Global Research

This was a first expedition by volunteers and activists to rescue seals trapped in plastic rubbish on the island, a breeding ground in the Sea of Okhotsk, off Sakhalin.

Each year, these shores are a magnet for seals and sea lions.

Young animals especially love playing with the junk – but often get trapped in synthetic fishing nets and plastic rings.

These easily turn into deadly collars that ‘grow’ deep into bodies of the mammals, leading to slow, agonising death.

Whales and dolphins suffer on an horrific scale from netting and plastic waste – some 300,000 die each year, according to the International Whaling Commission.

A dozen volunteers crawled along the beach to catch the seals tied up or otherwise tangled in the garbage. Pictures: Boomerang Club

Helping to free the stricken seals on Tyuleniy Island was no easy task as the seals have very sharp teeth and fast reactions.

The legal framework around using sedatives is not yet resolved and it is impossible to save large animals, such as mature seals and sea lions, and to work on rocky shores without immobilising them. This is why Tyuleniy Island with flat sand and gravel beaches – and many young animals – was chosen for this initial rescue mission.

A dozen volunteers crawled along the beach to catch the seals tied up or otherwise tangled in the garbage.

The pictures show how the team carefully went about their work.

Volunteers also removed dangerous hooks, ropes, boards with nails and sharp pieces of metal from the shoreline.

In the end 28 seals were saved from recklessly thrown rubbish.

The expedition was organised by Boomerang Club, an environmental NGO, and Friends of the Ocean along with Kamchatka Branch of the Pacific Ocean Institute of Geography, with support from the President’s Grants Fund and a fishing company from Lermontovka.

Activists and scientists plan to continue joint efforts to rescue sea animals from plastic rubbish in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Saving Our Seals – 28 sea mammals rescued after becoming trapped in plastic junk. Pictures: Boomerang Club

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image: Helping to free the stricken seals on Tyuleniy Island was no easy task as the seals have very sharp teeth and fast reactions. Pictures: Boomerang Club

In 1378, it was not clear who the true Pope was. Depending on whom one asked, it was either Clement VII, nowadays listed as an Antipope in the Catholic Encyclopedia, or Urban VI. This was a time of crisis in Western Europe, often referred to as the “Western Schism”.

Likewise today, in the realm of secular politics, we currently have or recently had disputed or contested presidencies – in varying degrees – in many countries. In fact, Venezuela – where Guaidó and the country’s president Maduro are each recognized by a number of countries – is far from the being the only such case in Latin America.

For instance, in Peru, on October 2019, both Vizcarra and Araós claimed to be the legitimate president. In Honduras, Hernández election was contested, amid allegations of narco connections.  Even in Colombia, Petro (2018 election runner up) and his party no longer recognize Duque’s presidency, who has also been accused of narco links and of tampering with ballots. In Brazil, Ms. Roussef’s 2016 deposition was perceived by many as an “institutional coup”. The current Brazilian president Bolsonaro, in his turn, also faces accusations of vote fraud through the use of Whatsapp “fake news”.

There are disputed presidencies or leaderships right now in Belarus, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Mali (which is under a military coup) and other countries. In the US, Trump’s 2016 election was also hotly contested (there were even wild accusations of “Russian interference”) and many journalists and experts are now writing that the new US election – amid the coronavirus outbreak and other crisis – may not be “swiftly accepted”. Antifa demonstrations are spreading across the country and are becoming increasingly violent.

All such legitimacy disputes are not just narrative wars amongst political rivals – it rather seems that in many parts of the world, the election process itself and democracy   are losing credibility. It could turn into a war of models. If the contemporary and rather globalized democratic model is in crisis – and it would appear so – then, what are the alternatives?

The very specific notion of “Democracy” as necessarily including free speech, a multi-party system, alternance in power, a secular state and a Montesquieu’s trias politica separation of powers – with an often bicameral legislature – is of course quite Western in terms of its history and the values underlying it. In Western discourse today, the notion of democracy sometimes gets even more exclusive, sometimes including only societies which recognize gay marriage and do not criminalize abortion.

The United States is often taken as an (unexamined) “standard-bearer” for the entire world. The truth is that political forms and models are not so clearly differentiable but actually are rather intermingled. Thus, the current British monarch, for example, is officially the Defender of the Church of English and, as such, appoints Bishops and Archbishops – and no one dares to call it a “theocracy”. The US president, in his turn, in his authority to conduct war, has the power to maintain anyone under indefinite detention (without due process of law) according to attorney John Yoo (of so called Torture Memos) – and no one calls it a dictatorship. Clearly, labeling one as “non-democratic” is also a weapon of political discourse.

As for alternative models, a few years ago, notions of “Bolivarian” direct democracy were on the rise in South America. Furthermore, Bolivia’s 2010 law acknowledged the rights of Pachamama (Mother Earth) as a collective subject of public interest. The current Bolivian de facto president, Ms. Jeanine Áñez (President Morales was deposed in what many described as a coup), is currently working to undermine such notions as well as the notion of Bolivia as a Plurinational State – as defined by its 2009 Constitution.

So, right now, the left too (and its Bolivarian and indigenist alternatives) has been largely discredited amongst a large part of the population in South America. This has opened the door for the rise of a new kind of right-wing “populism” – which has little regard for current institutions. For instance, according to recent polls, 34% of the Brazilian population would support closing down (abolishing) the Parliament and 32% support doing the same to the Supreme Court. The COVID-19 pandemic could also be paving the way for “authoritarianism” in Europe and the US, according to several political scientists. The new populism is on the rise in Europe too.

In many parts of the world, a large part of society seems to care more about employment and security than abstract notions of the rule of law. If current political regimes fail to provide safety and to economically include the people they rule, dissatisfaction is sure to follow. And in the economically fragile post-COVID-19 world, this could get ugly.

Is it about time to reinvent democracy? Some new forms of it could arise, better suited for their cultural and regional contexts. In the meanwhile, a lot of instability may ensue (with economic and security consequences), especially in Latin America but in other parts of the world too – perhaps in Europe and the US as well.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

The Western media functions more as lobbyists or even foreign intelligence agencies rather than real journalists by deliberately omitting facts, fabricating others, and all to ensure maximum momentum of what is verified US political interference in a foreign country. 

***

As the Western media had done during the opening phases of the now admittedly US-engineered “Arab Spring” in 2011, it is again attempting to lie about opposition movements across Asia attempting to oust pro-Beijing governments in favor of those that will bolster US primacy in Asia-Pacific.

This includes in Thailand where US-funded unrest is attempting to oust the current government, rewrite the Thai constitution, and roll back Thai-Chinese relations.

Reuters would write a nearly 1,000 word “profile” of Thai protest leader Anon Nampa.

Titled, “The bookish Thai rights lawyer who challenged the king,” it never once mentions the name of the organization Anon Nampa works for – Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) – or the fact that TLHR is funded by the US government via Washington’s notorious regime change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

A profile designed specifically to promote anti-government protests in Thailand rather than to actually inform readers of who Anon Nampa really is and who he really works for – is not journalism. It is lobbying or serves the function of an intelligence agency attempting to support Western-funded assets operating in Thailand.

The Reuters article even includes a video to help lionize both Anon Nampa and his cause which includes ousting the current Thai government and undermining both Thailand’s military and constitutional monarchy.

Again, Anon Nampa’s work for a US government-funded front is never mentioned even once.

The author, Reuters’ Panu Wongcha-um is most certainly aware of who Anon Nampa is and that he belongs to TLHR – as Panu Wongcha-um regularly retweets TLHR posts on social media. Not only is it troubling that a “journalist” uses his verified Twitter account to promote protests rather than impartially observe and report on them, it suggests that Panu Wongcha-um and Reuters itself is deliberately, knowingly hiding who Anon Nampa really is and who really funds him.

It is a pattern repeated across the entirety of the Western media operating in Thailand who function more as lobbyists and even intelligence agencies rather than as journalists of any kind.

A profile designed specifically to promote anti-government protests in Thailand rather than to actually inform readers of who Anon Nampa really is and who he really works for – is not journalism. It is lobbying or serves the function of an intelligence agency attempting to support Western-funded assets operating in Thailand.

The Western media did likewise not only just last year amid US-funded unrest in Hong Kong, China, but throughout the entirety of the 2011 “Arab Spring” which eventually led to war, US military intervention,  the destruction of multiple nations and the ruination of millions of human lives.

Anon Nampa and TLHR’s US Government Funding is a Documented Fact

The UCL is still listed on NED’s current webpage for programs it funds in Thailand. TLHR is listed as a member of UCL on its official website next to other recipients of US NED funding including the Cross Cultural Foundation, the Human Rights Lawyers Association, and the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL).

Before TLHR and its members began leading rallies – founding members admitted TLHR is entirely funded by foreign governments.

Even the Bangkok Post previously reported this – despite apparently “forgetting” this fact more recently in its reporting.

The Bangkok Post in a 2016 article titled, “The lawyer preparing to defend herself,” would admit (emphasis added):

…[TLHR] receives all its funding from international donors including the EU, Germany and US-based human rights organisations and embassies of the UK and Canada.

Russian and Syrian forces eliminated 327 ISIS militants during a joint security operation that took place in the desert areas of Homs and Deir Ezzor from August 18 to August 24.

According to the Russian side, strikes of the Syrian Air Force, the Russian Aerospace Forces, field artillery and actions of special forces units in the desert also allowed to eliminate 134 shelters, 17 observation posts, 7 warehouses and 5 underground storage areas belonging to ISIS terrorists.

The operation came in response to a series of successful ISIS attacks on pro-government forces in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert. One of these attacks, near Deir Ezzor city on August 18, led to the killing of Russian Major-General Vyacheslav Gladkih. Taking into account the numbers provided by the Russian side, the August 18-24 operation likely delivered a powerful blow to ISIS cells hiding in the desert. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that the ISIS threat was fully removed.

As long as areas not controlled by Damascus remain, ISIS will always have a place to hide and restore its forces.

On August 25, a Russian military vehicle was targeted with an RPG along the M4 Highway, during the 25th Turkish-Russian Joint Patrol. No Russian personnel received serious injures. According to photos from the site, a BTR-80’s wheel was damaged during the attack. This became the second attack on a joint Turkish-Russian patrol in southern Idlib in a week. The previous one targeting a Turkish military vehicle took place on August 17.

The regular attacks on Russian-Turkish patrols in southern Idlib reveal that the de-escalation process is not going very well. In fact, al-Qaeda-linked groups still keep a dominant position in the ‘opposition-controlled’ Idlib and have not been separated from their ‘moderate’ allies.

On August 14, Russia even temporarily suspended joint patrols with Turkey in the area due to Ankara’s inability to guarantee the security of patrols and fulfill its obligations under the de-escalation deal. It appeared that the decision had been reversed, as they began again on August 17, however the attacks resumed shortly thereafter.

In these conditions, the continuation of joint patrols by Turkey and Russia apparently puts its forces involved in such actions in danger. If the threat of al-Qaeda-linked radicals is not addressed, militants bolstered by the previous successes will likely increase their attacks on these patrols even further.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT: 

PayPal: [email protected], http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

In 2017, explosive allegations first emerged that the authorities of the Chechen Republic were reportedly interning gay men in concentration camps. After a three year period of dormancy, the accusations have resurfaced in a new feature length documentary by HBO Films entitled Welcome to Chechnya. Shot between mid-2017 and early last year, the film has received widespread acclaim among Western media and film critics. Shortly after its release last month, the Trump administration and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced an increase in economic sanctions and imposed travel restrictions against Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his family, citing the putative human rights abuses in the southern Russian republic covered in the film.

Most of the boilerplate reviews of Welcome to Chechnya have heaped particular praise upon the documentary’s novelty use of ‘deepfake’ technology to hide the identities of alleged victims in the cinematic investigation. Yet at the closing of the film, one subject who previously appears with his likeness concealed by AI reveals himself at a news conference without the disguise—rendering the prior use of synthetic media fruitless. Maxim Lapunov, who is not even ethnically Chechen but a Russian native of Siberia, is still the only individual to have gone public with the charges. Despite the obvious credibility and authenticity questions regarding the use of such controversial technology, it has not prevented critics from lauding it unquestioningly. Unfortunately, even some in alternative media have been regurgitating the film’s propaganda such as The Intercept, a slick online news publication owned by billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar whose financial ties to the national security state and U.S. soft power institutions conflict with the outlet’s purported mission. Notably, The Intercept’s glowing review of Welcome to Chechnyawas written by Mehdi Hasan, a journalist who also works for Al-Jazeera, a news agency owned by the ruling emirs of Qatar, a theocratic dictatorship where homosexuality is actually illegal. 

The documentarians follow the work of a purported network of activists who evacuate individuals like Lapunov out of the Caucasian republic. This is the film’s primary source of drama, despite their encountering seemingly no difficulty from the local authorities in doing so. We are then subjected to random cell phone clips of apparent hate crimes and human rights abuses going on, but at no point does the film crew even visit the Argun prison where the anti-gay pogroms are alleged to have taken place. In 2017, the imperial hipsters at Vice news were given unrestricted access to the facility where nothing was found and the warden adamantly denied the allegations — but not without expressing his own disapproval of homosexuality which was assumed by his interrogators to be evidence of the detentions having occurred. In the HBO documentary, a similar hatchet job is done to Ramzan Kadyrov, whose uncomfortable denial of the existence of homosexuality in the deeply conservative and predominantly Muslim republic is implied to be proof that the purges must be happening. One may recall this same sort of smear tactic was previously done to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, Kadyrov and the warden’s predictable responses to the subject serve only as confirmation bias, not confirmation.

The selective outrage in response to the alleged purges, like all things Russia-related, is highly politicized. Western viewers would have no idea that of the 74 countries worldwide where homosexuality is still criminalized, Russia isn’t among them. In more than a dozen of those nations, same-sex activity is punishable by death, a few of which happen to be close strategic allies of the United States, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As recently as 2017, the U.S. was one of 13 countries to vote against a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution condemning countries with capital punishment for same-sex relations to avoid falling-out with those allies, most of which have legal systems established on their respective interpretations of Sharia law. While the local authorities of the Muslim-majority Chechen Republic have been allowed to introduce some elements of the fundamentalist religious code by the Russian government such as the banning of alcohol and gambling and requiring the wearing of hijab by women, as a federal subject it is still ultimately beholden to Russia’s secular constitution. In fact, it was Kadyrov’s predecessor, Alu Alkhanov, who hoped to govern Chechnya with Sharia law, not the current administration. Credulous audiences would have no clue that Kadyrov actually represents the more moderate wing of Chechen politics because there is absolutely no history or context provided, a deliberately misleading choice on the part of the filmmakers.

The absence of any historical background deceptively suggests that the anti-gay sentiment in the mostly Muslim North Caucasus is somehow an extension of the homophobia in Russia itself, despite the autonomous differences in religion, culture, and society. In the last decade, the weaponization of identity politics has been central to Washington’s ongoing demonization of Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin, with the issue of LGBT rights particularly given significant attention. While homosexuality is decriminalized, there is admittedly no legal prohibition of discrimination against the LGBT community in Russia. In particular, human rights groups have condemned the notorious federal law passed in 2013 known as the ‘gay propaganda law’ that forbids the distribution of information promoting “non-traditional sexual relations” to minors, which entails the banning of gay pride parades and other LGBT rights demonstrations. However, the measure enjoys widespread support among the Russian people whose social conservatism has been resuscitated by the Orthodox Church since the breakup of the Soviet Union. It is rather ironic and hypocritical that the West has since taken issue with this turn, considering it facilitated that political transformation.

In reality, the reason for the relentless vilification of Putin has absolutely nothing to to do with the exaggerated plight of gays in Russia and a lot more to do with the reversal of policies under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin (image on the right). In the nineties, the mass privatization of the former state-owned enterprises during Russia’s conversion to capitalism resulted in the instant impoverishment of millions and the rapid rise of the notorious ‘oligarchs’ which the West characterized at the time as progression towards democracy. In the loans-for-shares scheme, a new ruling class of bankers and industrialists accumulated enormous wealth overnight and by the middle of the decade, owned or controlled much of the country’s media outlets. The oligarchs held enormous power and influence over the deeply unpopular Yeltsin, who would surely have lost reelection in 1996 without their backing and the assistance of Western meddling in the form of massive loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

While economic disparity and corruption persists today, overall the Russian economy has been rebuilt after its energy assets were re-nationalized and brought back under state control by the Putin administration, resulting in improved living standards and income levels for the last two decades. By the same measure, the Russian people can hardly be blamed for associating homosexuality with the unbridled neoliberalism, vulture capitalism and draconian austerity imposed on their country by Western capital. It is also truly paradoxical that the notion of “Russian oligarchs” has become synonymous with Putin in the minds of Westerners when many of the most obscenely wealthy oligarchs of the Yeltsin era now live in exile as his most ardent political opponents after they faced prosecution for their financial crimes. Not coincidentally, the initial reports of the ‘gay gulags’ in Chechnya were published in Novaya Gazeta, an anti-Putin newspaper partly owned by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the very man who ushered in the economic liberalization which auctioned off the state assets to oligarchs like co-owner Alexander Lebedev.

Gorbachev’s reforms, particularly that of perestroika (“restructuring”), also had destructive consequences for the national question and ethno-regional interests. V.I. Lenin had famously called the Russian Empire a “prison house of nations”, in reference to its heterogeneous range of nationalities and ethnic groups. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 especially re-agitated ethno-national conflicts in the Caucasus, a region that had enjoyed several decades of relative harmony and stability under socialism with rights and representation that did not exist in pre-revolutionary Russia. While Azerbaijan and Georgia were granted independence, Chechnya and many other municipalities remained under federal control of the Russian Federation, as sovereignty did not constitutionally apply because it had never been an independent state. Not to mention, its oil and gas reserves are essential to Russia’s very economic survival.

The jihadism which plagued the Caucasus was an outgrowth of the U.S.-backed ‘holy war’ in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the brainchild of Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor in the Jimmy Carter administration. It was the Polish-born Brzezinski who not only authored the geostrategy of arming the mujahideen against the Soviets but the efforts to turn Russia’s own large Muslim minority community against them. This was mostly unsuccessful as the majority of its 20 million Muslims (10% of the population) are harmoniously integrated into Russian society, but the Atlanticists did fan the flames of a militant secessionist movement in Chechnya that erupted in a violent insurgency and became increasingly Islamist as the conflict dragged on. For Washington, the hope was that the West could gain access to Caspian oil by encouraging the al-Qaeda-linked separatists rebranded as “rebels” vulnerable to its domination in the energy-rich region. The collapse of the USSR already escalated hostilities between the intermingling ethnic communities of the region, but the antagonisms were intensified by CIA soft power cutouts like the Jamestown Foundation fomenting the secessionist insurrection. As the separatist movement grew increasingly Wahhabist thanks to U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia, its more moderate nationalist faction led by Akhmad Kadyrov eventually defected back to the Russian side. The elder Kadyrov would pay the price when he was assassinated in a 2004 stadium bombing in Grozny during an annual Victory Day celebration, with his son becoming one of his successors.

The Kremlin’s support for the Kadyrovs should be understood as a compromise which prevented the more radical Islamists from taking power, which apparently Washington would be happier with running the North Caucasus. What a human rights utopia Chechnya would be as a breakaway Islamic state, under the salafists which during the Chechen wars committed unspeakable acts of terrorism including the taking of hospital patients, theater goers, and even hundreds of schoolchildren as hostages. One can be certain that if there aren’t anti-gay pogroms going on in Chechnya now, there definitely would be without the likes of Kadyrov in power. In the documentary, what the Chechen leader does implicitly acknowledge may be occurring are individual honor killings within families and clans, a social problem common in other Muslim countries such as Pakistan, and certainly not a human rights issue particular to Chechnya. Many instances of honor killings in the Muslim world have included homosexuality as a motive for the extrajudicial killings by relatives of victims believed to have betrayed the family honor. On the other hand, Kadyrov himself has overseen the establishment of unprecedented reconciliation commissions to address the issue of honor culture, blood feuds and vendetta codes of Caucasian tribes. Kadyrov’s promotion of reconciliation has made significant progress in reducing such killings which were rampant during the Chechen Wars as family members would often seek to avenge the deaths of loved ones. Now that the region is in a period of relative stability, peace and economic recovery, with the once devastated city of Grozny now known as the ‘Dubai of the North Caucasus’, the West is suddenly feigning concern over human rights.

The swift end brought to the conflict by Putin was another reason for his becoming a target of Washington who had been counting on the balkanization of southern Russia. In a pinnacle of imperial projection, the explanation for Putin’s rise to power has since been revised by the Atlanticists to his having somehow secretly masterminded the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings while director of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the KGB’s successor), as if the neocons hope to deflect all of the longstanding rumors about the Bush administration and the 9/11 attacks onto the Kremlin. Except this Machiavellian conspiracy would be a lot more believable if the Chechen wars had not been going on since the early nineties, with much worse terrorist attacks already having been committed by the separatists, such as the taking of thousands of hospital patients as hostages in southern Russia. Since the end of the Chechen Wars, on the flip side the U.S. has also backed Russian opposition figure and Putin critic Alexei Navalny, a right-wing Islamophobe who has pledged to secede the North Caucasus while comparing its Muslim inhabitants to cockroaches. Despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric and minuscule 2% support among Russians, Navalny has been depicted as a “pro-democracy” and “anti-corruption” campaigner in Western media, who have been crying foul over his recent suspected poisoning in Russia and ensuing comatose airlift to Germany. If only the naive American liberals who read The New York Timesand The Washington Post had any idea that Mr. Navalny has far more in common with the dreaded Mr. Trump than Putin does.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has already experienced blowback for its nurturing of terrorism in the Caucasus in the form of the Boston Marathon bombings, which recently returned to the news when convicted Chechen-American perpetrator Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence was vacated on appeal last month. In the aftermath of the April 2013 attacks, it was revealed that Tsarnaev’s deceased older brother and co-conspirator Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been radicalized attending seminars financed by the Jamestown Foundation while traveling abroad in Tblisi, Georgia, and the brothers’ uncle Ruslan Tsarni had previously been married to the daughter of high-ranking U.S. intelligence officer Graham Fuller, Brzezinski’s CIA station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the Afghan-Soviet war. It also came to light that ‘Uncle Ruslan’ had previously worked for the CIA-linked United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and established a company called the Congress for Chechen International Organizations which funded Islamic militants in the Caucasus. Despite the astounding ‘coincidences’ surrounding the Tsarnaev clan, Uncle Ruslan was never considered a person of interest by the FBI, who had ignored warnings by the Russian FSB of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s extremism prior to the attacks.

Two years before Putin’s election, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the prime mover of the West‘s plan to dominate the globe by using Islam to bring down the USSR in delivering the Soviet equivalent of the Vietnam War, wrote in The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997):

“…The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power.” 

Those words were written before the return of both Russia and China on the world stage, developments that have thrown a monkey wrench into Washington’s plans which the Russophobic Warsaw-native did not anticipate in his blueprint for Western hegemony. When the U.S.-backed headchoppers in the Syrian war nearly had control of Damascus, just a thousand miles or so from Sochi, the threat of jihadism returning to the Caucasus became very real. Beginning at the Munich Conference in 2007, Putin had begun to criticize the monopolistic expansion of NATO on Russia’s borders — but after the subsequent overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi where Moscow witnessed Libya transformed into a hotbed of terrorism like post-Saddam Iraq, the prospect of the same happening in Syria was an existential threat that could not be tolerated. In mainstream media, reality has been inverted where Moscow’s self-defense has been portrayed as expansionism, even though the so-called “annexation” of Crimea was virtually nonviolent compared to the Nazi junta initiated by Washington in Ukraine and the Russian-speaking people of Donetsk and Luhansk who voted to join Russia did not wish to end up like those massacred in Odessa. Besides, is the U.S. not currently annexing northeast Syria? The Crimean parliament and Syrian government invited Moscow, while the same cannot be said for the US presence in violation of international law.

Those with no respect for the sovereignty of nations in Washington would prefer Americans to see Russia as an adversary. During the Cold War, the threat was communism, but with capitalism restored in Eastern Europe, it became necessary to manipulate liberals into perceiving Russia as a ultra conservative regime. They must also keep Americans from knowing the true history of US-Russia relations — that Russia was the first nation to recognize American independence when Catherine the Great’s neutrality during the Revolutionary War indirectly aided the Thirteen Colonies in their victory against the Loyalists and Great Britain. During the War of Independence, the Russian Empress had maintained relations with the U.S. and rebuffed British requests for military assistance.

The Russian Empire also later helped secure the Union victory during the Civil War, with an Imperial Navy fleet off the shores of the Pacific preventing the Confederates from landing troops on the west coast and deterring intervention by the British and the French. Then as Allies in WWII, while the U.S. was victorious in the Pacific, it was the Soviets who truly won the war in Europe, a feat the Anglo-Americans are still trying to take credit for to this day. Unfortunately, despite his promising rhetorical embrace of détente with Moscow that has made him the subject of political persecution, Donald Trump has proven to be every bit as hostile toward Russia as his forerunners. With the latest actions taken by his state department regarding Chechnya that are right out of the Brzezinski playbook, the idiom that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” certainly applies to Washington and US-Russia relations.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at [email protected]. He is frequent contributor to Global Research

A mutiny by lower-ranking military officers on August 18 in the West African state of Mali has prompted the condemnation of regional, continental and international organizations.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was forced over the national media to resign from office after being elected just two years ago.

Demonstrations against the government in Bamako, the capital, have escalated over the last few months in the aftermath of legislative elections. Opposition parties and coalitions are accusing Keita of corruption, irregularities in the elections earlier this year and with the failure to bring stability to the northern region of the country which has been the scene of an insurgency by several Islamist groupings.

The mutiny began among the soldiers at the Kati military base where columns of troops headed towards the capital seizing control of the presidential residence and national media outlets. Later the president and prime minister were not available for comment after being detained by the mutineers.

This incident drew an immediate response from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional organization of 15 governments. An announcement was made indicating that the borders of Mali with contiguous states were to be sealed and the membership of Mali in ECOWAS was effectively suspended.

Mali ECOWAS delegation fails to reach agreement with mutineers

Later the continental African Union (AU), composed of 55 member-states, followed the lead of ECOWAS by prohibiting the military regime from participating in meetings and deliberations of the organization based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, spoke out against the coup as well saying that the situation should be returned to normal under the elected civilian government in Mali.

A statement was issued by the AU Commission Chair on the situation in Mali, saying:

“The Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat strongly condemns the forced detention of the President of Mali Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, the Prime Minister and other members of the Malian Government and calls for their immediate release. The Chairperson strongly rejects any attempt at the unconstitutional change of government in Mali and calls on the mutineers to cease all recourse to violence, and calls for the respect of the country’s institutions. The Chairperson further calls on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the United Nations and the entire international community to combine our collective efforts to oppose any use of force as a means to end the political crisis in Mali.”

ECOWAS sent a delegation to meet with the coup leaders and the deposed politicians. Former Federal Republic of Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan headed the mission to Mali where talks failed to reach an agreement to return President Keita to office.

According to reports, the military forces in control of the country are seeking to remain in their positions for a period of three years. They have agreed, in principle it appears, to the release of the president and other officials. However, the reinstallation of the president has been rejected by the mutineers.

The Role of Imperialism in the Destabilization of Mali

Since 2012, the country has experienced heightened levels of violence and instability. With the imperialist war of aggression waged by the United States, NATO and its allies in the region against Libya during 2011, triggered not only mass carnage in what was then Africa’s most prosperous nation, the war which was approved by the UN Security Council in two resolutions, resulted in the increasing dislocation and conflict throughout North and West Africa.

Many Malians had taken up residence in Libya due to its economic strength and social stability prior to the overthrow of the Jamahiriya, the political system established by former leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi. During the course of the daily blanket bombing operations in Libya carried out by the Pentagon and NATO in 2011, tens of thousands of people were killed including Gaddafi, who had just two years earlier, represented the AU at the United Nations General Assembly in 2009.

These events provided an opening for rebel groupings within northern Mali to make a bid for the control of key areas inside the country. The reemergence of an unresolved regional issue in Mali involving the Tuareg population in the north placed tremendous pressure on the military to end the insurgency.

The Tuareg question in northern Mali is a direct result of the failure of France to resolve regional issues in the country prior to independence in 1960. Mali represented in its earliest phase of independence the Pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist tendencies within the liberation movements which emerged in the post-World War II period.

There have been several military conflicts over the status of the Tuareg people even at the onset of national independence in the early 1960s. Later, in 1990, Algeria mediated an end to another series of clashes through the auspices of the predecessor of the AU, the Organization of African Unity (OAU). (See this)

However, in recent years the emergence of Muslim groupings which are reportedly linked to al-Qaeda and ISIS, suggests that the objectives of these armed organizations are centered on the creation of a state controlled by Islamic law. Such tendencies within the Muslim world have their origins in geo-political regions where the U.S. is seeking hegemony.

For example in Afghanistan, it was successive Democratic and Republican administrations which armed and politically bolstered select Islamic groupings that served to undermine socialism and the role of the former Soviet Union. Later in Libya, Yemen and Syria, similar organizations waged the ground operations while Pentagon and NATO-allied bombers destroyed large swaths of territory in these states.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) carried out its first major military project in Libya by destroying the national infrastructure, expropriating the wealth of the country and consequently plunging the nation into poverty and lawlessness. AFRICOM has established military relationships with many of the AU member-states under the guise of training and the enhancement of security. Nonetheless, since the formation of AFRICOM under the administration of President George W. Bush, Jr. in 2008, the security status of many states in West and North African has deteriorated.

Mali AFRICOM presence in source of instability

Implications for a Political Settlement in Mali

Of course it will be up to the people of Mali to resolve the current political quagmire along with the assistance of ECOWAS and the AU. A coalition of opposition forces known as the M5-RFP and a broader June 5 Movement has welcomed the seizure of power by the military units.

The opposition had in recent months demanded the resignation of Keita and the entire government. Various leaders which were waging a struggle against the ousted government have been quoted as supporting the three year transitional period under the direction of the military mutineers.

A former foreign minister and member of the opposition M5 told DW that:

“What is important for us is to see that this transition delivers to the Malian people’s expectations.  This is a historic opportunity for our country. We must take time to put things back in place.”

During the period after the previous coup in 2012, the military junta did not maintain power for an extended period. The elections held after the coup resulted in Keita coming to power. Keita has been very close politically to France which deployed thousands of troops to Mali when the situation worsened in early 2013. AFRICOM facilitated the intervention by France through the utilization of the Pentagon Air Force which assisted in the transporting of military personnel and equipment. French forces are continuing to occupy Mali irrespective of the recent coup.

France has spoken against the coup along with the U.S. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen what diplomatic posture Washington and Paris will take towards the new regime in Bamako.

Both of the officers designated as leaders of the 2012 and 2020 coups were trained in the U.S. by the Pentagon. These military training programs also have an ideological and political orientation as well. The imperialist states are consistently recruiting potential allies which will adhere to the imperatives of Western foreign policy objectives.

An article published in the Washington Post emphasizes:

“Col. Assimi Goita, who emerged Thursday (Aug. 20) as the head of the junta in power, worked for years with U.S. Special Operations forces focused on fighting extremism in West Africa. He spoke regularly with U.S. troops and attended U.S.-led training exercises, said officers from both countries, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Goita, who also received training from Germany and France, according to the officers, headed Mali’s special forces unit in the country’s restive central region, where fighters linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have established a stronghold that has alarmed global leaders.”

The same pattern holds true for Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo, the leader of the 2012 putsch in Mali. Sanogo was educated in several military training centers in the U.S. The same Washington Post wrote in 2012:

“Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo, who led a renegade military faction that on Thursday deposed Mali’s democratically elected president, visited the United States several times to receive professional military education, including basic officer training, said Patrick Barnes, a U.S. Africa Command official based in Washington.”

Consequently, the struggle of the Malian people is to overcome the influence of imperialism in its internal affairs. This can also be applied to the AU region as a whole. Genuine independence cannot be secured while the Pentagon and NATO maintain dominance over military affairs.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

Conventions suggest norms, a set of accepted rules.  Behaviour is agreed upon in advance.  In the case of US political conventions, there is much cant and gaudy ceremony.  Certain transgressions are simply not contemplated.  But the Trump administration is freighted with transgression, deviation, and, in some cases, a whole set of new norms born in defiant violation.

With that pattern in mind, why stop at the Republican National Convention?  Ethics experts are aghast.  Commentators are up in arms at the behaviour of Trump officials who have gone into full electioneering mode.  The distinction between office and party campaigner has been not so much blurred as obliterated.  President Donald J. Trump, in keeping with his own extravagant reading of his office, was not campaigning as a candidate but as the President with the office at his disposal.  The White House, in short, had been mobilised in an official capacity to assist in his re-election.  Trump appointees had been enlisted in the effort.  “You’d be forgiven,” mused Rebecca Ballhaus of the Wall Street Journal, “for thinking the Republican National Convention was being hosted at the White House.”

This sparked interest in a piece of legislation that would otherwise remain part of the obscure, corroding statuary of the Republic’s laws.

“The Hatch Act was the wall standing between the government’s might and candidates,” tweeted former head of the US Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub.  “Tonight a candidate tore down that wall and wielded power for his own campaign.”  

The sum effect of the Hatch Act, which conditionally exempts the President and the Vice President, is to prohibit federal employees from participating in partisan political activity in their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election”.  Activities covered by this injunction include the official employment of the employee’s “official title while participating in political activity” while political activity is defined as “an activity directed towards the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.”    

At the Republican National Convention, such injunctions had become baubles to be ignored.  There was his pardon of Jon Ponder, convicted for bank robbery.  There was Trump’s departure from convention in giving his acceptance speech at the South Lawn of the White House, a point that commentators tried to link to a legal breach.  “It is legal,” Trump had foreshadowed with scorn.  “There is no Hatch Act because it doesn’t pertain to the president.”  

What mattered more were those employees the Hatch Act is supposedly designed to bar from such displays of partisanship.  There was US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spouting hope and praise from Jerusalem and campaigning on what was a taxpayer-funded foreign trip.  A nice touch to the whole proceedings was that in doing so, Pompeo was effectively negating the very memo he had signed off on: that Senate-confirmed officials are barred from appearing at political party conventions or convention-related events. 

In doing so, he certainly delivered a roguish cat amongst the pigeons. Former foreign policy adviser in the Obama administration Lauren Baer imaginatively concluded that this would somehow impair “the ability to conduct diplomacy free from politics”. (Where has Baer been?) Ilan Goldenberg of the Center for a New American Security was offended to “find the Secretary of State illegally deploying government resources, to use Jerusalem as a political prop to appeal to evangelicals”.  A violation of protocol and law, but an act of mercenary political marketing. 

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, in presiding over the naturalization ceremony, was even more flagrantly in breach of the Hatch Act.  The justification given to Ballhaus was that the White House “publicized the content of the event on a public website this afternoon and the campaign decided to use the publically available content for campaign purposes.”     

Wolf’s presence was enough to see US House Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Don Beyer dash off a note of concern to Henry J. Kerner of the US Office of Special Counsel.  They requested an investigation, to be conducted by the Office of Special Counsel, on whether Wolf “and other senior members of the Trump Administration violated the Hatch Act on August 25, 2020 through using their positions, official resources, and the White House itself, to participate in the Republican National Convention.”

Kerner claims to be a fan of the Hatch Act, taking issue with arguments that it is obsolete, “the federal election law equivalent of the stagecoach”.  Its principles, he argued in February this year in the Federal News Network, “are as important today as when the law first passed.”  He also warned Trump last year about violations of the Act by the president’s counselor Kellyanne Conway.  “Ms Conway has repeatedly violated the Hatch Act during her official media appearances by making statements directed at the success of your re-election campaign.”  In recommending terminating her retainer, Kerner suggested that not punishing such breaches would “send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions.” 

And so it came to pass.  Conway poured scorn on the Act.  “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”  The Trump administration, for its part, proceeded to quietly defang the Merits Systems Protection Board, the body responsible for policing the Hatchet Act and an agency of appeal for federal employees disciplined, demoted or fired. 

The Office of Special Counsel was not ignorant about the convention logistics but decided to distribute a mild note of “general advice” that did “not purport to address every situation that could result from holding a political event at the White House.”  The opinion also chose to ignore the provisions of the Hatch Act covering the president in barring him from compelling employees “to engage in … any political activity including … working … on behalf of any candidate.” 

This was too much for Shaub.  “It happened on Henry Kerner’s watch,” he fumed.  “With ample advance warning, he chose not to use the bully pulpit of his office … to object to this travesty or arm the people with detailed information about what was prohibited.”  But even he was gloomily impressed by what he considered Kerner’s devilry in attempting to deal with this mess: “he’s a fast-working fixer.”   

