Global Research

Last night, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) moved to dismiss a meritless lawsuit filed against it by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and several individuals. Human rights attorneys say the lawsuit targets USCPR’s support of Palestinian rights and is intended to chill them from engaging in constitutionally protected advocacy. 

“The fact that we’re under attack is no surprise: human rights defenders around the world are under attack from repressive regimes and their allies. This lawsuit is part of this global, right-wing assault on civil society and movements seeking to build a better future for all,” said Ramah Kudaimi, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Deputy Director. “We will not be intimidated, and our work dedicated to the rights of the Palestinian people—work that is grounded in the principles of equal rights, justice, and freedom for all—will continue.”

Attorneys say the lawsuit makes outlandish claims, casting collective activism and expressions of solidarity as unlawful. Plaintiffs base their far-fetched accusations of conspiracy and material support for terrorism on USCPR’s support for Palestinian rights, including for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law. Their claims also rely on USCPR’s criticism of Israel’s unlawful use of force against Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza who are demanding their internationally recognized right of return to their homes, as well as its participation in the Stop the JNF Campaign aimed at exposing and challenging the JNF’s role in dispossessing Palestinians of their land.

In arguing for dismissal of JNF’s lawsuit against USCPR, attorneys emphasized the threat to free speech and association if a group of activists can be sued on such tenuous theories of liability.

“Anyone who cares about civil liberties and human rights should be deeply concerned by the frivolous and malicious lobbing of accusations of conspiracy and terrorism at a human rights organization,” said Diala Shamas, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “This case is part of a broader and well-resourced effort to attack advocates for Palestinian rights—whether through anti-boycott legislation, university administrations silencing student activists, or meritless lawsuits filed against supporters of Palestinian human rights. We will continue to support movements as they advocate for rights and dignity.”

The JNF, or Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, is a quasi-state institution in Israel that acquires and administers land for the sole benefit of Jewish people. The JNF has been instrumental in the Israeli state’s dispossession of the Palestinian people. While the JNF has been the target of lawsuits for its discriminatory policies, this is the first time it has tried to use US courts to silence critics.

Lawyers say the lawsuit is part of a broad and growing pattern of suppressing activism in support of Palestinian rights, a phenomenon that the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal have documented and called the “Palestine Exception” to free speech. The organizations report the widespread use of administrative disciplinary actions, harassment, firings, legislative attacks, false accusations of terrorism and antisemitism, and baseless legal complaints. Palestine Legal has responded to 1,494 incidents of suppression targeting speech supportive of Palestinian rights between 2014 and 2019. See 2019 Year in Review.

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Featured image is from Palestine Solidarity Campaign

The U.S. embargo on Cuba has been in effect for 60 years. It’s time to end it.

The embargo makes it a criminal offense for any American to spend money in Cuba or to do business in Cuba. If an American travels to Cuba and spends money there or does business there, he is subject to criminal prosecution, conviction, fine, and imprisonment by his own government upon his return to the United States.

The purpose of the embargo is regime change. The idea is to squeeze the Cuban people economically with the aim of causing discontent against Cuba’s communist regime. If the discontent gets significant enough, U.S. officials believe, the population will revolt and re-install a pro-U.S. regime into power.

Where is the morality in targeting the civilian population with death and impoverishment with the aim of achieving a political goal? Isn’t that why we condemn terrorism?

I say “re-install” because Cuba had a pro-U.S. dictator in power before the Cuban revolution installed Fidel Castro into power. The country was ruled by a man named Fulgencio Batista, one of the most brutal and corrupt dictators in the world. U.S. officials didn’t care about his tyranny because he was a pro-U.S. dictator — that is, one who could be counted on to do the bidding of the U.S. government.

But the Cuban people, who were suffering under Batista’s regime, revolted against it. Successfully ousting Batista from power, new Cuban dictator Fidel Castro made it clear that he would be no such puppet. In the eyes of U.S. officials, that made him a threat to “national security.”

What many Americans fail to realize is that the embargo is actually an infringement on their liberty. Under principles of freedom, people have the natural, God-given right to travel anywhere they want and spend their money any way they want. Freedom of travel and economic liberty are encompassed by the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that the Declaration of Independence enumerates as rights that preexist government.

When the American people agreed to this fundamental infringement on their rights and liberty, it was at the height of the Cold War. U.S. officials told them that there was a worldwide communist conspiracy based in Russia to take over the world, especially the United States. Cuba, U.S. officials said, was a spearhead in that effort. If a communist regime was permitted to remain in Cuba, which is only 90 miles away from U.S. shores, they said, there was no way to keep America from going Red.

The irony is that America was already going socialist and without an invasion by Cuba. That was reflected by the U.S. embrace of such socialist programs as Social Security, Medicare, public schooling, immigration controls, and a central bank, all of which are core elements of Cuba’s socialist economic system.

Terribly fearful of this supposed communist threat to conquer the United States, the American people traded away their rights and liberties for the sake of purported safety and security from communism.

The irony is that Cuba never attacked the United States and never even threatened to do so. Throughout the Cold War, it remained an impoverished Third World nation that never posed any military threat to the United States.

Instead, throughout the Cold War it was always the U.S. government that was the aggressor against Cuba. Not only did the U.S. government target the Cuban people with its embargo, it also secretly partnered with the Mafia to assassinate Castro.

In fact, the reason that Castro invited the Soviet Union to install nuclear missiles in Cuba was not to attack the United States but rather to deter the U.S. government from invading Cuba a second time or to defend Cuba in the event of another U.S. invasion of the island.

The Cold War ended some 30 years ago, but not for the Cuban people. When it comes to freedom and prosperity, they have been left behind, squeezed in a vise that consists of socialism on the one side and the U.S. embargo on the other.

Fidel Castro outlasted the embargo and the U.S.-Mafia murder attempts on his life and ended up dying four years ago. Nonetheless, the embargo goes on.

It’s time to bring an end to this sordid, immoral behavior on the part of U.S. officials. Leave the Cuban people alone, and restore freedom to the American people. If Cubans want to end their socialist system, that’s up to them to do so. The U.S. government has no legitimate business contributing to their suffering with its brutal economic embargo.

Moreover, the American people have the right to the restoration of their rights of freedom of travel and economic liberty, which should never have been traded away in the first place. The U.S. government has no legitimate authority to be prosecuting and punishing Americans for exercising what are natural, God-given rights.

Lift the embargo, now. It’s the morally and economically sound thing to do.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews atLewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

This is sanction number 191 imposed by the U.S. government on the Cuban people, with the purpose of causing discouragement and despair, while portraying revolutionary authorities as responsible for the damage caused by its aggressive policy

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The Donald Trump administration has added further pressure to its cruel, unjust sanctions on Cuba: the Western Union family remittance company, February 26, suspended financial transfers to Cuba, except for those issued from the United States.

Prensa Latina stressed statements previously made by the U.S. company, in which it was reported that due to the U.S. blockade´s unjust sanctions, this company could lose its ability to process remittances to Cuba from other countries around the globe.

This is sanction number 191 imposed by the U.S. government on the Cuban people, with the purpose of causing discouragement and despair, while portraying revolutionary authorities as responsible for the damage caused by its aggressive policy.

Let us recall that, in October of 2019, family remittances were limited to 1,000 dollars per person, per quarter, and that the U.S. blockade has caused losses to Cuba, valued at more than four billion dollars.

The current decision has a direct impact on Cuban families, and exposes another lie from Trump, who in his State of the Union address said sanctions imposed by his administration are meant to “help” the Cuban people.

Trump’s unique concept of help includes fierce financial persecution that continued to intensify in various countries’ jurisdictions from April of 2018 through March, 2019, with restrictions imposed on the Cuban banking system by 140 foreign banks.

The Foreign Assets Control Office and other U.S. agencies penalized several third-country companies, making transactions increasingly more difficult not only for the Cuban government, but also for the citizens it supposedly wants to help.

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Venezuela’s elections council said on Sunday that a fire over the weekend destroyed most of the voting machines stored in its main warehouse in the capital, Caracas, potentially complicating parliamentary elections scheduled for this year.

Nearly 50,000 voting machines and almost 600 computers went up in flames as a result of the fire that broke out on Saturday, said elections council chief Tibisay Lucena.

“There was little that could be rescued,” Lucena said in a statement broadcast on state television.

“If there are small groups (of people) who think that this will end our constitutionally established electoral processes, they are very wrong.”

She did not elaborate on how many voting machines were still available for use, or how the incident would affect future elections.

Lucena said she had asked state prosecutors to look into the cause of the blaze, which did not cause any injuries.

Read full article here.

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Fiore Longo of Survival International argues for an end to big conservation projects that abuse and destroy the very peoples who know how to protect the land.

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In a leaked report revealed to The Guardian in February, an investigation by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) found that armed eco-guards, partly-funded by the WWF to protect wildlife in the Republic of Congo, subjected Baka tribespeople to violent abuse and human rights violations.

The conservation giant has been trying to create a protected zone around Messok Dja, a huge forested area rich in wildlife and biodiversity, where the Baka people have lived for generations. UNDP investigators found that the Baka were not consulted about the project and suffered extreme violence at the hands of eco-guards, who also exclude them from the forests they depend on for food and medicines to survive.

Along with WWF, as well as palm oil and logging conglomerates, UNDP is a sponsor of the $21.4 million conservation project. A sizeable chunk of this funding goes to ‘conservation’ in Messok Dja, where the rest is allocated to TRIDOM, another forest situated across Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and Gabon. Under pressure from activists, the UNDP launched an investigation after receiving letters from the Baka in 2018 and complaints from Survival International (SI).

One letter, signed by Baka people in Mbaye village, said:

‘They ban us from going to the forest. If we make camps in the forest the eco-guards burn them down. Many Baka are dead today. Children are getting thinner. We are already finished off with the lack of forest medicines. We tried to tell our difficulties to the WWF but they do not accept them. They just tell us we cannot go to the forest.’

A draft report of the investigation, dated 6 January 2020, includes damning testimony of eco-guards beating Baka men, women and children. Other reports refer to eco-guards forcing Baka to beat each other at gun point; guards taking away machetes then using them for beatings; and eco-guards forcing Baka women to take off their clothes ‘to be like naked children’.

The draft report adds, ‘The violence and threats are leading to trauma and suffering in the Baka communities. It is also preventing the Baka from pursuing their customary livelihoods, which in turn is contributing to their further marginalisation and impoverishment.’

Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Just as shocking as these most recent revelations is how long WWF have known about this and done so little to put it right, and how until now, their conduct has been ignored by international bodies like the UN.

‘[Eco-guards] see Baka as animals, they don’t see us as humans,’ a Baka man from the Congo Basin told an SI researcher.

Survival International and the indigenous and tribal people it partners, have been campaigning since the 1980s against atrocities committed in the name of conservation. Agents supported by world-renowned nature groups, national governments and international bodies have tortured and murdered dozens of innocent and vulnerable people. Park rangers and government officials have burned down villages, bulldozed houses, gang-raped women, stolen possessions, beaten people up and maimed them for life.

Vast areas of land have been stolen from tribal people and local communities under the false claim that this is necessary for conservation. The stolen land is then called a ‘protected area’ or ‘national park’, and the original inhabitants are kept out; sometimes with the kind of violence that has been inflicted on the Baka.

WWF has been working in the Congo Basin for over 20 years – supporting squads who have committed violent abuse against tribal people. ©WWF

Cultural Imperialism

First created in the United States in the 19th century, national parks were predicated on the notion that nature is ‘untouched wilderness’ until white people ‘discovered’ it. According to Chief Luther Standing Bear of the Sicangu and Oglala Lakota: ‘Only to the white man was nature a “wilderness” and only to him was it “infested” with “wild” animals and “savage” people. To us it was tame.’

Thousands of Native American people were not ‘just’ living on the land, but actively using, shaping and nurturing it. They were playing a vital part in these ecosystems and possessed deep understanding of them, yet were perceived as no more than an ‘inconvenience’ to be ‘dealt with’, just like the inhabitants of African and Asian protected areas are today.

The tragic irony is that mass tourism, trophy hunting and ‘sustainable’ logging, mining or other resource extraction are often welcomed in areas where the original inhabitants have been evicted and forbidden from using the land themselves.

Image on the right: A man from a village near the proposed Messok Dja national park shows scars from a beating he received at the hands of ecoguards supported and funded by WWF. Credit: Fiore Longo

Both in 19th century North America and in much of Africa and Asia today, ‘conservation’ has meant that the original custodians cannot live on their ancestral lands, but tourists can come there on holiday; local people are forbidden from hunting for food in places where foreigners hunt for sport and indigenous communities are banned from using resources they depend on to survive. The definition of ‘sustainable’ here is conveniently bent to permit logging concessions and industrial mining on ‘protected’ land.

The idea that indigenous peoples don’t understand how to care for their environment stems from cultural imperialism. Evidence from across the world shows that securing land rights for indigenous communities produces comparable or even better conservation outcomes at a fraction of the cost of conventional conservation programmes.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz said in a 2018 report:

‘When bulldozers or park rangers force indigenous peoples from their homes, it is not only a human rights crisis, it is also a detriment to all humanity. Indigenous peoples… are achieving at least equal conservation results with a fraction of the budget of protected areas, making investment in indigenous peoples themselves the most efficient means of protecting forests.’

Anyone who truly cares about the planet must stop supporting forms of ‘conservation’ that wound, alienate and destroy indigenous and tribal peoples. It’s time for conservation to recognize them as senior partners in the fight to protect their own land: for their tribes, for nature and for all humanity.

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Fiore Longo is a campaigner at Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples. Find them on Twitter at @LongoFiore.

Featured image: Vast areas of land have been stolen from tribal people and local communities under the false claim that this is necessary for conservation. Credit: Fiore Longo

In his book titled “Capitalism and Freedom,” economist Milton Friedman said “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change.” 

“When a crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

“(O)ur basic function (is) to develop alternatives to existing policies (ready to roll out when) the impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

Friedman and likeminded ideologues believe that whatever government does, business does better so let it.

There’s nothing fair about their notions of “free market” capitalism.

Shock therapy at times of political, economic, and/or financial turbulence is the economic version of smashing nations militarily to save them.

Its central tenets include mass-privatizations, government deregulation, unrestricted free market access for US-led Western business interests, deep cuts in social spending, and harsh crackdowns on nonbelievers.

The scheme includes transferring wealth from public to corporate interests and high-net worth individuals — creating ruler/serf societies, enforced by hardline rule.

Inside the bubble is paradise. Outside is dystopian hell — featuring growing poverty, unemployment and underemployment, totalitarian rule, mass surveillance, mass incarceration, and slow-motion elimination of human and civil rights.

Financial crisis conditions in 2008 and early 2009 enabled consolidation of banks and other companies, creating fewer giant players, less competition under a fundamentally unfair system.

Will something similar play out ahead if financial, commodity, and other market turmoil continues?

Though too early to know, is what Paul Craig Roberts earlier called a house of cards US economy beginning to unravel.

“Every aspect of it is fraudulent, and the illusion of recovery is created with fraudulent statistics,” he explained in April 2014, adding:

“All financial markets are rigged. Massive liquidity poured into financial markets by the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing inflates stock and bond prices and drives interest rates, which are supposed to be a measure of the cost of capital, to zero or negative, with the implication that capital is so abundant that its cost is zero and can be had for free.”

“Large enterprises, such as mega-banks and auto manufacturers, that go bankrupt are not permitted to fail.”

“Instead, public debt and money creation are used to cover private losses and keep corporations ‘too big to fail’ afloat at the expense not of shareholders but of people who do not own the shares of the corporations.”

In early March, economist Nouriel Roubini predicted a financial and political crisis ahead, no “V-shaped recovery” later this year as some analysts predict, adding:

Markets are “completely delusional.” Global economic conditions were weakening before the COVID-19 threat emerged.

No monetary or fiscal response can help with growing numbers of illnesses when a government coordinated medical response is needed.

“(T)he US housing market is experiencing a bubble just like in 2007,” Roubini explained.

“Businesspeople tell me that things in China are much worse than the government is officially reporting. A friend of mine in Shanghai has been locked in his home for weeks now.”

If things get as bad as Roubini believes ahead, Trump “will lose the election,” he believes.

Last week David Stockman said “(t)he past 30 years of false prosperity is over,” adding:

COVID-19 “expose(d) a far more deadly disease…the poisonous brew of easy money, cheap debt, sweeping financialization and unbridled speculation that has been injected into the American economy by the Fed and Washington politicians.”

Wall Street reflects casino capitalism while “Main Street (is) buried under mountainous debt…the (US) economy exceedingly vulnerable to external shocks” like COVID-19 at a time of growing global economic weakness.

Shadowstats economist John Williams said the Fed’s “loss of systemic control was brought to head by the” COVID-19 outbreak, affecting growing numbers of countries worldwide — in numbers far short of epidemic or pandemic levels.

Fed “functionality was severely impaired” by how it mishandled things during and after the 2008-09 financial crisis — created by financialization and the rise of casino capitalism.

For decades, Wall Street manipulators transformed America into an unprecedented money making racket.

Business models prioritize grand theft, money made by stealing it in collusion with supportive government policies.

The late Bob Chapman warned of an eventual house of cards collapse, only its timing uncertain.

It lasted longer than he imagined because of manipulating markets, inflating them with what Stockman called “monetary heroin.”

Fraudulent practices ongoing for years include pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, insider trading, precious metals price suppression, and other dubious practices.

When times get tough, bankers and other corporate favorites get bailed out, ordinary people sold out, what may happen ahead.

In cahoots with government, the Wall Street owned Fed and other powerful private interests create shocks to the system, enabling greater consolidation for greater power by eliminating or buying up weak companies on the cheap.

Financial history has numerous examples of crushing competition, socializing risks, privatizing profits, redistributing wealth upward to a financial oligarchy, creating “tollbooth economies” in debt bondage according to economist Michael Hudson, and overall getting a “free lunch” at the public’s expense.

Orwell might have explained what’s ongoing this way, saying instability is stability.

Creating systemic risk is containing it. Sloping playing fields are level ones.

Extracting maximum profits for privileged interests is sharing the wealth, and what benefits the few helps everyone.

Market analyst Jeremy Grantham long ago explained that all markets eventually revert to their mean values from their highs and lows, stressing “no exceptions ever” in market history, adding:

“We know one principal truth at (his firm) and that is that we live in a mean-reverting world in investing.”

Its research “has shown…that all bubbles…eventually break (and our definition of a bubble is a) 2 standard deviation event – the kind of moves that occur about every 40 years” — the elevated state of things now, bubble markets ripe for bursting.

In its Monday edition, the Wall Street Journal headlined: “Global Markets in Turmoil as Oil Plunges,” saying:

“Markets shuddered Monday in the face of a price war for oil and the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, with frightened investors seeking shelter in the safety of government bonds and propelling yields to unprecedented lows.”

Pre-market opening, Dow futures plunged 5%, the “maximum allowed in a single session.”

Crude oil prices plunged after OPEC countries and Russia failed to agree on reducing daily output to try stabilizing prices.

Bond vigilantes are screaming recession, the yield on Treasuries plunging to record lows.

What’s ahead remains to unfold. Given enormous excesses to markets, the fullness of time will tell if a time of reckoning arrived.

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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.

Let’s be clear: the EU was not set up to promote a friendly big socialist community, a Soviet-lite. The EU was created by the US, originally the European Coal and Steel Community set up in 1950 with the intent of promoting European integration, approved by Truman as a Cold War anti-domino measure. The chief method of promoting compliance with the US-sponsored post-war order was through provision of aid. The Marshall Plan (1948) was the vehicle for Europe, aid tied to the purchase of US goods and services, effectively subsidizing the US balance of payments.

The main international organs created at the time to regulate international economic matters—the World Bank, the IMF, GATT—and the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction were rejected by the Soviet Union as part of US imperial plans. Which of course they were, since it is only rational that the US as chief architect of the post-war international system would set rules which would allow it to win. The US Senate rejected US participation in the British-designed League of Nations, rightly seeing it as an infringement on US sovereignty, but voted 89–2 for membership in the clearly US-controlled UN in 1945.

A prostrate Europe was ‘saved’ from communist revolutions by the US Marshall Plan begun in 1948, and its ex-colonies, upon achieving independence, were drawn into the US orbit. Later US administrations came to view it and its successor the EEC and finally the EU (1993) ambivalently, fearful that an independent unified Europe could forge a separate détente with the Soviet Union, combining Europe’s technology and industrial capacity with Soviet natural resources, manpower and ideology, gaining access to the Eurasian heartland and creating a continent-sized competitor able to ‘threaten’ North America (that is, threaten US world hegemony). Britain joined the EEC in 1975 under Labour. (After a refendum where a third of Labour ministers were opposed, and Labour members opposed membership at the Labour conference. The Tories were the gung-ho EUers at the start. )

But the US had done its homework. The ECSC/ EEC/ EU was structured from the start as a top-down bureaucracy. No constitution, its parliament having no real authority, just a pro forma body, much like parliaments in the socialist countries, which never threatened Soviet hegemony.

The EU has shown itself to be a faithful servant of the US, with only two brief moments of angst. The first, German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s (1969–74) Ostpolitik, recognizing the obvious — that the GDR was a prosperous socialist version of the FRG, the best of the socialist lot.  Brandt was even awarded a Nobel Peace Prize (1971), but was forced to resign for having an assistant who was foolish enough to spy for the East German Stasi.[1] (That he did no harm is shown that he was swapped in 1981 in a spy exchange and after German reunification, granted immunity. East German spymaster Markus Wolf have said that the affair was Stasi’s biggest mistake.)

Johnstone was on the inside during all this, and presents a devastating critique of that and the other momentary lapse from US hegemony: Mitterand’s election as French president (1981–1995). The Socialists’ Common Program (1974) ‘reflected an illusion that was widespread in the left: the belief that economic unification of Europe could ‘free it from the domination of Big Capital,’ democratize its institutions and above all, ‘preserve French freedom of action to carry out its political, economic and social program.”

Mitterrand’s election would have been impossible without support from the French Communist Party, then at the peak of its electoral strength, which was rewarded by four cabinet posts. The US was catatonic, but this was nothing new. In 1936 and 1937, Communists had already taken part in the anti-fascist Popular Front government and in France’s post-war government—until evicted in May 1947.

Fear not. When Mitterand finally made it to the top, Thatcher (1979) and Reagan (1980) were full-steam ahead with neoliberalism. Mitterand didn’t have a chance. Capitalists voted with their capital and Mitterand soon abandoned his fuzzy socialism.

The whole episode looks like a conspiracy in retrospect. Mitterand, who was part of Petain’s regime in Vichy France from 1941 to 1943, was no socialist by a long shot. His vague detente and brief flirtation with nationalization turned into a milder version of Thatcher, and the Communist Party was discredited, its 25% of the vote crashing to 3% today.

EU critique

Johnstone: The only journalists assigned to the European Parliament (she calls her chapter ‘the European Non-Parliament’) who showed real interest, and wrote real reports, were the Brits, because they were motivated. They were motivated, in fact, to deride the whole process of manufacturing intrusive Regulations that people didn’t want or need. Coming from the Mother of Parliaments, they observed that this was no proper parliament, and they were right. It had no real powers and even the debates were not genuine debates. [2]

The Treaty on European Union, signed in 1992, was adopted by 50.7% to 49.3%. no more cheerleading, only a blurred vision of ‘Europe’.

There was nothing “social” in the Maastricht Treaty. On the contrary, not only the institutions but the economic policies that Member States are obliged to follow were set out in the 600 page Kafkaesque Treaty document.

• The principle of “an open market with free competition. This canceled the right of any Member State to protect its vital utilities, infrastructure and resources from takeover by the highest bidder from some other country.
• The “primary objective” of the European Central Banks “shall be to maintain price stability.” Combating inflation is all very well, but shouldn’t banks be there to finance projects of public utility, such as infrastructure, energy sources, and large-scale industrial innovation? Nope. ‘Overdraft facilities or any other type of credit facility with the ECB [European Central Bank] or with the central banks of the Member States in favor of Community institutions or bodies, central governments […] or public undertakings of Member States shall be prohibited.’
• If States needed money, they must turn to commercial banks, giving vital decision-making power on the choice of investments to private financial institutions.
• *The operation of any vital public utility, such as water, must be open to competition, international competition. In short, a Member State’s essential public services could end up totally owned by foreign operators with little concern for the needs of the domestic population as a whole.[2]

While working for UNIDO in Tashkent in the 1993, I suggest to my British colleague, a gung-ho EUer, that the single currency was foolish, taking away national control of economic policy. He dismissed that as old-fashioned. But I was right, as the agony of Greece over the past decade shows. Staying out of the common currency was right.

Johnstone, like Galloway, is solidly anti-EU. Galloway put the left wing case for Brexit at RT:

In our 47 years of membership, Britain lost its coal, steel, car, truck, bus, motorcycle, shipbuilding, ship repair and railway workshop industries, and much more besides. All in exchange for the fools’ gold of the casino economics of the City of London, the devotion to which almost destroyed the country in 2008. Germany was to be the industrial power, France the agricultural, Britain the financial. This all led to the desertification of post-industrial Britain and the mounting anger which swept EU membership away in the Brexit referendum.

Now, abandoning the EU straitjacket is right, if the British government is trying to undo neoliberalism, but that’s not BoJo’s intent. Rather he and the jingoist Conservatives (the ‘good’ ones have abandoned the party) just wanted to eliminate a silly, extra layer of bureacracy, to keep the US-UK ‘special relationship’ homefires burning, in case the EU finally gets its act together and starts to defend Europe in the face of environment and imperialist armaggedon. That prospect is dim, but the toxic British nationalism from imperial days is the stuff that the Conservatives thrive on, which is easily manipulated to keep lowly Brits satisfied with an otherwise bleak existence, and to keep the ‘wogs’ in line.

Internationalism

That is the saving grace of the EU. It’s bland eurovision is a harmless nationalism, not really a nationalism at all, rather an internationalism, based on a feeling of cooperation, trust, a safety net for the really poor. The chauvinist dissenters (Hungary, Poland) are somewhat controlled by their need to follow EU ways. This experiment is in internationalism, not globalization), which is merely imperialism in fancy dress (though that may be the goal of those now in control of the EU).

The past two decades, with the socialist countries quickly incorporated, has been rocky. They started with a betrayal of Russia, by including accession to NATO, right up to the Russian borders. Foolish, as you don’t trick Russia and get away with it. Just ask Hitler. It seems the neocons dismissed post-Soviet Russia as just another satrap for the caliph in Washington. But Putin came along and put Russia back into Soviet-style superpower status. But that’s another story.

Back to BoJo’s vision. BoJo seems to enjoy rubbing EUers’ noses in his jingoist rule. The latest idea is a Brexit Day, a bank holiday United Kingdom Day, commemorating the Brexit vote on the Friday nearest to June 23 – the date of the EU referendum in 2016. Just to soften his jab at traitors British EUers, they can celebrate, instead, the Queen’s birthday and coronation anniversary, both of which fall in June. The Scots and Irish are not impressed. It looks like they will stick to the EU. Is that what BoJo wants? Does he know what he wants, other than power, fame, schmoozing with his fan Trump?

Corbyn was torn on the EU, like Britain itself. The nice cozy Euroness, access to the entire continent, was alluring. On that basis alone, I was mostly a Euro fan. The Soviet Union was similarly a loose union across 11 time zones. When I lived in Moscow, I could jump on a train/ plane and travel freely. Soviets (excuse me, Russians) still have those 11 time zones, but 14 of the Soviet republics require visas, now holding their citizens hostage to the whims of dictators, and make job hunting in the now relatively richer Russia dangerous and prey to fraudsters.

Corbyn hoped to square the circle, to renegotiate a better Brexit and put it again to a vote, which would have left less rancor than what has happened under the Tories. But electoral politics rarely work according to ‘sensible’. And the other trouble facing us all, the EU, Britain, the US, was the one that drove a stake through Corbyn’s sensibleness. By which I mean the Jewish lobby and its red line of criticism of Israel. Corbyn refused to use the Israeli definition of anti-semitism meaning any word remotely critical of Israeli atrocities. If Labour had won, it would have been the only western country, EU member/ nonmember or American, that had a principled foreign policy with respect to the crucial issue of the day — apartheid Israel.

British Jewish and mainstream media (Jewish Chronicle, Jewish Press, BBC, Guardian, Times, etc) crucified Corbyn and other Labourites with slander, charging them with racism. Though  the Jewish Chronicle was sued post-election by Labour activist Audrey White,[3] forcing it to fold, the damage was done. A Friends of Israel is attached to all major parties in Europe and America, a watch dog doing its best to stifle criticism of Israel. With the Tories doing Brexit, that made it acceptable by the otherwise globalist Zionists. Much easier to keep one big organization online that small, potential independent, countries, but BoJo promises 5 years of Zionism at 10 Downing St.

Let’s say Corbyn had won, and took some of the above beefs to the negotiating table, asking for EU reforms which recognize the concerns of all the members to put more meaning into the parliament, allow for nationalization of key sectors, ensuring that resources stay under national control, not prey to predators from who-knows-where, whose only bottom line is profit, rather than social well being and democratic control. If it didn’t work, and another referendum had confirmed that, Britain could ‘brexit’ and pursue a national policy in the interests of its people.

Maybe Scotland and northern Ireland wouldn’t be moving towards independence, not interested in old-fashioned Tory imperial jingoism. (Galloway says ‘good riddance’ to northern Ireland, but as a Scot, he insists that Scotland will not opt for Bulgarian plumbers, who will come just to sneak across the hard border to get to London.) By staying out of the Euro monetary zone, Labour could use its Central Bank and its Post Office Savings Bank to fashion a monetary policy to promote regional growth in the interests of society, not bankers and the 1%. Instead, Britain is officially a Euro-pariah. BoJo promises Britons a bleak future, isolated, bankrupt, an economic basketcase, much like his friend Trump’s America.

The international ethic behind the EU is flawed, yes. It was born to make a nice, big client of the US in whatever world plans it has. But it is not (yet) full scale globalization, where no local governments can effect change in the interests of their people. The coronavirus is a salutory wake-up call to the dangers of mindless globalization.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, EricWalberg.com.

Notes

[1] That he did no harm, was not a ‘traitor’, is shown that he was swapped in 1981 in a spy exchange and after German reunification, granted immunity. East German spymaster Markus Wolf have said that the affair was Stasi’s biggest mistake.

[2] Diana Johnstone, Circle in the Darkness, 2020, 276, 285, 358.

[3] White said of the libel damages that she would ‘spend the money on the movement’ and that she would organize a film showing in Liverpool during Labour conference in September. 

Obama’s war in Syria, now Trump’s, continues endlessly.

On or about the Ides of March, US aggression in Syria will enter its 10th year with no prospect for near-term resolution.

Tens of thousands of heavily armed jihadists remain in Idlib province — supported by the US other Western countries, Turkey, and their imperial partners.

What Putin and Erdogan agreed on last week left northern Syria west of the Euphrates River illegally occupied by Turkish troops — north of a contact line agreed to by both leaders.

According to Southfront on Sunday, Turkey’s military established another so-called observation post in Syria — used as platforms for al-Nusra and likeminded jihadists to attack Syrian forces and civilians.

Another Turkish observation post was established last Thursday while Erdogan met with Putin in Moscow.

On Sunday, three days after their meeting, large numbers of Turkish forces and heavy weapons entered occupied northwestern Syrian territory.

Ceasefire agreed to in Moscow is tenuous at best, slowly unravelling at worst like many times before when announced — because the US, Turkey, their imperial partners, and jihadists they support reject conflict resolution.

I believe Southfront is right saying “the Turkish military buildup in Greater Idlib suggests that Ankara may be preparing for a confrontation with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the region.”

Despite agreeing to ceasefire, committing to fight terrorism, and expressing a willingness to protect and aid civilians in Idlib — effective immediately “from the moment of signing” the joint agreement — Erdogan’s involvement in Syria throughout the conflict showed time and again after agreeing to one thing, he went another way.

Since last Thursday when the ceasefire was agreed on in Idlib, US/Turkish supported jihadists were responsible for multiple daily breaches — probably to increase in the coming days if past is prologue, which seems highly likely.

Last week, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Russian 24 television that the Erdogan and Trump regimes are coordinating aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic along its border with Turkey.

Assad: “The core of the issue is American policy. (The Obama regime and now Trump) decided (to replace regional) secular governments” with extremist ones serving US interests.

“(R)eplacement started with the so-called Arab Spring” — orchestrated and controlled by the Obama regime for objectives polar opposite stated ones, aiming to solidify US regional control by wars, coups, and other hostile actions.

Until 2011, Syria had good relations with Turkey. “We didn’t do anything against them, and we didn’t support any forces hostile to them. We believed them to be neighbors and brothers,” Assad explained.

Obama regime launched aggression in mid-March 2011 changed everything — causing endless war, instability, chaos, and the severest refugee crisis since WW II.

Asked if improved relations with neighboring Turkey is possible, Assad said not as long as “Erdogan continues to support the terrorists.”

“He has to stop supporting terrorism, at which point things can return to normal because there is no hostility between the two peoples.”

“The hostility is caused by political actions or policies based on vested interests.”

For Erdogan, it’s all about advancing his revanchist aims, wanting northern Syrian territory annexed.

For the US, it’s all about wanting another imperial trophy, a stepping stone toward replacing Iranian governance with pro-Western puppet rule.

It’s also all about feeding its military, industrial, security, media complex by waging endless wars, smashing one nation after another, advancing its global dominance agenda for greater wealth and power.

How did Syria manage to prevent conquest by the US for nine years?

Assad attributes it to the sacrifices and resiliency of the country’s military and people, most of all because of invaluable help from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah — allied for regional peace and stability.

“Syria remain(s) steadfast,” Assad stressed. War united its people against a threat to all.

Since Russia’s invention in September 2015, most Syrian territory was liberated from jihadist control, Idlib their last stronghold.

Southern parts of the province are liberated. US/Turkish supported terrorists still control large areas, holding hundreds of thousands of civilians hostage as human shields.

Conflict resolution has miles to go because the US and its imperial partners continue endless war.

