Car Manufacturers Caught in Crossfire of Trump’s Trade War

September 6th, 2019 by Mike "Mish" Shedlock

The global repercussions of Trump’s trade wars have a new casualty: US and European car manufacturers.

The telegraph reports European Carmakers are Caught in the Crossfire of Trump’s Trade War.

But it’s not just European manufacturers. The US will take a huge hit as well.

China has been the most frequent target of Trump’s ire. At the start of the month he fired another Twitter salvo in the trade war between Washington and Beijing.

From September 1, $300bn (£247bn) of imports from China would be hit with a surprise “small additional 10pc tariff,” Trump threatened. “This does not include the $250bn already tariffed at 25pc,” he added. The news caused the S&P index to fall almost 2pc in just a few minutes.

A few weeks later Beijing responded. Retaliatory tariffs of 10pc on US imports would similarly begin at the start of this month. But it also warned that in December the import duty on US-built cars would jump from the current 15pc to 40pc – reimposing a threatened 25pc hike that had been put on hold as tensions cooled last year. The warning put the global car industry squarely in the firing line.

“The car industry is complex with supply chains crossing borders and components moving between countries many times,” Professor David Bailey, a car expert at Birmingham University, says. “That’s before you take into account foreign-owned plants producing cars for export around the world*. Tariffs are a very blunt instrument and using them has unintended consequences*.”

US Impact

  1. The BMW plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, opened in 1994 and since then the 11,000 people whose jobs it offers or supports have produced 4m cars.
  2. The Mercedes site in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, has 3,800 direct employees and supports 10,000 more jobs, and the plant has churned out 3.2m vehicles since opening in 1997.
  3. “BMW and Daimler are two of the largest exporters of vehicles from the US to China,” says Ellinghorst. “A 25pc tariff would cause $1.7bn of extra costs for the two of them, split fairly evenly.”
  4. Volvo may be another victim. The company which is owned by China’s Geely opened its first US plant, in Ridgeville, South Carolina last year. Ian Henry of Auto Analysis added: “There’s also been stories of Volvo supplying some models made in China from its European factories to the US to avoid tariffs, with the shortfall in Europe made up with cars built in China being transported by rail.”
  5. Evercore says that of the US manufacturers, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, which respectively export 40,000 and 10,000 American-built cars to China annually, face an extra $320m and $80m in costs.
  6. Tesla, which is expected to sell about 45,000 vehicles in China in the coming year, faces a $620m bill. However, Elon Musk’s electric car company is building a plant in Shanghai which will allow it to dodge tariffs when it opens next year.

Source: Mish Talk

Truly Idiotic

BMW, Volvo, Mercedes, and Daimler all produce cars in the US for export to China. That slowdown is in addition to the direct hit on GM and Ford.

Elon Musk will avoid tariff retaliations by building cars in China.

If you think this is truly idiotic, you are not the only one.

The article concludes

For all Trump’s rhetoric about making America great again and protecting the country’s industrial base, his current tactics risk causing huge damage.”

Major Supply Chain Disruptions

Two days ago I commented Major Supply Chain Disruptions Coming: Thank Trump

I stand corrected.

Major supply chain disruptions are already here.

ISM and PMI Reports

The ISM and PMI reports were miserable, not just in the US, but globally.

I commented US Manufacturing Recession Begins: ISM Contracts First Time in 3 Years.

Here are a couple of items that caught my attention.

  1. Deteriorating demand conditions, especially across the automotive sector, were linked to subdued client demand.
  2. External demand also weighed on new business growth, as new export orders fell at the quickest pace since August 2009, linked by many firms to trade wars and tariffs.

Deteriorating Automotive Sector

Last Friday, I noted Personal Income Up 0.1%, Spending Up 0.6%, sarcastically commenting “What’s the Problem?”

Here is the contradictory line from the BEA report that caught my eye in advance of the ISM and PMI reports.

“Within goods, recreational goods and vehicles was the leading contributor to the increase.”

I commented “Auto and SUV sales have not been strong. I smell revisions.”

Gross Distortions

The economic reports appear to be grossly distorted, way more than usual.

Little of this ties together.

On July 7, I commented Dealers are Bumper-to-Bumper With SUVs: More Coming as Sales Decline

On August 5, CNBC reported Car dealers struggle to sell 2018 new-car inventory to make room for 2020 cars.

As dealerships look to sell off cars from the 2019 model year to bring in 2020′s shiny new models, they’re running into a problem. They still have cars from 2018 clogging up their lots.

Even if vehicles are a “leading contributor” to increased consumer spending as the BEA says it won’t last.

Auto sales figures are out later today.

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For those of us who opposed the war resolution on Iraq, the later spins by presidential candidates John Kerry and Hillary Clinton left us incensed. At the time, many of us criticized the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq as a blank check to President Bush that jettisoned the responsibilities given to them by the Framers. When they voted for the war, it was popular and that seemed the only determinative factor. When thousands died or were wounded and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, they followed the polls in belatedly opposing their own prior positions. Kerry and Clinton later insisted that they were tricked about the resolution despite such objections in the press. Now we can add presidential candidate Joe Biden who is raising objections over his insistence that he never really supported the war and that he “immediately” opposed it.

In a NPR interview, Biden said that he was misled on the war but then opposed it. First, he recounted a story that Bush’s people have flatly denied. He says that he went to the Oval Office and was expressly told that Bush had no intention to invade:

“[Bush] looked me in the eye in the Oval Office. He said he needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program. He got them in and before you know it, we had ‘shock and awe.’”

However, Biden’s insistence that he “immediately” has been challenged across the media. Nevertheless, Biden continues to maintain:

“That moment it started, I came out against the war at that moment.”

Biden is on record (and videotape) supporting the war before and after the passage of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq. When the invasion was being planned and reported publicly, Biden told Face the Nation that “If the covert action doesn’t work, we better be prepared to move forward with another action, an overt action. And it seems to me that we can’t afford to miss.”

More importantly, months after the invasion, Biden told CNN:

“I, for one, thought we should have gone in Iraq.” Later than that, he said at a hearing “I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again.”

Still later, he expressly stated that “we have always known” about the war in Iraq, namely that troops “would have to stay there in large numbers for a long period of time.” He also stated publicly (again after the invasion) that “[c]ontrary to what some in my party might think, Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with sooner rather than later. So I commend the president. He was right to enforce the solemn commitments made by Saddam. If they were not enforced, what good would they be?”

Biden has been challenged on the veracity of other stories or factual assertions that he has used on the campaign trail. That has been a long-standing problem with Biden. However, this is about his record in supporting an unnecessary and unwarranted war that costs thousands of lives and ultimately over a trillion dollars. Like Kerry and Clinton, Biden cast the popular rather than the right vote. No level of revision of history will change the cost of that war for thousands of families or the country.

These denials and revisions are precisely why the Framers wisely insisted on declarations of war — a constitutional requirement that has been effectively removed from the Constitution by our politicians.

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What Is the True Unemployment Rate in the US?

September 6th, 2019 by Dr. Jack Rasmus

A reader of this blog recently asked an important question: what do I think is the actual unemployment rate in the US today, not the media’s 3.8% that is almost always quoted. Here’s my reply as to why I calculate the real, actual unemployment at minimum to be 10%-12%.

“The real unemployment rate is probably somewhere between 10%-12%. Here’s why: the 3.8% is the U-3 rate, per the labor dept. That’s only for full time employed. What the labor dept. calls the U-6 includes what it calls discouraged workers (those who haven’t looked for work in the past 4 weeks. Then there’s what’s called the ‘missing labor force’–ie. those who haven’t looked in the past year. They’re not calculated in the 3.8% U-3 unemployment rate number. Why? Because you have to be ‘out of work and actively looking for work’ to be counted. The U-6 also includes what the labor dept. calls involuntary part time. But it should include the voluntary part time as well, but doesn’t (See, they’re not actively looking for work even if unemployed). But the involuntary part time is itself under-estimated. It counts only those involuntarily part time unemployed whose part time job is their primary job. It doesn’t count those who have second and third involuntary part time jobs. The labor dept. also misses the 1-2 million workers who went on social security disability (SSI) because it provides better pay, for longer, than does unemployment insurance. That number rose dramatically after 2009 and hasn’t come down much (although the government and courts are going after them). The way the government calculates unemployment is by means of 60,000 monthly household surveys but that survey also misses a lot of workers who are undocumented and others working in the underground economy in the inner cities (about 10-12% of the economy according to most economists and therefore potentially 10-12% of the reported labor force in size as well. The labor dept. just makes assumptions about that number (conservatively, I may add). But it has not real idea of how many undocumented or underground economy workers are actually employed since these workers do not participate in the labor dept. phone surveys, and who can blame them. The SSI, undocumented, underground, etc. are what I call the ‘hidden unemployed’.

Finally, there’s the corroborating evidence about what’s called the labor force participation rate. It has declined by roughly 5% since 2007. That’s 6 to 9 million workers who should have entered the labor force but haven’t. The labor force should be that much larger, but it isn’t. Where have they gone? Did they just not enter the labor force? If not, they’re likely a majority unemployed, or in the underground economy, or belong to the labor dept’s ‘missing labor force’ which should be much greater than reported. The government has no adequate explanation why the participation rate has declined so dramatically. Or where have the workers gone. If they had entered the labor force they would have been counted. And heir 6 to 9 million would result in an increase in the total labor force number and therefore raise the unemployment rate.

All these reasons–-i.e. only counting full timers in the official 3.8%; under-estimating the size of the part time workforce; under-estimating the size of the discouraged and so-called ‘missing labor force’; using methodologies that don’t capture the undocumented and underground unemployed accurately; not counting part of the SSI increase as unemployed; and reducing the total labor force because of the declining labor force participation-–together means the true unemployment rate is definitely over 10% and likely closer to 12%. And even that’s a conservative estimate perhaps.”

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Jack Rasmus is author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, October 1, 2019, of which the preceding material is an excerpt. His website is https://kyklosproductions.com and twitter handle, @srjackrasmus. He hosts the Alternative Visions radio show on the Progressive Radio network weekly, podcasts available are available at http://alternativevisions.podbean.com.

The New York Times may have referred to it as “The Secret History of the Push to Strike Iran,” but it’s hardly a secret that Israeli and US hawks have been angling for a war against Iran for decades.

Trying to advance a war narrative is a high priority for the hawks, and recent reports suggest that the Netanyahu government is once again actively considering just unilaterally attacking Iran without US permission.

That may seem like a very bold move, but some in the cabinet are arguing it really isn’t, saying Trump’s determination to be the most pro-Israel president ever means he’s probably not do anything to actively oppose Israeli aggression.

In recent history, of course, US policy has been to ignore Israeli aggression, or outright endorse it internationally. Israeli officials had reason to believe that President Obama would resist an attack however during their last major run-up to an attack, in 2012, which they ultimately called off.

Timing may be the key to any immediate attack. Israel faces elections in just two weeks, and Netanyahu’s recent attacks on “Iranian proxies” across the region were already seen as a bid for a last minute bump. He may believe, with polls still showing him trailing, that a direct attack is the next step.

The history of Israel’s foreign policy in recent years, indeed decades has been heavily Iran-centric, both with the various governments playing up Iran as an existential threat, and lobbying heavily to keep the US from making any positive diplomatic efforts.

This long-time acrimony is no secret to Iran, either, which is why Iran has spent the past decades building up its air defenses and potential retaliation in the event the long-threatened attack happens.

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Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.


150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

“What I’m saying … is that the Bush Administration knew the attacks were going to take place, and made a conscious decision that the casualty levels were acceptable to secure access to Central Asian oil for the major oil companies and for the U.S. economy, and to secure control of the drug trade.”

– Michael C. Ruppert, March 14, 2002 roundtable (from this week’s program.)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

As Canadian journalist and media critic Barrie Zwicker explained in his 2006 book Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9/11, mainstream journalists throughout Canada and the Western world failed spectacularly in their role to critically examine the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 and its consequences. [1]

Pertinent questions as to ulterior motives for a deadly military invasion of Afghanistan, or about the failure to scramble military aircraft to intercept the hijacked airplanes when they veered off course were never asked in the prominent newspapers, television networks and other major media organs of the day. Any skeptical inquiry of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the months immediately following the attacks was confined to ‘limited hang-outs’ along the lines of the CIA ‘never getting its act together’ and ‘controversies’ about the crime possibly being ‘blow-back’ from America’s oppressive policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. [2]

One national broadcaster in Canada, however, proved to be an exception to this trend. VISION TV is a Canadian cable and satellite specialty channel based in Toronto reaching an estimated 10 million homes. It was largely due to Zwicker’s influence as VISION TV’s resident media critic that the provocative discussion featured on this week’s show ever made it to the public airwaves.

On the evening of March 14, 2002, the network broadcast a round table on the 2001 terrorist attacks on a special installment of VisionTV Insight: Mediafile. This discussion would include one of the few appearances in Canadian media by U.S. based investigative journalist Michael C. Ruppert.

Ruppert was, along with Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalization, one of the very first figures in the world to intelligently refute the official story of the September 11th attacks. He had outlined his key arguments in a hard hitting monthly newsletter called From The Wilderness, as well as on his online site fromthewilderness.com. He had also given a series of talks across the United States and Canada detailing his problems with the official story.

The conversation featured in this week’s Global Research News Hour radio program as it debuts its eighth regular broadcast season sees Ruppert face critical, albeit respectful push-back from at least two of the panelists. The discussion delved not only into the unanswered questions mentioned above, but also put them into the context of America’s imperial conquest of oil resources, and the role of drug money, including the proceeds of Afghanistan’s illicit opium trade, in financing the global economy. Questions relating to the vulnerability of Canadian sovereignty, the anti-democratic nature of ‘anti-terrorism’ legislation, and the role of journalists in the face of these developments likewise rise to the fore.

The audio of this conversation and video of the discussion had been discarded by the network years ago, and has since been recovered and restored. The show is being rebroadcast on the Global Research News Hour radio program with the full consent of VISION TV, whom we warmly thank for their generosity in this regard.

An online link to some of the recovered video footage of the conversation can be found here or watch right below.

https://youtu.be/uWc9G9p3fcw

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Screenshot of March 2002 programme 

Michael Craig Ruppert (1951-2014) is a former investigative journalist and the publisher/editor of the now defunct From The Wilderness newsletter and website. A former LAPD officer and CIA whistle-blower, Ruppert had broken numerous stories related to government corruption, illegal U.S. covert operations, the reality and impact of Peak Oil, and perhaps most famously, the evidence of U.S. conscious complicity in the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. He is author of the Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil (2004) and A Presidential Energy Policy: Twenty-five Points Addressing the Siamese Twins of Energy and Money (2009) which was reworked into a follow-up volume Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World (2009). Ruppert was featured in the 2009 documentary film Collapse and hosted The LifeBoat Hour on the Progressive Radio Network until his tragic death by suicide in April 2014. Ruppert is a past guest of this radio program and has had articles re-posted to Global Research. A complete archive of his FTW articles can be found at FromTheWilderness.net.

Peter Hullett Desbarats, OC. (1933-2014) was a Canadian author, journalist and playwright. From 1981 to 1997 he served as the Dean of Journalism at the University of Western Ontario. He also served as one of the commissioners of the Somalia Inquiry convened to investigate Canadian military violence against Somalian civilians in the early 1990s.