The Hatch Act was being made to wither with each speech, yet another relic, yet another instrument to succumb to Trumpist vanity.  White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in airing his thoughts to Politico on the subject, was brutally frank.  The Hatch Act was there for the burying.  “Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares.  They expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values, and they would expect that Barack Obama, when he was in office, that he would do the same for Democrats.”  There was much “hoopla” made about the convention only because it had “been so unbelievably successful.”  To those who breach regulations, ethics and even the law, go the spoils.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo participates in a press conference with U.S. President Donald J. Trump during the NATO Foreign Ministerial in Brussels on July 12, 2018. (State Department photo/ Public Domain)

The desire to regain sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (called “Malvinas” by the Argentines) has for decades been deeply rooted in the Argentine people. In fact, the British occupation of the territory, made possible by the English victory in the Falklands War in 1982, was never well accepted by Argentina, so that the desire of retaking the islands persists. In general, Argentine governments have kept the dream of recovering the islands alive, except for some personalities strongly associated with foreign interests, such as the former president Mauricio Macri, who has ruled the country for the past four years with a passive stance towards the British rule. In this sense, things are changing in Buenos Aires.

With Fernandez, the Argentine government is taking a more proactive stance towards the Falklands. The Malvinas Islands Affairs Council was recently created, and, with this, a new submarine territorial demarcation was established claiming Argentine sovereignty over the Islands. The Council’s main objective is to transform the cause of the reconquest of the Falkland Islands into a matter of national priority. Fernandez’s policy has a great prospective character and is not restricted to the current president’s activity. The main merit of the creation of the Council is an officialization of the Argentine state position in relation to the Islands. Now the issue is no longer subordinated to the current president’s particular opinion, but there is an official state position that must be respected by all Argentine statesmen: that Buenos Aires must reconquer the Falkland Islands.

The new Council will be led by the president and integrated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the secretary of the Chancellery of the Malvinas and a deputy and a senator appointed by each of the three blocks with the greatest parliamentary representation. In addition, it will be integrated by the governor of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands, two experts in international law, three representatives from the academic and scientific sector and some representatives of ex-combatants from the Falkland Islands War – a decision particularly celebrated among the Argentine military. As we can see, civil, political, military and academic societies are integrated into the work of the Council.

In March 2017, the United Nations approved the expansion of the Argentine maritime space in more than 1.7 million km2, which increased it to more than 6.5 million km2. This means an increase of 35% in its sovereignty area, which would give it control over the natural resources of the underwater soils and subsoils. As decided by the UN, the submarine territory will be extended from 200 nautical miles to 350. The new law strengthens sovereign rights and increases legal security in the context of the exploitation of hydrocarbons and minerals. Since 2010, oil companies have been exploring and developing hydrocarbon extraction in waters close to the islands. In March 2011, the Argentine Congress banned oil activities on the Argentine continental shelf without “authorization”, which the United Kingdom described as illegal.

The new government’s foreign policy seems quite bold, but consistent with the current geopolitical reality. Fernandez is ending the four-year cycle of a conciliatory policy with British occupation and beginning a journey in search of the recovery of the Islands. From the point of view of international law, Fernandez’s attitude may be questionable, since British sovereignty is now recognized, however, a deeper investigation will lead to the question of how such British sovereignty over the region took place. The Islands have been under dispute since at least 1833. In the 1980s, with the war, the British consolidated their dominance in the region by the use of force. However, claims about the place differ. Not only Argentina, but even Spain has already claimed to have rights over the region. In fact, British law is currently recognized in the Islands, but it is not known how such recognition actually arose – there is no treaty or any other legitimate origin of British domination outside of military occupation and war, which are not recognized by international law – so Argentina is right to claim sovereignty over this region, since it lies within the territorial limits of the Argentine maritime space.

Sovereignty over the Falkland Islands would guarantee Buenos Aires control over an area rich in natural resources, conducive to fishing, commercial navigation and advanced scientific research, with notorious proximity to the Antarctic territory. The reasons that lead Argentines and British to seek the Islands are the same and as long as there is no reason to actually determine a legitimate origin of British control Argentina will have the right to claim sovereignty over a region within its territorial limits.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

***

The World is being misled concerning the causes and consequences of the corona crisis.

The COVID-19 crisis is marked by a public health “emergency” under WHO auspices which is being used as a pretext and a  justification to triggering a Worldwide process of economic, social and political restructuring. 

Social engineering is being applied. Governments are pressured into extending the lockdown, despite its devastating economic and social consequences.

What is happening is unprecedented in World history. 

Prominent scientists support the lockdown without batting an eyelid, as a “solution” to a global health emergency.

Amply documented, the estimates of the COVID-19 infection including mortality data are grossly manipulated. 

In turn, people are obeying their governments. Why? Because they are afraid? 

Causes versus solutions?

The closing down of national economies applied Worldwide will inevitably result in poverty, mass unemployment and an increase in mortality.

It’s an act of economic warfare.  It’s an unspoken crime against humanity.

Stage One: Trade War against China

On January  30, 2020 the WHO Director General determined that the coronavirus outbreak constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The decision was taken on the basis of 150 confirmed cases outside China, First cases of person to person transmission: 6 cases in the US, 3 cases in Canada, 2 in the UK.

The WHO Director General had the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Big Pharma and the World Economic Forum (WEF). The decision for the WHO to declare a Global Emergency was taken on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland  (January 21-24).

One day later (January 31) following the launch of the WHO Global Emergency, The Trump administration announced that it will deny entry to foreign nationals “who have traveled in China in the last 14 days”. This immediately triggered a crisis in air transportation, China-US trade as well as the tourism industry. Italy followed suit, cancelling all flights to China on January 31.

The first stage was accompanied by the disruption of trade relations with China as well as a partial closedown of export manufacturing sector.

A campaign was immediately launched against China as well ethnic Chinese. The Economist reported that

“The coronavirus spreads racism against and among ethnic Chinese”

“Britain’s Chinese community faces racism over coronavirus outbreak”

According to the SCMP:

“Chinese communities overseas are increasingly facing racist abuse and discrimination amid the coronavirus outbreak. Some ethnic Chinese people living in the UK say they experienced growing hostility because of the deadly virus that originated in China.”

And this phenomenon is happening all over the U.S.

Stage Two: The Financial Crash Spearheaded by Fear and Stock Market Manipulation

A global financial crisis unfolded in the course of the month of February culminating in a dramatic collapse of stock market values as well as a major decline in the value of crude oil.

This collapse was manipulated. It was the object of insider trading and foreknowledge. The fear campaign played a key role in the implementation of the stock market crash. In February, roughly $6 trillion have been wiped off the value of stock markets Worldwide. Massive losses of personal savings (e.g. of average Americans) have occurred not to mention corporate failures and bankruptcies. It was a bonanza for institutional speculators including corporate hedge funds. The financial meltdown has led to sizeable transfers of money wealth into the pockets of a handful of financial institutions.

Stage Three: Lockdown, Confinement, Closing Down of  the Global Economy

The financial crash in February was immediately followed by the lockdown in early March. The lockdown and confinement supported by social engineering was instrumental in the restructuring of the global economy. Applied almost simultaneously in a large number countries, the lockdown has triggered the closing down of the national economy, coupled with the destabilization of trade, transport and investment activities.

The pandemic constitutes an act of economic warfare against humanity which has resulted in global poverty and mass unemployment.

Politicians are lying. Neither the lockdown nor the closing down of national economies constitute a solution to the public health crisis.

Who Controls the Politicians?

Why are politicians lying?

They are the political instruments of the financial establishment including the “Ultra-rich philanthropists”. Their task is to carry out the global economic restructuring project which consists in freezing economic activity Worldwide.

In the case of the Democrats in the US, they are largely concerned in opposing the reopening of the US economy as part of the 2020 election campaign. This opposition to reopening the national and global economies is supported by “Big Money”.

Is it opportunism or stupidity? In all major regions of the World, politicians have been instructed by powerful financial interests to retain the lockdown and prevent the re-opening of the national economy.

The fear campaign prevails. Social distancing is enforced. The economy is closed down.  Totalitarian measures are being imposed. According to Dr. Pascal Sacré

… in some countries, patients can leave hospital by agreeing to wear an electronic bracelet. This is only a sample of all the totalitarian measures planned or even already decided by our governments in favor of the coronavirus crisis. It goes much further, it’s limitless and it affects a good part of the world, if not the whole world.
.

The “Herding Instincts” of Politicians

Are corrupt governments acting like “police dogs” with “herding instincts” going after their sheep.

Is “the herd” too scared to go after their “government”?

The analogy may be simplistic but nonetheless considered relevant by psychologists.

“Some breeds of dogs [corrupt politicians] have herding instincts that can be brought out with the right training and encouragement [bribes]. …. teach your dog [political proxy] basic obedience and see if it [he, she] displays herding tendencies. … Always look for a trainer who uses reward-based training methods [bribes, personal gain, political support, accession to high office]” (How to Teach Your Dog to Herd)

But there is another dimension. Politicians in high office responsible for “convincing their herd” actually believe the lies which are being imposed upon them by higher authority.

The lie becomes the truth. Politicians endorse the consensus, they enforce “social engineering”, they believe in their own lies.

It’s Not an Epidemic, It’s An Operation

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo  (slip of the tongue) tacitly admits in a somewhat contradictory statement that the COVID-19 is a “Live Exercise”, an “Operation”:

“This is not about retribution,… This matter is going forward — we are in a live exercise here to get this right.”

To which president Trump retorted “you should have told us”.

Those words will go down in history.

Geopolitics

Let us be under no illusions, this is a carefully planned operation. There is nothing spontaneous or accidental. Economic recession is engineered at national and global levels. In turn, this crisis is also integrated into US-NATO military and intelligence planning. It is intent not only upon weakening China, Russia and Iran, it also consists in destabilizing the economic fabric of the European Union (EU).

“Global Governance”

A new stage in the evolution of global capitalism is unfolding. A system of  “Global Governance” controlled by powerful financial interests including corporate foundations and Washington think tanks oversees decision-making at both the national and global levels. National governments become subordinate to “Global Governance”. The concept of World Government was raised by the late David Rockefeller at the Bilderberger Meeting, Baden Germany, June 1991:

 “We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. … It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” (quoted by Aspen Times, August 15, 2011, emphasis added)

 .

In his Memoirs David Rockefeller states:

 .

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure, one world if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” (Ibid)

 .

The Global Governance scenario imposes a totalitarian agenda of social engineering and economic compliance. It constitutes an extension of the neoliberal policy framework imposed on both developing and developed countries. It consists in scrapping “national autodetermination” and constructing a Worldwide nexus of pro-US proxy regimes controlled by a “supranational sovereignty” (World Government) composed of leading financial institutions, billionaires and their philanthropic foundations.

 .

The 2010 Rockefeller Foundation’s  “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development Area” produced together with Global Business Monitoring Network, GBN) had already outlined the features of  Global Governance and the actions to be taken in relation to a Worldwide Pandemic.  The Rockefeller Foundation proposes the use of scenario planning as a means to carry out “global governance”.

The Report envisages (p 18) a simulation of a Lock Step scenario including a global virulent influenza strain:

.

“LOCK STEP: A world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike 2009’s H1N1, this new influenza strain—originating from wild geese—was extremely virulent and deadly. Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly overwhelmed when the virus streaked around the world, infecting nearly 20 percent of the global population and killing. 8 million in just seven months”

–

It is worth noting that this simulation was envisaged in the year following the 2009 H1N1 Swine flu Pandemic, which was revealed to be a totally corrupt endeavor under the auspices of the WHO in liaison the Big Pharma which developed a multibillion dollar vaccine program. (Remember the “Fake” 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 02, 2020) 

“World Government”

Instructions are transmitted to national governments worldwide.  The fear campaign plays a crucial role in building acceptance and social submission to this “supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and bankers”.

Global governance establishes a consensus which is then imposed on “sovereign” national governments Worldwide, described by David Rockefeller as “national auto-determination practiced in past centuries”.  Essentially, this is an extended form of “regime change”.

Thousands of politicians and officials must be convinced and/or bribed for this operation to succeed. It’s an unsubtle form of “political arm twisting” (while respecting “social distancing”).

The decision to close down the global economy with a view to “saving lives” has not only been accepted as a means to combating the virus, it has been sustained by media disinformation and the fear campaign.

People do not question the consensus, a consensus which borders on the absurd.

.

Global Capitalism and “The Economic Landscape”

The crisis redefines the structure of the global economic landscape. It destabilizes small and medium sized enterprises Worldwide, it  precipitates entire sectors of the global economy including air travel, tourism, retail trade, manufacturing, etc. into bankruptcy.  The lockdown creates famine in developing countries. It has geopolitical implications.

The Pentagon and US intelligence are involved. The corona crisis affects to conduct of US-NATO led wars in the Middle East including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and Yemen. It is also used to target specific countries including Iran and Venezuela.

This engineered crisis is unprecedented in world history. It is an act of war.

The lockdown triggers a process of disengagement of human and material resources from the productive process. The real economy is brought to a standstill. Curtailing economic activity undermines the “reproduction of real life”. This not only pertains to the actual production of the “necessities of life” (food, health, education, housing) it also pertains to the “reproduction” of  social relations, political institutions, culture, national identity. At the time of writing, the lockdown is not only triggering an economic crisis, it is also undermining and destroying the very fabric of civil society not to mention the nature of government and the institutions of the state (crippled by mounting debts), which will eventually be privatized under the supervision of Big Money creditors.

There are conflicts within the capitalist system which are rarely addressed by the mainstream media. Billionaires, powerful banking and financial institutions (which are creditors of both governments and corporations) are waging an undeclared war against the real economy. Whereas the Big Money financial and banking establishment are “creditors”, the  corporate entities of the real economy which are being destabilized and driven into bankruptcy are “debtors”.

Bankruptcies

This diabolical process is not limited to wiping out small and medium sized enterprises. Big Money is also the creditor of  large corporations (including airlines, hotel chains, hi tech labs, retailers, import-export firms, etc.) which are now on the verge of bankruptcy.

The global financial establishment is not monolithic. It is marked by divisions and rivalry. The dominant Big Money faction seeks to destabilize its competitors from within. The results of which would be a string of  bankruptcies of regional and national banking institutions as well as a process of global financial consolidation.

In the US, numerous retailers, airlines, restaurant and hotel chains filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February. But this is just the beginning. The big gush of bankruptcies will occur in the wake of the lockdown (“The New Normal”). And at the time of writing, the financial establishment is relentlessly pressuring (corrupt) national governments to postpone the lifting of the lockdown. And the governments are telling us that this is to “protect people against the virus”.

Canada’s province of Alberta which is largely dependent on oil revenues is bankrupt.

“Countries that represent over 50 per cent of the world’s global GDP are closed for business. Economists looking for historical comparisons mention the 1929 stock crash, the 1974 economic crisis or the 2008 recession. But they admit that these all fall short of the toll that this pandemic could have.” (Wired News UK, April 29, 2020

In Britain, recent reports state (It’s very British”) “we do not know how many have gone bankrupt”.

What these reports fail to mention are the unspoken causes: a fear campaign on behalf of the creditors, instructions by corrupt governments to close down the economy, allegedly to “save lives”, which is a big lie. Lives are not being saved, and they know it.

The coronavirus crisis “has ground U.S. business to a halt”. National economies are destabilized. The objective of Big Money is to weaken their competitors, “pick up the pieces” and eventually buy out or eliminate bankrupt corporations. And there are many to choose from.

Global Finance Capitalism

The interests of Big Money (global financial interests) overlap with those of Big Pharma, Big Oil, The Media, The Telecoms, the Defense contractors, etc. Major banking institutions in the US including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, State Street Co. and Goldman Sachs, are investing in the war economy including the development of nuclear weapons under Trump’s 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program (first established under Obama). 

The ultimate objective of “Big Money” is to transform nation states (with their own institutions and a national economy) into “open economic territories”. That was the fate of Iraq and Afghanistan. But now you can do it without sending in troops, by simply ordering subservient proxy governments integrated by corrupt politicians to close down their economy on humanitarian grounds, the so-called “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) without the need for military intervention.

Impossible to estimate or evaluate. More than half the global economy is disrupted or at a standstill.

Let’s be clear. This is an imperial agenda. What do the global financial elites want? To privatize the State? To own and privatize the entire planet?

The tendency is towards the centralization and concentration of economic power. Heavily indebted national governments are instruments of Big Money. They are proxies. Key political appointments are controlled by lobby groups representing Wall Street, The Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the Corporate Media and the Digital Communications Giants, etc.

Big Money in Europe and America (through Washington Lobby groups) seek to control national governments.

In what direction are we going? What is the future of humanity? The current corona crisis is a sophisticated imperial project, which consists in Worldwide domination by a handful of multibillion dollar conglomerates. Is this World War III? Global capitalism is destroying national capitalism.

The unspoken intent of global capitalism is the destruction of the nation state and its institutions leading to global poverty on an unprecedented scale.

The following citation by Lenin dated December 1915 at the height of the First World War pointed with foresight to some of the contradictions which we are presently facing. On the other hand, we should understand that there are no easy solutions and that this crisis is intended to reinforce imperialism and the clutch of global capitalism:
.

“There is no doubt that the development is going in the direction of a single World trust which will swallow up all enterprises and all states without exception. But the development in this direction is proceeding under such stress, with such a tempo, with such contradictions, conflicts and convulsions not only economical, but political national, etc. etc — that before a single world trust will be reached, before the respective financial national capitals will have formed a “World Union” of ultra imperialism, imperialism will explode and capitalism will turn into its opposite.

(V. I. Lenin, Introduction to Imperialism and World Economy by N, Bukharin, Martin Lawrence, London, printed in the US, Russian Edition, November 1917)

How to reverse the tide. The first priority is to repeal the lie.

In this regard, it is unfortunate that many people who are “progressive” (including prominent Left intellectuals) are –despite the lies–  supportive of the lockdown and closing down of the economy as a solution to the public health emergency. That’s the stance of the Democratic Party in the US, which goes against common sense.

Truth is a powerful weapon for repealing the lies of the corporate media and the governments.

When the Lie Becomes the Truth There is No Moving Backwards

Without the fear campaign and media propaganda, the actions taken by our governments would not have a leg to stand on.

“Social Distancing” does not prevent the financial elites from providing instructions to corrupt politicians.

On the other hand, “social distancing” combined with confinement is being used as a means of social subordination. It prevents people from meeting as well as protesting this so-called New World Order.

Organization, Truth and Solidarity are essential to reversing the tide. The first step of a worldwide movement is “counter-propaganda”.

---

Related articles

2009 H1N1 Vaccine Caused Brain Damage in Children. Dr. Anthony Fauci on “Vaccine Safety” Issues

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 03, 2020

After the Lockdown: A Global Coronavirus Vaccination Program…

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 25, 2020

Todo mês de agosto a liderança do Partido Comunista Chinês converge para a cidade de Beidaihe, um resort à beira-mar a duas horas de distância de Pequim, a fim de discutir políticas importantes que se fundem posteriormente em planejamento estratégico crucial que será depois aprovado na sessão plenária do Comitê Central do Partido em outubro.

Ninguém menos que Mao, o Grande Timoneiro, estabeleceu o ritual em Beidaihe, cidade que ele amava e onde, não por acaso, o Imperador Qin, unificador da China no século terceiro antes de Cristo mantinha um palácio.

Como até agora o ano de 2020 é notoriamente o Ano de Viver Perigosamente, não é surpresa nenhuma que neste ano, nada havia para ver em Beidaihe. Mesmo assim, essa invisibilidade não significa que nada aconteceu.

Prova 1: o premiê Li Keqiang simplesmente desapareceu das vistas do público por quase duas semanas – depois que o presidente Xi Jinping comandou uma reunião crucial do Politburo no final de julho onde se definiu nada menos que todo o desenvolvimento estratégico chinês para os próximos 15 anos.

Li Keqiang reapareceu para coordenar uma sessão especial do todo-poderoso Conselho de Estado, justo quando o principal ideólogo do Partido Comunista Chinês, Wang Huning – número 5 do Politburo – surgiu como convidado especial em um encontro da Federação da Juventude Chinesa (ACYF [All China Youth Federation], na sigla em inglês – NT).

Ainda mais intrigante, lado a lado com Wang, poder-se-ia encontrar Ding Xuexiang, nada menos que o Chefe de Gabinete do Presidente Xi, assim como outros três membros do Politburo.

Nesta espécie de “agora estou aqui, agora não estou mais” o fato de que todos surgiram ao mesmo tempo, depois de uma ausência de quase duas semanas, levou astutos observadores chineses a concluir que Beidaihe na realidade aconteceu. Mesmo que nenhuma ação política tenha sido detectada à beira-mar. A dica semioficial é que, por causa da Covid-19 não houve reuniões presenciais ou confraternizações.

Porém, é a prova 2 que pode ser definitiva. O já famoso encontro do Politburo no final de julho, liderado por Xi Jinping, delineou de fato a sessão plenária do Comitê Central em outubro. Tradução: os contornos do roteiro que será seguido já tinham sido aprovados por consenso. Não havia necessidade de outras discussões em Beidaihe.

Política oficial ou balões de ensaio?

O caldo entorna quando se considera uma série de balões de ensaio que começaram a surgir poucos dias depois na mídia chinesa. Mostro alguns pontos principais:

1. No front da guerra comercial, Pequim não expulsará as companhias (norte)americanas já operando na China, mas aquelas que querem entrar nos mercados financeiros, de informação tecnológica e de serviços de saúde e educação não serão aprovadas.
2. Pequim não se desfará de uma vez só da esmagadora quantia de títulos do Tesouro (norte)americano que detém, porém – como já acontece – acelerará a alienação dos ativos. Ano passado, o total ficou em $100 bilhões de dólares. Prevê-se que até o final de 2020 o total pode chegar a $300 bilhões.
3. Previsivelmente, também será acelerada a internacionalização do Yuan. No pacote, a configuração final dos parâmetros para a compensação de dólares dos Estados Unidos através do sistema chinês CIPS – já prevendo a possibilidade vulcânica de que Pequim seja expulsa do sistema SWIFT pela administração Trump ou seja lá quem for a ocupar a Casa Branca após janeiro de 2021.
4. No que foi amplamente interpretado através da China como o front da “guerra de amplitude total”, principalmente híbrida, o Exército de Liberação Popular (People’s Liberation Army – PLA, na sigla em inglês – NT) foi colocado em alerta 3 – e todas as licenças foram canceladas até o final de 2020. Aceleração do desenvolvimento de armas nucleares e aumento do gasto com a defesa até 4% do PIB serão objetos de esforço conjunto da nação. Os detalhes deverão ser entregues durante o encontro do Comitê Central em outubro.
5. Colocar-se-á ênfase total no espírito chinês de autossuficiência independente e na construção do que pode ser definido como o sistema de “circulação econômica dupla”: consolidação do projeto de integração eurasiana paralelamente com a instalação do mecanismo de liquidez global do Yuan

No cerne desse caminho existe o que foi descrito como “o abandono firme de todas as ilusões quanto aos Estados Unidos e a condução de mobilização de guerra do povo chinês. Temos que promover a batalha para resistir às agressões dos Estados Unidos (…) a mentalidade de guerra orientará a condução da economia nacional (…) estejam preparados para a completa interrupção das relações com os Estados Unidos.”

Pelo que se observa até agora, ainda não está claro se são apenas balões de ensaio lançados para a opinião pública chinesa ou decisões reais alcançadas pela Beidaihe “invisível”. Assim, todos os olhos estão postos na forma pela qual essa tremenda configuração será apresentada quando o Comitê Central trouxer à luz seu planejamento estratégico em outubro. Significativamente, acontecerá faltando apenas algumas semanas para as eleições nos Estados Unidos.

É tudo uma questão de não parar

Todo o exposto até aqui espelha um debate recente em Amsterdã sobre o que configura a “ameaça” chinesa ao ocidente. Aqui, alguns pontos principais.

1. A China nunca se cansa de reforçar seu modelo econômico híbrido – uma absoluta raridade global: nem totalmente público, nem economia de mercado.
2. É espantoso o nível do patriotismo chinês: uma vez que o país esteja encarando inimigo externo, 1,4 bilhões de pessoas agem em uníssono.
3. Mecanismos nacionais tem força tectônica: absolutamente nada consegue parar o uso total dos recursos financeiros, materiais e humanos uma vez estabelecida determinada política.
4. A China conseguiu instalar o mais abrangente sistema industrial contínuo do planeta, sem interferência estrangeira, mesmo eventualmente necessária (bem, restaram algumas questões relativas a semicondutores para a Huawei resolver).

O planejamento da China alcança décadas, não apenas anos. Planos quinquenais são complementados por planos para uma década e até para os próximos 15 anos, como mostrou o encontro presidido por Xi Jinping. A Inciativa Cinturão e Estrada (BRI, na sigla em inglês [Belt and Road Initiative] – NT) foi pensado com um plano para realização em quase 40 anos, concebido em 2013 para ser finalizado em 2049.

E o nome do jogo é continuidade – quando se pensa que os Cinco princípios da coexistência pacífica, desenvolvidos nos idos de 1949 e depois expandidos por Zhou Enlai na Conferência de Bandung em 1955, são as inabaláveis guias orientadoras da política externa do país.

O grupo independente coletividade Qiao que viabiliza o papel de qiao (ponte) junto aos huaqiao (“chineses de além mar”), estrategicamente importantes, acerta na mosca quando destaca que Pequim jamais promoveu o modelo chinês como solução para os problemas globais. Do que o país se orgulha é das soluções chinesas para condições específicas do país.

Também destacam a força da argumentação de que o materialismo histórico é incompatível com a democracia liberal capitalista, que força austeridade e mudança de regime em sistemas nacionais, impondo modelos preconcebidos.

Isso sempre leva de volta ao núcleo da política externa do Partido Comunista Chinês: cada nação deve traçar o seu próprio curso, dadas as condições nacionais.

Assim, emergem todos os contornos do que pode ser descrito racionalmente como uma Meritocracia Centralizada com Características Socialistas Confucianas: um paradigma civilizacional diferente, que a “nação indispensável” ainda se recusa a aceitar e que com certeza não conseguirá abolir através de Guerra Híbrida.

Pepe Escobar

Artigo original em inglês :

China: Everything Proceeding According to Plan, Complete Interruption of Relations with US?

asiatimes.com

Tradução de btpsilveira

The British government had plans to test everyone in the country for coronavirus every week by October – and it’s handed most of the work to the global accountancy firm Deloitte, openDemocracy can reveal. Labour MP Clive Lewis has dubbed the deal “potentially the biggest NHS privatisation in history”.

Last week, civil servants were instructed to carry out the plan for all 68 million people in the UK to be tested weekly, according to a senior civil service source familiar with the conversations. The ambitious cross-departmental plan, dubbed Operation Moonshot, anticipated a second peak of COVID-19 in the winter.

Civil servants greeted the scheme with widespread incredulity, given the government’s previous record on testing and tracing, which has lagged well behind most other leading economies.

Those tasked with implementing the plan expressed doubt that it was even possible. One senior source told openDemocracy: “We all double-checked the figures,” and they described the plans as “crazy”.

The source also informed openDemocracy that Deloitte was being given the contract to deliver more than half of the work.

Clive Lewis said:

“Why not give the contract to the NHS?” adding: “It’s too easy to get the impression that this government will hand out contracts to whoever happens to be mates with the right minister.”

In the week since civil servants were instructed to make plans for weekly testing, the government has already seriously scaled back Project Moonshot, from testing 10 million people a day to 4 million a day – a reduction of over 40 million a week. It has also pushed back the plan’s target delivery date to February 2021, in recognition of the incredible scale of the challenge: “Timelines have already slipped,” conceded one source.

Whilst there is widespread support for more aggressive action against the pandemic, openDemocracy understands there is considerable cynicism across government agencies at the resources being ploughed into ministers’ ambitious, headline-grabbing targets, which are widely seen as unrealistic.

The original plan required UK testing capacity to rise from 326,000 tests a day at present to nearly 10 million. It would have involved the UK’s already overstretched labs multiplying their capacity by 31 times, within six to ten weeks.

Even the revised target involves completing twelve times as many tests a day. Asked about this capacity problem, a senior government planner sarcastically replied to openDemocracy: “Capacity is somehow solved by reducing the accuracy of the test.”

All this comes in the midst of a major reorganisation of health authorities, with plans leaked in last week’s Sunday Times for Public Health England to be scrapped next month, and replaced with a new National Institute for Health. The new institute, designed by McKinsey consultants on a £563,000 contract, is likely to play a leading role in delivering the testing plans.

The scheme also raises questions around compulsion. Health secretary Matt Hancock has already said he does rule out compulsory testing, but the sheer scale of the new plan comes as a surprise, and there are serious concerns around forcing groups such as children to be tested.

There are also huge uncertainties around how enforcement would work, what any new legislation would say, what criminal penalties could be applied for non-compliance and whether police forces have the time or inclination to enforce the scheme.

In recent weeks, openDemocracy has revealed a string of controversiesaround companies linked to the Conservative Party leadership being handed major contracts.

There are currently fifteen workstreams within Project Moonshot. Eight have been handed to Deloitte. Other workstreams are in the hands of the Ministry of Defence, plus at least one other well-known private-sector consultancy.

Two days ago, Matt Hancock likened population-wide testing to a “moonshot” – an acknowledgement of the government’s codeword for the plan.

Deloitte didn’t provide a comment for this article, referring us to the Cabinet Office.

Update, 22 Aug: the Cabinet Office passed our inquiries to the Department for Health and Social Care, who have now said “we will continue to challenge capacity, and have routinely set and met ambitious targets”, and that they have announced a series of testing pilots. 

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Ireland is leading a movement.  

The Statistics are manipulated.

More people will die as a result of the closing down of the global economy.  

No justification for the schools to be closed down. 

No justification to wearing a face mask.

According to Dr. Russell Blaylock: by wearing a face mask, “the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain.”

Something is wrong in the Russian government and in the governments of former Soviet Republics. 

In 2014, the president of Ukraine stood aside and disarmed his police and Putin went off to the Olympics, while Washington-financed “Maidan protests” overthrew the Ukrainian government.  Now it seems to be happening again in Belarus.

One would think that after Ukraine, Belarus and Russia would clamp down on their traitorous internal oppositions financed and led by Washington.  But no. They continue to permit a Washington-funded operation to overthrow themselves.

The Russian and Belarus governments permit oppositions that are financed by Washington and serve as agents for Washington to challenge their every election, action and decision.  This is the behavior of governments that have no sense of self-preservation.

The Russian government even fell into the trap laid for them when they agreed to send opposition leader Navalny to Germany to be treated for a serious health condition that developed while Navalny was traveling by airliner from Tomsk to Moscow.

There was an emergency landing of the airliner in Omsk and Nalvany was rushed to a Russian hospital where his life was saved. But Washington-financed “opposition leaders” alleged Navalny had been poisoned and demanded he be sent from the Russian hospital to Germany for investigation and treatment.

It was deplorable enough for the Russian government to allow itself to be put in a situation that implied public acknowledgement that German medicine was superor to Russian medicine and that Nalvany was unsafe in a Russian hospital. But how could the Russian government have overlooked that in Washington-controlled Germany Navalny would be declared to have been poisoned on Putin’s orders? It was completely obvious that this would happen. See this.

If Russia wanted Navalny dead, why was there an emergency landing of the airliner?  Why not simply let him die on the flight? But facts don’t matter in propaganda operations.  Will the Russians ever learn?  MH-17, the poisoning of the Skripals, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin conspiracy with Trump to steal the US presidential election, Russian bounties paid to Taliban to kill US troops occupying Afghanistan.  Russia this, Russia that.  It is endless. Each time the Russians take refuge in the facts to no avail.

As the Russian doctors saved Nalvany’s life, there was no reason to enable another poisoning case against Putin by sending him off to Germany.  The Russian government would do much better if it ignored the various false charges instead of responding to them.  When it responds, it just keeps the story alive so that it reaches more people.

Perhaps the Russian government will listen to Belarusian president Lukashenko who says that the forces directing the ongoing political crisis in Belarus are aiming to attack Russia next—see this.

Yes, they are.

Addendum: A likely explanation, see this.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Everything is so uncertain around the world that the international community craves some semblance of structural stability around which they can rebuild their economies. China and the US’ reaffirmation of their trade deal fulfills this much-needed role, which in turn enables decision makers and entrepreneurs alike to continue implementing their economic recovery plans. Had the US declined to discuss this deal, then everyone would have probably panicked and the global economy might have worsened.

Irony is dead, or at least one might think so by observing several articles about Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar’s recent re-nomination. Article after article references her statement that U.S. officials’ support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins”, and then references her erstwhile opponent, one Antone Melton-Meaux as ‘bankrolled by pro-Israel donors”. Omar complained, more than once, about Israel’s influence on U.S. elections, a charge that, even to the most politically naïve, must be seen as legitimate.

But such dichotomies are overlooked by a media that certainly would like to see progressive members of Congress defeated. Prior to Tuesday’s election, headlines such as ‘lhan Omar’s Career on the Line in Tough Primary (Politico); ‘Ilhan Omar Fights for Political Survival (USA Today), and “Is Ilhan Omar One and Done? Why She Could Lose the August Primary’ (The Hill) all predicted a close election, with the definite possibility of Omar’s defeat. Today, with 100% of the votes counted, she won with 57.44%; her next closest competitor, Melton-Meaux, received 39.18%: hardly a nail-biter.

Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib faced similar daunting headlines, before besting her opponent by almost 50%; she garnered 71,703 votes compared to her opponent’s 36,493 votes. One must wonder why the self-proclaimed pundits didn’t see such an overwhelming victory coming.

And so it goes. One can understand the ‘fight for her life’ or ‘tough primary race’ when the outcome is within a few percentage points; that amount, in pre-election polls, usually indicates a very close race since most polls are only accurate within a small number of percentage points. It is rare, but not unheard of, that an election seen to be very close turns out not to be, or the anticipated victor winds up being defeated. But with progressive incumbents, it seems that their defeat in a primary election is all but guaranteed by a corporate-owned media that will do the government’s bidding. Does predicting such an outcome make it so? Apparently not.

One might take exception to the idea that the media follows lockstep what the government wants. After all, don’t many outlets criticize Donald Trump relentlessly? Don’t they document his constant lies, his blatant racism and his very obvious misogyny?

Certainly, they do. But how much opposition do they demonstrate against the bloated military budget?

Why did they not, like their European counterparts, decimate his ‘Deal of the Century’, which provides Israel everything it could possibly dream of, and Palestinians their worst nightmare? Why have they not continually decried the U.S. violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord or from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia? Why has the media not continually pointed out the hypocrisy of a nation that claims to support the right of self-determination around the world, as it maintains brutal sanctions against Venezuela and Iran for claiming that right? Trump says that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is not a legitimate president; why does the media not emphasize that Trump himself became president when nearly 3,000,000 more citizens voted for his opponent than for him?

Let’s add to this dysfunctional media mix the Republican Party’s attempts at voter suppression. Yes, everyone is all agog over Trump’s attempts to defund the USPS, so that mailed-in ballots will not be counted. How will this help him and his fellow Republicans? We will break it down for the reader:

1. More Democrats than Republicans accept that coronavirus is real and contagious.
2. Therefore, more Democrats than Republicans will hesitate to wait in line at a crowded polling place, knowing that many people on that same line will not social-distance, or wear a mask.
3. As a result, more Democrats than Republicans will want to vote by mail. If they are not able to do so, many will not risk their health, and will simply remain at home.
4. Voila! Voter suppression.

While this particular method of suppressing the Democratic vote is new, the concept isn’t. Requiring photo identification, which lower-income and poor people (who generally vote Democratic) often don’t have and requiring university students (who also generally vote Democratic; does anyone see a pattern here?) to vote in their home district rather than at school are just two ways Republicans use to suppress the Constitutionally-promised right to vote.

Let us summarize:

• The corporate media does its darnedest to portray non-progressive candidates as potential winners, stating, against the evidence, that the progressive opponent is in deep trouble for re-election.
• The Republican Party apparatus does its darnedest to suppress Democratic votes, despite the blatant violation of the Constitution, which they all proclaim to hold sacred, second only (if that) to the Bible, another document they are willing to spit on for their own purposes.
• Donald Trump, arguably the most corrupt and out-of-control president the nation has ever seen (yes, this even includes Richard Nixon), seems to have cast a spell on the Republican Party, causing them to overlook his ethics violations (this writer was astounded to see Goya products lined up on the desk in the Oval Office), abuse of executive orders, and blatant racism and misogyny. Nixon himself was unable to achieve such a feat, resigning the presidency with the sure knowledge that he’d be removed in a senate trial, with most, if not all, of the Republican senators likely to vote against him.

Likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden only looks good in comparison to Trump. There is nothing even slightly progressive about him; he will maintain the pro-Israel, pro-police, pro-war, pro-wealthy philosophies of his many predecessors, to hell with what the people want.

This writer has long since surrendered, and repented of, his ‘vote for the lesser of two evils’ mantra. The lesser evil is still evil. He will cast his vote for the La Riva – Peltier ticket, which has no chance of victory. But the Party for Socialism and Liberation offers candidates and a no-nonsense platform he can believe in, so his political donations, time and vote will go with them. ‘Lesser of two evil’ voting only validates a broken and corrupt system. It is long past time for it to end.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Robert Fantina is an activist and journalist, working for peace and social justice. A U.S. citizen, he moved to Canada shortly after the 2004 presidential election, and now holds dual citizenship. He serves on the boards of Canadians for Palestinian Rights, and Canadians for Justice in Kashmir, and is the former Canadian Coordinator of World Beyond War. He has written the books Empire, Racism and Genocide: A  History of U.S. Foreign Policy and Essays on Palestine.

Featured image is from American Free Press

The narrative of “regime change in Iran” has turned into a profitable industry run by those who indoctrinate White House officials with misperceptions about the course of events in Iran, and by doing so, mislead US policies vis-à-vis Tehran. Indeed,  the brokers’ profits from the “regime change industry” are ever expanding.

When it comes to policymaking towards Iran, White House officials are always torn between two options: considering the existing facts and realities on the ground or following their own aspirations and illusions. Although choosing the wrong option has often been more convenient than the right one.  In fact, owing to the repetition of pointless, interventionist and hostile strategies like “regime change” in the statements of US officials, the spirit of US-Iran relations have become intertwined with constant hostility.

Remarks made by US officials, indicate how much US assessments of Iran’s actual situation at domestic, regional, and international levels are far from reality and are founded on the illusions of the anti-Iran lobby groups.

Hence, referring to the realities of Iran’s current situation may make the US officials more mindful of what might ensue from the persistence of US hostile policies against Iran.

1. It is true that US maximum pressure campaign have targeted Iran’s economic structure. They have, however, failed to “bring Iran to its knees,” so to speak.

Undoubtedly, Iran’s economy has undergone difficult circumstances due to the US financial and economic sanctions, coupled with European countries’ inaction. More importantly, because of the consequent problems in money transfers with Iran, many necessary goods especially in the healthcare sector are not allowed to enter Iran – an issue that has led to the suffering of thousands of innocent Iranians fighting EB or the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nevertheless, dealing with harsh economic and social conditions is not an unexpected matter in any country whose revenues have plummeted significantly and has encountered difficulties in import and export of goods, hence, Iran is not an exception.

In spite of some US officials’ hope for widespread domestic discontent in Iran, Iran’s development indicators are not only high compared to many countries in the region, but also very close to international standards. In fact, Iranian people’s access to many indicators of social welfare, such as education, healthcare, insurance, and transportation network is much above-average.

Over recent years, various Iranian governments have adopted effective measures to promote social justice and improve welfare indicators for the general public and have generally designed and implemented appropriate mechanisms to increase efficiency.

Furthermore, progressive policies are currently on the government’s agenda: the banking and financial system is being amended so as to support businesses and startups, the all-inclusive insurance system is providing widespread support to the workforce, the procedures for starting a business are speedily getting shorter, the mechanisms of the tax system are being reformed in order to develop tax justice and transparency of revenues, the judiciary is focused on making the financial statements of banks, businesses and government officials more transparent, the apparatus of government is trying to be more efficient and efforts are being made to reduce government bureaucracy.

As a result of US economic sanctions and the drop in global oil prices, long-term policies have been introduced with the purpose of decreasing dependence on oil revenues, the outcome of which will be seen a few years later.

2. Iran’s economic constraints should be understood in the context of the US maximum pressure campaign.

The current state of Iran’s economy is a direct result of sanctions policy imposed by the United States and its allies. According to some estimates, since May 2018, Iran’s access to more than $ 50 billion has been lost owing to US sanctions. However, as mentioned earlier and despite claims by US officials, all these pressures have not put Iran through the course to decline. Iran is a rich country which has enormous resources in different fields including stability, skilled labor force, motivated and diligent youth, oil and gas, numerous mines, high potential for investment in knowledge-based economy and eligible infrastructure to attract foreign investors. Certainly, having these capacities keeps people hopeful for the future. Yet, as Pompeo points out, US officials are working hard to make life difficult for the Iranian people by depriving them of these opportunities for growth.

3. The experience of unsuccessful US interventions are before the Iranian people.

Over the past decades, Iran has been a witness to the consequences of US interventions in other countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq.  Just a short visit to these countries provides one with a wealth of information about the prevailing political, social, and economic instability. The assets of these countries have been held by Washington for nearly two decades and they are being spent on the development of the two countries. Therefore, no one in Iran can be fooled by the sweet promises of the United States since the US has failed to fulfill its pledges in Iraq and Afghanistan.

4. Regime change brokers are the real thieves of American financial resources.

The aforementioned points are very general examples of the existing realities in Iran. Yet, White House officials are listening to the brokers who plunder American financial resources through propagating the illusory promise of regime change.

For years, US officials, under the influence of anti-Iran lobby, have been waiting for regime change in Iran and, thus, have missed the opportunity to engage constructively with Iran. If one were to examine the realities on the ground, they would clearly understand that the necessary conditions for the realization of White House aspirations are not provided, both domestically and abroad.

Consequently, paying heed to the advice of anti-Iran lobby has not resulted in maintaining the interests of the American people. Influencing US officials, anti-Iran lobby groups (many of whom are responsible for the death of innocent Iranians and Americans) have been able to divert billions of dollars from American assets to obsess over an issue that poses no threat to the American people.

5. Has the inability of the United States to deal with more difficult issues led its politicians to relatively easier goals?

The United States does not have a real understanding of its threats and enemies, or perhaps, strives for more attainable policy goals as a result of its inability to achieve more difficult policy goals – though despite the fact that Washington’s focus fixation on Iran exhausts the country’s capacity to pursue more immediate policy goals.

Conclusion

The undeniable reality before the United States and its allies is that they ought to treat Iran and Iranian people with respect. The dignity of the Iranian people is a non-negotiable issue and using the mindset of force against Iran has been proven to be ineffective.

The United States of America acts with no regards for the final outcome of its policies towards the Islamic Republic of Iran, and this could lead to the loss of many future opportunities. In other words, Washington will not be able to make the Islamic Republic of Iran give into its unreasonable demands through exerting maximum pressure on Iran.

The United States has frequently had the opportunity to rectify its misguided policies towards Iran through positive interactions, but each time, under the influence of anti-Iran lobby groups, it has exacerbated its animosity toward Tehran.

Nevertheless, the continuation of enmities not only does not lead to the unrealistic demands of US officials being met, but also tarnishes the Iranians’ view of the US more than ever before. It is not strange for a person to lie, but it would be unusual if they believed their own lie. Certainly, the brokers of regime change are well aware of the futility of anti-Iran policies; nonetheless, the important question is when US officials would become aware of this reality.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Silent Crow News

Joe Biden’s selection of U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate, was lauded by an editorial opinion in the British Guardian as “a safe and historic appointment”. But a cursory examination reveals Harris to be the archetype of what the contemporary U.S. politician has become: One who works ceaselessly for the ‘Donor Class’ and who thus is beholden to powerful lobbies. This has informed her record as a prosecutor and legislator who is committed to the perpetuation of America as a ‘Carceral State’. She is also a servant of the National Security State, which means that she will maintain the bi-partisan arrangement which has ensured that America has remained committed to the militarism which has characterised its foreign policy since the ending of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War.

The selection by Democratic Party Presidential Candidate Joe Biden of U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate for the forthcoming elections is striking on several accounts. As what is often termed as a ‘Woman of Colour’, Harris’s selection certainly deviates from the typical presidential candidate as being a person who is both male and White Anglo-Saxon. Nonetheless, there is much about her which remains typical of the calibre of candidates for either the presidency or vice-presidency. Many candidates like her have typically been selected from the pool of serving U.S. Senators. They are creatures of one of the major political parties and must have performed some sort of public service. Yet, in Harris’s case there are two noteworthy issues that mark her out as a flawed candidate.

Firstly, her abilities as both a politician and a public servant are rather questionable. And secondly, she represents many of the negative attributes of the modern political operator in either of the parties that represent the duopoly of American politics.

There is much to perplex over her selection by Biden. Harris was a big loser in the Democratic Party Primaries during which her poll-ratings were so low that she was forced to suspend her campaign before formally withdrawing. Her conduct on the hustings marked her as a poor campaigner, and her performance during the televised debates revealed her to be a poor debater.

During the debates, Tulsi Gabbard, a Congressional representative from the State of Hawaii, took Harris to task over her record as a District Attorney in the city of San Francisco. Harris, Gabbard reminded, had put hundreds of marijuana smokers in jail, and later when asked about whether she had ever smoked the substance had responded with a smirky giggle. It speaks of Harris’s grotesque sense of entitlement and rancid hypocrisy to boast about imprisoning people while boldly admitting that she had committed the same crime.

And she shamelessly -and awkwardly- once used this in projecting herself in the context of the identity politics that is so prevalent today. Harris once gave a speech at a forum at which she boasted of having smoked marijuana while alluding to her part-Jamaican origins. But to his credit, her father, the parent of Jamaican parentage, rebuked her for feeding into the stereotype of Jamaicans as freewheeling, ganga-smoking outlaws.

He issued a statement saying the following:

My dear departed grandmothers, as well as my deceased parents must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected in anyway, jokingly or not, with the fraudulent stereotype of the pot-smoking joy-seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.

That attempt at gaining an imaginary street cred was mirrored by her painfully contrived assertion that she had been a fan of the Rap Music icons 2Pac and Snoop Doggie before they became famous; implying that she got high while listening to their music during her college years.

Her competence, as well as her integrity, as a public prosecutor was compromised when, as Gabbard revealed during the debate, Harris was found to have been prepared to conceal exculpatory evidence in relation to an innocent prisoner on death row until a court order forced her to reveal the information.

One reason why Joe Biden selected Harris is presumably because he feels that her tough stance on crime will render her immune to attacks by the Republican Party which traditionally finds fault in many Democratic Party candidates as liberal progressives who are ‘soft’ on crime. But while Harris, resolutely proud of her record, insists on describing herself as a progressive, her goals in this area have been anything but progressive. There is an ineluctable contradiction between her posture as a progressive and her record as a prosecutor. This is borne out of her policy of using prisoners -some of them beyond their sentences- as cheap labour. In defiance of a court order, she failed to release ‘Minimum Custody Inmates’, that is, persons who have committed minor crimes on parole. When challenged in court, state lawyers under her control argued that releasing these sorts of prisoners would deny the State of California an important pool of labour. When this line of argument was brought to the attention of the public, Harris claimed that she had no knowledge of the policy.

A crucial defect in Harris’s attempt to portray herself as a progressive who is nonetheless ‘tough on crime’ can be garnered from the fact that her policies have impacted on the poor and the marginalised, and not the well-off. For instance, her policy of prosecuting the parents of children who were truant meant that parents who did not have the financial resources to pay the fines levied on them were sent to jail, a factor which then impacted on the very issue sought to be addressed: the absence of parental direction in the life of the affected children.

Harris’s self-promoted zeal at prosecuting transgressors did not apparently extend to Wall Street and its banks. For instance, she declined to prosecute OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations in 2013. OneWest was the bank for which Steve Mnuchin, the present Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, served as CEO from 2009 to 2015.

Harris’s deeds thus expose her for what she is: the member of a privileged class who irrespective of their professed ideologies and party affiliations serve the monied interests of an oligarch-controlled political system.

It explains Harris’s penal policies geared towards using prisoners as a cheap form of state labour, and her stances on imprisoning those who smoke contraband drugs, as well as those parents who could not pay fines for truant children. A high prison population is good for the business interests that benefit from the nation’s Prison Industrial Complex.

Her failure to prosecute Mnuchin’s bank is consistent with the attitude of the political class that they cannot bite the sources that fund their campaigns and feather their nest eggs. For in America, banks who bring the nation to near economic collapse through their greed and avarice are “too big to fail” and receive bailouts, while the lives of ordinary people who suffer from foreclosure, unemployment and bankruptcy do, it would appear, count for little even to those who label themselves as progressive.

Harris is simply the latest of a litany of politicians who are foisted on the American public because of their pliability to the interests of those who run the major political parties, in this case the Democratic Party. The decision to choose Harris clearly has more to do with her as someone who is capable of being controlled rather than her competence as an administrator and her ability as a political campaigner.

The suspicion that she has emerged because of the calculations on the part of the power brokers in the Democratic Party is an irresistible one. So resolute are they in the quest for maintaining control that they clearly do not mind losing to Donald Trump by offering as a presidential candidate a man whose faculties are clearly in sharp decline, and a woman who is a proven vote-loser within her own political party. The objective of these higher ups in control of the Democratic Party machinery thus would appear to be to ensure that the left-wing or genuinely progressive segment of their party does not displace this control. After all, a defeat by Donald Trump in November will not remove their access to the funding from the oligarchs who sponsor the party whether it controls the White House or not.

A similar scenario holds true for the Republican Party.

The question then is when, if ever, will the insouciant American masses wake up to the fact that they need to remake their political and economic system by removing those mechanisms which enable monied groups to control their political leaders. Their attention for the most part is taken up by the false ideological divide in the duopoly ruling them and the manufactured culture wars which keep them divided along racial and social lines.

To sum up, Kamala Harris typifies the politician of the era who is short on principle, and who is lacking in the ideas required to energise and unite Americans at a period in time when the country is increasingly divided and its global prestige and economic power is in noticeable decline.

Harris, like others including Joe Biden, has nothing new to offer.

She has demonstrated none of the intellectual resources required to project any foundational philosophies upon which her political beliefs are based. On the contrary, she is chameleon-like and has changed her position on so many issues that the only conclusion that a reasonable observer can reach is to describe her as a political opportunist. For in accepting Biden’s offer to be his running mate, Harris is evidently willing to set aside her strongly worded campaign accusation of Biden as a racist whose anti-bussing rhetoric during the Civil Rights era impacted on her as a schoolgirl, just as she is willing to bury her belief in the veracity of the women who came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Biden.

Harris is clearly a ‘company man’, that is, a person dedicated to carrying out the policies dictated to her by those who control the Democratic Party and the financial interests who facilitate such control.

Indeed, Harris’s record so far as the criminal justice system is concerned, only  demonstrates her servitude to the sort of interests which ensures that a nation which composes less than 5% of the world’s population houses just under 25% of the world’s prisoners. Further, the foreign policy views which she expressed during the Democratic Primary debates indicate that she would be a willing servant of the National Security state and the endless wars it has promulgated and sustained for over two decades.

In sum, Kamala Harris’s candidature is nothing short of a disaster for her party, as well as her country which at this moment in history is desperately in need of a higher calibre of political leaders.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. He writes on his blog site, Adeyinka Makinde, where this article was originally published.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image: Kamala Harris. Credit: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times

With Covid-19 incapacitating startling numbers of U.S. service members and modern weapons proving increasingly lethal, the American military is relying ever more frequently on intelligent robots to conduct hazardous combat operations. Such devices, known in the military as “autonomous weapons systems,” include robotic sentries, battlefield-surveillance drones, and autonomous submarines. So far, in other words, robotic devices are merely replacing standard weaponry on conventional battlefields. Now, however, in a giant leap of faith, the Pentagon is seeking to take this process to an entirely new level — by replacing not just ordinary soldiers and their weapons, but potentially admirals and generals with robotic systems.

Admittedly, those systems are still in the development stage, but the Pentagon is now rushing their future deployment as a matter of national urgency. Every component of a modern general staff — including battle planning, intelligence-gathering, logistics, communications, and decision-making — is, according to the Pentagon’s latest plans, to be turned over to complex arrangements of sensors, computers, and software. All these will then be integrated into a “system of systems,” now dubbed the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control, or JADC2 (since acronyms remain the essence of military life). Eventually, that amalgam of systems may indeed assume most of the functions currently performed by American generals and their senior staff officers.

The notion of using machines to make command-level decisions is not, of course, an entirely new one. It has, in truth, been a long time coming. During the Cold War, following the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with extremely short flight times, both military strategists and science-fiction writers began to imagine mechanical systems that would control such nuclear weaponry in the event of human incapacity.

In Stanley Kubrick’s satiric 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, for example, the fictional Russian leader Dimitri Kissov reveals that the Soviet Union has installed a “doomsday machine” capable of obliterating all human life that would detonate automatically should the country come under attack by American nuclear forces. Efforts by crazed anti-Soviet U.S. Air Force officers to provoke a war with Moscow then succeed in triggering that machine and so bring about human annihilation. In reality, fearing that they might experience a surprise attack of just this sort, the Soviets later did install a semi-automatic retaliatory system they dubbed “Perimeter,” designed to launch Soviet ICBMs in the event that sensors detected nuclear explosions and all communications from Moscow had been silenced. Some analysts believe that an upgraded version of Perimeter is still in operation, leaving us in an all-too-real version of a Strangelovian world.

In yet another sci-fi version of such automated command systems, the 1983 film War Games, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenage hacker, portrayed a supercomputer called the War Operations Plan Response, or WOPR (pronounced “whopper”) installed at the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) headquarters in Colorado. When the Broderick character hacks into it and starts playing what he believes is a game called “World War III,” the computer concludes an actual Soviet attack is underway and launches a nuclear retaliatory response. Although fictitious, the movie accurately depicts many aspects of the U.S. nuclear command-control-and-communications (NC3) system, which was then and still remains highly automated.

Such devices, both real and imagined, were relatively primitive by today’s standards, being capable solely of determining that a nuclear attack was under way and ordering a catastrophic response. Now, as a result of vast improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, machines can collect and assess massive amounts of sensor data, swiftly detect key trends and patterns, and potentially issue orders to combat units as to where to attack and when.

Time Compression and Human Fallibility

The substitution of intelligent machines for humans at senior command levels is becoming essential, U.S. strategists argue, because an exponential growth in sensor information combined with the increasing speed of warfare is making it nearly impossible for humans to keep track of crucial battlefield developments. If future scenarios prove accurate, battles that once unfolded over days or weeks could transpire in the space of hours, or even minutes, while battlefield information will be pouring in as multitudinous data points, overwhelming staff officers. Only advanced computers, it is claimed, could process so much information and make informed combat decisions within the necessary timeframe.

Such time compression and the expansion of sensor data may apply to any form of combat, but especially to the most terrifying of them all, nuclear war. When ICBMs were the principal means of such combat, decisionmakers had up to 30 minutes between the time a missile was launched and the moment of detonation in which to determine whether a potential attack was real or merely a false satellite reading (as did sometimes occur during the Cold War). Now, that may not sound like much time, but with the recent introduction of hypersonic missiles, such assessment times could shrink to as little as five minutes. Under such circumstances, it’s a lot to expect even the most alert decision-makers to reach an informed judgment on the nature of a potential attack. Hence the appeal (to some) of automated decision-making systems.

“Attack-time compression has placed America’s senior leadership in a situation where the existing NC3 system may not act rapidly enough,” military analysts Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin argued at War on the Rocks, a security-oriented website. “Thus, it may be necessary to develop a system based on artificial intelligence, with predetermined response decisions, that detects, decides, and directs strategic forces with such speed that the attack-time compression challenge does not place the United States in an impossible position.”

This notion, that an artificial intelligence-powered device — in essence, a more intelligent version of the doomsday machine or the WOPR — should be empowered to assess enemy behavior and then, on the basis of “predetermined response options,” decide humanity’s fate, has naturally produced some unease in the community of military analysts (as it should for the rest of us as well). Nevertheless, American strategists continue to argue that battlefield assessment and decision-making — for both conventional and nuclear warfare — should increasingly be delegated to machines.

“AI-powered intelligence systems may provide the ability to integrate and sort through large troves of data from different sources and geographic locations to identify patterns and highlight useful information,” the Congressional Research Service noted in a November 2019 summary of Pentagon thinking. “As the complexity of AI systems matures,” it added, “AI algorithms may also be capable of providing commanders with a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace, in turn enabling faster adaptation to complex events.”

The key wording there is “a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace.” This might leave the impression that human generals and admirals (not to speak of their commander-in-chief) will still be making the ultimate life-and-death decisions for both their own forces and the planet. Given such anticipated attack-time compression in future high-intensity combat with China and/or Russia, however, humans may no longer have the time or ability to analyze the battlespace themselves and so will come to rely on AI algorithms for such assessments. As a result, human commanders may simply find themselves endorsing decisions made by machines — and so, in the end, become superfluous.

Creating Robot Generals

Despite whatever misgivings they may have about their future job security, America’s top generals are moving swiftly to develop and deploy that JADC2 automated command mechanism. Overseen by the Air Force, it’s proving to be a computer-driven amalgam of devices for collecting real-time intelligence on enemy forces from vast numbers of sensor devices (satellites, ground radars, electronic listening posts, and so on), processing that data into actionable combat information, and providing precise attack instructions to every combat unit and weapons system engaged in a conflict — whether belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or the newly formed Space Force and Cyber Command.

What, exactly, the JADC2 will consist of is not widely known, partly because many of its component systems are still shrouded in secrecy and partly because much of the essential technology is still in the development stage. Delegated with responsibility for overseeing the project, the Air Force is working with Lockheed Martin and other large defense contractors to design and develop key elements of the system.

One such building block is its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), a data-collection and distribution system intended to provide fighter pilots with up-to-the-minute data on enemy positions and help guide their combat moves. Another key component is the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS), designed to connect radar systems to anti-aircraft and missile-defense launchers and provide them with precise firing instructions. Over time, the Air Force and its multiple contractors will seek to integrate ABMS and IBCS into a giant network of systems connecting every sensor, shooter, and commander in the country’s armed forces — a military “internet of things,” as some have put it.

To test this concept and provide an example of how it might operate in the future, the Army conducted a live-fire artillery exercise this August in Germany using components (or facsimiles) of the future JADC2 system. In the first stage of the test, satellite images of (presumed) Russian troop positions were sent to an Army ground terminal, where an AI software program called Prometheus combed through the data to select enemy targets. Next, another AI program called SHOT computed the optimal match of available Army weaponry to those intended targets and sent this information, along with precise firing coordinates, to the Army’s Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) for immediate action, where human commanders could choose to implement it or not. In the exercise, those human commanders had the mental space to give the matter a moment’s thought; in a shooting war, they might just leave everything to the machines, as the system’s designers clearly intend them to do.

In the future, the Army is planning even more ambitious tests of this evolving technology under an initiative called Project Convergence. From what’s been said publicly about it, Convergence will undertake ever more complex exercises involving satellites, Air Force fighters equipped with the ABMS system, Army helicopters, drones, artillery pieces, and tactical vehicles. Eventually, all of this will form the underlying “architecture” of the JADC2, linking every military sensor system to every combat unit and weapons system — leaving the generals with little to do but sit by and watch.

Why Robot Generals Could Get It Wrong

Given the complexity of modern warfare and the challenge of time compression in future combat, the urge of American strategists to replace human commanders with robotic ones is certainly understandable. Robot generals and admirals might theoretically be able to process staggering amounts of information in brief periods of time, while keeping track of both friendly and enemy forces and devising optimal ways to counter enemy moves on a future battlefield. But there are many good reasons to doubt the reliability of robot decision-makers and the wisdom of using them in place of human officers.

To begin with, many of these technologies are still in their infancy, and almost all are prone to malfunctions that can neither be easily anticipated nor understood. And don’t forget that even advanced algorithms can be fooled, or “spoofed,” by skilled professionals.

In addition, unlike humans, AI-enabled decision-making systems will lack an ability to assess intent or context. Does a sudden enemy troop deployment, for example, indicate an imminent attack, a bluff, or just a normal rotation of forces? Human analysts can use their understanding of the current political moment and the actors involved to help guide their assessment of the situation. Machines lack that ability and may assume the worst, initiating military action that could have been avoided.

Such a problem will only be compounded by the “training” such decision-making algorithms will undergo as they are adapted to military situations. Just as facial recognition software has proved to be tainted by an over-reliance on images of white males in the training process — making them less adept at recognizing, say, African-American women — military decision-making algorithms are likely to be distorted by an over-reliance on the combat-oriented scenarios selected by American military professionals for training purposes. “Worst-case thinking” is a natural inclination of such officers — after all, who wants to be caught unprepared for a possible enemy surprise attack? — and such biases will undoubtedly become part of the “menus of viable courses of action” provided by decision-making robots.

Once integrated into decision-making algorithms, such biases could, in turn, prove exceedingly dangerous in any future encounters between U.S. and Russian troops in Europe or American and Chinese forces in Asia. A clash of this sort might, after all, arise at any time, thanks to some misunderstanding or local incident that rapidly gains momentum — a sudden clash between U.S. and Chinese warships off Taiwan, for example, or between American and Russian patrols in one of the Baltic states. Neither side may have intended to ignite a full-scale conflict and leaders on both sides might normally move to negotiate a cease-fire. But remember, these will no longer simply be human conflicts. In the wake of such an incident, the JADC2 could detect some enemy move that it determines poses an imminent risk to allied forces and so immediately launch an all-out attack by American planes, missiles, and artillery, escalating the conflict and foreclosing any chance of an early negotiated settlement.

Such prospects become truly frightening when what’s at stake is the onset of nuclear war. It’s hard to imagine any conflict among the major powers starting out as a nuclear war, but it’s far easier to envision a scenario in which the great powers — after having become embroiled in a conventional conflict — reach a point where one side or the other considers the use of atomic arms to stave off defeat. American military doctrine, in fact, has always held out the possibility of using so-called tactical nuclear weapons in response to a massive Soviet (now Russian) assault in Europe. Russian military doctrine, it is widely assumed, incorporates similar options. Under such circumstances, a future JADC2 could misinterpret enemy moves as signaling preparation for a nuclear launch and order a pre-emptive strike by U.S. nuclear forces, thereby igniting World War III.

War is a nasty, brutal activity and, given almost two decades of failed conflicts that have gone under the label of “the war on terror,” causing thousands of American casualties (both physical and mental), it’s easy to understand why robot enthusiasts are so eager to see another kind of mentality take over American war-making. As a start, they contend, especially in a pandemic world, that it’s only humane to replace human soldiers on the battlefield with robots and so diminish human casualties (at least among combatants). This claim does not, of course, address the argument that robot soldiers and drone aircraft lack the ability to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants on the battlefield and so cannot be trusted to comply with the laws of war or international humanitarian law — which, at least theoretically, protect civilians from unnecessary harm — and so should be banned.

Fraught as all of that may be on future battlefields, replacing generals and admirals with robots is another matter altogether. Not only do legal and moral arguments arise with a vengeance, as the survival of major civilian populations could be put at risk by computer-derived combat decisions, but there’s no guarantee that American GIs would suffer fewer casualties in the battles that ensued. Maybe it’s time, then, for Congress to ask some tough questions about the advisability of automating combat decision-making before this country pours billions of additional taxpayer dollars into an enterprise that could, in fact, lead to the end of the world as we know it. Maybe it’s time as well for the leaders of China, Russia, and this country to limit or ban the deployment of hypersonic missiles and other weaponry that will compress life-and-death decisions for humanity into just a few minutes, thereby justifying the automation of such fateful judgments.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change.

Featured image is from CSMonitor.com

The Indo-Pacific Region (IPR) is a geopolitical area that comprises parts of the Indian and Pacific oceans. But there is more to it than that. The maritime domain is indeed an important theater for geopolitical competition. The rise of Chinese power across both the Pacific and Indian Ocean certainly challenges the very notion of a “security umbrella” (this notion persisted even after the end of the Cold War). Thus, the new geopolitical construct of the “Indo-Pacific” may be an attempt to deal with new realities. But theoretical constructs not only attempt to describe reality – they also may shape and change it. One could think of it as a war of concepts. The core of such “conceptual warfare” is to propose and to construct views and models through diplomatic talk and through the production of documents. In this arena, different visions often clash. Sometimes, they complement each other. It turns out Indonesia might have its own view of the IPR. It also has a strategic partnership with India which could further develop.

The seas that connect the Indian Ocean to the central Pacific Ocean run through the general area of Indonesia, giving it a strategic location. Jakarta has always aspired to become an unofficial leader of the ASEAN, which in its turn is a major partner of the Shangai Cooperation Organization. It is indeed the biggest economy and the largest country in the ASEAN group. One could say Indonesia has recently been quite successful in establishing its presence as an important player both in the Pacific and Indian Ocean.

On July 27th something important happened: Indonesia and India agreed to further expand their strategic cooperation in a number of areas, including technology sharing and industries. Further expanding their security and military ties was also discussed. According to some sources, there were talks about exporting Indian BrahMos cruise missiles to Indonesia and also about increasing security cooperation in the ocean. Chinese activities in Eastern Ladakh (a disputed Indian-Chinese border) must have been a topic – but no public statement was made. On June 15, the Chinese army attacked and killed 20 Indian soldiers there in the most fatal clash between the 2 countries in 4 decades (the number of Chinese soldiers killed in the standoff remains unknown). Such incident obviously increased tensions in the region. So far, troops on both sides haven’t fully disengaged. On top of that, according to an Asian News International report on Wednesday (19), India is now building a  road connecting Ladakh (for better troop movement).

Indonesia and India have a shared history of colonialism as well as civilizational ties which go back over two millennia. Geopolitically, both countries share the Indian Ocean maritime space. And both signed the “Shared Vision of India-Indonesia Maritime Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific” in 2018.

For Russia, the Indo-Pacific is a doorway for the East. For India and Indonesia, it is a northern doorway, bringing resources from the Arctic region to Asia. India’s concept of the Indo-Pacific may complement the so called Greater Eurasia project. For the US, in their turn, the IPR stretches from the American West Coast to the western seashores of India. In line with previous administrations, Trump has been pushing the notion of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” since 2017. Critics have compared such notion to former president Obama’s “Rebalance Strategy”.

China so far has often viewed the notion of the Indo-Pacific as an “exclusive” concept and as a containment – it would be merely an American strategy to connecting the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, thus constraining China while maintaining American hegemony in the region.

Some Chinese scholars, however, believe the concept may mature into something more interesting (from a Chinese perspective) and recently the Chinese media started using the term. One could call such game a kind of conceptual warfare.  Of course, the “Quad” – the quadrilateral group of India, Australia, Japan and the US –  still worries China, which perceives it as a potential “Asian NATO”. Basically, China “welcomes” an inclusive Indo-Pacific, as long as India and other countries dissociate themselves from the Quad. Indonesia’s attitude towards the Quad remains quite ambivalent, in line with its traditional “independent” (bebas dan aktif) foreign policy.

More concretely, Indian-Indonesian military cooperation certainly worries China also. Since 2005, India and Indonesia have a strategic partnership which includes maritime security cooperation. In 2014, there were Indian-Indonesia joint naval exercises, for example – with an increased number of navy vessels.

India and Indonesia have each their own views on the IPR, close as they may seem to be at times. Will such views clash with China’s own view? Can the IPR and Greater Eurasia complement each other? Will the US really use the geopolitical concept of IPR to project their influence and their own view of the Indo-Pacific onto other Asian countries? Time will tell. Be it as it may, countries in the region – such as Indonesia – have a say in the future of the Indo-Pacific. And both China and the US will need to keep that in mind.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

This article was first posted on Global Research in March 2015. It is of crucial significance. It proves that the collapse of WTC building seven was a “terrorist act”. Both CNN and the BBC had foreknowledge of the collapse.

A class action law suit against the BBC should be contemplated?

The BBC had foreknowledge of a criminal act and failed to inform the public. ( M. Ch. GR Editor)

By EV

Horsham, UK, 2013 – Tony Rooke, in an act of civil disobedience, refused to pay the mandatory £130 TV license fee claiming it violates Section 15 of the Terrorism Act. Rooke’s accusation was aimed at the BBC who reported the collapse of WTC 7 over 20 minutes before it actually fell, and the judge accepted Rooke’s argument. While it was not a public inquiry into 9/11, the recognition of the BBC’s actions on September 11th are considered a small victory, one that was never reported in the US.

“Today was an historic day for the 9/11 truth movement,” Peter Drew of AE911Truth UK told Digital Journal, “with over 100 members of the public attending, including numerous journalists from around the UK as well as from across other parts of Europe.”

It is an offence for someone to invite another to provide money, intending that it should be used, or having reasonable cause to suspect that it may be used, for terrorism purposes.

The fact that the BBC reported the collapse of WTC 7 twenty-three minutes before it actually fell indicates that the UK was aware of the attacks on 9/11 before they actually happened. The direct implication is that they were working with the “terrorists”, all arguments as to who the terrorists actually were aside.

Here is a broadcast of the BBC’s announcement that WTC 7 (Salomon Brothers Building) collapsed when it was still standing behind the reporter:

Rooke had been given a six-month conditional discharge and told to pay £200 after admitting that he owned a television and watched it without a license. He represented himself at Horsham Magistrates’ Court in West Sussex.

“Mr. Rooke puts the basis of his defence under Section 15 of the Terrorism Act, effectively asking the court to find the BBC  a terrorist organisation and that if he continues to pay them he himself is committing a criminal offence.” – District Judge Stephen Nicholls

In Rooke’s statement to the court:

“I believe the BBC, who are directly funded by the licence fee, are furthering the purposes of terrorism and I have incontrovertible evidence to this effect. I do not use this word lightly given where I am.”

Although he was not allowed to show his video evidence in court due to the District Judge deeming it irrelevant to the trial, the fact that the BBC reported WTC 7’s collapse over 20 minutes beforehand proved to be evidence enough.

He also made reference to the theories behind the collapse of WTC 7 being a controlled demolition, as the evidence suggests. In an additional statement:

“The BBC reported it 20 minutes before it fell. They knew about it beforehand. Last time I was here I asked you (the judge): ‘Were you aware of World Trade Centre 7?’ You said you had heard of it. Ten years later you should have more than heard of it. It’s the BBC’s job to inform the public. Especially of miracles of science and when laws of physics become suspended.

“They have made programmes making fools of and ridiculing those of us who believe in the laws of gravity. American reports have shown that the fall was nothing but a controlled demolition.

“I am not looking at who demolished it—that is impossible—but the BBC actively tried to hide this from the public.”

In response from Judge Nicholls:

“Even if I accept the evidence you say, this court has no power to create a defence in the manner which you put forward.”

In light of the evidence the judge took into consideration, Rooke was given an unconditional discharge, which in British legal parlance means he “was convicted but he does not suffer the consequences of a conviction, and the conviction will be erased if he is not brought before the court for six months.” He was not required to pay the fee and non-payment fine either—only court costs of £200.

Sources:

Alexander, Victoria. Digital Journal. Feb 27, 2013. (http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/344438)

Duell, Mark. Daily Mail. Feb 25, 2015. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284337/TV-licence-evader-refused-pay-BBC-covered-facts-9-11.html)

Livingston, Bob. Personal Liberty. Apr 5, 2013. (http://personalliberty.com/british-man-wins-small-victory-for-911-truthers/)

Copyright We are Anonymous, 2015

Realities Watch. Mar 6, 2015. (http://realitieswatch.com/uk-man-wins-court-case-against-bbc-for-911-cover-up/)

On Tuesday, Pompeo addressed the Republican National Convention from Jerusalem, his remarks prerecorded. See below on what he said.

***

Was his unprecedented act by a US secretary of state unlawful?

According to the 1939 Hatch Act, US executive branch employees are prohibited from engaging in political activities or using federal funds for this purpose — except for the president and vice president.

In US Civil Service Commission v. National Association of Letter Carriers (1973), the Supreme Court upheld the Hatch Act by a 6 – 3 majority.

Justices William Brennan, William Douglas and Thurgood Marshall dissented. According to Douglas:

“It is no concern of government what an employee does in his or her spare time, whether religion, recreation, social work or politics is his hobby, unless what he or she does impairs efficiency or other facets of the merits of his job.”

The above three justices also noted that limiting First Amendment rights should not be a federal employment requirement — other than what may be “narrowly tailored” to prohibiting a specific activity.

Under 3 FAM 4123.3, State Department “employees, spouses, and family members are prohibited from engaging in any partisan political activities abroad.”

“Partisan political rallies are not permitted on embassy or consulate premises.”

In response to Pompeo’s Tuesday address, House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee chairman Joaquin Castro initiated a probe into whether he breached federal law by addressing the GOP National Convention.