At the moment, liberating Idlib is the top military priority, Assad stressed — what the Trump and Erdogan regimes oppose.

Assad: “(W)e see Erdogan using all his force and no doubt under American directives.”

“This is because by liberating Idlib we will be able to move towards liberating the eastern regions” illegally controlled by US and Turkish forces.

“Idlib militarily is an advanced post. (The US-led West and Erdogan) used all their power to obstruct the liberation of Idlib, so that we do not move eastward.”

“However, despite not yet advancing towards the eastern region, we are still in direct communication with the population there.”

“There is a great deal of anger and resentment on their part against the American occupation and against the groups acting on behalf of the Americans.”

“I believe that this anger will build up gradually and there will be resistance operations against the occupiers.”

“It is the national and constitutional duty of the state to support any act against an occupying power.”

“As time goes by, the Americans will not have a population supporting them but a population standing against the American occupation.”

“They will not be able to stay, neither for the oil nor to support terrorists like ISIS and al-Nusra or any other reason.”

“The same of course, applies to the Turks who are occupying the northern part of Syrian territories.”

“If they do not leave through political negotiations, they must leave by force.  This is what we will do.  This is also our patriotic duty as Syrians.”

“The problem right now is dealing with the Americans. The Americans are occupiers; they occupied our lands. The Americans are thieves stealing our oil.”

Assad, his government, and vast majority of Syrians oppose US and Turkish occupation of the country’s territory.

Uninvited foreign occupation of nation’s land breaches the UN Charter. The only acceptable endgame is eliminating it through diplomacy or military means.

A Final Comment

When concluded, Russian television interviewer Yevgeny Primakov Jr. said the following to Assad:

“You have confirmed once again that a person like you can only have one position, the position of the statesman, because the views you have expressed are the views and the position of a statesman” whose top priority is liberating Syria, ending years of war, and rebuilding what imperial forces destroyed.

Note: Russian television host and interviewer Yevgeny Primakov Jr. is a lower house State Duma member.

He’s the grandson of former Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov (1998-99), former foreign minister (1996-98), and former chairman of the Soviet Union (1989 – 90).

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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.

Despite a massive coronavirus-related public health crisis, an anti-Iran pressure group with close ties to the Trump administration is urging major pharmaceutical companies to “end their Iran business,” focusing on companies with special licenses — most often under a broadly defined “humanitarian exemption” — to conduct trade with Iran.

With a novel strain of coronavirus rapidly spreading around the world, Iran has been hit particularly hard, with 107 deaths and 3,515 infections recorded so far. Yet the pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran, is carrying on with its campaign targeting medical trade with Iran despite the Trump administration’s special financial channels for humanitarian goods and medicine to reach the beleaguered country.

“U.S. sanctions have had a long-term impact on Iran’s ability to freely import medical supplies,” said Tyler Cullis, an attorney specializing in sanctions law at Ferrari & Associates. He pointed to “outside groups” that seek to bolster the Treasury Department’s investigatory heft and provide information on companies doing trade with Iran. “In tandem with U.S. sanctions,” Cullis said, “these groups have sought to impose reputational costs on companies that engage in lawful and legitimate trade with Iran, including humanitarian trade.”

The medical and humanitarian trade are carved out of crippling sanctions against Iran through special licenses issued by the Treasury Department. But companies must apply for the licenses then carry out the trade — something United Against Nuclear Iran, known as UANI, seeks to discourage.

“Their efforts are not insignificant,” Cullis said. “It is, after all, not an altogether lucrative enterprise selling medical supplies to Iran, so the name-and-shame operations of outside groups have a significant impact on the cost-benefit analysis associated with doing business with Iran.”

Joshua Silberberg, a spokesperson for UANI, declined to respond to questions about the group’s effort to name and shame companies doing medical trade with Iran. “UANI has a long history of expressing support and solidarity with the Iranian people,” he said, pointing to a statement applauding the finalization of the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement, an agreement arranged by the U.S. and Swiss governments.

UANI says it aims to persuade “the regime in Tehran to desist from its quest for nuclear weapons, while striving not to punish the Iranian people.” (The U.S. intelligence community does not believe that Iran has any desire or plans to build nuclear weapons.) UANI’s efforts, however, have extended beyond sanctions into pressuring companies that do legal trade with Iran, often under the Treasury Department’s humanitarian exemptions to sanctions — including medical-related trades that would presumably aid in combating a massive public health crisis like this  coronavirus outbreak.

UANI operates an “Iran Business Registry” that provides an online database of companies it believes are conducting business in or with Iran — a name-and-shame strategy to increase Iran’s economic isolation. The pressure campaign has targeted multiple medical companies with Treasury Department licenses to conduct trade with Iran. Nine pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical-device corporations, all with special licenses, are listed on UANI’s business registry. Companies urged by UANI to “end their Iran business” include Bayer, Merck, Pfizer, Genzyme, AirSep, Medrad, Becton, Dickinson & Company, Eli Lilly, and Abbott Laboratories.

The legal channels for humanitarian trade are widely reported to be failing to provide a sufficient flow of medicine and other humanitarian goods.

Uani’s efforts are particularly notable in light of the group’s close ties to the Trump administration; Iran’s regional adversaries Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel; and the Republican Party’s biggest donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.

Senior UANI adviser John Bolton worked for UANI both before and after his stint in the Trump administration as national security adviser. UANI’s umbrella group, Counter Extremism Project United Inc, paid Bolton $240,000 between 2016 and 2017. Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser was quickly followed by Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran.

Besides Bolton, the Trump administration twice sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to UANI’s annual conference, held during the United Nations General Assembly. Pompeo used the occasions to promote outlandish claims about Europe purportedly financing Iranian terrorism and to present the administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy to UANI’s audience, which included senior diplomats and intelligence officials from the Persian Gulf and Israel.

The group’s last summit, held in September, featured U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who is now Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, as well as a who’s who of the Trump administration’s hawkish Middle East partners, including top diplomats from Persian Gulf monarchies and Israel. (UANI and its affiliated organizations have a number of links to Gulf monarchies, including a 2014 email from a UANI advisory board member soliciting “support” from the United Arab Emirates.)

UANI’s top funder, billionaire Thomas Kaplan — an investor whose companies have looked to profit from “political unrest” in the Middle East — was also in attendance at the summit.

Finally, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson’s financial support for UANI closely tracks the Republican megadonors’ hawkish views toward Iran. In 2013, Sheldon Adelson told an audience at Yeshiva University that Obama should launch a nuclear strike on Iran and threaten that Iran will be “wiped out” if it doesn’t dismantle its nuclear program. The Adelsons were Trump’s biggest funders in the 2016 election and the GOP’s biggest funders in the 2018 cycle. They are expected to contribute at least $100 million to Trump’s reelection efforts and Republican congressional candidates in the 2020 cycle.

While the Trump administration’s extreme financial pressure against Iran is coinciding with the coronavirus outbreak, Tyler Cullis, the sanctions lawyer, was careful to note that issues with ensuring a robust trade of medical and humanitarian supplies to Iran began under previous administrations. “While those problems have been exacerbated under the Trump administration,” Cullis said, “their origination takes place more than a decade ago when prior administrations first started imposing enormous sanctions pressure on Iran’s financial sector.”

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The UK Government has reneged on assurances that the devolved nations would have a say in post-Brexit trade negotiations by stating the devolved government’s views would only be taken into account “when we (UK Government) can”.

As recently as January 2020, Michael Gove MP said the devolved nations would “absolutely” have a say in shaping the UK’s negotiations. Instead, the UK has published a stance which implicitly suggests they’ll walk away from negotiations unilaterally and will “go it alone”.

In a strongly-worded statement, Counsel General & Brexit Minister, Jeremy Miles (Lab, Neath) said:

“The Welsh Government does not endorse the positions set out in the UK mandate. In taking their approach, the UK Government has missed the opportunity to build a strong united position across all governments of the UK. With a UK Government choosing not to listen to our legitimate concerns, they enter the negotiations next week alone.”

ITV Wales’ Adrian Masters said a statement from the First Minister, in which he expressed “great regret” at the UK Government’s decision, was a sign of “a serious breakdown in relations” between the UK and Welsh governments.

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Israeli occupation forces have confiscated the only vehicle available to a medical team serving the needs of some 1,500 Palestinians in an isolated region of the southern West Bank, reported Haaretz.

According to the paper, this is the second time that the vehicle – which serves the residents of Masafer Yatta in the south Hebron hills – has been seized within a year, “cutting off healthcare to an isolated and impoverished population” living inside an Israeli military firing zone.

The medical team make weekly visits to the area’s Palestinian communities, which lie roughly one hour’s drive on dirt roads from the nearest town of Yatta. The jeep in question “is the only vehicle available for providing medical services to these communities”.

Last Thursday, Haaretz reported, Israeli occupation forces intercepted the medical team at Khirbet Al-Majaz, claiming that they were not allowed there “without prior coordination”. The patrol then impounded the jeep and held the medics for half an hour.

In February 2019 the vehicle was confiscated “under similar circumstances”, stated the paper, and only returned six months later after the medical team paid a 3,000 shekel ($865) fine. On that occasion, the team were unable to provide medical care for the entire six months.

The Israeli military commented that “the vehicle was impounded by supervisors at the Civil Administration since it was traveling in a fire zone, a forbidden area for vehicles by law”.

The Israeli military’s “Firing zone 918” was established in the 1980s, and the army has repeatedly sought to remove Palestinians from the area.

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Featured image: Israeli security forces hinder the movement of a Palestinian ambulance in the West Bank, on 6 October 2017 [Ayman Ameen/Apaimages]

The latest agreement of ceasefire between the Russian President and the Turkish madman Erdogan explicitly excludes combating terrorists. Erdogan doesn’t consider al-Qaeda as a terrorist group, he invested heavily in this organization especially in Syria and lately in Libya.

A Turkish column of troops entered the Syrian Idlib province on the second day of the ceasefire through Kfar Lucin, some sources reported another Turkish forces column crossed the borders into Idlib, while the Turkish-sponsored Nusra Front (al-Qaeda Levant) declared their rejection of the ceasefire and the agreement.

Erdogan instead of separating the radical head-choppers of al-Qaeda from the moderate head-choppers of al-Qaeda as per his own commitment he obliged himself to in September 2018, he beefed up those terrorists in numbers and gears, both types of them, supplied them with advanced weapons, and when they were defeated despite this support he merged the Turkish Army soldiers within the ranks of these terrorists hoping the Turkish soldiers would serve as human shields to save the terrorists, and that is exactly what resulted in the killing of dozens (29, 38, 62, or most likely 109 depending on the source) of them by the Syrian Arab Army who were bombing the gathering of al-Qaeda terrorists on 27th of February, last month.

The killing of their soldiers, the al-Qaeda human shields, was used by the Turks as a justification to attack the Syrian Arab Army units and their allies in Syria to allow al-Qaeda terrorists regain the territories they lost, momentarily, using the Russian strange stand down which left the SAA without the agreed air cover, yet Erdogan instead of only licking the bone offered by President Putin, he actually ate the bone and wanted more which resulted in increased escalation with the SAA and the IRGC issued their chilling warning to the TSK (inseparable Turkish Army and al-Qaeda).

Twenty violations of the ceasefire regime were recorded by the Russian Reconciliation Center in Hmeimim, 19 by the Turks; the Nusra Front rejection of the ceasefire agreement and increase of the Turkish human shields soldiers into Idlib, all are signals of a coming showdown unless someone cuts the tree under the Turkish madman and allow him the free fall he needs and hopefully a bang to his head would wake him up or allow someone smarter to take over in Turkey and save what could be saved in that country before it’s too late and hundreds more of their troops get sardined and sent back in boxes, or whatever is left of them. The SAA is more than determined to clean the country to the last inch from the terrorists and their supporters.

On the other side and where Erdogan forces lost the battles, the Aleppo – Damascus M5 Artery returned to life and hundreds of vehicles took the chance to travel using the once backbone of the Syrian economy and social life, it saves them 3 hours of driving when they had to take side roads to avoid the targeting by the Turkish-sponsored terrorists of al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

The 6 kilometers both sides of the Aleppo – Latakia M4 artery is in the works as per Russian sources, after a week they are supposed to start patrolling this highway jointly with Turkish patrols to ensure the implementation of the second article of the latest ceasefire agreement. This is a more serious test for the Turkish ability to meet their commitments, the terrorists are cornered near Zawya Mountain not far from the M4, and under the threat of their shelling using the advanced weapons they received from NATO member state Turkey.

Russian Military Police in Syria – Archive

Will Erdogan get a new chance after this when, not if, the truce is seriously breached? Nobody knows what he offered President Putin in their 3 hours closed meeting before joined by the delegations of both countries in their last summit, and nobody will be able to understand what is there left to offer by the Turkish madman.

We reported earlier from our sources within the Turkish top brass about a brewing military coup, Erdogan is aware of this as well, he’s racing time to achieve anything to regain some popularity among the Turks, nobody envies him on any front.

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The 2019 UK general election was really a second Brexit referendum, where the electorate justifiably expressed their disgust at the Labour Party’s contempt for democracy and neutering of Corbyn. Once upon a time it was Labour who stood against the de-industrialization foisted onto Britain by the neoliberal imperialist EU and the offshoring of its manufacturing jobs to Germany and the global south. Corbyn should have listened to the words of past Labour leaders like Tony Benn who opposed the European project and its unelected bureaucracy as a violation of British sovereignty and democracy, not charlatans like Mr. Varoufakis. Worst of all is that the “left” is now disparaging the entirety of the working class as bigots and reducing the Leave vote to a reaction against the migrant crisis, as if Greece’s bailout referendum never occurred. Like the Yellow Vest protests in France, Corbyn’s loss was a sign that the opposition to globalization by the working class is still in good condition but has no authentic left to represent it.

If Bernie meets the same fate, a real vanguard should be prepared to take the reins.

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An appellate panel of the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled Thursday that an investigation leading to the potential prosecution of US officials for war crimes during Washington’s nearly two-decade-old war in Afghanistan can move forward.

Fatou Bensouda, the court’s Gambian-born chief prosecutor, whose US visa was revoked for her pursuit of the probe, praised Thursday’s ruling, stating, “Today is an important day for the cause of justice in Afghanistan.”

The ruling overturned a decision by ICC pretrial judges last year that a case involving crimes by the US and its puppet regime in Afghanistan “would not serve the interests of justice” because of the abject refusal of Washington and Kabul to cooperate. This decision was taken in the context of US threats of retaliation against the court, including economic sanctions and even the arrest of its members if the investigation was allowed to move forward.

The appeals judges ruled that last year’s decision was in contradiction to the ICC’s own statutes, holding that “It is for the prosecutor to determine whether there is a reasonable basis to initiate an investigation.” The appeals judges said that the pretrial panel had no business deciding whether the case served the “interests of justice,” but only whether there were grounds to believe that crimes had been committed and that they fell under the court’s jurisdiction.

The investigation is one of the first to be launched against a major imperialist power by the ICC, whose prosecutions have largely been limited to crimes committed by regimes and leaders in impoverished African countries. A preliminary investigation has also been launched into war crimes carried out by British forces in the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Unlike the US, the UK is a signatory to the agreement establishing the international court.

The ICC’s prosecutors first opened a preliminary probe into crimes against humanity and war crimes in Afghanistan nearly 14 years ago.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to Thursday’s ruling with the bellicose threats that have been the trademark of Washington toward the ICC since its founding by a decision of the United Nations in 2002. Describing the investigation as a “political vendetta” by an “unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body,” the secretary of state vowed that Washington would “take all necessary measures to protect our citizens from this renegade, unlawful so-called court.”

He characterized the ICC appeals judges’ ruling as “reckless” because it was issued after Washington had signed a so-called “peace deal” with the Taliban five days earlier. That agreement has already begun to unravel, with the US military carrying out air strikes against the Taliban after the Islamist movement launched multiple attacks on forces of Afghanistan’s US-backed puppet regime. The unstated assumption in Pompeo’s remarks is that “peace” in Afghanistan can be achieved only based on a cover-up of Washington’s crimes.

Asked whether the Trump administration would retaliate against the court, the secretary of state said that measures would be announced within “a couple of weeks about the path that we’re going to take to ensure that we protect American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, our intelligence warriors, the diplomats that have worked for the State Department over the years to ensure that the ICC doesn’t impose… pressure on them in a way that doesn’t reflect the noble nature of the undertakings of every one of those Americans.”

The concern in Washington is not for the troops, but rather that the real authors of the crimes in Afghanistan will someday be held to account: the presidents and their cabinets along with the top generals, the leading politicians of both major parties, the big business interests that supported the war and the media pundits who promoted it.

Pompeo went on to insist, “We have a solid system here in the United States. When there’s wrongdoing by an American, we have a process by which that is redressed.” The character of this “solid system” was made clear last year with Trump’s pardon of convicted war criminals, including two US Army officers convicted and jailed for illegal killings in Afghanistan.

The ICC prosecutor Bensouda requested the investigation of war crimes in 2017, saying there was evidence that US military and intelligence agencies had “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence” against detainees in Afghanistan.

In its ruling Thursday, the ICC Appeals Chamber declared it “appropriate to amend the appealed decision to the effect that the prosecutor is authorized to commence an investigation into alleged crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan since May 1, 2003, as well as other alleged crimes that have a nexus to the armed conflict in Afghanistan.”

The prosecutor has already indicated that this extension of the investigation involves the “nexus” between the torture centers set up at Bagram Air Base and other US installations in Afghanistan to so-called “black sites” run by the CIA in countries like Poland, Lithuania and Romania. It could as well link to the infamous Abu Ghraib detention and torture facility in Iraq, where US military interrogators were sent after torturing prisoners in Afghanistan. It could also potentially encompass the drone assassinations and massacres of thousands carried out by successive US administrations in neighboring Pakistan.

The war crimes carried out by US imperialism since it invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 are innumerable. They began at the outset with massacres of unarmed detainees, including hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners of war who were asphyxiated and shot to death in sealed metal shipping containers after the siege of Kunduz.

Among the most infamous crimes were those exposed in an investigation into a so-called “Kill Team” formed by a unit of the US Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade sent into Kandahar Province as part of the Obama administration’s 2009–2010 “surge,” which brought the number of troops in Afghanistan to roughly 100,000. As members of the team themselves acknowledged—and documented in grisly photographs—they set out to systematically murder civilians and mutilate their bodies, taking fingers and pieces of skulls as trophies.

They lured one of their victims, a 15-year-old boy named Gul Mudin, toward them before throwing a grenade at him and repeatedly shooting him at close range. After bringing his father to identify the body, they took turns posing and playing with the corpse, before cutting off one of the boy’s fingers. Members of the team also described throwing candy from their Stryker armored vehicle while driving through villages and then shooting children who ran to pick it up.

US soldier with the body of 15-year-old Gul Mudin.

While the Pentagon sought to pass off these atrocities as the work of a few “bad apples,” the killings were known to their commanders and other units that participated in similar acts. They were the product of a criminal colonial occupation in which troops were taught to regard the entire civilian population as potential enemies and less than human.

The number of Afghans killed in the conflict is estimated at over 175,000, with many more indirect victims of the war’s destruction. Nearly 2,400 US troops have been killed, along with tens of thousands more wounded. US crimes include indiscriminate air strikes that wiped out wedding parties, village meetings and hospital patients and staff.

Among the most extensive exposures of US war crimes were those contained in the so-called “Afghan War Diaries,” some 91,000 documents given by the courageous US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning to WikiLeaks in 2010. In retaliation, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now imprisoned in the UK facing extradition to the US on Espionage Act charges that carry a 175-year prison sentence, or worse. For her part, Manning is being held in indefinite detention in a US federal detention center in Virginia for refusing to testify against Assange.

Washington’s virulent hostility to any international investigation into its crimes was clear as soon as the ICC was founded in 2002. The Bush administration repudiated it from the outset, and the US Congress followed suit through its passage by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of a law protecting all US personnel from “criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not a party.” The same year, Bush issued a memorandum declaring that the US would not be bound by the Geneva Conventions in its war in Afghanistan.

US officials have sardonically referred to the anti-ICC law passed by Congress as the “Hague Invasion Authorization Act,” as it provides for the use of military force to free any US citizens facing charges before the ICC, which sits in The Hague, Netherlands.

The US reaction to the ICC’s Afghanistan investigation is an explicit repudiation of international law and the abandonment of any pretense that Washington is guided by anything other than the predatory interests of US imperialism. On this, the Trump administration and its ostensible opponents in the Democratic Party are agreed. Their unconditional defense of the war crimes carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere is a warning to the working class that far greater crimes are being prepared as US imperialism prepares for “great power” conflicts.

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This week’s meeting between Presidents Putin and Erdogan in Moscow was cast as preventing a war between Russia and Turkey in Syria. War, however, was never on the horizon. Putin called Erdogan’s bluff, and the Turk folded.

Julian Assange – an innocent journalist/publisher – is being constantly strip-searched, handcuffed and confined either in an iron cell in the infamous Belmarsh prison or in a glass cage during his show trial. The aim is to make Assange feel and look powerless. Ironically the news of the torture and weakened body of Julian Assange and his unfair trial has generated a tremendous political movement for his freedom.

Today this movement is a global movement and is rising to the level of the international campaign which saved Nelson Mandela’s life in preventing the death sentence and ultimately making his freedom possible. Although Assange is in isolation and confined in a tiny cell, certainly he is not alone. A few yards from his prison, there are people of all walks of life; artists, intellectuals, workers, youth and democratic-minded people who proudly hold their signs up high in defense of Julian Assange. Today, the line of justice for Assange has crossed the UK borders and has reached the four corners of the world. The power of truth is frightening the shameful authorities in London, Washington, and Canberra!

Is it possible to see Julian Assange unchained and FREE? The legendary Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg believes that without whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and publishers like Julian Assange “we would not have a democracy”, and in their defense, he says: “It is now up to us to make sure that the First Amendment is preserved.” The great Roger Waters clearly points out that: “The ruling class,… the corporate world, the rich people, the people who run everything, the people who tell [U.K. Prime Minister] Boris Johnson and Donald Trump what to do” are responsible for the imprisonment of Julian Assange.

He tirelessly campaigns for Assange’s freedom because he believes he is “representing the thoughts of ordinary people who believe in the law, freedom, and the freedom of the press and free speech.”

Professor Noam Chomsky emphasizes that “Assange in courageously upholding political beliefs … performed an enormous service to all those in the world who treasure the values of freedom and democracy.”

John Shipton, Assange’s father, logically and rightly so is concerned that his son’s extradition to the U.S. is nothing but a “death sentence”.

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture has stated: “My most urgent concern is that, in the United States, Mr. Assange would be exposed to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

Makia Freeman, the truth-telling researcher in his article on the Global Research site; “Freedom of the Press on Trial: 10 Reasons Why Assange Is Lawfully in the Right”* covers the key issues about Assange case which makes it a credible and informative source of information for the democratic-minded people who want to join the movement to FREE ASSANGE.

Today, there is a long list of prominent people who have made Assange’s freedom campaign uniquely strong. However, it is the ordinary people who are moving the campaign forward inch by inch, day by day. In the different demonstrations, the simple and creative hand-made signs in defense of Assange reflect the power of truth.

Today, the old unfounded accusations and plots by the police and media against Assange incontrovertibly have failed. People indeed understand that Julian Assange not only did not commit any crime, on the contrary, but he has exposed American war crimes! People have concluded that the treatment of Julian Assange is a miscarriage of justice; his confinement in a maximum-security prison under very harsh conditions is inhumane and unnecessary.

Therefore today ordinary people more than ever understand that the trial of Assange is an attempt to crush independent journalism, freedom of the press and at the same time to punish Assange as an individual, sending a signal to all courageous journalists.

Join the global movement to FREE JULIAN ASSANGE and block his extradition to the U.S. now; he is innocent!

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Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

The utter and complete corruption of the Democratic Party is on full display as the DNC desperately maneuvers to derail the insurgent candidacy of Bernie Sanders by denying him a majority of delegates to the July convention in Minneapolis.  Winning a mere plurality of votes in primary elections will deny Sanders a first ballot nomination and allow the DNC to use their super-delegates to support the conventional candidate, Joe Biden, on a second ballot.

Hillary Clinton and the DNC already conspired to successfully deny Sanders the nomination in 2016.  The mere fact that the party installed super-delegates after the factious anti-war candidacy of George McGovern in 1972 should sufficiently illustrate the party hierarchy’s contempt for democracy.

The opposition of the political establishment to the Sanders’ campaign stems from its programmatic support for a rabid neoliberal agenda against the Senator’s proposed New Deal liberal reforms.  The Democrats have been moving to the right in American politics for the past three decades and have no desire to reverse course.

Beginning with the Clinton presidency and continuing throughout the Obama regime, the Democratic Party initiated a new Cold War with Russia, imposed neoliberal economics globally, abandoned class politics for identity politics, deregulated the financial industry and the media, bailed out Wall Street at the expense of main street and presided along with the Republicans, over the greatest transfer of wealth to the top 1% of the population in American history.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Party is viewed by many of its supporters as a ‘lesser evil’ than the Republicans. Furthermore, in this election season, Trump and the Republicans are so terrible, the thinking goes, that anybody the Democrats nominate will be a better president than the orange billionaire.

Prior to evaluating these assumptions, a little lesson in political history is in order.  To begin, it is important to identify the class nature of the Democratic Party and to illustrate its principal functions in American and international affairs.

The Democratic Party is one of the two partner parties of American capitalism.  As with the Republicans, it is primarily financed by the corporate rich and represents their class interests.  The policies it implements are cohered within a vast policy formulation network of foundations, think tanks and policy discussion groups that have been set up for the purpose of legitimizing the policy choices of the corporate community and its military industrial security complex.

Since the Great Depression, one of the major functions of the Democratic Party has been to diffuse popular discontent by advocating concessionary policies in times of social unrest.

Exaggerated wealth concentration and financial speculation during the 1920’s led straight away to the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  Worker militancy, mass industry wide unionization, sit-down strikes, secondary boycotts, factory occupations and pitched battles with the police brought Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of 1935 along with the Wagner Act, the Magna Carta of the labor movement that same year.

Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr

Institutional racism, legal segregation, violent social repression, urban ghettoization and systemic police brutality resulted in the emergence of a civil rights movement and black liberation struggle that organized bus boycotts, sit-ins, civil disobedience, pickets, urban rebellions, armed self-defense and a mass march on Washington that produced Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Fair Housing Act of 1968 and War on Poverty in 1965.

A genocidal war in Vietnam, a compulsory military draft and staggering American casualties in that war generated an anti-war movement whose tactics included the burning of draft cards, mass marches on the Pentagon, campus rebellion, student strikes and a radical resistance that involved the bombing of government targets undertaken in solidarity with the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people.  These struggles brought forth the anti-war candidacies of Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.  Their entry into the presidential race of 1968 led to the decision of the war’s chief proponent, Lyndon Johnson, not to seek a second term as president.  Johnson’s decision signaled the beginning of the end of U.S. involvement in the war as his successor, Richard Nixon, was compelled to promise an end to the war so he could secure his election victory over Johnson’s Vice-President and war advocate, Hubert Humphrey.  Nixon subsequently began troop withdraws and ‘Vietnamization” of a conflict that was subsequently abandoned along with the military draft in 1973.

In short, the Democrats operate as the shock absorber of American capitalism whose main function is to diffuse, absorb and co-opt social opposition and political dissent during times of upheaval caused by economic and social crisis.

A corollary function of the Democratic Party is to periodically impose domestic political repression on various sectors of the American population that refuse to be co-opted in defense of a persistently rapacious capitalistic and virulently racist social order.  In this respect, the Democrats alternate with the Republicans when it becomes necessary to quash incipient rebellion.

Woodrow Wilson’s administration produced the Sedition Act of 1917, Espionage Act of 1918 and Palmer Raids of 1919, 1920 initiating the first Red Scare; Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated FBI investigations of the Communist Party for domestic subversion in 1936 and ordered the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942;

Harry Truman mandated loyalty oaths, signed the National Security Act creating the National Security Council and the CIA, signed the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act and began the second Red Scare in 1947;

John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson continued the murderous FBI COINTELPRO program begun in 1956 during their tenure in office from 1961-1968; Johnson declared a ‘War on Crime’ in 1965 integrating the federal government with local law enforcement;

Bill Clinton’s administration produced the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 resulting in the exponential growth of mass incarceration, a militarized police force, accelerated executions on death row and the evisceration of civil liberties;

Clinton’s Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno organized the deadly ATF/FBI/military raid on the compound of Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas in 1993;

Barak Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act in 2012, section 1021 of which effectively terminated habeas corpus, defended the NSA’s Prism program of mass surveillance in 2013 and used the Espionage Act to indict whistleblowers from 2010-2012; the majority of Congressional Democrats supported the Patriot Act from 2001-2020 further eroding civil liberties.

Internationally, the Democrats along with their Republican cohorts have conducted wars, instigated covert interventions and imposed political repression in countries around the world as part of their defense of global capitalism and corporate hegemony under the pretexts of fighting communism, interdicting terrorism and making the world safe for democracy and human rights.

Wilson invaded Haiti in 1915 and brought the United States into World War I in 1916; FDR entered World War II in 1941;

Truman dropped Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, intervened in Greece thus beginning the Cold War in 1947, recognized Israel in 1948 and started the Korean War in 1950;

Kennedy unleashed the CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion and Operation Mongoose in Cuba along with implementing the doctrine of counter-insurgency in Asia and Latin America in 1961;

Johnson backed a coup d’état in Brazil in 1964, escalated the Vietnam War and invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965; Carter endorsed the CIA’s Operation Cyclone that armed the Islamic Mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1979 and supported repressive governments in Zaire, Angola, East Timor, Guatemala and El Salvador from 1977-1980;

Clinton enforced sanctions on Iraq from 1993-2001 killing one and a half million Iraqi civilians, bombed Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 and bombed Yugoslavia in 1999;

Obama presided over coup d’états in Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2014, bombed Libya in 2011, waged proxy war in Syria in 2012, imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 and conducted drone warfare across the Middle East and North Africa.

A cursory examination of the foregoing political history reveals that the Democratic Party, no less so than its Republican counterpart, represents the interests of the American corporate plutocracy not the American people.

The idea that the Democrats are a ‘lesser evil’ is pure fiction.  The belief that a ‘political revolution’ can be waged from within the Democratic Party is an illusion.

The Democrats are a party of criminals.  They are a war party.  They serve Wall Street.  A vote for the Democrats is a vote for American imperialism, an empire that has committed crimes against humanity too vast to comprehend.

Likewise for the Republicans.  The American political class should not be supported or respected.  It should be imprisoned.  But that would take a genuine ‘political revolution’ to accomplish.

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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His recent book is titled, The Politics ofTerrorism, and is available at amazon.com

Ceasefire in Syria’s Idlib province is more illusion than reality.

At best, principles Putin and Erdogan agreed on last Thursday abated fighting short-term without halting it or preventing a flareup like all previous times when ceasefires were declared throughout years of war in Syria.

After nine years of Obama regime-launched aggression, now Trump’s war, resolution is nowhere in prospect because of bipartisan US support for regime change.

Endless US-led NATO et al war on the Syrian Arab Republic is all about replacing its legitimate government with pro-Western puppet rule, along with isolating Iran regionally — aiming to topple its government.

For Turkey’s Erdogan, it’s all about annexing northern Syrian territory, especially its oil producing areas.

For Israel, it’s all about eliminating a rival state to advance its regional dominance aims as Washington’s Middle East junior partner.

Russian support is crucial for Syria to survive as a nation-state in its present form.

Press TV quoted Syrian UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafar’s remarks to the Arabic-language Elnashra online news service, saying:

“I can confirm that Syrian leadership besides Syrian people will not allow Erdogan or anyone else to repeat in Idlib what happened in Alexandretta.”

In July 1939, weeks before WW II began, Turkish forces seized the Syrian territory, transforming it into Ankara’s Hatay province.

Jaafari called Erdogan Turkey’s Netanyahu, describing them both as “occupiers and aggressive,” adding:

“What we care about in Syria is the elimination of terrorism and the establishment of full control and sovereignty over Syrian soil.”

“If Erdogan listens to the voice of wisdom, puts an end to his support for terrorism, refrains from destructive interference in Syria and stops wasting the blood of forces of his aggressive and occupying army, this will serve peace and stability of all peoples of the region, including the neighboring Turkish nation.”

If his cross-border aggression continues, “nothing will prevent us from continuing our war against terrorism and all those who support, arm, finance, and use it for political gains.”

Time and again, Erdogan breached what he agreed to with Russia in Astana and Sochi — proving he can never be trusted.

Instead of opposing regional terrorism, he actively supports it, using jihadists to advance his imperial aims, operating like the US, NATO and Israel.

Al Jaafari: “(T)he number of terrorists, especially foreigners, increased in Idlib, and instead of withdrawing all tanks, rocket launchers and mortars from the demilitarized zone by October 10, 2018, thousands of (Turkish) soldiers plus heavy military hardware were deployed inside the Syrian territory.”

“We never expected Erdogan to honor his pledges, because this simply means the end of his reckless adventures in Syria, and an end to his political and military interventions in other countries.”

No reasons exist to believe he’ll turn a page for restoration of peace and stability in Syria, what he hasn’t done throughout nine years of war.

Idlib is the last Western/Turkish/Israeli/Saudi supported terrorist stronghold in Syria.

It’s liberating struggle depends on eliminating its scourge in the province and wherever else it may emerge in the country.

It depends on ending foreign occupation by US and Turkish forces.

War continues in Idlib and elsewhere in Syria despite what Putin and Erdogan agreed on last week.

On Saturday, Russia’s reconciliation center in Syria said the following:

No cessation of hostilities agreed to by Putin and Erdogan in Moscow has been achieved. Fighting abated but continues.

Syrian and Russian forces are committed to eliminate the threat of terrorism in Idlib and throughout the Syrian Arab Republic.

“Over the last 24 hours, the Russian party of the Russia-Turkey Commission on violations of the Joint Agreement has registered 19 cases of firing in the provinces of: Idlib-3, Latakia-7, Aleppo-9.”