Ronald George Atkey, PC, QC. (1942-2017) was a lawyer, law professor and former Canadian Federal cabinet minister. From 1984 to 1989 he served as Chairman of Canada’s Security Intelligence Review Committee which oversaw the activities of the newly established Canadian Security Intelligence Service. A lecturer on national security law and international terrorism, he was appointed Amicus Curiae to the Arar Commission in 2004, where he played a role testing government requests made on the grounds of national security confidentiality.

Phyllis Creighton is an award-winning peace campaigner having been active with many justice and peace organizations over the course of 3 decades, including Science for Peace, Project Ploughshares, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, the International Peace Bureau and the Toronto Raging Grannies. She is also an ethicist who has served on the Health Canada board on reproductive technologies.

Rita Shelton Deverell, C.M., Ed.D. is a theatre artist, playwright, independent television producer/director, a founder of and executive producer with Vision TV, and was the first woman to lead a journalism program in Canada as acting Director of the University of Regina’s Journalism School in the 1980s. A former occupant of Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount St. Vincent University, her many honours include two Geminis, the Black Women’s Civic Engagement Leadership Award, and membership in the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. She is also recipient of the 2005 Order of Canada.

Be sure to check out Global Research’s dossier on 9/11:

THE 9/11 READER. The September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks 

(Global Research News Hour Episode 267)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The Global Research News Hour now airs Fridays at 6pm PST, 8pm CST and 9pm EST on Alternative Current Radio (alternativecurrentradio.com)

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 3pm.

Los Angeles, California based Thepowerofvoices.com airs the Global Research News Hour every Monday from 6-7pm Pacific time.

Notes: 

  1. Barrie Zwicker (2006), ‘Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11’, pg. 141-178
  2. ibid., 161

She’s a little lady, 70 something, with this cute, addictive smile. Drives an old bomb of a car, replete with Peace and End the Occupation type stickers on it. She’s a nurse, still works, doing home care for very ill folks with that special Mona type TLC.

I first met her at a progressive discussion event my friends and I organized back in ’03.

Many of us were disgusted with the government’s hog wash version of 9/11 and the insuring illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. We wanted to rally our community (those few who took the time to really care about such things in ’03) to speak out. Tiny, quiet Mona joined our monthly group of concerned citizens, acknowledging her ‘lack of depth’ on what was happening. Yet, she quickly added, that her  inner self told her what was right and what was wrong. She became a regular member of our group.

When Michael Moore’s new film, Fahrenheit 911, was opening in Daytona, rumors spread that Bush supporters in this area were going to hold a protest outside the theater. I asked if anyone would join me in a counter demonstration. Mona raised her hand. We met outside the theater in the parking lot. She had told me that her daughter would accompany her, as this was the first time in both their lives that either of them had demonstrated. Mona was scared! What if? What if the Bush supporters got physical? What if a fight broke out? Here was this little lady going against ….. what and who? At the parking lot, at our allotted time to meet, Mona walked slowly towards me. Where was her daughter? “She stayed in the car….. she’s frightened. So am I, but I gave my word. Let’s do it!” We did, and the Bush lovers protest never occurred (when does it?). Mona proudly held her sign, smiled a lot, and made a greater impression on the moviegoers than I ever could.

There are a bunch of folks who have been standing on the same corner in Port Orange, my town, each and every Tuesday. Some, like Mona, have been there from the beginning, which is now almost 3 and 1/2 years. She stands there, with her Honk for Peace sign, or whatever else she may decide to hold, and waves at the cars. Always that smile, that… well, that Mona Lisa half smile her namesake wore. She raises her hand as if to say to all who pass “Hey, here I am, because I care!. The others, those who come and stand with Mona, they care too. Enough to put aside political differences (not all are Democratic Party loyalists) and converge in harmony for truth and justice. And Mona? Well, she’s the glue, the non judgmental glue, that keeps it all together.

This writer has strayed from that corner recently, with my differences with the mainstream Democrats overpowering and frustrating my efforts. Then, while recently driving in our local shopping center, I spot Mona, walking to her car. “When are you coming back? We miss you on the corner.” If only there were more Monas in this community. Because of her I will be back!

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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].

Featured image is from Rise Up Times

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The Official Story of the Collapse of WTC Building 7 Lies in Ruins

September 5th, 2019 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

A research team at the University of Alaska’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, led by Dr. Leroy Hulsey, Dr. Zhili Quan, and Professor Feng Xiao, Department of Civil Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, released yesterday for public comment their findings from a four-year study of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11, 2001. This is the first scientific investigation of the collapse of the building. Here is the conclusion:

“The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.”

Notice three things: (1) it has taken 18 years to get a real investigation of the destruction of a building blamed on Muslim terrorists, (2) the only way “near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building” can occur is through controlled demolition, and (3) this remarkable finding is not reported in the presstitute media.

In other words, the study is assigned to the Memory Hole. This is the way The Matrix operates. This is why you need this website.  The only purpose of print and TV news is to program you so that you insouciantly go along with the agendas of those who rule you. Those who sit in front of TV news, listen to NPR, or read newspapers are programmed to be mindless automatons.

Note this resolution of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District

Whereas, the attacks of September 11, 2001, are inextricably and forever tied to the Franklin Square and Munson Fire Department;

Whereas, on September 11, 2001, while operating at the World Trade Center in New York City, firefighter Thomas J. Hetzel, badge #290 of Hook and Ladder Company #1, Franklin Square and Munson Fire Department of New York, was killed in performance of his duties, along with 2,976 other emergency responders and civilians;

Whereas, members of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire Department were called upon to assist in the subsequent rescue and recovery operations and cleanup of the World Trade Center site, afflicting many of them with life-threatening illnesses as a result of breathing the deadly toxins present at the site;

Whereas, the Board of Fire Commissioners of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District recognizes the significant and compelling nature of the petition before the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York reporting un-prosecuted federal crimes at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and calling upon the United States Attorney to present that petition to a Special Grand Jury pursuant to the United States Constitution and 18 U.S.C. SS 3332(A);

Whereas, the overwhelming evidence presented in said petition demonstrates beyond any doubt that pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries—not just airplanes and the ensuing fires—caused the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings, killing the vast majority of the victims who perished that day;

Whereas, the victims of 9/11, their families, the people of New York City, and our nation deserve that every crime related to the attacks of September 11, 2001, be investigated to the fullest and that every person who was responsible face justice;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Board of Fire Commissioners of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District fully supports a comprehensive federal grand jury investigation and prosecution of every crime related to the attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as any and all efforts by other government entities to investigate and uncover the full truth surrounding the events of that horrible day.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published.

World Systems and Capitalism: Immanuel Wallerstein’s Legacy

September 5th, 2019 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“The dead albatross that hangs around our neck is our legacy of arrogance, racism.  And we must struggle to atone, to reconstruct, to create a different historical system.”  So wrote the late sociologist and thinker Immanuel Wallerstein in unequivocal tones of repentance on Europe’s legacy, its “oldest disgrace.”

Wallerstein was one of those refreshing types in an increasingly restrictive academy, the big picture sort rich with colour, engaged in splashing out portraits of historical development.  Dreary minutiae and specialism was not for him even if he could play the game when needed, and his quest in sociology and history was a bold commitment to seek “a more egalitarian world and a more libertarian one.”

Within his work, the theme of inequality marks the gap between the Third World and the West. Only a transformation of the world-system itself, one dealing with “its division of labour and allocation of rewards” would rectify it. We still await that particular idea of orderly distribution on earth to be realised.

The Wallerstein method is the vision: the world-system seen as an integrated, interdependent whole.  “There are not, and cannot be multiple capitalisms because capitalism is a singular structure that is the defining feature of the modern world-system.”  It simply would not do to use a case study system of specific economies in understanding socioeconomic development; nor would it suffice to discern a pattern of magic in the pure realms of statistics, applied comparatively.  What was needed was a new “unit of analysis” that refused to stop at the defined borders of societies.

The theoretical device best suited, he argued, was seeing development in the context of the centre (Northern Europe, North America, Australasia) and peripheral areas, with the former the engine for pushing the global capitalist system.  Four different categories emerge: the core, semi-periphery, periphery and external.  Considering the world-system from this perspective enabled a view of multiple, global polities, rather than a single one, while also understanding the transnational division of labour, one distinctly unequal in nature: the core, marked by capital intensive production and specialist skills, the peripheral marked by low-skill, labour-intensive production and raw material extraction.

World-systems analysis, accordingly, was not so much a theory as “a protest against neglected issues and deceptive epistemologies”.  Moving towards a world “substantively rational” could only be undertaken with eyes wide open to intellectual and political challenges.  “We can only struggle uneasily with both challenges simultaneously, and push forward as best we can.”

In The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (1974), he charted the demise of feudalism before urgings of capitalist growth, defining capitalism as “production for sale in a market which the objective is to realise for profit”.  The feudal economy had been exhausted; climate had exerted its pull on agriculture; epidemics had taken their toll. Growth became premised on Europe’s territorial expansion, the deployment of commercial enterprises backed by state machinery, and the flow of goods from the periphery to the centre.

Capitalism effectively de-territorialised meaningful state boundaries, and did not necessitate the creation of a political empire in a strict sense.  As Wallerstein posited,

“the techniques of modern capitalism and the technology of modern science, the two being somewhat linked as we know, enabled this world-economy to thrive, produce, and expand without the emergence of a unified political structure.”

Three other volumes on this theme followed, coming out in 1980, 1989 and 2011.  More bracing scholarship could also be found in such essay collections as Geopolitics and Culture (1991), The Politics of World-Economy (1984) and The Capitalist World-Economy (1979).

Some of his broader concepts can be found in the reflections of the neat introduction to World-Systems Analysis.  In the 1950s, he recalls, there was interest in Cold War categories: the totalitarian and the democratic; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.  For him,

“the most important thing happening in the twentieth-century world was the struggle to overcome the control by the Western world of the rest of the world.”

His critics deployed the usual devices in attempting to qualify, if not dismiss his work.  In using systems as his benchmark he risked being all too simplistic, however vast his reading suggested.  The fall back position was often empirical: Was he correct in his use of evidence, his reading of historical events?  Snootily, and typically within the usual disciplinary foxholes, he might have used historical sources, but was no historian.  In the words of Stanley Aronowitz, Wallerstein “is asking questions about social structure rather than offering plausible explanations for the causes of particular events.”

And in his scheme lurked Karl Marx not so much as ghost as conductor, a point many were bound to take issue with. Marxist critics argued that too dominant a role was being attributed to trade rather than class interaction.  Those like Robert Brenner argued that the unit of analysis was itself at fault, preferring the nation-state as the appropriate level.  But unlike others of the Left, Wallerstein remained dedicated to the big-ticket issues: understanding economic inequality, identifying the predations of capitalism. Terms such as “epistemic violence” and the impenetrable jargon of the modern postcolonial oeuvre were distracting sideshows.

In his last days, he penned what he himself termed his “last commentary ever.”  He had written 500, and that was enough.  In it, he still held out hope of the possibility of “a transformatory use of a 1968 complex… by someone or some group.”  He conceded that predictions on this score were speculative at best.  Further “by-paths” of development might be followed, or not.  “I have indicated in the past that I thought the crucial struggle was class struggle, using class in a very broadly defined sense.”  There “a 50-50 chance that we’ll make it to transformatory change, but only 50-50.” By most measures, such odds look rather good.

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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]

JCPOA Commitments: Iran will Increase its Nuclear R & D

September 5th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

In response to Britain, France, Germany, and the EU’s continued failure to fulfill their mandated JCPOA obligations, Iranian President Rouhani said his government will increase its nuclear R & D beginning September 6.

It’s the third rollback of its voluntary commitments, permitted by JCPOA Articles 26 and 36, Rouhani saying:

“We took the first step in reducing our commitments, and gave the P4+1 a two-month deadline. Then we went ahead with the second phase, giving them another two-month deadline.”

“In the four-month period, we held negotiations with the P4+1, including the European Union and the three European countries in particular.”

Beginning Friday,

“the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) will be obliged to immediately start research and development on whatever technical needs the country has, and set aside all R&D commitments stipulated in the JCPOA.”

“R&D on various new centrifuges and whatever the country may need for uranium enrichment” will be pursued.

“A major part of negotiations with the P5+1 (Russia, China, the US, the UK, France, and Germany) was focused on the R&D timing… All the R&D timings in the JCPOA to which we committed ourselves will be fully lifted as of Friday.”

“We will carry out whatever we need technically…under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and within a peaceful framework.”

Steps taken by Iran are reversible if Europe fulfills its obligations, what it failed to do since the Trump regime’s illegal May 2018 JCPOA pullout — a hostile act, wanting the landmark nuclear deal killed.

It’s doomed if Europe remains in noncompliance — saying one thing to Iran while observing unlawful US “maximum pressure” tactics, acting as its vassal.

On Tuesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Seyyed Abbas Araqchi said the following:

“Our return to the full implementation of the nuclear accord is subject to the receipt of $15 billion over a four-month period. Otherwise the process of reducing Iran’s commitments will continue,” adding:

“Iran has repeatedly stated that it will return to the full implementation of the JCPOA only when it can freely sell its oil and fully access its oil revenues.”

French President Macron proposed offering Iran a $15 billion credit line to facilitate its oil sales.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian said the idea is “to exchange a credit line guaranteed by oil in return for (Iran reversing its voluntary JCPOA pullback), security in the Gulf, and the opening of negotiations on regional security and a post-2025 (nuclear program).”

The idea depends on Trump regime approval, he added, what’s highly unlikely.

On Wednesday, the Financial Times (FT) said

“US officials have played down the idea of Washington backing a French proposal to give Iran a $15bn credit line, as the (Trump regime) ramps up its ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on Tehran.”

On the same day, White House envoy for regime change in Iran Brian Hook said the following:

“We did sanctions yesterday. We did sanctions Friday. We did sanctions today. There will be more sanctions coming,” adding:

“We can’t make it any more clear that we are committed to this campaign of maximum pressure, and we are not looking to grant any exceptions or waivers.”

Rouhani told Macron that

“Europe has to either buy oil from Iran or provide Iran with the equivalent of selling oil as a credit line guaranteed by Iran’s oil revenues, which in some sense means a pre-sale of oil.”

Major differences remain between Iran’s legitimate rights and European policies toward the country, Rouhani added.

If Britain, France, Germany, and the EU were serious about saving the JCPOA, they’d have fulfilled their mandatory obligations long ago.

Failure to act responsibly shows they side with the Trump regime against Iran — while pretending otherwise.

Like the White House, they can never be trusted — operating more as US colonies than sovereign independent countries, partnering with hostile US actions against all nations on its target list for regime change.

A Final Comment

According to the FT, Brian Hook tried to bribe Iran’s Adrian Darya 1 super-tanker captain Akhilesh Kumar, saying:

He offered Kumar millions of dollars.

“With this money you can have any life you wish and be well-off in old age.”

“If you choose not to take this easy path, life will be much harder for you.”

Kumar ignored him. Trump’s Treasury Department sanctioned him. Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif slammed the attempted bribe, tweeting:

“US has told the captain of Iranian oil tanker that deliver us Iran’s oil and receive several million dollars or be sanctioned yourself.”

“This sounds very similar to the Oval Office invitation I received a few weeks ago.”

“(H)aving failed at piracy, the (Trump regime) resorted to blackmailing.”

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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 Raialyoum

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) abandoned their military facility at Avivim in Upper Galilee, which had been targeted by Hezbollah anti-tank guided missile strike. According to a released video, IDF troops left behind at least 2 pieces of military equipment and multiple personal possessions, including ammunition.