According to the State Department, none of its resources were used to prepare or deliver his remarks.

Castro claims he breached the Hatch Act and State Department regulations by engaging in partisan political activities from abroad that are related to US elections.

According to a December 2019 House Foreign Affairs Committee Office of the Legal Advisor:

“Senate-confirmed presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention or convention-related event.”

In July, citing from a State Department memo signed by Pompeo, Castro said the following:

“It’s absolutely unacceptable that a sitting US Secretary of State, America’s top diplomat, would use official taxpayer-funded business to participate in a political party convention, particularly after the State Department published guidance that explicitly prohibits such activity.”

“This action is part of a pattern of politicization of US foreign policy, for which President Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, that undermines America’s standing in the world. The American people deserve a full investigation.”

Castro gave US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun until September 1 to submit answers in writing to the House Foreign Affairs Committee as to whether Pompeo used department resources to prepare and deliver his remarks — until September 10 to provide the committee with related documents and receipts.

According to McClatchy, Pompeo’s speech to the GOP National Convention “was cleared by four teams of lawyers,” citing ‘two (unnamed) sources close to the secretary,” adding:

His politically related speech delivered from abroad on official business “rais(ed) concerns in both Washington and Jerusalem, with two Israeli officials telling McClatchy that the event could aggravate a growing political divide over Israel in the United States.”

“His lawyer, the State Department lawyers, RNC lawyers, White House lawyers have all worked on his appearance to make sure it is completely lawful and appropriate, including screening and approving all of his remarks.”

Trump “personally requested that Pompeo make the speech, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.”

It was paid for by “his campaign and the Republican National Committee.”

Former Obama regime under secretary of state for political affairs Wendy Sherman said the following:

“Pompeo speaking from Jerusalem breaks multiple traditions and norms.”

“Secretaries of State, as far as I can find, have never appeared at a political convention.”

“Jerusalem should not be a prop in the Republican convention. Pompeo should not tarnish his office by this unprecedented action.”

His remarks included China bashing, falsely accusing its ruling authorities of committing “predatory aggression” — a longstanding US specialty.

Blaming Beijing for “covering up the ‘China virus’ and allowing it to spread death and economic destruction in America and around the world (sic)” is one of countless examples of how the US blames others for its own unlawful actions.

The SARS-Cov-2 virus that produces COVID-19 disease was made-in-the-USA and exported worldwide.

Pompeo also slammed nonbelligerent North Korea, ignoring two failed Kim Jong-un/Trump summits because of unacceptable US demands in return for hollow promises.

He lashed out against Iran, the Middle East’s leading proponent of peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries.

He falsely claimed that the Trump regime “wiped out…ISIS,” a jihadist group created and used by the US as proxy forces against targeted countries.

He praised Trump for abandoning the landmark INF agreement with Russia and JCPOA nuclear deal.

These and countless other US actions further global instability instead of stepping back from the brink of endless preemptive wars and other hostile actions that define Washington’s geopolitical agenda.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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.

Featured image is from LobeLog

All politicians lie. Rare exceptions prove the rule.

Trump elevated dissembling to a whole new level. Take nothing he says seriously.

His serial lying is so extreme that he may no longer be able to distinguish between facts and fiction.

His remarks focus on self-promotion, feeding his insatiable narcissistic appetite.

Developmental psychologist Sander Thomaes said he uses Trump as a classroom example of prototypical narcissism.

His abnormal traits include a “grandiose self-image, a very inflated ego, a continuous need for attention, a big urge to be admired.”

When his needs aren’t fulfilled or actions criticized, “he lashes out recklessly.”

When popularity with his base fades or if Biden defeats him in November, watch out.

He won’t likely go gently into that good night. Narcissists don’t operate that way, notably not when forced to relinquish the public spotlight they crave.

Thomaes explained that

“narcissists who fail will lash out…blam(ing) others for their failures,” along with vilifying opponents who defeat them.

They see things as “winners and losers.”

If Trump loses in November, “while the whole world is watching, that’ll have a big impact on him” that will heighten his insecurity and rage against the system he’s part of.

Dems and Republicans both falsely pledged to end forever wars that will continue endlessly no matter which wing of the US war party controls the executive and congressional branches ahead.

For the vast majority in Washington, world peace and stability are nonstarter notions they reject.

Domestic and geopolitical agendas of both right wings of the one-party state mimic each other on issues mattering most.

They’re all about serving privileged interests by exploiting and otherwise harming ordinary people everywhere — at home and abroad.

The Trump campaign’s claim that he’s “fighting for you” defies his record in office.

He’s unapologetically anti-peace, equity, justice, and the rule of law — pro-benefitting himself, his cronies, Wall Street, other corporate favorites, the Pentagon, the national security state, and favored foreign allies.

His “priorities” for a second term are continuing the wreckage of his tenure so far.

Dems offer no positive alternative. The one-party state doesn’t operate that way — why ordinary Americans should vote for alternative party candidates or stay home.

Below are some of Trump’s hollow campaign promises.

After destroying millions of jobs, leaving nearly one-third of working-age Americans unemployed, the vast majority with jobs have rotten ones paying poverty or sub-poverty wages, needing two or more to survive.

Many tens of thousands of small, medium-sized, and some larger firms shut down this year because of state-sponsored economic collapse — with no prospect for recovery any time soon, the worst perhaps yet to come.

The Economic Collapse blog noted the following:

Americans owe $21 billion in unpaid rent — because of no income or not enough to pay for essentials to life and welfare.

In July, 27% of US households made no rent of mortgage payments for the same reason.

US bankruptcies are surging.

World trade was at the “lowest levels on record” in June.

Nearly one-fourth of hotel mortgage payments are 30 or more days delinquent.

Nearly one-third of laid off US workers called back by employers were furloughed again or fired.

Half of US laid off workers believe their jobs are permanently lost.

An unprecedented number of Americans filed for unemployment benefits since March — around 60 million.

At a time of growing economic misery for tens of millions of US households, Republicans and Dems are dithering and dickering while Rome burns.

The Economic Collapse blog explained that “(i)ndustry after industry is in the process of unraveling.”

“Major economic bubbles are bursting all around us, and the economic pain that is on the horizon is going to dwarf what we are going through at this moment.”

If the above assessment is accurate, the hardest of US hard times ever lie ahead with little or no relief likely for tens of millions of households unable to pay rent, service mortgages, afford medical care, or feed families.

Neither wing of the one-party state proposed ways to address economic collapse, turn things around, and help ordinary Americans in need.

Trump’s pledge to “create 1 million new small businesses” is campaign rhetoric with virtually no chance for follow-through.

His tax-cutting pledge is for corporate America and high-net-worth individuals like himself exclusively —a repeat of the great American 2017 tax cut swindle, part of the scheme to transfer wealth from ordinary people to privileged interests.

His pledge for a COVID-19 vaccine by end of 2020 ignores that all vaccines contain toxins that are hazardous to human health.

Rushed development of coronavirus vaccines likely means they’ll be especially dangerous and should be avoided by everyone valuing their health and well-being.

Rushing them to market is all about Big Government aiding Big Pharma cash in big on a potential bonanza of profits without regard for human health and safety.

There’s virtually no chance to restore US economic health in 2021. Trump’s pledge for return to normality next year is hollow.

So is his promise to deliver “critical medicines and supplies” for US healthcare workers — what he failed to do since COVID-19 outbreaks began in January.

Bringing back “1 million manufacturing jobs from China” is pure fantasy.

So is excluding “federal contracts for companies (that) outsource” their operations to China.

For decades, corporate America outsourced millions of manufacturing and other jobs to many low-wage countries.

Republicans and Dems have done nothing to incentivize US businesses to operate domestically or impose financial penalties for offshoring jobs.

Trump wants China held “fully accountable for” the made-in-the-USA coronavirus it exported to China and worldwide.

Trump breached his first-term pledge to cut drug prices. Repeating the promise is hollow like the first time around.

So are his pledges to “lower healthcare insurance premiums…cover all pre-existing conditions…protect Social Security and Medicare, (and) provide world-class healthcare” to veterans.

He failed to deliver on all of the above so far. If reelected in November, more of the same is virtually assured.

“Drain(ing) the swamp” pledge is back that’s far more greatly filled with benefits for privileged interests than when Trump’s tenure began.

He wants “more police, (more) law enforcement,” and less accountability to enforce hardened police state control over the lives of ordinary Americans.

Claiming support for US workers is belied by his record in office.

He supports expansion of a US space force to let the Pentagon wage future wars with this capability.

Saying he’ll “build the world’s greatest infrastructure system” is belied by his record in office so far.

His biggest Big Lie is claiming he’ll “stop endless wars and bring our troops home.”

He’s waging endless wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and intermittently in Iraq — along with wars by other means on China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and other nations unwilling to subordinate their sovereign rights to US interests.

Ignoring the Pentagon’s open-ended budget, spending many trillions of dollars beyond what’s congressionally authorized annually, Trump pledged to “maintain and expand America’s…military strength” when it should be sharply cut back at a time when the nation’s only enemies are invented, not real.

He also falsely pledged to “wipe out global terrorists” the US created and uses as proxy forces against targeted nations.

Repeating his promise to “make America great again” is all about continuing dirty business as usual.

It includes endless wars on humanity at home and abroad by hot and other means to benefit privileged interests at the expense of world peace, stability, equity, and justice for all — notions ruled out by both wings of the US one-party state.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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.

Featured image is from Syria News

In what is a turn-up for the books, a senior voice of the Catholic Church made something of an impression this month that did not incite scandal, hot rage, or the commencement of an investigation.  It did, however, agitate a few editors.  Archbishop John C. Wester of San Fe, in speaking at the online Hiroshima Day vigil, had put up his hand to defy the validity and morality of nuclear weapons and, along with them, the idea of nuclear deterrence.  One of the organisers of the event, the veteran peace activist Rev. John Dear, claimed it had “never happened before.”

Dear had a point.  There has been a shift within Catholic ranks urged along by Pope Francis on that most fatuous of strategic doctrines, nuclear deterrence.  Before the United Nations General Assembly in June 1982, Pope John Paul II chose to argue that nuclear “‘deterrence’ based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable.” 

At a Vatican symposium in November 2017, the current pontiff acknowledged concern for “the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any employment of nuclear devices.”  Given the risk of accidental detonation occasioned by error, “the threat of their use, as well as their possession, is to be firmly condemned.” 

In November 2019 in Nagasaki, the pontiff expressed the view that peace and international stability were incompatible objects “with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual assured destruction, or the threat of total annihilation.”  Such weapons could not “protect us from current threats to national and international security”. Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles and president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was of similar view in his recent commemorative remarks, at one with the Pope and calling “on our national and world leaders to persevere in their efforts to abolish these weapons of mass destruction, which threaten the existence of the human race and our planet.”

Archbishop Wester reminded his listeners of the stance taken by the US Conference of Bishops: that Washington has a pressing obligation to reverse the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and “reduce its own reliance on weapons of mass destruction by pursuing progressive disarmament.”  He spoke of the “fear, a dread and a sorrow” when visiting Nagasaki in September 2017.  “It reminded me a little bit of those days during the Cuban missile crisis when I would walk home from school having been instructed what to do in the event of a nuclear attack within a few thousand yards of a Nike missile site in San Francisco.” 

The travails and challenges caused by COVID-19 might have forced social distance between people but, according to the Archbishop, “we’re united in our resolve to eliminate nuclear weapons and build a world that is grounded, not in fear and distrust, but in mutual respect for the life and dignity for all.” He quoted Pope Francis’s Nagasaki remarks about such instruments of death being an “affront crying out to heaven”, developed even as people continued to live in miserable conditions.

Support was also given to the efforts made by the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, co-founded by Tina Cordova and Fred Tyler in 2005 with the express purpose of drawing attention to the health effects of the Trinity test of July 16, 1945.  Their aim is compensation and health coverage for victims of the radioactive fallout drawn from the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

It stands to reason that Archbishop Wester is concerned.  Two of the US’s three nuclear weapons laboratories are to be found in the dioceses of Sandia and Los Alamos. “In fact,” observes Nuclear Watch New Mexico executive director Jay Coghlan, “there are probably more nuclear warheads in his dioceses – some 2,500 stored in reserve at the Kirtland Air Force Base at Albuquerque.”  The Los Alamos National Laboratory is also intending to expand plutonium pit production, but not, according to Coghlan, to maintain “the already extensively tested and reliable stockpile.”  The future lies in dangerously “speculative new designs” that will be untested because of the global testing moratorium unless the US recklessly decides to get back into the testing game.  

The laboratories do come with their biting paradox.  Wester is aware that an enterprise involving such weapons of mass lethality has other aspects, those incremental, even accidental benefits drawn from the inventive drive to kill.  Scientists, for instance, were turning their minds to “research that envelops energy and environmental programs, computing science, bio science, engineering science, materials science and micro-systems, as well as advances in medicine, and lately, helping in fighting COVID-19.” 

The editors of the Albuquerque Journal were unimpressed by the Archbishop and the organisers.  Wester and Dear inhabited “a world that sounds lovely but will never exist.”  They had erred in not recognising the “deterrent benefit of the nuclear arsenal” which had “kept a nuclear peace since 1945 even as nations like Pakistan and North Korea have developed nuclear weapons.”  They slipped up in not accepting that using atomic weapons on Japan saved the lives of Allied soldiers and millions of Japanese.  Horrific as those weapons were, war was horrific.  “World War II claimed 60 million lives.” 

For the editors, it was far better to endorse the somewhat darker view of the Very Rev. Glennon Jones, whose piece for the August edition of the People of God newsletter for Catholics in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe impressed. “There is a vital difference between the promotion of an ideal and being naively idealistic.”

And so, we return to the historical reasoning that justified virtuous butcheries, the war is terrible argument, ignoring the obvious contention that such weapons are themselves potential incitements to error, lunacy and existential deletion. As long as nuclear deterrence, that most unmeasured of strategies, remains, it keeps company with the prospect of use and annihilation.  Coghlan, in his rebuke to the editors also penned in the Albuquerque Journal, gave an acid summation: “the US arsenal has always been about nuclear war fighting, starting with the simple fact that we were the first to use it.”  Only “sheer luck has kept us from nuclear catastrophe.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Central to China’s rise as a global power are the attempts to increase its influence over Xinjiang, the country’s biggest and most mineral rich region. Xinjiang has been part of Chinese territory since the mid-18th century, longer than the existence of the United States, and this province at just over 640,000 square miles, is equal to two-thirds the size of continental Europe. Unlike Europe, however, Xinjiang is sparsely populated with just over 20 million people while it contains rare and iconic species like snow leopards, bears and wolves.

In 2019 Beijing oversaw the production of five million tons of cotton in Xinjiang, 85% of the national total for the year. Cotton is considered one of the most important cash crops in China. Oil itself was first discovered in Xinjiang during the mid-1950s, in the opening phase of the Mao Zedong era. Drilling for oil began soon thereafter, but oil production in the whole of China prior to 1960 was almost non-existent. Since the early 1960s, China’s oil figures have been greatly increasing with little respite.

Well into this century Beijing’s extraction of oil from Xinjiang was booming, while production had already peaked in the early and late 1990s in China’s major oil fields to the east, Shengli and Daqing (1). In recent months further significant discoveries of oil have occurred in Xinjiang, along with the finding of new natural gas reserves. Xinjiang holds slightly more than 25% of all known oil sources in China, and is the country’s second biggest oil producing area (behind Heilongjiang province).

Xinjiang’s terrain has proven particularly challenging, posing unique issues relating to transportation of goods and raw materials eastward. Water scarcity has long been a problem. Xinjiang is encompassed by imposing peaks including the formidable K2, and it is studded with deserts like the Gurbantünggüt and Taklamakan. The latter desert is comfortably larger in size than Britain.

Xinjiang is the linchpin of Beijing’s international-scale Belt and Road Initiative. The province has never been more firmly under the sway of China’s authorities – thwarting the efforts of separatist US-funded groups such as the right-wing World Uyghur Congress, an umbrella organisation headquartered in Munich; which calls for Xinjiang’s complete independence from China, along with its affiliates such as the Uyghur American Association, based in Washington, and funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. (2)

To grasp the social complexities seen in Xinjiang, it is important to examine briefly the relevant history of this increasingly vital landmass. The Islamic religion, of which its followers are called Muslims, first reached the western half of Xinjiang in the 9th century, when it was then part of Central Asia. From the 17th century Islamic teachings spread to the eastern part of Xinjiang. By this time Xinjiang’s population consisted of branches of Turkic-speaking Muslims, possessing different dialects, lifestyles and attire. The Qing dynasty governed China from the years 1644 until 1911 – and in 1759 the long-ruling Qing Emperor, Qianlong, conquered Xinjiang by force at the expense of the Mongol Dzungar people. By the mid-18th century, China’s main concern in capturing Xinjiang was to secure its mainland from the threat of Mongol invaders, an ancient fear of Chinese leaders. In the late 18th century the Qing dynasty began promoting Chinese migration to Xinjiang, so as to “fill out the borders”.

In the 1880s, the most numerous Muslim group in Xinjiang were commonly being referred to as Uyghurs. In 1884 the Qing government officially bestowed its north-western province with the title “Xinjiang”, meaning “New Frontier”. With the Mongol threat dissipated, China’s leadership aimed to place Xinjiang out of the reach of the massive Russian Empire, which believed it had claims to this area.

Complete chaos befell China in 1912 with the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the last empire to rule China. It had been hindered by financial difficulties and inner turmoil, primarily due to Western imperial encroachment, including American and British interference. Over following years both Xinjiang and Tibet, China’s two largest provinces, were dislodged from Beijing’s sphere of influence. Furthermore, parts of Mongolia northwards gravitated to Russian and then Soviet control, leaving China in a terribly diminished state during the early-to-mid 20th century. China’s troubles were compounded by Japanese regional expansionism, that in turn was spurred partly by further Western intrusion into Japan’s own realms of concern.

Even before China’s independence in 1949, Beijing’s officials and intellectuals argued during the 1930s of the pivotal importance not “to lose Xinjiang” to outside powers (3). Yet by 1934, Xinjiang had come under the domination of Stalin’s Soviet Union to the north, with Red Army soldiers intervening in Xinjiang twice, in 1934 and 1937, to support a Soviet-backed warlord named Sheng Shicai. By 1940 there were only around 190,000 Han Chinese still resident in Xinjiang, barely more than the numbers living there in the early 1800s. The Han Chinese, it can be noted, presently make up 1.3 billion out of China’s 1.4 billion population.

Xinjiang started slipping out of Soviet control from the summer of 1941, as Stalin’s gaze was fixed on the murderous Nazi invasion of the western USSR. The Soviets were never quite able again to reinstate their authority over Xinjiang, a region which Stalin prized like the Tsar before him. In November 1944, it is true that a Soviet-supported East Turkestan Republic was declared in Xinjiang. This comprised merely of parts of northern Xinjiang and it was short-lived, dissolving five years later as China’s communist forces entered Xinjiang. They found that most of the arable land was controlled by a small number of landlords. (4)

At the end of World War II, the Uyghur people consisted of 82% of the approximately four million people then living in Xinjiang, with other Muslim folk like ethnic Kazakhs and Hui filling in most of the remaining percentage. When China’s communists came to power in October 1949 their leader Mao Zedong, recognising the importance of safeguarding his boundaries, sought to swiftly integrate Xinjiang and other vast provinces like Tibet.

In state-sponsored moves, Mao encouraged Han Chinese to migrate in large numbers to Xinjiang; this process was quickened from the late 1950s with the Sino-Soviet split, as Mao became worried and suspicious of Russian intentions close by. He was moreover keen to erode Xinjiang’s centuries-long cultural links to neighbouring Central Asia, which is heavily populated by Muslim groups. In the decades after 1949 Xinjiang therefore shifted steadily towards Beijing’s command, a strategy which continues. (5)

Mao’s financial injections into Xinjiang led to a raising of the living standards for the majority of people there, including Muslims, which peaked at least in GDP terms in 1960 before gradually dropping off in the ensuing 15 years. During the latter stages of Mao’s reign, by 1967 two million Han Chinese had relocated westwards to Xinjiang (6). The arrival of Han Chinese, whose culture is notably different to the indigenous groups, inevitably resulted in varying levels of tension and dissatisfaction among Xinjiang’s Muslim people. This includes principally the Uyghur communities, many of whose roots in the province date back centuries.

In 1945 Han Chinese amounted to just 6% of people living in Xinjiang, and by 1982 this figure had risen to 40%. The percentages have stabilised through to this century, with Muslim groups having a majority of about 60% to the 40% of Hans. Most of the Han Chinese dwell in cities along Xinjiang’s more industrialised north, such as the capital Urumqi and oil metropolis Karamay. The Uyghur people, many of whom are farmers, tend to lead simple lives and the prospect of city existence can be repellent. Uyghurs generally have a strong connection to the soil. For the bulk of Uyghurs, it is worth stressing that their deepest concern is a potential loss of their ethnic and religious identities (7). Nevertheless in Xinjiang there are 24,400 mosques in operation, equating on average to one mosque for every 530 Muslims.

From 1978 until today, the rate of reform enacted by China’s governments has risen substantially, bringing with it rapid economic development to Xinjiang. There have been commendable social benefits too. The average life expectancy of a Xinjiang native in 1949 was very low at 31 years. Six decades later it had more than doubled to 72 years. The huge increase in life expectancy can be attributed to Beijing’s implementation of health care programs, which have accelerated since the 1990s. These policies are highlighted in independent studies published four years ago showing that, by 2001, there were just over 7,300 health care facilities in Xinjiang, including 1,357 hospitals. (8)

By 2008, the number of hospitals in Xinjiang rose further to 1,629 – whereas when the communists first came to power, 54 medical centres existed throughout Xinjiang. Seventy years ago just 10% of people in Xinjiang could read or write, but by 2017 this figure had climbed to a well over 90% literacy rate (9). These figures receive scant mention in the major Western media, despite their significance. Prior to 1949 a minority of children attended primary school, mainly because of a shortage of such schools. Beijing’s development of educational initiatives has led to the construction of many hundreds of schools in Xinjiang, both first and second level. In November 2017, the Chinese government outlined a 15 year free education program for all of Xinjiang’s high school students (10). Extra subsidies were reportedly provided to children from poorer backgrounds.

Through the decades, Beijing has poured the equivalent of over a quarter of a trillion dollars into Xinjiang, most of which was forthcoming after 1978. Under China’s president Xi Jinping, since 2017 the average income of a rural Xinjiang resident has increased by nearly 10%, with the majority of Uyghurs residing in rural areas (11). Those living in Xinjiang’s cities still enjoy a considerably higher income overall, as it is easier to generate more wealth in a city environment where opportunities are usually greater; although, with urban life comes certain disadvantages such as a detachment from nature and the land, health problems due to pollution, etc.

A large proportion of Uyghurs practice a moderate form of Islam called Sufism, which promotes an ascetic lifestyle and shuns material wants. Sufism is incompatible with radical Islamic fundamentalism and Wahhabism, extremist beliefs which are prevalent in states like Saudi Arabia, a country which has fanned the flames of terrorism in recent decades along with its Washington sponsor; whose endless wars in the Middle East have been a boon to terrorists past and present. Beijing is understandably anxious about extremism afflicting some disgruntled Uyghurs, which has been the case; but it should be stated that the overwhelming majority of Uyghurs are not militant or extremist in outlook.

Beijing’s reforms in Xinjiang, such as relating to agriculture, have allowed many Han Chinese to prosper and some Uyghurs. Over the past generation especially, Beijing has undertaken large-scale infrastructural projects in Xinjiang, overcoming serious logistical problems. This is borne out by the construction of sprawling railroads, airports and highways, including recently a 1,600 mile long road, completed in July 2017, linking Xinjiang’s most populace city Urumqi to Beijing. The Chinese government’s oil and gas pipelines criss-cross Xinjiang, like the enormous West-East gas pipelines, which transport natural gas from Xinjiang to eastern China. These industries have tied Xinjiang closer to mainland China, and has also helped to push Central Asia in Beijing’s direction where China’s infrastructure extends to.

In 2010 Beijing established a “pairing assistance” system, in which some cities in China are required to aid Xinjiang by providing “human resources, technology, management and funds”. In recent years Beijing has directly furnished south-western Xinjiang, almost entirely populated by Uyghurs, with $1.1 billion worth of earthquake-resistant housing construction, low-income housing renovation, and sanitation (12). Chinese leaders have continued to bankroll projects in Xinjiang, despite the disturbing number of terrorist attacks in the province following the Soviet Union’s collapse.

There have reportedly been different degrees of discrimination against Xinjiang’s Muslim communities, along with the human rights abuses which the Western media have devoted such huge attention to; mainly relating to extensive internment of Uyghurs and other Muslims in detention camps (13). However, the press have failed to cover the above positive aspects of Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang over the decades, which by a large measure outweigh negative factors.

The media in the West, who have a history of supporting US and British wars, also betray a long established tendency to overlook the more severe human rights violations perpetrated by Western allies, like the Gulf oil dictator countries. Perhaps the leading newspaper in the Western hemisphere, the New York Times, strongly endorsed the US-led invasions of Iraq and Libya this century – and the Times previously backed the brutal attack on Vietnam launched in early 1962 by the Kennedy administration; with the newspaper continuing its support for the war as it escalated and expanded across Indochina from the mid-1960s, by the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

Various New York Times journalists championed the US military assault on Vietnam. They erroneously described “the free world’s fight to contain aggressive Communism”, while defending the southern half of Vietnam “against proxy armies of Soviet Russia” as the US Army sought to “resist” the Vietcong (14).

Relating to Xinjiang, over the past generation Washington and the CIA has provided consistent support to Uyghur separatist organisations, and terrorist groups such as the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP). Since 2003 the TIP has been led by the now 48-year-old extremist Uyghur militant, Abdul Haq al-Turkistani, who was born in southern Xinjiang. The TIP, originally going by the name the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, received direct CIA funding and sponsorship (15). From 1990 until 2016 scores of terrorist attacks were perpetrated in Xinjiang. Many of these rampages were subsequently traced back to the TIP, which has close connections to Al Qaeda. The TIP leader Abdul Haq has, for example, served on Al Qaeda’s executive leadership council, and he is a firm believer in waging jihad (holy war) against China to attain the TIP’s separatist goals.

Contrary to numerous US intelligence reports and media accounts at the time, Abdul Haq was not in fact killed in an American drone strike on 15 February 2010, in north-western Pakistan. On 5 June 2015 he was seen alive and kicking, as he spoke in a video interview about how he had been “heavily injured in 2010” but duly recovered. He also appeared in later videos providing undeniable evidence of his apparent reincarnation. Abdul Haq was well acquainted with former Al Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden, who was not so fortunate, having been killed by US Special Forces in northern Pakistan on 2 May 2011. The Americans took the extreme risk of violating Pakistan’s sovereignty, and sparking a possible war with a nuclear power, in order to eliminate bin Laden who once had ties to the CIA. (16)

In the months prior to the summer 2008 Olympic Games held in China, Abdul Haq ordered the TIP to unleash terrorist attacks against a number of cities in mainland China – particularly those hosting sporting activities – in order to disrupt and overshadow Beijing’s hosting of the Olympics (17). Almost all of the terrorist plots were foiled. Following China’s clampdown in Xinjiang starting in 2017, including increased surveillance, it can be acknowledged that no terrorist acts have since taken place in the province.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Mikael Hook, Xu Tang, Xiongqi Pang, Kjell Aleklett, “Development journey and outlook of Chinese giant oilfields”, Uppsala Universitet, Diva Portal, April 2010

2 Ajit Singh, “Inside the World Uyghur Congress: The US-backed right wing regime change network setting the fall of China’”, The Grayzone, 5 March 2020

3 William A. Joseph, Politics in China: An Introduction, Third Edition (Oxford University Press; 3rd edition, 6 June 2019) p. 492

4 Cameron Orr, “U.S. public gets fake news about China’s alleged anti-Muslim campaign”, People’s World, 13 February 2020

5 William A. Joseph, Politics in China: An Introduction, Second Edition (Oxford University Press; 2nd edition, 11 April 2014) p. 435

6 Anthony Howell, C. Cindy Fan, “Migration and Inequality in Xinjiang: A Survey of Han and Uyghur Migrants in Urumqi”, geog.ucla.edu, 2011

7 Politics in China: An Introduction, Third Edition, p. 510

8 D.V. Buyarov, A.A. Kireev, A.V. Druzyaka, “Demographic Situation in Xinjiang-Uigur Autonomous Area in the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century”, Global Media Journal, 24 June 2016

9 Xin Gao, “Education in Xinjiang”, Borgen Magazine, 4 December 2017

10 The Times of India, “China offers 15-year free school education in restive Xinjiang”, 21 November 2017

11 Mark O’Neill, “A growing economy is key to China’s control of Xinjiang”, TheArticle, 1 March 2020

12 Politics in China: An Introduction, Third Edition, pp. 497-498

13 Louis Charbonneau, “China Again in UN Hotseat Over Xinjiang Abuses”, Human Rights Watch, 6 March 2020

14 Noam Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot (London, Verso Books, 1 April 1993) Intro., p. 2

15 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA, (Springer 1st ed., 23 June 2017), p. 68

16 Michael Moran, “Bin Laden Comes Home To Roost”, MSNBC, 24 August 1998

17 United Nations Security Council, “Abdul Haq”, 20 June 2017

Featured image is from United World International

US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun is rushing to Moscow from 25-26 August in a desperate attempt to stop Russia from “pulling a Crimea” in Belarus after the ongoing Color Revolution there has thus far failed to depose Lukashenko amid his dangerous saber-rattling with NATO, though it remains to be seen if the US and Russia can succeed in reviving their “New Detente” by reaching a pragmatic “compromise” on a “political solution” to this crisis or whether the situation has already gone so far that its current trajectory of either pro-Western regime change or (re)unification with Russia is irreversible.

***

Environment America along with other environmental organizations and the Gwich’in Steering Committee filed a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration over plans to begin oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The suit argues that the government is running afoul of federal laws and regulations by failing to protect the land, water and wildlife in the refuge. 

“Oil drilling and wildlife simply do not mix,” said Steve Blackledge, senior director for Environment America’s Conservation Program. “Not only will the Trump administration’s slapdash and tragic plan threaten one of the world’s most untamed wildlife areas, but it is also completely blind to the reality that, in 2020, dangerously extracting more fossil fuels from the ground is a fool’s errand when clean renewable energy options are rapidly on the rise.”

Set on Alaska’s northern coast and often described as “America’s Serengeti,” the Arctic Refuge is a unique and astounding place. Covering approximately 19.3 million acres, it has no roads or other human infrastructure, making it a vital home for numerous notable wildlife species. These include the threatened polar bear, which den in the area affected by the plan, and migratory birds from all 50 states and six continents. The refuge is also used as a calving and nursery ground by the Porcupine Caribou Herd. The indigenous Gwich’in people have relied on these caribou as part of their way of life for thousands of years.

In contention is the refuge’s 1.56 million-acre coastal plain, which has been sought-after land by the oil and gas industry for decades. With the Bureau of Land Management’s record of decision released last Monday, lease auctions could begin in this area before the end of the year.

“The BLM’s decision to violate lands sacred to my people and essential to the health of the Porcupine caribou herd is an attack on our rights, our culture and our way of life,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee. “We have lived and thrived in the Arctic for thousands of years. We have listened and learned from our elders, and we know we must stand united to protect future generations, and that means going to court to protect the caribou herd and sacred lands.”

The lawsuit specifically charges that the government violated the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Wilderness Act and the Endangered Species Act.

In addition to Environment America and the Gwich’in Steering Committee, the other plaintiffs are Alaska Wilderness League, Alaska Wildlife Alliance, Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society-Yukon Chapter, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges, National Wildlife Federation, National Wildlife Refuge Association, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and Wilderness Watch. The plaintiffs are represented by Trustees for Alaska.

“Through the decades, our country has prioritized the extraction of resources far more than the protection of wild places, and yet through a little wisdom, a lot of hard work and a sprinkle of luck, this place remains free from the harms of industrial oil drilling,” said Blackledge. “We can’t let that change. While we wish common sense would prevail, we’re now turning to the courts to protect it.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

For the past months the Peoples’ Republic of China has been subject to one after the other devastating shocks to its agriculture sector. A deadly outbreak of African Swine Fever that halved China’s huge pig herds in 2019, was followed by infestation from a plague of fall armyworms (FAW) which reached China in December, 2018 and now threaten China’s corn belt. Now the worst floods in some 60 years is wiping out major rice and other crops in central China along the Yangtze and other rivers. Food Security is one of six national priorities for national security. President Xi Jinping has just issued a call to citizens not to waste food or face penalties, a sign that the depth of the food security threat is far worse than thought.

While any of the several problems would be manageable in normal times, the combination of agriculture disasters combined with the economic consequences of the China outbreaks of coronavirus are presenting challenges that could well impact global food security in coming months.

Fall Armyworm

At the end of 2018 the presence of a large infestation of dreaded fall armyworm was noted in southern China. In 2019 the devastation by the resilient fall armyworm (FAW) invasion caused destruction of more than 1 million hectares of farmland in China last year, damaging mainly corn and sugarcane crops. According to government news wires, so far in 2020 the fall armyworm infestation has already destroyed 1.07 million hectares in 24 provinces as of early August. Notably, the FAW infestation worked its way across Africa where it was first detected in 2016 to India and in 2018 to China.

Now as the plague moves north inside China, it threatens the heart of China’s northeastern region, including Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning provinces and the Inner Mongolia region, known as the grain basket of China, producing about half of the country’s corn on some 13 million hectares. On August 21, Chinese state media reported presence of the dreaded FAW in in Liaoning province in its northeastern cornbelt for the first time. The government has made fighting the pest a priority, however the insect is resistant to many pesticides and produces up to 3,000 eggs a season. The adults can travel up to 60 miles in a night. A major problem is that the FAW in China has already developed a resistance to many commonly used insecticides. As of February 20 this year, despite vigorous attempts at eradication with various chemicals including sophisticated spraying with drones, the FAW infestation range in China was 90 times larger than during the same period the previous year. That was just at the peak of the China coronavirus lockdowns which severely hampered timely pest control measures.

African Swine Fever

The FAW is not the only major threat to China food security. In 2019 the African Swine Fever resulted in the death of more than 40% of China’s pig population, the largest in the world according to official Agriculture Ministry statistics, though industry estimates put the loss as high as 60% or more than 215 million pigs. African swine fever (ASF) is an animal disease affecting pigs and wild boars with up to 100% fatality rate. There is no known cure meaning infected herds must be slaughtered to contain spread. The crisis in 2019 was the worst ever for ASF pig losses in China.

While incidences of ASF in China are dramatically down this year, the rebuilding of pig herds will take a minimum of three years according to the UN’s FAO. And the new cases of ASF are still being detected. The US Department of Agriculture reports that China’s overall swine production and slaughter will hit record lows in 2020 as African Swine Fever continues to impact China’s hog industry. If all goes well, far from sure at this point, pig herds are expected to be only at 80% of pre-fever levels by 2022. With pig being the largest source of animal protein in the Chinese diet, the result has been doubling of consumer prices for pork products at a time the economy is in serious stress from COVID-19 and other factors.

Now, since June central China from Sichuan Province to Wuhan region along China’s largest river, Yangtze and its tributaries, severe flooding is causing new outbreaks of African Swine Fever. As of early July, as record rains continued, a Shandong Yongyi survey of small pig farmers, corporate farmers, traders and slaughterhouses in 20 provinces revealed dozens of African swine fever cases had occurred since the heavy rains in Guangdong province, the Guangxi region and other areas.

Then the Great Floods and Droughts

Every summer usually beginning May or June, there is Monsoon rainfall in central China in the region from Sichuan to Wuhan along the longest river in Asia, the Yangtze River. The Yangtze originates in the Tibetan Plateau. This year the rains have been recorded as the heaviest in some 60 years, since records began in 1961, and as of late August heavy rains have not stopped. The result has been severe flooding especially along the path of the Yangtze River basin.

By late July the intensive rains had raised the water levels along the Yangtze River to such a level level that the huge Three Gorges Dam, world’s largest hydroelectric dam, situated between Chongqing in the West and Wuhan and finally, Shanghai, was deemed by some hydrologist experts to be in danger of collapse. To control flooding damage to Chongqing, officials were forced to open the Three Gorges Dam to release huge volumes of water. That water began causing severe flooding downriver in Wuhan, the site of the first declared outbreak of the coronavirus at the end of 2019.

Quite literally, a dammed if you do and dammed (sic) if you don’t dilemma—flood Chongqing to save Wuhan and risk rupture of the huge dam or release water and flood Wuhan and major downriver regions. So far both have taken place. And the record rains are in the fifth declared flood as of late August.