“The Turkish side has registered 1 cases of ceasefire violations in in the provinces of Idlib-1.”

According to Russia’s Avia.Pro publication on Saturday,

“(t)wo  Russian military aircraft in the sky over the province of Idlib prevented a Turkish F-16 fighter from shooting down the Syrian fighter-bomber Su-22, which carried out attacks on terrorist positions.”

“Thanks to Russian aircraft, the Turkish combat fighter not only did not dare to enter Syrian airspace, but also underwent an unexpected attack.”

A state of undeclared war by Erdogan exists on Syria, more incidents like the above highly likely ahead.

Russian support for Damascus is key to checking US and Turkish revanchist aims in Syria.

Supported by the West, Turkey, Israel and the Saudis, the terrorist threat to Syrian sovereignty continues.

Following principles agreed on by Putin and Erdogan last week, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the US created and supported al-Nusra offshoot from al-Qaeda by another name, said the following:

“(C)easefire is nothing new…(I)ts  days will not pass until there is another betrayal against the revolution…”

“This agreement is marred by obscurity and floating platitudes that allow for the Russian occupier to make use of it for new aggression.”

“We thank the Turkish government for clearly standing with and supporting the Syrian revolution.”

“(T)here is no victory for our revolution without continuing the struggle against our enemy however much it costs.”

(T)here is no security or peace in Syria except by removing” its government.

On Saturday, Iran’s Fars News reported the death of a senior IRGC military advisor in Palmyra, Syria, the second death of an Iranian military official in Syria since late February.

Ceasefire in Idlib province exists in name only, Turkish claims of no violations more illusion than reality.

It just a matter of time before an invented pretext by the US, Turkey, and/or one of their imperial partners unjustifiably justifies escalated fighting.

What happened before numerous is highly likely to repeat again.

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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.

Conservation, environmental and landowner groups argued in federal court in Montana today that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wrongly permitted the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to be constructed through hundreds of rivers, streams and wetlands and failed to evaluate the project’s impacts, a violation of bedrock U.S. environmental laws.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris heard oral arguments in the lawsuit filed in July 2019 by Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Friends of the Earth against the Army Corps of Engineers. The case centers on the agency’s approval of Keystone XL under its insufficient “Nationwide Permit 12” process, under which the Corps avoided the transparent and comprehensive review normally required for major projects.

The groups argue that this approval violates the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, and urged the court to require the Corps to conduct additional environmental review of the effects of pipelines like Keystone XL on local waterways, lands, wildlife, communities and the climate.

The hearing comes as the tar sands industry faces questions about its very future. TC Energy made the stark admission at its latest quarterly meeting that the company is not ready to commit to a final investment decision yet on Keystone XL.

Other projects, including the recently canceled Teck Resources tar sands mine “megaproject,” are also struggling to move forward in the face of climate considerations, indigenous-led opposition, and heightened scrutiny by analysts and investors after $90 billion in tar sands projects have been shelved over the past five years.

Late last year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana ruled that the Trump administration violated several environmental laws by issuing a cross-border permit for Keystone XL without adequately evaluating critical information on the pipeline’s environmental impacts, including tar sands oil spills and climate change.

Although Trump effectively circumvented that ruling by issuing a new permit in March, the fact remains that the federal government has yet to fully evaluate the pipeline’s harmful environmental effects, as required by law.

“Farmers and ranchers in Nebraska stake their livelihoods and our food supply on clean water, and the Trump administration’s illegal blanket approval of water crossings for a risky tar sands export pipeline puts that all at grave risk,” said Jane Kleeb, president of Bold Alliance. “TC Energy’s recent admission that its ‘not ready to commit’ to moving forward on KXL combined with the flight of investors from Canada’s tar sands should be evidence enough that this boondoggle of a project will see no reward, and is all risk to clean water, wildlife, and climate.

“The fact that TC Energy itself now refuses to commit to Keystone XL speaks volumes on how flawed and unnecessary the project really is,” said Eric Glitzenstein, the Center for Biological Diversity’s litigation director. “The Trump administration’s so-called ‘streamlined’ permitting process is a desperate farce designed to shield an impending environmental disaster from scrutiny. It is also blatantly illegal and the court cannot allow it to proceed.”

“TC Energy has made it clear time and again that they can’t be trusted not to spill their dirty tar sands into our water, and yet the Trump administration is trying to give them a free pass to build Keystone XL through hundreds of waterways without even considering the risks to clean water and wildlife,” said Sierra Club Senior Attorney Doug Hayes. “We cannot allow this reckless and illegal approval process to stand.”

“Pumping some of the world’s dirtiest and most dangerous oil products through our backyards is excessively dangerous,” said Marcie Keever, legal director at Friends of the Earth. “At a moment when TC Energy is second-guessing their investment, the Trump administration continues to push for this unnecessary and hazardous project. We hope the court will ensure that the Army Corps of Engineers performs a proper environmental review.”

“The proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has never been in our national interest,” said Cecilia Segal, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The recent financial news and skittishness from TC Energy to commit to the project confirms that. We’ll keep fighting to protect our nation’s wildlife, water, communities, and climate from this disastrous and dirty pipeline until we stop it, once and for all.”

“We are confident the court will again see the Trump administration’s efforts for what they are: another illegal attempt to force a dangerous, Canadian tar sands pipeline through Montana ignoring threats to hundreds of waterways vital to our farmers, ranchers, and tribal communities,” said Dena Hoff, a Glendive, Mont., farmer and member of Northern Plains Resource Council. “TC Energy has repeatedly harmed rural communities, including with their 383,000 gallon spill only weeks ago in neighboring North Dakota’s wetlands. Our communities can’t afford the risks KXL poses to our irreplaceable resources.”

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The first days of March broke the dreams of the Turkish political and military leadership of a swift victory over the Syrian Armed Forces. Operation Spring Shield failed to achieve the goal officially declared by top Turkish officials – to push the Syrian Army back from territories liberated in Idlib since September 2018, when Moscow and Ankara reached so-called Sochi agreements. The deal was intended to separate terrorists from moderate rebels, create a 30km deep demilitarized zone and de-escalate the situation in Greater Idlib in general. These agreements have never been fully implemented because Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda-linked groups did not withdraw from the demarked demilitarized zone and did not separate from these mysterious moderate rebels that reportedly existed somewhere in Idlib.

This led to the resumption of active anti-terrorist actions by the Syrian Army supported by Russia and Iran, the liberation of thousands of km2 from radicals, and the deployment of Syrian troops within striking distance of Idlib city. Ankara saw the existence of the militant-held enclave in Greater Idlib as an important tool of its policy towards Syria considered its possible destruction a vital threat to its own interests and responded with a large-scale military operation against the Damascus government.

Since its start, Turkish forces have victoriously captured Nayrab village and a few other nearby positions. At one point, they also entered the town of Saraqib on the M5 highway, but were then forced to retreat after they were counter-attacked by the Syrian Army. Later, units of the Russian Military Police deployed there.

The Nayrab success came amid major setbacks of the Turkish-led forces in southern Idlib. Syrian forces captured over a dozen settlements and repelled Turkish attempts to recapture the town of Kafr Nabul. The Turkish-led attack on positions of the Syrian Army in western Aleppo also ended with no results after the Syrian Army took back Sheikh Aqil and the nearby hilltop that it had lost to Turkish-led forces for a day.

Summing up, the Syrian Army defeated Turkish-led forces in an open battle, kept control over key positions along the M5 highway, and set conditions for further advances south of the M4 highway.

According to Syrian state media, in the period from December 15, 2019 to March 5, 2020 government forces liberated 215 settlements spread across 1,600km2. During the same period, 6,100 terrorists were eliminated, 2550 others were wounded, and 615 vehicles belonging to Turkish-backed militant groups were destroyed. The report also claimed that 100 ‘Turkish’ pieces of military equipment were eliminated. These numbers as well as those provided by the Turkish side about supposed Syrian Army casualties are highly overestimated. As of the evening of March 5, the Turkish Defense Ministry claimed that its forces had ‘neutralized’ 3,322 Syrian soldiers, shot down 3 warplanes, 8 helicopters, 3 UAVs, destroyed 155 battle tanks, 103 artillery pieces and rocket launchers, 8 air defense systems, 15 anti-tank weapons, 4 mortars, 157 various military vehicles and 10 weapon depots.

Turkey and Syria should make at least a bit softer claims if they want to make these claims look more reliable. Regardless of the provided numbers, the situation on the frontline speaks for itself. The March 5 visit of Turkish President Recep Erdogan to Moscow came amid another large-scale attack of Turkish-led forces on Saraqib. This attack, however, was repelled.

The Russian and Turkish presidents negotiated a new deal to de-escalate tensions in Idlib. It includes the following:

• The cessation of all hostilities along the existing line of contact from midnight on March 6th;
• Russia and Turkey will create a six-kilometer-deep security corridor both north and south of the M4 highway;
• Russia and Turkey agreed to begin joint patrols on March 15th along the M-4 highway in Syria;
• All previous agreements remain in effect. Terrorists are excluded from the ceasefire.

This agreement has several important implications:

• Turkey in fact confirmed that it had lost its small war on Syria and officially accepted all the gains made by the Syrian Army since September 2018;
• The Syrian Army kept control of the M5 highway and significantly improved its military position in the region;
• The agreed buffer zone, along the M4 highway, is located inside the militant-held area. It can only be created and joint patrols launched if radical militants are removed from this sector. If militants are not removed, this will create conditions for another operation in the area, fully within the framework of the agreement signed by Turkey;
• Both Turkey and Russia declared that they support a political solution to the conflict. However, a political solution is not possible as long as terrorist groups are present in the area. This creates conditions for further tensions and escalations.

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At the start of their discussion marathon in Moscow on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with arguably the most extraordinary diplomatic gambit of the young 21^st century.

Putin said:

“At the beginning of our meeting, I would like to once again express my sincere condolences over the death of your servicemen in Syria. Unfortunately, as I have already told you during our phone call, nobody, including Syrian troops, had known their whereabouts.”

This is how a true world leader tells a regional leader, to his face, to please refrain from positioning his forces as jihadi supporters – incognito, in the middle of an explosive theater of war.

The Putin-Erdogan face-to-face discussion, with only interpreters allowed in the room, lasted three hours, before another hour with the respective delegations. In the end, it all came down to Putin selling an elegant way for Erdogan to save face – in the form of, what else, yet another ceasefire in Idlib, which started at midnight on Thursday, signed in Turkish, Russian and English – “all texts having equal legal force.”

Additionally, on March 15, joint Turkish-Russian patrolling will start along the M4 highway – implying endless mutating strands of al-Qaeda in Syria won’t be allowed to retake it.

If this all looks like déjà vu, that’s because it is. Quite a few official photos of the Moscow meeting prominently feature Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu – the other two heavyweights in the room apart from both Presidents. In the wake of Putin, Lavrov and Shoigu must have read the riot act to Erdogan in no uncertain terms. That’s enough: now behave, please – or else face dire consequences.

The second Ataturk

A predictable feature of the new ceasefire is that both Moscow and Ankara – part of the Astana peace process, alongside Tehran – remain committed to maintaining the “territorial integrity and sovereignty” of Syria. Once again, there’s no guarantee that Erdogan will abide.

It’s crucial to recap the basics. Turkey is deep in financial crisis. Ankara needs cash – badly. The lira is collapsing. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) is losing elections. Former prime minister and party leader Ahmet Davutoglu – who conceptualized neo-Ottomanism – has left the party and is carving his own political niche. The AKP is mired in an internal crisis.

Erdogan’s response has been to go on the offensive. That’s how he re-establishes his aura. Combine Idlib with his maritime pretensions around Cyprus and blackmail pressure on the EU via the inundation of Lesbos in Greece with refugees, and we have Erdogan’s trademark modus operandi in full swing.

In theory, the new ceasefire will force Erdogan to finally abandon all those myriad al Nusra/ISIS metastases – what the West calls “moderate rebels,” duly weaponized by Ankara. This is an absolute red line for Moscow – and also for Damascus. There will be no territory left behind for jihadis. Iraq is another story: ISIS is still lurking around Kirkuk and Mosul.

No NATO fanatic will ever admit it, but once again it was Russia that just prevented the threatened “Muslim invasion” of Europe advertised by Erdogan. Yet there was never any invasion in the first place, only a few thousand economic migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Sahel, not Syrians. There are no “one million” Syrian refugees on the verge of entering the EU.

The EU, proverbially, will keep blabbering. Brussels and most capitals still have not understood that Bashar al-Assad has been fighting al Nusra/ISIS all along. They simply don’t understand the correlation of forces on the ground. Their fallback position is always the scratched CD of “European values.” No wonder the EU is a secondary actor in the whole Syrian tragedy.

I received excellent feedback from progressive Turkish analysts as I attempted to connect Erdogan Khan’s motivations with Turkey’s history and the empires of he steppes.

Their argument, essentially, is that Erdogan is an internationalist, but in Islamic terms only. Since 2000 he has managed to create a climate of denying ancient Turkish nationalist motives. He does use Turkishness, but as one analyst stresses, “he has nothing to do with ancient Turks. He’s an Ikhwani. He doesn’t care about Kurds either, as long as they are his ‘good Islamists.’”

Another analyst points out that, “in modern Turkey, being ‘Turkish’ is not related to race, because most Turkish people are Anatolian, a mixed population.”

So, in a nutshell, what Erdogan cares about is Idlib, Aleppo, Damascus, Mecca and not Southwest Asia or Central Asia. He wants to be “the second Ataturk.” Yet nobody except Islamists sees him this way – and “sometimes he shows his anger because of this. His only aim is to beat Ataturk and create an Islamic opposite of Ataturk.” And creating that anti-Ataturk would be via neo-Ottomanism.

Crack independent historian Dr Can Erimtan, whom I had the pleasure to meet when he still lived in Istanbul (he’s now in self-exile), offers a sweeping Eurasianist background to Erdogan’s dreams. Well, Vladimir Putin has just offered the second Ataturk some breathing room. All bets are off on whether the new ceasefire will metastasize into a funeral pyre.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from en.kremlin.ru

The US under both right wings of its war party wants endless conflict, instability, and chaos continuing in all its war theaters — peace considered detrimental to its imperial ambitions.

On Friday, the Trump regime blocked a Security Council statement, expressing support for cessation of hostilities in Idlib province Syria agreed to by Russia and Turkey on Thursday in Moscow.

Commenting on Friday’s session, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia said his government sought Security Council support for what Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed on with regard to halting hostilities in Idlib.

“(I)t was not possible because of the position of one delegation,” he said.

Asked which one, he said it’s “not appropriate to say the name. Do some guessing.” None needed.

The US is the main obstacle to world peace and stability along with its junior imperial partners — notably key NATO countries, Israel, the Saudis and Turkey under Erdogan in the Middle East.

Nebenzia expressed hope that what was agreed on Thursday in Moscow would hold — “provided that all parties maintain their commitments to the Additional Protocol,” he stressed.

It states the following:

Cessation of hostilities in Idlib to begin after midnight March 6.

Establishment of a 6-km-wide security corridor to the north and south along both sides of the M4 highway by March 15.

Russia and Turkey to jointly patrol the strategic M4 highway to begin March 15.

The Additional Protocol became effective on signing by Russia and Turkey Thursday.

Both countries agreed to support Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

They agreed “to combat all forms of terrorism, and to eliminate all terrorist groups in Syria as designated by the UNSC, while agreeing that targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure cannot be justified under any pretext.”

No military solution to years of war was agreed on.

“(I)t can only be resolved through Syrian-led and Syrian-owned, UN facilitated political process in line with the UNSCR 2254 (Dec. 2015).”

It calls for cessation of hostilities and diplomatic settlement to the long-running conflict.

Mandating all parties to the conflict cease hostilities, it urges all UN member states to support efforts for restoring peace and stability to Syria.

The Russia/Turkey agreement also calls for “prevent(ing) further deterioration of the humanitarian situation, protection of civilians, and ensuring humanitarian assistance to all Syrians in need without preconditions and discrimination, as well as prevention of displacement of people and facilitation of safe  and voluntary return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their original places of residence in Syria.”

For now, the Russia/Turkey agreement prevented possible direct confrontation between forces of both countries in Syria.

It failed to stop hostilities on the ground. According to Reuters, at least 15 people were killed in clashes between jihadists and Syrian forces on Friday — hours after ceasefire took effect.

According to Russian reconciliation center in Syria head Admiral Oleg Zhuralev, “(s)ix shelling (incidents) have been registered since the beginning of ceasefire at midnight on 6 March.”

AMN News reported that armed drones unsuccessfully attempted to attack Russia’s Khmeimim airbase in Syria Friday night.

Separately, jihadists attacked Syrian forces in and around the strategic city of Saraqib — controlled by government troops.

The above incidents and others breached the tenuous ceasefire. Like numerous earlier ones, it failed straightaway.

Fighting in Idlib continues sporadically. It’s likely just a matter of time before it escalates to pre-Friday levels between jihadists and Syrian/Russian forces.

Many thousands of heavily armed US, NATO, Turkish, Israeli, Saudi supported jihadists remain in Idlib.

Their presence and continued attacks against government forces prevents restoration of peace and stability to the province.

So do occupying Turkish forces and Erdogan’s annexation aims.

The same goes for US occupation of northern and southern Syrian territory, including control over Syrian oil producing areas.

Restoration of peace and stability in Syria requires elimination of illegal foreign occupation and defeat of jihadist fighters.

Russia’s agreement with Turkey failed to resolve these issues.

As long as the US rejects restoration of peace and stability to Syria, wanting Assad replaced by pro-Western puppet rule, conflict resolution will remain unattainable.

Despite Russia’s good faith efforts, that’s the disturbing reality of where things stand in Syria today.

Endless conflict continues with no prospect for near-term resolution.

A Final Comment

Ignoring multiple incidents of violence in Idlib following Thursday’s Russia/Turkey agreement in Moscow, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar pretended they didn’t happen, saying:

“From the moment the ceasefire agreement in Idlib entered into force, there have been no cases of violation thereof until now.”

“We are closely monitoring the situation and in case of attacks on our observation posts will immediately respond.”

Ahead of Thursday’s Moscow meeting, so-called Turkish observation posts have been used as platforms for Erdogan-supported jihadists to attack Syrian forces, civilians, and Russia’s Khmeimim airbase.”

Are they still used for this purpose? Russian satellite imagery will discover if this is the case.

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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.

Former First Lady, New York State Senator, Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton continues to criticize Vermont senator Bernie Sanders whenever the opportunity to do so presents itself. ‘Nobody likes him’, says she, despite the millions of people who voted for him in the current primary season alone. ‘No one wants to work with him’, she proclaims despite high-profile endorsements from prominent members of Congress. And she blames her electoral defeat in 2016, when the odious Donald Trump was elected, at least in part to Sanders’ delayed endorsement of her.

We will elucidate some facts for the hapless Clinton.

• The Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016 was anything but democratic, for two main reasons. 1. It ‘leaked’ useful information to the Clinton campaign that it withheld from the Sanders campaign; when this was exposed, it resulted in the resignation of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (Florida) as chair of the DNC. And 2, the ‘super-delegates’ were not bound by primary votes; they could, and did, vote to nominate whoever they chose, regardless of the wishes of the people of the state they represented.
• Clinton never met a war she didn’t like. For example, despite all evidence indicating that Iraq had no involvement in the attacks of September 11, 2001, and United Nations inspectors combing the country and finding no trace of the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that then President George Bush and his corrupt Secretary of State, Colin Powell, told the world were threatening the very existence of the United States, she voted to give Bush broad powers to wage war.
• Clinton is also the darling of the very rich; her campaign, unlike that of Sanders, was funded by the super-wealthy, many of whom benefited during her work as secretary of state, by donating to the Clinton foundation. Conflict of interest, anyone?
• Zionism doesn’t sit well with the rank and file. Clinton said that Syria must be destroyed to protect Israel, and she supports without reservation the brutal, apartheid Israeli regime. This shows her complete disdain for international law and human rights. That alone should disqualify her from public office.

Pundits have said that the current battle for the Democratic nomination is a fight for the soul of the party. It seems it lost its soul some time ago, but that is a topic for another essay. Clinton must revel in the fact that former vice president Joe Biden did surprising well in the Super Tuesday primaries. He, like she, is happy with the status quo: benefits for the rich, with an occasional bone thrown to the poor and middle class. And the Democratic establishment would prefer to see another four years of Donald Trump, rather than rocking their status-quo boat.

And what of Biden’s endorsements? Establishment representatives (this writer uses that term only as a title; elected officials in the U.S. seldom ‘represent’ the people who elect them), and former representatives, including former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, all former rivals for the nomination, all Zionists, all elitists, have climbed upon his bandwagon. Even billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has endorsed him.

Sanders endorsements include the wildly popular Alexandra Ocasio-Cortex of New York and Illan Omar of Minnesota, among many others. These are not people beholden to wealthy corporations. They represent the people who voted for them. They do not take the positions the corporate elite wants. But the best way to get elected and re-elected in the United States is to bow to the corporate masters. Clinton is a world-wide champion in doing so. Sanders? Not so much.

The bitterness to which Clinton clings is understandable. She lost the presidential election to a dishonest, misogynist, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic reality television performer. It is no wonder she will lash out at Sanders, who was her chief rival for the nomination in 2016, and anyone else who might get in her line of fire. One would think that almost anyone could have defeated Trump, but Clinton couldn’t do it. And because of the way the Democratic Party cooked the books to assure Clinton’s coronation, the U.S. now has a conservative Supreme Court; children in cages at the Mexican border; a plan to establish Palestine as a series of Bantustans; a shrinking middle class, and the threat of war with Iran. In addition, U.S. citizens are told by their president, when white-supremacists are confronted by counter-protesters, that there are ‘good people’ on all sides; that national security operations are wrong when they say that Russia interfered in the U.S. election of 2016, and that they are also wrong in assigning blame to Saudi Prince Mohammad Bin Salman for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Some things under Trump would be no different under Clinton. Support for terrorists in Syria, Venezuela, Palestine and Iraq would continue. CIA overthrows of governments would not end, and people would still be tortured by the United States government and military in Guantanamo and various rendition sites around the world. International law would only need to be followed by nations that are not U.S. allies, and U.S. alliances would be based on power and profits. The already grotesquely-bloated military budget would continue to grow.

What would a Joe Biden presidency bring? Change? Hardly! He has said that he loves the racist Israeli Prime Minister, supports war over diplomacy and is nearly as beholden to special interests as Clinton (it would be difficult to match her status in that category).

Would a Sanders presidency bring change?

While many of his proposals would need to be watered down (sadly) to get through Congress, we could at least hope for better and less expensive medical care for everyone; an end to unlimited, no-questions-asked foreign aid to Israel; affordable college tuition and some relief from the crippling student debt so many citizens carry. Taxes on the very rich might possibly increase, and the so-called ‘safety net’ for the poor, which most presidents are happy to shred to finance military expense increases, might actually be strengthened.

But let us not be too optimistic; the Democratic Party is democratic in name only (similar to elected ‘representatives’ being representative in name only), so Sanders’ road to the nomination is littered with the Party’s schemes to keep it from him. Who are the little people to decide who the nominee should be? Such decisions are better left to the power-brokers, those who hobnob with corporate titans, military leaders and foreign dictators. What does the ‘common’ man or woman, working daily or attending school, struggling to make a life for him/herself and his/her family, know about it? They need to attend to their own business: paying taxes so those in charge can stay exactly where they are.

It has been said that if nothing changes, nothing changes. Welcome to the United States.

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It seemed an unlikely prospect.  The International Criminal Court has tended to find itself accused of chasing up the inhumane rogues of Africa rather than those from any other continent.  It has also been accused of having an overly burdensome machinery and lethargy more caught up with procedure than substance.  Critics fearing a behemoth snatching soldiers from the armed forces of various states could rest easy, at least in part.

Law tends to be a manifestation of power and international law, in particular, tends to be a manifestation of consensus.  And the powerful rarely give their consent in matters of trying crimes against humanity when it comes to their own citizens.  Qualifications and exemptions abound, often cited with a certain sneer.

This explains the sheer fury and curiosity caused by the decision of the ICC’s Appeals Chamber on March 5 authorising Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to proceed with an investigation into alleged crimes committed in Afghanistan from 2003.  The interest was not merely in the commission of crimes by any one force: the Taliban and various “armed groups”, members of the Afghan armed forces and “alleged crimes by the US Forces and the CIA” featured.  But the actions of US and Afghan forces was bound to arouse much interest, given a UN report alleging more killings in the first three months of 2019 than attributed to the Taliban.  (The figures, respectively, were 227 civilians killed by insurgent groups and 305 deaths caused by Afghan and international forces.)

The initial decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber II (April 12 2019) had gone against the Prosecutor’s efforts that had commenced in November 2017.  While the pre-trial chamber accepted that the brief established a reasonable basis to consider crimes that fell within the jurisdiction of the ICC, time had elapsed since the preliminary examination in 2006 and the evolving political scene in Afghanistan.

As ever, the jurisdiction of war crimes and crimes against humanity is a political thing: to authorise such an investigation, in the words of the 2019 media release, would have diverted “valuable resources prioritizing activities that would have better chances to succeed.”  Nor had cooperation with the Prosecutor been forthcoming in Afghanistan itself.  It was a decision that caused a fair share of consternation among human rights critics and activists.  One question kept being asked: Had the ICC folded before pressure from the Trump administration?

The argument of pressure was a hard one to dispel.  In 2019, the Trump administration announced that it would revoke or deny visas to any members of the ICC connected with investigating alleged war crimes by US personnel in Afghanistan.  That body, charged US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was “attacking America’s rule of law,” an interesting formulation suggesting how partial that rule can be for a certain country.

Despite this backdrop of intimidation, the Appeals Chamber had a change of heart.  According to presiding judge Piotr Hofmański, “The prosecutor is authorised to commence an investigation into alleged crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan since May 1, 2003, as well as other alleged crimes that have a nexus to the armed conflict in Afghanistan.”  The pre-trial chamber had erred in identifying “additional considerations” as to whether the prosecutor could proceed with the investigation.  It was not for the body to consider “the interests of justice” as part of that authorisation, merely whether there was “a reasonable factual basis to proceed with an investigation, in the sense of whether crimes have been committed, and whether potential cases(s) arising from such an investigation appear to fall within the Court’s jurisdiction.”

Pompeo was sufficiently incensed by the decision to call the ruling a “truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable, political institution masquerading as a legal body.”  He also had the prospects of peace on his mind, considering the ruling disruptive given that it came “just days after the United States signed a historic peace deal on Afghanistan.”

Resistance against the ICC from the United States is far from new.  Henry Kissinger feared it, and said so, suggesting it would preside in thuggish majesty and impunity citing universal jurisdiction as its basis of operation.  His views were rebuked by former Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz.  “The innocent,” he remarked pointedly, “need not fear the rule of law.”

But fear and loathing for the ICC has been a recurrent theme.  In 2018, then national security adviser John R. Bolton, famed for his opposition to international institutions, insisted that the US would not “cooperate with the ICC.  We will provide no assistance to the ICC.  And we certainly will not join the ICC.  We let the ICC die on its own.”

Such a view sits in that particularly odd canon of US political thinking that dismisses aspects of international law – notably those involving breaches of human rights – as matters of convenience and sentiment.  Such a view holds that Washington’s enemies deserve trial and punishment at the hands of international law; alleged offences by US forces should be a matter of US jurisdiction.

It also bucks the idea put forth by US prosecutor Robert H. Jackson at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in November 1945 that international tribunals are not products “of abstract speculations nor … created to vindicate legalistic theories.”  Jackson’s enunciated views would see US officials participate, extensively, in the creation of tribunals in the Balkans and Rwanda.  Indeed, as Ferencz observed in 2001, numerous former presidents of the American Society of International Law and the American Bar Association acknowledged that “it would be in the best interests of the United States and its military personnel of the United States to accept” such a body.

While it is hard to see the US surrendering any soldiers for trial before judges of the ICC, the very acceptance that it has jurisdiction to investigate alleged crimes committed by such personnel enlarges its traditional and cautious scope.  International law has seen a turn up for the books.

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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]

There is a critical nexus between colonial development and economic re-structuring processes in the Third world whereby globalization is an ideological weapon that extends imperial control over ex-colonies through persistent poverty and underdevelopment.

Globalization is also an external war that is waged against women’s bodies, rights, autonomies and livelihood through the continuation of  dispossession and violence. It must be emphasized that the concepts of violence and dispossession are not limited to seen, forceful, physical activities that are exerted towards less powerful groups by more dominant groups but the concepts are also unseen and institutionalized into socio-cultural, economic and political spaces.

The international political economy becomes a site for external imposition of Western standards to civilize and modernize economies of Global South through consistent emphasis on financialization, marketization and quantification of success in measures such as gross domestic product (GDP). As a result of these extensive forms of ‘civilization’ methods, women in Global South remain in the position of chattels (‘properties’) that are tied and subdued by multiple patriarchies in the sequence of: father, husband, employer, nation-state, local capitalists, private investors, development institutions and development planners, men within resistance movements and Western women.

Women’s secondary status had remained tightly embedded in society’s social and economic fabrics. This reinforced patriarchal, gender ideologies about women’s expectations, justified dispossession and displacement and inequitable, power relationships. Gosh’s astute observation that gender discrimination tends to be interconnected with others forms of social and economic disparity. This holds true to the fact that financial crisis forces women in informal and care sectors of employment in which their labour is unremunerated and unrecorded in national statistics. While the formal or better-paid sectors of employment are reserved for the occupation of men.

The deliberate distinction between ‘formal’ vs. ‘informal’ employment and ‘men’s’ vs. ‘women’s’ labour sets the foreground for a constant struggle between privilege and disadvantage. This is seen where  women’s labour is invisible and unpaid because it is seen as natural extension of their physiology while men’s labour attracts profit because it is seen as more valuable to the success of the capitalist economy (Mies, 1986).  The capitalist economy is an archenemy of women’s upward mobility and independence because the market is allowed to determine the price of labour and the assignment of people to jobs that are based on socially constructed norms and expectations. Similar to the proposition of Gosh on women’s unpaid labour, Ehrenreich, Russell-Hocschild and Elson highlighted that national statistics do not take into account women’s employment in the informal sectors neither do they capture the burdens of additional responsibilities and obligations indirectly and directly caused by financial crisis and structural adjustment programs.

Financial crisis and structural adjustment programs are instruments of violence that work in collaboration with nation states to re-direct the attention from strong social policy to financial policy because profit is more important than people’s well-being and sense of self-worth. Additionally, access to social services are not seen as inalienable human rights in which citizens, especially vulnerable populations, are entitled to but rather ambitious public policy goals to be achieved by developing states (Vasciannie, 2005). Under  neo-liberal globalization, rights are privatized commodities that are owned by a debt ridden, third world state and the controllers of wealth and production in the global economy.

Numbers are also used to conceal their personal and collective realities of instability, suffering and misery. Quantification is a top-down strategy of measurement that is used to present an illusionary version of a nation-state’s success because it fails to answer the following questions: who benefits from success? is success equitable? at whose expense is success achieved? Thus, women are not integrated in development with the intention for them to be equally valuable stakeholders as men but to be victimized and to remain at the bottom of the social class, gender and race pyramids as servants to systems and structures that are against their interests. Thus, the personal is not just political, it is also economic (Scott, 1984).

It is against this background that Chant argues that women end up working for development instead of development working for them because the notion of empowerment denies the fact the women in the non-Western world possess the potential to define empowerment on their own terms. Projects and programs are bestowed upon women in the Global South under the banners of ‘empowerment and gender equality’ to fight against high incidences of poverty. These projects address women’s access and enablement to various spaces but they still do not transform the existing power relations that propagate violence and women’s marginalized position. The existing power relations will not be effectively addressed either, because development planners and Western institutions rely on the logic of the market to support their vested interests. The goal of international development is never about serving ‘womankind’ through good will but maintaining the status quo. Hence, the persistent poverty among women in the developing world is not a ‘natural’ process but a condition that is politically and socially engineered.

The issue of the political engineering of poverty among third world women who are single mothers in third world have been addressed by Ehrenreich and Elson. The scholars note that the financial crisis have contributed to the significant decline in incomes, standard of living and the traditional male headed households in the Third world. As a result, women are forced to maintain households by seeking jobs in the care and informal economy in first world countries, amidst men who have abdicated their responsibilities.

Women are expected to be suitable alternatives to men by  providing compensations for their absence or failures. They are also expected to meet multiple demands and obligations in order to be crowned the titles “good daughter, mother and or wife”.  Femininity is a performance of morality in which women who comply with the strict regulatory norms of submissiveness and docility are rewarded while those who deviate are chastised. Chant discusses this subject matter in her cross-country case studies.  She coined the term ‘feminization of responsibility’ in attempt to revise the ‘ feminization of poverty’ thesis. This theme was also evident in the movie, ‘Return to Hansala’ where the female protagonist was chastised for her brother’s death and she tried to convince her father that she is a good daughter and good Muslim woman.

The identity of third world women becomes more complex when they migrate from their countries of origin to the first world. Their precarious connection with middle or upper class Western women transforms sub-ordination from gender issue to an issue of race, social class and sexuality. Western women and non-western women are not fighting in the struggle for the same type of equality and empowerment because the issue of oppression affects them differently. Their goals are also different. While upper or middle class, Western women seek to break the glass ceilings in well paid, male-dominated jobs, non-Western women are being employed in unpaid or underpaid jobs that still cannot help to meet their personal or family needs. Western women are critical components in the preservation of global, hegemonic masculinity because their victory in the employment sphere comes as a result of epitomizing the liberal goal of the ‘self-optimizing’ individual. They also actively or indirectly engage in the process of ‘othering’ non-western women in sectors that they no longer can or choose to occupy. While household patriarchy in the third world has declined, public patriarchy has remained tightly embedded into the social, economic, cultural and political fabrics of transnational borders.

