to the book otherwise termed The Australian Way of Life to suggest that certain things were simply not done Down Under. Suggesting himself that the press release had been a mistake, deeming it “clumsy”, he also declared that, “We would never stop people in the street and ask them for their visa details. We don’t do that Australia.”

Such statements tend to suggest that such a policy’s time is up. The words, when it comes to such operations, are often indicative of that operation’s substance.  It was the stuff of “Brown Shirts, the army and ticket collectors working as a team to end the wholesale plundering of our transport system and porous borders.”[2]

The only salvaging grace in this was that the incompetence, and public reaction to it, were formidable enough to spark a reversal. Incompetence is one of those gifts from the heavens that scuttles venal operations, leading to their executor’s downfall and eventual abolition. Liberties depend on upon it, and refugees are only one part of that dire equation.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/border-farce-immigration-minister-peter-duttons-office-saw-border-force-visa-operation-briefing-ahead-of-its-release/story-fnpn118l-1227504270914

[2] http://www.smh.com.au/comment/melbourne-cbd-goes-full-mad-max-as-border-forces-operation-fortitude-slammed-into-reverse-20150828-gjaeuj.html

 

Last Friday, Australians got a taste of what the operational nature of the Prime Minister’s Border Force might look like. It began with a 9.16am press release that was issued featuring Don Smith, the Australian Border Force Regional commander for Victoria and Tasmania warning that “ABF officers will be speaking with any individual we cross paths with”.

The purpose of such a seemingly dramatic exercise? Examining instances of visa fraud at the gates of one of Victoria’s busiest stations.

The Gestapo-styled directive, given the absurd title of “Operation Fortitude” had an effect that surprised authorities, which should itself be a suitable gauge about how estranged this government has become from its citizens. Operating outside Melbourne’s busy Flinders Street station, the impression given was that there would be random checks of individuals in and around the vicinity.

Originally, Operation Fortitude was intended to conduct what would have been spot checks of taxi driver licenses and visas. Someone had either bungled dramatically, or become a revisionist versed in the evils of totalitarian bureaucracy.

At 1.46 pm that same Friday, the ABF would have to clarify that it “does not and will not stop people at random in the streets”. There would be no effort to purposely “check people’s papers”, something which they attributed to a media spin.

The ABF commissioner Roman Quadvleig had a stab at something of an admission: the press release had “incorrectly construed what our role was… it should have been better explained, it was clumsy.” Naturally, his pristine pure outfit was exempt from what the lowers in the organisation had done. The release, like that of a bowel emission, stemmed from “the lower levels of the organisation.”

An odd thing to say, given that the statement had been cleared by Mark Jeffries, the assistant secretary for communications and the media for the ABF. In any case, the distancing from other features of the execution has been palpable, with the immigration office claiming that ministers do not have a hand in directing operational matters.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton still had to concede to the Sunday Telegraph that his own office had received a copy of the operational briefing. “There was never any intent for the ABF to conduct visa checks during this operation. It is unfortunate that the poorly written Media Release indicated otherwise.”[1]

Then comes the boiling frog phenomenon – gradually, the dial is being turned up as the unfortunate body of liberties is being cooked. According to a spokesman for Dutton, “The information provided indicated that the planned operation was routine with the ABF’s role relatively low level in support of a Victorian police activity, so the media release was not reviewed and not cleared.”

This may, on the surface, look innocuous. But is a direct admission to an institutionalised role that conjures up images of uniformed men and women treating their quarry, not as citizens, but subjects who need to be found out. This activity takes place out of the view of the minister, who has his hands at the wheel while refusing to direct the vehicle.

In the apt words of barrister Charles Waterston, this was to be “the perfect storm for perfect storm troopers.” There would be a seamless operation involving the Metro Train operators, the Yarra Train heavies and those of the Taxi Services Commission.

Freshly created, with a nationalist zeal that is fast moving into the world of pantomime, the ABF is looking scratchily incompetent even as it claims it is protecting Australian “security” and the rights of the vulnerable. The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has likened the episode to Tony Abbott’s decision to award Prince Philip a knighthood, though it is far graver than that. “It’s sort of like a uniformed version of the Prince Philip decision.”

That said, spot checks on visas are not unusual, though the nature of this operation, with its pugnacious, state mandated thuggery, was. The previous Labor government conducted scores of such checks when he was Immigration Minister, ostensibly on the grounds of protecting the welfare of foreign workers. Not that Labor can aspire to the nobility of this higher cause either.

The Migration Act itself also vests immigration officers with powers to require a person “whom the officer knows or reasonably suspects is a non-citizen” to present evidence of citizenship status or identity. Protocols governing such inspections tend to be linked with police operations, but the ABF remains virginal in many respects.

Prime Minister Abbott’s reaction was to take to the book otherwise termed The Australian Way of Life to suggest that certain things were simply not done Down Under. Suggesting himself that the press release had been a mistake, deeming it “clumsy”, he also declared that, “We would never stop people in the street and ask them for their visa details. We don’t do that Australia.”

Such statements tend to suggest that such a policy’s time is up. The words, when it comes to such operations, are often indicative of that operation’s substance.  It was the stuff of “Brown Shirts, the army and ticket collectors working as a team to end the wholesale plundering of our transport system and porous borders.”[2]

The only salvaging grace in this was that the incompetence, and public reaction to it, were formidable enough to spark a reversal. Incompetence is one of those gifts from the heavens that scuttles venal operations, leading to their executor’s downfall and eventual abolition. Liberties depend on upon it, and refugees are only one part of that dire equation.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/border-farce-immigration-minister-peter-duttons-office-saw-border-force-visa-operation-briefing-ahead-of-its-release/story-fnpn118l-1227504270914

[2] http://www.smh.com.au/comment/melbourne-cbd-goes-full-mad-max-as-border-forces-operation-fortitude-slammed-into-reverse-20150828-gjaeuj.html