Chongqing is a megacity with more than 33 million people in the metropolitan area, including some 23 million farmers. The entire Yangtze Basin contains considerable agriculture including rice crops that have been washed away from the flooding. In the southwest, the Province of Sichuan with a major upstream section of the Yangtze, raised its flood emergency response to its highest level for the first time as its rivers overflowed and villages and farmland were inundated.

The 13 provinces in China that plant rice by July were all impacted by the record flooding. Farmers plant rice three times a year and the extended flooding from June into late August has impacted all three plantings. At this point there are no precise estimates of the total agriculture crop damage due to the flooding in the Yangtze region other than that it is immense.

While central China is afflicted with record flooding, other parts of China have seen severe drought, especially in the wheat regions of northern and central China.

Wheat is mainly planted in central and northern China. Farmers only harvest once a year in late May to early June. This year droughts killed the crops in Henan, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Xinjiang, Jilin, and other northern provinces. Henan Province alone produces some 25% of China’s total agriculture production. According to independent assessments wheat production areas of Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces this year is lower in quality than 2019 and up to 30% lower in produced volumes. Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Xinjiang is worse. State-run media Xinhua reported on June 16 that 50.7 percent of Inner Mongolia’s land suffered heavy droughts this year. The region mainly grows wheat, as well as soybeans and corn. Crops and wild grass were unable to grow, impacting local animal husbandry.

While details of the extent of agriculture devastation are limited, as it is considered a matter of national security, the situation is clearly far graver that so far admitted. One indication is official remarks. Vice Premier Hu Chunhua recently asked the governors of each province in China to make sure sown areas of agricultural crops would not shrink and crop yield not be reduced this year. Given the extent of flooding damage, drought and insect damage to crops, that could be near to impossible. On July 27 at a Beijing food security meeting the Vice Premier warned that governors would be punished if they failed to uphold the promise, including with dismissals.

Fortunately for China, its close economic ties with Russia and the fact the Russian grain harvest looks set to again be the world’s largest mean that China will be able to import much of the deficit, albeit at a high price. However, with much of the world still imposing one or another degree of COVID-19 quarantine, global food availability is likely to become an increasing problem.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from NEO

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

In the course of the 2018 elections, a large group of former military-intelligence operatives entered capitalist politics as candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 50 congressional seats—nearly half the seats where the Democrats were targeting Republican incumbents or open seats created by Republican retirements. Some 30 of these candidates won primary contests and became the Democratic candidates in the November 2018 election, and 11 of them won the general election, more than one quarter of the 40 previously Republican-held seats captured by the Democrats as they took control of the House of Representatives. In 2020, the intervention of the CIA Democrats continues on what is arguably an equally significant scale.

More military-intelligence and FBI candidates

The number of contested congressional seats in 2018 was unusually large, as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee targeted 115 seats, about half of those in the Republican caucus. Candidates from military-intelligence backgrounds won the nomination for 30 of those seats, making them the largest single occupational group, ahead of lawyers (20), state and local politicians (26), businessmen (15), and others (24).

The likely takeover targets have shrunk in number because of the Democratic success in 2018. Only 31 seats are on the DCCC’s “red-to-blue” shopping list, and even of these, one is held by a Democrat already. That leaves 30 seats now held by Republicans but targeted for potential takeover. Of these, five have military-intelligence operatives as the Democratic nominees: Feehan, Jones, Jacobs, Kulkarni and Johnson, profiled above.

Another 18 military-intelligence candidates are running in districts held by Republicans that are not currently considered competitive but could become so in some cases if the Democratic edge in the election widens significantly—it is currently averaging about seven percent in the polls. The number of CIA Democrats in the House of Representatives could rise to as many as 20, depending on political shifts between now and November 3.

Reviewing the biographies of these candidates, based on the information they themselves chose to present on their campaign websites, gives a glimpse of the social types who are being attracted to and mobilized by the Democratic Party’s campaign against Trump, and particularly by the incessant claims that Trump is a Russian stooge and that his victory in 2016 was the product of “Russian meddling” in the elections.

By region, these candidates include:

Northeast

New Jersey, 4th Congressional District: Stephanie Schmid, a retired Foreign Service officer, is opposing incumbent Christopher Smith, an anti-abortion zealot who has held the seat for 40 years. A former attorney, Schmid joined the Foreign Service in 2011 and worked in Haiti, Brazil and Washington, D.C. Her website declares, “Stephanie has proudly served with Republican and Democratic leaders who have always put country before party.”

Pennsylvania, 13th Congressional District: Todd Rowley, a retired FBI counterintelligence officer, is the Democrat opposing first-term Republican John Joyce. Rowley is a former policeman, state trooper and paramedic who spent 24 years as an FBI agent engaged primarily in paramilitary and counterintelligence operations, including liaison with the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence.

Image on the right: Todd Rowley

Maryland, 1st Congressional District: Mia Mason is a retired 20-year military veteran, who “completed a total of 5 combat tours between Iraq and Afghanistan while serving in the Navy and Army,” according to her campaign website. She was discharged from the military for being gay and then brought back in. She was “onboard USS Kitty Hawk CV-63 for Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.” She is opposing five-term Republican incumbent Andy Harris in a district that comprises the rural eastern shore of Maryland.

Pennsylvania, 14th Congressional District: William Marx retired from the Marines after a 16-year career and is now a high school teacher and local councilman. He is running against first-term incumbent Republican Guy Reschenthaler in this southwest Pennsylvania seat.

Image on the left: Bill Marx

Midwest

Ohio, 14th Congressional District: Hillary O’Connor Mueri was a Navy pilot, who flew combat missions during the Iraq war to provide close air support to ground forces. She went to law school after the military, specializing in product litigation in the aviation industry. Mueri is running against four-term incumbent David Joyce in a mixed suburban and rural district extending northeast from Cleveland along Lake Erie.

Wisconsin, 1st Congressional District: Roger Polack was recruited by the US intelligence services while a student at the University of Wisconsin and trained to specialize in Asian affairs. His web site declares: “Roger served multiple tours as a civilian intelligence officer in Afghanistan, spending 20 months on the ground first as an analyst for, and then Deputy Director of, the Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell. He sat face to face with Taliban detainees, helped plan law enforcement and military operations, and managed the intelligence priorities of 40 civilian and military staff.”

In other words, the Democratic candidate in the district formerly held by Republican Paul Ryan, now by first-term Republican Bryan Steil, should be investigated for possible connections to torture and assassination. But in the eyes of the Democratic Party leadership, this record is a credential, not the mark of Cain.

Image on the right: Chip Coldiron in Afghanistan

Indiana, 3rd Congressional District: Chip Coldiron is an Army veteran deployed twice to Afghanistan, who became a health care worker and then schoolteacher after leaving the military. He is running against four-term incumbent Jim Banks in a district centered on Ft. Wayne.

South

Kentucky, 6th District: Josh Hicks is a Marine veteran turned policeman. In his four years on active duty, he was deployed twice with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, rising to the rank of sergeant. He went to work as a policeman in eastern Kentucky, becoming a member of the SWAT team. He is running against four-term incumbent Andy Barr in a district centered on the city of Lexington.

North Carolina, 11th Congressional District: Morris Davis is the former chief prosecutor at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, although he was forced out by the Bush administration because he objected to the use of testimony obtained through torture of detainees. The Guantanamo posting was the culmination of a 25-year military career as a Judge Advocate General in the Air Force. Davis is running for the Asheville-based seat formerly held by Mark Meadows, now White House Chief of Staff for Trump. He was initially a heavy underdog to 25-year-old Madison Cawthorn, a right-wing activist who won an upset victory in the Republican primary, but Cawthorn is now caught up in a scandal over social media postings of his trip to see Hitler’s vacation hideaway in the Bavarian Alps, which he tweeted was “on his bucket list” of must-see locations.

Georgia, 1st Congressional District: Joyce Marie Griggs retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel after a 33-year career in Army intelligence. She won the Democratic primary to face incumbent three-term Republican Buddy Carter in a district centered the city of Savannah. According to her website: “Among her many decorations, medals, and badges are the Bronze Star, Defense Meritorious Service, and Global War on Terrorism Service medals, and the Parachutist badge.” Griggs  had three tours in Iraq in 2007, 2008 and 2010.

Georgia, 9th Congressional District: Devin Pandy, like Griggs, is a career Army intelligence officer, who initially specialized in electronic warfare systems maintenance and was deployed overseas five times, to Panama, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, retiring as a Chief Warrant Officer 2. He boasts of coming from an Army family, with his grandfather in World War II, his father in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, and his brother and sister-in-law also in the military. Pandy is the Democratic candidate for the seat vacated by right-wing Republican Doug Collins, who is running for US Senate. He will face Republican Andrew Clyde, a businessman and Navy veteran with a huge financial advantage.

Image below: Devin Pandy (left)

Florida, 1st Congressional District: Philip Ehr is a repeat candidate from 2018, when he lost to incumbent Matt Gaetz, perhaps the most fervent Trump supporter in Congress, by a 2-1 margin in a district that comprises Pensacola and much of the Florida Panhandle. According to his campaign website, in the course of his 26-year career as a Navy seaman and pilot: “He flew reconnaissance missions in the Cold War, Desert Storm and post-9/11 operations; oversaw U.S. air operations in NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign in the Balkans; organized operational intelligence support to non-DOD Federal agencies; improved electronic warfare readiness of Allied forces; and provided strategic advice to senior leaders in Washington and London.”

Florida, 12th Congressional District: Kimberly Walker was in the Army for eight years, then a prison guard, and is now a civilian employee of Centcom, the US military command for all operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, headquartered in Tampa. After the military and prison system, Walker was hired as an IT contractor at MacDill Air Force Base, then “accepted a position as a Software Engineer at United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).” Later she became a contractor for Centcom headquarters. She is the Democratic candidate against four-term incumbent Republican Gus Bilirakis, who has a 50-1 advantage in terms of fundraising.

Florida, 18th Congressional District: Pam Keith is a former Judge Advocate General in the Navy, who continued in the legal profession and became a legal counsel to Florida Power & Light. Keith lost the Democratic primary in 2018 to another military-intelligence candidate but ran again in 2020 and won Tuesday’s primary easily. She will oppose two-term incumbent Republican Brian Mast, himself a combat veteran who lost his legs to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.

Alabama, 1st Congressional District: James Averhart retired from the Marine Corps as a Chief Warrant Officer Five after a 30-year career, mainly as a military policeman, rising to head the Marine Corps Correction Service (the prison for Marines convicted of criminal offenses on duty). He was in combat in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm (the two phases of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War). As the Democratic candidate in the Mobile-based 1st Congressional District, left vacant by the retirement of Republican Bradley Byrne, Averhart is a prohibitive underdog to Republican nominee Jerry Carl, a Mobile County commissioner, who has raised $1.7 million to Averhart’s $50,000.

Oklahoma, 2nd Congressional District: Danyell Lanier is a Navy veteran and health care trainer who won an uncontested primary for the Democratic nomination against five-term incumbent Republican Markwayne Mullin. Lanier’s website gives little biographical information about her. Mullin has raised $1.3 million compared to $18,000 for Lanier.

Colorado, 4th Congressional District: Ike McCorkle is a retired Marines Corps special forces officer, who boasts of a military family, including two grandfathers, his father, a brother and two cousins. According to his campaign website, he retired in 2014 “to recover from eighteen hard years of service in the USMC Infantry and Spec Ops communities.” McCorkle deployed six times overseas, four times in combat, was wounded multiple times, and medically retired with the rank of captain. He is the Democratic candidate in the heavily rural district covering the eastern third of Colorado, against three-term incumbent Ken Buck, an extreme right-winger.

Utah, 2nd Congressional District: Kael Weston spent seven years as a military adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than any other State Department official. According to his campaign website, he was “State Department Political Adviser to a dozen Marine commanding generals, including during and after the biggest battle of the Iraq War (Fallujah, 2004-2007).” He also played a significant role in Afghanistan, in the city of Khost and as a Marine Corps adviser in Helmand province, one of the bloodiest battlegrounds against the Taliban. Weston is a published author and has written regularly for the corporate media on counterterrorism and military subjects. He will be the Democratic candidate against four-term incumbent Republican Chris Stewart, who is a heavy favorite and enjoys a 4-1 fundraising advantage.

Some conclusions

There is one other aspect of this list that has political significance. It represents the intersection of the pro-imperialist orientation of the Democratic Party and identity politics. Of the 18 candidates given thumbnail descriptions above, six are African American (Griggs, Pandy, Walker, Keith, Averhart and Lanier), and three more are white women (Schmid, Mason and Mueri). In other words, half of these military-intelligence candidates are examples of “diversity,” although enabling minorities and women to commit the same crimes previously committed by white men would not seem to be an improvement.

Not every one of these 18 candidates is a monster or a war criminal. But then there are those whose background is so filthy that they provide an unanswerable argument against claims, put forward by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, that it is possible to “reform” the Democratic Party and even to transform it into a vehicle for social progress.

What does it say about the Democratic Party that it has, among its candidates for Congress, a half dozen career military intelligence operatives, the longest-serving civilian adviser to US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, and the former overseer of prisons for the Marine Corps? What of the record of FBI counterintelligence officer Todd Rowley? His campaign website deserves a more extended citation:

Todd served as the FBI’s senior liaison representative to the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) regarding the FBI’s role in support of and counterintelligence efforts related to U.S. government overseas sensitive and classified construction projects in critical threat countries. Todd regularly interacted with FBIHQ and USIC senior executive managers and personnel throughout the USIC, representing the FBI’s security and counterintelligence interests related to a host of critical threat and national security matters…

Todd traveled overseas extensively in support of this critically important mission. During Todd’s distinguished FBI career, he was entrusted with some of our country’s most sensitive and classified intelligence information and was called upon to provide testimony in Federal Court and Grand Juries, as well as being the affiant in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) proceedings.

What does such an individual see in the Democratic Party? And equally important, what does the Democratic Party see in him?

This list, however tedious—and hideous—is instructive. It gives a picture of the social elements that comprise a significant fraction of the Democratic Party. These candidates, drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus, demonstrate the real nature of this organization, a political instrument of Wall Street and the imperialist state.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

All images in this article are from WSWS

This is how Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jose Arreaza, direct from Caracas during the August 20, 2020 historic Zoom Conference, responded to a question about the threat of a US-led military intervention in Venezuela:

“Maybe they [Canadian government officials] can listen to this [Conference]. I am so sure that, I don’t know if the Minister, but people from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada are listening to this conference, to this exchange, and they are taking notes, hopefully they rectify, and they will never support, not now or in the future, a military operation against Venezuela. Thank you, August.”

The question was based on recent reports compiled in an article. It indicates that the Trump administration is planning for a pre-US presidential election “October surprise” military intervention into Venezuela. The operation may not US troops directly, but the US counts on other countries such a Colombia. The silent acquiescence of Canada would obviously play a key role. The US counted on Canada’s silent surrender to the May 2020 US-led military intervention, one of whose key figures was Canadian-American former US Special Green Beret turned mercenary.

On August 19 there were yet further indications of this military operation. This time, Covid-19 is one of the main pretexts. Furthermore, Canada is no stranger to the cynical use of Covid-19 to further its own interests, initially to get a seat on the United Nations Security Council. It used Covid-19 to repair its tarnished image after its humiliating defeat for that seat. Let us keep this in mind as we review some of the most recent troubling revelations.

The Venezuelan Ambassador to the United Nation in New York, Samuel Moncada tweeted on August 19.

[My translation] “The Center for International Strategic Studies is one of Washington’s most active propaganda organs in the campaign for the invasion of Venezuela. In 2019, it organized a secret meeting to discuss US-Colombia military attack with Venezuelan traitors.” See here, for which we are indebted to The Grayzone and Max Blumenthal:

Exclusive: US military attack on Venezuela mulled by top Trump advisors and Latin American officials at private meeting of DC think tank @CSIS https://t.co/6L9Bl6s4KM via @MaxBlumenthal pic.twitter.com/3jccZEHKOh

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) April 14, 2019

What is the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)?

CSIS is ranked the number one think tank in the United States as well as the defense and national security center of excellence for 2016-2018 by the University of Pennsylvania’s “Global Go To Think Tank Index.”

In the CSIS recent August 5 article, the title tells it all:

“Venezuela: Pandemic and Foreign Intervention in a Collapsing Narcostate.” It refers to Covid-19 in the region. However, it is based on the false affirmation that Covid-19 is not being treated in Venezuela and thus many are flocking to Colombia and other countries, as the title of the article indicates:

“If international politics makes a multilateral humanitarian military intervention unthinkable—as has occurred elsewhere in the world—when the international community fails to act, Venezuela’s neighbors could be forced to take matters into their own hands as a matter of national self-preservation….Current challenges in the region—spanning citizen security, economic resilience, democratic consolidation, energy security, and the respect for human rights, among others—point to a need for broader and deeper involvement. And should it reinforce its dedication to concerns distinctly relevant to the North America, the continent can further its hemispheric leadership and effect positive change throughout the region.”

This is the real situation:

• Venezuela: 35,687 cases, 297 deaths, 24,561 people recovered, with a population of 29 million.

• Colombia: 502,178 cases, 15,979 deaths, 326,298 people recovered, with a population of 50 million.

A large explosion rocked the Arab Gas Pipeline in Syria on August 24 causing a blackout in the country’s capital Damascus and multiple other cities and towns.

The explosion occurred between the towns of Ad Dumayr and Adra the a result of a ‘terrorist attack’, according to Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Ghanem. The incident led to a pressure drop and cascading shutdowns of the country’s power stations. Authorities almost immediately extinguished the fire, but as of August 25 morning blackouts were still seen in many towns and even in the capital, with some power restored to hospitals and government buildings.

This is the sixth time that stretch of the gas pipeline has been hit by an explosion over the course of the Syrian conflict, Kharboutli added, refusing to speculate about possible causes of the latest blast. The US envoy for Syrian affairs James Jeffrey insisted that the explosion was likely an attack by ISIS.

Earlier, ISIS claimed responsibility for several drone and rocket attacks on Syria’s oil and gas infrastructure in the Homs desert. In April, a mysterious explosion also erupted on a natural gas pipeline near al-Shadadi in the province of al-Hasakah. This area is in the hands of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces and the US-led coalition. Then, some sources also accused ISIS cells operating in the area. However, there are many more than just one suspect.

In January, Damascus said divers had planted explosives on offshore pipelines belonging to the Banias refinery on the Mediterranean coast, but the damage had not halted operations. This attack was likely conducted by Israeli forces.

The terrorist attack in Syria took place two days after a top Iranian nuclear official has for the first time described the July 2nd fire at the Natanz nuclear facility as sabotage.

“The explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility was a result of sabotage operations,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said adding that “Security authorities will reveal in due time the reason behind the blast.”

The fire at Natanz caused severe damage, setting back the development of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges. On top of this, Iran was targeted by a series of strange explosions and fires at various military and industrial sites across the country.

These developments together with the attacks in Syria and the blast in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, raise more and more concerns that Iran and countries from the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance became a target of a major Israeli-led or even US covert destabilization campaign.

The UN arms embargo on Iran will expire in October, and Iran is now shopping for Russian military hardware, including the S-400. The US suffered a humiliating defeat at the UN on Aug. 14, as they tried to extend the embargo, but found themselves isolated on the global diplomatic stage as Russia and China voted against the extension, and the only country who sided with the US was the tiny Dominican Republic. 

Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment Institute for Peace said,

“It is a scorched-earth approach, destroying the JCPOA in order to make it difficult for a Biden administration, and for the Iranians, to return to it,” DiMaggio said. “They’re not concerned with keeping a lid on Iran’s nuclear program. They really want to kill this deal.”

Army 2020 arms expo

Army 2020 is being held on August 23-29 at Kubinka Air Base, Alabino Military Training Grounds, outside of Moscow. About 70 nations will participate in a display of more than 730 pieces of Russian weapons, equipment, and industrial exhibits.

The event acts as a showroom for sales, as well as a forum for discussions between military officials, researchers, and defense industry experts.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the ongoing Army 2020 event will enable the Iranian delegation to inspect the latest Russian equipment.

Shoigu explained,

“This year we decided to combine the international military-technical forum ‘Army’ and the Army International Games,” while adding, “At the forum’s expositions, the Iranian delegation will be able to get acquainted with the latest examples of Russian weapons and military equipment.”

Shoigu also met with Iranian Border Police forces, who are competing in the 6th International Army Games, which are being held concurrently with ARMY-2020.

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami explained the need for continuing regional cooperation to establish peace and stability in the region while attending Army 2020. He said,

“The realistic response of the UN Security Council and the rejection of the recent US anti-Iran resolution on extension of arms embargoes against Iran, once again, brought a major defeat for the US and its regional allies and proved the global opposition to unilateralism.” He added, “JCPOA parties’ reaction to activation of trigger mechanism and re-imposition of sanctions on Iran was another harsh response, rejecting America’s excessive demands.”

Hatami inspected the Russian made S-400 Triumf air defense system at the ARMY-2020 military expo on Sunday along with his Iranian delegation, where they were briefed on the S-400’s systems feature and principles of operation. The delegation also inspected the Pantsir S1E combined medium-range surface-to-air missile system and anti-aircraft artillery system, the Kamov KA-226T utility helicopter, and was browsing the Sukhoi Su-30 fighter.

Hatami added that the joint strategies applied by Tehran and Moscow can bring peace and stability to the region, regardless of the US one-sided policies.

Shoigu referred to the developing mutual defense cooperation between Tehran and Moscow which join the two in strategical, regional, and international goals.

Kasem Jalali, the Iranian ambassador to Russia, confirmed that Tehran was shopping for Russian weapons to “enhance its defense capabilities,” and recognized that Moscow has “always been by our side in times of trouble”.

Weapons ‘Made in Iran’

Iran has developed advanced air defense capabilities at home. In 2019, the Khordad-3 air defense system produced by Iran Aviation Industries Organization shot down a $220 million US-made Northrop Grumman Global Hawk surveillance drone over Iranian airspace in the Strait of Hormuz, and Tehran ordered the Iranian made Bavar-373 air defense system, described as similar to the S-300 to be produced.

Trump trashed the Obama era Iran Nuclear deal

US President Trump inherited in 2016 a historic treaty known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was designed for global security and had brought the US and Iran to a closer relationship.

The 2015 deal was: if Iran keeps its promise to limit its civilian nuclear program, the US would lift sanctions. Iran stuck to its promises, but Trump broke the deal in 2018, alone and without the support of the US allies who had signed the deal.

Iran complied with its promises under the agreement, as verified by eleven consecutive International Atomic Energy Agency reports. Trump trashed the deal, even though the US was not the only signer, to get support from his fans for the 2020 re-election campaign.

US-Russian Arms Control in the Middle East

US-Russian cooperation in removing Syria’s declared chemical weapons (CW) in 2013-2014 was seen as an important arms control achievement; however, the two failed to build on their joint success because the US policy in the Middle East is decided in terms appeasing Israel, at the expense of the rest of the region.  Prospects for future joint projects are dim unless their regional interest are broadened and fairly balanced.

The US-Israeli-UAE deal

Earlier this month, it was speculated that the recent joint US and Israeli F-35 drills may have been aimed at dealing with advanced Russian air defense systems being sold to Iran.

Israel has depended on a long-standing US policy to not sell the same weapons to Arab countries but was shocked by the recent US willingness to sell the UAE the F-35 jet. The UAE purchase is seen as a countermeasure to Chinese and Russian arms sales to Iran.

In the process of getting an Arab monarchy to make a peace-deal, Israel has lost its military advantage as ‘best-friends forever’ with the US, which has stood for half a century.

Russia-Turkey weapons deal

Russia signed a contract to deliver the second batch of S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems to Turkey, which is a follow-up to the September 2017 deal for the S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems, costing $2.5 billion. to Turkey.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist.

Featured image is from MD

“They came again this morning at about 8:00 o’clock. A large cargo-type helicopter flew low over the cabin, shaking it on its very foundations. It shook all of us inside, too. I feel frightened … I see how helpless and tormented I am becoming with disgust and disillusionment with the government which has turned this beautiful country into a police state … I feel like I am in the middle of a war zone.”—Journal entry from a California resident describing the government’s aerial searches for marijuana plants

Backyard gardeners, beware: tomato plants have become collateral damage in the government’s war on drugs, especially marijuana.

In fact, merely growing a vegetable garden on your own property, or in a greenhouse on your property, or shopping at a gardening store for gardening supplies—incredibly enough—could set you up for a drug raid sanctioned by the courts.

It’s happened before.

After shopping for hydroponic tomatoes at their local gardening store, a Kansas family found themselves subjected to a SWAT team raid as part of a multi-state, annual campaign dubbed “Operation Constant Gardener,” in which police collected the license plates of hundreds of customers at the gardening store and then investigated them for possible marijuana possession.

By “investigated,” I mean that police searched through the family’s trash. (You can thank the Supreme Court and their 1978 ruling in California v. Greenwood for allowing police to invade your trash can.) Finding “wet glob vegetation” in the garbage, the cops somehow managed to convince themselves—and a judge—that it was marijuana.

The hydroponic tomato garden that led to a 2012 police raid. (Court exhibit via Washington Post)

In fact, it was loose-leaf tea, but those pesky details don’t usually bother the cops when they’re conducting field tests.

Indeed, field tests routinely read positive for illegal drugs even when no drugs are present. According to investigative journalist Radley Balko,

“it’s almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to. A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiard’s chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins.”

There’s a long list of innocent ingredients that could be mistaken for drugs and get you subjected to a raid, because that’s all it takes—just the barest whiff of a suspicion by police that you might be engaged in criminal activity—to start the ball rolling.

From there, these so-called “investigations” follow the usual script: judge issues a warrant for a SWAT raid based on botched data, cops raid the home and terrorize the family at gunpoint, cops find no drugs, family sues over a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, and then the courts protect the cops and their botched raid on the basis of qualified immunity.

It happens all the time.

As Balko reports,

“Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It’s happened with all five.)”

Surely, you might think, the government has enough on its hands right now—policing a novel coronavirus pandemic, instituting nationwide lockdowns, quelling civil unrests over police brutality—that it doesn’t need to waste time and resources ferreting out pot farmers.

You’d be wrong.

This is a government that excels at make-work projects in which it assigns at-times unnecessary jobs to government agents to keep them busy or employed.

In this case, however, the make-work principle (translation: making work to keep the police state busy at taxpayer expense) is being used to justify sending police and expensive military helicopters likely equipped with sophisticated surveillance and thermal imaging devices on exploratory sorties every summer—again at taxpayer expense—in order to uncover illegal marijuana growing operations.

Often, however, what these air and ground searches end up targeting are backyard gardeners growing tomato plants.

Just recently, in fact, eyewitnesses in Virginia reported low-flying black helicopters buzzing over rural and suburban neighborhoods as part of a multi-agency operation to search for marijuana growers. Oftentimes these joint operations involve local police, state police and the Army National Guard.

One woman reported having her “tomato plants complimented by the 7 cops that pulled up in my yard in unmarked SUVs, after a helicopter hovered over our house for 20 minutes this morning.” Another man reported a similar experience from a few years ago when police “showed up in unmarked SUV’s with guns pulled. Then the cops on the ground argued with the helicopter because the heat signature in the ‘copter didn’t match what was growing.”

Back in 2013, an aerial surveillance mission spotted what police thought might be marijuana plants. Two days later, dozens of city officials, SWAT team, police officers and code compliance employees, and numerous official vehicles including dozens of police cars and several specialized vehicular equipment, including helicopters and unmanned flying drones, descended on The Garden of Eden, a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, for a 10-hour raid in search of marijuana that turned up nothing more than tomato, blackberry and okra plants.

These aerial and ground sweeps have become regular occurrences across the country, part of the government’s multi-million dollar Domestic Cannabis Eradication Program. Local cops refer to the annual military maneuvers as “Eradication Day.”

Started in 1979 as a way to fund local efforts to crack down on marijuana growers in California and Hawaii, the Eradication Program went national in 1985, right around the time the Reagan Administration enabled the armed forces to get more involved in the domestic “war on drugs.”

Writing for The Washington Post, Radley Balko describes how these raids started off, with the National Guard, spy planes and helicopters:

The project was called the Campaign Against Marijuana Production, or CAMP… In all, thirteen California counties were invaded by choppers, some of them blaring Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as they dropped Guardsmen and law enforcement officers armed with automatic weapons, sandviks, and machetes into the fields of California … In CAMP’s first year, the program conducted 524 raids, arrested 128 people, and seized about 65,000 marijuana plants. Operating costs ran at a little over $1.5 million. The next year, 24 more sheriffs signed up for the program, for a total of 37. CAMP conducted 398 raids, seized nearly 160,000 plants, and made 218 arrests at a cost to taxpayers of $2.3 million.

The area’s larger growers had been put out of business (or, probably more accurately, had set up shop somewhere else), so by the start of the second campaign in 1984, CAMP officials were already targeting increasingly smaller growers. By the end of that 1984 campaign, the helicopters had to fly at lower and lower altitudes to spot smaller batches of plants. The noise, wind, and vibration from the choppers could knock out windows, kick up dust clouds, and scare livestock. The officials running the operation made no bones about the paramilitary tactics they were using. They considered the areas they were raiding to be war zones. In the interest of “officer safety,” they gave themselves permission to search any structures relatively close to a marijuana supply, without a warrant. Anyone coming anywhere near a raid operation was subject to detainment, usually at gunpoint.

Right around the same time, in the mid-1980s, the federal government started handing out grants to local police departments to assist with their local boots-on-the-ground “war on drugs.” These grants (through the Byrne Grant program and COPS program, both of which started to be phased out under George W. Bush, only to be re-upped by Barack Obama) could be used to pay for additional police personnel, equipment, training, technical assistance and information systems. However, studies show that while these federal grants did not improve police effectiveness or drug deterrence, they did incentivize SWAT team raids.

But how do you go from a “war on drugs” to SWAT-style raids on vegetable gardens?

Connect the dots, starting with the government’s war on marijuana, the emergence of SWAT teams, the militarization of local police forces through the federal 1033 Program, which allows the Pentagon to transfer “vast amounts of military equipment—machine guns and ammunition, helicopters, night-vision gear, armored cars—to local police departments,” and the transformation of American communities into battlefields: as always, it comes back to the make work principle, which starts with local police finding ways to justify the use of military equipment and federal funding.

Each year, the government spends between $14 and $18 million funding helicopter sweeps and police overtime to help the states track down illegal marijuana plants. These sweeps are even being carried out in states where it’s now legal to grow marijuana.

The sweeps work like this: Local police, working with multiple state agencies including the National Guard, carry out ground and air searches of different sectors. Air spotters flying overhead in helicopters relay their findings to police on the ground, who then carry out a search-and-destroy mission.

Mark my words: the use of police drones will make these kinds of aerial missions even more common.

For the most part, aerial surveillance is legal. As Arthur Holland Michel writes for The Atlantic: “When it comes to law enforcement, police are likewise free to use aerial surveillance without a warrant or special permission. Under current privacy law, these operations are just as legal as policing practices whereby an officer spots unlawful activity while walking or driving through a neighborhood.”

There have been a few notable exceptions.

In 2015, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that surveillance from a low-flying helicopter conducting an aerial search for marijuana by state police and the national guard was illegal under the U.S. Constitution. The court reasoned that “when low-flying aerial activity leads to more than just observation and actually causes an unreasonable intrusion on the ground—most commonly from an unreasonable amount of wind, dust, broken objects, noise, and sheer panic—then at some point courts are c and require a warrant before law enforcement engages in such activity. The Fourth Amendment and its prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures demands no less.”

In Philip Cobbs’ case, helicopter spotters claimed to have seen two lone marijuana plants growing in the wreckage of a fallen oak tree on the Virginia native’s 39-acre family farm.

Cobbs noticed the black helicopter circling overhead while spraying the blueberry bushes near his house. After watching the helicopter for several moments, Cobbs went inside to check on his blind, deaf 90-year-old mother. By the time he returned outside, several unmarked police SUVs had driven onto his property, and police (ten in all) in flak jackets, carrying semi-automatic weapons and shouting unintelligibly, had exited the vehicles and were moving toward him.

Of course, it was never about the two pot plants.

What the cops were really after was an excuse to search Cobbs’ little greenhouse, which he had used that spring to start tomato plants, cantaloupes, and watermelons, as well as asters and hollyhocks, which he planned to sell at a roadside stand near his home. The search of the greenhouse turned up nothing more than used tomato seedling containers.

Nevertheless, police charged Cobbs with misdemeanor possession of marijuana for the two plants they claimed to have found. Eventually, the charges were dismissed but not before The Rutherford Institute took up Cobbs’ case, which revealed that police hadn’t even bothered to secure a warrant before embarking on their raid of Cobbs’ property—a raid that had to cost taxpayers upwards of $25,000, at the very least—part of their routine sweep of the countryside in search of pot-growing operations.

Two plants or two hundred or no plants at all: it doesn’t matter.

A SWAT team targeted one South Carolina man for selling $50 worth of pot on two different occasions. The Washington Post reports: The SWAT team “broke down Betton’s door with a battering ram, then fired at least 57 bullets at him, hitting him nine times. He lost portions of his gallbladder, colon, bowel and rectum, and is paralyzed from the waist down. He also suffered damage to his liver, lung, small intestine and pancreas. Two of his vertebrae were damaged, and another was partially destroyed. Another bullet shattered his leg.” After security footage showed that most of what police said about the raid was a lie, the cops settled the case for $2.75 million.

Monetary awards like that are the exception, however.

Most of the time, the cops get away with murder and mayhem. Literally.

Bottom line: no amount of marijuana is too insignificant if it allows police to qualify for federal grants and equipment and lay claim to seized assets (there’s the profit motive) under the guise of fighting the War on Drugs.

SWAT teams carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids every year. The vast majority of these raids are to serve routine drug warrants, many times for crimes no more serious than possession of marijuana.

Although growing numbers of states continue to decriminalize marijuana use and 9 out of 10 Americans favor the legalization of either medical or recreational/adult-use marijuana, the government’s profit-driven “War on Drugs”—waged with state and local police officers dressed in SWAT gear, armed to the hilt, and trained to act like soldiers on a battlefield, all thanks to funding provided by the U.S. government, particularly the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—has not abated.

Since the formation of the DHS post-9/11, hundreds of billions of dollars in grants have flowed to local police departments for SWAT teams, giving rise to a “police industrial complex” that routinely devastates communities, terrorizes families, and destroys innocent lives.

No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.

Unfortunately, general incompetence, collateral damage (fatalities, property damage, etc.) and botched raids tend to go hand in hand with an overuse of paramilitary forces.

In some cases, officers misread the address on the warrant. In others, they simply barge into the wrong house or even the wrong building. In another subset of cases, police conduct a search of a building where the suspect no longer resides.

SWAT teams have even on occasion conducted multiple, sequential raids on wrong addresses or executed search warrants despite the fact that the suspect is already in police custody. Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs. Incredibly, these substances have included tomatoes, sunflowers, fish, elderberry bushes, kenaf plants, hibiscus, and ragweed.

All too often, the shock-and-awe tactics utilized by many SWAT teams only increases the likelihood that someone will get hurt with little consequences for law enforcement, even when the raids are botched.

Botched SWAT team raids have resulted in the loss of countless lives, including children and the elderly. Usually, however, the first to be shot are the family dogs.

SWAT raids are usually carried out late at night or shortly before dawn. Unfortunately, to the unsuspecting homeowner—especially in cases involving mistaken identities or wrong addresses—a raid can appear to be nothing less than a violent home invasion, with armed intruders crashing through their door.

That’s exactly what happened to Jose Guerena, the young ex-Marine who was killed after a SWAT team kicked open the door of his Arizona home during a drug raid and opened fire. According to news reports, Guerena, 26 years old and the father of two young children, grabbed a gun in response to the forced invasion but never fired. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. Police officers were not as restrained. The young Iraqi war veteran was allegedly fired upon 71 times. Guerena had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.

The problems inherent in these situations are further compounded by the fact that SWAT teams are granted “no-knock” warrants at high rates such that the warrants themselves are rendered practically meaningless.

This sorry state of affairs is made even worse by U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have essentially done away with the need for a “no-knock” warrant altogether, giving the police authority to disregard the protections afforded American citizens by the Fourth Amendment.

Clearly, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, something must be done.

When the war on drugs—a.k.a. the war on the American people—becomes little more than a thinly veiled attempt to keep SWAT teams employed and special interests appeased, it’s time to revisit our drug policies and laws.