Elson in another academic article provided the example of the Korean government requesting women to become supportive wives to their husbands in the context of the financial crisis in 1997/8 but men were not expected to provide reciprocal support. This reinforces cultural beliefs about the roles and expectations of men and women in Korean society. It also illustrates how gender ideologies and power dictates an unequal relationship of privilege and advantage for men vs. sub-ordination and disadvantage for women on the global stage. Masculinity and femininity are not equal, socially constructed dimensions and therefore, institutions are put in place to perpetuate the unequal expectations and treatment of men and women.

Nevertheless, women in the Global South are not passive victims to violence, dispossession and exploitation. Women are active in their defense of re-claiming the stolen possessions from ‘mother nature’ through resistance and collective organizing. Both Desmarais and Lind employ participatory approach to development research to examine the collective organizing and mobilization strategies of women who were attempting to survive amidst the turmoil of structural adjustment programs and trade liberalization. Trade liberalization has more severe negative effects on developing countries because they have weak social service sectors to compensate those who have not benefitted from their participation in the exchange of goods and services. Free trade also destroys incubator industries in developing countries that require state protection. Global free trade is a winner takes all system (Chang, 2008).

Although rural women were among the poorest and most affected by global restructuring processes, there were still silenced by men within the La Via Campensina resistance movement. This illustrates that while women were experiencing the violence of neo-liberal policies imposed by the state, they were also confronted by internal challenges of male domination and power struggles. The issue of patriarchy presents a gridlock situation for women in and outside the resistance movement but women used collective organizing and their personal experiences as counter methods to articulate an alternative model on food security. Here, women are subverting the feminine connotation assigned to nature in order to reclaim their ownership of the land. The land was stolen, previously through conquest and colonization but now through, privatization and environmental degradation by multi-national corporations and investors.

Lind explored, how the women in Quito, Ecuador also subvert the conventional expectations of nurturance by transforming them into strategies of resilience and survival to hold themselves, communities and households together. ‘Mothering the crisis’ is about women in the Global South exhibiting strength, endurance and presence in the context of instability, absence of male support and compensation systems because the only compensation women have is, unity among themselves. Nevertheless, the greatest obstacle of addressing the power structures that contribute gender equality remains unchallenged because their local struggles were aligned to an access and enablement model.

Criticisms

“Crisis has a negative impact on physical security on women through increased proclivity to gender-based violence and domestic violence as men look for outlets for their anger and frustration.”- Gosh

Criticism: Is this a plausible reason for the increasing incidences of women’s proclivity towards domestic violence and other forms of gender based violence? This is a problematic argument because it performs the role of equating male violence towards women as a simple action that is motivated by anger and frustration. Violence towards women by men is an action that stems from private and public patriarchy in which there are specific expectations that are associated with masculinity and femininity across cultures and other social institutions. Masculinity is associated with violence in which men are expected to assert their dominance and ownership of a particular space through hostilic relations towards less dominant groups of persons, especially women. This can be supported by a variety of case studies in cross-cultures that unearth the underlying assumptions that guide the surge of domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence towards women. Additionally, the argument defeats the purpose of examining the influence of power in ascribing advantage to men and sub-ordination of women at the household and public levels.

“There is a strong movement for the cancellation of debt to poor countries and the re-building of a kind of development aid that supports human development”- Elson

Criticism: While Elson shared examples of countries that are attempting to re-shape the development landscape by merging strong social policy with financial policy, she fails to acknowledge that the movement that is pushing for the cancellation of debt to poor countries is led by Western institutions, developed nations and neo-liberal ideologues such as economist, Jeffrey Sachs (Wilson, 2008). Whether international capitalism presents itself as shock therapy in the form of structural adjustment programs or it is more reformed in the form of human development, the fact still remains that such a framework will not be truly beneficial to developing countries and their vulnerable populations, particularly women. An agenda becomes beneficial when there is active participation and power within developing countries and their vulnerable populations to shape an alternative destiny and the workability of this suggestion, is rare with only few exceptions.

“The feminization of poverty thesis must be re-constructed through a multi-dimensional and gendered approach”- Chant

Criticism: Chant provided an excellent analysis and critique of the feminization of poverty thesis. She also provided new directions for future discussion on the topic through the findings in her cross-country case studies.  However, her recommendations answered ‘what to do?’ but not ‘how to implement the recommendations?’ The recommendation does address the broader, political problem of gender inequality but the practical steps to achieve this recommendation were not explored. This reflects a major gap in third world feminist theorizing where there is strength in the internal critique of Western hegemony and development but there are grave limitations to formulate or re-construct the alternative that is being proposed.

“Affluent career women earn their status not through leisure”- Ehrenreich and Hochschild

Criticism: If not through leisure, how then do affluent women earn their status? This argument needs to be substantiated by explanation. The article did not evaluate first world women’s social position in relation to patriarchy and how this sets the stage for class and gender privileges.

“To what extent do their broader social struggles contribute to broader social change and changes in their own lives?”- Lind

Response: If local struggles in Quito, Ecuador were aligned to the objectives of the Women in Development framework, it therefore means that the problem of access to material needs were addressed. This might contribute to marginal changes depending on women’s social status before and after the financial crisis. However, the local struggles cannot contribute to broader social change because the framework in which the local struggles operates in; does not address structural issues. The structural issues are more difficult to address because the material needs of the oppressed group (women) has to be met before they can be engaged in the broader political struggle.

Women have been grossly affected by financial crises, structural adjustment programs and global re-structuring processes in the Global South. Despite their resistance and collective organizing efforts, the power structures that dictate gender injustices and inequalities remain unchallenged.

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Sources

Chang, H. J. (2008). Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Martinez-Salazar, E. (1999). From Poisonous Colonialism to Toxic Globalization. pp.100-107 in Barndt, D. (1999). Women working in NAFTA food chain: Women, Food and Globalization.Toronto, Ontario: Second Story Press.

Mies, M. (1986). Patriarchy and Accumulation and World Scale. Colonization and Housewifization. London: Zed Books. pp. 55-74.

Scott, H. (1984). Working your way to the bottom: The Feminization of Poverty. London: Pandora Press.

Vasciannie, S. (2005).  Caribbean perspectives on human rights. Organization of American States. Retrieved from http://www.oas.org/es/sla/ddi/docs/publicaciones_digital_XXXII_curso_derecho_internacional_2005_Stephen_Vasciannie.pdf

Visvanathan, N. (2011). Women, Gender and Development Reader. London: Zed Books. Chapters 2, 21, 24, 40 and 42.

Wilson, J. (2008).Jeffrey Sachs: The Strange Case of Dr. Shock and Mr. Aid. London: Verso.

Image. Prof. Tim Anderson

First published by GR on March 8, 2016

On International Women’s Day – The Syrian Arab Republic – the only genuinely pluralist nation in the region – was the first country in the Middle East and North African region (MENA) to give women the vote (1949, 1953) and the second after Lebanon to allow women to stand for election (1953). Syria was the first to have a woman elected to parliament (1973).

Syria has by far the highest level of paid maternity leave in the MENA region – a minimum of 17 weeks paid leave, 100% paid by employers. Employers must also pay a minimum of 6 weeks paternity leave, also at 100%. Although one of the poorer MENA countries, the Syrian Arab Republic has a maternal mortality rate (per 1000,000 live births) of 46 in 2008, well below the MENA average (91); that is linked to skilled assistance at birth much higher than average (93% Syria / 79% MENA). In overall HDI-GNI, which measures effective use of resources for human development,

Syria is way out in front, on 29. All other MENA countries (except Libya, data not available) have negative figures, meaning their income is not well transferred into human development (education and health). In Syria, life expectancy and infant mortality are better than its income levels would suggest, inequality is lower than average and ‘women’s health adjusted life expectancy’ is the best in the MENA region (Sources: UNDP 2014; UN Women 2011).

The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance, by Tim Anderson

The Dirty War on Syria has relied on a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory. In seeking ‘regime change’ the big powers sought to hide their hand, using proxy armies of ‘Islamists’, demonising the Syrian Government and constantly accusing it of atrocities. In this way Syrian President Bashar al Assad, a mild-mannered eye doctor, became the new evil in the world.

As western peoples we have been particularly deceived by this dirty war, reverting to our worst traditions of intervention, racial prejudice and poor reflection on our own histories. This book tries to tell its story while rescuing some of the better western traditions: the use of reason, ethical principle and the search for independent evidence.

Title: The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance

Author: Tim Anderson

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-8-4

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Early on March 5, the Israeli Air Force carried out a series of airstrikes on targets in the Syrian provinces of Homs and Quneitra. According to the Syrian military, the attack was conducted from Lebanese airspace at 00:30 local time. Israeli warplanes used two civilian flights of Qatar Airways as a cover for their strikes. The Syrian side claimed that it had intercepted all the hostile missiles. However, ground explosions were reported in Quneitra. Therefore, at least some of them in fact did hit their targets.

The previous Israeli strikes on Syria took place on March 2 and February 23. On March 2, an Israeli attack helicopter destroyed a vehicle in the province of Quneitra after Israeli troops in the Golan Heights had reportedly come under sniper fire. On February 23 Israeli warplanes targeted positions of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in Damascus.

‘Entirely by chance’ the increase of Israeli military actions in Syria came amid the escalation of the Syrian-Turkish conflict in Idlib.

On March 4, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkistan Islamic Party and other al-Qaeda-linked groups supported by the Turkish Army made another attempt to recapture the town of Saraqib, located on the M4-M5 highways crossroad, from the Syrian Army. Despite the intense artillery and air support from Turkey, al-Qaeda members failed to achieve their goal.

Supporters of the 25th Special Forces Division and Hezbollah deployed there claim that Turkish-led forces suffered notable losses in the clashes but provide no particular numbers. Video evidence from the ground confirms that pro-government forces recaptured a T-90 battle tank that they had lost earlier in the same area.

Syrian troops also entered the village of Afis north of Saraqib but failed to fully secure it. The village remains contested. If Turkish-led forces keep control over it, they will be able to carry out attacks on vehicles moving via the M5 highway from Saraqib to Aleppo.

Earlier on the same day, 2 Turkish soldiers were killed and 6 others were injured in Syrian Army artillery fire in eastern Idlib. In response, the Turkish military tried to shoot down a Syrian Su-22 warplane bombing al-Qaeda positions west of Saraqib. Turkish supporters claim that an anti-air missile was launched by an F-16 fighter jet. However, most likely this was a MANPAD launched from one of Turkey’s so-called ‘observation posts’ in the area. During the past weeks, Turkish soldiers were repeatedly spotted launching MANPADs at Syrian and Russian aircraft. The Russian Defense Ministry officially says that Turkish observation posts have merged with terrorist bases and have been used to carry out attacks on government-controlled areas. Nonetheless, Turkish soldiers surrounded by the Syrian Army continue enjoying safety and receiving supplies. This is another demonstration of the fact that modern conflicts often take strange forms.

Setbacks in southern and eastern Idlib forced Turkey and its proxies to shift the focus of their military efforts. Late on March 4, Turkish-backed al-Qaeda forces attacked positions of the Syrian Army in western Aleppo. By the morning of March 5, they had captured the village of al-Sheikh ‘Aqil and al-Rraqim Hilltop. The control over these positions will allow them to shell the western suburb of Aleppo city more effectively.

Since the start of Turkish military actions in Idlib in February, the Syrian military had shot down 13 Turkish military UAVs, pro-government sources claim. According to them, this number includes 7 Bayraktar TB2 and TAI Anka combat drones. It should be noted that only a part of these claims has been confirmed  by visual evidence.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militants tried to stage a chemical provocation in eastern Idlib, but poisoned themselves, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on March 4. According to the report, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members were planning to stage the incident on March 2nd during the Syrian Army advance in the western part of Saraqib by blowing up canisters with a chemical substance, but a canister leak caused casualties among the militants themselves.

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On 17 July 2014 a Malaysian Airlines flight was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over Ukrainian territory with the loss of all passengers and crew. The majority of the passengers were Dutch citizens, although there were significant other nationals represented, including in particular Australian citizens and residents.

The Ukrainian territory over which the tragedy occurred was the centre of fighting between its largely Russian speaking inhabitants and Kiev government forces, acting on the instructions of the Kiev government that had earlier that year seized power in an American financed coup.

An international group of countries set up an investigation into the crash. An early indicator that the investigation was likely to be less than objective came from its membership: the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine. As the countries suffering the largest casualties, the presence of The Netherlands and Australia was understandable.

There was no obvious reason for including Belgium, although that countries position as NATO headquarters provides at least one clue. Why Ukraine was included was also a puzzle. On the then known facts, or at least what was thought to be the facts, Ukraine was at the very least a prime suspect in the shooting down. The exclusion of Malaysia, the plane’s owner and operator, who also lost citizens, was at the time inexplicable. The reasons only became known much later. Malaysia refused to be a party to an extraordinary agreement between the other four nations that gave an effective veto to the Ukrainians against any adverse findings.

Contrary to basic principles of investigation, the quartet of countries immediately blamed Russia, alleging that a Russian missile has been fired at the plane, causing its destruction and the death of all on board. Not then and never since has any remotely plausible argument been advanced as to what possible motive Russia could have for shooting down the civilian airliner of a friendly country.

In the now more thanfive- and one-half years since the tragedy, the original blame game has not ceased. A new report has recently been released however, that has shed considerable light on what really happened. This report follows earlier revelations from the Malaysians that they had sent a team to the Ukraine to recover the plane’s black boxes, managing to do so with the assistance of local rebels fighting the Ukrainian government forces.

Had the Malaysians not been successful, establishing the truth of what happened would have been much more difficult. Thanks also to the efforts of an independent Dutch group, a great deal more information has become available, none of which casts the original quartet of countries in a favourable light.

The conduct of the inquiry, the evidence that was established and then suppressed by the original investigators, the allegations repeated without question in the western media, and the manifestly false allegations have now been revealed in a major study by an independent Dutch group led by the investigative journalist Max van der Werff. Their results can be read on the website.

That this report, with its devastating revelations, has not been reported in the western mainstream media confirms that rather than being an inquiry into the truth about a tragedy, the investigation always had as a primary objective, to blame Russia.

It will be recalled that the allegations against Russia hinge on the alleged presence of a Russian missile system in the crash location on the relevant date. This allegation was actively promoted by the notorious mouthpiece of the United Kingdom security services who publishes under the nom de plume Bellingcat.

Bellingcat was a major promoter of the version of events that a Russian missile crew had crossed the border from Russia into Ukraine, and then fired its missile with the devastating consequences of destroying the aircraft and killing all its passengers and crew, and then returning across the border back into Russia.

Bellingcat published some photographs of the Russian missile system, and the western mainstream media duly reported the allegations that the photographs were of the offending missile system, without the least bit of fact checking, either with local citizens who would have witnessed the alleged movements of such a conspicuous weapon system, or any verifiable military records. It is now known that local eye witnesses were interviewed by the Dutch investigators.

Those eye witnesses referred to seeing Ukrainian fighter jets operating in the sky at the relevant time.  This directly contradicted the Ukrainian government claim that none of their fighter jets were operational on that day. Such an obvious and easily disproven lie raises questions about what else the Ukrainians may be lying about.

As might be expected, the Dutch Military Intelligence Service carried out its investigation into the circumstances surrounding the crash. Their investigation produced a report that has been leaked to the van der Werff investigation team. That data shows quite clearly that at the material time the flight path of MH 17 was outside the operational range of both Ukrainian and Russian missile systems.

The report of the Dutch military investigation team (MIVD) quoted by van der Werff confirms that there were no Russian BUK missiles or radar systems in Ukraine on or about 17 July 2014.  The Dutch report further confirmed that no BUK missiles were detected as having been fired on that day.  Nor had anything been fired from the Russian side of the border.

This information was consistent with data obtained by two Australian investigators, Shaun Ellis and Timothy Johns, conducting an inquiry under the code name “Operation Arkanella”. None of these findings, which clearly contradict the allegations of Russian responsibility, have ever been published in the western mainstream media.  It raises the obvious question of why the lie of Russian complicity in the tragedy has been raised and maintained ever since, when it is clearly contradicted by the evidence the Dutch-Australian investigations discovered.

The known Russian missile systems were in proximity to substantial population centres. There were no reports in any format of any missiles being fired on the relevant day. This conclusion is clearly reported in the official report of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service. Their report clearly states: “it becomes apparent that flight MH 17 was flying beyond the range of all identified and operational Ukrainian and Russian locations where 9K37m1Buk M1 Systems were deployed.” Again, it raises the obvious question: how is this information reconciled with the propaganda attack on Russia, then and ever since?

This report was published on 21 September 2016, i.e. more than three years ago. Not a word of it has been published by the western media who persist in their “blame Russia” version despite having no verifiable evidence let alone motive, to sustain such an allegation.

If we are able to exclude a missile as the cause of MH 17’s demise, that inevitably leaves only either an accident (which may be emphatically excluded) or intervention by fighter aircraft. Even the Ukrainians and their Western allies have never alleged that a Russian fighter jet was involved.

Rather, the Ukrainian government has always maintained that none of its military aircraft were flying at the time. This claim has long been disputed by civilians living in the area who have given repeated accounts of the activity of Ukrainian fighter jets in the area at the relevant time.

The area where the shooting down of MH17 occurred was an active war zone. It is known that both United States and Russian satellites were in stationary orbit over the region at the relevant time.  It raises the obvious question as to why these data have not been released.  One can understand the US reluctance as the data would disclose the complicity of their ally Ukraine in the tragedy. It is less clear why the Russian authorities have not released their data. The evidence after all is in their favour.

What the satellite data would show is exactly what was established by the Dutch and Australian investigators at the time.  That is, MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian fighter jets.

Van der Werff’s report includes the transcript of an interview with one such keywitness,a Brigadier of the Dutch Police. That witness gave detailed evidence as to the activities of Ukrainian fighter jets in the area at the relevant time on the day of the tragedy. Again, this clearly refutes the Ukrainian claims.

When one adds together the known facts revealed in the Dutch documents as well as other sources, certain irresistible inferences can be drawn. The most obvious is that MH 17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet. That single fact, from which so much else followed, has never been reported in the mainstream media despite it being the irresistible inference drawn by Dutch investigators more than three years ago.

That the suppression of the truth has been a major factor in the anti-Russian campaign waged by the Netherlands, Australia and Ukraine is obvious. That the lies, obfuscations and misinformation should be perpetrated by the mainstream media is a sad commentary on the deplorable state of affairs that media has now sunk to.

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James O’Neill, an Australian-based Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

“It is an honor for me to inform you that I have nominated comrade Evo Morales Ayma for the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2020,” the Argentinian Adolfo Perez Esquivel announced on his Twitter account.

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The Argentinian activist and human rights defender Adolfo Perez Esquivel announced Tuesday that he nominated the former Bolivian president, Evo Morales, for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.

Perez received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 thanks to his commitment to defending democracy and human rights against the region’s military dictatorships.

“It is an honor for me to inform you that I have nominated comrade Evo Morales Ayma for the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2020,” the Argentinian announced on his Twitter account.

In his letter to the Committee, Perez said he proposed the award for “a social leader, the first Indigenous president of Latin America, who managed to implement successful programs to fight poverty, inequality and peace.”

“The model of a country with equality, social justice and sovereignty that Evo led must be recognized internationally,” he said.

“Evo is also a symbol of resistance against the new Operation Condor (about repressive coordination among militaries in South America in the 1970s led by the United States) that today carries out military, media and judicial coups to outlaw political parties and candidates who achieve high intention of vote because they implement sovereign policies in favor of the people,” he stressed.

Morales resigned from the Presidency of Bolivia in the midst of the social upheaval that resulted from the allegations of possible electoral fraud in the Oct. 2019 elections,  which were supported by an audit report by the Organization of American States (OAS).

However, a recent investigation by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in the Washington Post stated that there is no statistical evidence to justify the alleged fraud asserted by the OAS that led the country to the political crisis in which it is currently immersed.

The Norwegian Nobel committee accepts all proposals before the deadline of Jan. 31 submitted by one of the thousands of individuals with the ability to launch a candidacy. Among those qualified to do so are parliamentarians and ministers from all countries, former winners, some university professors, or current or former members of the committee.

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First, Diana Johnstone’s memoir is a classic, and will be read and quoted as long as we keep struggling for peace and justice. It is one of the great personal accounts of the anguished decline of our uncivilization, both a riveting eye-witness account of many of the horrors and perfidies, and a primer for students of history and all those struggling to not only dismantle the beast, but to prepare us for what follows it.

Read it and weep. And smile at the follies. And shout ‘Yes!’ as light bulbs flash in your mind.

Johnstone’s concern in Circle in the Darkness is not so much ‘the lived experience of the transitory nature’ of things but ‘especially of the moral environment.’

She was blessed to to begin at the beginning of the end. At the empire’s undisputed zenith under FDR. And though not a card-carrying anything religious or left wing, she grabbed that blessing and stoked and nurtured it, creating her life, her jobs, a single mother raising a daughter in Minnesota and then France, seeing through the cant everywhere and using her only weapon, the pen, to expose it.

It is a frightening, unremittingly gruesome, Dantesque journey, but Johnstone’s steady moral compass sees us through and is uplifting.

One of her first memories is seeing the Minerva of Peace mosaic by Elihu Vedder (1896) in the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, DC, with its very unpeaceful message: Minerva’s peace and prosperity is attained only through warfare.

Diana Johnstone (right)

Nike, a representation of Victory, similar to those erected by ancient Greeks to commemorate their success in battle, stands next to Minerva. I doubt that 3-yr-old Diana would have been able to articulate this message, but it hit me: this was a sign from beyond, be it from God or whatever. This little lady was fated to wrestle with the forces of war and peace till the day she dies.

So I thought: And what was happening in America in the 1890s to inspire Vedder (and Diana)?

1890: Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho join the Union.

1893: severe economic depression, as well as several strikes in the industrial workforce.

The decade saw much of the development of the automobile.This decade was also part of the Gilded Age, a phrase coined by Mark Twain, when the super rich were even more super, and the rest were super poor.

The Philippine Revolution began in 1896, ceded to US in 1898. The Provisional Government of Hawaii sent armed militia against the lepers in the Leprosy Colony of Kalawao. The template for Minerva’s  ‘peace through war’.

Hey, isn’t that today’s empire? Just more of the same?

History comes to life in Johnstone’s  reflections, which cover almost a century, from  the depths of the Depression and the rise of FDR to the sputtering loose canon of Trump, with America looking in many ways like the mess it was when Johnstone was born.

But it is not mass unemployment that is the chief cause of the malaise today. Keynes and a massive state sector combine with Eisenhower’s ‘military industrial complex’ more or less ‘solved’ that. The problem is deeper. It is the same uneducated nation, steeped in ‘enemies’, for the past century, anti-communism, writ large despite the demise of communism. The fear of yet another world war, environmental armaggedon, capitalism blind to its fatal flaws. And Americans too, blind and ignorant of foreign affairs, always fearful of the ‘other’, willing to leave world affairs in the hands of officials, who presumably know better.

Johnstone has spent most of her life abroad, in France, the rare foreign correspondent (she created a job as foreign correspondent for In These Times) who has free rein to explore a story, and a mission from the left wing ITT, to cover socialist/ communist politics in Europe, bringing her to meet with and cover the careers of remarkable people such as Olaf Palme and Willy Brandt, and to reflect on the demise of the old guard communists such as Marchais and Berlinguer and the embrace of social democracy by the heirs of Lenin and Stalin, so-called Eurocommunism, which abandons any thought of revolution, relegating it to oblivion.

Circle in the Darkness is almost an encyclopedia of the landmark events, which Johnstone covered as both journalist, participant, friend and enemy. Her calm passion for justice motivates her throughout her very ‘lived life’, someone for Socrates to admire, like Johnstone, crucified for his unflinching honesty. Though she may not have stopped the Vietnam war (‘the Viet Cong did that’), she created ways to help, inventing first a Community Contact outreach program to knock on doors to talk about Vietnam with the Minnesotan public.

Then she invented ‘people’s diplomacy’, organizing a group of 30 widely diverse Americans to go with her to her already beloved Paris in 1970 to meet with the South Vietnamese provisional government and the North Vietnamese, hoping to take the message of peace back to the US.

Johnstone loves her subject, whatever it may be, and her description of some of the colourful participants (and some tragic fates) is delightful and arresting.

The vegetable farmer George Panayotoff was especially active in speaking to every meeting he could find, often together with Robert Nienkerk, a private detective. Nienkerk was truly amazing. He could speak to the most conservative groups, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and with his Mr. America necktie, short haircut and straightforward manner, win them over.[1]

But, like most genuine efforts in the quest for peace, they were met by a deafening silence from the mainstream media (International Herald Tribune: It’s only a local story. Go to your home town for a human interest piece.) The Cold War Deep State had taken the US empire’s foreign affairs off the table, made it ‘bipartisan’, which with the rise of the powerful Israeli lobby, made the empire a US-Israeli empire, even more a captive of Eisenhower’s nemesis, the military industrial complex.

Speaking of arresting, her own arrest in Paris at a Vietnam rally during the chaotic summer of ‘68 was the essence of civilization. She explained to the French policeman when they reached the police station that she had to pick up her daughter from school, and he let her go. She realized he was against the Vietnam war, as were virtually all the French, and admired her courage.

There is much of interest both to historians and activists. Johnstone is a master of cutting to the quick, Occam’s razor. Most world events are so complex, assassinations in particular, that they remain a matter of conjecture. But she was on the spot for such events as the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, and the ‘successful’ one of Olaf Palme, and followed the ‘investigations’.

Agca, a truly crazy Turk, was already in the sites of authorities, a ‘grey wolf’ fascist, who reveled in his act, claiming first

he was ordered to kill the Pope by the Turkish mafia, then by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, even by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Secretary of State of the Vatican. Nobody took any of that seriously. But almost a year and a half later, in his Italian cell, he came up with a new story, which unlike all the others was widely welcomed as a “confession” of the truth: he had shot the Pope on instructions from Bulgarian agents, acting on orders from the Kremlin … later proclaiming himself to be Jesus Christ. But he had every reason to go along with the Bulgarian Connection story. He could be assured that it would guarantee comfortable prison conditions. It made him a media star. And shifting the blame to the communist Warsaw Pact enemy.

Perfect for the US and its ‘NATO allies who had internalized the need for US protection, whether from Russia or from their own domestic left.’

Useful to Agca, keeping him amused and famous. It was useful to the Italian right in its relentless effort to destroy the Italian Communist Party. It was useful to the American war party, … useful to the Vatican, not only as anti-communist propaganda, but also as the occasion to enact a characteristically Christian morality play, in which the Pope pardons a repentant Agca in his cell. Nor could leaders of Turkey, a NATO ally, mind having blame shifted to Bulgarians. The one who had no reward was the hapless Bulgarian travel agent, Sergei Antonov, who spent over three years in prison before being acquitted, a broken man. it illustrated how easy it was to build a major international political scandal out of a “confession” methodically extracted by intelligence agents from a convicted pathological killer and sold to the public by mass media. It is all too easy to tell the American public wild tales about “the rest of the world,” about which their school system has taught them little.[1]

I’m ashamed to say, if you had asked me before Circle about JPII’s almost assassination, I would have said, ‘Supposedly a Bulgarian assassin.’ Our brains work ‘Last in, first out.’ It is sooo hard to stay ahead of the game.

This legacy of the Nazis was also behind the assassination of Palme. The pompous New York Times investigation took months (and lots of moola), and turned up nothing. But plucky Diana, on a shoestring, went to Lund University to learn of the independent investigation by historian Wilhelm Agrell, who dismissed attempts to pin it on Kurds or South Africa. ‘He settled on the ‘patriotic’ motive: the explanation that Palme was eliminated by elements within Swedish security or armed forces that considered him a threat to the nation.’

In the 1930s, Swedish fascists in the military supported Hitler, Sweden remained neutral, useful to Germany in its occupation of anti-fascist Norway, and that legacy remained. The Germans were replaced by the Americans after the war, with the common enemy, the Soviet Union, still in place.

Palme was hated by the right, especially the military, who were becoming irrelevant to Palme’s vision of Sweden as a haven of peace, a friend to (peace loving) Soviet Union. His assassination, done from within, could be kept under raps, unsolved, but attributable to nasty apartheid South Africa, which certainly loathed Palme too. Agrell, a prominent expert on Swedish military doctrine and (from 1990) a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences, and his claim disappeared from view, mentioned, it seems, only by Diana at ITT. Agrell’s wikipedia page makes no mention of what surely is his ‘finest moment’. How the mighty have fallen.

I could go on with many more beautifully written, barbed Occam’s razors, but I will end on some morsels of inspiration of my own, courtesy of Johnstone. Diana disclaims labels, but her analysis is Marxist in the best sense of the word, not the eurocommunist, ‘cultural Marxist’ which neoliberalism produced as a distraction from the remorseless destruction of all that’s good, which capitalism thrives on.

This is the subtext of Star Wars ‘Doomsday Machine’ (1967), where Kirk destroys the alien robot planet-eater, left behind by warring civilizations but still roaming the universe in search of planets to destroy and eat, long after its ‘masters’ have killed each other and the machine has eaten up their planet. To kill the beast, Kirk feeds it a tasty H-bomb, a version of Earth’s very own quaint 20th century doomsday bomb, ‘the first time it has been used constructively.’ The Doomsday Machine, of course, is capitalism/ imperialism, and its avatar today US-Israel, seizing whole nations, eating up the Earth’s treasures, a doomsday machine to kill us all.

My other ‘morsel’ recalls The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (1993), where author Benjamin Ginsberg, concerned with an Israel already out of control in 1990, argued that for their own purposes, rulers often  were happy to accommodate Jews in exchange for their services, resulting in “the rise to great power by Jewish elites, but creating conditions for their subsequent fall.” They made alliances “responsible for the construction of some of the most powerful states of the Mediterranean and European worlds, including the Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, and Ottoman empires.” This led to the paradoxical situation where some Jews were ministers or viziers while the majority of them were oppressed and rebels, a foretaste of the twentieth century Great Games.[2]

Johnstone witnessed three examples of these latter day ‘viziers’ during the 1980s:

• adviser to Sartre (Benny Lévy, a Maoist in ‘68),
• adviser to Mitterand (Attali),
• destroyer from within of the Green Party of France (Cohn-Bendit).

Sartre’s friends were appalled when an attractive young Svengali (Levy) mesmerized him as he lay dying, inducting him into Kabbalah mysteries. Levy himself had shifted from Maoism to Judaism, or ‘from Mao to Moses’, i.e., fill the spiritual gap of dying atheist Sartre with harmless Jewish mysticism, ignoring the Zionist monster at work in the real world.

Unelected Attali wormed his way into President Mitterand’s private circle and convinced him to abandon his socialism and quest for detente, for neoliberalism and more anticommunism.

In December 2014 the daily Libération opened its article on Attali with the rhetorical question, “And what if it turns out that Jacques Attali, 71, is the real President of France?” This thought was inspired by the fact that at that very time, Attali was guiding his protégé, Emmanuel Macron, through his first big political job as Minister of Economy in the Socialist Government of François Hollande, designing laws to reduce worker rights.[3]

Gadfly Cohn-Bendit (with his fellow traitor Fischer of the German Greens) gutted the Greens of their quest for peace and disarmament, so dear to Johnstone’s (and my) heart, in favour of R2P, their crowning achievement, the 1990s the destruction of Yugoslavia.

Johnstone’s crowning achievement is undoubtedly Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions (2003), which sifts through the bombed-out rubble of poor Yugoslavia, revealing the real story, the real culprits. In the fine tradition of western media, she faced screaming silence, unable to get the message into the mainstream. I wondered at her passionate devotion to this particular cause, but after reading Circle, I understand. At the tender age of 19, she was able to join a pre-Peace Corps (SPAN, the Student Project for Amity among Nations) visit to Belgrade, just months after the death of Stalin in 1953. Serbia circa 1953 was simple but civilized, full of spirit, building a new society.

My own such experience, studying Russian in Moscow in 1979, had the same impact on me, and accounts for my own struggle to save at least the ‘memory of memories’ of that lived reality so different, faulty but in many ways, far superior, to what US-Israel has left behind after our Doomsday Machine ate up that tasty morsel.

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This article was originally published on the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Notes

[1] Johnstone Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher, Clarity Press, 2020, 94, 191.

[2] Eric Walberg, Canada Israel Nexus, Clarity Press, 2017, 66.

[3] Johnstone, op.cit., 160.

Time and again, ceasefires agreed to on Syria were breached straightaway by US/NATO/Turkish supported terrorists.

Is this time different? Will belligerent Trump and Erdogan regimes turn a page for restoration of peace and stability in Syria?

Will they renounce years of support for anti-government jihadists, cease arming and providing them with other material support?

Will they respect Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity, along with the rule of law — what they’ve never done before since Obama regime aggression on the Syrian Arab Republic was launched in March 2011, forever war continuing to this day, no end of it in prospect?

Will a Cinderella scenario emerge at midnight local time Friday — the illusion of agreed on ceasefire in Idlib turning into a pumpkin, no fairy godmother to save the day, no happily ever after end game?

In 2019 alone, Putin and Erdogan met eight times to discuss endless war in Syria — accomplishing nothing.

Turkish aggression escalated this year against government forces to prevent them from liberating Idlib province, their own sovereign territory — infested with jihadists supported by the Trump and Erdogan regimes.

On Thursday, Putin and Erdogan announced the following points agreed on:

Ceasefire in Idlib will begin one minute past midnight Friday morning. Hold the cheers!

Russia and Turkey will jointly patrol the strategic M4 highway in the province.

A six-km-wide buffer zone will be established along both sides of the M4 highway by March 15.

Russia and Turkey affirmed support for Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Their leaders pledged to help Syrian refugees return to their home areas and address their humanitarian needs.

They agreed that conflict resolution cannot be achieved militarily.

A new line of contact was established to include areas liberated by Syrian forces.

Both leaders agreed that it’s for Syrians alone to determine the country’s future, free from foreign interference.

Are Moscow and Ankara on the same page for what lies ahead, or will agreed on principles vanish in the mist of day like after all previous ceasefire agreements?

Russia and Syria observed what was agreed on before, not jihadists supported by the US, NATO and Turkey.

Will Thursday’s agreement succeed despite the failure of earlier ceasefires?