The escalation at the Lebanese-Israeli contact line happened on September 1 after IDF shelled unidentified targets at Shebaa Farms. After the incident, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a de-facto victory saying that Israel “acted with a combination of decisiveness and sagacity” and its forces achieved all of their “goals”. However, at the first look, the abandoned facility does not seem to be a sign of the victory. Probably, this was a tactical retreat.

On September 3, FoxNews and ImageSat Intl. came with a new report on Iranian presence in Syria. According to the report citing “multiple Western intelligence sources” and showing satellite imagery, Iran has established a new military base near al-Bukamal and “has plans to house thousands of troops at the location”. The report came with a common speculation that the supposed base could be use to house Iranian precision-guided missiles.

Watch the video here.

The situation at the Syrian-Iraqi border has been for a long time a part of the fearmongering campaign by mainstream media that started after the US-led coalition appeared to be unable to separate Syria and Iraq by capturing the border area employing its proxies. The main point of this campaign is that Iran will use the established ground link to supply its allies in Syria and Lebanon with weapons and equipment.

In Syria, forces of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (that are the core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces) shelled positions of Turkish-backed armed groups near Azaz and Mari. Pro-Turkish forces responded with a series of limited artillery strikes.

The situation at the contact line between the Syrian Army and militants in southern Idlib remains calm.

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The End of the “Greater Middle East Project”: The Case of Kurdistan

September 5th, 2019 by United World International

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential elections has had dire implications for the American “Greater Middle East” project which has guided US foreign policy in the Middle East since it was first put forward in 2003. Trump’s reorientation toward internal US problems (migration, economy, protectionism), the emergence of new geopolitical rivals (China and Iran) and the turning point being reached in the war against Daesh in Syria have resulted, more or less, in a new balance of powers in the Middle East. While the situation is still rather chaotic, one fact is certainly clear: the Americans have lost their dominant position.

On top of all of this, following the events of July 2016, Turkey, one of the central players in the Middle East, headed for geopolitical rapprochement with Russia and began to distance itself from the United States. Turkish authorities accused Washington of having played a role in the attempted coup, driving a wedge in the relationship of the long-time allies. Up to this point, Turkey, together with Israel, were seen as outposts for pushing US foreign policy interests in the Middle East. However, contradictions began to emerge over the US’ reliance on the Kurdish separatists, who are locked in a state of open conflict with the Turkish government. As a result of disagreements over this issue, America began to lose one of its most important regional partners. After the coup attempt, hostilities between Turkey and the West escalated even further: Turkey openly discussed the possibility of a withdrawal from NATO, the West countered by threatening Turkey’s ongoing EU integration process.

Unsuccessful negotiations between Washington and Ankara over the extradition of accused coup leader Fethullah Gulen only complicated matters further, as did disputes over Turkey’s detention of Pastor Andrew Branson. The contradictions eventually reached their sharpest point as the US attempted to dissuade, and ultimately, threaten Turkey over their purchase of Russian S-400 missile defense systems.

In parallel with these processes, Saudi Arabia and Qatar began to adjust their foreign policy accordingly. Realizing that the West could no longer fully control the situation in the region, Qatar began to seek support from Russia, which had successfully shown the strength of its influence in Syria.

Qatar, being a traditional ally of Turkey (predominantly via the Muslim Brotherhood), began to follow Turkey’s lead, even improving relations with Iran. Saudi Arabia, a regional adversary of Qatar, was forced to follow a similar strategy… of course, not in terms of improving relations with Iran (their main regional adversary) but by establishing ties with Russia. This is evidenced in Riyadh’s attempt to buy S-400s from Moscow against Washington’s wishes.

Thus, the United States has lost most of its regional partners, with only the invariable Israel remaining a part of the Greater Middle East project. Trump has bent over backward to keep this relationship secure, even if it means finally destroy Washington’s relations with the Islamic world altogether and instead rely on the Kurds… a plan as obvious as it is failed.

Revising the Greater Middle East Strategy

The Greater Middle East project was the guiding light of US foreign policy strategy in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia for decades. As of 2011, the project grew to include the Arab nations of North Africa and Syria in particular. On a project map designed by J. Kemp and R. Harkavy, the Republic of Turkey and Kazakhstan were also included.

The project aimed to spread and deepen “democracy” in the region. The plan had two sides: the official one, which was supposed to contribute to a rise in power for states led by pro-Western reformers (initially completely unrealistic) and the unofficial one, which was to actively destabilize existing Islamic regimes, support color revolutions, riots and even bring about regime change.

Creating controlled chaos has always been a central goal of the project. This goal was realized in Libya and Iraq, but its implementation in Syria was disrupted by the effective policy of Russia and Syria’s alliance with Iran and Turkey. In addition to these major powers, Hezbollah played a critical role in disrupting Washington’s plans.

However, the plan also involved the creation of a wider arc of instability – from Lebanon and Palestine to Syria, Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Iran – right up to the Afghanistan border, where NATO garrisons are located. The levers of the project were numerous: large-scale financial investments in the economies of the Middle Eastern countries, support for extremist groups, information warfare, alongside open provocations and false-flags operations. During the implementation of the project, many Middle Eastern countries underwent “color revolutions” backed by Western operators who induced controlled chaos and exploited social media networks in order to use various countries’ social, political, religious, ethnic and economic problems against them. During the “Arab Spring”, this strategy led to regime change in 3 states: Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, while Libya and Syria were left in a state of civil war.

The US and EU were never completely unified over the project. At one G8 summit, the Greater Middle East project was criticized by French President Jacques Chirac, arguing that Middle Eastern countries do not need this kind of forcibly exported “democracy.”

The strategy for “spreading democracy” in the region had essentially become thinly , if at all, veiled US intervention in the domestic political life of Middle Eastern states. Military assaults began in Afghanistan, Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Syria. However, the results were less than favorable for most, resulting in floods of refugees, including representatives of terrorist organizations. Western Europe was forced to face the brunt of the backlash for Bush and Obama’s Middle Eastern adventures. The globalists and neoconservatives were united in their efforts, and although their destructive goals were achieved, the majority of Americans did not even understand why these costly and brutal operations were being prioritized.

Trump properly grasped the mood of voters and promised to curtail the Greater Middle East project. After coming to power, he at least began to move in that direction: in December 2018, he decided to withdraw all American troops from Syria.

Project Implementation Opportunities

After the wave of color revolutions and the Arab spring, some states in the Middle East realized the real threat posed by America’s evolving strategy. Before their eyes, centralized and well-ordered states were turning into ruins. It was not just a change of leadership: the very existence of entire countries was threatened. Hence, many leaders concluded the need for a new emphasis on sovereignty. For example, Turkey, an important player in the region, focused on geopolitical interaction with Russia and China, reorienting itself toward the Eurasian axis which caused a crisis in relations with the United States (the purchase of the S-400s from Russia led the United States to refuse to sell Turkey F-35 fighter jets as previously agreed).

The region around Syria was gradually cleared of extremist groups, with the remaining militants relegated to the province of Idlib and the south-east of the country. When Imran Khan became Prime Minister, Pakistan also moved further away from the United States and began to develop pro-Chinese policies while establishing strategic relations with Russia.

Looking at all of these factors, we can conclude that the Greater Middle East project has already been curtailed.

However, the American strategy only partly depends on who runs the White House. That’s why it’s important to understand the role of the so-called Deep State in US politics. The Deep State has its own logic and direction, something which Trump needs to take into account. Due to the Deep State’s influence, America continues to take advantage of a number of complex problems for the region, one critical example being its tactic of fomenting conflict through support for the forces fighting for an independent Kurdistan. This conflict in particular is shaping  up to be the “last battle” of the Greater Middle East project.

The Kurdish Map

The Greater Middle East project, according to Ralph Peters and Bernard-Henri Levy (the plan’s most important European propagandists), involves the creation of an independent “Free Kurdistan” which includes a number of territories in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The creation of a single state entity through the unification of the 40 million Kurds residing in these countries could lead to a number of serious problems.

The idea of ​​creating an independent Kurdish state openly and clearly began to emerge at the end of the 19th century (the first Kurdish newspaper in Kurdish began to circulate in Cairo in 1898). At the end of the 19th century, the Kurdish people seemed as though they might actually embrace Turkey. The founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey, Kemal Atatürk, was positively greeted among the Kurds – some Alevite groups interpreted the role of Atatürk as Mahdi, the last successor of the prophet Muhammad. However, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds did not receive their desired autonomy, which began to cause problems.

Historically, the “Kurdish map” has always been an ace-up-the-sleeve of various geopolitical powers striving for influence in the Middle East: Woodrow Wilson first supported the creation of an independent Kurdish state after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the US again supporting Kurdish forces in the 1970s in an attempt to overthrow the Iraqi Ba’ath party… in 2003, it used the Kurds to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The Iranians used the Kurds against Iraq in the 70s as well, while in more recent times the Syrians have tried to use the Kurdish issue against Turkey. Israel has strongly supported the Kurdistan project in order to weaken the Arabic States.

The fragmentation of the Kurds who live in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, as well as in the Caucasus, is one of the reasons why it is currently impossible to build a single Kurdish state. The Kurdish people have historically been prone to clan and political fragmentation. There are several factors which strongly separate the various groupings of Kurds.

One complication to the formation of an independent Kurdistan is linguistic fragmentation – Soran is spoken in eastern Iraq and Iran, while Kurmanji is spoken by Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds. Some Kurds in Iraq speak yet another dialect – Zaza.

Religious issues also hinder the unification of Kurdish tribes and clans into a single state: the majority of Kurds are Sunnis (with a large number of Sufi tariqas),  while Zoroastrian styled Yazidism is less widespread. Meanwhile, In Iran, Kurds are mainly followers of Shia Islam. Yazidism is considered the Kurdish national religion, but it is too different from orthodox Islam and even from the rather syncretic Sufi Tariqas.

Yazidism is prevalent mainly among the northern Kurds – Kurmanji.

New year celebrations in Lalish, 18 April 2017. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Religion is a mixture of Zoroastrianism (manifested in the doctrine of the seven Archangels and a special attitude to fire and the sun, along with a strong caste system) with the Sufi teachings of Sheikh Abi ibn Musafir. The unexplored and closed sources of the Yazidi religion strongly complicate the Kurdish factor. The Muslim nations surrounding them often characterize the Yazidi Kurds as worshipers of Shaitan. Shiite-style Kurds (mainly residing in Iran) are a separate group, difficult to reduce to the Shiite branch of Islam as such, and are more approximately a Zoroastrian interpretation of it. Interestingly, Shiite Kurds believe that the Mahdi should appear among the Kurds, suggesting a degree of ethnocentrism.

Another important factor in assessing the chances of creating an independent Kurdistan is their cultural specificity in the Iranian context: the Kurds, unlike other Iranian peoples, maintained a nomadic lifestyle far longer than others.

We can conclude that building a unified Kurdistan is essentially a utopian idea: the rich diversity of the religious, linguistic and cultural codes would be impossible obstacles in building a traditional nation-state… and this is without taking into account the stiff opposition to the project from other states in the region, including Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. For these countries, the implementation of the Greater Kurdistan project would actually mean the end of territorial integrity and a fundamental weakening of their sovereignty, and perhaps even their complete collapse (particularly given the fact that other ethnic minorities would likely want to follow the Kurdish path).

Although an independent state might be a pipe-dream, Turkey’s current tactical ally, Russia, could play a positive role in solving and regulating the Kurdish issue by other means. Being neutral in the conflict, despite historically positive relations with the Kurds, Russia could act as a mediator and guarantor of Kurdish rights while fighting to maintain the territorial integrity of existing states. Russia could assist in providing the Kurds with the possibility of cultural unification, protection and the development of their identity, but this implies the concept of a cultural and historical association rather than a political one. This association could grant the Kurds a certain degree of autonomy while preserving the territorial borders of the states in which they live.

In Iraq, a solution to the Kurdish issue is possible through the construction of a tripartite confederation between the Shiite majority, the Sunnis (with the rejection of Salafism and extremism and with the Sufis playing a predominant roe) and the Kurds (mainly Sunnis). It is also necessary to take into account Assyrian Christians, Yezidis and other ethnic-religious minorities of Iraq.

At present, Iraqi Kurds have the maximum autonomy and prerequisites for the implementation of the Kurdistan project under the leadership of Masoud Barzani. The origins of the relative independence of Iraqi Kurdistan are in American operations during the 2000s. It was during this period that Iraqi Kurds gained a maximum degree of autonomy. At the moment, Iraqi Kurdistan has its own armed forces, currency and even its own diplomats. Its main income comes from oil sales. Interestingly, the per capita GDP in Iraqi Kurdistan is quite high and exceeds that of Iran and Syria.

Moreover, in September 2017, the autonomous region’s leadership held a vote on secession from Iraq – 92.73% voters voted in favor of creating an independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Erbil’s plans in this direction have been met with negativity both in Iraq and in Turkey (despite Erdogan’s partnership with Barzani).

However, the situation in Iraq has its own difficulties and complications – the Barzani clan controls only half of the region, the second part of Iraqi Kurdistan, including the capital located in Sulaymaniyah, is controlled by the Talabani clan (the “Patriotic Union of Kurdistan” party is subordinate to it). Conditional partnerships have been established between the Barzani clan and the Talabani clan, but their orientations differ due to their diverging political priorities: this also manifests itself in terms of foreign policy: The Talabani clan is focused on Iran while the Barzani clan is focused on Turkey. This situation shows that even in the strongest part of Kurdistan there are heavy internal contradictions which make state-hood impossible.

In Turkey, the project faces several particularly sharp problems, a notable one being the ruling circle’s strong views on the Kurdish issue. Erdogan came to power in part by playing on the Kurdish factor (in efforts such as the Western-supported Kurdish–Turkish peace process), but, as relations with the West worsened, he began to return to a national Kemalist course, which traditionally takes a tough anti-separatist position, seeing any compromises with separatists as weakening Turkey’s national unity. As a result, Erdogan is now pursuing a policy of suppressing the movement for Kurdish autonomy – the PKK has responded in turn by carrying out terrorist attacks and issuing ultimatums.

The most stable situation for the Kurds in the Middle East is the one in Iran. The Kurds there live in four provinces – Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Western Azerbaijan and Ilam.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The second seed of the Kurdish state is a network of associations of followers of the partisan leader Abdullah Ocalan, a left-wing politician, and the mastermind/creator of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Ocalan’s teachings are about creating a special political union of Kurds in the spirit of “democratic confederalism”. This project promotes the creation of a virtual Kurdish state, based on socialist ideas. The center of this teaching is currently Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), which has raised strong concerns from Turkey who sees the Syrian Kurds as an integral part of the PKK. Consequently, Erdogan’s policy is based on the uncompromising political rejection of the Syrian Kurds political formations, which is why he is preparing for military operations in northeastern Syria.

In Ocalan’s ideas, we find the interesting postmodern political project of creating a post-national virtual state called a “confederation” which relies on disparate associations, clans and tribes rather than a formal nation. This network-based society surprisingly coincides in its general features with postmodern theories in international relations, promoting the end of the era of nation-states and the need for a transition to a virtual structure of power. In philosophical terms, the idea is inspired by left-wing French postmodernists, in particular, the Deleuzian concept of the “rhizome” – a scattered mushroom in which there is no center, but everything is still connected in a network. The idea is manifested in the Kurdish anarcho-communist project which combines leftist ideas, postmodern philosophy and feminism. Representatives of anarchist communities inspired by globalist financier George Soros also have sympathy for the idea of a virtual rhizomatic state.