“You take the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, all the rights you expect to have—when they come in like that, the only right you have is not to get shot if you cooperate. They open that door, your life is on the line,” concluded Bob Harte, whose home was raided by a SWAT team simply because the family was seen shopping at a garden store, cops found loose tea in the family’s trash and mistook it for marijuana.

“Our family will never be the same,” said Addie Harte, recalling the two-hour raid that had police invading their suburban home with a battering ram and AR-15 rifles. As The Washington Post reports:

Bob found himself flat on floor, hands behind his head, his eyes locked on the boots of the officer standing over him with an AR-15 assault rifle. “Are there kids?” the officers were yelling. “Where are the kids?” “And I’m laying there staring at this guy’s boots fearing for my kids’ lives, trying to tell them where my children are,” Harte recalled later in a deposition on July 9, 2015. “They are sending these guys with their guns drawn running upstairs to bust into my children’s house, bedroom, wake them out of bed.”

It didn’t matter that no drugs were found—nothing but a hydroponic tomato garden and loose tea leaves. The search and SWAT raid were reasonable, according to the courts.

There’s a lesson here for the rest of us. As Bob Harte concluded: “If this can happen to us, everybody in the country needs to be afraid.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

What do we know?

We know that the tests do not work but governments pretend that they do. We also know that some vaccines sterilize people. Warp Speed vaccine preparation almost guarantees vaccine injury, plus it is an entirely new DNA altering vaccine. Big Pharma is not liable for injuries. Nano-tech is also part of the equation with Immunity Passports etc. — Mark Taliano

***

Dr Petrella is a retired gynaecologist from Teramo in Italy who has already garnered controversy over his Covid 19 views. Petrella was expelled from the Order of Doctors after retirement for his views surrounding the HPV vaccine which he considers to be ineffective and in some cases dangerous. Petrella upheld his right to his opinion and stated that he is against any kind of mandatory vaccine. Petrella is appealing against the decision.

Regarding Covid19, the gynecologist said:

”Doctors and virologists go on television every day to tell shit and lies to create panic. Time to send home all these highly paid gentlemen and consultants who have kept us locked up in jail. We can’t take it anymore”.

Petrella wrote a letter to the Abruzzo region authorities:

Translated from Italian:

Text by Oltra TV.

“I am ashamed to have been represented, in this health emergency, by doctors on television who said shit and created anxiety. A revolution can come out here,” Petrella continued.

He then also turned to the police who in this period have been the protagonists of several unpleasant episodes:

“With what conscience you make a fine of 500 euros to poor people!”

It does not fail to deal with one of the most discussed issues of this phase.

“The mask, in addition to creating the now known complications, predisposes to cancer.”

But the worst is that you are planning to force the children to put them in school. ‘Dr. Petrella then added:

“There will be war. Did you understand scientists of my feet, virologists of my shoes? Open everything again, nothing happens”.

About two weeks ago the Abruzzese doctor sent a registered letter to the President of the Abruzzo Region Marco Marsilio and for information to the Regional Health Councilor Nicoletta Verì, to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Teramo, to the Carabinieri Command of Teramo and to the General Director of the ASL of Teramo. The object of the registered letter is the mandatory use of masks for this emergency.

Petrella about the emergency declared:

“You created the panic, there is no emergency. The virus will return in October because you said the vaccine is already ready”.

The doctor is very hesitant on this aspect because it takes years to make a vaccine and making one on a virus that is so changeable is unthinkable: “Colleagues, react, strike.”

The mask is harmful and infringes the rights. In the letter the doctor wrote:

“I do not intend to use the aforementioned mask, at least in open spaces and with sufficient distance from other people”.

Petrella then touched on the legal issue:

“Since the mask is a medical surgical device, it cannot be imposed, under penalty of violation of Article 32 of the Constitution and of the Oviedo Convention signed by Italy”.

He also added:

“On the basis of the anti-terrorism law and article 85 of the TULPS (Consolidated Law on Public Safety): “It is forbidden to circulate misrepresented, or with an unidentifiable face”.

Then Petrella touched on the topic of the correct use of the masks that should be changed several times a day to have an effective action:

“You do it? If you see an elder afterwards, do you change it immediately? “It limits the physiological act, primary and essential for life, that is, breathing. The lack of a free and healthy breathing is incompatible with an optimal state of health which represents the primary good of each individual, well protected by the Constitution and by the laws 848/55 and by the law 881/77″.

“Why don’t you journalists say anything about these things?” You are accomplices. People are reacting, they can’t take it anymore. He can’t live, he has no money left. They will come to Rome”.

Still taking up the text:

“It is immediately understandable that within the space between the face and the mask an accumulation of hypercapnic stale air is rapidly created and more saturated with microbes, viruses, bacteria and fungi contained within the oral cavity. This increases the possibility of developing pathologies of the lower respiratory tract”.

He also pointed out in the registered letter that there is the possibility of dispersing air through the escape routes between the mask and the face that are created above, below and to the side:

“So what the fuck is it for?” “Prolonged use of the mask over the months involves, for the reasons explained above, an increase in tissue acidosis which, as is now well known, predisposes to the onset of cancer”, Petrella continued.”The imposition of the mask is detrimental to the dignity of the individual, it metaphorically represents a gag, a symbol of slavery”.

Although these are words contained in the letter sent to the President of the Abruzzo Region.

“With the Nuremberg trial, for the first time in history, it is established that no law can be harmful to human dignity. It is, in the hierarchy of laws, superior to any law. You cannot pretend to ignore it”.

Petrella then concluded the reading of the letter:

”If as a result of this communication an oppressive action is taken against me, to force me to use the mask in all situations of parking outside the home, I will take legal action to protect my rights and my health“.

Finally, the Abruzzo doctor invited everyone to send this letter to their regional presidents to make themselves heard and save the future.

Read the report in Italian here.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

Claims by German doctors that Navalny was poisoned appear greatly exaggerated. See below.

***

Russian political figure with scant public support, sharp Putin critic, Western media darling Navalny supported by the CIA and NED became ill onboard a flight to Moscow.

Rushed to a Omsk, Russia hospital and placed in a medically induced coma, doctors at the facility diagnosed his illness as a metabolic disorder.

US and other Western headlines screamed otherwise, claiming he was poisoned. No traces of poisons were found in his blood or urine.

At the request of family members, he was flown over the weekend to Berlin’s Charite Hospital for treatment.

On Monday, a statement by the hospital said the following:

Navalny “is being treated in intensive care and remains in medically induced coma.”

“While his condition is serious, it is not currently life-threatening.”

“Clinical findings indicate poisoning with a substance from the group of cholinesterase inhibitors.”

“The specific substance involved remains unknown, and a further series of comprehensive testing has been initiated.”

“The effect of the poison – namely, the inhibition of cholinesterase in the body – was confirmed by multiple tests in independent laboratories.”

“As a result of this diagnosis, the patient is now being treated with the antidote atropine.”

“Navalny’s prognosis remains unclear. The possibility of long-term effects, particularly those affecting the nervous system, cannot be excluded.”

“The treating physicians remain in constant contact with Mr. Navalny’s wife.”

“After close consultation with the patient’s wife, Charite is reassured that the decision to make details of the patient’s condition public would be in accordance with his wishes.”

Cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEIs) “are medications that prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine in the body,” Medicinenet explained, adding:

They “block the action of acetylcholinesterase.”

“Acetylcholinesterase is an enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine to an inactive form.”

“This reduces nerve cell communications in your body that use acetylcholine to help transmit cell to cell messages.”

“Doctors prescribe cholinesterase inhibitors to individuals with dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease…Parkinson’s disease, glaucoma, myasthenia gravis, and schizophrenia.”

The Royal Society of Chemistry said “(n)atural cholinesterase inhibitors (are found in) marine organisms,” adding:

They’re “common(ly) (used) for the management of several disease states…notably neurological disorders.”

They’re also found in pesticides and nerve agents.

The Extension Toxicology Network of Cornell, Michigan State, Oregon State, and UC Davis explained the following:

“Cholinesterase (ko-li-nes-ter-ace) is one of many important enzymes needed for the proper functioning of the nervous systems of humans, other vertebrates, and insects.”

Unintended “human exposure to cholinesterase inhibiting chemicals can result from inhalation, ingestion, or eye or skin contact.”

If “a person receives too great an exposure to cholinesterase inhibiting compounds, the body is unable to break down the acetylcholine.”

If Navalny was exposed to cholinesterase inhibitors, it doesn’t automatically indicate an attempt to poison him.

He’s undergoing further tests to learn more about his condition..

With scant public support in Russia, there’s no reason why its authorities would want him poisoned or otherwise harmed.

Establishment media straightaway claimed otherwise.

Like political Russophobes in Washington and London, they invent reasons to bash Russia, providing no evidence backing claims because none exists.

Nothing suggests Kremlin responsibility for Navalny’s condition.

Note: Claims by German doctors that Navalny was poisoned were disputed by Russian doctors.

Russian toxicologists at Omsk “found no toxic chemical substances (in Navalny) that could be called poisons, or their residues.”

Navalny tested negative for cholinesterase inhibitors at Omsk, Reuters reported.

RT quoted Omsk region’s top toxicologist Alexander Sabayev saying the following:

When Alexey Navalny was admitted to the in-patient clinic, he was examined for a wide range of narcotics, synthetic substances, psychedelic drugs and medical substances, including cholinesterase inhibitors. The result was negative.”

German doctors who examined Navalny agreed that their Russian counterparts involved in treating him “saved (his) life.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Noi, persone di buona volontà di tutti i ceti sociali, di tutti i continenti, di credo e religioni diverse, richiamiamo la vostra attenzione sulla minaccia di una guerra nucleare totale che può scoppiare molto facilmente a causa di azioni deliberate da parte di qualsiasi Stato nucleare o a causa di un errore non intenzionale, umano, tecnico o di altro tipo.

Stiamo assistendo al fatto che la soglia per l’uso di armi nucleari in un attacco limitato o su larga scala è stata recentemente drasticamente abbassata, portando il mondo intero sull’orlo di un Armageddon nucleare.

Molti funzionari militari e civili di alto rango, politici ed esperti parlano apertamente della possibilità di utilizzare armi nucleari in un primo colpo d’ attacco contro qualsiasi nazione con numerosi pretesti, con l’impiego di cariche nucleari a basso o alta potenza.

Gli Stati Uniti infatti si sono ritirati da una serie di noti e utili trattati e accordi sul controllo delle armi nucleari, per ragioni dubbie e con spiegazioni illogiche.

I vettori di armi nucleari stanno diventando più sofisticati, più veloci e più precisi. Sono realizzati in una pericolosa combinazione che comprende armi nucleari strategiche e tattiche insieme a sistemi di difesa missilistica e capacità convenzionali, e con la possibilità di collocare armi d’attacco nello spazio, inclusi sistemi di difesa missilistica e armi anti-satellite.

Molte esercitazioni militari, che in precedenza erano state condotte con l’uso di armi convenzionali, si stanno gradualmente trasformando in esercitazioni con l’impiego di finte armi nucleari.

Gli esperti di armi nucleari calcolano che durante un primo massiccio attacco nucleare, almeno 34 milioni di persone morirebbero immediatamente e 57 milioni subirebbero ferite multiple, che causerebbero orribili dolori, sofferenze, malattie da radiazioni e morte. Inoltre, vari tipi di infrastrutture, flora e fauna, centrali nucleari, risorse idriche, compresa l’acqua potabile e dighe idroelettriche, verrebbero pesantemente danneggiate o completamente distrutte da enormi tempeste di fuoco, vasta contaminazione nucleare, potenti esplosioni e terremoti.

Ma questo è solo l’impatto immediato. L’inverno nucleare, se provocato anche solo da una guerra nucleare limitata, minaccerebbe l’intera umanità con fame e altre minacce mortali.

Noi che abbiamo firmato volontariamente questo appello vi sproniamo, in qualità di leader di tutte le nove nazioni nucleari, a intraprendere le seguenti azioni nel 2020:

Primo, quale passo iniziale verso un disarmo nucleare completo e irreversibile su scala globale, che vi impegniate a non usare e a denunciare qualsiasi tipo di uso di armi nucleari in un primo attacco contro qualsiasi nazione in qualsiasi momento.

Secondo, firmare e ratificare il Trattato sulla proibizione delle armi nucleari con   l’impegno seguente specificato nel punto successivo.

Terzo, impegnarsi a smantellare irreversibilmente tutte le armi nucleari entro il 6 agosto 2045 o prima di tale data – in tutti i nove Stati dotati di armi nucleari, in fasi attentamente calibrate e attraverso meccanismi di ispezione ben sviluppati e reciprocamente accettabili, a condizione che tutti gli Stati dotati di armi nucleari seguano questo modello simultaneamente e onestamente.

Queste due proposte non sono conclusive. Sono un inizio. Sono le più urgenti. Altre disposizioni concrete devono essere elaborate senza alcun ritardo.

Firmato personalmente come espressione della nostra buona volontà:

Firma

…………………..

residente nella Repubblica (Stato) di ……………

(alla data) ………………………. 2020.

Comitato No Guerra No NATO (CNGNN), ITALIA

Con i membri del Comitato Esecutivo CNGNN:

Giuseppe Padovano (Coordinatore Nazionale CNGNN), Manlio Dinucci (giornalista, saggista, portavoce CNGNN), Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti (giornalista, scrittrice, Relazioni Internazionali CNGNN), Flaminio Maffettini (avvocato), Jeff Hofmann (TV reporter),Vladislav Gavryusev (ricercatore di fisica), Franco Dinelli (PHD CNR-INO), Berenice Galli (TV reporter), Germana Leoni (giornalista, scrittrice), Maria Heibel ( saggista, blogger), Isabella di Magdala, Manuela Fani, Ciril Munca (poeta), Silvia Forlivesi (archeologa), Francesco Cappello (insegnante), Maya Nogradi (film maker), Luca Belardi (film maker), Suor Stefania Baldini (religiosa), Padre Fernando Zolli (monaco comboniano), Cesare Casotti (bibliotecario), Cristoforo Attardo (blogger), Luca Sardi (musicista), Roberto Germano (fisico).

il 21 Agosto 2020.

* * * *

Sponsorizzato da “Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space” (USA)  Analytical Agency “Strategic Stability” (Russia), Comitato No Guerra No NATO (Italia)

Si prega di fare copie di questo documento, firmarlo e inviarlo tramite posta elettronica

[email protected]

I nostri più sentiti ringraziamenti.

Dear Readers,

The goal of the Global Research website is to shed light on complex and controversial issues often neglected by the mainstream media. You help this light shine brighter by sharing the information we publish, engaging in research and dialogue, and achieving real and sustainable empowerment.

Global Research is proudly independent and does not seek financial support from any private or public foundations. It’s not that we don’t answer to anyone — rather, we answer to everyone. We have been able to develop our activities almost entirely thanks to contributions from our readers.

Please continue to support us in our day-to-day operations and help us expand our scope and content by clicking below to contribute financially via a donation or a membership subscription.

Click to donate:

Click to make a one-time or a recurring donation

Click to become a member (receive free books!):

Click to view our membership plans

Thank you for supporting independent media!

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump adviser Jared Kushner are hitting the road in an attempt to strong-arm more Arab states into normalizing relations with Israel, turning their backs on Palestine and isolating Iran.

***

U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and unelected advisor to President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, are embarking on a tour of the Middle East beginning with a stop in Israel to discuss “regional security issues related to Iran’s malicious influence” with Prime Minister Netanyahu, followed by visits to Sudan, Bahrain and now official U.S. partner, the United Arab Emirates.

Spun as an effort to speed up a U.S.-brokered “normalization” between Arab countries and Israel, the trip comes just four days after the White House sent the Secretary of State to the U.N. Security Council with the message that all UN sanctions against Iran were to be restored; invoking a clause in the Iran nuclear deal “that allows participants to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran.”

Critics of the move have deemed it illegal, not only because the Trump administration itself withdrew from the deal it is now attempting to enforce, but also because the UN Security Council had previously voted to allow the arms embargo to expire in the fall.

As Pompeo and company land in Jerusalem, tensions are high in the region. Sudan, one of the countries on the itinerary, is in political disarray nearly two years after the ouster of longtime President Omar al-Bashir in 2018. In July, Sudanese Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, replaced seven senior cabinet officials, including the ministers of finance, foreign, energy, and health. Five days ago, he sacked his official spokesperson for disclosing ongoing talks with Israel during a press conference in which spokesman Haider Badawi said he was “looking forward to concluding a peace agreement” with the apartheid state.

The Sudanese government immediately disavowed Badawi’s comments, asserting that “no one tasked [the spokesman] with making statements on this matter.” Meanwhile, Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen has reportedly confirmed talks with Sudan, adding that “Israel hopes to reach a peace agreement that includes the return of Sudanese refugees to their country,” according to the Al-Ittihad newspaper. Israeli officials have also claimed that Netanyahu himself met with the head of Sudan’s transitional government in Uganda last February for a top-secret meeting to discuss normalizing relations.

The long-time ally

Bahrain, a long-time Atlanticist client state, is also on Pompeo’s diplomatic schedule. The tiny Gulf state of fewer than two million people has played host to the U.S. Navy since 1947 and was the headquarters for the British protectorate of the lower Persian Gulf after World War II. The crown prince of Bahrain, Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa descends from a long line of Al-Khalifas to rule the nation under Britain’s neo-colonial eye and, later, as a sovereign country since 1971. Considered a “strong security partner” by the U.S. and host of the only operating American naval base in the region with 7,800 U.S. troops, the Trump administration recently lifted arms sales restrictions imposed by Obama. Another member of the Al-Kahlifa clan, Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid Al-Khalifa, sat down for an interview with The Times of Israel last summer in which he said he “hoped to visit Israel, when it’s all open, peaceful,” signaling Bahrain’s openness to facilitate normalization between Israel and Arab states.

A report updated in June by the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CSR) titled “Bahrain: Unrest, Security, and U.S. Policy,” outlined the country’s human rights record and history of political repression, which should nevertheless be overlooked because the country “has long presented a policy dilemma for the United States because Bahrain is a longtime ally that is pivotal to maintaining Persian Gulf security.”

An easy dilemma

The policy dilemma is limited to whether or not Bahrain, Sudan or any other oil-rich countries wish to abide by Atlanticist dictates for their particular region, which has now shifted to a policy of exclusion of the Palestinian people living under the apartheid regime in Israel and an intensification of the campaign of isolation against Iran.

This is being called normalization and some, like Sudan’s former government spokesman, see nothing wrong with it. In what may be the most disingenuous statement ever made, Haider Badawi told Sky News Arabia that Sudan “shall be able to build an exemplary peace deal to all our neighboring countries in the region, so that they are able to follow our footsteps and do the same with Israel. I would like to note here that even Palestinians have had a long history of diplomatic ties with Israel. So, why should it be right for them and considered wrong for us.”

Pompeo will finalize his trip in the UAE, where he will meet with Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan to discuss the deal signed with Israel a few weeks ago. Jared Kushner’s itinerary, however, has not been made public. He will be accompanied on an ostensibly separate excursion by National Security adviser, Robert O’Brien and special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook in what is only being described as “talks with leaders in the region to encourage more Arab countries to follow in the UAE’s footsteps and move forward with full normalization of relations with Israel.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.

China’s One Belt One Road project has been a great source of speculation for some time since its announcement by the Communist Party of China and China has since fielded a barrage of endless accusations that they are seeking to assert “global hegemony” and consequently engaging in imperialism since then.

Xi Jinping and the CPC have always assured the international public that China’s main focus is multipolarity but this hasn’t staved off their critics among every level of power in the US. But what about China’s broad-scale infrastructural projects is so imperialistic in nature and is the much-feared “debt trap” a real phenomenon?

To examine whether the debt trap is real, we must consider first what actually is a debt trap and what historical examples we can draw from the West to first to establish a comparative baseline.

The Debt Trap: The IMF’s Structural Adjustment Program versus China’s Lending Practices

The other major avenue through which African countries become beholden to the West’s unfortunate and often unfair measures is via the International Monetary Fund’s Structural Adjustment Programs which have historically been heavily involved in the regions that China is now involved in.

The US and UK for example pressured Tanzania into following this program. As an agrarian raw materials exporting nation, Tanzania compensated for low growth with foreign capital inflows including in the form of foreign aid. This foreign aid was later restricted in the 1970s and by 1980s and the country had no other choice but to approach the IMF. The IMF extended Tanzania a tranche loan under the condition that they reduce domestic credit drawings by the public sector. Since then, Tanzania has been trapped into a circuitous relationship with the IMF where they are stuck between accepting liberalizing reforms or being starved of funding. And the same stories can be found for 25 other countries across the African republic.

By the same token, IMF intervention in Indonesia and South Korea was deeply unpopular. The IMF also initiated a series of harmful structural adjustment reforms on Bangladesh after they accepted credit from the IMF under the three year Structural Adjustment Facility. Bangladesh subsequently underwent a shift from government to military rule under martial law where the negotiated adjustments took place including a strong shift from public lead growth to a mixed economy. By 1978 the moves towards privatization of sectors like agriculture and industrial development and they incentivized private investment which had the ultimate cost of massive job loss and stagnating growth at around 4%.

So, in order to examine whether China has an impact on the Global South that is equivalent to that of the IMF or as some of the pundits argue worse than, we must compare their impact with the of the West’s international financial body, the IMF.

Similarly, the West gives aid to most African countries with Egypt, Kenya and South Sudan being the largest beneficiaries. US, Canada, Japan and France all follow a program of aide known as “tied debt” essentially meaning that the money given to these African countries must be spent on each countries national companies or that a percentage majority of these purchases must be made at each countries companies. The ultimate consequences of a program where African countries are beholden to importing solely from the US, Europe, Australia and Canada is that they are locked into a vicious cycle of being able to afford less than they otherwise would have at a globally non-competitive rate creating an artifical hike in these nations’ production prices. This current structure continues a cycle of poverty alongside other expectations or pressures for structural reform from these exact same nations.

Zambias President, on Western trade relations, said

“they are not prepared to discuss the issues of justice and fair play concerning the international trade and commercial sector, which imposes consider able suffering and privation on developing countries. The developing world continues to subsidize consumption of the developed world, through an iniquitous trade system. The existing structure is designed to consign us to perpetual poverty and underdevelopment. It is unrealistic to expect support, relief or respite from those who benefit from the status quo.”

The African subcontinent by contrast have a notion of a specifically Chinese model of growth as unique from the West. President of the African Development Bank said

“the phenomenal growth rate and the fact that hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty is an attractive model for Africans and not just the elderly leadership. Young, intelligent, well-educated Africans are attracted to the Chinese model even though Beijing is not trying to spread democracy. We can learn from them how to organize our trade policy, how to move from low to middle income status, to educate our children in skills and areas that pay off in just a couple of years.”

The 2 billion dollar credit line China extended to Angola in 2004 was used by the nation for railroad repair, road building, office construction, a fibre optic network and oil exploration – all of which was possible because China does not follow a model of tied debt. China immediately guaranteed them a contract for the sale of oil in which they were able to begin paying back the loan which was originally at 1.5% interest and was dropped to 0.25% interest including a five year interest free period which is being recuperated over a space of 17 years. For Angola, this is a realistic goal for not only paying back their debt to China but also for upgrading their infrastructure enough to begin investing in other trade projects.

Tanzanian leader Julius Nyere who have also accepted similar deals with China once commented on the country’s relationship saying “the Chinese people have not asked us to become communists in order to qualify for this loan. They have never at any point suggested that we should change any of our policies, internal or external.”

Another of the biggest investment’s China has entered into in the subcontinent of Africa is funding the building of Sudan’s Merowe Dam. China won the bid for the dam because comparative to other contenders they promised to keep Chinese staff costs low, which from 2003 to 2005 employed 18, 000 Chinese workers and 16, 000 Sudanese workers.

Another of China’s larger project in the BRI was the East Coast Rail Link with Malaysia. China put negotiation on this project above all else when a Malaysian company rejected the original terms of the project, instantly the Chinese company sought to negotiate new terms until both parties were happy. Outside observers would have noted no instance of imposing hegemony on Malaysia at all. And that’s not the only instance where resistance lead to China negotiating new terms with local players

Similarly, China has been accused of “land-grabbing” in the African subcontinent mainly by its rivals but China has not invested in major plots of agricultural land outside of infrastructure projects and has always historically had a firm focus on food self-sufficiency. Another of China’s biggest projects in subcontinent is the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Guage Railway which connects the port city of Mombasa and Nairobi. The project itself is a massive boost the Kenyan economy, not only in that it facilitates trade but is being built almost entirely with local resources generated within Kenyan Railways.

The next biggest project along the BRI in Africa is the Karuma Hydroelectric Power Station. The project cost cost $458 million with 85% of that in a concessional loan from the import-export bank of China where again Sinohydro won the major contract for procurement and construction largely because of cheaper costs of materials and labour. By comparison, another procurement company may have loaded Kenya with significantly more debt while developing necessary infrastructure needed to electrify the country.

Ultimately, not only is China working within the systems of the countries they work with but in Global South nations that have been overrun by lawlessness since early British, or French colonization and later American financial domination, they are improving those systems by investing in new infrastructure, and discouraging against corruption at the local political levels.

In order to work with China fully, each nation must invest capital wisely and even then China cancels or suspends debt repayments at great cost to themselves. Many on the left attempt to argue that that imperialism at its core is purely about “exporting capital” as Lenin originally described it in the context of British imperialism limits us in our understanding of imperialism entirely.

What people tend to ignore in his original descriptions are a reference to a parasitic capitalism that sought to aggressively extract surplus value usually through manipulation or force without benefiting the domestic economy of the country that the capital is exported to.

For example, following the logic of the original reductionist position the US’ relationship with Australia could be considered definitely imperialist simply on the grounds that they are Australia’s primary investor. To many this would sound like a ridiculous argument when the US export technology that Australian businesses in turn benefit from without the same traps that they would extend to other countries.

So, what we really need to be asking ourselves when we examine this definition is whether or not that particular countries investment is actually growing the domestic economy. For every major metric of investment as exploitation,

China does not fit the mould and its time for the left rather than simply parroting Old Ideological lines to recognize the need for an analysis that fits the era. China not only is not exploiting the Global South but many of the countries they engage with on economic policy are far further to the right than they are. A country with a strong history of devastation at the hands of British imperialism themselves is not going to simply abandon this historical memory. In fact, it is China’s historical memory of being looted by the British which is exactly why China sees its greatest revenge as the drive towards increasing domestic living standards and building towards a counterhegemonic bloc of Global South nations with exactly the same history of looting at the hands of European and Western colonialism as theirs.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Jemma Nott is a political economy student at the University of Sydney, Australia.

We hope that by publishing diverse view points, submitted by journalists and experts dotted all over the world, the website can serve as a reminder that no matter what narrative we are presented with, things are rarely as cut and dry as they seem.

If Global Research has been a resource which has offered you some solace over the past few months, we ask you to make a financial contribution to our running costs so that we may keep this important project alive and well! We thank you for your support!

Click to donate:

*     *     *

COVID-19: Trigger for a New World Order. Economic Stagnation and Social Destruction

By Patrick Henningsen, August 24, 2020

What makes all of this difficult for so many is that the sudden transition has been almost instantaneous, leaving people in a near callow state of bewilderment, wondering what just happened to their old life.

Free Speech be Damned: Joshua Krook and the Australian Public Service

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, August 25, 2020

There was very little controversial about it.  A featured blog post in the Oxford Political Review, authored in April by Joshua Krook, suggested that COVID-19 had brought a host of benefits for big tech companies.  Isolation ushered people towards online platforms.  Engagement on such platforms had increased dramatically.

Rashomon American Style. Truth Is Somewhere in Between

By Philip Giraldi, August 25, 2020

Many journalists and op-ed pundits have been observing how the United States has become two nations that are seemingly divided along a red-blue line, each side believing in “facts” that are irreconcilable with those “facts” believed to be true by the other side. Some are even suggesting that the United States is on the verge of what would be a new civil war. 

China: Everything Proceeding According to Plan, Complete Interruption of Relations with US?

By Pepe Escobar, August 25, 2020

China plans not only in years, but in decades. Five year plans are complemented by ten year plans and as the meeting chaired by Xi showed, 15 year plans. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is in fact a nearly 40-year plan, designed in 2013 to be completed in 2049.

Alliance Between Venezuela and Iran Evolves into the Military Sphere

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, August 25, 2020

The alliance between Venezuela and Iran seems to be taking new directions. The ties between the two countries began to strengthen in an economic sphere when, in the first half of 2020, Tehran started sending oil ships to Venezuela, circumventing the international trade rules imposed by Washington with the aim of blocking Caracas economically.

US to Tighten Venezuela Sanctions after Gasoline Seizure

By Ricardo Vaz, August 25, 2020

US President Donald Trump has allegedly expressed “frustration” that sanctions have not succeeded in ousting the Maduro government. The White House’s hardening stance comes less than 90 days ahead of November presidential elections, which Trump hopes to win with the support of Latin American emigre communities in Florida.

The DNC and the Politics of Betrayal. Political and Moral Bankruptcy of the Democratic Party

By Black Alliance for Peace, August 25, 2020

The political and moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party was on full display last week. First it was the convention of the Democratic Party, where the progressive wing of the party was pushed to the margins while the victorious, neoliberal right wing engaged in a surreal spectacle that came off oblivious to the economic, social and political crisis the country has been experiencing.

“Poisoned” Kremlin Critic Flown to Germany as German-Russian Nord Stream 2 Nears Completion

By Tony Cartalucci, August 25, 2020

Navalny’s sudden reappearance across the Western media comes just at the height of US attempts to place maximum pressure on Germany to cancel a pipeline – Nord Stream 2 – it is jointly constructing with Russia. The pipeline would move Russian hydrocarbons into Western Europe directly, bypassing Ukraine now fully destabilized by US and NATO intervention.

North Macedonia conducted elections on July 15 that were originally scheduled for April 12 but were postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 18, the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) and the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) reached a deal to establish a coalition government that gave greater powers to the Albanian minority in North Macedonia. Under this deal, North Macedonia will have their first ever Albanian Prime Minister, although it will not be until the last 100 days of the four-year mandate of the new government headed by Zoran Zaev. The fact that the North Macedonian Albanians will have some of the most vital ministries and the position of the First Deputy Prime Minister shows that they now have some of the greatest influence in the country. The Albanians now have some power to try and federalize the country if they wish.

Zaev, the leader of the SDSM and Prime Minister-designate, is introducing the first ever deputy prime minister, who will be appointed at the suggestion of the DUI. Without Albanian parties, a government could not be formed in North Macedonia as the Albanians account for a massive 20% of the population. By having a huge minority, they can wield great influence in coalition governments, which is exactly why they requested the Ministry of Finance.

The DUI party now controls the largest number of municipalities in North Macedonia where Albanians live and control a good part of government ministries. Effectively, they managed to push through a consensual decision-making system. Consensual democracy, although implies a half-hearted way of decision-making, actually enables Albanians to control the entire state of North Macedonia. Effectively, in these elections, the Albanians are definitely political bosses in Skopje.

The Ministry of Finance controls everything in the country, so the government of Zaev will not be in a situation to fully control all financial and political flows in the country, especially since the first deputy prime minister, who comes from the DUI party, has a signature with the Prime Minister. That is why a rivalry between the SDSM and the DUI will most likely emerge in the first 100 days of the new government.

Although the ruling political milieu remains the same because SDSM and DUI are in power again, they will also have a lot of problems because the majority they have in parliament is very narrow. The situation is not only bad politically, but also socially – the economic situation is catastrophic, and North Macedonia is among the leading countries when it comes to the number of people infected with COVID-19 per capita. The new government has a plethora of problems to deal with including a major economic crisis, increasing poverty, and the COVID-19 pandemic. But it does have a trump card – securing a date for negotiations with the European Union, a process which will last at least 15 years. But it is unlikely this trump card can outweigh all the problems the country has at the moment. That is why this government is unlikely to survive for a long time, especially since next year there will be local elections for mayors.

The SDSM, under the guise of “Macedonia for all,” managed to abolish almost all parties of minority communities in these elections, namely parties of Serbs, Turks, Vlachs, Romas and Bosniaks. Through the election for the new North Macedonian government, three Albanian foreign ministers in the region will exist – in North Macedonia, Albania and the partially recognized Kosovo. According to a 2010 Gallup Balkan Monitor report, 83% of Albanians in Albania supported the idea of a Greater Albania, with 81% and 53% of Albanians in Kosovo and North Macedonia respectively supporting such an ambition.

Although the overwhelming majority of Albanians want a Greater Albania, it is unlikely to be achieved as North Macedonia does not pose a threat to U.S. dominance in the Balkans, and instead serves American interests in the region, especially since joining NATO in March of this year. The Albanians, who form the majority in western North Macedonia, will likely be pushing for a federalized state or autonomy as a first step towards independence or unification with Albania. However, unlike in Kosovo, the Albanians are unlikely to find western support for this, especially since North Macedonia is now a NATO member and has serious ambitions of joining the European Union.

For this, although the Albanians of North Macedonia have their best opportunity to date to make the next step towards a Greater Albania, it will not be realized as it will not find western support like it did in Kosovo. Nonetheless, even without western support, this will not stop the DUI and other Albanian organizations in the country from attempting to establish a headway for the eventual federalization or independence of western North Macedonia.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign announced Sunday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will address this week’s Republican National Convention—news that sparked swift criticism both because it’s unprecedented for the nation’s top diplomat to participate in this type of political event and because he will reportedly speak from “an undisclosed location” in Jerusalem while he’s there on official travel.

Before meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday, Pompeo—a former congressman from Kansas who previously served as CIA director under Trump—wrote Sunday on his personal Twitter account:

“Looking forward to sharing with you how my family is more SAFE and more SECURE because of President Trump. See you all on Tuesday night!”

The State Department told an Associated Press correspondent that

“Secretary Pompeo will address the convention in his personal capacity. No State Department resources will be used. Staff are not involved in preparing the remarks or in the arrangements for Secretary Pompeo’s appearance. The State Department will not bear any costs in conjunction with this appearance.”

Citing two unnamed sources “close to the secretary,” McClatchy reported Sunday that “Pompeo’s decision to deliver a speech to the Republican National Convention while on official travel to the Middle East was cleared by” his personal attorney as well as lawyers for the State Department, RNC, and White House.

Wendy Sherman, who served as undersecretary of state for political affairs in former President Barack Obama’s administration and led the negotiations for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, told McClatchy that Pompeo’s decision was a “shameful” attempt to appeal to evangelical voters who supported Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocating the U.S. Embassy.

“Pompeo speaking from Jerusalem breaks multiple traditions and norms,” Sherman said. “Secretaries of state, as far as I can find, have never appeared at a political convention. They, like the secretary of defense, have been above politics because they stand for America in the world.”

“At a time when peace and security in the Middle East is so tough, this political appearance is more than shameful,” she added. “Jerusalem should not be a prop in the Republican convention. Pompeo should not tarnish his office by this unprecedented action.”

At a time when peace and security in Middle East is so tough, Jerusalem should not be a prop for the RNC, and @SecPompeo should not be tarnishing the office of SecState. Unprecedented and wrong.

— Wendy R. Sherman (@wendyrsherman) August 23, 2020

The Times of Israel detailed on Monday how Pompeo’s decision constrasts with his predecessors from at least the past couple decades:

Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry, for instance, sat out the 2016 Democratic convention. And when Obama was officially nominated for a second term in 2012, Hillary Clinton was literally half a world away, traveling to the Cook Islands, Indonesia, China, East Timor, Brunei, and far eastern Russia.

It’s not just Democrats. When Republicans nominated John McCain in 2008, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on a trip to Portugal, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Former U.S. President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, Colin Powell, likewise did not speak to the 2004 Republican National Convention.

During a campaign event in Wisconsin last week, Trump said that “we moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem,” referring to his 2017 decision to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv. “That’s for the evangelicals,” the president added. Sherman was far from alone in accusing Trump and Pompeo of exploiting religion and using the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem as a prop for political gain:

US Embassy to be used as a campaign prop ….. again https://t.co/VE4ZSPwq8J

— (((YousefMunayyer))) (@YousefMunayyer) August 23, 2020

⁦@mikepompeo⁩ will speak to the @GOP convo from #Jerusalem. It is an outrageous exploitation of religion to advance Trump. That’s why he moved the embassy in the 1st place. They are displaying their contempt for human life, religion, & international law. Disgrace. pic.twitter.com/cK2U71kndO

— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) August 24, 2020

And from there it will only sink lower, using Judaism as a political prop with Pompeo crowing to the Evangelical vote from Jerusalem. https://t.co/CyjfGvt2s1

— Ariel Gold אריאל #SaveUSPS ☮️🔥✡️ 💕🌹 (@ArielElyseGold) August 24, 2020

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) suggested that Pompeo’s speech could violate the Hatch Act, which restricts federal employees from participating in certain political activities:

If reports are true, @SecPompeo is using foreign travel paid for by American taxpayers to campaign for Donald Trump.