US regime change aims in Syria remain hard-wired. The same goes for Erdogan’s revanchist ambitions.

If past is prologue, what’s most likely, Russia’s best efforts will fail like every time before since 2012 Geneva peace talks.

As long as the US wants Syria transformed into a vassal state and Erdogan wants northern parts of the country annexed, endless war without resolution is likely ahead.

It’s been this way for nine years. Nothing in prospect suggests a dramatic turnaround toward conflict resolution (in Idlib or in Syria overall) following Thursday talks in Moscow.

Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and Damascus are allied for restoration of peace and stability in Syria, supporting the country’s sovereign independence and territorial integrity.

The US, NATO, Turkey, Israel, and the Saudis oppose all of the above, attaining them not possible as long as this dichotomy exists.

Throughout the post-WW II era, especially post-9/11, the US has been uncompromising in pursuit of its imperial agenda — wanting control over planet earth, its resources and populations, wanting all sovereign independent countries transformed into client states.

Nothing on Thursday in Moscow changed this dire state of things, including in Syria.

It’s Obama’s war, now Trump’s, NATO, Turkey, Israel and the Saudis allied with US aims as junior partners in pursuit of their own interests.

The prospect for conflict resolution in Idlib or Syria overall is virtually nil any time soon.

In the cold light of day, principles agreed on between Russia and Turkey in Moscow will likely dissolve like many times before — unjustifiably justified by falsely blaming Damascus like countless earlier times.

At the same time, Bashar al-Assad may have gained some breathing room for rearming and regrouping Syrian forces to prepare for the next flareup in fighting.

Based on how things evolved before, it’s virtually certain to come, maybe much sooner than expected.

Furthermore, as long as US and Turkish forces illegally occupy Syrian territory, a state of war will exist — exacerbated by their support for jihadists as proxy troops.

I respect Russia’s good faith conflict resolution efforts.

The problem is they’re not reciprocated by nations allied against Syria — Erdogan’s Turkey very much one of them.

Another major problem is that many thousands of heavily armed jihadists remain in Idlib. Liberating the province requires their elimination by combat or diplomatic means.

The latter way never worked, the former most likely needed, war to continue with no end of it in prospect.

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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.

‘The Home Secretary is doing an outstanding job’: Boris Johnson’s repeated response to the allegations of bullying by Priti Patel across three different government departments in recent times. At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn asked if Johnson was even aware of some of the allegations regarding Patel’s conduct, and if so, why did he appoint her?

The resignation of Sir Phillip Rutnam, as Home Office permanent secretary on Saturday, a man with 33 years’ service, was a sure sign something was not right in Patel’s department. Rutman is now suing the Home Office for constructive, unfair dismissal as he accuses Patel of being involved in ‘a vicious and orchestrated briefing campaign’ against him.

It emerged on Wednesday that Priti Patel is also facing allegations dating back to her time as International Development Secretary, which she resigned from back in 2017 over an unauthorised trip to Israel. The BBC reported that during her time there she was ‘humiliating civil servants in front of others, of putting heavy pressure in emails and of creating a general sense that “everyone is hopeless”.’

Prior to that position, Patel was employment minister, during which time she has been accused of bullying an official in the Department for Work and Pensions who subsequently received a payout of £25,000 after a suicide attempt. Jeremy Corbyn said at PMQs that if the allegations were indeed true, that ‘this suggests a shocking and unacceptable pattern of behaviour across three government departments – on each occasion, tens of thousands of pounds of hard-earned taxpayers’ money has been spaffed up the wall to buy their silence.” The opposition leader also called for an independent enquiry.  According to The Guardian newspaper, Westminster sources say the Conservative party was warned about the bullying allegations when Patel was in the DWP, before she was promoted to Home Office minister, but it failed to take any action.

So how has Patel survived? Clearly, it is in part due to her loyalty to Johnson. This tough Brexiteer has stuck by Boris Johnson, just as he said he would be ‘sticking by Patel the other day. A staunch admirer of Margaret Thatcher; Patel’s Britain-first, anti-immigration stance has been just what Johnson has been looking for in a Home Secretary. Never mind the fact that her parents themselves were immigrants, and under her rules would not have been granted entry to Britain. Indeed her latest advert on the new immigration rules – which will take effect – in 2021 is quite frankly disgusting. It boasts allowing entry to only the ‘best and brightest’ – as if being highly qualified on paper suddenly makes you a better, more worthy human being.

The scandal over the Home Secretary has just been one of many indications of a somewhat unhealthy setup at Number 10. Only a few weeks ago the Chancellor for the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, resigned, after rejecting Number 10’s instructions to sack an advisor. Javid stated that ‘no self-respecting minister could have accepted such a condition. His resignation came on the back of rumours of a rift between him and Boris Johnson’s controversial advisor Dominic Cummings. A later statement delivered in the House of Commons hinted at such discord as Javid said Johnson’s plans to bring the PM’s office and the Treasury closer together were a threat to the ‘national interest’. Indeed it has been suggested in The Express that Javid’s resignation ‘brilliantly represents Cummings’ Treasury masterplan – as in 2014 the Brexit guru had already made his intentions to reform the cabinet and to “break the power of the Treasury” clear’.

If anything, Johnson is a survivor. Having survived the Brexit election, to lead the country out of the EU; having survived allegations of racism and sexual harassment; having survived criticism over his lack of leadership during last month’s floods and claims of him being a ‘part-time Prime Minister’; it seems the blonde buffoon is indefatigable. And it has set a precedent for others in his team. One quite honestly gets the impression that the Johnson cabinet could almost get away with anything now. Even the investigation into Priti Patel will be an internal one, rather than an independent one, and led by Michael Gove, who has already come out to vehemently defend the Home Secretary – so how unbiased is that likely to be?

The real test for the Johnson cabinet now will be, however, in the form of something utterly intangible; a completely new phenomenon which rivals any terrorist threat or military adversary: coronavirus. Sweeping across Europe now, it will not only pressurize our health services but will impact every aspect of our daily lives. Our economy is also likely to suffer, they say on a par with the last economic crash in 2008. The competence of the current government, therefore, could not be faced with a better test.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johana Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The US сould be the prime culprit behind Covid-2019 outbreak that hit China and then Iran, head of its elite Revolutionary Guards claimed, threatening that the virus will eventually be turned against those who unleashed it.

Hillary Clinton, of course, received the Democratic Party nomination in 2016 and was widely expected to beat Trump but she lost to him (though she won California by 4,269,978 in the popular vote, and so beat Trump by 2,864,974 in the nationwide popular vote, while she lost all other states by 1,405,002 votes, and so she would have been California’s President if she had won, but the rest of the nation wouldn’t have been happy). 

Among the top reasons why Democrats in primaries and caucuses voted for Clinton was that they thought she would have a higher likelihood of beating the Republican nominee than Sanders did. This was the impression that the Democratic National Committee spread, and the Party’s voters believed in it. However, by the time when Election Day rolled around, the passion that Republicans felt for their nominee, Trump, was much stronger than was the passion that Democrats felt for their nominee, Clinton.

During the Democratic primaries, polls were showing that the Democrats who were voting for Sanders to become their Party’s nominee were far more passionate in their support of him than was the case regarding the Democrats who were voting for Clinton to become the Democratic nominee.

And nobody questions that Trump was the passion-candidate in the Republican Party’s primaries and caucuses.

On 1 May 2017, McClatchy newspapers headlined “Democrats say they now know exactly why Clinton lost” and reported that, 

A select group of top Democratic Party strategists have used new data about last year’s presidential election to reach a startling conclusion about why Hillary Clinton lost. Now they just need to persuade the rest of the party they’re right.

Many Democrats have a shorthand explanation for Clinton’s defeat: Her base didn’t turn out, Donald Trump’s did and the difference was too much to overcome.

But new information shows that Clinton had a much bigger problem with voters who had supported President Barack Obama in 2012 but backed Trump four years later.

Those Obama-Trump voters, in fact, effectively accounted for more than two-thirds of the reason Clinton lost, according to Matt Canter, a senior vice president of the Democratic political firm Global Strategy Group. In his group’s analysis, about 70 percent of Clinton’s failure to reach Obama’s vote total in 2012 was because she lost these voters. …

Although Clinton has blamed her loss on Putin, and on Sanders — and perhaps if Biden wins the nomination he will likewise blame Putin and Sanders if he subsequently loses to Trump — the passion factor is actually much stronger an influence on whom the winner of an electoral contest will be than losing candidates wish to admit or publicly acknowledge; and it could turn out to be the case in 2020, just the same as it did in 2016.

On 24 August 2017, NPR bannered “Here’s How Many Bernie Sanders Supporters Ultimately Voted For Trump” and reported that, “12 percent of people who voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries voted for President Trump in the general election. That is according to the data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) — a massive election survey of around 50,000 people.”

That study was done for CCES by Brian Shaffner of Tufts and Harvard Universities, who also reported that:

WI: 9% of Sanders voters voted for Trump.

MI: 8% of Sanders voters voted for Trump.

PA: 16% of Sanders voters voted for Trump.

Shaffner failed, however, to mention that Sanders beat Clinton in Wisconsin and won 570,192 votes in the Democratic primary there, and that Trump beat Clinton there by 22,748 votes, and that 9% of Sanders’s voters having voted for Trump there constituted 51,317 Sanders-Trump voters, and that this was 2.26 times as high as was Trump’s 22,747-vote victory-margin in Wisconsin, and, consequently: Sanders’s voters who voted for Trump were 2.26 times Trump’s victory-margin against Clinton there; so, clearly, Trump became President because of the huge number of Sanders voters who voted for Trump against Clinton. And it was the same thing that happened in each of the other two crucial states that Trump won in 2016.

Sanders likewise beat Clinton in Michigan and won 598,943 votes in the Democratic primary there, and Trump beat Clinton there by 10,704 votes, and 8% of Sanders voters having voted for Trump there constituted 47,915 Sanders-Trump voters, and this was 4.47 times as high as was Trump’s victory-margin in Michigan, so that Sanders’s voters who voted for Trump were 4.47 times Trump’s victory-margin against Clinton there.

Similarly, though Clinton beat Sanders in Pennsylvania, where Sanders won 731,881 votes in the Democratic primary, Trump beat Clinton there by 44,292 votes, and 16% of Sanders voters having voted for Trump there constituted 117,101 Sanders-Trump voters, and this was 2.64 times as high as Trump’s victory-margin in Pennsylvania, so that Sanders’s voters who voted for Trump were 2.64 times Trump’s victory-margin against Clinton there.

Of course, virtually all of the primary voters for Sanders would have been voting against Trump if Sanders had been the Democratic National Committee’s choice as the nominee instead of Clinton, whom they chose instead. By contrast, almost none of Clinton’s voters in the primaries would have voted against Clinton and for Trump in the final election (though some of them would have voted third-party or not at all — just as happened with Clinton’s actually being the Democratic nominee). Sanders would have overwhelmingly beaten Trump according to all of the nationally-polled match-ups — by far larger margins in a Sanders-Trump contest than Clinton was shown likely to in a Trump-Clinton contest. The DNC basically chose the overwhelmingly weaker nominee (and sometimes they even did it blatantly), and so they lost to Trump instead of to have their billionaire donors lose to Sanders and to the American public by Sanders becoming the nominee and then the President. Keeping the support from their billionaire donors was the DNC’s top priority, in 2016. Of course, America’s voting public generally don’t know that both the DNC and the RNC are far more committed to keeping the support from their billionaire donors than they are committed to winning elections.

This is why those voters pay close heed to what their Party’s leaders say about which candidates are ‘electable’ and which ones aren’t. The voters don’t understand how politics actually works, in today’s America — they think that winning the current general election is a Party official’s top priority. They think that Party professionals are professionals at selecting winners, but instead Party professionals are professionals at pleasing their Party’s billionaires. If a voter wants to please him or her self instead of please a group of billionaires, that voter ought to vote for whomever that voter thinks would best serve that voter and not serve any group of billionaires 

As the Huffington Post reported on March 4th, the day after Joe Biden’s huge Super-Tuesday win, “‘Voters liked both candidates but clearly consolidated around the one they saw as most electable,’ said Jared Leopold, who was the communications director for the Democratic Governors’ Association during the race.

‘The intraparty ideological fight pales in comparison to the thirst to beat Donald Trump and his buddies.’”

Those people’s top concern is to please the few individuals who fund their careers.

Winning the current electoral contest isn’t actually their #1 concern, though voters think it is.

The Party professionals have a longer-term, personally career-oriented, goal in mind — pleasing their bosses’ bosses.

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

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Afghanistan: Imagine There’s No Future

By Daniel Lazare, March 06, 2020

Little, if anything, about the peace agreement signed last weekend in Qatar makes sense. It calls for a phased, fourteen-month withdrawal of 12,000 US troops in exchange for what the New York Times called “vague” commitments on the Taliban’s part to protect the civil liberties, the very idea of which is ludicrous. It requires the Taliban to combat Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups operations even though Taliban military commander Sirajuddin Haqqani heads a subgroup known as the Haqqani Network that is itself on the State Department’s list of officially proscribed terrorist organizations.

Why Is the US Apparently Not Testing for the COVID-19 Coronavirus?

By Larry Romanoff, March 06, 2020

The CDC produced a series of test kits that produced wildly random results, positive or negative, followed by instructions to discard the test kits as unreliable. (1) Several U.S. states said the new coronavirus test kits did not work, while others said they were totally unreliable. (2) New York City reported the government-issued tests are faulty and “cannot be relied upon to provide an accurate result”. Those faulty kits were also shipped all over the world, but to my knowledge the CDC have relayed that information to no one outside the US.

Coronavirus: Remember the “Fake” 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 06, 2020

There wer 150 confirmed cases outside China, when the decision was taken. 6 in the United States, 3 in Canada, 2 in the UK, etc.

150 confirmed cases over a population of 6.4 billion (World population of 7.8 billion minus China’s 1-4 billion). What is a risk of being infected? Virtually zero.

That does not constitute a justification for launching a Worldwide fear campaign. In recent developments, the number of confirmed cases has increased particularly in South Korea, Iran and Italy.

The Pentagon’s “Ides of March 2020”: Best Month to Go to War?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 05, 2020

There are ongoing military threats against a large number of countries including, Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea. Is a US-NATO sponsored war contemplated for the Ides of March 2020?

In recent developments, US-NATO have deployed 37,000 troops to the Russian border in the context of their latest war games entitled “Defender Europe 2020”. “The scale of NATO’s provocative military exercise underscores how far advanced the preparations for war are 75 years after the end of World War II”

Coronavirus and “Pandemic Pantries”. Fear Campaign Triggers Stockpiling of Emergency Supplies

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, March 05, 2020

Fears of imminent apocalypse tend to be midwives to absurdity.  The stockpiling fever that has gripped various populaces in response to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has taken various forms.  “Pandemic pantries” are becoming the norm, suggesting that hoarding in the crisis tends to be a precursor to petty crime.

Who Made Coronavirus? Was It the U.S., Israel or China?

By Philip Giraldi, March 05, 2020

The most commonly reported mainstream media account of the creation of the Coronavirus suggests that it was derived from an animal borne microorganism found in a wild bat that was consumed by an ethnic Chinese resident of Wuhan. But there appears to be some evidence to dispute that in that adjacent provinces in China, where wild bats are more numerous, have not experienced major outbreaks of the disease. Because of that and other factors, there has also been considerable speculation that the Coronavirus did not occur naturally through mutation but rather was produced in a laboratory, possibly as a biological warfare agent.

Defender 2020: Largest Mobilisation of NATO Troops Against Russia in 25 Years

By Markus Salzmann, March 05, 2020

The largest deployment of troops across the Atlantic in 25 years entered its main phase last weekend within the framework of the Defender Europe 2020 exercise. The scale of NATO’s provocative military exercise underscores how far advanced the preparations for war are 75 years after the end of World War II.

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“Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? Only the Shadow knows.”– opening line in “The Shadow” radio show from 1930 to 1954. It became a pop culture icon.

The Trump impeachment process that began in late September 2019 continued the ugly, visible spectacle for those choosing to see the historic dark shadow of US culture and its pretend politics. Politicians from both major political parties, and the corporate media, take the pretend-society extremely seriously – integrity of the Constitution is at stake, the rule of law must be preserved, etc! Oh my god! And how the Democrats are obsessed with demonizing Russia and Putin, ushering in another earth-threatening Cold-Hot War. What?!

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.” –US author Stephen King.

Going after a member of an internal political rival relating to Ukraine matters to achieve political gain is apparently considered impolite, and therefore impeachable. But how easily and intentionally the Democrats forget their grossly illegal 2014 coup under Obama, overthrowing Ukraine’s democratically elected president, utilizing $5 billion to assure an anti-Russian, pro-Western government, protected by Nazi-oriented security forces. (Azov Battalion image right)

In contrast, serious US criminal, unlawful, and unconstitutional behaviors occurred during the 135-day period of the impeachment process, September 24, 2019 to February 5, 2020 without notice or concern. For example, in that period alone there were an estimated 2,025 drones striking terror in at least seven countries – inflicting death sentences from the air with missiles traveling faster than the speed of sound. US policy declares any person killed in those strikes as “enemy killed in action” (EKIA), and anyone who appears to be male over the age of 16 is a legitimate target.[1] The obvious result: the criminal murder, maiming, and displacement of countless human beings worth as much as we are. Can we viscerally understand this?

I know a bit of the fear experiencing being targeted by incoming aerial missiles. In 1969, during the US criminal war, I was in servitude as night security commander of an airbase which, at the time, was the most mortared of the ten 7^th Air Force installations in Viet Nam.[2] On high anxiety alert all night long, with heavily armed security personnel ringing the perimeter, I found myself shallow breathing to enable increased capacity to hear slight movements – rustling in water or vegetation off the perimeter, or be prepared for incoming, or ground sapper attacks. I was able to call in aerial fire and illumination support within 2 minutes if needed. We had the advantage of a rotating anti-mortar radar unit (when the generator was working), which issued a siren when incoming was detected, warning us to take cover, or scrambling to a bunker if one was nearby. But, imagine daily living in any one of seven countries thousands of miles from the US not knowing when you will be annihilated from the air by a drone missile? Due process? Have any Congresspersons experienced anything like this? Do they care? So what? Do they know anything about the victims, even if they asked? In Viet Nam we constantly manufactured “enemies” and killed them when in fact they were innocent civilians. That lie continued for 30 years with 6 million murdered. Can you grasp this? I repeat, can you grasp the grotesque immorality and evil?

Author standing next to Binh Thuy anti-mortar radar unit, 1969.

These continuing egregious, lawless crimes around the globe result in the murder, maiming, and displacement of countless human beings in a number of countries. But these crimes are immune from impeachment because they enjoy overwhelming bi-partisan support. Additionally, the President has severely curtailed important life-preserving domestic programs and environmental protections designed to save the health and lives of US citizens, while the Congress yawns.

The obscene, insane annual $1.25 Trillion bi-partisan military intelligence budget, that includes 17 separate intelligence agencies, pre-empts development of any serious social and physical infrastructure.[3] And, such policy endangers everybody at home and abroad. Who really is the enemy of the US? What is clear is that the US is at war with the world.

The President and Congress are captives to the military-industrial-Wall Street-banking-media bribing complex which provides the underpinning for the US oligarchic economy. The US has 200,000 troops in 177 countries, including use of special forces, with the bulk of active duty personnel located at 800 major overseas military bases in 70 countries.[4] Countries cannot even demand that US troops leave their country as Iraq recently discovered. Can you imagine foreign countries quartering their military troops at various locations inside the United States? Really? The Pentagon also operates 170 golf courses for the enjoyment of military stationed in the US and around the world.[5] And there are over one million active duty troops at hundreds of military bases within the United States. The National Security State in fact is in charge, as John F. Kennedy learned in 1963. The bi-partisan banality supporting atrocious, imperial policies is disgusting beyond comprehension – immoral and inhumane. People dying, moaning, maimed. So what?

Our political system is not broken. The current ugly, obvious campaign by the Democratic establishment and corporate media to stop Bernie Sander’s Presidential campaign at any cost is a live case study of the rigged nature of the political system. Sanders is not even a radical, just a politician who genuinely wants to introduce social fairness into the corrupt system, one fixed in its racist, classist, sexist historical patterns, with cybernetics to boot. A massive system of bribery by the oligarchic war making and financing scheme, controls who the (s)elected leaders are, what laws they write and pass, and which laws to apply or not, and when. The US process of selecting governing representatives is rigged with inordinate amounts of money and ego to assure the prevailing political economy wins, virtually every time – manufactured consent at home, manufactured dissent in US targeted countries. The corporate media controls the narrative such that people’s minds are full of the cabal’s script – deceptions, untruths, and lots of omissions. Voting itself is no longer even trusted.

A Nation Run by Gangsters of the Worst Kind; Do What?

There have been nearly continuous wars by our Eurocentric ancestors against others since the early 1600s, continuing after the formation of the Republic in 1789 to the present. Our behavior toward others has often been cruel and sadistic, perhaps a product of its super narcissism. But, nonetheless, we consider ourselves “democratic” and “exceptional”, but the question is whether as a culture we are exceptionally fair and respectful, or exceptionally demonic and imperial?

At Trump’s State of the Union address the President identified specially invited guest Juan Guido as the “legitimate President of Venezuela”. Democrats and Republicans arose with standing applause. More disgust. In January 2019, Guido, a relatively unknown legislator, was called on the phone by US Vice-President, Mike Pence, and told that he was the US-chosen President of oil-rich Venezuela, as part of a US-supported a regime change effort. This is bizarre, since the Venezuelans had already democratically elected Nicolas Maduro three times as their President, who was following in the footsteps of exceedingly popular Hugo Chavez. Chavez had unexpectedly died in 2013 at age 58, with some evidence suggesting he had been poisoned.  So far the majority of the Venezuelan have supported Maduro, much to the disappointment of the US and Guaido. Thus, the criminal policy of bi-partisan regime change remains popular, despite violating international law and the US Constitution, Article VI, Section 2. We live in a mafiosa oligarchy, still basking in its exceptionalism. So what?

The US drone assassination of Iranian General Qasah Moleimani January 3, 2020 while on a peace mission in Iraq was an act of war that could have led to major war if the Iranians had not exercised restraint. Grotesque murder of an Iranian leader. So what?

The overthrow of popular and democratically elected President Evo Morales in Bolivia on November 10, 2019 was facilitated with millions of US dollars and technical and social media assistance. Overthrowing democracy. Congress didn’t even blink. So what?

What about the thousands of children who have been separated by US Immigration officials from their parents at the US-Mexican border and placed in filthy cages located at numerous concentration camps around the US, some run by private companies? Crimes against humanity?

People’s lives have been severely and deleteriously destroyed in countries like Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico due to unfairly imposed US trade policies, or repressive neoliberal governments created and/or sustained by the US – militarily, economically, propaganda-wise – that have left millions terrorized and destitute. A bi-partisan Congress supports these destructive policies. Cruel, more crimes against humanity. So what?

What about the innocent citizens being murdered and maimed in the eight countries the US is regularly bombing – Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somali, Niger, and sometimes Syria? Trump merely continues policies of Bush and Obama, as Congress yawns and routinely funds the war-making companies? War crimes, despite the Congress claiming that the National Defense Authorization Act provides them legal cover. The Constitution requires Congressional Declarations of War. More people dying, moaning, maimed. So what?

What about the innocents being terrified in any one of 130 or 140 of the world’s countries as their homes are bashed down by paramilitary, called US Special Forces, and subsequently cellphone-targeted for routine drone assassination because US intelligence arrogantly and hypocritically identified them as terrorists and placed them on the President’s regular kill list? War crimes? Again, these are continuation of Bush and Obama policies as the Congress yawns and shops. Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents terrorized, killed, tortured, maimed. So what?

What about the President’s actions to unilaterally abrogate important historical bilateral agreements that were designed to decrease the dangers of nuclear war, thus endangering the whole world? Except, I presume, the Mafioso Congress feels immune from any danger or severe consequences from their sanctity of gangsterism. So what?

Who cares? Certainly not the 1 per cent. And certainly not the majority of our 535 (s)elected representatives who are bribed and devoted to their 1 percent donors. But the majority of people lose every time as long as they continue to abide by the oligarch’s rules. As Chris Hedges continually preaches, the only hope is for massive civil disobedience in the streets making business as usual impossible. The stakes are really high – our dignified survival.

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Brian Willson is a Viet Nam veteran and trained lawyer. He has visited a number of countries examining the effects of US policy. He wrote a psychohistorical memoir, Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson(PM Press, 2011), and in 2018 wrote Don’t Thank Me for my Service: My Viet Nam Awakening to the Long History of US Lies(Clarity Press). He is featured in a 2016 documentary, Paying the Price for Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson, and others in the Peace Movement, (Bo Boudart Productions). His web essays: brianwillson.com. He can be reached at [email protected].  

Brian Willson is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Notes

[1] Elise Swain and Jon Schwartz, “Merry Christmas, America! Let’s Remember the Children Who Live in Fear of Our Killer Drones”, The Intercept, December 25, 2019.

[2] Roger P. Fox, Air Base Defense in the Republic of Vietnam, 1961-1973 (Wash., DC: Office of Air History, USAF, 1979), see data for Binh Thuy.

[3] William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger, “Boondoggle: Inc. Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget”, Tomdispatch.com, January 30, 2020.

[4] Jeff Desjardins, “Nearly 200,000 US troops are currently deployed around the world — here’s where”, Business Insider, citing Visual Capitalist data, Mar 20, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-personnel-deployments-by-country-2017-3

[5] David Vine, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015), 4.

This was originally crossposted in 2019.

Israeli Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian revealed yesterday that the Israeli occupation authorities issues permits to large pharmaceutical firms to carry out tests on Palestinian and Arab prisoners, Felesteen.ps reported.

The Hebrew University lecturer also revealed that the Israeli military firms are testing weapons on Palestinian children and carry out these tests in the Palestinian neighbourhoods of occupied Jerusalem.

Speaking in Columbia University in New York City, Shalhoub-Kevorkian said that she collected the data while carrying out a research project for the Hebrew University.

“Palestinian spaces are laboratories,” she said. “The invention of products and services of state-sponsored security corporations are fueled by long-term curfews and Palestinian oppression by the Israeli army.”

In her talk, entitled “Disturbing Spaces – Violent Technologies in Palestinian Jerusalem”, the professor added:

“They check for which bombs to use, gas bombs or stink bombs. Whether to put plastic sacks or cloth sacks. To beat us with their rifles or to kick us with boots.”

Last week, Israeli authorities refused to hand over the body of Fares Baroud, who passed away inside Israeli prisons after suffering from a number of diseases. His family fear that he could have been used for such tests and Israel is afraid this could be revealed through forensic investigations.

5,000 tests on prisoners

In July 1997, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported remarks for Dalia Itzik, chairman of a parliamentary committee, acknowledged that the Israeli Ministry of Health had given pharmaceutical firms permits to test their new drugs of inmates, noting that 5,000 tests had already been carried out.

Robrecht Vanderbeeken, the cultural secretary of Belgium’s ACOD trade union, warned in August 2018 the population of the Gaza Strip is being “starved to death, poisoned, and children are kidnapped and murdered for their organs.”

This follows previous warnings from Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour who said the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces “were returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power.”

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Featured image: Palestinian activists take part in a protest in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons [Source: Almanar News English/Twitter]

Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine it’s Sept. 12, 2001, and America is in deep shock over the destruction of the World Trade Center the previous day. George W. Bush goes on national TV and declares:

“Now is not the time to lose our heads. Like Pearl Harbor, the death of thousands of innocent people in Lower Manhattan is a crime that will live in infamy. But our response must be carefully calibrated. With that in mind, we are sending teams of commandos to Afghanistan with the sole purpose of apprehending Osama bin Laden and his top henchmen. Once they’re arrested – and, mark my words, they will be – we will bring them to New York to stand trial just a few yards from where their despicable act of mass murder occurred. We have no quarrel with the people of Afghanistan. But we will have no dealings with the Taliban government as long as it harbors despicable terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. We are confident that our allies will do the same.”

The result of such a well-calibrated response would have been no war in Afghanistan, no prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, and almost certainly no war in Iraq either. Without earlier conflicts to pave the way, intervention in Libya, Syria, and Yemen would have all proved more difficult. Countless deaths would have been avoided and entire societies spared.

But it was not to be. The Bush administration was in no mood for calibration after 9/11, only brute revenge. It didn’t want to put Bin Laden on trial because of the stories he might tell about Al Qaeda’s ties to the CIA, the Saudi royal family, and others. It was more interested in going after Saddam Hussein because Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had somehow gotten it into his head that the Iraqi leader was ultimately responsible. It therefore decided to invade Afghanistan (a) because it wanted to show it could and (b) because it needed a stepping stone to an invasion of Iraq that would eliminate a bothersome rival in the Persian Gulf.

So it went to war. Nearly twenty years later, we’re living with the consequences in the form of a conflict that has cost $2 trillion and taken the lives of nearly 2,400 Americans and at least half a million Afghans, yet which continues with no exit in sight and can only get worse. And Donald Trump’s phony Taliban peace deal is proof.

Little, if anything, about the peace agreement signed last weekend in Qatar makes sense. It calls for a phased, fourteen-month withdrawal of 12,000 US troops in exchange for what the New York Times called “vague” commitments on the Taliban’s part to protect the civil liberties, the very idea of which is ludicrous. It requires the Taliban to combat Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups operations even though Taliban military commander Sirajuddin Haqqani heads a subgroup known as the Haqqani Network that is itself on the State Department’s list of officially proscribed terrorist organizations.

It calls on the Taliban to release a thousand prisoners of war in exchange for five thousand Taliban fighters held by the Afghan government even though negotiators never contacted the Afghan government to see if it would go along. And it somehow imagines that the Taliban will do Trump’s bidding from here on out even though a Taliban spokesman announced a day earlier that an accord would mark “the defeat of the arrogance of the White House in the face of the white turban.” A group that brags about defeating Trump one day is not likely to prove very cooperative the next.

Which is why the agreement has fallen apart in record time. The day after it was inked, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani confirmed that a prisoner exchange was out of the question. Two days later, the Taliban retaliated by launching 43 attacks against Afghan government forces. A day after that, the US responded by bombing Taliban positions in Helmand province, a longtime stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

This was after Trump spent 35 minutes on the phone with a Taliban leader named Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and declared, “The relationship is very good that I have with the mullah.” If this is a good relationship, one can only wonder what a bad one would be like.

Why won’t the Taliban go along? The chief reason, as an ex-CIA officer named Douglas London pointed out in a recent New York Times op-ed, is because it knows it’s winning. “The Taliban has successfully challenged the government for control of rural areas, and by doing so, the roads necessary to resupply major urban areas,” he wrote. “And while the government in Kabul can claim support from a greater percentage of the overall population – mainly people in the major cities – the Taliban continues to extend the territory over which it rules.”

It knows that time is on its side, in other words, and that negotiations are a pointless distraction. London, moreover, noted out that it’s not clear the group could enforce a peace even if it wanted to. Since it’s more “diverse, decentralized, and factionalized” than generally realized, leaders will have a hard time convincing the rank-and-file to hold their fire against the hated Americans, while persuaded local fighters to turn their guns on Al Qaeda will be even worse. Why shoot down fellow Muslims if the only beneficiary is the US?

The very idea of a negotiated settlement is a pipedream, and the insurgents know it. Taliban attacks rose some six percent last year while ground operations by the Afghan government military simultaneously fell, a clear indication of which way the win is blowing. US bombings are running at record levels. But since civilian casualties are doing the same, the result is to create more enemies than the American military can possibly kill off.

Then there’s Kabul where things are going from bad to worse. Ashraf Ghani is feuding with his chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, who claims to have won last month’s presidential election and is threatening to set up his own parallel government if his rival doesn’t step down. The same holds true in the military, where morale is plummeting among soldiers forced to man isolated outposts that the Taliban can seemingly attack at will.

“Police and soldiers are stuck in their bases,” a district council head in western Afghanistan told the New York Times. “The Taliban are killing security forces easily, but no one pays attention.” While elite special forces sometimes go on the offensive, the effect is like tossing a pebble into the sea. “They come here, kill some people and arrest some, and that’s it,” one district governor observed. “When they leave, the Taliban come back.”

We’ve seen it all before in Vietnam, Algeria, Somalia, and whatnot. Hence, it was all so predictable. The “Afghan Model,” as the Bush administration initial strategy is now known, rested on a combination of CIA and Special Forces teams, precision airpower, and local “rent-a-militias” that were willing to play along with the US in exchange for military and financial support. It proved devastatingly effective in scattering the Taliban and seizing control of major cities. But conquering a vast and thinly-populated country like Afghanistan is one thing and holding onto it year and year out is quite another – and in their rush to accomplish the first, “Vulcans” like Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney vastly underestimated the cost and difficulty of the second.

As a result, the US threw itself into a war that it can’t possibly win – and for no good reason, too. The result can only grow more and more painful as the White House searches desperately for a way out, only to find that all exits are blocked. Hopefully, there will be a helicopter waiting on the roof, but no one can be sure.

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Daniel Lazare is the author of The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He writes a weekly column for Antiwar.com. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at Daniellazare.com.

Fears of imminent apocalypse tend to be midwives to absurdity.  The stockpiling fever that has gripped various populaces in response to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has taken various forms.  “Pandemic pantries” are becoming the norm, suggesting that hoarding in the crisis tends to be a precursor to petty crime.

In the United Sates, the price of hand sanitizers has risen by 73 percent in dollar value since February 22.  A Nielsen report on these trends reads glumly: “Consumers around the world are actively stockpiling emergency supplies as concerns grow that the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) could become a worldwide pandemic.”  But the focus of such purchases lies beyond such supplies, including “basic foodstuffs, including canned goods, flour, sugar and bottled water.”  Non-food essentials also feature in buying behaviour, including first aid-kits.

One item has risen in prominence in the purchasing schedule.  A visit to various shopping outlets in Australia – at least in cities – will greet the customer with shelves emptied of toilet paper.  The phenomenon struck the BBC as amusing enough to run an image of a toilet roll emptied of paper with the question: “Does this strike fear into your heart?”