The main enemies of Ocalan’s project are Turkey and Syria (in Syria, the followers of Ocalan are based in the North – they call themselves the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria). Support for the Syrian Kurds has also come from the US government… for several years, they have sent financial assistance to the Kurds to fight Daesh terrorists. In the Western media, far more attention was paid to the Kurd’s fight against Daesh than the actual large-scale victories of the Syrian and Turkish armies.

Israel is betting heavily on the Kurds in its regional policy since the Israelis are well aware that a Kurdish state would be a fundamental problem for all of their regional opponents (Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria). Although the Kurds are Muslims, and therefore hardly enthusiastic about Israeli policy toward Palestine, the pragmatic interests of Kurdish nationalism often outweigh confessional solidarity.

Following the recent strengthening of Assad’s position in Syria, Iran’s tough opposition to US policy and Turkey’s geopolitical reversal toward multipolarity, America is also increasingly putting its money on the Kurds, literally and figuratively. In 2019, the Ministry of Defense allocated $300 million to support Kurdish forces in the war against Daesh. The United States, according to UWI sources, continues to supply arms to Kurdish militants from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) today, using them as a weapon in the struggle to overthrow Assad. A report by the Carnegie Foundation notes that Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq that successfully conducted operations against Daesh are “key US allies.” In the Western media, the Kurds are usually portrayed as “peacekeepers.”

The Americans (who are well aware of the difficulties involved) believe that the process of trying to build a Kurdish state will weaken or destroy their Middle Eastern rivals. After all, the creation of a free Kurdistan would entail the territorial division of Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, creating a wide-ranging but controlled chaos.

An Alternative to the Greater Middle East Project

It has become apparent that the Kurdish issue needs to be resolved in the framework of a new project, an alternative to the globalist’s Greater Middle East strategy. It is important to create an alternative project that could rely on Ankara, while taking into account the interests of Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus. It should be Moscow, and not Washington (at least, not the American deep state) that plays the central mediating role. The project should work to preserve the territorial integrity of existing nations and even strengthen their overall sovereignty… at the same time, it is extremely important to take into account the diversity of peoples in the Middle East, and the Kurds in particular. Within this new political framework, the Kurds should have certain powers and guarantees – but at the same time, they must not be allowed to be exploited by globalist forces looking to destabilize the region to their own advantage.

In the context of the transformation of the Middle East, powers should reorient themselves towards cooperation with the Eurasian pole. China and Russia could become the key players in resolving the Kurdish issue, ensuring a balance between real Kurdish interests and the countries seeking to maintain their territorial integrity. The only way out of the current Kurdish impasse is finding a strict, consistent and integrated approach to solving the problem of Kurdish identity.

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“The Christian Gospel for Americans: A Systematic Theology”

September 5th, 2019 by Elizabeth Woodworth

 

It is intended to clearly ground America in its founding identity, and to reset its priorities accordingly.

(The word “gospel” refers to the teachings of Christ. It comes from the old English word god, meaning “good,” and spel, meaning “news, a story,” which was translated from the Latin word for good news, “evangelion.”)

The early primary Christian doctrines are listed in Griffin’s Introduction and each contains good news about the nature, purpose, and justice of the creator.

Later, and not central to the original gospel, came the “bad news” (appearing in secondary and tertiary doctrines), some of which contradicts the essential gospel that God is love.

Having read this book several times, I believe that it does a superb job, in plain English, of what it set out to do:

  1. to provide a theology specifically for Americans in the 21st century, a theology justified and needed by America’s overwhelming economic, military, and cultural power; and by “the tensions that exist between the American image of itself as a Christian nation and its actual behavior.”
  2. to understand America in light of what the gospel calls people to do, rather than to interpret the gospel for the convenience of America;
  3. to encourage the revision of Christian thinking to clearly express the good news contained in the gospel’s primary doctrines;
  4. to offer a Christian theology which, like philosophy, seeks to provide an all-inclusive worldview, using evidence and reason that is consistent with the facts of our experience;
  5. to emphasize that at the center of Christianity is the morality of how an individual or a community lives. This morality is based on the words of Jesus: “do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets.”

Unfortunately, this central moral tenet has been increasingly violated by America’s dark foreign policy under the guise of “American Exceptionalism.”

A theology for America, Griffin says, must deal with this darker side, showing that the American Empire resembles the Roman Empire that crucified Jesus – Jesus, who had resisted economic injustice and foreign imperialism as demonic power opposing the Reign of Divine Values that he proclaimed.

Thucydides stated that “if we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled ourselves.” From this fear emerged the international war system and imperialism, unrestrained by any central moral authority such as a global democracy.

Anyone who ever doubts the unrestrained atrocities and regime changes the US has performed in at least 30 countries, including

Afghanistan, Brazil, Chile, the Congo, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Greece, Guatemala, Hawaii, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Laos, Libya, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Syria, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia,

should read “Chapter Eleven: The American Empire.” This scholarly research is not to be found in American school curricula.

Thus, never-ending wars, promoted domestically by symbols of victory and glory, have institutionalized violence and demonic power as virtuous, especially in the United States. A new theology is needed to extricate America from the grips of a much greater demonic power than that which governed Rome.

The Bible authors dealt with “the politics of fallen creation” – in other words, the politics of demonic power – the same power that now drives America’s “humanitarian” ideology expressed through foreign imperialism, nuclear weapons, environmental degradation, and climate destruction.

This rampage cannot continue without the support of the people.  American citizens and their clergy need a sound, internally consistent, systematic theology upon which to ground both their own ethical behavior and the behavior they require of their governments.  Griffin’s is the theology they need.

He confronts the science versus religion issue in a fascinating chapter showing that some scientists – former atheists – have been overwhelmed by the exceedingly precise ratios between the elements on Earth that are required for life. These scientists are now saying that the universe was “fine-tuned for life,” thus implying a “fine-tuner” (or divine creator).

For all who have been concerned about the failure of certain traditional Christian teachings to accommodate science, this gift of integrated new theological thinking has risen to meet the challenge.

Better yet, it conveys the positive essence and divine values of Christianity. As such it is a foundational guide for citizens and clergy who wish to deepen their understanding of the original gospel, and to actively promote a peaceful, sustainable existence.

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On September 4th, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran would give the EU a further 60 days to come back into compliance with its economic commitments under the JCPOA before Iran would initiate a third phase of withdrawal from its own obligations under the deal. On September 29th, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran has been enriching uranium to a purity of 4.35%, which marginally exceeds the limit of 3.67% stipulated under the terms of the JCPOA.

Furthermore, Iran has at this point exceeded the stockpile of 300 kilograms of nuclear fuel which was agreed upon in 2015. These measures are quickly reversible, but likewise, Iran also has the technical capacity to very quickly implement any decision to further suspend its commitments. The Iranian government has said that it has the technical capacity to resume production of 20% enriched uranium within 48 hours, were it to take such a decision.

The stumbling-block in the negotiations is that, with the United States having withdrawn from the JCPOA and re-imposed sanctions on Iran following Donald Trump’s assuring office as US president in 2017, the EU finds compliance with its own JCPOA-obligations extremely difficult, as European banks fear being hit by sanctions themselves if they un-freeze Iranian assets or facilitate transactions relating to Iranian oil-exports. US federal law states that, ultimately, all dollar-denominated banking-transactions worldwide ultimately have to pass through the US banking-system. Therefore, the strategic advantage conferred on the US by dollar-hegemony is not simply that it artificially inflates the value of the dollar, but also that it brings all dollar-denominated transactions worldwide under US legal jurisdiction.

In an attempt to find a workaround, French president Emanuel Macron has proposed that the EU should extend a $15 billion letter of credit to Iran, which would be guaranteed by Iranian oil-exports, thereby compensating Iran for losses of revenue owing to US sanctions. The Iranians have already rejected the first version of this offer, wherein this $15 billion package was classified as a loan rather than as a letter of credit. The distinction is crucial, as classifying the $15 billion package as a letter of credit would prevent the western powers from trapping Iran in a vice-grip composed simultaneously of an oil-embargo in addition to the obligation to service debt. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has explained that such a letter of credit would in effect be a pre-sale of oil.

However, the crucial weakness in this solution is that it will still require a waiver from the US government, which seems improbable considering Trump’s intransigence and US National Security Advisor John Bolton’s opposition to the plan.

Although, in the interests of fairness, we should extend some credit to President Macron for his diplomatic initiatives in an effort to find a way out of the impasse, the situation which exists still amounts to a very serious test of the EU’s credibility as a distinct negotiating-entity. The principal EU negotiator in the talks which led to the 2015 JCPOA-deal, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, has shown extreme weakness and passivity since the American withdrawal in 2017. Having worked hard to hammer out the terms of a deal, she has subsequently done absolutely nothing to defend it.

The net result is that the EU is currently in violation of its JCPOA-obligations because it has folded in the face of US economic bullying. What exactly is the point of bothering to negotiate with the EU if it is incapable of maintaining an independent policy on foreign relations, finance or security?

Another question thrown up by this diplomatic shambles is, considering that the number of countries worldwide being targeted by unilateral US economic sanctions is ever-increasing, when do we hit a tipping-point wherein this increasingly trigger-happy US policy, hitting the sanctions-button on reflex, has an accelerating effect in de-dollarization as a global process?

Banking-systems are dependent on a certain minimal level of systemic trust. How can the US hope to maintain its financial role in the world economy if everybody else is continuously reminded that their dollar-denominated assets worldwide can arbitrarily be frozen or seized at any time?

Already, the four largest banks in the world are Chinese. The only factor which has so far delayed China’s assumption of the role of the world’s banker is that the Chinese government has not yet decided to make the Yuan a more easily tradable currency. Further preparation is still required before the Chinese decide to flick that switch. Once they eventually do, it’s game over for the Dollar.

It is understandable that the Chinese have not yet decided to make the Yuan as tradable as other reserve-currencies, but their principal concern is not fears of vulnerability to speculators and raids. The capitalization of China’s state-owned financial institutions is such that, together, they could easily mobilize enough volume to defend the Yuan’s value against raids, or for that matter to suppress its value, any time they needed to.

I believe that the preparation which the Chinese government most centrally has in mind prior to any decision to make the Yuan fully tradable is the completion of the fibre-optic component of the Belt and Road Initiative. The strategic importance of these fibre-optic pipelines is the most under-emphasized aspect of Belt and Road. Once this physical infrastructure is in place, it will be possible to entirely circumvent American efforts toward virtual piracy in the form of unilateral sanctions. That will have a transformative effect on the world economy. The erosion of dollar-hegemony has been very gradual over the past 15 years, but if we are to see a sudden acceleration, a tipping-point, then that will be it.

It is quite probable that, in anticipation of this, odes to the Petro-Yuan are already being written in Farsi.

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São Paulo – the largest city in the Americas – was recently plunged into darkness in the middle of the day due to smoke from the Amazon rainforest burning more than 2,700km (1,700 miles) away.

These fires have brought global attention to the forests of South America, but the crisis surrounding them has deep roots. To understand what is happening in the Amazon today, it’s necessary to understand how deeply exploitation of the forest, and the Indigenous peoples who live within it, are ingrained in the global economy.

The first Portuguese explorers arrived in Brazil on April 22 1500. The region didn’t at first appear to offer the gold or silver that was to make Central America a tempting target for colonisers, but it did present a more obvious asset: vast forests with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of timber.

The region’s Brasilwood trees produced a valuable red dye, and with the colour red in fashion in the French court, Brazil’s forests quickly became a target for profit-minded Europeans. Brasilwood was so prevalent before colonisation that it lent its name to the country. But after centuries of overharvesting, these trees are now a highly endangered species.

Indigenous peoples were initially incentivised to help harvest timber in exchange for European goods. But eventually the native peoples were enslaved and made to destroy the forests which had provided the wood for their homes and the game and plants for their diet.

Once cleared of trees, land was turned into plantations to grow labour-hungry cash crops such as sugar, encouraging the enslavement of yet more Indigenous people. When they proved too few in number, vast numbers of people were taken from Africa and forced into slavery alongside them.

Global economy, local cost

The Mata Atlântica, a vast tropical forest which stretched down the east coast of the country and well into its interior, was an obvious target for the seafaring colonisers, who needed to ensure the materials they harvested could be easily transported to overseas markets.

But the environmental cost of this process was massive. As much as 92% of the Mata Atlântica has been destroyed over the past 500 years, erasing the places in which hundreds of distinct cultures evolved over the preceding millennia. Vast numbers of species disappeared along with it.

Indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon were enslaved by rubber barons into the 20th century. Walter Hardenberg/Wikipedia

In the 19th century, the British cleared yet more forest to establish rubber plantations. Despite officially being keen to encourage the abolition of slavery, the British-owned Peruvian Amazon Company violently forced Indigenous people into servitude. The anthropologist Wade Davis would later comment that

The horrendous atrocities that were unleashed on the Indian people of the Amazon during the height of the rubber boom were like nothing that had been seen since the first days of the Spanish Conquest.

The American industrialist Henry Ford founded a rubber-producing town deep in the Amazon rainforest in 1928. He hoped to “develop that wonderful and fertile land” to produce the rubber his company needed for car tires, valves and gaskets. Fordlândia, as it became known, was abandoned in 1934.

Fordlândia required the Ford Motor Company to ‘develop’ significant areas of rainforest. The Henry Ford Collection

By the middle of the 20th century, the size of the Indigenous population first encountered by the Portuguese had shrunk by 80-90%. Meanwhile, the global demand for beef accelerated the destruction of South American forests to free up new grazing land.

Global brands, such as McDonalds, have been linked with Brazilian beef, half of which is produced on lands which were once rainforest. Just as demand for sugar and rubber fuelled historic slavery, the global appetite for beef drives deforestation and displaces Indigenous people today.

New frontiers

The current crisis in the Amazon began with illegal gold miners, loggers, and farmers setting fires to clear lands for new enterprises. This process has been promoted and celebrated by the government of Jair Bolsonaroand the country’s powerful agribusiness sector. Already dislocated people face an increasingly grave situation. This is especially true for uncontacted groups who’ve yet to cultivate biological resistance to the diseases which outsiders can introduce, or develop the cultural experience necessary to navigate today’s complex political landscape.

Members of the Kaingang, a people displaced by the destruction of the Mata Atlântica. Their name can be translated as ‘owners of the forest’. Darren Reid, Author provided

Many of Brazil’s Indigenous cultures are completely oriented around their forests. In the modern era, their belief systems endure in groups such as the Kaingang, a part of the Gê peoples who occupied the southern parts of the Amazon rainforest and lived throughout the Mata Atlântica. They must actively nurture and protect these beliefs in the face of tremendous outside pressure.

Unlike in the US, dense forests and unmapped locations, not to mention uncontacted peoples, ensure continuity between the earliest days of European colonisation and modern Brazil.

Indigenous peoples have shown remarkable strength and resilience against more than 500 years of colonialist attack. But they remain vulnerable to an insatiable global economy which profits from the destruction of South American forests and the people who live within them. The recent fires are simply the most recent chapter in a much longer story.

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 is a Senior Lecturer, American History and Popular Culture, Coventry University

Featured image is from End of the American Dream

There have been several interesting developments in the United States government’s war on free speech and privacy.

First of all, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP), which is responsible for actual entry of travelers into the country, has now declared that it can legally access phones and computers at ports of entry to determine if there is any subversive content which might impact on national security.