This action by our top diplomat is not only inappropriate, but also likely violates the Hatch Act.

What @StateDept resources were used for this political stunt? https://t.co/GUKO3DA0eV

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) August 24, 2020

Noting on Sunday that “it’s very unusual for a diplomat to get involved in domestic politics” and that “this starts to look like using taxpayer-funded federal resources for a campaign,” Margaret Brennan, moderator of CBS News‘ “Face the Nation,” askedRepublican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel whether taxpayers will be reimbursed for Pompeo’s trip. The chair did not provide a direct answer.

“I can only tell you, Margaret, that the events that we’ve put forward from the RNC and the campaign are going to be paid for by the convention from… the RNC and the campaign,” McDaniel responded. “You know, everything that we’ve put together has changed because of Covid. The president rightly said we’re going to leave Jacksonville because we don’t want to have resources taken away from a city that’s dealing with a pandemic. And he brought it back to the White House, which is his residence.”

“And it’s being paid for by the Republican National Committee and the campaign, not the taxpayers,” McDaniel added. After Brennan asked whether she was confirming that Pompeo’s trip will be reimbursed by the campaign, the chair said that “I’m not confirming anything having to do with Secretary Pompeo’s trip. I am just saying the programming, the staging, everything that we’re doing will be paid for by the Republican National Committee and the campaign.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on August 24, 2020 in Jerusalem. (Photo: Pompeo/Twitter)

A mystery for months is how it is that so many governments in so many different places on earth could have adopted the same or very similar preposterous policies, no matter the threat level of the virus, and without firm evidence that interventions had any hope of being effective. 

In the course of two weeks, traditional freedoms were zapped away in nearly all developed countries. In a seriously bizarre twist, even the silliest policies replicated themselves like a virus in country after country.

For example, you can’t try on clothing in a store in Texas or in Melbourne, or in London or in Kalamazoo. What’s with that? We know that the COVID bug is least likely to live on fabrics unless I have symptoms of it, sneeze on my handkerchief and then I stuff it in your mouth. The whole thing is a ridiculous mysophobic overreach, like most of the rules under which we live.

Then there was the inside/outside confusion. First everyone was forced indoors and people were arrested for being outdoors. Later, once restaurants started opening, people were not allowed indoors so eating establishments scrambled to make outdoor dining possible. Are we supposed to believe that the virus lived outside for a while but then later moved inside?

Or these curfews. So many places have them despite a complete absence of evidence that COVID spread prefers the night to the day. I guess the real point is to put a stop to revelry that might bring people together in a fun way? It’s like all our governments decided on the same day that COVID spreads through smiles and fun, so we have to banish both.

In Sydney and Los Angeles, and also in Detroit and Miami, you need to wear a mask when you walk in a restaurant but not when you sit. And this 6-foot rule is highly suspect too. It seems to imply that if you get too close to each other, COVID spontaneously appears. At least people seem to believe that.

Australia, in its way, even created a slogan and a jingle to go with it. “Staying Apart Keeps Us Together,” says Orwell, I mean, Victoria.

Socially distance! Don’t be a silent spreader! Even though the largest study yet has shown that “asymptomatic cases were least likely to infect their close contacts.” Which is to say, this is mostly nonsense.

In most places too, you have to quarantine two weeks when you arrive from afar, even though it is rare that the virus incubation period is that long. The mean period is 6 days, perhaps, which is what one would expect from a coronavirus like the common cold.

Oh, and in department stores, you can’t spray perfume to try it out, because surely that spreads COVID – not. Except that there is not one shred of evidence that there is any truth to this. This one seems completely made up, though it is widely imposed.

The list goes on. The bans of gatherings over 50 outdoors and 25 indoors, the closures of gyms at a time when people need to be getting healthy, the shutting of theaters and bowling alleys but the keeping open of big-box stores – these policies are as ubiquitous as they are unsupported by any science. And we’ve known this for many months, ever since the media meltdown over Florida Spring Break ended up in zero fatal cases contracted at the revelry.

The worst case is school closings. They were shut down at the same time all over the world, despite evidence available since at least January that the threat to children is nearly zero. Yes, they do get COVID almost entirely asymptomatically, which is to say they do not get “sick” in the old-fashioned sense of that term. What’s more, they are highly unlikely to spread it to adults precisely because they do not have symptoms. This is widely admitted.

Still governments decided to wreck kids’ lives for an entire season.

And the timing of it all seems strangely suspicious. All these countries and states implemented this compulsory clown show at the same time, whether cases were everywhere or nowhere.

In the U.S., this was fascinating to watch. The shutdowns happened all over the country. In the Northeast, the virus had already spread widely toward herd immunity. The South shut down at the same time but the virus wasn’t even there. By the time the virus did arrive, most states in the South had already reopened. The virus doesn’t seem to care either way.

Now, looking at this it is very easy to go to conspiracy as the explanation. There is probably some secret hand at work somewhere that is guiding all of this, the thinking goes. How can so many governments in the world have simultaneously lost their marbles and abolished the people’s liberties in such a cruel way, while trampling on all rights of property and association?

I tend to resist big conspiracy theories on this subject simply because I seriously doubt that governments are smart enough to implement them. From what I can see, these governors and statesmen seem to be making things up in a crazy panic and then sticking with them just to pretend that they know what they are doing.

Pete Earle’s theory of pot commitment seems to explain why the stringency persists even in the lack of evidence that they do anything to suppress the virus.

But how can we account for the imposition of so many similarly ridiculous rules at the same time across so many parts of the globe?

I invite you to examine a very interesting study published by the National Academy of Sciences: Explaining the homogeneous diffusion of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions across heterogeneous countries.

A clearer title might be: how so many governments behaved so stupidly at once. The theory they posit seems highly realistic to me:

We analyze the adoption of nonpharmaceutical interventions in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during the early phase of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Given the complexity associated with pandemic decisions, governments are faced with the dilemma of how to act quickly when their core decision-making processes are based on deliberations balancing political considerations. Our findings show that, in times of severe crisis, governments follow the lead of others and base their decisions on what other countries do. Governments in countries with a stronger democratic structure are slower to react in the face of the pandemic but are more sensitive to the influence of other countries. We provide insights for research on international policy diffusion and research on the political consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This seems to fit with what I’ve seen anecdotally.

These guys in charge are mostly attorneys with specializations in bamboozling voters. And the “public health authorities” advising them can get credentials in the field without ever having studied much less practiced medicine. So what do they do? They copy other governments, as a way of covering up their ignorance.

The political and moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party was on full display last week. First it was the convention of the Democratic Party, where the progressive wing of the party was pushed to the margins while the victorious, neoliberal right wing engaged in a surreal spectacle that came off oblivious to the economic, social and political crisis the country has been experiencing. The second thing that happened was the emergency reconvening of the U.S. House of Representatives to “save the post office.”

On the night Kamala Harris accepted the nomination as vice president, the Democratic Party devoted itself to demonstrating it was more militantly aggressive in its commitment to military threats, in the use of force and in reclaiming the U.S. global dominance that Trump supposedly has squandered. Neocons from the Republican Party also spoke to assure the country Joe Biden would commit to a stronger NATO, to completing the military pivot to Asia, and to standing up to the demon of the moment—Vladimir Putin.

The inspiring stories of democratic renewal and of happy days being just around the corner once Joe is in office seemed strangely disconnected from the fact that Congress had gone on vacation, leaving millions in economic limbo because the federal enhanced unemployment benefit had expired. Yet the House was called back by Nancy Pelosi not to pass a bill to end the confusion around extended unemployment and to protect against evictions, but to save the postal service so nothing would get in the way of electing the political class.

The racism, militarism, and materialism that Dr. King warned would be the diseases that would kill the body politic of the United States have created a zombie democracy.

War, the political betrayal of the working class, and an inane political posturing in the face of an intractable crisis are the politics of a society beyond salvation.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Flickr

The perfectly timed poisoning of unpopular, ineffective Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny and the involvement of Germany comes as Washington sought to place maximum pressure on Berlin to cancel the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline. 

***

Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny – according to German doctors – was allegedly poisoned but is expected to survive. If Navalny was poisoned and the goal was to assassinate him, it was a poorly conceived, poorly executed, and most of all – poorly timed plan.

Navalny’s sudden reappearance across the Western media comes just at the height of US attempts to place maximum pressure on Germany to cancel a pipeline – Nord Stream 2 – it is jointly constructing with Russia. The pipeline would move Russian hydrocarbons into Western Europe directly, bypassing Ukraine now fully destabilized by US and NATO intervention.

Just last week German state media DW in an article titled, “US senators threaten Germany’s port town of Sassnitz over Nord Stream 2 gas project,” would highlight the nature of US pressure, reporting that:

Three US senators are threatening the ferry port on the island of Rügen with “crushing” sanctions to prevent the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Fearing financial ruin, the people of Sassnitz are defiant.

This latest threat from the US against their own German “allies” comes after a long, concerted campaign to pressure Germany into cancelling the joint pipeline with Russia.

Earlier this year, the New York Times in an article titled, “A Russian Gas Pipeline Increases Tension Between the U.S. and Europe,” would report:

…the State Department moved to potentially impose economic penalties on investors and other business participants in the project, an expansion of existing sanctions.

The new measures were “a clear warning to companies” that “aiding and abetting Russia’s malign influence projects will not be tolerated,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters. “Get out now, or risk the consequences.”

The New York Times would note that growing US pressure faced condemnation from European leaders who accused Washington of interference in their sovereign affairs and specifically in regards to European energy policy.

The pipeline is already well over 90% completed.

Perfectly Timed Political Stunt 

The New York Times in a more recent article titled, “Aleksei Navalny, Putin Critic in a Coma, Was Poisoned, German Doctors Say,” deliberately trumps up the incident.

Indeed Navalny is in a coma, but according to the German hospital currently treating him in an official statement, it was a medically induced coma. The statement read:

Since his admission at the weekend, Alexei Navalny has been receiving treatment at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. The patient is being treated in intensive care and remains in medically induced coma. While his condition is serious, it is not currently life-threatening.

The New York Times in its article notes how unpopular and ineffective Navalny has been as an opposition figure in Russia over the years, admitting that:

Mr. Navalny’s needling criticism of Mr. Putin has never posed a serious electoral threat to the Russian leader, and Mr. Putin remains popular with many Russians.

It should be noted that Navalny himself and the anemic opposition he leads is a product of the US State Department with virtually ever organization and individual in it the recipient of US government money channeled through Washington’s notorious regime change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Navalny’s US Backing 

It is documented fact that Navalny was funded by and specifically to serve US interests through the NED and a variety of other US-based programs and fellowships and clearly promoted throughout the entirety of the Western corporate media.

Navalny’s fading brand is admitted openly even by his most eager supporters in the Western media – most recently in the above mentioned New York Times article describing his alleged poisoning.

The notion that the Kremlin would order Navalny’s assassination at this time defies common sense and logic.

There was very little controversial about it.  A featured blog post in the Oxford Political Review, authored in April by Joshua Krook, suggested that COVID-19 had brought a host of benefits for big tech companies.  Isolation ushered people towards online platforms.  Engagement on such platforms had increased dramatically.

Names were not mentioned.  Krook’s then employer, the Australian Public Service, made no appearance in the text.  Tech entities were not outed, though Krook noted, in general, how “big tech companies” have been “pursuing the attention economy”, seeking to get “all our attention at all times.”  With COVID-19, this had been achieved.  “People are trapped indoors, at home, on their devices at all times, with nowhere to go.”  Krook’s tone did come across as a touch judgmental, suggesting that replacing “human connection with technology has never felt so nakedly negative.”  He likened big tech entities to spouses who know “everything about you.”  By giving them information about yourself, a loss of free will is perpetrated precisely “because the person, or company, knows so much about you.” 

It took three months for Krook to get the call.  The managers of the APS took issue with the post.  It’s pessimism might damage the government’s relationship with the technology industry.  In Krook’s words to the Guardian, “the problem was that in talking about the big tech companies, we risked damaging the relationship the government has with big tech companies and that when we go and do public-private partnerships, they could Google my name, find my article and then refuse to work with us.”  Had the article been ingratiating – “positive about the big tech companies” – it would have been entirely permissible.  His options were starkly simple: remove the post or face termination of employment.  Any future pieces would have to go through the censoring scissors of the service.  

Screenshot from Oxford Political Review

What followed was the usual pattern.  The cold sweat of initial alarm; a quick request to the Oxford Political Review that the blog post be removed.  Deletion.  Then, a reconsideration of matters, the growth of a backbone to resist: quitting the job in the public sector and talking about civil service censorship.

As Krook explained in the Oxford Political Review,

“I resigned from my job in the government because I fundamentally disagree with the decision.  The Australian government should not be involved in censoring personal blog posts.  Public servants should be able to criticize private companies, including big tech companies.  There is no conflict of interest.  Freedom of speech is fundamental to a thriving, secular democracy.”

It pays to know what creatures you are working for, and what strange armour they insist on wearing when they deal with expression.  Know their values and code of conduct, because they are bound to be conversely related to what is actually intended.  Ideas will only be permitted in such an ecosystem if they are expressed with respect, which usually means causing no offense to the thick and unimaginative.  What is challenging is bound to be offensive; what is audaciously defying is bound to rub the dullards the wrong way.

The APS, for instance, has a code of conduct which deals with “employees as citizens”.  This has a sinister edge to it.  The APS acknowledges in Section 6 of the Code that employees are citizens and members of the community but “the right to serve the community as APS employees comes with certain responsibilities.”  Central to the point is a notion that has been stretched and mangled in punishing supposed transgressions by APS employees.  Responsibilities, for instance, “include maintaining confidence of the community in the capacity of the APS, and each member to it, to undertake their duties professionally and impartially.”  This comes terribly close to having no opinions, or at least the sort you can legitimately express. 

The section further gives clues as to what an APS employee should, or should not do.  Be careful making comments in an unofficial capacity (no mention of the healthy thoughts of such a person as an engaged private citizen).  Be wary of participating in political activities, participating in acts that might generate a conflict of interest, be cautious when working overseas and when being “identifiable as an APS employee.”

Naturally, such elastic codes are drafted in ways that suggest openness and fairness, while coldly repudiating them.  There is, for instance, a tentative nod to the engagement of APS employees “in robust discussion … as an important part of open government.”  But the lid is tightly shut on the issue of public comments, which must conform to the “APS Values, Employment Principles and the Code.”  And public comments are broad indeed, covering public speech, online media including blogs and social media networking sites. 

Michaela Banerji, formerly an employee of the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship, found at much personal cost that tweeting critically about government policy on refugees, even anonymously, was sufficient to get her sacked.  Her heroic effort to bring her messages and opinions within the realms of Australia’s implied right to freedom of communication on political subjects was snootily dismissed by the country’s highest court in 2019.  The implied right was not a personal one, intoned the High Court judges, but “a restriction on legislative power which arises as a necessary implication” on construing various sections of the Australian Constitution “and as such, extends only so far as is necessary to preserve and protect the system of representative and responsible government mandated by the Constitution.” 

Justice James Edelman went so far as to claim that the APS Code did not turn “public servants into lonely ghosts” but conceded that it would cast “a powerful chill over political communication.”  All that interested the judges, however, was that Banerji had been given a proportionate penalty balanced against preserving a neutral public service.  Had Krook dared test the waters of litigation, it would have been grimly interesting how the High Court might have distinguished his case to that of Banerji’s, given that he expressed no criticism in the post of the government or government policy. 

The Krook affair also reveals another disturbing trend.  With all that froth and babble about regulators keen to rein in the power of Silicon Valley, we have an object lesson about how keen the Australian government is to stay in the warming bed of big tech.  Google, Facebook and other representatives will be delighted by this stinging hypocrisy.  Public servants have been crudely warned: do not write pieces, however general, about the consequences of the COVID-19 tech world and its delighted Silicon Valley stalwarts.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. 

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Many journalists and op-ed pundits have been observing how the United States has become two nations that are seemingly divided along a red-blue line, each side believing in “facts” that are irreconcilable with those “facts” believed to be true by the other side. Some are even suggesting that the United States is on the verge of what would be a new civil war. To be sure, each morning it is possible to open Facebook, which is, of course, a managed site that features innuendo, opinion plus outright lies, and immediately see wide divergences in analysis of events that took place the night before. This is particularly true regarding the long running debate over the genesis of the coronavirus and the methods that are being used to combat it.

On one side in the pandemic crisis debate are all those who, often for ideological reasons, reject government telling people what they should or must do. On the other side is establishment medical thinking and those government officials who believe that the state has an obligation to intervene in what is undeniably a health crisis. The “truth,” if it actually exists, might well recognize that the virus is dangerous and should be treated seriously while also taking steps to minimize the collateral damage in those measures that are being taken to tame it. And, of course, both sides are talking past each other, frequently resorting to ridicule and doling out punishments to make their points. Humiliating a store clerk because she is wearing a mask or simulating a sneeze in the face of someone who is not doing so to express one’s contempt are hardly conversation starters.

Likewise, the “black lives matter” generated protests have not surprisingly also produced strong responses that have gone far beyond the whys or wherefores involving the killing of one man in police custody. Much of the heat is generated by elusive collateral issues that remain stubbornly subject to individual interpretation like “white supremacy” and “systemic racism.” Most Americans caught in the middle of the verbal onslaughts probably would agree that the militarization of police forces in the U.S. since 9/11 has not exactly worked out well in terms of making policing community responsive. But rampaging crowds of looters and provocateurs seemingly dedicated to destruction of both public and private property suggest that the countervailing arguments have gone far beyond the point where anything sensible might come out on the other end.

One is reminded of the Japanese book and movie Rashomon. The story was written by Akutagawa Ryunosuke in 1922 and the film, directed by Akira Kurosawa, followed in 1950. The tale, set in 8^th Century feudal Japan, involved a rape and a murder with each of the four principal characters providing his and her own version of what had occurred. The murdered samurai speaks through a Shinto psychic, while a bandit-witness in the forest, a traveling monk, and the samurai’s wife, who was the rape victim, all provide alternative versions of what had taken place. The story reveals how all of the contradictory testimony was fundamentally dishonest, in that each participant was interpreting events to support his or her self-interest in the outcome of the tragedy.

The movie is now considered to be one of the greatest films ever made and the story line, dubbed the “Rashomon effect,” has been used to described situations in which eye witnesses to an event provide completely contradictory versions of what took place. One might suggest that the Rashomon effect is currently working overtime in the United States. The mainstream “progressive” media sees “peaceful demonstrators” in places like Portland or Seattle because that fits their agenda of anti-Trumpism, while others see mostly burning buildings and cars as well as injured policemen because they are internally wired to condemn the disorder. Particularly in a stress situation, most people will see what they want to see.

Similarly, COVID-19 is a “hoax” because to some the government is inappropriately and “unconstitutionally” getting involved while others are prepared to lock themselves in the basement for three months because they believe the dire warnings they are receiving by way of the media must be true. No one is necessarily lying in an attempt to deceive because those expressing their views actually are convinced by what they are apparently seeing and hearing.

With the virus raging and blm continues to grow, the federal government has been playing its own little Rashomon game in the country’s foreign policy. Some observers, like myself, see an escalating Rashomon-esque global war of aggression, while the key players in Washington claim to see only threats to American hegemony and the liberal democratic order that the U.S. claims to support. In the Middle East, for example, the U.S. and Israel have been edging towards war with Iran and Syria, possibly suggesting that the recent bombing in Beirut might have been a “plausibly denied” Israeli preemptive strike against Hezbollah. Israel has in fact been the aggressor, having instigated an increasing number of incidents with Hezbollah along the Lebanese border while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Pentagon’s leaders look benignly on and praise Israeli restraint. But other “Rashomon effect” witnesses to what is taking place see all the aggression coming from Jerusalem and Washington. Neither side can see any merit in what the other is saying.

China is largely replacing Russia as the most favored “threat” for both the Democratic and Republican parties. Beijing has already been accused of unleashing the coronavirus on the United States while also preparing to interfere in the upcoming November national elections, even though evidence to back up either claim has been lacking. This fearmongering has led the U.S. to dispatch warships, including two aircraft carrier strike groups, to the South China Sea to intercede in a maritime dispute China is having with its neighbors, several of whom are allied to the United States. China has declared a two-hundred-mile economic zone off its coasts and also off some disputed islands which Washington has declared “illegal,” in part because it restricts “freedom of the seas.” The contested area, which is over 7,000 miles from North America, has been the site of massive U.S. Navy exercises in recent weeks. The increase in military activity has the potential to turn nasty if China opts to contest the U.S. presence. Some congressmen are already predicting that there will be an armed conflict of some kind within the next three to six months.

So, China sees itself has a regional power that is engaging in economic expansion in competition with countries like the United States while the U.S. sees an increasing threat. Both are looking at the same data and drawing conclusions that are nevertheless diametrically opposed, just like Rashomon. And both are talking past each other. To be sure China is no “gentle giant.” It is a totalitarian state with the world’s largest population and what might currently be the largest economy. It has recently reneged on agreements to maintain Hong Kong as an autonomous region, which has invited international opprobrium. The head of the FBI Christopher Wray has described Beijing as the “greatest long term threat” to the future of the United States, though he is probably referring to the economic and political challenges rather than its military. China in return is out to supplant the United States as the world’s superpower and has done so by largely peaceful means, expanding its commercial ties to and investments in resource rich regions of the third world, locking in the raw materials that it will rely on to grow even more economically powerful.

Mike Pompeo is uncomfortable with that, saying last month that “We must admit a hard truth that should guide us in the years and decades to come: that if we want to have a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century of which Xi Jinping dreams, the old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done. We must not continue it and we must not return to it.” So it’s all about a “free 21^st century,” but in Rashomon fashion China wants the freedom to continue to expand economically that Washington sees as a potential threat to “political” freedom and, more generally speaking, to its own dominance. Both countries have their own vision of what they are “seeing” and neither one is listening.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

The Trump administration is reportedly considering ending all Venezuela oil sanctions exemptions in October.

“Whatever oil business is left has to be completed (by the deadline),” an anonymous source told Reuters, while a State Department spokesman said Washington continues to warn companies on the “risks” they face by dealing with Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.

US President Donald Trump has allegedly expressed “frustration” that sanctions have not succeeded in ousting the Maduro government. The White House’s hardening stance comes less than 90 days ahead of November presidential elections, which Trump hopes to win with the support of Latin American emigre communities in Florida.

Starting with financial sanctions against PDVSA in August 2017, the US Treasury Department has imposed successive rounds of measures targeting Caracas’ main source of income. A January 2019 oil embargo was later expanded to a blanket ban on all dealings with Venezuelan state entities. The South American nation’s oil production has plummeted, falling from 1.911 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2017 to a decades-low record of 336,000 bpd in June.

The measures targeting Venezuela’s oil industry were further escalated in 2020 with the levying of secondary sanctions against two Rosneft subsidiaries. The Russian oil giant had been carrying a large proportion of Venezuelan crude before rerouting it to other destinations. Following Washington’s secondary sanctions, Rosneft transferred its assets to a Kremlin-owned company.

Most recently, the US Treasury Department looked to further choke off the Caribbean country’s oil exports by targeting vessels and shipping companies. PDVSA has attempted to assume shipping costs but its fleet has likewise been hurt by US sanctions.

Since the January 2019 oil embargo, foreign companies have gradually ceased to deal directly with PDVSA, while those who did requested special permission from US authorities. The Treasury Department has also issued temporary waivers to allow corporations to wind down their Venezuela activities. These have included California-based oil giant Chevron, which operates several joint ventures with PDVSA.

Washington’s threat to further tighten its sanctions regime comes days after the seizure of Venezuela-bound gasoline shipments.

According to the Wall Street Journal, threats of legal action and sanctions forced the Greek owner of four fuel tankers to surrender the Iranian fuel to US authorities in international waters. While the current location of the ships is unknown, they reportedly transferred the fuel cargo to other tankers bound for Houston.

Tehran reacted to the first reports through its ambassador to Venezuela Hojjatollah Soltani, who denied that the tankers were Iranian. The country’s oil minister, Biyan Namdar Zangane, later confirmed that the fuel had indeed been shipped from Iran and it had already been paid for by Venezuela.

Venezuelan authorities have yet to comment on the seizure.

With sanctions taking a hit on the country’s refining industry and also driving away fuel exporters, Caracas turned to Tehran to address its worsening fuel shortages.

Iran sent five fuel tankers in May while also offering technical assistance in repairing Venezuela’s most important refineries. The Amuay, Cardon and El Palito facilities have been brought back online, despite operating intermittently and severely below capacity.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from teleSUR

The US military has been facing increasing pressure from local resistance forces and pro-Iranian groups in Iraq.

On August 21, an improvised explosive device (IED) reportedly struck a vehicle of company working with the U.S.-led coalition in Aweerij, south of the capital, Baghdad. The vehicle was destroyed and its driver was killed. Pro-Iranian sources even claimed that the entire supply convoy of the US-led coalition was destroyed, and three Fijian private military contractors working for the U.S. military were killed. These claims have not been confirmed by any visual evidence so far.

On August 22, another IED attack hit a logistical convoy of the US-led coalition near Baghdad. This time the incident happened in Ghazaliya, on a highway leading to the al-Shuala district. The video from the site showed that at least one vehicle was damaged.

On August 23, an IED explosion targeted a convoy of US forces withdrawing from Camp Taji just a few hours after the US military officially handed the military base to Iraqi government forces. The base used to host 2,000 US troops. Most of them are set to be withdrawn in the coming days.

According to local sources, local Shiite resistance groups and Iranian-linked forces were behind these attacks. Iran and its Iraqi allies vowed to expel US forces from Iraq after the assassination of Iranian Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Deputy-Commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a US drone strike on January 3, 2020.

On August 20, Iran even unveiled two missiles with named after Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The missiles were revealed on the occasion of the National Defense Industry Day. The first missile “Martyr Hajj Qassem Soleimani” is ballistic with a range of up to 1,400 km. The second weapon, named “Martyr Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis,” is a cruise missile with a range of up to 1,000 km. Iran claimed that both missiles are capable of penetrating advanced anti-missile systems.

Tehran considers its missile program to be among the cornerstones of the country’s defense capabilities. On January 8, 2020, Iran even publicly conducted a missile strike on US military bases in Iraq retaliating for the assassination of Soleimani and al-Muhandis in Baghdad. The naming of new Iranian missiles after these prominent commanders are likely a demonstration of the Iranian determination to continue its anti-US campaign in the region. Therefore, the pressure on US forces in Iraq will likely further increase in the near future.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT: 

PayPal: [email protected], http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Despite ruling Belarus with an iron fist, most Belarusians support Alexander Lukashenko.

President since 1994, he was legitimately reelected by a 61.7% majority, according to the pro-Western election monitoring group Golos.

It published “data collected by US-backed civic youth organization Zubr ‘Bizon’ and Chestniye Lyudi (‘Honest People’), an election monitoring group established by a group of programmers,” Sputnik News reported. More on this below.

Lukashenko’s victory margin exceeded the largest presidential landslide in US history since 1820.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater by a 61.1% – 38.5% majority.

Running virtually unopposed in 1820, James Monroe won by an 80% majority.

George Washington, the first US president, won unanimously in 1789 and 1792, receiving all electoral college votes.

Compared to today’s money-controlled US political process, Washington did no campaigning, spending nothing to become US president twice.

Inventing the office he held from scratch, he was quoted saying: “I walk on untrodden ground.”

He was the nation’s larger than life figure, a general, not a politician who preferred to “liv(e) and d(ie) a private citizen on (his Mount Vernon) farm,” he said.

He was called on to take the job he didn’t want because his stature exceeded all others in the country at the time.

Today’s America and world are vastly different than in his day, what no one in his time could have imagined.

Commenting on the state of the nation at the time, Benjamin Franklin was quoted saying that a republic was created if its ruling class ahead could keep it.

He understood that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, what happened throughout the years to the present state of things that are far too debauched to fix.

According to Sputnik News, opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya won 25.4% of the vote, not the officially reported 10%.

Her support was far less than the 60% majority triumph she falsely claimed, Sputnik further explaining:

“Golos’ figures are based on data received after the processing of protocols from 1,310 polling stations, constituting about 22 percent of the total 5,767 polling places throughout Belarus, with protocols said to cover regions across the country, including cities, towns and villages.”

“The protocols were said to account for about 1.8 million voters, or about 32.2 percent of the 5.8 million people who cast votes.”

Despite results it reported, Golos claimed they’re not reliable, adding:

Lukashenko “cannot be considered Belarus’ legitimate president.” Election results should be declared “invalid.”

Lukashenko won. Tikhanovskaya lost. Cross-border in Lithuania, she met with US and EU officials, manipulating her to serve their interests.

On Sunday, Sergey Lavrov accused anti-Lukashenko elements of seeking “bloodshed” in the country.

With establishment media support, Tikhanovskaya appeals more to the West than Belarusians who oppose a repeat of 2013-14 (US orchestrated) Euromaidan violence in neighboring Ukraine.

Tikhanovskaya “was not allowed to calm (things) down, and she began to make political statements, quite harsh ones, demanding to continue strikes, walkouts, protests,” Lavrov explained — her remarks scripted by her US handlers.

Notably her remarks are made in English for a Western and Belarusian audience, not her native language.

Controlled by her handlers, her agenda is unrelated to strengthening democracy in Belarus, a notion both right wings of the US one-party state abhor and tolerate nowhere — not at home or abroad.

Russia is involved diplomatically to prevent a repeat of what happened in Ukraine.

The Kremlin supports the right of Belarusians to decide on who’ll lead them — free from foreign interference.

Previous articles discussed the reintegration of Belarus into Russia — with or without Lukashenko.

By referendum judged open, free, and fair by international monitors, Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to correct an historic mistake by returning to Russia.

Belarusians deserve the same choice — to decide by independently monitored referendum whether or not to again become a Russian republic.

That’s how democracy the way it should be is supposed to work.

As for my view, I support the right of the Belarusian people to decide this issue on their own, free from foreign interference.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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.

Featured image is from OneWorld

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Let’s start with the story of an incredibly disappearing summit.

Every August, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) converges to the town of Beidaihe, a seaside resort some two hours away from Beijing, to discuss serious policies that then coalesce into key planning strategies to be approved at the CCP Central Committee plenary session in October.

The Beidaihe ritual was established by none other than Great Helmsman Mao, who loved the town where, not by accident, Emperor Qin, the unifier of China in the 3^rd century B.C., kept a palace.

2020 being, so far, a notorious Year of Living Dangerously, it’s no surprise that in the end Beidaihe was nowhere to be seen. Yet Beidaihe’s invisibility does not mean it did not happen.

Exhibit 1 was the fact that Premier Li Keqiang simply disappeared from public view for nearly two weeks – after President Xi chaired a crucial Politburo gathering in late July where what was laid out was no less than China’s whole development strategy for the next 15 years.

Li Keqiang resurfaced by chairing a special session of the all-powerful State Council, just as the CCP’s top ideologue, Wang Huning – who happens to be number 5 in the Politburo – showed up as the special guest at a meeting of the All China Youth Federation.

What’s even more intriguing is that side by side with Wang, one would find Ding Xuexiang, none other than President Xi’s chief of staff, as well as three other Politburo members.

In this “now you see them, now you don’t” variation, the fact that they all showed up in unison after an absence of nearly two weeks led sharp Chinese observers to conclude that Beidaihe in fact had taken place. Even if no visible signs of political action by the seaside had been detected. The semi-official spin is that no get-together happened at Beidaihe because of Covid-19.

Yet it’s Exhibit 2 that may clinch the deal for good. The by now famous end of July Politburo meeting chaired by Xi in fact sealed the Central Committee plenary session in October. Translation: the contours of the strategic road map ahead had already been approved by consensus. There was no need to retreat to Beidaihe for further discussions.

Trial balloons or official policy?

The plot thickens when one takes into consideration a series of trial balloons that started to float a few days ago in select Chinese media. Here are some of the key points.

1. On the trade war front, Beijing won’t shut down US businesses already operating in China. But companies which want to enter the market in finance, information technology, healthcare and education services will not be approved.
2. Beijing won’t dump all its overwhelming mass of US Treasuries in one go, but – as it already happens – divestment will accelerate. Last year, that amounted to $100 billion. Up to the end of 2020, that could reach $300 billion.
3. The internationalization of the yuan, also predictably, will be accelerated. That will include configuring the final parameters for clearing US dollars through the CHIPS Chinese system – foreseeing the incandescent possibility Beijing might be cut off from SWIFT by the Trump administration or whoever will be in power at the White House after January 2021.
4. On what is largely interpreted across China as the “full spectrum war” front, mostly Hybrid War, the PLA has been put into Stage 3 alert – and all leaves are canceled for the rest of 2020. There will be a concerted drive to increase all-round defense spending to 4% of GDP and accelerate the development of nuclear weapons. Details are bound to emerge during the Central Committee meeting in October.
5. The overall emphasis is on a very Chinese spirit of self-reliance, and building what can be defined as a national economic “dual circulation” system: the consolidation of the Eurasian integration project running in parallel to a global yuan settlement mechanism.

Inbuilt in this drive is what has been described as “to firmly abandon all illusions about the United States and conduct war mobilization with our people. We shall vigorously promote the war to resist US aggression (…) We will use a war mindset to steer the national economy (…) Prepare for the complete interruption of relations with the US.”

It’s unclear as it stands if these are only trial balloons disseminated across Chinese public opinion or decisions reached at the “invisible” Beidaihe. So all eyes will be on what kind of language this alarming configuration will be packaged when the Central Committee presents its strategic planning in October. Significantly, that will happen only a few weeks before the US election.

It’s all about continuity

All of the above somewhat mirrors a recent debate in Amsterdam on what constitutes the Chinese “threat” to the West. Here are the key points.

1. China constantly reinforces its hybrid economic model – which is an absolute rarity, globally: neither totally publicly owned nor a market economy.
2. The level of patriotism is staggering: once the Chinese face a foreign enemy, 1.4 billion people act as one.
3. National mechanisms have tremendous force: absolutely nothing blocks the full use of China’s financial, material and manpower resources once a policy is set.
4. China has set up the most comprehensive, back to back industrial system on the planet, without foreign interference if need be (well, there’s always the matter of semiconductors to Huawei to be solved).

China plans not only in years, but in decades. Five year plans are complemented by ten year plans and as the meeting chaired by Xi showed, 15 year plans. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is in fact a nearly 40-year plan, designed in 2013 to be completed in 2049.

And continuity is the name of the game – when one thinks that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, first developed in 1949 and then expanded by Zhou Enlai at the Bandung conference in 1955 are set in stone as China’s foreign policy guidelines.

The Qiao collective, an independent group that advances the role of qiao (“bridge”) by the strategically important huaqiao (“overseas Chinese”) is on point when they note that Beijing never proclaimed a Chinese model as a solution to global problems. What they extol is Chinese solutions to specific Chinese conditions.

A forceful point is also made that historical materialism is incompatible with capitalist liberal democracy forcing austerity and regime change on national systems, shaping them towards preconceived models.

That always comes back to the core of the CCP foreign policy: each nation must chart a course fit for its national conditions.

And that reveals the full contours of what can be reasonably described as a Centralized Meritocracy with Confucian, Socialist Characteristics: a different civilization paradigm that the “indispensable nation” still refuses to accept, and certainly won’t abolish by practicing Hybrid War.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

A new focus of tensions and uncertainties appears to be emerging in Iran. Recent reports from the Iranian authorities have concluded that the explosion at the Natanz nuclear plant had a criminal cause, most likely caused by a sabotage operation. Not many details have yet been provided about the completion of the investigations. The Iranian government has announced that more information about the case will be released soon but made clear the authorities’ certainty about the criminal nature of the plant’s fire.

In July, a major explosion hit the Iranian nuclear power plant at Natanz, used especially for enriching uranium – an essential activity for the development of nuclear technology. The explosion sparked a huge fire that caught the attention of the media around the world at the time. After the incident, no fatalities or leaks of radioactive materials were reported in the region, so the damage was considered low.

Immediately after the explosion, several rumors were spread about the real nature of the event, as it is common on such occasions. Some of the rumors claimed that Israel had triggered the explosion with the intention of damaging Iran in its nuclear development plans. At the time, all rumors were denied and no “conspiracy theory” was highlighted. Now, after the result of the investigations, such rumors have surfaced, but the Iranian government remains silent about them, stating that the investigations’ data will be revealed later.