Australia’s chief medical officer, Dr Brendan Murphy, did his bit, albeit a touch officiously, by suggesting that such empty lavatory rolls were not to be feared.  “We are trying to reassure people,” he told Australian parliamentarians, “that removing all the lavatory paper from the shelves of supermarkets probably isn’t a proportionate or sensible thing to do at this time.”

This fevered rush prompted a veteran journalist of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to issue a curt reminder.

“Most, if not all, toilet paper is made in Australia.  It is NOT imported,” tweeted a grumpy Michael Rowland.  “The manufacturers are ramping up production to replenish shelves stripped bare by panic buying.  Australia will not run out of toilet paper.  So everybody can calm down.”

Not quite everybody.  On social media, the viral nature of COVID-19 trends alongside that other viral spread: the hashtag.  These include #toiletpapergate, #toiletpapercrisis and, as of today, #toiletpaperemergency.  Limits on the number of rolls have been imposed in some supermarket chains.  Woolworths has capped the limit at four to, in the words of a spokesman, ensure “more customers have access to the products”. The limit would “help shore up stock levels as suppliers ramp up local production and deliveries in response to higher than usual demand.”

One contributor to a Facebook group page made her feelings clear about the whole business.  “So I just went to Woolies (in Perth),” wrote a troubled Amy Bainbridge on Mums Who Budget & Save, “and found there’s a 4 packlimit on toilet paper during this ‘shortage’.  Our store only had a few 4 roll Kleenex $7 packs which I had to succumb to due to 6 kids!”  An Aldi Mums Facebook group was filled with indignation.  “Panic buying causes hysteria,” observed one furious contributor.  “People who really need these products won’t be able to get them because of this madness.”

As tempting as it would be to see Australians as being idiosyncratic in this regard, other countries affected by COVID-19 have also gone on the toilet paper purchase spree.  Over the weekend, shoppers descended upon Costco, WinCo and Fred Meyer in Oregon on hearing word that COVID-19 cases had been found in the Portland area.  For David Dunstan, manager of Tigard WinCo foods the purchasing patterns seemed odd.  “Honestly – they’re just stocking up, preparing for the end of the world.”

In Japan, toilets for customers are replete with threatening language promising to punish the paper pinchers.  Restrooms have been closed.  The country had descended, wrote a hyperbolic correspondent for the Financial Times, “into Lord of the Flies-style depravity.”  A country proud of its chatty, multi-functional toilets, the envy of the world, is taking a battering in image.  The authorities, from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe down, are not deemed credible.  “On this matter,” went the view of one shopper as noted by the FT, “we cannot trust Abe.  He says Japan is self-sufficient in toilet paper, but anyone can see the shops are empty.”

In Hong Kong, toilet paper larceny has made a very public appearance.  Three masked men took some HK$1,600 worth of toilet paper last month – some 600 rolls in 50 packets in Mong Kok. “This is a senseless act,” a grave spokeswoman for the Wellcome store chain explained to journalists, “and we are shocked.”  The fact that the items were toilet paper would not necessarily lead to a lenient appraisal of the court. “Whether it is money or toilet paper being robbed,” opined barrister Albert Luk Wai, “that’s not the most important consideration by the court.”

Be it heists, panic buying, the emergence of pandemic pantries, the coronavirus phenomenon is itself becoming merely a part of various other outbreaks.  “Consumers’ irrational behaviour,” Allen Adamson of New York University’s Stern School of Business tells us tritely, “will certainly do more damage than reality will.”  The reaction to COVID-19 threatens a slowing economic growth, disrupting supply chains and perpetrating a shortage of necessaries.  But most disturbing of all, it has nourished the undergrowth of suspicion against fellow human and the authorities.

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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]

The most commonly reported mainstream media account of the creation of the Coronavirus suggests that it was derived from an animal borne microorganism found in a wild bat that was consumed by an ethnic Chinese resident of Wuhan. But there appears to be some evidence to dispute that in that adjacent provinces in China, where wild bats are more numerous, have not experienced major outbreaks of the disease. Because of that and other factors, there has also been considerable speculation that the Coronavirus did not occur naturally through mutation but rather was produced in a laboratory, possibly as a biological warfare agent.

Several reports suggest that there are components of the virus that are related to HIV that could not have occurred naturally. If it is correct that the virus had either been developed or even produced to be weaponized it would further suggest that its escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab and into the animal and human population could have been accidental. Technicians who work in such environments are aware that “leaks” from laboratories occur frequently.

There is, of course and inevitably, another theory. There has been some speculation that as the Trump Administration has been constantly raising the issue of growing Chinese global competitiveness as a direct threat to American national security and economic dominance, it might be possible that Washington has created and unleashed the virus in a bid to bring Beijing’s growing economy and military might down a few notches. It is, to be sure, hard to believe that even the Trump White House would do something so reckless, but there are precedents for that type of behavior. In 2005-9 the American and Israeli governments secretly developed a computer virus called Stuxnet, which was intended to damage the control and operating systems of Iranian computers being used in that country’s nuclear research program. Admittedly Stuxnet was intended to damage computers, not to infect or kill human beings, but concerns that it would propagate and move to infect computers outside Iran proved to be accurate as it spread to thousands of PCs outside Iran, in countries as far flung as China, Germany, Kazakhstan and Indonesia.

Inevitably there is an Israeli story that just might shed some light on what has been going on in China. Scientists at Israel’s Galilee Research Institute are now claiming that they will have a vaccine against coronavirus in a few weeks which will be ready for distribution and use within 90 days. The institute is claiming that it has been engaged in four years of research on avian coronavirus funded by Israel’s Ministries of Science & Technology and Agriculture. They are claiming that the virus is similar to the version that has infected humans, which has led to breakthroughs in development through genetic manipulation, but some scientists are skeptical that a new vaccine could be produced so quickly to prevent a virus that existed only recently. They also have warned that even if a vaccine is developed it would normally have to be tested for side effects, a process that normally takes over a year and includes using it on infected humans.

If one even considers it possible that the United States had a hand in creating the coronavirus at what remains of its once extensive biological weapons research center in Ft Detrick Maryland, it is very likely that Israel was a partner in the project. Helping to develop the virus would also explain how Israeli scientists have been able to claim success at creating a vaccine so quickly, possibly because the virus and a treatment for it were developed simultaneously.

In any event, there are definite political ramifications to the appearance of the coronavirus, and not only in China. In the United States President Donald Trump is already being blamed for lying about the virus and there are various scenarios in mainstream publications speculating over the possible impact on the election in 2020. If the economy sinks together with the stock market, it will reflect badly on Trump whether or not he is actually at fault. If containment and treatment of the disease itself in the United States does not go well, there could also be a considerable backlash, particularly as the Democrats have been promoting improving health care. One pundit argues, however, that disease and a sinking economy will not matter as long as there is a turnaround before the election, but a lot can happen in the next eight months.

And then there is the national security/foreign policy issue as seen from both Jerusalem and Washington. It is difficult to explain why coronavirus has hit one country in particular other than China very severely. That country is Iran, the often-cited enemy of both the U.S. and Israel. The number of Iran’s coronavirus cases continues to increase, with more positive tests confirmed among government officials last Saturday. There were 205 new coronavirus cases, bringing the government claimed total to 593 with 43 fatalities, though unofficial hospital reports suggest that the deaths are actually well over 100. That’s the highest number of deaths from the virus outside of China.

No less than five Iranian Members of Parliament have also tested positive amid a growing number of officials that have contracted the disease. Iran’s vice president Masoumeh Ebtekar and deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi had also previously been confirmed with the virus.

The usual suspects in the United States are delighted to learn of the Iranian deaths. Mark Dubowitz, Executive Director of the Washington-based but Israeli government connected Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) boasted on twitterTuesday that “Coronavirus has done what American economic sanctions could not: shut down non-oil exports.” An Iranian government spokesman responded that “It’s shameful and downright inhuman to cheer for a deadly Virus to spread – and enjoy seeing people suffer for it…” Dubowitz followed up with an additional taunt, that Tehran has “spread terrorism” in the Middle East and “now it’s spreading the coronavirus.”

So, you have your choice. Coronavirus occurred naturally, or it came out of a lab in China itself or even from Israel or the United States. If one suspects Israel and/or the United States, the intent clearly would have been to create a biological weapon that would damage two nations that have been designated as enemies. But the coronavirus cannot be contained easily and it is clear that many thousands of people will die from it. Unfortunately, as with Stuxnet, once the genie is out of the bottled it is devilishly hard to induce it to go back in.

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Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

As the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election campaign heats up, there is every chance that Donald Trump can become a one-term president as the popularity of Bernie Sanders increases despite the sabotage within his own Democrat Party against him. There still remains a strong possibility that Sanders can become the next president sitting in the White House. Sanders continues to grow mass appeal, with former Trump White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon even conceding last month that the Democrat candidate is a “populist,” even if it is different to that of Trump’s. Sanders appeals to the impoverished by directing the frustrations of Middle America to the ultrarich who are fighting tooth and nail to bring the U.S. to Western standards by providing free education and healthcare. This is in contrasts to Trump’s populism which redirects anger of Middle America’s increasing impoverishment to the so-called immigrant “invasion” coming from Latin America.

One of Trump’s main platforms for his seemingly ‘unlikely’ election win, as many so-called experts thought of it back in 2016, was to build a wall traversing the border between the U.S. and Mexico to make it even more difficult for illegal immigrants to enter the North American country. All the slurs and accusations of racism were not able to subdue Trump’s fever as many in Middle America believed they finally found a candidate that spoke their language, addressed their issues and provided a solution to the so-called problem of illegal immigrants “invading” their country. Trump of course knows that illegal immigrants are not the reason for the U.S. problems of de-industrialization, lack of job opportunities, unaffordability and poverty – but it was this rhetoric that projected him into what was an unexpected win for the presidency against Hillary Clinton.

With Sanders speaking of a new populism, not based on a so-called invasion from immigrants, but actually addressing the real issues of the U.S. political and economic system, it is likely that Trump will resort back to the fear of Latin American illegal immigrants to project him to the presidency. This of course may not be necessary in the likely case that the Democrats ignore the popularity of Sanders to go for a Hillary Clinton-like hack and establishment pawn like Joe Biden who will prove unpopular against Trump. None-the-less, Trump will not take chances and will begin using the refugee card, frightening U.S. voters with the threat of new flows coming from Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico and other countries.

Meanwhile the world’s focus right now is on the Greek-Turkish border where tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are trying to enter Greece on the orders of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with a high level of international solidarity going to the European country. However, there are stark differences between the migration crisis between the U.S. and Greece. Greece is an impoverished post-colonial country that was under Turkish occupation for over 400 years and does not have the means to support such large numbers.

Nor is Greece the reason for this migrant crisis as it had not invaded Afghanistan, where the majority of illegal migrants come from despite the incorrect reporting that they are Syrian, nor did Greece invade or apply economic sanctions on Pakistan, Iran, North Africa and Syria where the other illegal migrants are from. In the case of Latin America though, the U.S. is the key country in destabilizing the region and therefore has a responsibility to attend to the refugees that itself created. Although many in Middle America are impoverished, this is a result of their own leaderships economic policies, and rather the U.S. is the world’s richest country and has the means and capabilities of dealing with Latin American migrants it creates.

Non-the-less, as the so-called “invasion” of illegal immigrants has drastically decreased, Trump will be wanting to desperately destabilize Latin American countries to create an atmosphere of fear in the U.S. ahead of the presidential election to show voters that he is their only and sole defender whom they must elect in order to secure their future and safety. It worked in 2016 and he will be betting for it to work again later this year. Trump has already mentioned he has some kind of intentions of doing this during an address to the Latino Coalition Legislative Summit only yesterday.

“We’re with Venezuela all the way, and we’re doing a lot, and we have a lot planned,” said Trump, adding that

“the tragedy in Venezuela is a reminder that socialism and communism bring misery and heartache everywhere they’re tried,” prompting a cry of “gracias” from a member of the audience.

Trump has consistently applied devastating sanctions on Venezuela in an effort to force the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and in support of wannabe president Juan Guaidó.

However, these sanctions have had such a devastating effect on the Venezuelan economy that it has prompted many people from the country to seek a better life in the U.S. Trump has not hidden away from the fact that he has “a lot planned” for Venezuela, which only guarantees further misery in the country. Unlike Greece, the U.S. prompts illegal migration by destroying the very countries that these people come from. Not only does this destruction serve U.S. corporate interests in these countries, it will also serve Trump’s re-election campaign as there is a strong likelihood that a new immigration crisis will appear at the borders between Mexico and the U.S.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

The Trump regime’s so-called deal with the Taliban is intended to facilitate future talks with the US and its puppet regime in Kabul. 

It has nothing to do with assuring peace and stability to the war-torn country, nothing to do with ending US occupation — nothing to do with giving Afghanistan back to the Afghans, free from US control of their territory.

It’s not a peace or ceasefire deal. The so-called “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” is subterfuge — guaranteeing nothing to its long-suffering people because the US doesn’t operate this way, serving its own geopolitical interests by controlling and exploiting other nations.

The US came to Afghanistan to stay, permanent occupation planned, the same plan in all its war theaters, waged to transform nations into vassal states — ruled by installed puppet regimes subservient to US interests.

The Kabul regime was uninvolved in US/Taliban talks with no say on the signing document that included a prisoner swap.

When US-installed president Ashraf Ghani objected, saying he “made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners” as part of a prisoner swap a day after the agreement was signed in Doha, Qatar, fighting resumed.

A separate so-called Joint Declaration between the US and its Kabul puppet regime makes no mention of numbers of prisoners to be exchanged, saying the following:

“To create the conditions for reaching a political settlement and achieving a permanent, sustainable ceasefire, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will participate in a US-facilitated discussion with Taliban representatives on confidence-building measures, to include determining the feasibility of releasing significant numbers of prisoners on both sides.”

Failure to release about 5,000 Taliban prisoners as stipulated in the US agreement with its representatives could unravel the deal before the ink is dry.

On March 10, intra-Afghan dialogue is supposed to discuss prisoner swap arrangements. Ghani objected saying “(i)t is not the authority of the (US) to decide. (It’s) only a facilitator.”

On March 3, Trump spoke with Taliban leaders in Doha. A day later, Pentagon warplanes terror-bombed Taliban fighters in Nahr-e Saraj.

Reportedly their fighters killed 30 Afghan forces and four civilians in areas they control.

Before the February 29 Doha signing ceremony, the Taliban and Trump regime agreed to a week-long cessation of fighting.

Breached by resumption of violence, the fragile deal is unravelling much faster than anticipated.

It calls for reducing numbers of US and allied forces in the country in the coming months, withdrawing entirely in 14 months, including abandonment of Pentagon bases that cost billions of dollars to build and maintain.

It affirmed a phony US commitment to aid Afghan security forces prevent ISIS, al-Qaeda, and likeminded jihadist groups from operating in Afghanistan — groups the US created, supports, and deploys to combat theaters as proxy troops.

It permits continued Pentagon military operations with consent of the Afghan government on the phony pretext of combatting terrorism as necessary.

It prohibits use of force by the US and allied countries “against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs” — how the US operates time and again against targeted nations to control them.

Terms of so-called agreements the US signed with the Taliban and Kabul puppet regime aren’t in sync with each other.

Taliban officials won’t deal with the Kabul regime unless a prisoner swap agreed to with the US is fulfilled, what Ghani objects to.

Further complicating things is the disputed September 2019 presidential election Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah both claim to have won — the Trump regime yet to recognize one figure over the other.

Resumed fighting between Taliban fighters and government forces may continue as long as terms agreed to in Doha aren’t fulfilled.

In response, the Pentagon said it’ll “defend Afghan forces” by attacking Taliban positions.

The US/Taliban agreement doesn’t obligate its fighters to cease combatting government forces.

Trump wants concluded whatever will help his reelection campaign.

Claiming an end to over 18 years of war in Afghanistan and bringing home US troops in whatever numbers could help his chances even if conflict is far from resolved.

A resumption of fighting on the ground along with Pentagon terror-bombing of Taliban controlled areas could unravel the Doha deal altogether.

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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.

When Asad Dandia received a friend request on Facebook, he didn’t think much of it. 

The college student was active with a religious-based charity, so it was common for people to reach out on the social media platform and offer to donate food and money.

Dandia and the man also had several friends in common. So when he read a message requesting advice on how to become a better, practising Muslim, he willingly responded.

Over the next few months, the two became friends. Dandia even invited him to his family home, where he met his parents and ate with them.

Once, he even spent the night.

But what Dandia didn’t realise was that the man hadn’t reached out to better himself, make new friends or help the community. He would later confess that he was paid $1000 a month to spy on Dandia for the New York Police Department.

The informant, it later turned out, was part of a wide network of infiltrators working at the behest of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office – monitoring and surveilling the Muslim community in New York City and New Jersey.

“We were rattled and we were shaken,” Dandia, now a graduate student at Columbia University, told Middle East Eye.

Bloomberg was mayor of New York City between 2002-2013, during which he presided over the much-maligned stop-and-frisk policy – which targeted African Americans and Latinos – and the surveillance of Muslims.

Like Dandia, hundreds of thousands of Muslims from New York and New Jersey are still coming to terms with Bloomberg’s discriminatory practises that left a legacy of distrust between communities and contempt for the police.

Dandia subsequently received help from the City University of New York Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility (CLEAR) project and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and he joined a class-action suit against the city for unlawful surveillance.

Bloomberg’s short-lived run for the White House has left those impacted by his policies troubled, wondering how he could have even been considered as a Democratic presidential nominee.

Would-be militants

Under his direction as mayor, the NYPD’s Demographics Unit – built with the help of the CIA – secretly mapped the Muslim community, sending informants to mosques to watch religious sermons, to cafes to listen in on conversations and even on white water rafting trips to look for would-be militants.

Not only did the programme that began after September 11 unlawfully target one community, it failed to provide a single criminal lead, internal audits of the NYPD have revealed.

Ayisha Irfan, a New Yorker who studied at Brooklyn College in the mid-2000s, remembers being told as an 18-year-old to “watch what you say and who you trust because there are police informants at the university”.

The fear of being watched meant that Muslim youth were forced to avoid congregating, participating in social or civic life, and inevitably, avoiding each other.

“When it all began to come out following the Associated Press expose, we found benign details of our college lives in government documents,” Irfan says.

“They even wrote down that a group of Muslims go to Dunkin Donuts after Jumah (Friday prayers).”

While Bloomberg has apologised for the stop and frisk policy that targeted mostly black and brown people, he has since doubled down on the surveillance programme, arguing “that it was just after 9/11 and everyone was petrified of another terrorist attack”.

Current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is one of the few establishment politicians to criticise the programme, recently calling it a “failure”.

“As the person who ended Bloomberg’s racist and counterproductive Muslim surveillance programme, I will tell you what he won’t. It actually made us less safe,” said de Blasio.

“It bred resentment and distrust, just when we most needed to bring our police and our Muslim community together.”

The legacy of surveillance

In the Astoria neighbourhood of Queens, a New York City borough with a thriving Arab and Muslim population, Zohran Mamdani says the impact of Bloomberg’s surveillance policies still persist.

He recalled how the police would note down the time boys gathered at the local park to play soccer.

“We had the Demographics Unit go up and down Steinway Street surveilling Muslims, whether they were in barbershops, grocery stores, cafes, hookah bars, masjids; it doesn’t matter where we were.

“If there was even one Muslim in an area, it was considered cause for suspicion,” Mamdani, who is a candidate for New York State Assembly, told MEE.

“This is the kind of legacy the people have had to live with, [the idea] that we should not build any type of collective because the response of the state will be to both surveil and imprison us.”

Bloomberg has repeatedly downplayed the scale and impact of the surveillance policy of his administration.

In an interview with PBS in late February, Bloomberg said his office had “sent some officers into some mosques to listen to the sermon that the imam gave. The courts ruled it was exactly within the law and that’s the kind of thing we should be doing.”

He has also doubled down on justifying the singling out of the Muslim community.

“All of the people came from the same place and all that came were from a place they happened to be one religion. And if they’d been another religion, we would’ve done the same thing,” he added.

But no court has ever ruled the programme legal; several lawsuits were filed against New York City’s programme.

In the Raza v. City of New York class-action suit, which Dandia joined, the final settlement approved by the court in March 2017 “established a number of reforms designed to protect New York Muslims and others from discriminatory and unjustified surveillance”.

Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a national civil rights organisation, described Bloomberg’s assertions as a “fantasy”.

“What happened in New York City was a massive civil rights breach that caused lasting harm to countless innocent American Muslims. Mayor Bloomberg needs to correct the record immediately,” Khera said.

Muslim community has failed to organise itself

In Harlem, the northern half of Manhattan, many black Muslims have had to endure both the stop and frisk policy that targeted African Americans and Latinos, as well as the surveillance of Muslims.

Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, from the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood Inc, in Harlem, says that the Muslim community failed to organise itself and exact a political consequence for Bloomberg’s policies.

“Any other group who had been treated in that way, they would have exacted a political consequence for his statements.”

Abdur-Rashid argued that as someone running for president, Bloomberg’s refusal to apologise or make amends for the surveillance programme said a lot about the place of Muslims in the imagination of presidential candidates.

“Obviously, he doesn’t see this as a liability because Muslims are still seen across the US with suspicion,” he says.

Ayiesha Irfan agrees. “Apparently a million Muslims placed on an unlawful, secret surveillance programme, and weaponising the biggest police force in the country against Muslim does not merit even an apology,” she says.

Dandia says he is not interested in a half-hearted apology. He wants reparations.

“Now that Bloomberg is out of the race, he ought to reflect over the enormous harm he has caused to communities of colour during his time as mayor of New York, and he must offer material reparations to all those he harmed.

“He is one of the richest men on the planet. He is more than capable of doing that. He should also meet with Muslims and ask them: how can I serve you?” he said.

“However, Bloomberg endorsing Biden shows that he is not committed to any structural change or reparations, and prefers the same establishment politics that he benefited from at our expense.”

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Empires of the Steppes Fuel Erdogan Khan’s Dreams

By Pepe Escobar, March 05, 2020

The latest installment of the interminable Syria tragedy could be interpreted as Greece barely blocking a European “invasion” by Syrian refugees. The invasion was threatened by President Erdogan even as he refused the EU’s puny “offer you can refuse” bribe of only one billion euros.

Well, it’s more complicated than that. What Erdogan is in fact weaponizing is mostly economic migrants – from Afghanistan to the Sahel – and not Syrian refugees.

Erdogan Tells Putin: “We’re in Idlib to Protect the People There.”

By Eric Zuesse, March 05, 2020

According to Middle East Eye, on Saturday February 29th, reporting under their headline “Erdogan asks Putin to stand aside as Ankara deals with Syrian government forces”, Erdogan said in Istanbul that on Friday the 28th he had told Putin (presumably by phone or some other remote means) that, “We did not go there [into Syria’s Idlib Province] because we were invited by” Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad; but instead, “We went there because we were invited by the people of [Idlib Province of] Syria. We don’t intend to leave before the people of Syria say ‘okay, this is done’.” Thus, “Erdogan said he asked Putin to leave Turkey ‘to do what is necessary’ with the Syrian government.”

Video: Syrian Armed Forces Teach ‘2nd Strongest NATO Army’ Painful Lesson in Idlib

By South Front, March 04, 2020

Units of the Russian Military Police entered the town of Saraqib in eastern Idlib following the second liberation of the town from al-Qaeda terrorists and Turkish forces. According to the Russian military, the deployment took place at 5:00pm local time on March 2 and was intended to provide security and allow traffic through the M4 and M5 highways. In fact, the Russians came to put an end to Turkish attempts to capture the town and cut off the M5 highway in this area.

Turkey in Syria: Down a Blind Alley in an Unwinnable War?

By Tony Cartalucci, March 03, 2020

Fighting in northern Syria has escalated as Syrian forces retake the last remaining bastions of foreign-funded militants and encircle, cut-off, and in some cases catch in the crossfire their Turkish backers.

Turkey had been making some promising steps in the right direction since Washington’s disastrous proxy regime-change war in Syria began unraveling – yet it still maintains a problematic position inside Syrian territory, backing what are unequivocally terrorists and obstructing Syria’s sovereign right to recover and restore order within its own borders.

Turkey Asks NATO to Join Its War Against Syria and Russia

By Eric Zuesse, March 02, 2020

The spokesperson for the Islamist party of Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan has called upon all of NATO to go to war against Syria for Syria’s having killed dozens of Turkey’s troops in order for Syria to defeat Turkey’s invasion and military occupation of Syria’s Idlib Province, which borders on Turkey. Going to war against Syria would mean going to war also against Russia, which is in Syria to protect Syria’s sovereignty over its own territory.

Turkey Sacrifices Their Own Troops to Protect Al-Qaeda?

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, March 02, 2020

After 33 Turkish troops were killed in a Syrian army offensive on February 27 amidst the current Russia-backed campaign to liberate Idlib, Erdogan responded by laying the blame entirely on Russia and Syria – successfully avoiding all mention of the uncomfortable fact that Turkey has been protecting radical terror networks not only in Idlib but across Syria as a whole for years.

During this time, Islamist forces within Turkey favorable to Assad’s overthrow have been attempting to play a complex game of geopolitics for which they are totally unqualified.

Turkey and Syria Are at War Without a Declaration of War

By Paul Antonopoulos, March 02, 2020

Although Turkey has supported anti-Syrian government forces, especially terrorist organizations  like ISIS and the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra and Turkistan Islamic Party, since the very beginning of the Syrian War in 2011, no declaration of war has ever been announced between the two neighboring countries. Russia became militarily involved in 2015 and its intervention saw the quick defeat of ISIS and the recovery of large swathes of the country back into Syrian government control, as well as a partnership emerging with Turkey to discuss the Syrian crisis.

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It’s been two years to the day since disgraced former military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, were allegedly found on a park bench in Salisbury, near unconscious and apparently very unwell.

A lot has been said about the unanswered questions revolving around the incident. But perhaps the best of way of demonstrating the peculiarity of the alleged situation is to simply relate, in full, the “official version”.

Here it is:

• Sergei Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer, was found guilty of spying for the UK in 2006, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
• In 2010 he was released and traded to the United Kingdom as part of a spy swap. Having settled in the UK Sergei lived a quiet and comfortable life of retirement, so far as we know
• Eight years later, in early 2018, with a Presidential election looming and just weeks before Russia was due to host the FIFA World Cup, Vladimir Putin decided to assassinate him for as yet obscure reasons.
• The GU, Russia’s military intelligence unit, dispatched two of their elite officers, who proceeded to fly direct from Moscow under aliases they had allegedly already employed and using Russian passports.
• These alleged assassins carried with them two perfume bottles full of “Novichok”, allegedly one of the deadliest nerve agents ever devised. This would be enough to kill around 800,000 people.
• On arriving in the UK these highly-trained covert agents book a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, and the next day, March 3, they travel to Salisbury by train, allegedly to recon the area, then return to London. They are apparently observed by CCTV camera’s the entire time.
• The day following, March 4, they again travel to Salisbury, this time the master assassins walk to Skripal’s house and somehow “smear” the liquidNovichok on the handle of his front door.
• No eye-witness, photograph or piece of CCTV footage has ever been made publicly available to show either of these two men anywhere in the area of Sergei Skripal’s house.
• The whereabouts of the opened bottle of poison have never been established.
• Having applied the poison, the two highly trained assassins do two things before returning to London. 1) They drop their second, unopened, bottle of novichok (presumably enough to kill approx 400,000 people) in a charity donation bin, rather than destroying it or taking it back to Russia. 2) They stop by an antiques store to browse.
• The two assassins leave the country that afternoon, flying direct to Moscow, without knowing if their alleged target is dead, and again making no effort to conceal their origins.
• Despite both handling the poison, and somehow carrying enough of it back to contaminate their hotel room, neither of the men – nor any of the staff, train passengers or passersby who come into contact with them – ever become sick, even though only 0.2mg of Novichok is an allegedly lethal dose.
• Later that afternoon, Sergei and Yulia Skripal are found “almost unconscious”on a park bench in Salisbury town centre. It is claimed this was due to contact with the Novichok smeared on Sergei’s door handle, though reports originally stated neither he nor his daughter had returned to the house, and the timing seems to make it unlikely they did
• The person who found them was the most senior nurse in the British Army (likely in the area as part of Toxic Dagger, the British Military’s landmark chemical weapons training exercise which began Feb 20th and ran on until March 12th).
• The nurse and her family administer “emergency aid” to the two alleged poisoning victims. Neither she nor anyone else on the scene, nor any of the first responders, ever experience any symptoms of nerve agent poisoning. Neither do any of the other people the Skripal’s came into contact with that day.
• DS Nick Bailey, a CID officer is in contact with the Skripals or their home at this time and subsequently becomes ill. It has never been stated how exactly he was exposed. It was initially reported he was a first responder to the scene, but that story was changed and it was later claimed he visited the Skripal hpouse. Despite the alleged lethality of novichok in even very minute doses, Bailey is fit to return home after 18 days.
• Porton Down, the British government’s chemical weapons research centre, is brought in to help identify what chemical – if any – the Skripals/Bailey were exposed to.
• Within a month they release a statement claiming the poison was “a novichok like agent”, but that they could not pinpoint its origin. How they were able to test for a (at the time) theoretical chemical without having a sample to test against, has never been explained.
• Porton Down is 8 minutes away from Salisbury by car.
• Nearly four months later, in late June of 2018, Charlie Rowley finds the unopened perfume bottle a full of novichok (whether he bought it from a charity shop or found it in a bin is unclear, both stories have been reported). Upon using the perfume Rowley’s partner, Dawn Sturgess, falls ill. Later that day Rowley also falls ill. Sturgess dies in hospital two weeks later. But Rowley survives. Making him the fourth person in this narrative to survive exposure to an agent lethal in doses as small as 0.2mg.
• Sergei Skripal and Julia both recovered and allegedly chose to live secluded lives. Sergei has not appeared in public at all since allegedly being found on that park bench. Yulia made one brief press statement. Their current whereabouts are totally unknown. Their family in Russia have apparently been denied all access to them. DS Bailey was initially also keen to maintain his privacy but has subsequently given at least one interview some while after the event.

This is the UK government’s version of what happened. Unvarnished and unsatirised. None of it is disputed, exaggerated or speculative.

If you can see any unanswered questions, logical gaps or peculiar coincidences…you are likely a Russian bot.

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The news of Britain’s economic and political well-being just gets worse and worse as each week parades by. There simply isn’t any Brexit sunlight at the end of any tunnel to bring us news of renewed prosperity and optimism. Project fear is now project reality. Leaving aside the collapse of inward investment, the worst productivity in over 100 years, an emphatic fall in the currency and other solid economic indicators that Brexit is causing real problems to our future – there’s some more news out – and to be fair, it’s just the same old stuff.

NHS

Mass resignations after the Brexit vote have compounded health staffing shortages. Nearly 13,000 EU nationals have left the NHS since the Brexit referendum, including well over 5,000 nurses. Recent figures from the Nursing and Midwifery Council show that the number of nurses arriving from the EU dropped by 87% from 2016-17 to 2017-18. It’s simply not possible to overstate what a disaster this is turning out to be.

And, as the NHS emerges slowly out of its now normal annual crisis of the winter months, it hardly needs saying that an epidemic will not be coped with, no matter what the government says. Appeals by the government for retired doctors to step forward to help combat the Coronavirus crisis is not only desperate, it jeopardises their own health – you know, being in the highest mortality group of the virus and all that.

Heavens above

British attempts to rival the European’s Galileo satellite navigation system – hailed as a symbol of post-Brexit independence – has fallen flat on its face after a series of disagreements over the costly space project.

The government had intended to rival the EU’s Galileo system, which will have 24 satellites orbiting the earth to serve satellite navigation systems, as well as high-level encryption services for public service authorities and the military.

One of Johnson’s first acts in office was to back the proposals. “Let’s get going now on our own position navigation and timing satellite and earth observation systems – UK assets orbiting in space with all the long-term strategic and commercial benefits for this country,” he said.

However, space industry insiders have been claiming that there was little understanding of what was actually involved and the Financial Times reports that the costs have risen from approximately £3 billion to £5 billion.

“The problem is that this programme was launched in the political environment of Brexit, but there has been no discussion among stakeholders about what the requirement is,” one space industry expert said.

Work harder

A Tory MP has called for the government to review the EU’s working time directive after Brexit to fill labour expected shortages.

Appearing on the BBC’s Politics South West programme, the Conservative MP for North Cornwall was asked about how the government will solve the problem of shortage of workers once the Brexit transition period ends and the new points-based immigration system is introduced.

Mann admitted that the impact Priti Patel’s proposals will have on the workforce is “one of the biggest challenges has at the moment”. Mann went on to explain how the problem could be solved – “I genuinely think we need to have a serious think looking at the working time directive.” It was then pointed out by the host that these laws were there to protect vulnerable people from excessive hours. Ahh, well, there is that.

Peugeot to sue the government

Peugeot could demand compensation from the British government to keep its Vauxhall factory in Ellesmere Port open in the event of a bad Brexit deal, its chief executive has said.

Carlos Tavares, the head of Peugeot’s owner, PSA, said the carmaker’s European workers should not be forced to bear the costs of “customs barriers” between the UK and the EU when the transition period finishes at the end of the year.

The Ellesmere Port factory in Cheshire, employs about 1,000 people and all of their jobs are now on the line.

Far-right resurgence now mainstream

Brexit is causing far-right views on immigration and identity to be drawn into the mainstream, a report has warned this week.

Research by Hope Not Hate found that Britain’s departure from the EU has fuelled discussions of loyalty, elitism and patriotism, “drawing people who might have otherwise have been attracted to the far right back into the mainstream right”.

“The blurring of these boundaries has seen mainstream politicians and commentators using language and rhetoric that was previously found only on the far right [and] seen anti-Muslim prejudice, demeaning rhetoric on migrants and refugees and notions of a ‘cultural war’ against social liberalism increasingly being adopted,” the group’s annual report said.