“Subversive content” is, of course, subjective, but those seeking entry can be turned back based on how a border control agent perceives what he is perusing on electronic media.

Unfortunately, the intrusive nature of the procedure is completely legal, particularly as it applies to foreign visitors, and is not likely to be overturned in court in spite of the Fourth Amendment’s constitutional guarantee that individuals should “…be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Someone at a port of entry is not legally inside the United States until he or she has been officially admitted. And if that someone is a foreigner, he or she has no right by virtue of citizenship even to enter the country until entry has been permitted by an authorized US Customs and Border Protection official. And that official can demand to see anything that might contribute to the decision whether or not to let the person enter.

And there’s more to it than just that. Following the Israeli model for blocking entry of anyone who can even be broadly construed as supporting a boycott, the United States now also believes it should deny admittance to anyone who is critical of US government policy, which is a reversal of previous policy that considered political opinions to be off-limits for visa denial. DHS, acting in response to pressure from the White House, now believes it can adequately determine hostile intent from the totality of what appears on one’s phone or laptop, even if the material in question was clearly not put on the device by the owner. In other words, if a traveler has an email sent to him or her by someone else that complains about behavior by the United States government, he or she is responsible for that content.

One interesting aspect of the new policy is that it undercuts the traditional authority of US Embassies and Consulates overseas to issue visas to foreigners. The State Department visa process is rigorous and can include employment and real property verification, criminal record checks, social media reviews and Google-type searches. If there is any doubt about the visa applicant, entry into the US is denied. With the new DHS measures in place, this thoroughly vetted system is now sometimes being overruled by a subjective judgment made by someone who is not necessarily familiar with the traveler’s country or even regarding the threat level that being a citizen of that country actually represents.

Given the new rules regarding entering the United States, it comes as no surprise that the story of an incoming Harvard freshman who was denied entry into the United States after his laptop and cellphone were searched at Boston’s Logan Airport has been making headlines. Ismail Ajjawi, a 17-year-old Palestinian resident of Lebanon, was due to begin classes as a freshman, but he had his student visa issued in by the US Embassy in Beirut rejected before being flown back to Lebanon several hours later.

Ajjawi was questioned by one immigration officer who asked him repeatedly about his religion before requiring him to turn over his laptop and cell phone. Some hours later, the questioning continued about Ajjawi’s friends and associates, particularly those on social media. At no point was Ajjawi accused of having himself written anything that was critical of the United States and the interrogation rather centered on the views expressed by his friends.

The decision to ban Ajjawi produced such an uproar worldwide that it was reversed a week later, apparently as a result of extreme pressure exerted by Harvard University. Nevertheless, the decisions to deny entry are often arbitrary or even based on bad information, but the traveler normally has no practical recourse to reverse the process. And the number of such searches is going up dramatically, numbering more than 30,000 in 2017, some of which have been directed against US residents. Even though permanent resident green card holders and citizens have a legal right to enter the United States, there are reports that they too are having their electronic media searched. That activity is the subject of an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security that is currently working its way through the courts. The ACLU is representing 10 American citizens and a legal permanent resident who had their media searched without a warrant as required by the Fourth Amendment.

It is believed that many of the arbitrary “enforcements” by the CBP are carried out by the little-known Tactical Response Team (TRT) that targets certain travelers that fit a profile. DHS officials confirmed in September 2017 that 1,400 visa holders had been denied entry due to TRT follow-up inspections. And there are also reports of harassment of American citizens by possible TRT officials. A friend of mine was returning from Portugal to a New York Area airport when he was literally pulled from the queue as he was departing the plane. A Customs agent at the jetway was repeatedly calling out his birth date and then also added his name. He was removed from the line and taken to an interrogation room where he was asked to identify himself and then queried regarding his pilot’s license. He was then allowed to proceed with no other questions, suggesting that it was all harassment of a citizen base on profiling pure and simple.

My friend is a native-born American who has a Master’s degree and an MBA, is an army veteran and has no criminal record, not even a parking ticket. He worked for an American bank in the Middle East more than thirty years ago, which, together with the pilot’s license, might be the issue these days with a completely paranoid federal government constantly on the lookout for more prey “to keep us safe.” Unfortunately, keeping us safe has also meant that freedom of speech and association as well as respect for individual privacy have all been sacrificed. As America’s Founding Father Benjamin Franklin once reportedly observed, “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety will wind up with neither.”

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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West’s “Fake News” Begins to Backfire

September 5th, 2019 by Joseph Thomas

Western special interests have used the term “fake news” as a pretext for widening censorship, particularly across US-based social media networks like Facebook and Twitter as well as across Google’s various platforms.

In a move of political judo, many nations are citing the threat of “fake news” to in turn deal with media platforms, often funded and supported by the US and Europe, operating within their borders and often targeting sitting governments to either coerce or unseat them in pursuit of Western interests.

A recent example of this is in Thailand where the government has announced plans for measures to combat what is being called “fake news.”

A Bangkok Post article titled, “Digital Economy and Society Ministry outlines fake news crackdown,” would report:

The Digital Economy and Society Ministry (DE) is seeking to counter fake information shared online through the Line app because urgent issues could potentially incite mass public misunderstanding.

The article also makes mention of the Thai government’s plans to approach tech-giants like Facebook, Line and Google, urging each to establish offices in Thailand for the specific purpose of confronting “fake-news.”

Facebook and Google already have a well-oiled process of identifying and removing content both platforms deem “fake news” or “coordinated, disingenuous behaviour,” but this is a process that focuses solely on deleting narratives from their networks that challenge US interests. Both platforms, as well as Twitter, are more than happy to otherwise allow false narratives aimed at governments around the world to flourish with impunity.

The offices the Thai government seeks to establish are described as a shortcut for the Thai government to contact these foreign tech companies and spur them into action. However, similar arrangements have already been tried with mixed results and ultimately, with large foreign tech-giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter enjoying net influence over Thailand’s information space at the Thai government’s and the Thai people’s expense.

Genuine Cooperation and Non-Interference Requires Thai Leverage 

Google’s adherence to Chinese conditions for operating within Chinese territory resulted not from Google’s good will, but from China’s sufficient leverage over the tech-giant. China maintains its own tech corporations which dominate China’s information space. China’s Baidu is an equivalent to Google. Weibo is a Chinese equivalent to Twitter. And RenRen is a Chinese version of Facebook. All three dominate their respective target markets within China.

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China doesn’t need Google. Google needs China. And because of this leverage, China is able to bend Google to conform to its conditions while operating within China. At any time China can remove what little of Google’s business remains there because of this fact.

For smaller nations like Thailand, tech-giants like Google face little to no competition. They are able to exert influence over Thailand’s information space with virtual impunity. The Thai government may “ask” for cooperation, but lacking any indigenous alternative, requests for cooperation lack the sufficient leverage necessary to receive it in full.

Thailand’s latest plans will likely backfire if not linked to serious efforts to establish Thai versions of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms operated by foreign tech giants currently dominating Thailand’s information space.

Such efforts have been hinted at.  In 2017 there were talks between the Thai and Russian governments regarding Russian assistance to develop local Thai alternatives to US-based social media platforms.

So far, no tangible progress has been made. But should concrete plans be rolled out alongside requests that foreign tech giants concede control of Thai information space to the Thai government, the threat of local alternatives displacing foreign social media platforms just as they did in China or Russia could give Bangkok the leverage it needs to have its requests met.

The West’s Surreal Hypocrisy 

In the wake of Thailand’s announcement  to fight “fake news,” Western media platforms began decrying the proposed plans.

The Diplomat’s article, “‘Fake News’ and Thailand’s Information Wars,” would attempt to claim:  

Identifying what is considered “fake news” has become a political weapon for authoritarian consolidation after the 2014 military coup. The regime has relentlessly accused its critics of spreading false information while claiming that it is the only official source of true facts.

The author, Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, appears entirely unaware the term “fake news” was first coined in the West specifically for this purpose and the tech-giants Thailand proposes to lean on to enforce its own definition of “fake news” have already scoured their networks of tens of thousands of accounts in a politically-motivated censorship campaign propped up by claims of fighting “fake news.”
Janjira also complains that the Thai government’s proposal puts first and foremost US-backed political parties like Future Forward at risk. She never mentions Future Forward is a political proxy of foreign interests and glosses over its links to political parties guilty of mass murder, street violence and terrorism. She also attempts to imply US designs for primacy over Asia is a threat imagined by Thailand’s current government and its supporters despite a half century of US policy papers, US-led wars and standing armies placed in the region proving just how real this threat is.

If a campaign aimed at confronting “fake news” was ever really needed, it is for parties like Future Forward, the foreign special interests it works for and the networks of violence and terrorism it works with.

As Asia Rises, Western Influence in Physical and Information Space will Wane

Thailand is not alone. Other nations across Southeast Asia have already passed laws regarding what they define as “fake news,” much of which targets US-funded media platforms seeking to influence regional public perception, policy and economic decisions.

Reuters in its article, “Thailand asks tech firms to set up centers against ‘fake news’ in Southeast Asia,” would note:

Other Southeast Asian governments have also recently made efforts to exert more control over online content and taken a tough stance against misinformation. 

Singapore passed an anti-fake news bill in May, forcing online media platforms to correct or remove content the government considers to be false. 

Vietnam said its cybersecurity law, which was passed last year and banned posting anti-government information online, would guard against fake news. 

Whether or not Thailand’s current plans succeed, what is certain is that the balance of power in the region is shifting. Nations once powerless to compete against US economic, political, military and information supremacy are now moving individually and in unison to chip away at US hegemony in the region.

Thailand will eventually develop its own alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, Google and others which will not only be a benefit to Thai national security, but also to the Thai economy. Much of Thailand’s nearly 70 million strong population is online (including 46 million on Facebook alone) and keeping the money generated by their online activity inside Thailand’s borders can only be a positive thing.

It’s not a matter of if but of when US-based tech giants lose their grip on information space abroad. The only question that remains is how much damage they’ll be able to do in each respective country, including Thailand, before that grip loosens.

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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”. 

Featured image is from NEO

The German government announced Wednesday it had agreed on a plan to phase out the use of glyphosate—the key chemical in the weedkiller Roundup—with a total ban set to begin by the end of 2023.

“Way to go, Germany!” tweeted the U.S.-based advocacy group Organic Consumers Association.

Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s cabinet agreed to the plan Wednesday. The proposal, reported Bloomberg, also says that

the “government intends to oppose any request for the E.U. to renew the license to produce the weedkiller, according to a release by the environment ministry.”

The European Commission, the E.U.’s rules and regulations body, in 2017 renewed the license for glyphosate in the bloc through the end of 2022.

Germany’s environment Minister, Svenja Schulze, framed the new move as necessary to protect biodiversity, and said that “a world without insects is not worth living in”.

“What harms insects also harms people,” Schulze said at a press conference. “What we need is more humming and buzzing.”

Glyphosate is no longer exclusive to Monsanto’s Roundup, as it “is now off-patent and marketed worldwide by dozens of other chemical groups including Dow Agrosciences and Germany’s BASF,” as Reuters noted.

That’s despite the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer’s 2015 designation of glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen,” increasing concerns over its health effects, and mounting legal woes for Bayer, which acquired Monsanto last year, as multiple juries have found Roundup to have been a factor in plaintiffs’ cancers.

Such concerns prompted Austria to become the first E.U. country to ban glyphosate, a step it took in July.

Erwin Preiner, a member of the Austrian parliament who worked on the ban, said at the time,

“We want to be a role model for other countries in the E.U. and the world.”

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Amazonian Communities Need Solidarity, Not Saviours

September 5th, 2019 by Daniel Willis

A multitude of images of burning rainforest have circulated across social media over the last week with the hashtag #PrayfortheAmazon. A familiar refrain in these tweets and posts has been: if billionaires could dig in their pockets for Notre Dame, why won’t they save the Amazon?

Why won’t the billionaires intervene? Because it is their agribusiness and financial markets which profit from the rampant extractivist model at the heart of this unfolding crisis. Many commentators have failed to identify the system that benefits the burning rainforest, or grasp who bears responsibility for it.

The Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has emerged as a dangerous bogeyman in this context (and, to be clear, Bolsonaro deserves none of our sympathy) with environmentalists proposing his censure, or even assassination, to try and stop the blaze. But Bolsonaro and the Amazon fires are a problem of our own making in the global north. Centuries of extractivism, of putting free markets first, and a tendency to see the Amazon as belonging to all of us (as opposed to the indigenous communities that live there) have all contributed to the situation. President Macron’s comments ahead of the G7 summit in France last weekend that “our house is burning”, or the much repeated idea that the Amazon holds the “lungs of the earth”, represent just another instance of would-be white saviours laying claim to indigenous lands. Meanwhile, free trade policies pushed by leaders including Boris Johnson at the G7 would give corporations even more power to challenge any environmental regulations.

Bolsonaro made the point numerous times in his election campaign that he would open up the Amazon basin to agribusiness, and he has stayed true to his word. Reports this month have demonstrated that Bolsonaro’s government is waging a deliberate war on indigenous communities in Amazonas and across Brazil in order to clear land for farming and big business. But Bolsonaro is only one part of an unholy alliance between the far right, global finance and corporate power. Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas, Barclays and JPMorgan Chase are among the Anglo-European financial institutions with investments in companies that are destroying the Amazon. The Intercept has also reported that two Brazilian firms owned by Mitch McConnell, a big ally of President Trump, are “significantly responsible for the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest”.

The impact of this is truly terrifying and could be utterly catastrophic. If roughly another fifth of the Amazon rainforest is burned then the phenomenon known as “dieback” may lead to the total collapse of the Amazon ecosystem, with apocalyptic consequences for the global climate.

Yet one fifth of the Amazon was also destroyed in the 50 years before Bolsonaro’s rise to power, and it is crucial that we consider how Anglo-European corporations, global finance institutions, and previous Brazilian governments are implicated in this. We cannot simply abrogate responsibility for this crisis.

Furthermore, Bolsonaro is a figure worthy of denunciation for everything he does, and it is revealing that some politicians, environmental campaigners and celebrity figures have remained silent on Bolsonaro’s attacks on trade unionists, LGBTQ+ groups and feminists, but are outraged when he threatens the so-called “lungs of the earth”.

Solidarity not saviours

It is this implication, that the Amazon rainforest is somehow the collective property of everyone, which reveals a startling colonial tendency in responses to climate crisis. In these narratives, indigenous communities are either erased, represented without agency, or as essentialised guardians of the forest. The truth is that Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, as well as social movements in Peru, Ecuador and across the Amazon Basin, have struggled for decades (if not centuries) to defend their communities. The Amazon is not ours to save with prayers and clicktivism; it is their homeland to defend (with our solidarity) against the global corporations and free trade deals which would open up the Amazon to more risk.

It is also no accident that Anglo-European minds are particularly fixated on the Amazon given that European empires, particularly the British, have felt they have a stake in the Amazon for centuries. Foreign Office diplomat Roger Casement’s reports to parliament on the rubber boom in Peru in the early twentieth century demonstrate how British companies enslaved indigenous communities and caused widespread environmental destruction in their pursuit of profits. Today, different companies are destroying the Peruvian Amazon in pursuit of oil money; the British government has been highly supportive of the Camisea oil project and improving trade links with Peru.

Understanding this is fundamental to how we meet the climate emergency. Jair Bolsonaro, Alan García (former President of Peru) and Lenín Moreno in Ecuador have not opened up the Amazon out of pure malevolence, but because economic success for their administrations is predicated on them selling their country’s natural resources to markets and financers in the global north.