Despite the uncertainties surrounding the case, the proximity of the date of the explosion in Natanz with other similar events in Iran brings us intriguing reflections and leaves many questions unanswered. In fact, since June, a series of repeated explosions at Iranian plants has been reported. In June, there was a major explosion at the nuclear power plant at Parchin’s military base in Tehran. This plant is the largest explosive factory for Iranian forces and is therefore a place of great strategic value for the country. Shortly thereafter, there was the event in Natanz, after which, in July, another major explosion occurred at the Isfahan power plant in central Iran. Still, not only plants have been victimized by mysterious explosions in Iran, but also several other facilities: on June 30, an explosion at a clinic in Tehran left 19 dead; in July, two people died in an explosion at a factory also in Tehran; also in July, a major fire in the port of Bouchehr destroyed several vessels, but left no victims. All these incidents have had no well-defined explanation and are therefore the subject of rumors.

The most curious thing is to note that the explosions occurred shortly after Iran intensified its uranium enrichment project. The withdrawal of the US from the 2015 nuclear agreement led Tehran to reconsider the national nuclear plan and to announce the resumption of the uranium enrichment program in the first half of June, on a date coincidentally close to the beginning of the series of explosions. Whether or not there is a causal relationship between both facts, the proximity of the dates is minimally interesting and justifies the suspicions and hypotheses raised by several experts. This is not a mere “conspiracy theory”: the possibility that foreign powers are sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program through some secret operations  is quite plausible, regardless of whether it is factual or not.

Since the resumption of the uranium enrichment program, Iran has received several accusations from other countries, mainly from Israel, that it is planning to acquire an atomic bomb. Tehran vehemently denies such accusation, as it has done on many other occasions – according to various statements by Shiite religious leaders, the building of a nuclear bomb is condemnable according to the Islamic religion, so Iran, as an Islamic Republic, could not undertake such project. However, Iranian military progress remains intense and the results are visible. The country recently announced the development of a new long-range ballistic missile, causing even more negative reactions in the West and Israel, where the speech about a possible Iranian nuclear bomb is gaining strength.

In fact, we should expect the Iranian authorities to provide more information about the case and only then express opinions about it. For the time being, the most interesting thing to note is the war of narratives around Iran: even with several pronouncements denying the accusations, the United States and Israel maintain the claim that Tehran is building an atomic bomb as an official state discourse; on the other hand, the opinion of experts on possible sabotage against strategic installations of the Iranian government is classified as a “conspiracy theory” or “false rumor” and is immediately rejected.

There is, of course, an information war around the case. We do not know if it was foreign sabotage – and we may never know – but we do know that such subversive activities really exist and often happen.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

The alliance between Venezuela and Iran seems to be taking new directions. The ties between the two countries began to strengthen in an economic sphere when, in the first half of 2020, Tehran started sending oil ships to Venezuela, circumventing the international trade rules imposed by Washington with the aim of blocking Caracas economically. Earlier this year, Tehran sent several cargoes of gasoline to Venezuela to help the South American country overcome fuel shortages, as well as equipment to help state oil company PDVSA overcome production and export difficulties during the crisis.

The presence of Iranian ships on the Venezuelan coast has been a real affront to the United States, which has always played a role of naval hegemony in the Caribbean. Recently, the United States claimed to have seized four ships carrying Iranian gasoline en route to Venezuela, prompting Washington to tighten sanctions on both countries. But the US was unable to contain the Iranian advance and now the alliance between Caracas and Tehran has advanced into a military step.

Recently, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro thanked Iran for helping the South American country overcome US sanctions on its oil industry. At the time, he said that Iran is helping to maintain all Venezuelan national governance but did not elaborate on how this cooperation was taking place. He said it was important to maintain secrecy on the topic because of the economic boycott imposed by the US – which he called a “brutal war”. However, Colombian President Iván Duque said last week that Maduro was interested in buying missiles from Iran, which Venezuelan officials denied, but later Maduro responded that Duke’s statement was a “good idea” and that he had not yet considered it.

Shortly thereafter, Maduro confirmed his interest in buying Iranian weapons. According to the Venezuelan president, Iran, possessing advanced military technology, can be a great partner of the South American country in case of possible attacks by the US. According to Maduro, buying Iranian missiles was not in his plans until the moment that Iván Duque gave him this idea by accusing him in a condemning tone of being acquiring such equipment.

“With Iran having tremendous military technology, buying short, medium and long-range rockets and missiles from Iran to defend against imperialist threats seemed like a good idea, [so] I gave the order to Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino to evaluate all potentialities and possibilities, and if it is possible and convenient, we will buy these missiles at the right time”, said Maduro in an interview with the state television channel” Venezolana de Televisión”.

According to the Venezuelan president, the Duke’s pronouncement was intended to attack Venezuela to take international attention away from Colombia’s national problems, such as the massacres and murders perpetrated by drug trafficking militias and the great social crisis generated by the new coronavirus, however, it ended up arousing interest the Venezuelan government to buy such Iranian missiles.

Now, it seems that the possibility of buying Iranian missiles is being evaluated by Vladimir Padrino, leader of the Venezuelan Defense, and there is a great tendency for the negotiations to be concluded, considering that there is a willingness on both sides for international cooperation since they have a common enemy. Looking at the case from a realistic point of view, it is very unlikely that negotiations between Iran and Venezuela started due to Iván Duque’s pronouncement. Both countries were probably already discreetly maintaining this dialogue and the accusatory and condemnatory pronouncement served only as an opportunity to make the news public. In fact, it seems that Duque’s words were a flawed blow: Venezuela was expected to deny the accusations and thus create a scenario of tensions and uncertainties, but, contrary to what was predicted by the Colombia-US coalition, Venezuela has made public its intention to acquire the missiles and now the alliance is almost official.

If the missiles are bought by Caracas, this will be a major blow to the American presence in South America and, at the same time, a major milestone for Iranian international projections. The most important thing to note is that this agreement has a much deeper dimension than mere military trade: everything indicates that it will only be the first step in a major military alliance. Venezuela will have its defense system strengthened and will guarantee greater security against possible attacks by both Americans and Colombians. Likewise, in a possible war against Washington, Iran will have the definitive support of Venezuela – a strategically well located ally, with its coastline pointing to the Caribbean Sea, an important area of ​​American influence.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Longstanding US plans earmarked Belarus for regime change, wanting pro-Western puppet rule in another nation bordering Russia.

There’s nothing spontaneous about mass protests that erupt in nations the US wants transformed into client states.

They’re most likely to occur in the run-up to and/or after elections in which a pro-Western US chosen candidate is unlikely or unable to defeat an incumbent dark forces in Washington want toppled.

On August 9, longtime Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko defeated opposition challenger Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in an election he was expected to win.

His inflated eight-to-one majority triumph created an opportunity for prearranged protesters to cry foul in Minsk streets.

Historian, former UK envoy, human rights activist Craig Murray believes Lukashenko was reelected handily “with over 60% of the vote.”

Tsikhanouskaya’s claim that she triumphed by over a 60% majority amounted to reading lines scripted by her US handlers.

She lost. He won, but likely by much less than an 80% majority.

Orchestrated daily protests have been ongoing since the August 9 presidential election, most likely to continue ahead.

US regime change plots don’t quit until achieving success or they’re foiled.

Russia is highly unlikely to allow another US client state to emerge on its border without acting to prevent it.

On Sunday, Sergey Lavrov explained that Washington seeks to gain control over Belarus, adding:

In cahoots with its NATO partners, the Trump regime is “trying to redraw Belarus according to (its) own design.”

“(W)e will not be against any decision that the Belarusian leadership will make regarding dialogue with its population.”

“When the West says that only mediation with the participation of Western countries will be effective, everyone remembers how it was in Ukraine, where Western mediation turned into a complete (unwillingness of the Obama regime) to negotiate.”

Moscow supports Lukashenko’s proposal for dialogue with opposition elements on constitutional reform.

Belarusians need no external interference in their internal affairs, what’s been going on for the past two weeks.

Lukashenko accused the US-led West of attempting to destabilize the country, including by deploying NATO forces close to its borders.

Foreign dark forces want him removed him from office, he stressed.

Tikhanovskaya’s call for Lukashenko “to leave” came ahead of a planned meeting with Trump regime Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun in Lithuania on Monday — to hand her updated imperial instructions.

She’s putty in the hands of US dark forces using her to further their interests, manipulating her moves and remarks.

Belarus and Russia are Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member states, along with Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

It calls for member states to abstain from use of force, at the same time pledging military support in case a CSTO nation is invaded by foreign elements.

On Sunday, Belarusian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Anatoly Glaz said his country rejects what he called “threadbare advice” from Ukraine’s pro-Western puppet regime, adding:

Kiev has “a lot of more important everyday problems to address inside the country for years to come rather than giving advice to the neighbor” it doesn’t want or accept.

Hostile US actions destabilized Belarus. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell opposes Trump regime shenanigans to destroy the JCPOA while supporting its unlawful color revolution attempt in Belarus, tweeting on Sunday:

“Hugely impressed by massive and peaceful demonstrations in Minsk and across #Belarus.”

“They show determination and courage of the Belarusian people to seek democratic change (sic).”

There’s nothing “democratic” about trying to replace an elected president with pro-Western puppet rule.

Ignoring US-orchestrated violence, Pompeo said the Trump regime “has been inspired by the display of peaceful expression of the Belarusian people seeking to determine their own future (sic)” — as long as the nation’s ruling authorities subordinate its sovereign rights to US interests.

Russia stands ready to help the Belarus stay free from Western control.

Its actions will conform to the rule of law — polar opposite how hegemon USA operates everywhere.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

NOTE: This piece was written in April 2020 and first appeared in the May-June edition no. 180 of New Dawn Magazine

I can remember them saying that ‘everything changed after 9/11’. It did, but certainly not for the better. I think we can all agree on that.  I remember how everyone surrendered their rights and key aspects of democracy, all in the name of ‘keeping us safe’.

Back then, world-changing decisions were made in reaction to an exaggerated threat, with sweeping ‘emergency measures’ and laws enacted. Usually, nothing good follows from a government that is making decisions and formulating permanent policy, suspending constitutions and rights – imposing all of this on a population operating from a position of fear. That much we did learn. Some of us did anyway.

In January, like a leviathan sprung forth from the titans Oceanus and Ceto in ancient Greece, the global coronavirus pandemic was born. Like 9/11, it was a disruptive event, but this time on a scale unimaginable. Whether or not one believes this was naturally-occurring or a biologically-engineered pathogen (there is every reason to believe it could be), it is beyond argument that this ‘crisis’ is and will be used to advance a multi-pronged globalist agenda, likely to feature more wars between the great powers.

Modern man is now entering realms of dystopia only imagined before by the likes of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, with more than a hint of Philip K. Dick. What makes all of this difficult for so many is that the sudden transition has been almost instantaneous, leaving people in a near callow state of bewilderment, wondering what just happened to their old life.

No matter which way this situation goes, it’s almost certain life will never be the same.

COVID Crisis

By now we should be familiar with the story: a novel coronavirus, scientifically known as SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19, has made its way across the planet, infecting millions of people and registering over 100,000 deaths (as of the time of writing) across 180 countries. The victims of this outbreak are overwhelming elderly persons over the age of 70 and those in palliative care, most of who have severe and chronic underlying medical conditions.

Make no mistake about it – this is a disruptive event on a scale the modern world has never seen before. The shock and awe began from the moment the story broke from the Chinese city of Wuhan in Hubei Province. Global audiences were inundated with images of Chinese authorities putting hundreds of people into biological suits, hosing down the outside of buildings, before quarantining themselves in their apartments. Then began a state-sanctioned medieval-style program that western media and politicians enthusiastically dubbed a “lockdown,” a term aptly borrowed from the prison industrial complex.

Wuhan was an unforgettable spectacle which really impacted the western psyche, such that when the coronavirus made it to European and North American shores, the public was already conditioned to expect a Chinese-style response from their own governments. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what they got and, in fact, it was what they demanded.

On 12 March, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called an emergency press conference where he took to the podium, flanked by his two leading science advisors, Sir Patrick Vallace and Chris Whitty, who proceeded to explain the government plan of action which was centred around the commonly known epidemiological concept of “herd immunity.” Their strategy was a familiar one because it has been the orthodoxy in modern epidemiology – allow a virus to go through approximately 60-80% of the population in order to achieve herd immunity, naturally extinguishing the virus in a single season.

But Johnson made the fatal error of grossly overestimating the death rate at 1% of the total infected, an estimate that would have left the country with some 52 million infected and 500,000 fatalities. Of course, in hindsight, these numbers were pure fiction, but at the time everyone was so enveloped in fear that they believed the ‘experts’. Nonetheless, the herd immunity approach was more or less identical to the ‘no lockdown’ approach taken by European countries Sweden and Iceland, as well as Belarus, Mexico, and Japan. This would entail standard random sample testing nationally and for those exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms. The elderly and vulnerable people would be told to self-isolate for a period of time while studies were conducted.

‘Plan A’ didn’t last long. On 24 March, Johnson appeared on national TV, this time without his science team, to announce a nationwide lockdown – an effective shutdown of society and most of the country’s economy. The UK was now following fellow NATO member states France, Italy, Spain and others, which had already imposed draconian national lockdowns, including strict new ‘social distancing’ guidelines preventing people from being together.

It appeared that Johnson’s sudden 180º degree turn was prompted in part by an alarmist report generated by one of the government ‘expert’ teams at Imperial College London, led by controversial computer modeler Neil Ferguson who was previously responsible for the 2001 ‘Foot and Mouth’ crisis, a debacle which ended in the unnecessary culling of some six million livestock in Britain.

This time, Ferguson and his team worked their modelling magic to come up with an estimated half a million coronavirus deaths if the government did not implement “very intense social distancing and other interventions now in place.”

While the figure was completely fictional, the media seized on it, as did government officials, which fuelled fear and panic across Britain’s government-media complex. Frightened and unsure, the public accepted the authoritarian measures, but the government never gave an end date to the quarantine; it was left open-ended at the discretion of the government’s scientific coterie.

Once that bubble of fear had been sufficiently inflated, a medieval-style lockdown was a fait accompli in numerous countries including Australia and New Zealand. The impact of a full national quarantine is yet unknown, but it’s already becoming clear that it will be nothing short of cataclysmic for those countries who agreed to the voluntary self-destruction of their economies and the indefinite suspension of democracy.

It’s worth noting this isn’t the first time the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), and Imperial College tried conjuring a global panic over a flu virus. Back in 2005, the “range of deaths,” the UN warned of bird flu virus H5N1, “could be anything between five and 150 million.” Officials even drafted in Imperial’s most reliable doomsayer, Neil Ferguson, to help come up with another completely fictional death toll of 200 million people. His high school level math equation was breathtaking in its over-simplicity:

“Around 40 million people died in the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak,” said Prof. Ferguson. “There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably.”

That doomsday prediction led to the culling of tens of millions of birds in Southeast Asia, but the pandemic never really materialised. In the end, human fatalities numbered in the hundreds worldwide. It was a non event.

Similar unremarkable numbers followed the global hype over the H1N1 swine flu in 2009. Thanks to the work of investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US was caught over-inflating the number of cases – a fraudulent move that had grave implications for government policy and stoking unfounded public fear.

With COVID-19, the globalist medical industrial complex, led by WHO, hoped to repeat the previous public relations campaigns by hyping the novel coronavirus as the next Spanish Flu. This time they were given an extraordinary opportunity thanks to China which put on an incredible media performance and ‘show of strength’ in the month of January by ‘locking down’ Wuhan – inspiring western and other leaders to try the same big government approach.

However, the results would turn out economically disastrous for western ‘lockdown’ countries.

Economic Collapse

All of this is certain to trigger a protracted global recession marked by at least 12 months of negative growth, with economic and social displacement the likes of which the world has never seen before. The decision by countries like the UK, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US to voluntarily implode their economies and place most of their populations under house arrest will have a lasting impact not only on national economies but also the global economy for years to come.

In terms of scale, the damage caused to markets and industry has already surpassed the 2008 financial crisis by orders of magnitude, and there’s no end in sight.

To ‘fight the coronavirus’ governments have imploded their real economies and replaced them with nationalised pools of finance earmarked for each section of the economy. This emergency transformation is the same as a wartime mobilisation of an economy, with a heavy focus on the medical and pharmaceutical industrial complex, the military, and selected corporate partners hand-picked by the state. This hard fusion of state and corporate interests is classic corporatism or fascism. In this brutal and constrained environment, these are some of the only institutions strong enough to remain viable.

The net effect of immediately putting millions of workers onto government welfare rolls and pushing hundreds of thousands of small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMEs) into bankruptcy will be the largest consolidation and transfer of wealth in modern history. Those with enough capital to ride out the crisis will be able to buy-up companies, and even whole industries, for literally pennies on the dollar. Monopolies like Amazon, Google and telecoms giants will consolidate and solidify their market shares as competitors gradually die off and are swallowed-up in receivership. Formerly independent contractors will now be reliant on government assistance, as will any business qualifying for government ‘relief’ grants and loans. Large corporations will now have governments covering the cost of their payrolls for the duration of the crisis.

There is no semblance of any discernible sound economic model to describe what is now happening with government printing up record amounts of money to cover the enormous cost of the shutdown. For a wealthy country like the US, the Federal Reserve Bank will simply go into overdrive, creating trillions of dollars to be released through various ‘stimulus plans’ and bailouts. The New York Fed is now pumping trillions of new dollars into banks, with the Fed also issuing ‘bridge’ loans directly to businesses. This never happened before in history. The US is also buying up unprecedented amounts of corporate stock in order to keep Wall Street afloat. With these levels of quantitative easing, there are risks of hyperinflation and other systemic problems. This may be coupled with higher food prices due to supply shortages, and stagnant wages due to a glut in the labour market after the government’s domestic scorched earth economic policies. The end result of all these bailouts (if they ever end) will be exactly as with any war in history: a rapid wholesale transfer of power, control and ownership into centralised government and the central banking cartel.

For individuals and families, this means your savings are wiped-out, your property collapses in value, and your future prospects are dim, at least in the short to midterm, and you will have no choice but to load up on personal and family debt to survive.

Before this crisis, we saw the largest wealth gap in modern history since the Gilded Age (1870–1900), with the richest 1% now owning more than half of the world’s wealth. After the first phase of this crisis, that gap may double or even triple. With SMEs wiped out, the only jobs available will be with the government or with a handful of mega-corporations.

As is often the case after any war, developed and developing countries are likely to become dependent on credit lines from either the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or from the United States itself which will have plenty of dollars and US Treasury bonds for sale or loan at near zero percent interest rates. Plenty of funny money to go around, mostly for the elites.

The shutting down of the world’s airlines – along with biosecurity and financial stagnation hitting certain sections of global trade – will severely injure the dominant system of globalisation. This will no doubt encourage already existing regional trading blocs, like ASEAN in Southeast Asia, and the African Union, leveraging their interests to create more regionalised and resilient trading networks. As physical trade and relations are codified regionally, globalisation will increase in the online digital sphere and with international e-commerce, online learning and social networking.

Now, with massive economic recession, marked by record levels of mass unemployment and debt, the balkanisation of formerly open globalisation routes, combined with a new global veil over scarcity of resources, all under a broad cloak of biological insecurity – the soil is fertile for more dismantling of democracy and a rise in fascist regimes, particularly in the West. The trend was already moving in this direction before the crisis, but now it will only accelerate.

Historically speaking, the scene is now set for another world war in which the winner sets the agenda for a ‘new world order’ going into the 21^st century.

Full Spectrum Dominance: World War Footing

Just as in 1914 and the onset of World War I, the year 2020 will be a major pivot point for the early 21^st century and should be seen as a tangible prelude to a new world war. There are a number of reasons why this is likely.

It is true that you can implement more change in two years of war than you can in twenty years of peace. In the case of the corona crisis, that two years was reduced to two months. Presently, events are being framed by western powers as the “global fight against an invisible enemy,” but the corona crisis has created a number of new paradigms some of which are classic precursors for war. The first and most obvious is the fact that virtually overnight, the western countries, especially NATO member states the United States, United Kingdom and France, have effectively mobilised all aspects of their country’s economy and restructured society to reflect both a wartime economy and a state of martial law. The western bloc countries are now prepared to bunker down for a long war if need be.

The threat of a biological agent presents some serious problems for a globally-embedded military as America’s. Already the US had to cancel major NATO drills in Europe, and pull some of its naval fleet into dock because of the coronavirus and fears of infecting large numbers of military personnel. Other countries may have similar issues. In this sense, the disease has severely slowed fighting across the world – one of the more unexpected, albeit welcome, tertiary benefits of the crisis.

The western powers first obvious choice for instigating either a hot or cold war is China, along with its allies. When US President Donald Trump refers to COVID-19 as “the Chinese virus,” he is signalling to his base and to the war hawks in the Republican Party that the White House is preparing a confrontation. Anti-Chinese rhetoric and media propaganda has increased substantially in the US since the onset of the corona crisis, with many Americans, particularly the right-wing, now blaming the Chinese for releasing this pestilence into the world.

After a few more months of economic destruction, social malaise and an increasing death toll in the US, the new ranks of unemployed will be demanding a scapegoat for their terrible suffering, at which time a war with China could become more viable for Washington. This could take the form of an on-off, hot-cold war which lasts for 30 or 40 years, and pulls in other major powers using proxy battlegrounds in third party countries.

For the US empire, one primary objective in confronting China would be to disrupt and possibly derail Beijing’s historic infrastructure and economic development known as the Belt and Road Initiative, designed to link Europe with Asia along various routes over land and sea. If successful, the global centre of gravity would shift away from the US and back towards Eurasia. In the event of a global depression post-corona, the US is geopolitically well-placed to weather the storm as it commands the control of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. China’s Belt and Road would effectively upend Washington’s plans for Fortress America lording it over all global markets during this new tumultuous epoch.

In some ways, the crisis has disrupted the emergence of a new multipolar world, but the imperative for multipolarism may also be propelled by the economic balkanisation and the fact that the US will continue withdrawing its military assets from stalwart outposts like the Middle East. Any US withdrawal from the world stage will be filled by other emerging powers like Russia, India, Turkey and possibly Japan. Many of these emerging powers require resources and materials, so the scramble to establish trading routes in Africa will be a post-corona feature.

The corona crisis also provides a convenient cover for the aggressive roll-out of 5G networks around the world. These look to be the backbone of a new global surveillance state able to track and record everything in real-time. Along with millions of masts in towns and cities, the network will also feature an array of new satellites with the potential to flood our atmosphere and communities with even more untested high-frequency radiation.

One World Health & Medical Martial Law

The current ‘state of war’ extends internationally with blanket travel restrictions already in place. There looks to be a rapid drive to institute a streamlined global system of mandatory digital tracking and tracing, implemented under the auspices of ‘global health’ and spearheaded by the World Health Organization (WHO). They are joined by participating governments and the transnational corporations that will roll out these new ‘health surveillance’ systems.

The real question that remains unanswered is what will happen once all the ‘lockdown’ measures are relaxed, and international air travel opens up again?

There are already noises coming from governments and organisations about requiring citizens to pass some form of ‘immunity test’ for COVID-19 to be granted freedom of movement within society by carrying an ‘immunity passport’ or digital certificate stored on a microchip or smartphone.

This dovetails with the rapid drive for a cashless society as a result of the corona scare. Due to corona contagion fears, paper money and coins are being stigmatised as ‘dirty’ with many retail outlets refusing to accept cash. Once this system is adopted domestically, it follows that these same restrictions will be extended to international travellers. Needless to say, this has grave implications for personal liberty and privacy. At present, this juggernaut seems difficult to stop.

If allowed, this new bio regime will become the de facto governance for the world’s population. Microsoft founder Bill Gates (net worth $97.8 billion) has called for a national vaccine tracking system in the US, funded in part by an estimated $100 million he and his wife Melinda’s Gates Foundation have donated to fight the coronavirus to discover ‘a fix’ as quickly as possible. Gates is already heavily invested in vaccine research, development and production and, with his wife, they are a primary driver in the proliferation of vaccines globally. Gates says he will front the investment for seven new vaccine factories around the globe, and as he told Daily Show host Trevor Noah during an interview on 2 April, “until we get the world vaccinated.”

Clearly, he has a vision for vaccinating every person on the planet, presumably for the coronavirus, or until the next big ‘outbreak’. “The only thing that really lets us go back completely to normal and feel good about sitting in stadiums with lots of other people is to create a vaccine and not just take care of our country but take that vaccine out to the global population,” said Gates.

From oligarchs like Gates, the transnational pharmaceutical corporations, and the government officials in their pocket, the warning is clear: you will not be permitted to resume ‘normal life’ until you accept the latest vaccine. And do not expect the list of newly required vaccinations to end with the novel coronavirus. Once this first precedent is set, countries dependent on international travel and trade will be forced to adopt the regulatory framework of this new ‘one world health’ security complex. The trail is then blazed for a constant stream of vaccine requirements to ‘fight’ various and sundry outbreaks and ‘biothreats’, be they real, exaggerated or completely fabricated. This could be another disruptive force going forward.

Combine this with naked authoritarian statements made by other self-appointed corona tsars like Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director of WHO, who recently remarked that members of families may need to be removed from their homes by force. “Most of the transmission actually happening in many countries now, is happening in the household at family level…. In some sense, transmission has been taken off the streets and pushed back into family units. Now, we need to go and look at families to find those people who may be sick and remove them, and isolate them in a safe and dignified manner,” said Ryan.

The obvious danger here is that this new state-corporate regime will discriminate against and marginalise citizens based on their immunity records, requiring them to take a new vaccine to receive rights and privileges. This would be a complete abrogation of personal liberty and human rights, effectively turning the clock back hundreds of years – all based on what many leading doctors and epidemiologists agree is no more of a significant public health threat, in terms of infections and fatalities, than seasonal influenza.

A COVID Green New Deal?

One of the clear main political beneficiaries of a COVID-19 global shutdown has been the climate change lobby.

By forcibly shutting down millions of businesses and pulling tens of millions of cars off the road and grounding world commercial airlines, the crisis has delivered young Greta Thunberg the evidence she and her supporters need to demonstrate the virtues of a net zero carbon world in a real-life simulation.

This will also accelerate the adoption of a so-called ‘Green New Deal’ internationally, which may have less to do with saving the environment or ‘changing the climate’, and more to do with the creation of new global financial bubble based on the commodification and financialisation of Earth’s ecosphere. This is essentially a new ‘green-backed’ and fully tradeable monetary credit, bond and derivatives market.

Greta didn’t appear out of nowhere in 2018. She and her handlers have been tasked with a mission, and now in just three weeks they are very close to realising large pieces of their agenda, which also dovetails with UN Agenda 2030 sustainability goals.

Who’s Winning: Globalism or Nationalism?

Another unexpected byproduct of this crisis has been a number of European Union member states kicking Brussels to the curb, either for not reacting fast enough to help, or simply for not releasing enough funds for struggling public institutions and businesses. As a result, countries like Italy and Poland are exerting their nationalist power over Brussels’ relatively weak and ineffectual response to requested assistance from members states.

At the same time, this new global control grid lends itself towards the implementation of a world government structure to be used to fund an international regime that regulates and adjudicates problems, as well as manage future ‘outbreaks’. In late March, former British PM and Chancellor, Gordon Brown, called for world leaders to create a provisional global government body in order to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and manage the global economic collapse.

Screenshot from The Guardian, 26 March 2020

Whatever geopolitical and social engineering agendas were already in motion before the crisis, you can be sure that the coronavirus has accelerated many of them.

In terms of power-grabs, this is the embodiment of “never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Oh, and don’t forget –it’s really all about saving lives. 

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Patrick Henningsen is the founder and editor of the news and analysis website 21st Century Wire, and is an independent foreign and political affairs analyst for RT International. He is also the host of the SUNDAY WIRE radio program which airs live every Sunday on the Alternate Current Radio Network. Learn more about this author at: www.patrickhenningsen.com

Notes

1. Professor who predicted 500,000 Britons could die from coronavirus and prompted Boris Johnson to order lockdown accused of having ‘patchy record of modelling pandemics’, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8164121/Professor-predicted-500-000-Britons-die-coronavirus-accused-having-patchy-record.html

2. Return of the oppressed, aeon.co/essays/history-tells-us-where-the-wealth-gap-leads

3. Is an ‘immunity certificate’ the way to get out of coronavirus lockdown?, edition.cnn.com/2020/04/03/health/immunity-passport-coronavirus-lockdown-intl/index.html

4. The first steps after lockdown ends: How will Spain return to normal life?, english.elpais.com/society/2020-04-05/the-first-steps-after-lockdown-ends-how-will-spain-return-to-normal-life.html

5. Bill Gates Calls For National Tracking System For Coronavirus During Reddit AMA, www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/03/18/bill-gates-calls-for-national-tracking-system-for-coronavirus-during-reddit-ama/

6. Bill Gates on Fighting Coronavirus – The Daily Social Distancing Show (YouTube), www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyFT8qXcOrM

7. The coronavirus is washing over the U.S. These factors will determine how bad it gets in each community, www.statnews.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-how-bad-it-gets-different-communities/

8. Gordon Brown calls for global government to tackle coronavirus, www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/26/gordon-brown-calls-for-global-government-to-tackle-coronavirus

Featured image is from New Dawn 180

A federal judge in Houston late yesterday approved an incentive package worth up to $57 million for top executives as part of bankruptcy proceedings for oil giant California Resources Corporation.

Nine executives with the company, which is California’s biggest oil and gas producer, would get the high-dollar payouts if they meet certain metrics over the next year as part of CRC’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy claim, filed last month.

The potential executive payouts are nearly double the $29 million in back taxes the company owes to Kern, Ventura and Orange counties. In all, the state’s largest driller is seeking bankruptcy protection to wipe out more than $5 billion in debt and equity interests.

“After laying off hundreds of workers, polluting California’s environment and failing to pay taxes, CRC is piling execs into a luxury getaway car and stepping on the gas,” said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If company officials have the money for big-bucks incentive payments, they can pay their taxes and do environmental cleanup. It’s time for Gov. Newsom to step in and prove he’s with Californians over fat cat polluters.”

The Center has called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to intervene in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings to ensure it sets aside enough money for well cleanup.

CRC and its affiliates operate approximately 18,700 wells in California, which could cost more than $1 billion to properly plug, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Of these 7,826 are already “idle,” which means they’ve produced no oil in the past two years.

So far in 2020, Gov. Newsom has issued more than 500 permits to CRC for drilling new wells, reworking existing wells and other dangerous activities.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

“DeJoy himself confirmed that there have been significant service slowdowns. It makes no sense at all for him to say USPS sorting machine ‘are not needed.’ Put them back.”

***

Update:

In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Friday, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told lawmakers that he has “no intention” of returning or replacing mail sorting machines that have been removed from post offices across the nation.

Questioned by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) on the machine removals , DeJoy—a Trump megadonor with no prior experience working for the U.S. Postal Service—said, “They’re not needed, sir.”

Watch:

DeJoy says he has "no intention" of bringing back any mail sorting machines that were removed since he became postmaster general https://t.co/uPUUHHEj5w pic.twitter.com/fr9XQTonGG

— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 21, 2020

“Postmaster General DeJoy himself confirmed that there have been significant service slowdowns,” tweeted Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) in response to DeJoy’s remarks. “It makes no sense at all for him to say USPS sorting machine ‘are not needed.’ Put them back.”

According to the American Postal Workers Union, the USPS under DeJoy’s leadership was moving to decommission more than 670 sorting machines around the country before the postmaster general vowed earlier this week to suspend his operational changes until after the November election.

Iowa Postal Workers Union President Kimberly Karol—a 30-year Postal Service veteran—told NPR last week that the removal of mail sorting machines “hinders our ability to process mail in the way that we had in the past.”

🚨🚨 Louis DeJoy testified today that more than 600 mail sorting machines removed by USPS under his leadership won't be reinstalled. That includes:

59 in FL
58 in TX
34 in OH
30 in PA
26 in MI
15 in NC
12 in VA
12 in WI
11 in GAhttps://t.co/N6Ek0rU10B

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) August 21, 2020

In an email sent hours after DeJoy committed to suspending his policy changes, Kevin Couch, a director of maintenance operations at USPS, instructed postal workers “not to reconnect/reinstall machines that have been previously disconnected without approval from HQ Maintenance, no matter what direction they are getting from their plant manager.”

Following the hearing Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted that

“Louis DeJoy flat-out lied to the Senate today about the changes he’s implemented at the USPS, refused to cooperate with requests for documents, and rejected the idea of fixing his damage.”

“Enough is enough: the Board of Governors must remove DeJoy and reverse his acts of sabotage,” Warren added.

Earlier:

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is set to testify Friday before the Republican-controlled Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the wake of startling new revelations surrounding the process that led to his appointment as well as fresh details on his plans for a massive post-election overhaul of mail operations.

Earlier this week, as Common Dreams reported, DeJoy vowed to suspend—but not reverse—his policy changes at the U.S. Postal Service that caused massive package backlogs across the country and threatened the timely delivery of mail-in ballots.

According to the Washington Post, DeJoy “has mapped out far more sweeping changes to the U.S. Postal Service than previously disclosed, considering actions that could lead to slower mail delivery in parts of the country and higher prices for some mail services.”

“The plans under consideration, described by four people familiar with Postal Service discussions, would come after the election and touch on all corners of the agency’s work,” the Post reported. “They include raising package rates, particularly when delivering the last mile on behalf of big retailers; setting higher prices for service in Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico; curbing discounts for nonprofits; requiring election ballots to use first-class postage; and leasing space in Postal Service facilities to other government agencies and companies.”

Watch DeJoy’s testimony, which is scheduled to begin at 9:00 am ET:

In a letter (pdf) Thursday to USPS Board of Governors member John Barger—who, like DeJoy, is a major Republican donor—Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and Katie Porter (D-Calif.) raised alarm about Barger’s role in selecting the postmaster general, who was appointed in May despite his complete lack of experience at the agency.

“As you know, the executive hiring firm Russell Reynolds Associates was contracted to research and recommend a candidate to the United States Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors for the position of postmaster General,” the lawmakers wrote. “According to individuals familiar with the process, Mr. Louis DeJoy was never recommended by this firm but was rather introduced by you to the selection committee.”

Krishnamoorthi and Porter said in a joint statement Thursday that “the appointment of Mr. Louis DeJoy as postmaster general was highly irregular and we are concerned that his candidacy may have been influenced by political motivations.”

“We need to get to the bottom of why Mr. DeJoy was considered, given that he apparently was not one of the candidates recommended by the firm contracted to make such recommendations, and did not undergo a background check as was urged by then-Inspector General and Vice Chairman of the USPS Board of Governors David Williams.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

THE FACE MASK

Ample scientific literature. Medical consensus (shared by Dr. Fauci) until it was repealed by government directives.

By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain.”

Researchers found that about a third of the workers developed headaches with use of the mask, most had preexisting headaches that were worsened by the mask wearing, and 60% required pain medications for relief. As to the cause of the headaches, while straps and pressure from the mask could be causative, the bulk of the evidence points toward hypoxia and/or hypercapnia as the cause. That is, a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an elevation in blood C02 (hypercapnia).

By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain.” Dr. Russell Blaylock,

FACE MASK 

SOCIAL DISTANCING

Social distancing in the case of Covid-19 is based on tenuous scientific norms. it disrupts social gatherings, family relations, sport and cultural events. And it is enforced by police state methods.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Color Revolution-beleaguered Belarusian President Lukashenko surprised the world on Sunday after exiting a helicopter that landed on his palace grounds while dressed in body armor and holding an AK -47, which was a risky soft power stunt that could either do wonders for his image or completely backfire on him.

***

中国周边有400多个装备核武器的军事基地，美军继续对中国进行包围，中国进入 “包围状态”。

美国与罗纳德-里根航母打击群在有争议的南海进行军事演习。这些靠近中国大陆的美国 “海上防空行动 “是美国在该地区大幅增加的军事演习的一部分。

美国国防部长埃斯佩尔宣布，美国将从德国撤军，但把军队移到靠近俄罗斯边境的地方，以对俄罗斯起到更有效的威慑作用。

俄罗斯表示，将把任何瞄准其领土的弹道导弹视为核攻击，并将以核武作为回应。

虽然美国在形式上没有与任何非洲国家开战，但一份新的报告显示，美国在22个非洲国家都有特种部队活动，有29个基地，6000名士兵，其中在尼日尔有一个巨大的无人机中心，耗资1+亿建造，预计到2024年运营成本将超过2800亿美元

**

你可以点击下面的链接阅读整篇文章的英文版，也可以用手机翻译

American Politics: Send in the Clowns for the Circus Is in Town.                                                                 

By Edward Curtin, August 19, 2020