British retailers

This week, the Retail Gazette confirmed that British retailers have to act in order to save their businesses. Multiple threats to retailers as a direct result of Brexit come from additional paperwork, increased delivery times, currency fluctuations, tariffs and what they see as their biggest problem – staffing.

“Retail is one of the many sectors that relies disproportionately on international employees, the majority of whom are from the EU and who have previously been able to enter the UK without any visa or requirement for particular qualifications or measurable skills,” said Shara Pledger, an associate at Latitude Law.

“This isn’t to say this workforce isn’t skilled, just that the government doesn’t treat it as such.” Pledger went on to warn that – “The government’s points-based immigration system is set to have a significant impact on the retail industry.”

Forms, forms and more forms

Also, this week comes the news that the government now face having to hire and train up 50,000 people in the next six months to process Brexit paperwork for border operations.

But experts have warned it will be a challenge to train enough people in time to be competent in the complexity of customs declarations and the second layer of red tape involving entry and exit declaration forms that are mandatory for trading with the EU.

The Road Haulage Association has warned that the number of declaration forms for tariffs alone will rocket from the current 50m a year to 200-250m a year.

In addition, the exit and entry forms introduced after the 9/11 terror attack in New York to ensure safety on ferries and planes will involve another 100-125m forms being processed every year.

And the extra taxpayer cash required for that – just £1.5billion – each and every year.

UN -“post-Brexit exports could fall by $32 billion“

Potential losses under a “no-deal” Brexit from tariffs are estimated at between $11.4 billion and $16 billion of current exports – and the new study says ‘Non-Tariff Measures’ would double those losses.

The study also projects that even if a “standard” free trade agreement were to be signed by the parties, the UK’s exports could still drop by nine per cent, a cost of $32bn.

This is because standard trade deals normally focus on reducing or eliminating tariffs rather than NTMs and Britain has already indicated it will diverge from the EU in terms of regulation.

As the EU market accounts for 46 per cent of the UK’s exports, a no-deal Brexit would deal a major blow to the UK’s economy, according to the study by the Geneva-based agency.

Too few cooks spoil the…

EU citizens make up about a quarter of the 3 million workers in Britain’s hospitality industry, the country’s fourth-biggest employer, according to a KPMG report just out. In London, about 75% of waiting staff and 25% of chefs are from the EU.

Since the Brexit vote, annual immigration from within continental Europe has fallen by more than half.

In response, the Home Office said – “Employers will need to join our mission to level-up skills and economic growth across the whole UK so that we deliver a high-skill, high-wage and highly productive economy.” No-one understands what that means in the hospitality industry when the shortage is so great with no-one to replace the losses. Paying upwards of £26,000 to a waiter might sound good news to waiter’s but not having any restaurants to work in might prove problematic if they all go bust.

Mark Jones, the chief executive of Carluccio’s which runs a chain of Italian restaurants, said he is “hugely disappointed” by the proposed immigration changes. Jones said more than two-thirds of his employees currently come from the EU.

But, but…

Blue passports can be obtained from next month. Embattled Home Secretary, Priti Patel – still clinging on to her job by the tips of her talons said: “Leaving the European Union gave us a unique opportunity to restore our national identity and forge a new path in the world.”

So, we rejected a British manufacturer and went for a European-designed, polish printed version where the profits are routed through Denmark to the bank of a munitions manufacturer in Paris. Daily Express readers were incandescent with rage over this and are demanding the passports are made in old Blighty. In fact, 96 per cent of them in their own poll conducted by the newspaper to their own readers agreed-  according to a completely unbiased journalist.

One devastated reader said – “For the love of mercy, absolutely, how can we be a sovereign nation and NOT produce our own passports!!?? HOW?”

The British company that lost out has now made operational cuts of £20million as the news saw its share price plunge. Soon afterwards, the CEO Martin Sutherland, said there would need to be a big shakeup including a reorganisation of the workforce and then promptly resigned.

Oh and don’t mention the words – ‘farmers’ or ‘fishermen’ – because the government just confirmed this week that they mean nothing to the UK and will be sacrificed in trade negotiations.

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Featured image is from TP

The largest deployment of troops across the Atlantic in 25 years entered its main phase last weekend within the framework of the Defender Europe 2020 exercise. The scale of NATO’s provocative military exercise underscores how far advanced the preparations for war are 75 years after the end of World War II.

The United States and 18 other countries are deploying large contingents of troops from America and Western Europe to the Russian border within a short period of time. In total, around 37,000 soldiers are participating in the exercise, which is to continue until June. Their objective is Poland and the Baltic states.

The freight ship Endurance docked in Bremerhaven last week together with four other vessels carrying US tanks and other heavy military equipment. The US alone is deploying 20,000 troops and their armaments to Europe.

Stand-alone infrastructure is being established to facilitate the troop movements. The German army has established a central transport control centre, set up tent camps on military training grounds, and deployed mobile refuelling stations. Although the kilometres-long convoys are generally on the move during the night, they are causing significant disruption to transport.

The German army has remained silent on the cost of the exercise. Referring to sources in the army, the Tagesspiegel newspaper estimates that the cost will be €2.5 million in Germany alone. “This needs analysis by the parts of the armed forces involved based on the deployment of equipment and personnel, accommodation, and the provision of infrastructure. Additionally, further costs could arise,” wrote the Tagesspiegel .

A spokesman for the US military stated that the countries involved would invest in military infrastructure. As an example, he referred to Lithuania, which like Germany is investing in the expansion of its railway network for heavy cargo.

Of the 37,000 soldiers from 19 countries involved in the exercise, more than half, 20,000, come from the United States. 4,000 German soldiers are taking part. In addition, police units are protecting the transportation of materials. Alongside around 33,000 vehicles and containers, some 450 tanks will deploy to the Russian border. Over 100 rail transportation trips will take place. Overall, the troops will move through seven countries and use 14 airports and ports.

Germany is the main hub of the exercise. In the first phase, which runs until April, American weaponry and military equipment will be deployed in Germany, Belgium, and Poland. In stage two, which will run partially in parallel until May, troops will be deployed through Germany to Poland. In the final phase prior to the main exercise all remaining troops will be deployed from Germany to Poland and the Baltic states. The final exercise will take place in Bergen on the Lüneburger moors, Germany, at the end of May, before the withdrawal of all forces is completed by the end of July.

The manoeuvre builds on military exercises held well into the 1990s in Western Europe, some of which involved up to 130,000 troops. Now, for the first time, such a large-scale exercise is being carried out right up to the Russian border and on former Soviet territory.

The manoeuvre is designed to send a message of deterrence, according to the German and US militaries. Lt. Gen. Martin Schelleis commented on this, “The reality is that Russia, with its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, provoked this development. But Russia is not the pretext for the exercise; military capacity can only be rebuilt and maintained over an extended period of time.”

NATO’s European supreme commander Gen. Tod. D. Wolters described the exercise as a “platform to strengthen the readiness and interoperability of allied forces.”

Like the Sabre Strike exercise in Lithuania in 2017 and Trident Juncture in 2018, the current manoeuvre aims to test the capacity to rapidly deploy combat-ready troops and equipment to the Russian border, before the “alliance case” is put to the test in a series of combat simulations.

The advanced character of the preparations for war with Russia was underscored last week when US Defence Secretary Mark Esper participated in a war game at the US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, during which the firing of nuclear weapons against Russia was simulated.

The US military stated that the war game involved an unexpected incident in Europe during which a war is being waged on Russia, and Russia decides to fire a small-scale nuclear weapon on a location in NATO territory.

Two exercises will take place in Latvia on the border with Russia during the early part of this year. A Swift Response Training involving Latvian and international troops will run between April and May. Military units from the United States, Britain, Italy, and Spain will practice aerial manoeuvres in case of a sudden threat.

However, it is not only the Trump administration that is speaking the language of war. Germany and the European powers are attempting to emerge militarily from the shadow of the United States.

This applies above all to Germany. In his speech at the recent Munich Security Conference, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier complained that Russia had annexed Crimea without any regard for international law. Moscow “used military force and the violent redrawing of borders on the European continent as legitimate policy options.”

“Observing is insufficient,” declared Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany’s defence minister, who spoke in Munich on the topic of “Defending the West.” On this issue, she stated her “full agreement” with French President Emmanuel Macron, who called at the Munich Security Conference for a more independent European military policy. The Europeans must not simply “describe their weaknesses, comment on the actions of others or complain about them, but also conduct much more strategic dialogue in Europe and do something concrete for our security.” Germany in particular is “obliged to develop a greater capacity to act and a willingness to take action.”

All political parties in Germany support this drive to war. The formerly pacifist Greens are no exception to this. With their typical demagogy, they have sought to turn events on their head and present the current NATO exercise as a contribution to disarmament. Green party defence spokesman Tobias Lindner stated that one successful outcome of the exercise would be that a permanent stationing of more US troops in Germany and Europe would not be required.

Russia, which was given the assurance 30 years ago when Germany was reunified that NATO would not expand into eastern Europe and certainly not onto former Soviet territory, has responded with alarm to the latest provocation. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov remarked, “Of course we will respond. We can’t ignore developments that cause us concern. But we will respond in a way that does not create any unnecessary risk.”

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Featured image: U.S. Marines run to firing positions during live-fire training in Jordan [Credit: Marine Corps, Staff Sgt. Dengrier M. Baez]

More politically dependent than almost all other industries, arms manufacturers play for keeps in the nation’s capital. They target ads and events sponsorships at decision makers while hiring insiders and military stars to lobby on their behalf.

Activist and academic Tamara Lorincz recently posted a photo of an F35 ad in a bus shelter in front of Parliament Hill. US weapons giant Lockheed Martin is pushing hard to win a $19 billion contract to supply the Canadian air force with a fleet of new fighter jets.

To gain a share of the public funds on offer arms companies target ads at political and military leaders, promoting their products in washrooms and bus shelters where Department of National Defence (DND) and Canadian Forces (CF) officials congregate. Rideau Institute founder Steven Staples pointed out that “you can’t walk around in Ottawa without tripping over some arms dealer on Spark Street.”

Arms sellers also sponsor talks and exhibits attended by Ottawa insiders. They promote their brand at the Canadian War Museum, Gatineau-Ottawa airshow, Ottawa Chamber of Commerce, Conference of Defense Associations, etc.

Beyond promoting their wares in the nation’s capital, companies advertise aggressively in publications read by Ottawa insiders such as iPolitics, Ottawa Business Journal and Hill Times. “Today’s Morning Brief is brought to you by Canada’s Combat Ship Team,” noted a regular iPolitics ad. “Lockheed Martin Canada is leading a team of BAE Systems, CAE, L3 Technologies, MDA and Ultra Electronics to deliver the Royal Canadian Navy’s future fleet of surface combatants.” Their ads also foot much of the bill for journals read by military officials such as the Canadian Defence Review, Canadian Naval Review and Esprit de Corps.

Arms companies’ constantly lobby MPs and DND officials. In a “12-Month Lobbying Activity Search” of the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada Lockheed Martin, CAE, Bombardier, General Dynamics, Raytheon, BAE, Boeing and Airbus Defence were listed dozens of times. Lockheed Martin’s name alone appeared 40 times in a recent search.

To facilitate access to government officials, international arms makers maintain offices in Ottawa. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE, General Dynamics, L-3 Communications, Airbus, United Technologies, Rayethon, etc. all have offices in Canada’s capital and most of them are a few blocks from Parliament.

A sales pitch carries more weight when it comes from a friend, CF “star” or experienced veteran. As a result, arms companies contract former CF and DND leaders to lobby on their behalf. Long-time Project Ploughshares campaigner Kenneth Epps explains: “there are many cases of government officials who, very early after retiring, become lobbyists or advocates of certain types of equipment or representatives of particular companies. They come from government and know the ins and outs of how government decisions are made, who in government to contact and what arguments might be useful to advocate for certain types of equipment.”

In October 2017 Lockheed Martin contracted retired Air Force commander Andre Deschamps to lobby for military contracts while Irving Shipbuilding hired former vice-admiral James King to push for Arctic and offshore patrol ship contracts. In 1983 three leading DND bureaucrats set up CFN Consultants. A late 1980s CFN brochure highlighted its “in-depth knowledge of Canadian government and military requirements, military specifications, contracting procedures and associated budgetary considerations.” Headquartered two blocks from Parliament, CFN Consultants remains dominated by retired military leaders.

But contracting former CF/DND as lobbyists is a half measure. Some arms firms offer executive positions to retired CF leaders. In 2013 former deputy commander at NORAD and commander of NATO forces in Libya, Charles Bouchard was appointed “country lead for Lockheed Martin Canada” in a bid to convince Ottawa to purchase its F-35 jets. Four years later L3 Technologies appointed Major General Richard Foster to oversee its Canadian business. The press release announcing its hiring of the former commander of the RCAF and deputy commander of the Joint Operations Command highlighted “his extensive military experience and work with foreign governments.” In 2012 former Navy commodore Kelly Williams became General Dynamics Canada’s senior director of strategy and government relations while three weeks after Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie retired as Chief of Transformation for the CF, CGI Group appointed him to lead an Ottawa-based business unit seeking to “serve the Canadian Forces around the globe.”

It’s not only CF leaders who use their public sector careers as a springboard to lucrative arms industry positions. Weapons makers often hire top bureaucrats who were formerly responsible for arms procurement. Two weeks after stepping down as a deputy minister of defence in 2017 — after years of procurement work — John Turner was appointed vice president of operations at arms contractor PAL Aerospace. In 2011 CGI Group hired 12-year DND veteran Ken Taylor as vice-president of cyber security in Canada. A CGI Group press release noted: “In his new role, Ken will work closely with both government and commercial clients as part of the newly formed Canadian Defence, Public Safety and Intelligence business unit under the leadership of Lieutenant-General (retired) Andrew Leslie.” (Leslie was later Justin Trudeau’s Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.)

The CF-leader-to-arms-executive pipeline is important to the upper echelon of the military. In 2008 columnist Don Martin pointed out that “dozens of retired officers pocket salaries they could never have dreamed of as soldiers.”

The prospect of a lucrative post-retirement industry position increases the likelihood that CF leaders identify the military’s interests with arms makers. The ‘rent a general’ pipeline strengthens interest in expensive new weaponry and opposition to arms control measures. Since many Canadian weapons companies are branch plants of US firms, lucrative post-retirement positions also increase CF leaders’ support of the US military-industrial complex.

To weaken militarism, it is imperative to reduce the financial benefits sloshing around the system. Senior CF and DND officials should be restricted from lobbying for at least five years after leaving the public service and other measures ought to be adopted to weaken the link between the military hierarchy and arms firms.

In the meantime, activists in Ottawa should follow Lorincz’ lead and ‘correct’ arms industry ads. She posted a sign on top of the Lockheed Martin ad outside Parliament noting, “F35 Climate Disaster: Green Jobs Not War Jobs!”

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All images in this article are from the author

There was this moment during the State of the Union Address that I can’t stop thinking about.

When President Trump spoke to army wife Amy Wiliams during his speech and told her he’d arranged her husband’s return home from Afghanistan as a “special surprise,” it was difficult to watch.

Sgt. Townsend Williams then descended the stairs to reunite with his family after seven months of deployment. Congress cheered. A military family’s reunion — with its complicated feelings that are typically handled in private or on a base — was used for an applause line.

That gimmick was the only glimpse many Americans will get of the human reality of our wars overseas. There is no such window into the lives or suffering of people in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, or beyond.

That’s unacceptable. And so is the myth that Trump is actually ending the wars.

The U.S. has reached a deal with the Taliban to remove 3,400 of the 12,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan, with the pledge to withdraw more if certain conditions are met. That’s a long overdue first step, as U.S. officials are finally recognizing the war is a disaster and are negotiating an exit.

But taking a step back reveals a bigger picture in which, from West Africa to Central Asia, Trump is expanding and deepening the War on Terror — and making it deadlier.

Far from ending the wars, U.S. airstrikes in Somalia and Syria have skyrocketed under Trump, leading to more civilian casualties in both countries. In Somalia, the forces U.S. operations are supposedly targeting have not been defeated after 18 years of war. It received little coverage in the U.S., but the first week of this year saw a truck bombing in Mogadishu that killed more than 80 people.

Everywhere, ordinary people, people just like us except they happen to live in other countries, pay the price of these wars. Last year saw over 10,000 Afghan civilian casualties — the sixth year in a row to reach those grim heights.

And don’t forget, 2020 opened with Trump bringing the U.S. to the brink of a potentially catastrophic war with Iran. And he continues to escalate punishing sanctions on the country, devastating women, children, the elderly, and other vulnerable people.

Trump is not ending wars, but preparing for more war. Over the past year, he has deployed 14,000 more troops in the Middle East — beyond the tens of thousands already there.

If this seems surprising, it’s in part because the problem has been bipartisan. Indeed, many congressional Democrats have actually supported these escalations.

In December, 188 House Democrats joined Republicans in passing a nearly $740 billion military budget that continues the wars. They passed the budget after abandoning anti-war measures put forward by California Representative Barbara Lee and the precious few others trying to rein in the wars.

It’s worth remembering that State of the Union visual, of Congress rising in unison and joining the president in applause for his stunt with the Williams family. Because there has been nearly that level of consensus year after year in funding, and expanding, the wars.

Ending them will not be easy. Too many powerful interests — from weapons manufacturers to politicians — are too invested. But ending the wars begins with rejecting the idea that real opposition will come from inside the White House.

As with so many other issues — like when Trump first enacted the Muslim Ban and people flocked to airports nationwide in protest, or the outpouring against caging children at the border — those of us who oppose the wars need to raise our voices, and make the leaders follow.

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Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported the following:

“Michael Bloomberg plans to stay in the presidential race until after the results of Super Tuesday primaries are counted, his campaign manager said, rejecting calls from (Dem) officials (that he) drop out and make way for Joe Biden,” adding:

He “dismissed suggestions that he drop out,” stressing that “no one will secure the nomination before the (July) convention.”

Money can’t buy everything — no matter how much is spent trying.

Bloomberg did poorly the first time he appeared on the ballot in 14 Super Tuesday states, winning only the American Samoa caucus, despite a spending blitzkrieg — over $500 million of his own money to try buying the White House, more on advertising than all other Dem aspirants combined.

While winning small numbers of delegates on Tuesday, he finished no better than third in all mainland contests.

Asked if he would reassess things late Tuesday, his campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said while taking stock of where things stand “after every election” goes on, Bloomberg looks forward to competing in upcoming primaries.

Citing an unnamed aide, Bloomberg News reported that his “campaign would look at the results but that the intent is to continue competing,” adding:

“Bloomberg himself brushed off questions earlier Tuesday about whether he would drop out of the race.”

When asked, he said “I’m in it to win it.” A day later, he dropped out, saying the following:

“I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it.”

“After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American (sic), Joe Biden.

“I’ve known Joe for a very long time. I know his decency, his honesty, and his commitment to the issues that are so important to our country – including gun safety, health care, climate change, and good jobs (sic).”

He ignored Biden’s longstanding support for dirty business as usual — pro-war, pro-business, anti-populist, anti-social justice, anti-governance serving all Americans equitably positions throughout his public life for nearly half a century.

No political candidate in US history ever spent more for less results than Bloomberg in his presidential bid.

Instead of spending over $500 million on self-aggrandizement, likely tens of millions more to come for an elaborate infrastructure remaining in place.

It includes numerous staff members he pledged to pay through the November elections to support the Dem nominee.

Imagine the good his spending could have accomplished if used for this purpose.

How much healthcare for needy households and higher education for students to avoid debt bondage could he have bought with money thrown away on self-promotion?

How many homeless could he have funded shelter for? How many food insecure families could he have aided?

He could have funded a significant pro-peace, equity and justice campaign, the power of his wealth perhaps able to make a difference.

He entered the race to become Dem standard bearer, believing Biden was weak and beatable.

He bet wrong. Dem party bosses support the former vice president. Super Tuesday results proved it.

He believed money could buy the Dem nomination and White House by spending enough.

Yet he dropped out early in the race badly beaten. His record as New York City mayor left him vulnerable, including his racist stop-and-risk policy.

Black and Latino males were disproportionately targeted. In 2002 when he became mayor, the NYPD made about 97,000 annual stop and frisk searches.

At the end of his tenure in 2013, it was over 700,000, a policy Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas denounced in Terry v. Ohio (1968), a dissenting view, saying:

Absent probable cause, “(w)e  hold today that the police have greater authority to make a ‘seizure’ and conduct a ‘search’ than a judge has to authorize such action. We have said precisely the opposite over and over again.”

“To give the police greater power than a magistrate is to take a long step down the totalitarian path.”

“Perhaps such a step is desirable to cope with modern forms of lawlessness.”

“But if it is taken, it should be the deliberate choice of the people through a constitutional amendment.”

Throughout the US, Blacks and Latinos are racially profiled and otherwise abused by law enforcement.

The New York State’s ACLU earlier denounced NYPD stop-and-frisk practices, saying:

“The Department’s own reports on its stop-and-frisk activity confirm what many people in communities of color across the city have long known: The police are stopping hundreds of thousands of law abiding New Yorkers every year, and the vast majority are black and Latino.”

Multi-billionaire Bloomberg long ago lost touch with ordinary people who struggle daily to get by.

Dozens of women sued him for sexual harassment and discriminatory practices. He boasted about his womanizing exploits, including in an autobiography.

Now out of the race for the White House, he’s helping Joe Biden become Dem standard bearer and will aid his campaign against Trump if nominated.

Based on Super Tuesday results, the 2020 race for Dems looks like a repeat of 2016 — assuring Hillary’s nomination then, Biden the apparent choice of Dem party bosses to face Trump in November.

A Final Comment

Is Warren next to drop out? According to the Hill and other media, she’ll meet with staff to assess her position in the race after doing poorly so far, winning no states.

Through Super Tuesday, she won an estimated 50 delegates, noticeably finishing behind Biden and Sanders in Massachusetts, her home state.

Following her Feb. 29 loss in South Carolina, her campaign manager Roger Lau said the following:

“Our internal projections continue to show Elizabeth winning delegates in nearly every state in play on Super Tuesday, and in a strong position to earn a sizable delegate haul coming out of the night.”

After things didn’t turn out as expected, Lau said the team is “obviously disappointed. (Warren is) going to take time right now to think through the right way to continue this fight.”

An internal campaign memo quoted by the Boston Herald was wrong, saying she was “poised to finish in the top two in over half of Super Tuesday states (eight of 14), in the top three in all of them, and is on pace to pick up at-large statewide delegates in all but one.”

She finished third or fourth in Super Tuesday contests, meeting the 15% threshold to win delegates in only 5 of 14 states — doing no better in earlier races.

Is it just a matter of days before she bows out, leaving Biden and Sanders in the race to be Dem standard bearer against Trump in November?

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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 Flickr

When US elections are held for high office and key congressional posts, party bosses in cahoots with monied interests decide things, not voters.

It works the same way every time, Super Tuesday results in 14 states the latest example.

According to pre-election polls, Sanders was heavily favored to trounce Biden in most states, especially delegate-rich California and Texas.

Tuesday results turned out otherwise. In three presidential campaigns (1988, 2008, and currently) longtime establishment figure Biden never won a primary election until South Carolina last Saturday.

It came after poor showings in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, his campaign close to collapsing.

How was it possible to dramatically turn things around overnight, turning near-defeat to frontrunner status in a few days?

The post-Super Tuesday delegate count has him with 566 to Sanders’ 501, Warren virtually out of contention with 61, and Tulsi Gabbard with one.

The rest of the Dem starting field dropped out, Bloomberg the latest. Is Warren next?

A Wednesday NewsOne report said the following:

“Elizabeth Warren has reportedly decided to suspend her campaign to be president. It wasn’t a question if, but when and how…”

“After such a poor showing during this early primary season, the decision to call it quits was likely not much of a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to politics.”

“What may have been a surprise…was the additional report that Warren’s team was colluding with Bernie Sanders to make a dual announcement of ending her campaign along with endorsing his.”

On the same day, the Washington Post reported the following:

“Top surrogates and allies of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are discussing ways for their two camps to unite and push a common liberal agenda, with the expectation that Warren is likely to leave the presidential campaign soon, according to two people familiar with the talks.”

“Warren associates and the camp of former vice president Joe Biden also had talks about a potential endorsement if she drops out, according to two people familiar with the conversations,” adding:

“(C)onverations…are in an early phase,” nothing official so far. Warren’s “associates…say she is now looking for the best way to step aside…no certainty she will endorse Sanders or anyone else.”

He and Warren reportedly spoke by phone Wednesday, Sanders saying:

“She has not made any decisions as of this point. It is important for all of us, certainly me…to respect the time and the space she needs to make a decision.”

Given how poorly she’s done so far, polls for upcoming primaries largely showing no improvement, it’s likely just a matter of when she drops out and whether she’ll endorse Sanders, Biden, or neither aspirant.

Most polls conducted in February through early March showed Sanders leading Biden, other candidates way behind, according to Real Clear Politics.

It suggests that election meddling turned things around for the former vice president, a figure considered “safe,” Sanders not “safe” enough — despite going along to get along most often, his rhetoric and voting record world’s apart.

How else could he have been elected and reelected to the House and Senate since 1990?

True blue anti-war/progressive Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney overcame huge obstacles to serve six terms as Georgia’s 4th district representative (12 years) — before defeated by the power of Big Money, notably from the Israel lobby for her support of long-suffering Palestinians, her opposition to Israeli apartheid.

Rarely ever does someone of her stature serve in Congress, almost never for the duration of her tenure.

What could transform the US into a model society if figures like her got elected in large numbers is prevented by manipulating the process to block it.

That’s the American way — hypocrisy, autocracy, and plutocracy from inception, not democracy.

No rule of the people ever existed – governance of, by, and for the privileged few alone at the expense of most others under one-party rule with two right, sharing power by taking turns.

American exceptionalism, moral superiority, and the indispensable state are pure fantasy.

The nation’s founders empowered its privilege class to rule – democracy the way it should be an anathema notion throughout US history, at home and abroad, wanting it eliminated wherever it exists.

Each US electoral cycle, names and faces change. Dirty business as usual remains in place, dark forces retaining power — their interests alone served, never the public welfare.

Managed news misinformation and disinformation created a truth emergency gone unaddressed – voters unable to make informed choices from major media coverage.

Democracy in America is for the privileged few alone at the expense of most others, billions of dollars spent each election cycle insuring it.

Digital age technology makes outcomes easier to control. Easily manipulated corporate controlled electronic machines vote, not citizens.

It’s why losers can become winners. Was Super Tuesday the latest example? Results diverging from pre-election polls suggest it.

Fantasy democracy over the real thing is why around half the US electorate abstains most often in presidential year voting, larger numbers in midterm elections.

Voter disenfranchisement is rife, independent candidates shut out of the system, unable to compete on a level playing field.

If elections transformed swords into plowshares and changed things to serve all Americans equitably, they’d be banned.

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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.

It’s true that the Trump administration signed a “peace deal” with the Taliban — something that eluded both George W. Bush and Barack Obama — but a closer look at the agreement reveals it to be riddled with conditions that are fraught with obstacles.

The terms of the deal suggest that Trump is more interested in boasting that he’s fulfilling his campaign promise to bring the troops home than he is committed to achieving real peace in Afghanistan. This fact has also been noted by Trump’s former national security aides, some of whom have said that the president “is far less interested in an actual Afghan peace” than in claiming he is making good on his vow to withdraw the U.S. troops.

The agreement announced on February 29 should not rightly be called a “peace deal,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) said in a statement. Although the agreement “is a step forward,” Lee noted, “It leaves thousands of troops in Afghanistan and lacks the critical investments in peacebuilding, human-centered development, or governance reform needed to rebuild Afghan society.”

Afghan women activists Mary Akrami, Sahar Halaimzai and Rahela Sidiqi criticized the agreement and the process leading to it in USA Today: “Afghan women and representatives from civil society and other minority groups should have been at the table for the U.S.-Taliban talks that led to this agreement, but we were not.”

Trump’s “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” sets forth a plan for withdrawing all foreign forces from Afghanistan, a mutual release of prisoners, Taliban prevention of attacks against U.S. and allied forces from Afghan soil, and negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Although it claims to be “a comprehensive peace agreement,” as Lee points out, “this so-called ‘peace deal’ is anything but.”

Withdrawal Timeline for All Foreign Forces

The agreement establishes a timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. It says the “United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting service personnel” no later than 14 months after the agreement is announced.

Within the first 135 days, the U.S., allies and the Coalition will reduce the number of forces to 8,600 and withdraw all forces from five military bases. The remaining 8,600 forces (the same number that remained when Obama left office) is “the minimum number of Special Operations forces, intelligence officers and support and security personnel that the Pentagon and C.I.A. believe are necessary to hold the capital, Kabul” and fight the Islamic State, David Sanger wrote in The New York Times.

Apparently, the U.S. wants “to keep intelligence operatives on the ground fighting Isis and al-Qaida,” The Guardian reports. While the CIA won’t increase its presence in Afghanistan, it will remove its personnel “more slowly than the military,” according to sourcesquoted by the The New York Times.

The U.S., allies and Coalition will withdraw “all remaining forces from Afghanistan” by the end of the remaining nine and a half months.

But, Sanger cites reports of “a series of not-so-secret annexes to the agreement that allow both Special Operations forces and the C.I.A. to retain a presence in the country.”

Negotiations Between Taliban and Afghan Government

The Taliban will begin “intra-Afghan negotiations with Afghan sides on March 10, 2020.”

But since the contested election between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, it is unclear with whom the Taliban will be negotiating. On February 18, the Independent Election Commission declared Ghani the winner. Abdullah disagrees and is threatening to form a parallel government.

The agreement, which was announced after a seven-day “reduction in violence,” requires “dialogue and negotiations” about “a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire.”

Meanwhile, the carnage continues.

Mutual Prisoner Release

The U.S. commits to work on a plan to “expeditiously release combat and political prisoners” by March 10. The Afghan government would release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners and the Taliban would release up to 1,000 prisoners they are holding. The goal of “the relevant sides,” facilitated by the United States, is to release “all the remaining prisoners” within the ensuing three months.

But since the Afghan government was not part of the pre-agreement negotiations, it did not agree to the release. In fact, Ghani said on March 1 that he does not intend to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners by the March 31 date for initiation of negotiations with the Taliban.

The Taliban won’t come to the negotiating table unless the prisoners in Afghan custody are released.

Taliban Agrees to Prevent Attacks Against U.S. From Afghan Soil

According to the agreement, the “Taliban will not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qa’ida,” to use Afghan soil “to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.” The Taliban will also instruct members of the Taliban “not to cooperate with groups of individuals threatening the security of the United States and its allies.”

Furthermore, the Taliban “will prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan” from threatening U.S. and allies’ security and will block them from training, recruiting and fundraising.

The Taliban also commits that the prisoners it releases won’t pose a threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies. In addition, the Taliban commits to complying with international migration law so that people who are granted asylum don’t pose a threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies. And the Taliban won’t issue passports, visas, travel permits or other legal documents for entry to Afghanistan to anyone who poses a threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies.

But it is unclear whether the Taliban is capable of preventing terrorist groups from launching attacks from Afghan territory. “We will not allow our land to be used against any country including the U.S.,” Suhail Shaheen, spokesman for the Taliban’s Qatar office, told The Washington Post, “but I am talking about the area where we have control.”

Indeed, as Douglas London, Georgetown University adjunct professor and former senior CIA officer, wrote in The New York Times, the Taliban is “diverse, decentralized and factionalized,” which leaves enforcement of the agreement in doubt. The Taliban “has historically been controlled by regional warlords with no enduring loyalty to any particular ideology, leader or cause,” London noted. Moreover, members of the Taliban’s negotiating team are “largely disconnected from and disrespected by the Taliban’s senior leadership.”

U.S. Review of Sanctions Against Taliban

The United States will conduct a review of its sanctions against the Taliban “with the goal of removing these sanctions by August 27, 2020.” These include a freeze on financial assets and an arms embargo against the Taliban.

When negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government commence, the U.S. “will start diplomatic engagement” with other Security Council members and Afghanistan to remove the Taliban from the sanctions list.

U.S. Commits to Refrain From Threat or Use of Force Against Afghanistan

In a provision confirming their obligations under the United Nations Charter, the U.S. and its allies “will refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.”

The U.S. will “seek economic cooperation for reconstruction” from the new Afghan government during their negotiations and “will not intervene in [Afghanistan’s] internal affairs.”

Finally, the United States will ask the Security Council to endorse this agreement.

After 18 Years and Loss of Blood and Treasure, U.S. Hands Afghanistan Back to Taliban

Bush illegally launched “Operation Enduring Freedom” in October 2001, in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist attacks. After 18 years, tens of thousands killed and more than $2 trillion spent, the U.S. government is returning Afghanistan to the Taliban.

“United States went to war against the Taliban, and then almost two decades later, handed Afghanistan back to the Taliban,” Vijay Prashad, foreign policy expert and director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, noted ironically.

More than 100,000 Afghan civilians and over 58,000 Afghan security forces have been killed. About 2,400 U.S. servicemembers have been killed and 20,000 wounded in the United States’s longest war.

After a 10-year preliminary examination, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda found a “reasonable basis” to believe that U.S. military and CIA forces committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, in Afghanistan.

The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber agreed with Bensouda but refused to open a formal investigation, citing doubt about whether it could secure “meaningful cooperation from relevant authorities” which limited the “prospects for a successful investigation.” Bensouda appealed the ruling.

On March 5, the ICC Appeals Chamber will issue a judgment affirming or reversing the Pre-Trial Chamber’s refusal to initiate an investigation.

Meanwhile, the Taliban control or claim to control almost half of Afghanistan’s districts, “more territory . . . than at any point since 2001,” according to the Pentagon.

Robert Malley, president of the International Crisis Group, told The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan that the reason the Taliban “got so much out of the deal” is that “after two decades, the U.S. has failed to win an unwinnable war.”

Nevertheless, The Washington Post’s explosive report titled “The Afghanistan Papers” reveals that the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations all lied routinely about U.S. success in the war.