But now is not the time to despair. If we truly want to stop the Amazon from burning we must immediately focus on building internationalist solidarity, through new and existing institutions, with indigenous movements Brazil, the Amazon basin and across the global south. There is a dire need to censure Bolsonaro for his actions against indigenous communities – through international pressure and perhaps even a general boycott. We must accelerate our plans to decarbonise our economies – being careful to dismantle our extractivist economic model in the process. And we must tackle the power of big business and the upcoming trade deals (e.g. Trans-Pacific Partnership, EU-Mercosur trade deal, and the corporate courts they often contain) that will give corporations even more power to destroy the climate at will.

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Belarus is in the unenviable position of being caught in the middle of the New Cold War and having to delicately “balance” relations between Russia and the US.

US National Security Advisor Bolton’s trip late last month to Belarus was the highest official visit by an American dignitary in decades and caught many observers off guard who could never have imagined that he’d travel to the country that his own government had previously described as the so-called “last dictatorship of Europe” in the 2000s. Bolton also has an extremely negative reputation in Russia for his hawkish views, which is why many in Moscow were looking askance at his visit, especially since it came in the context of increasingly complex relations between Belarus and Russia. President Lukashenko regularly espouses tough rhetorictowards Russia whenever he feels like Moscow’s generous subsidies of his country’s economy are at risk of being curtailed, but most experts never took him too seriously because they believed that geostrategic reasons would always compel him to reconcile with his neighbor and never carry out a Ukrainian-like pivot towards the West. That view, however, has proven to be somewhat naive.

Ideally, Belarus would love to indefinitely remain subsidized by Russia and never have to reach out to the same country that previously disrespected its leader through personal insults and even sanctions, but an unexpected impact of the West’s anti-Russian sanctions forced his hand and resulted in him welcoming Bolton to Minsk. Russia is in the midst of a systemic socio-economic transition towards a “Great Society” built upon “National Development Projects” that will diversify the budget’s lingering dependence on resource exports and make the country much more competitive on the world stage, but it’s precisely because of this that domestic spending is being prioritized at the expense of external aid such as what was previously given to Belarus since independence. Specifically, Russia can no longer afford to subsidize oil exports to Belarus, which its partner used to then sell for enormous profit further afield in Europe, and this has created an unprecedented problem for bilateral relations.

Even worse, the mysterious contamination of oil exports to the country earlier this year seriously damaged the trust between these two neighbors, influencing Lukashenko to seriously begin looking for alternatives in the West. That’s why he’s considering purchasing oil from the US of all possible sources, in what’s clearly a snub to Russia that’s also designed to get him further on Trump’s good side. It’s not just that he hopes to “buy access” to the American administration, but the possibility exists of the Belarusian leader investing in related infrastructure connecting his country with the US’ regional vassal states, specifically Poland, where an expensive LNG terminal was recently constructed for importing American gas. It should also be noted that Poland is the leader of the “Three Seas Initiative“, which functions as a structure of American proxy influence for “containing” Russia in the region in an economic way, so it’s entirely feasible that Belarusian-Polish relations will continue improving as a result of the nascent Belarusian-American rapprochement.

Lukashenko could indeed pivot away from Russia, but his economy is still much too dependent on it to do so without any serious consequences, which is why Belarus’ steps westward will likely be incremental (though possibly punctuated by several symbolic developments like the import of American oil). From the Russian perspective, this is a worrying trend because it might eventually manifest itself in the security sphere with time, such as if Belarus breaks with its CSTO mutual defense commitments with Russia and disagrees with Moscow’s steps for responding to the US’ potential deployment of post-INF missiles to Poland or elsewhere in the region due to growing Western influence in this strategically positioned country. At the same time, the West has launched an intensive infowar campaign fearmongering about a speculative Russian “annexation” of Belarus, one that could either be undertaken forcefully as “punishment” or “gently” through integrative means.

The first-mentioned scenario is completely unrealistic, but the second one is much more effective in influencing Lukashenko because it’s designed to sow the seeds of doubt in his mind about the wisdom of tightening the so-called “Union State” between the two. As it happens to be, the only realistic recourse that Russia has for improving relations with Belarus is to integrate with it into the “Union State”, which the US cleverly predicted and is why it preemptively sought to discredit this possibility by painting it as an “annexation”. This is also supposed to serve as a “dog whistle” for Color Revolution “sleeper cells” to become active if any serious progress is made on this front, just like what happened in Ukraine when Kiev delayed signing the EU Association Agreement. Belarus therefore finds itself between a rock and a hard place, where the wrong move could spell American-driven disaster if Lukashenko’s high-stakes “balancing” act falls flat.

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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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UK MPs Block No-Deal Brexit

September 5th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s agenda was rejected in the first three parliamentary votes on his watch — a hugely inauspicious start to his premiership, leaving his status shaky.

On Tuesday by majority vote, MPs took control of parliament’s agenda, usually the government’s prerogative.

On Wednesday, majority MPs blocked a no-deal Brexit and snap elections.

Note: MPs voted by a 298 to 56 in favor of October 15 snap election, the date Johnson proposed — 296 MPs abstaining or not voting, well short of a 434 super-majority needed for adoption.

According to the 2011 Fixed Term Parliament Act, a two-thirds majority is needed to approve a snap election. It can also be held following a majority no-confidence vote by MPs.

Johnson vowed to leave the EU by October 31 with or without a deal, what most MPs and Brits oppose, including 21 Tories, expelled from the party by BoJo for opposing a no-deal Brexit.

He no longer has a ruling majority. Legislation passed Wednesday by a 327 – 299 majority requires him to seek a three-month Brexit extension to end of January if no deal with the EU happens by October 19 — approval by Brussels required.

Frustrated by three parliamentary defeats, he said

“(i)t is completely impossible for the government to function if the House of Commons refuses to pass anything the government proposes.”

Note: March 29 was the original Brexit deadline, postponed until April, then October 31, perhaps end of January next.

On June 23, 2016, Brits voted by a 52 – 48% majority to leave the EU, the issue unresolved over three years later.

Delaying Brexit requires approval by a House of Lords majority, likely no later than Friday, and Queen Elizabeth, the latter most often a formality.

New elections are likely ahead, when uncertain. When held, they’ll be a second Brexit referendum,

Polls now show more Brits against than for Brexit most voters oppose, fearing its disruptive effects without a deal.

Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn said he’ll support snap elections once a no-deal Brexit no longer is an option, adding:

“The reality is deeply unpalatable: a disastrous no-deal Brexit to take us into the arms of a trade deal with Donald Trump that would put America First and Britain a distant second.”

According to former MP George Galloway, stopping a no-deal Brexit appears certain, adding:

“Unless something dramatic happens in the House of Lords – which can’t be ruled out, because they intend to sit all night and filibuster this bill.”

On Thursday, House of Lords Labor peer Philip Hunt tweeted the following:

“Government ends filibuster in the Lords. Agrees Brexit Bill will complete passage in the Lords by 5.00 pm Friday.”

Chances are a no-deal Brexit is off the table, though nothing ahead is certain.

Since becoming prime minister on July 24, Johnson achieved no parliamentary victories, three dramatic defeats on his core objective — delivering Brexit,  leaving him weakened, heading a minority government.

According to UK academic Jon Tonge, he’s gotten “the shortest honeymoon in British political history. Boris Johnson is in a terrible mess.”

He considers himself a “sensible, moderate” Tory leader. Others call him divisive, hardline and devious, never to be trusted.

UK journalist Patrick Cockburn accused him of trying to engineer

“a slow-moving coup d’etat in which a right-wing government progressively closes down or marginalizes effective opposition…concentrates power…by stifling parliament, denounc(es) its opponents as traitors to the nation, displac(es) critics in its own ranks, and purg(es) non-partisan civil servants,” adding:

Johnson is “a demagogic nationalist populist authoritarian leader (who assumed) power through quasi-democratic means, and makes sure that he cannot be removed.”

Cockburn compares him to Turkey’s Erdogan. Others call him a UK Trump.

DJT loves him, calling him “a friend of mine…Boris knows how to win. Don’t worry about him.”

Ordinary Brits have plenty to worry about — ruled by hard right politicians, force-feeding them austerity like in the US, France, and other Western countries.

In July, Tories chose Johnson as prime minister over Jeremy Hunt by a two-to-one margin — despite no popular mandate.

Theresa May resigned after failing three times to strike a deal with Brussels on Brexit.

Johnson’s hardline agenda is worse. House of Commons Speaker John Bercow called him a “constitutional outrage.”

What’s coming ahead remains very much uncertain.

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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.

New Kazakhstani President Tokayev is facing his first real test as the country’s leader after low-intensity anti-Chinese protests broke out in three main cities in response to concerns that the Central Asian state is becoming much too dependent on its eastern neighbor, with this sudden outbreak of small-scale unrest inconveniently (but not un-coincidentally) occurring just a week before his upcoming visit to the People’s Republic and dangerously showing signs of Color Revolution potential.

An anti-Chinese protest movement has suddenly broke out in three of Kazakhstan’s main cities just a week before the country’s new leader visits the People’s Republic, with this low-level but nevertheless potentially dangerous unrest being President Tokayev’s first real test since entering office a few months ago. The western city of Zhanaozen was the scene of the first such demonstrations when 300 people demanded that no Chinese-financed factories be built in their region following rumors that they might be constructed in the coming future. Zhanaozen is significant because it suffered from short-lived but deadly riots in December 2011 that were quickly put down by the authorities within a day, which is why international observers are keeping an eye on the latest developments there. Copycat protests by only several dozen people have since spread to the former capital of Almaty and the current one of recently renamed Nur-Sultan, which while seemingly irrelevant in a country of approximately 18 million people could nevertheless catalyze a proto-Color Revolution depending on the state’s response.

Growing Chinese influence in Kazakhstan is a very emotive topic following the spread of the US’ dual infowars against its chief global geopolitical adversary, the first of which alleges that the communist country is secretly using its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) to “colonize” its partners while the second one purports that the People’s Republic is brutally suppressing its Muslim minorities (including ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang) out of pure hatred for Islam. Neither narrative is true, though it’s understandable that some of its targeted audience might easily be misled through the selective reporting of facts and the outright propagation of fake news. Furthermore, despite being the most socio-economically developed Central Asian state, Kazakhstan is having trouble diversifying its economy beyond its energy-exporting dependence, and it’s always convenient for blue-collar workers to blame foreigners for their troubles instead of accepting some hard economic realities. That said, it’s ironic that China has become the object of their anger because its BRI investments will actually real helpful.

The Eurasian Land Bridge, one of BRI’s megaprojects, is envisaged to connect Western Europe with East Asia via Kazakhstan and Russia, to which end China intends to invest heavily in these two transit states in order to facilitate trade and add value to products along the way. In pursuit of this, China provides low-interest loans in order to help all of its global partners, Kazakhstan included, so one would naturally expect its people to be in favor of China’s growing role in their country. Some of them aren’t, however, such as the protesters who are also calling on President Tokayev to stop accepting Chinese loans. They believe that this puts their country’s sovereignty at stake and contributes to corruption, though as is typical of most contemporary protest movements, they aren’t offering any alternative solution that they believe would be better. Instead, the demonstrators are clearly trying to incite public anger by using the controversial issue of Chinese influence and fearmongering about their neighbor’s supposed “neo-imperial” and “anti-Islamic” designs, which is a very dangerous political game to play.

By the looks of it, the agitators don’t have much public support even if some members of the population might partially sympathize with the narratives that they’re spreading, whether because they’re misinformed or truly believe them. In any case, the timing of the protests isn’t coincidental since they’re clearly intended to generate international attention ahead of President Tokayev’s visit to China, after which they might turn violent in order to provoke the police into forcefully responding so that they can revive memories of the 2011 riots in Zhanaozen and also spread the new infowar narrative that the Kazakh leader is a “Chinese puppet killing his own people at the anti-Islamic communists’ behest”. That turn of events might be enough to encourage more people to take to the streets and protest against so-called “police brutality” and then use that as the basis for demanding the resignation of security and political officials, thus manufacturing a crisis in this ultra-geostrategic state where there otherwise would never have been one.

It’s impossible for most states to wield full control over domestic narratives in this time and age given the recent information-communication technology (ICT) revolution and the prevalence of social media, let alone for the governments of comparatively smaller non-Western countries to positively influence international coverage during periods of unrest, so Kazakhstan needs to accept that it’ll remain forever vulnerable to infowar-driven Color Revolution attempts — whether genuinely indigenous or influenced from abroad — and should therefore exercise the utmost caution in formulating its on-the-ground response to the latest low-level unrest. Incipient HybridWars capitalize off of their target’s overreactions, as well as local footage of the aforesaid being decontextualized and manipulated to provoke more anti-government protests, so Kazakhstan should take care not to fall into this trap.

President Tokayev should also ensure that the reasons for his upcoming trip to China and the tangible benefits of the Kazakhstani-Chinese Strategic Partnership are clearly articulated to the population in order to counteract the misinformation that’s being spread. By appreciating the part that their country plays in the emerging Multipolar World Order, as well as physically benefiting from this role, ordinary citizens will become less vulnerable to anti-Chinese infowars and therefore increasingly unlikely to be lured into Color Revolution schemes. If forced by circumstances to actively respond to the protests before or during President Tokayev’s visit, the police should make sure that they have their own footage of what happened in order to debunk claims that they “mercilessly attacked peaceful civilians” and to show that they were compelled to do so in order to maintain law and order following attacks against the authorities or whatever else might have provoked their crackdown. With all of this in mind, there isn’t any reason to over-exaggerate the impact of these protests, but they nevertheless represent a latent threat that should also be taken seriously in the long term.

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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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5G Critics Censored by Big Tech

September 5th, 2019 by Alliance for Natural Health

More and more concerned citizens are asking tough questions about the safety of 5G wireless networks. Are big tech companies trying to quash their dissent? Action Alert!

Over the last few months, we’ve been reporting on the planned deployment of 5G wireless networks and some of the health and safety issues that are being swept under the rug by telecom companies and their enthusiasts in the government. Some communities, like Sacramento, California, have already seen the installation of “small cell” towers near homes. When activists in Sacramento started speaking out, it appears as though YouTube and other sites have silenced their criticisms of 5G.

Noah Davidson, an activist in Sacramento, noticed his young nieces started experiencing health problems after Verizon installed a small cell just 45 feet from their home. Other members of the community also started experiencing adverse effects after small cells were installed. Davidson has worked to start a grassroots movement to raise awareness about 5G in the community and to work with telecom companies to establish an opt-out program for those who do not want 5G in their neighborhood.

In so doing, it appears as though Davidson has incurred the wrath of the Internet censors. His account was apparently suspended, without explanation, by YouTube. One of the two videos on his YouTube account was footage of Sacramento activists speaking at a city council meeting. This seems deeply suspicious. YouTube is owned by Google, a company that we know is aggressively censoring content on dubious grounds. It doesn’t seem outlandish to conclude that Google and YouTube are quashing dissent about a technology they want to see implemented across the United States.

Activists are not the only ones advising us to pump the breaks on 5G. A group of hundreds of scientists from around the world recently sent a letter to the United Nations and the World Health Organization warning of “serious concerns regarding the ubiquitous and increasing exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) generated by electric and wireless devices.” The scientists explain that EMF “affects living organisms at levels well below most international guidelines,” causing increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in free radicals, genetic damage, changes to the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, and neurological disorders.