In his op-ed in The Times, London opines that Trump’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated the so-called peace deal for the United States, only wants the agreement to survive until the fall election. London wrote that Khalilzad has his sights set on being appointed secretary of state in a second Trump administration.

If the deal falls apart, Trump has threatened to “go back with a force that no one’s ever seen.”

In the meantime, Trump, whose overwhelming motive is to be reelected, can claim bragging rights about securing a “peace deal” with the Taliban.

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Copyright © Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

This writer has watched countless boxing matches over the years, and has seen how in many instances ‘The Fix is in’. The powers that be want a certain prospect to move up the ranks, they ‘Fix’ it. With boxing all you needed was two judges and maybe the referee, and wallah, your guy wins. It was on  March 13th 1963, when heavyweight prospect Cassius Clay fought journeyman fighter Doug Jones at Madison Square Garden. My dad and I watched it on I believe video tape (not sure of that) and we both felt that Jones won the fight. Clay (soon to be Muhammad Ali) got the decision and went on to fight Sonny Liston for the championship. Well, what just transpired in politics these past 48 hours was right up there with any good old FIX.

Go back to the South Carolina Democratic Presidential debate. Bloomberg calls Bernie Sanders a ‘Communist’ and rails how Sanders will never defeat Trump. Meanwhile, the (so called) moderates, Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar, are going after ‘Mr. Supreme Moderate’, Lunchbox Joe Biden, for not being as moderate as them. So what happens? The powerful National Democratic Neo Con Party powerbrokers make sure that the black elected officials and pastors in South Carolina (and elsewhere- the Dems have lots of Afro American politicians and pastors in their pocket)  push their constituents to get behind Biden.

The LIE  they tell is that ‘Sanders cannot defeat Trump’, and Lunchbox Joe can. After all, wasn’t he VP under their hero Obama? I mean, look at all Obama did for black folks. He did virtually nothing as white cops were shooting to kill unarmed blacks. He made a few speeches but did not get the full power of this government to come down hard on police forces that turned a blind eye to it all. Ditto for Obama, and thus VP Biden, for not using their power to stop union busting nationwide. Oh yes, even though too few Amerikans, black or white or yellow and brown, even care enough about this crazy militarism on steroids, it was under Obama (and VP Biden) that we had the highest military spending ever!! Check it out.

So, Biden, scarred by increasingly lower poll numbers, wins big in South Carolina (those politicos and pastors did a great job with their fear card of Sanders VS. Trump). Now here is where the ‘Fix’ shows itself to be exposed under any sort of ‘Light of Truth’. One day before the Big Tuesday primaries Buttigieg and Klobuchar decide to drop out of the race and throw their support for Biden. ‘Amy for Amerika’ even flies out to Texas to attend a Biden rally… The day before Big Tuesday! And last night he did win Texas by a small margin. Think of that for a minute. If Buttigieg and Klobuchar waited until Big Tuesday was over, where they both were on the ballots in all those states, anyone with even ‘half a brain’ knows that many of the votes Biden secured last night would have instead gone to the two of them! Translated: Biden would NOT have won in Texas, Minnesota, Mass. and probably elsewhere. In California, with the largest by far delegate prize, as I write this Sanders is ahead but not by the larger margin expected. Why, well once again, all those so called moderate Democrats who maybe favored Buttigieg or Klobuchar, voted for their ‘Third option’ Biden. Starting to get it folks? Fighter Doug Jones, who passed away in 2017, is probably laughing up in heaven… maybe Muhammad Ali is up there doing the same.

Let’s face it, Trump and his cabal are THE Worst group of predatory capitalists ever in office. This writer, who walked away from the Democrats decades ago, lives in what they like to call a ‘Major Swing State’, Florida. Seeing how the rise of a Neo Fascist white supremacist mindset has been sheltered and even nurtured by this current regime running our nation, I changed my political affiliation from Green Party to Democrat so as to vote for Sanders in our upcoming primary here. I, against my own political understanding as a true Socialist (which Bernie is unfortunately NOT), will honor my vow and vote Democrat (for the LAST TIME I assure you) in November to thwart this craziness a bit. Having a Biden as the choice is so tough for me, but… the ‘Evil of two lessers’ is the one currently in the White House. Biden as president will be but a band-aid on this major wound of our Military Industrial Empire. Yet, if you study history correctly you would know what transpired in Germany, circa 1930-33. The Nazi Party could have been stopped from obtaining power if the Social Democrats and the Communist Party would have formed a coalition. Together, they had the number of votes to thwart Hitler. In this Amerikan Empire of 2020 the same rings true for me.

Remember what happened in 2004? Well, Howard Dean was the absolute frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. He wasn’t as ‘Left Wing’ as Sanders but, in that political climate Dean was much more, as they like to label things, progressive than the others running. John Kerry was flopping in the polls and in the debates.

The empire’s mainstream media even labeled him as such. Kerry was, like Biden less than a week ago, toast. So, Dean does well in the Iowa caucuses and gives a stirring ‘Rah Rah’ speech at a rally that evening. The media picks up on it as if Dean was a madman! They play the bit over and over and before you know it Howard Dean is labeled as a nutcase! Kerry survives and loses to Bush Jr in a highly suspicious election. So much so, just for the meat of this column, that on election eve, I watched pundit Dick Morris as an analyst on one of the networks. Morris was known as a ‘King of Polling’ and helped Bill Clinton win the presidency. He had, by 2004, turned into a bit of a Neo Con ideologue. Either way, he sat there and said early on that the ‘ Exit polls’ in Ohio were showing that Kerry was way ahead. “The exit polls are highly accurate” Morris stated. When, a few hours later it showed that Bush would win Ohio, Morris said “Something smells!” He knew what we all know happens, as it did in 2000 in Florida, that ‘The fix is in’.

Here is my conspiracy theory: The empire that controls both political parties did not want Sanders to be the nominee. Perhaps he would have lost to Trump (as Biden surely will), but more importantly to this Military Industrial Empire, his mere presence on that stage would be detrimental to them.

Why? Well, think of all those working stiffs out there who are getting ****** by both parties for generations. To repeatedly hear the options of how this republic could choose to level this outrageous playing field is not what they want heard. On top of that, and most important, is the influence that Sanders, an old style FDR Democrat, is having on the ‘under 30 year olds’ of this nation. Even in defeat Sanders would galvanize that mindset of  those great young folks for future battles with empire, as Martin Luther King Jr. laid out through peaceful and aggressive non cooperation. The masters who run the Democratic Party will get their ‘Paper Tiger’ in Biden. Or, they will, through a brokered convention, with their 500 Super Delegates, choose someone like Elizabeth Warren… or maybe, as the great essayist Edward Curtin has said since last October, the return of a rejuvenated Hillary Clinton. No kidding.

Finally, what will happen if and when (sadly) they push Sanders out, regardless of what ‘Loyal Soldier’ Bernie will do to help this corrupt party? I will predict this: Many of his young supporters, and millions of those who never choose to vote, seeing through this continual scam, will stay away again in November. Of course, with all the skeletons in Biden’s closet, it will be easy for the carnival barker Trump to defeat him anyway. In defense of his own sabotaged  candidacy here is what the Sanders’ campaign should be doing from now until the convention:

• In ads for Bernie show the tape of how in 1991 Senator Joe Biden attacked Anita Hill, a black woman of conscience, during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. That should resonate with ALL those Afro American women who voted for Biden yesterday.
• Play the tape of ranking member of the Judiciary Committee Senator Joe Biden questioning Alberto Gonzales in January of 2005 at his confirmation hearing for Attorney General. Gonzales, at that time, was already outed by journalist Sy Hersh as having ‘ signed off’ on the Protocols for torture that circumvented the Geneva Accords, which were written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo (interesting how Bybee later on became a federal judge, and Yoo a professor at of all places, U of Cal at Berkeley). In his encounter with Gonzales, Biden actually said ” I like ya, and I’m probably going to vote for ya… ” which of course he did, caring NOT for what our government was doing to those detainees at Gitmo and Baghram.

Oh what tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive!

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected]

Global stock markets have experienced roller-coaster levels of volatility over the last two weeks due to fears that the coronavirus is going to seriously impact the global economy.

On Tuesday the US Federal Reserve panicked and introduced a 0.5% cut in interest rates. The last time it carried out such an emergency measure was in late 2007 which failed to avert the stock market crash of 2008.

This panic measure failed to reassure financial markets with the major Wall Street indexes from the Dow Jones to the S&P recording major falls.

Financial analyst Wolf Richter has observed:

“By the stock market’s reaction today to the Fed’s shock-and-awe surprise 50-basis point rate cut – it should have caused stocks to soar, but caused them to plunge nearly 3% instead – it would seem that another such shock-and-awe event signals even more panic inside the Fed, and who knows how the stock market might react when it sees the Fed panicking.’’

Over the last 10 days over $4 trillion in value has been wiped from US stock markets.

On the same day as the emergency rate cut the US Federal Reserve injected a record $120 billion into the short term debt market (repo).

Economist Steve St Angelo of the S RS Roco report has commented on the significance of these developments:

“Clearly, there is something SERIOUSLY WRONG in the Financial markets for the Fed to being injected $120 billion, the most since it started its Rep operations last September.

I believe investors and the market have no idea just how bad this Global Contagion will be like over the next 2-4 weeks… and longer. As I stated, don’t be surprised to see the Dow Jones Index lose 40-50% from its peak over the next month. Traders and Wall Street are going to get destroyed, and there is little they can do about it.’’

Over the next few weeks we can expect further emergency measures from the US Federal Reserve and Congress. Media reports suggest that the US Congress is preparing a $9 billion spending package to help offset the impact of the coronavirus on the American economy.

All of these measures smacked of panic. We shouldn’t forget that Jerome Powell, the chair of the US Federal reserve bank, keeps insisting that the fundamentals of America’s economy are sound and strong. Yet the measures he has introduced remind one strongly of the measures carried out by the Fed late 2007 on the verge of the great financial crisis.

We could add to this tale of woe regarding the world’s largest economy.

The latest IHS Markit flash for the U.S. revealed that output had contracted across the American economy during February.

Key findings from the PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) figures reveal that there was a contraction in business activity driven by notable declines in the service sector. New orders for private sector businesses fell for the first time since records were first collected in 2009.

• Flash U.S. Composite Output Index at 49.6 (53.3 in January) which is a 76-month low.
• Flash U.S. Services Business Activity Index at 49.4 (53.4 in January) which is a 76-month low.
• Flash U.S. Manufacturing PMI at 50.8 (51.9 in January) which is a 6-month low.
• Flash U.S. Manufacturing Output Index at 50.6 (52.4 in January) which is a 7-month low.

Commenting on the significance of the flash PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit, said:

“With the exception of the government-shutdown of 2013, US business activity contracted for the first time since the global financial crisis in February. Weakness was primarily seen in the service sector, where the first drop in activity for four years was reported, but manufacturing production also ground almost to a halt due to a near-stalling of orders.

“Total new orders fell for the first time in over a decade. The deterioration in was in part linked to the coronavirus outbreak, manifesting itself in weakened demand across sectors such as travel and tourism, as well as via falling exports and supply chain disruptions. However, companies also reported increased caution in respect to spending due to worries about a wider economic slowdown and uncertainty ahead of the presidential election later this year.

“The survey data are consistent with GDP growth slowing from just above 2% in January to a crawl of just 0.6% in February.’’

As Steve St. Angelo has noted the global contagion and its impact are only just beginning. Over the next few weeks and months expect a flurry of emergency measures by central banks and governments across the world as economic data goes from bad to worse.

In 2008 the global economy was saved from a deep depression by the massive stimulus measures carried out by the world’s two most powerful nations i.e. the US Federal Reserve spending trillions to bail out banks across the world and the Chinese government spending over $500 billion on a gigantic infrastructure programme that stimulated the global economy.

The combined measures of global central banks since the great recession of 2008 have served to drive global debt to over $250 trillion. This unprecedented level of debt, which can never be repaid, will only be added to by global central banks and governments over the next period.

Creating yet more debt is not going to solve problems of the global economy, which is afflicted by historic levels of wealth inequality, and has seen a gigantic wealth transfer from the 90% to the top 10% of the world’s population.

The growing problems of the world’s largest economy indicate the current business cycle, which is the longest on record, is rotten ripe for an economic contraction. The next recession is likely to be on a scale that is much worse than that seen during the 2008 crisis. It is likely to drive the American Empire into even more aggressive actions towards its rivals and competitors on the economic and geopolitical stage.

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The latest installment of the interminable Syria tragedy could be interpreted as Greece barely blocking a European “invasion” by Syrian refugees. The invasion was threatened by President Erdogan even as he refused the EU’s puny “offer you can refuse” bribe of only one billion euros.

Well, it’s more complicated than that. What Erdogan is in fact weaponizing is mostly economic migrants – from Afghanistan to the Sahel – and not Syrian refugees.

Informed observers in Brussels know that interlocking mafias – Iraqi, Afghan, Egyptian, Tunisian, Moroccan – have been active for quite a long time smuggling everyone and his neighbor from the Sahel via Turkey, as the Greek route towards the EU Holy Grail is much safer than the Central Mediterranean.

The EU sending a last-minute emissary to Ankara will yield no new facts on the ground – even as some in Brussels, in bad faith, continue to carp that the one million “refugees” trying to leave Idlib could double and that, if Turkey does not open its borders with Syria, there will be a “massacre.”

Those in Brussels spinning the “Turkey as victim” scenario list three conditions for a possible solution. The first is a ceasefire – which in fact already exists, via the Sochi agreement, and was not respected by Ankara. The second is a “political process” – which, once again, does exist: the Astana process involving Russia, Turkey and Iran. And the third is “humanitarian aid” – a euphemism that means, in fact, a NATO intervention of the Libya “humanitarian imperialism” kind.

As it stands, two facts are inescapable. Number one: the Greek military don’t have what it takes to resist, in practice, Ankara’s weaponizing of the so-called “refugees.”

Number two is the kind of stuff that makes NATO fanatics recoil in horror: Since the Ottoman siege of Vienna, this is the first time in four centuries that a “Muslim invasion” of Europe is being prevented by, who else, Russia.

Fed up with sultan

This past Sunday, Ankara launched yet another Pentagon-style military adventure, baptized as Spring Shield. All decisions are centralized by a triumvirate: Erdogan, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and the head of MIT (Turkish intel) Hakan Fidan. John Helmer has memorably called them the SUV (Sultan and the Ugly Viziers).

Behlul Ozkan, from the University of Marmara, a respected Kemalist scholar, frames the whole tragedy as having been played since the 1980s, now back on the stage on a much larger scale since the start of the so-called Syrian chapter of the Arab Spring in 2011.

Ozkan charges Erdogan with creating “conquering troops out of five unlikely fundamentalist groups” and “naming the armed groups after Ottoman sultans,” claiming they are a sort of national salvation army. But this time, argues Ozkan, the results are much worse – from millions of refugees to the terrible destruction in Syria, and “the emergence of our political and military structures affecting national security in a dangerous way.”

To say that the Russian General Staff are absolutely fed up with the SUV’s shenanigans is the ultimate understatement. That’s the background for the meeting this Thursday in Moscow between Putin and Erdogan. Methodically, the Russians are disrupting Turk operations to an unsustainable level – ranging from renewed air cover to the Syrian Arab Army to electronic countermeasures totally smashing all Turkish drones.

Russian diplomatic sources confirm that no one in Moscow believes any word, promise or cajoling emanating from Erdogan anymore. So it’s useless to ask him to respect the Sochi agreement. Imagine a Sun Tzu-style meeting with the Russian side displaying the very picture of self-restraint while scrutinizing Erdogan on how much he is willing to suffer before desisting from his Idlib adventure.

Those non-nonsense proto-Mongols

What ghosts from the past evolve in Erdogan’s unconscious? Let history be our guide – and let’s go for a ride among the empires of the steppes.

In the 5^th century, the Juan Juan people, proto-Mongols as much as their cousins the White Huns (who lived in today’s Afghanistan), were the first to give their princes the title of khan – afterwards used by the Turks as well as the Mongols.

A vast Eurasian Turco-Mongol linguistic spectrum – studied in detail by crack French experts such as J.P. Roux – evolved via conquering migrations, more or less ephemeral imperial states, and aggregating diverse ethnic groups around rival Turkish or Mongol dynasties. We can talk about an Eurasian Turk space from Central Asia to the Mediterranean for no less than a millennium and a half – but only, crucially, for 900 years in Asia Minor (today’s Anatolia).

These were highly hierarchical and militarized societies, unstable, but still capable, given the right conditions, such as the emergence of a charismatic personality, to engage in a strong collective project of building political constructions. So the charismatic Erdogan Khan mindset is not much different from what happened centuries ago.

The first form of this socio-cultural tradition appeared even before the conversion to Islam – which happened after the battle of Talas in 751, won by the Arabs against the Chinese.  But most of all it all crystallized around Central Asia from the 10^th and 11^thcenturies onwards.

Unlike Greece in the Aegean, unlike India or Han China, there was never a central focus in terms of a cultural berth or supreme identity organizing this process. Today this role in Turkey is played by Anatolia – but that’s a 20^th century phenomenon.

What history has shown is an east-west Eurasian axis across the steppes, from Central Asia to Anatolia, through which nomad tribes, Turk and Turkmen, then the Ottoman Turks, migrated and progressed, as conquerors, between the 7^th and the 17^th centuries: a whole millennium building an array of sultanates, emirates and empires. No wonder the Turkish president pictures himself as Erdogan Khan or Sultan Erdogan.

“Idlib is mine”

So there is a link between the turcophone tribes of Central Asia from the 5^th and 6^thcenturies and the current Turkish nation. From the 6^th to the 11^th centuries they were set up as a confederation of big tribes. Then, going southwest, they founded states. Chinese sources document the first turkut (Turkish empires) as eastern Turks in Mongolia and western Turks in Turkestan.

They were followed by more or less ephemeral empires of the steppes such as the Uighurs in the 8th century (who, by the way, were originally Buddhists). It’s interesting that this original past of the Turks in Central Asia, before Islam, was somewhat elevated to mythic status by the Kemalists.

This universe was always enriched by outside elements – such as Arab-Persian Islam and its institutions inherited from the Sassanids,  as well as the Byzantine empire, whose structural elements were adapted by the Ottomans. The end of the Ottoman empire and multiple convulsions (the Balkan wars, WWI, the Greek-Turkish war) ended up with a Turkish nation-state whose sanctuary is Asia Minor (or Anatolia) and eastern Thrace, conformed into a national territory that’s exclusively Turk and denies every minority presence that is non-Sunni and non-turcophone.

Evidently that’s not enough for Erdogan Khan.

Even Hatay province, which joined Turkey in 1939, is not enough. Home to the historic Antioch and Alexandretta, Hatay was then re-baptized as Antakya and Iskenderun.

Under the Treaty of Lausanne, Hatay was included in the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon. The Turkish version is that Hatay declared its independence in 1938 – when Ataturk was still alive – and then decided to join Turkey. The Syrian version is that Hatay was acquired via a rigged referendum ordered by France to bypass the Treaty of Lausanne.

Erdogan Khan has proclaimed, “Idlib is mine.” Syria and Russia are responding, “No, it’s not.” Those were the days, when turcophone empires of the steppes could just advance and capture their prey.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Erdogan’s forces continue their bloody battle for peace and prosperity for al-Qaeda groups in the Syrian region of Greater Idlib.

On March 3, Turkey shot down an L-39 warplane of the Syrian Air Force in eastern Idlib. The warplane, which was carrying out strikes on al-Qaeda militants, crashed near the town of Maarat al-Numan. One of the ejected pilots landed in the militant-held area and was killed. On the same day, Turkish media released videos showing drone strikes on the Syrian Army convoy supposedly moving near Maarat al-Numan and the destruction of an alleged Pantsir air defense system of the Syrian Air Defense Forces near Saraqib.

Additionally, a large Turkish military column consisting of M113 and ACV-15 armoured vehicles, Leopard 2A4 battle tanks and ALTIGNAN air defense systems entered Batbu village in the northern part of Idlib. Pro-Turkish sources also claimed that the Turkish military will soon deploy Hisar air defense systems to the region in order to put an end to the constant aggression of the Syrian and Russian air power against peaceful al-Qaeda members and their Turkish supporters. Thus far, al-Qaeda members and the Turkish Army are on a ‘tactical retreat’.

In eastern Idlib, Erdogan’s forces lost the villages of Jawbas, Tarnaba, Dadikh and Kafr Battikh west of Saraqib. Units of the Syrian Army also advanced on the town of Afirs aiming to fully secure the M4-M5 crossroad area. In southern Idlib, the Syrians cleared the villages Kafr Mus, Kawkabah, Amqiyah and Fulayfil of Turkish-led forces. On top of this, the Syrian military shot down 3 Turkish combat UAVs. One of them, the Bayraktar TB2 crashed near Saraqib. According to pro-government sources over 150 militants were killed or injured in recent clashes with the Syrian Army. Taking into account the scale of the ground clashes, this number is likely overestimated.

However, such claims are a weak shadow of the statements of the Turkish Defense Ministry which is ‘neutralizing’ thousands of Syrian soldiers and hundreds of pieces of military equipment in its statements on a regular basis.

On the morning of March 3, the Turkish military claimed that that during the past 24 hours Turkish-led forces had destroyed a warplane, a UAV, 6 battle tanks, 5 howitzers and artillery pieces, 2 air defense systems, 3 armored combat vehicles, 5 armed pickups, 6 military vehicles and an ammunition depot belonging to Syrian forces. The defense ministry also claimed that 327 Syrian soldiers were “neutralized” during the same period.

On the evening of the same day, when Erdogan’s forces withdrew from another batch of positions, a Turkish soldier was killed and 9 others were injured, so the defense ministry made another Twitter offensive to compensate the setbacks. It said that 299 Syrian soldiers were ‘neutralized’, and 9 battle tanks, 8 artillery pieces and rocket systems and 2 military vehicles were recently destroyed. Thus, the Turkish-claimed number of “neutralized” Syrian soldiers since the start of Operation Piece Spring just reached 3,183.  It doesn’t matter if the Turkish military announces that its forces have destroyed a Syrian carrier strike group ‘Al-Assad’ near Tartus or shot down a dozen Russian-supplied Su-50 fighter jets or even neutralized a detachment of Iranian Rembos, the result will be same –the invincible Turkish forces make no gains on the ground.

Meanwhile, Moscow once again announced that Russia is not planning to cease anti-terrorist efforts in the Idlib region and called Turkish claims about ‘millions’ of refugees fleeing the Syrian anti-terrorist operation in Idlib fake.

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Breaking news from Russian Ministry of Defense: A 15-member terrorist group tried to explode ammunition containing chemical substances in vicinity of Saraqib in Idlib countryside.

Yesterday, Syria News wrote that “The possibility of another chemical hoax continues to loom.”

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab visited Turkey to voice support of  Erdogan’s war crimes against Syria; Ambassador Kelly Craft again breached the UN Charter in her support of these same anti-Syria war crimes.

Details to follow.

UPDATE from SANA:

“Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that Turkish regime-backed terrorist groups tried to detonate ammunition contain chemical materials near Saraqeb city in Idleb countryside in an attempt to hinder the advance of the Syrian Arab army and to accuse it later of using the chemical weapons.

“The Russian Coordination Center said in a statement that a 15-member terrorist group tried in March /2/ to explode explosive devices near containers that filled with chemical substances with the aim at hindering the advance of the Syrian Arab Army in the western neighborhoods of Saraqeb city and to accuse later the Syrian Army of using chemical weapons.

“The statement pointed out that terrorists failed to tighten the closure of one of the containers which caused the leakage of chemical materials and they have been exposed to severe chemical poisoning and they failed to explode the explosive devices and to carry out their provocative operation.

“It affirmed that the Ministry possesses “irrefutable evidence” that prove the reality that this chemical accident took place, asserting that the Ministry intends to publish those evidence soon.

“The Russian Defense Ministry has stressed repeatedly the existence of laboratories to prepare chemical substances for Turkish regime-backed terrorist organizations in Idleb, asserting that those labs were managed by specialists who received training in Europe and those weapons will be used to carry out fabricated chemical attacks against the civilians to accuse the Syrian State.”

The timing of the planned chemical atrocity conveniently coincided with the American ‘diplomats’ breaching the UN Charter.

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Featured image is from Syria News

US State Department-funded front “Radio Free Asia” (RFA) recently complained about plans to proceed with joint Chinese-Cambodian military exercises despite the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

According to Khmer Times, this year’s joint exercises will include up to 200 Chinese personnel and over 2,000 personnel from Cambodia. According to the article the exercises will also include “the use of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery, mortar and helicopter gun ships.”

Cambodia has dismissed concerns over holding the exercises amid the outbreak noting the relatively small impact the virus’ spread has had on the nation. Additionally, it is unlikely China will not exercise extreme caution when selecting and screening military personnel sent to participate in the exercises later this year.

The citing of the virus is merely the US taking a political shot at both China and Cambodia and by doing so reminding both nations of the importance of establishing significant and enduring alternatives to the current but waning US-led “international order.”

US Complains About Growing Chinese-Cambodian Ties 

In an RFA article titled, “Joint Cambodia-China ‘Golden Dragon’ Military Drills to Proceed, Despite Threat of Coronavirus,” the US front complained:

Cambodia and China have no plans to cancel their fourth annual joint “Golden Dragon” military exercise later this month, despite the threat of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Cambodia’s Minister of Defense Tea Banh said Monday.

The article also openly complained about declining Western-Cambodian ties and how they reflected China’s growing influence in the region. RFA would claim:

This year’s exercises mark an expansion over those in 2019, when 250 Chinese and 2,500 Cambodian military personnel took part in drills over 15 days at the Chum Kiri Military Shooting Range Training Field in Chum Kiri district.

They were the third and largest joint Cambodia-China military drills to be held on Cambodian soil since Cambodia’s Defense Ministry abruptly suspended annual “Angkor Sentinel” joint exercises with the U.S. military and abandoned counter-terrorism training exercises with the Australian military in 2017.

Joint exercises with Western nations were never reestablished after 2017, a sign of Washington’s terminal decline in the region.

Washington’s More of the Same Didn’t and Won’t Work 

Rather than addressing Cambodia’s concerns over overreaching Western influence, meddling and subversion within Cambodia’s internal political affairs, the West (and the US in particular) has instead doubled down on meddling.

This too was mentioned in the RFA article, which claimed:

Meanwhile, Western influence in Cambodia is on the decline amid criticism of Hun Sen and the CPP over restrictions on democracy in the lead up to and aftermath of the ballot.

The U.S. has since announced visa bans on individuals seen as limiting democracy in the country, as part of a series of measures aimed at pressuring Cambodia to reverse course, and the European Union in mid-February announced plans to suspend tariff-free access to its market under the “Everything But Arms” (EBA) scheme for around one-fifth of Cambodia’s exports, citing rollbacks on human rights. 

In reality, there has been no “rollback on human rights” in Cambodia, but merely a crackdown on openly Western-backed and funded sedition in the form of political opposition parties, many of which are literally run out of Washington D.C. and led by political figures hiding abroad from criminal charges and jail sentences.

It is a pattern repeated all across Southeast Asia and beyond, where the US and its European partners use a combination of economic and political coercion to manipulate and control developing nations, but a pattern that has worn thin among the nations targeted.

Targeted nations have increasingly taken advantage of emerging multipolarism and the ability to build alternative ties with nations like China and Russia who not only provide an alternative to Western ties and access to markets, but are increasingly providing better opportunities than the West can, even under the most ideal conditions.

While the West’s brand of meddling will continue to have an impact on Cambodia, Cambodia and other nations in the region are increasingly establishing permanent alternatives in a process that will ultimately and likewise permanently render Western tactics impotent and the shareholders wielding them increasingly isolated.

Growing political, economic and military ties between China and Cambodia are permanently replacing US primacy over the region. Unless the US finds a more constructive and honest way of engaging with the region, this process will continue, and amid this process, contributing to a much wider, global decline of US power and influence.

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Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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The onslaught of misinformation from the corporatist wings of both political parties and media biases against universal healthcare are obviously confusing the electorate. This is seemingly evident in this week’s Super Tuesday with Joe Biden winning the majority of the states.  This confusion leaves citizens bewildered about how they will pay their bills unless a fundamental overhaul of medical insurance is undertaken. More important, what will happen when you are diagnosed with a serious illness and are not fully covered? What are your chances of joining the ranks of the 530,000 families that file bankruptcy annually for medical reasons? 

According to a study published last year by the American Journal of Public Health, 66.5% of bankruptcies are medically-related. In the past, it was rare for people to go bankrupt because they did not have accessible medical care. There was a time in the US when medicine carried a higher standard of ethics. The Hippocratic Oath was respected and no one was denied medical care because they could not afford it.  But that was in the past. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which Biden continues to believe is a successful piece of legislation, has done little to mitigate the increasing financial burden on individuals and families. In fact, quality of healthcare has steadily declined.

Now with the threats of a coronavirus pandemic, we are learning that we may need to pay for diagnostic testing and very likely treatments. If you are returning to the country from overseas, you may be forced to pay for the time in quarantine even if you test negative for the virus.  And it is certain that the pharmaceutical industry will attempt to capitalize on this pending disaster.

The Democrat Party’s full throttle assault to undermine the legitimacy of Bernie Sanders’ campaign is being orchestrated by the insurance and medical industrial complex, which has bought unbridled biased coverage across the media waves. The goal is to effectively sustain Obama’s failed healthcare efforts. After listening to dozens of commentators on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the pseudo-health journalists at the New York Times, one would think that Bernie is only offering free stuff to everyone and at enormous cost to tax payers.  Therefore to remove Medicare for All from the national dialogue before the November presidential election, the neoliberal forces are uniting behind Biden.

No one truly knows how much a national universal program would cost. Forecasts for a 10-year period range roughly between $13 trillion and $48 trillion. One thing is certain. The math is simple. It would be extremely expensive and for it to succeed dramatic infrastructural changes would need to be made throughout the entire system.  That conversation is long overdue.

However, perhaps this is the wrong argument because it is based upon the Democratic Party’s deep seated cognitive dissonance to protect the vested interests of Wall Street’s financial community, Biden’s allegiance to the credit industry, the military industrial complex, and the pharmaceutical and agro-chemical industries. In effect, the entirety of corporate America and the deep state, its lobbyists and oligarchic billionaires, and their sounding board in the mainstream media, are on one side of the scale while the urgent humanitarian medical needs of average citizens are on the other.  All that weighs on the side of Bernie are the educated adults, unionists, working people, and those who understand climate change and the need for a comprehensive and equitable healthcare system. And after Super Tuesday’s disturbing results, it might not look good for the revolution that must take place across the nation.

In part, it may be Sanders’ campaign’s miscasting the argument that has failed to win over moderate Democrats. Therefore what do we need?

First, Medicare for All is doable and affordable. In fact, it can potentially save $1.7 trillion a year by removing from the equation unnecessary and unconscionable profit to private insurance providers and the large mega-hospital networks.  There is no reason for having so many levels of bureaucracy between direct medical care and the patient. Every industry directly involved in providing treatment and care would continue to profit. But it would be a reasonable profit. Instead we have a medical industry that is excessively greedy and eager to take advantage of loopholes in order to milk the system for whatever it is worth.

The problem is that we can have Medicare for All only after we seriously look at what it costs to treat a patient and make efforts to reduce the exorbitant waste that has been programmed into our current system. How is it that a hospital can charge $787 for an adult and $393 for a child for a one dollar bag of intravenous saline solution, plus an additional $127 to administer it? Americans spend more on prescription medications than any other developed nation, as drug prices can soar ten times the rate of inflation.  Daraprim, for example, which is prescribed to fight one of the world’s most common parasitical infections that causes toxoplasmosis, can cost $45,000 per month, or $750 for a single pill that costs $13.50 to manufacture.

Based upon earlier figures between 2012-2015, about $2.6 trillion can be saved by removing bureaucratic waste. This includes $275 billion on private insurance paperwork, $55.6 billion on liability, $471 billion for insurance billing, $140 billion for medical fraud (2016), $210 billion for unnecessary medical testing, and $190 billion for wasteful administrative services.  Back in 2016, the British Medical Journal reported that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US.  As a result over $1 trillion is spent on avoidable medical errors.

Universal healthcare will not break the economy. What is breaking the economy is our current broken medical system.  Universal, quality care is easily within reach but only after the health of the population is given preference over the healthcare system’s vulture capitalism. Then Americans will no longer have to worry about bankruptcy, which further contributes to the stresses associated with ill health, because they cannot afford the treatments or medications without putting themselves and their family into perpetual debt.

Second, providing universal healthcare does not guarantee that patients will receive quality care. If we are truly honest with ourselves and ask whether the US has the best medical care available, the answer should be a resounding no.  American emergency medicine is exemplary. However, chronic care for treating heart disease, cancer, diabetes, pain management and neurological conditions has been a dismal failure. More physicians need to be brought into the system without the anxiety of paying off enormous school debt and being forced to work to exhaustion.  Bernie would be wise to make medical education free in return for young doctors committing themselves to charging reasonable fees if they wish to remain within the system. If a doctor prefers to gouge patients, that is their right to do outside of the national system.

Finally, the US lags far behind in a implementing a national preventative program. Very little is being done to prevent diseases shown to be directly related to life-style, diet and toxic conditions in our environment.  A viable prevention program would begin by supporting and mandating holistic health programs in our schools beginning with grade school. Why does offering school courses in “How to be Healthy” seem absurd when it has been shown repeatedly in the scientific literature and efforts in other advanced nations to avoid preventable illnesses and further reduce avoidable medical costs? But in order to launch a comprehensive preventative program at a national scale, only respected educated health consumers should be in charge. Entities representing private corporate interests should be prohibited since they are responsible for the medical disasters that now demand for universal healthcare.  If Obamacare and the current corporate medical establishment were truly effective, there would be no discussion about Medicare for All.

Yes, universal healthcare will be expensive and cost trillions. But how many trillions will it save when all else is considered for how many lives will be saved and how healthier the nation would be if comprehensive measures were taken to prevent disease in the first place.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including The War on Health, Poverty Inc and Plant Codes.