We must keep speaking out about this crucial public health issue in defiance of the censors and the crony capitalists railroading us into accepting this technology with no questions asked.

Our previous articles have covered some of the other dangers associated with 5G networks. For example, 5G utilizes millimeter waves—a shorter wavelength than the current 4G networks in use. Millimeter wavelengths have been used in crowd control devices that shoot high-powered millimeter waves that make the target feel like their skin is burning. Other research has shown that our sweat ducts can act like antennas for the shorter millimeter waves, meaning we absorb more of this energy into our bodies.

Keep in mind that we will be exposed to EMF generated by wireless devices on an unprecedented scale for two reasons. First, short millimeter waves cannot travel as far as longer waves, which is why many more “small cell” units must be installed to create a 5G network. Some neighborhoods would see dozens of small cells installed, all of them emitting microwave radiation. Second, the sheer number of wireless devices will increase. More and more systems are becoming wireless, or will become reliant on wireless technology. “Smart cities” will use wireless networks to collect and analyze data about the environment, traffic, water, transit, lighting, waste management, security, and parking. Millimeter-wave-emitting devices will saturate our environment, and the fact that we’re plunging head-first into deploying this technology without knowing the health consequences is shocking.

Action Alert! Write to the FCC and Congress, urging them to stop the spread of 5G until its safety can be determined. Please send your message immediately.

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US, NATO, Israeli missiles and other weapons are used time and again for naked aggression. 

Judge them by their actions, warrior states, global menace nations, threatening everyone everywhere.

The Islamic Republic of Iran never attacked another country preemptively. It’s the leading regional proponent of peace and stability.

It’s targeted by the US for regime change because of its sovereign independence, support for Palestinian rights, and its vast hydrocarbon resources Washington seeks control over.

It’s also Israel’s main regional rival, the Jewish state and the US wanting pro-Western puppet rule replacing its sovereign independence.

Its nuclear program has no military component, never did, and no evidence suggests one may be developed by a nation abhorring these weapons, wanting them eliminated everywhere.

The US, Britain, France and Israel are nuclear armed and dangerous.

America is the only nation ever to use these weapons against another state — gratuitously against Japan after its authorities offered to surrender when WW II in the Pacific was won.

On August 31, Middle East Monitor quoted Netanyahu threatening to “wipe out” Israel’s enemies — standing next to the country’s Dimona nuclear reactor.

In 1964, France built it in the Negev, used by Israel to develop nukes, not to produce electricity. Its nuclear program is focused on weapons development and production.

Israeli production of nuclear weapons began in the 1960s. The Eisenhower administration aided Israeli development of nukes, supplying the country with its first small nuclear reactor in 1955.

South Africa collaborated with Israeli nuclear weapons development until the early 1990s.

Israeli missiles, warplanes and submarines can launch nukes to reach targets far distant from its territory. Reportedly it has hundreds of warheads in its arsenal.

In the mid-1980s, Dimona nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu publicly revealed the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

He was politically imprisoned for 18 years for the “crime” of truth-telling, mostly in solitary confinement — persecuted and denied his fundamental rights after released.

Today, Israel’s thermonukes nukes can destroy large cities. Was Netanyahu’s “wipe out” remark a threat to use these weapons against adversaries?

Does he have Iran, Syria, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah in mind? Like the US, Israel is perpetually at war, mostly against defenseless Palestinians — partnering as well with US aggression against Syria since 2011, and posing a serious threat to Lebanon.

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif slammed Netanyahu, tweeting: “Iran, a country without nuclear weapons, is threatened with atomic annihilation by a warmonger standing next to an actual nuclear weapons factory.”

Israel has numerous nuclear weapons sites, including R & D facilities, factories, private companies, and government research centers devoted to developing, upgrading, producing and maintaining Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

The 1961 US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits aiding nations develop nuclear weapons. Israel was secretly exempted.

On Tuesday, the Trump regime escalated sanctions war on Iran, targeting it legitimate space program — part of DJT’s unlawful “maximum pressure” on the country.

Last week, Pompeo said the Trump regime “will not allow Iran to use its space launch program as cover to advance its ballistic missile programs. Iran’s August 29 attempt to launch a space launch vehicle underscores the urgency of the threat,” adding:

US action taken “should serve as a warning to the international scientific community that collaborating with Iran’s space program could contribute to Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon delivery system” — it doesn’t seek, no evidence suggesting otherwise.

On Tuesday, Trump’s State Department falsely accused Iran of developing ballistic missiles and related technology prohibited by Security Council 2231 — unanimously affirming the JCPOA nuclear deal.

No Iranian ballistic or other missiles are designed to carry nuclear warheads. No evidence suggests otherwise.

Its missile development, testing, and production comply fully with SC Res. 2231. Solely for defense, Iranian missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads exclusively.

Neither SC 2231 or any other SC resolutions prohibit Tehran’s legitimate ballistic missile development, testing and production.

Pompeo and other Trump regime officials falsely claimed otherwise, wanting Iran’s defense capabilities weakened.

Its strength gives Pentagon and IDF commanders pause about attacking a nation able to hit back hard against an aggressor.

Iran threatens no other nations. The US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial allies threaten everyone everywhere.

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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.

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Selected Articles: Political Outrage in Britain over No-deal Brexit

September 4th, 2019 by Global Research News

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UK Parliamentarians Voted to Take Control of the Agenda. Majority UK MPs Oppose Johnson’s No-Deal Brexit

By Stephen Lendman, September 04, 2019

They want a measure debated to prevent Britain from leaving the EU without a deal with Brussels — either by the current October 31 deadline or later if it’s extended again.

The Real Reason Johnson Prorogued Parliament

By True Publica, September 04, 2019

However, it is also now clear that Boris Johnson’s team does, in fact, have a plan. Proroguing parliament was just a part of it and that has become clear now that Johnson is withdrawing the whip from Tory MPs who do not toe the no-deal Brexit line.

Why No-deal Brexit Is a Battle for the Soul of Our Nation. “Boris Johnson’s Lies Would make Pinocchio Blush”

By Prof. John Van Reenen, September 04, 2019

We are careening towards the most extreme form of Brexit imaginable – flouncing out of the European Union (EU) after 46 years without any transition plan.

“Regime Change in the UK”: This Is an Anti-parliamentary Coup – and an Internationally Organised One

By Diane Abbott, September 02, 2019

We are living through a coup against parliament by a minority of parliamentarians, who have seized control of the Tory party from the right. They intend to impose their will against the majority of elected representatives and against the will of the public.

The Queen’s Active Role in Britain’s Right Wing Coup

By Craig Murray, September 02, 2019

The monarch appoints the UK Prime Minister. The convention is that this must be the person who can command the support of the majority in the House of Commons. That does not necessarily have to be from a single party, it can be via a coalition or pact with other parties, but the essential point, established since Hanoverian times, is that the individual must have a majority in the Commons.

Unhinged before the Fall: Boris Johnson, Parliament and Brexit

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, August 30, 2019

Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been inspired by a mild dictatorial urge, seeking to suspend the UK parliament five weeks out from October 31.  This has been described as nothing short of a coup, or, if you are the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, a “constitutional outrage”.  

Brexit “Transition”: The Calm before the Storm for Boris

By Johanna Ross, August 27, 2019

President Macron echoed the words of German Chancellor Angela Merkel who when meeting the UK PM on Wednesday gave him just 30 days to come up with an alternative to the Irish backstop.

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Sophie Tucker was a Jewish American singer and radio personality. Known for her powerful delivery, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century and was widely known by the nickname “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas”.

Her hit song, ‘My Yiddishe Momme’ was translated into many languages including German, Spanish, French and Russian as well as in English by a number of well-known stage artistes and touched a chord of humanity, love and respect in audiences worldwide.

The song, broadcast internationally, brought a tear to so many listeners over more than fifty years and struck a chord with families of all faiths, not merely those born Jewish.  It reminded all who listened to it of family values, of decency, humanity and kindness as well as respect for our parents and grandparents, whatever and wherever their origins.

How starkly different are the values espoused today by the hard-Right, extremist Likud Party of Israel headed by the now notorious Binyamin Netanyahu.  A leader and a Party that advocates the forced annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the ‘transfer’ of millions of the region’s majority indigenous people out of their homeland of a thousand years, to adjoining territories.

A political Party that has imposed an illegal blockade of essential goods against 1.8 million in Gaza for over 12 years, in a deliberate, inhuman and illegal attempt at regime change.

A Party that has destroyed schools, electricity stations and hospitals using chemical and other weapons in an (albeit failed) attempt at not only regime change but annexation of land plus the redistribution of water from the River Jordan to Israeli occupied land.

When the newly constituted United Nations, in 1947-8, approved the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state, it was never envisaged that it would serve as a magnet that would attract thousands of economic and political migrants from America, Russia and France, among other places, to sell their homes in order to relocate their families upon Palestinian land that had been largely acquired by threat and violence during 1947-8 by marauding paramilitaries who had already conducted a terrorist attack by bombing the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

“My Yiddishe Momme I’d like to ..  hold her hands once more as in days gone by and ask her to forgive me for things I did that made her cry” [1]

Of course, we are reminded that the song was entitled ‘My Yiddishe Momme’ and not ‘My Israeli Momme’!  And that puts a necessary perspective upon it.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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[1] My Yiddishe Momme lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc

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On Tuesday by a 328 – 301 majority, UK parliamentarians voted to take control of the agenda.

They want a measure debated to prevent Britain from leaving the EU without a deal with Brussels — either by the current October 31 deadline or later if it’s extended again.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson expelled 21 Tory MPs from the ruling party for voting Tuesday against a no-deal Brexit — including former Chancellor Philip Hammond and Winston Churchill’s grandson Nicolas Soames.

Following his parliamentary defeat, Johnson said he’ll seek a motion to call for general elections.

According to the 2011 Fixed Term Parliament Act, a two-thirds majority is needed to approve a snap election. It can also be held following a majority no-confidence vote by MPs.

The Commons Library estimate on how quickly a general election may be held puts it no earlier than October 24, a week before the current Brexit deadline.

Since Johnson became prime minister on July 24, his public approval rating surprisingly rose 10%. Yet Tories are more unpopular than the reverse.

Labor is second to Tories in public support, but it eroded in favor of Remain-backing Liberal Democrats.

Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn and Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said they’ll only support a snap general election if parliament blocks a no-deal Brexit.

According to the UK-based betting and gaming firm Oddschecker, a snap general election is highly likely — putting the odds at more than 4 – 1.

If held, Tories may retain power. Polls show they lead opposition parties. Currently, most MPs oppose a no-deal Brexit because of its disruptive effects.

New elections will be like a second Brexit referendum. In 2016, Brits voted to leave the EU by a 52 – 48% majority.

Current polls show most Brits oppose a no-deal Brexit. In an August YouGov poll, 47% of respondents opposed leaving the EU without a deal, only 21% in favor.

At the same time, a BMG Research poll showed only 34% support for a no-deal Brexit — 49% favoring either a delay, remaining in the EU, or a new referendum. Only 19% believe Johnson will negotiate a new deal with Brussels.

Other polls show more opposition to leaving the EU without a deal than favoring the idea. If new elections are held, chances are majority MPs would oppose a no-deal Brexit, though nothing is certain in advance.

In late August, Johnson suspended parliament for five weeks, an attempt to ram through a no-Brexit deal most MPs oppose, and are attempting to block before so-called end of the parliamentary session prorogation begins from next week through October 14.

Anti-no-deal Brexit MPs control parliament after Tuesday’s vote. They seek an extension of the October 31 deadline until end of January 2020, EU approval required.

Johnson said

“(t)here are no circumstances in which I will ask Brussels to delay. We are leaving on 31 October, no ifs or buts.”

He’s in trouble. He lost his first crucial vote in parliament, 21 Tory MPs defied him and were expelled from the party, and he lost his ruling majority after Phillip Lee defected to the Lib Dems — its party members against Brexit or for holding a second referendum.

During Tuesday’s parliamentary session, Lee left Tory benchers and joined Lib Dem MPs — because Johnson is pursuing a “damaging Brexit,” he said separately.

Following events on Tuesday, former MP George Galloway said the following:

“It is chaos in Parliament. Britain is effectively now ungoverned just weeks before we’re supposed to leave the European Union,” adding:

“Not since Hitler was at the Channel ports in 1940 and Chamberlain was brought down and replaced by Sir Winston Churchill has Britain been in a more chaotic and precarious place.”

What’s ahead is anyone’s guess.

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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 Pixabay

Ribbeck Law Chartered, which represents the majority of families of the victims of the deadly Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashes, and Global Aviation Law Group, has filed additional lawsuits against Boeing for an Egyptian family in U.S. federal court in Chicago.

Ribbeck Law Chartered has filed 44 cases against the Boeing Company in Federal Court in Chicago for the recent Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft crashes. Manuel von Ribbeck of Ribbeck Law Chartered stated,

“Today, we have filed an additional case for a passenger from Egypt who died in the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash.” “Our clients are seeking more than one billion US dollars for their damages.” “Ribbeck Law Chartered and Global Aviation Law Group represent 67 families of both crashes.”

This latest lawsuit filed by a mother who lost her son in the tragic Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, is yet another, in a growing number of lawsuits being filed against Boeing, the manufacturer of the 737 Max 8 aircrafts. In total there were six victims from Egypt, all of whom worked for the country’s Foreign Ministry.

“When I wished my son a safe trip, I had no idea it was going to be the last time I ever saw or spoke to him,” remarked the mother. “I am beyond devastated having lost my son in this air tragedy.” “In the months that followed, discovering Boeing knew about a potential flaw in their software, but still decided to leave this plane in service is shameful.” The still grieving mother continues, “It appears to me that Boeing put corporate profits ahead of the lives of its passengers.” “With this latest news about the airplanes and how they are still grounded almost after a year of the first crash means something very serious is wrong.” Dr. Mohamed, the passenger’s brother stated, “After my brother was killed in the crash, we felt an unbearable loss in our family.” “I felt I had lost all things in life, I had lost my life, lost our hopes, lost our dreams, he was the leader of our family.”

Furthermore, data from satellites shows the final track of Ethiopia Airlines Flight ET302 is nearly identical to that of the Lion Air flight that crashed on October 29, 2018. It has been documented that jack screws, which are used to manipulate the control surfaces on the horizontal stabilizer that pitch the nose up and down, have been found at both crash sites. Investigators noted both jack screws were set to send both ill-fated aircrafts into a dive.

“After the Lion Air 737 Max 8 catastrophe, Boeing issued a series of recovery steps pilots needed to take in order to prevent a similar tragedy, however, these directives which were grossly inadequate and did not prevent this second tragedy from occurring,” states Monica Kelly of Ribbeck Law Chartered. “Crash investigators believe the Ethiopian Airlines ‘crew followed all of the procedures’ and made repeated attempts to stabilize the aircraft and regain control of the jet from the same automated anti-stall system MCAS that had been implicated in the Lion Air crash.” Monica Kelly goes on to say, “This is truly a case of corporate greed, whereby Boeing pushed ahead with flights with no concern for their passengers.” Ms. Kelly concludes, “These cases are set to be heard again in court on September 17 for the Ethiopian Airlines case and October 17 for the Lion Air crash”

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Hezbollah is preparing to down an Israeli drone in the coming days, after leaving time for Israeli politicians and media to increase their criticism and attacks on Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, accused of undermining Israel’s vital deterrence strategy in force since 1955. 

The Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has decided to make his own contribution to the forthcoming Israeli elections, expected on September 18, by backing the failure of Netanyahu’s candidacy. Hezbollah achieved the first part of its two-part plan by hitting a military vehicle last Sunday on the 3.8 km road between Yiron and Avivim. The attack caused the destruction of the Israeli vehicle and inflicted casualties among the five soldiers inside- notwithstanding the Israeli denial of casualties. The hit was filmed by Hezbollah’s cameras and shows the firing of two anti-tank Kornet guided missiles.

The attack came as retaliation against Israel’s violation of UN resolution 1701 which in its first article stipulates “the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations”. Indeed, Israel sent two suicide drones last month to blow-up a Hezbollah military asset in a suburb of Beirut, after killing two Hezbollah members in a direct targeted killing in Syria. That triggered an overt threat by Sayyed Nasrallah to hit back, which gave Israel ample time to take counter-measures. Israel deserted its military positions all along more than 100 kilometers of the UN blue-line separating Lebanon and Israel, to the extent of 4 to 5 kilometers and more. This was interpreted as an admission of cowardice by the Israeli Army, shaking its reputation as the “eighth strongest army in the world.” This hide and seek followed a televised threat by a “non-state actor”. Hezbollah doesn’t have tanks or jets in Lebanon but its guerrilla skills gained through decades of experience, in particular in the Syrian war, have transformed it into a an organised, strong, “non-regular” army.

Well-informed sources indicate that

“Israel deserted their military barracks and all positions along the Lebanese borders for fear of being bombed by Hezbollah’s rockets, notably the Burkan (Volcano) that can carry over 1000 kg of explosive and cause a large number of casualties”.

Sayyed Nasrallah is striking a painful chord by highlighting one of the most strategic foundations of the state of Israel, which the current Prime Minister has failed to uphold. It is one of the principles of Israel’s existence to achieve military superiority, maintain disproportionate military responses, impose escalation dominance and deterrence, and raise the “cost of Israeli blood” to a level untenable for any enemy population. These are the key principles introduced by Moshe Dayan and by the first prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, also said:

“We should be prepared to go on the offensive with the aim of smashing Lebanon”.

This objective seems far-fetched today, due to Netanyahu’s blind personal ambition for re-election. The Israeli Prime Minister targeted Syria hundreds of times without achieving any strategic objectives. He did not manage to remove Iran from Syria; on the contrary, the Syrian government is more linked to Iran than ever. He didn’t achieve the destruction of Hezbollah’s military capabilities (as it happened, a couple of Kornet missiles were sufficient to shake Israel’s image, and a simple threat on a television forced the Israeli army to abandon defense of its borders). The former Israeli Chief of Staff General Rafael Eitan said once:

“When we have settled the land all the Arab will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”

It seems Hezbollah, unlike Syria and Iraq, has confounded Israel’s expectations and has stood up to this vision of the future in a robust manner.

Netanyahu went to Iraq to hit Iran’s allies but achieved nothing but blowing up a few among hundreds of warehouses, creating a clear and serious menace to US forces established in Iraq.

US President Donald Trump can do little now to save his close friend and advisor the Israeli Prime Minister.

The US can’t fight Netanyahu’s war of election for him, nor can it prevent Israel from shaking under the blows of Hezbollah. Netanyahu walked on the edge of the abyss to boost his image but now he has faltered. Israel will remember not how he hit Syria and Iraq, but how its deterrence has been damaged and its reputation shaken by Netanyahu’s ill-considered actions and responses.

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The following is an interview conducted by email with a filmmaker based in Donetsk, who has been documenting Ukraine’s war on the Donetsk People’s Republic and the tragedies this has caused civilians living there.

‘Maxim Fadeev’ is actually the pseudonym of a correspondent whose family lives in an area of Ukraine controlled by the government. To protect his family, Maxim, like many journalists whose families live on the other side, opted to use a pseudonym, due to persecution by the Ukrainian authorities.

In fact, even journalists living and working in such areas openly and transparently are persecuted. One prime example is that of Kirill Vyshinsky, editor of RIA Novosti Ukraine, arrested and imprisoned by Ukraine in May 2018, the authorities alleging treason. Vyshinky has 15 months later still not had an actual trial.

UPDATE: As of August 28, Kirill Vyshinsky has finally been released, although he still has not had a fair trial. Sadly, his case is not unique; journalists in Ukraine have very real fears of being persecuted, as do their lawyers. Maxim Fadeev and his family would be a prime target, given the nature of his courageous and damning documentary work.

More on Maxim, as told to me by his colleague:

“Max Fadeev is one of the most prominent filmmakers who has captured the war in the east of Ukraine: his unique footage from the fighting in the midst of the battles was shown on both Russian State TV channels as well as US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Very few in the industry have dared plunge so deeply into unfolding events. At one stage, he was living with the rebels (militia fighters) for several days during a bloody assault on the terminal building at Donetsk airport, the enemy, the Ukrainian military, being stationed only a hundred meters away. Max daringly filmed an offensive operation from within the Marinka settlement, which is located close to the city of Donetsk. The footage was used by a dozen clip makers – almost every video about Donbass contains his footage (the most famous example has almost 3 million views on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NyCD3LqfbJ8).

Max Fadeev has shot 16 films since May 2014 (https://vimeo.com/maxfadeev), and now, despite the fact that this war is almost forgotten, he and his team independently continue to work on serious documentary projects to show and document what is happening on his native land.”

In order to continue his vital work, Maxim is fundraising. Details can be found at this tweet.

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Eva Bartlett: How and why did you get into making war documentaries? Did you study journalism? Is this a career for you or are you motivated by other reasons?

Max Fadeev: “They say that the truth is the first victim of any war. Heavy artillery was pounding my city, the inhabitants were dying, and no one cared, either in Ukraine, or moreover in the West. I thought at that time that when people learned from the news that war was raging here, the war would stop. I had such naive hopes. That was the reason I began filming the shelling.

What was horrifying was not so much the artillery attacks as the reaction of my relatives and acquaintances living in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. They genuinely believed that the separatists were shelling themselves. They still believe it, in spite of the fact that a division of Ukrainian heavy artillery (152-mm) – 11 self-propelled Msta-S howitzers and 3 self-propelled Akatsiyahowitzers – was deployed three km from my house. There were several such heavy artillery units nearby at the time.

The civilians killed in Slavyansk are erased from life and from memory by the Ukrainian government. There are no records of casualties in Slavyansk, nor in Nikolayevka, nor Kramatorsk. No first or last names of the killed and wounded can be unearthed.

Uragans” —multi-missile rocket launchers, with cluster bomb units—werefiring, and no one was registering it, neither the OSCE nor Western journalists. They had all left by that time.

Electricity and water supplies were cut off in Slavyansk for more than a month, and no humanitarian corridors for civilians were provided, while all media broadcasted a distorted image – that of a city captured by terrorists and being liberated by Ukrainian army. I wanted to prove that the real picture was quite different.

It was never about career for me – more like moral obligation. Now my aim is to learn to professionally make documentaries.”

EBDescribe the situation around you on the first day you began filming.

MF: “At first, I was hired as a live-streamer. I moved around on a bicycle with a tablet and broadcasted everything happening.

On my very first day at the front line, I came under fire by all kinds of weapons deployed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) at Slavyansk: first I was sniped at, then we came under 82-mm mortar fire, after that – under D-30 howitzer fire, and finally an armoured personnel carrier targeted our position with tracers. I felt as if I was in the middle of a war movie.

A swift sequence of actions unfolded: our reconnaissance team left for the enemy’s rear, enemy artillery pounded our positions and the buildings around, we ran towards a building already ablaze and came under artillery fire. A wounded girl was screaming, a young boy, militiaman, was trying to help her using a torch, and mortar guns targeted the torch light. I attempted to film it all…

The wave of fear overwhelmed me only when I was already in the safe zone: I felt giddy and dizzy. There was a live fire road there, scary – I rode my bike along it, alone, and in order to get to the front line one had to cross a deserted area, where punctured burnt cars were scattered, and the rider either moved forward in silence or listening to the sounds of distant fire. The uncertainty was unnerving.”

EB: What important events or battles have you covered over the years?

MF: “After the Crimean referendum, and beginning in March 2014, Ukraine started to amass armed forces in Donbass, deploying heavy armaments and artillery.

The illegitimate government of Ukraine declared anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in the Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov regions, although the protests in the east of Ukraine were mirroring the events in Kiev and western regions several months earlier…

What would have been the reaction of Kiev residents if units of heavy artillery appeared around the capital in the time of manifestations on Maidan? Perhaps, it would have been similar to that of Donbass people. When tanks were brought here, civilians threw themselves under their tracks, crowds tried to stop the tanks with bare hands. This was happening in March and April.

On May 2, people were burnt alive in Odessa in the House of Trade Unions, and on the same day in Slavyansk for the first time the Ukrainian military started to fire at the people, who blocked their way.

In my opinion, those operations were pre-scheduled: the act of intimidation by burning alive pro-Russian activists in Odessa and the escalation in Slavyansk.

On that day, units of Ukrainian army and National Guard started attacking the city from different directions. There were also air raids. Before that, commandos from central and eastern Ukraine had attempted to enter the city, but they were unwilling to shoot at their compatriots, who blocked the entrances to the city. Eventually, some of the units of the 25th airborne brigade joined the People’s Militia, and the rest of the units left the city and returned to their barracks.

On May 2, the 95th air assault brigade from Zhytomyr (western Ukraine) attacked the city, started firing at people. Civilian casualties in Slavyansk were already forgotten, because the Odessa story dominated the news. No one mentioned Slavyansk, although the first death of a civilian – nurse Yuliya Izotova – occurred there at the time. Militiamen were killed at the roadblocks, when UAF opened large caliber machine-gun fire at them. If before those events journalists could work on both sides of the conflict, after May 2 it became impossible for most Russian and local journalists. The war had started.

After the Crimean events, the Ukrainian army took under its control all the airports in eastern Ukraine. They were controlled mostly by commandos and the units of the 25th airborne brigade. Kiev suspected that Russia could use air force to bring in its armed forces. The Ukrainian army got surrounded, or half-way surrounded, in the airport on the north-west outskirts of Donetsk. Ukrainian propaganda made a symbol out of the besieged airport.

The fiercest fighting occurred at the Donetsk airport, and it went on for a long time. The militia unit that I was filming in Slavyansk fought at the airport, thus, I had access to the frontline positions and was able to film the storming. I knew that the airport would be stormed by the People’s Militia sooner or later, and the storming must be recorded, so, I established good relationship with the commanders in advance.

I arrived in Donetsk when the fighting for the airport was in full swing. I filmed all the stages of the fighting, beginning with in November 2014, the capture of the old terminal, the storming of the new terminal, the attempt of the Ukrainian side to unblock (break the siege on) the airport.

Later I filmed a breakthrough attempt at Maryinka. In Maryinka, the unit was in for a storm, and it was my first attempt at filming attacking troops. There, we were in a vulnerable position in the open, and I was concentrating more on staying alive than on filming. The attack was abortive, the attacking forces had to retreat, having suffered heavy losses.

I reported the events in Slavyansk – the beginning of the hot phase of the war. What was happening in Slavyansk was that the rebels sat tight in one place, and Ukrainian artillery of all kinds of caliber, tanks and aircraft pounded the city and the surrounding settlements. Strelkov’s group from the Crimea entered the city, 52 men. The very first day, about 300 locals joined them, including some of my friends. They made a decision to fight with a machine gun in their hands, and I – with a camera, showing the real state of things that Ukrainian media were silent about.

In Slavyansk we were always under artillery fire, and I had no chance to film machine-gun fire. I shot the first clashes with the use of machine-guns at the Donetsk airport. The clashes took place inside the buildings, so, in most cases the militiamen were protected from artillery fire by concrete walls.

I filmed the suffering of the civilians and also reported from positions in Semyonovka. This locality in the outskirts of the city was connecting the besieged rebels with the outer world, it was their lifeline, in fact.

The hostilities mainly took place there. They cannot even be called true hostilities – they were the raids of sabotage, reconnaissance groups and ambushes. The militiamen also downed military aircraft and choppers attacking both civilian quarters and their positions. The city is situated in a valley and is surrounded by hills. One of the hills was under militia control, and the other three hills were occupied by Ukrainian artillery, which pounded what they called “Russian terrorist forces”. I filmed the impacts upon my school, people being rescued from under the rubble, and I myself helped to evacuate the wounded.

As far as the significance of those events is concerned: Slavyansk is the city in which armed confrontation started, the full-scale war began. Before that, there were separate incidents of activists assassinations. The conflict already was grave. Maidan protestors captured military arsenals, prosecutors’ offices, police stations, and regional administrations offices in the West of Ukraine. At first, the wave of such attacks rolled along Western Ukraine, then the unrest reached Kharkov and Donetsk, where the overwhelming majority of the population was pro-Russian and did not approve of the Maidan coup.

Roadblocks were erected around the city, controlled by local inhabitants whose main task was to not to let the Ukrainian army inside the city.”

EB: Have you been injured in the course of your work?

MF: “Yes, I was wounded twice. The first injury I received while filming in the Donetsk airport, some of the shrapnel is still inside my body. I got the second injury when I was filming training exercises at a firing ground. Generally, the more time spent on the front line, the higher is the risk of getting wounded. One has to follow safety rules, but you cannot foresee every circumstance, and no one can guarantee your security in the course of hostilities.”

EB: What are some of the more difficult (emotionally) moments of your work over the years?

MF: “The most difficult moments must be those in Slavyansk. The Ukrainian heavy artillery division was three kilometers from my home. Its fire went over our heads, pounding the city. The pictures and the clock on the walls were shaking not because of the impacts, but because of outgoing fire.

However, one day, the firing shifted and they started targeting our block of apartments. We had no water for a month by then, and the people living in our block were taking water from one of the water-towers. Once I went there for water and saw that everything around me was destroyed by artillery fire. I saw the rubble, the torn wires. It was a warm summer evening, and everything was quiet, too quiet. I was more than forty years old, and I never experienced such dead silence inside the city. There was always normal urban noise: car sounds, humans talking… And at that moment the city was deadly quiet. I could only hear cats wailing and the sounds of distant gun fire. I was pumping water and thinking that a shell explosion can target me any minute. It was scary.

While our side was not equipped with enough artillery to resist, the UAF relentlessly shelled our towns in order to intimidate the population. That shelling was senseless from the military point of view. It did not exterminate the armed rebels or their fortifications.

In Semyonovka, they did not eliminate the rebel positions, but they wiped from the face of the earth the entire settlement. A heavy artillery division needs only half an hour to destroy several sectors of private housing.

In the course of a month at the start of the war, I was subjected to120-mm artillery fire, then 122-mm, 82-mm. When they started pounding the suburb of high-rise buildings with 152-mm shells, it was very frightening. The explosion shockwave can knock you off your feet. You hear a powerful sound reverberated by the neighbouring buildings, an echo, when a shell hits a house. The 20-mm shells are a crock of shit, but the 152-mm ones… The powder clouds, the dust, the moaning of the wounded…

I knew nothing back then about first aid measures, and several times I was the first to reach the impact site, where I found injured people, and I could do nothing to help them, I was just running in circles like an idiot and shouting: “Please, someone, call an ambulance!”

It was not easy to face frightened women, children, relatives of the deceased. There were two typical reactions to the impacts: people either used strong swear words, or, mostly women did it, lowered their voices to a whisper.

At times my colleagues asked me why I filmed people cursing. I did it because everyone curses after they are hit by artillery strikes. When people started to whisper, it was slightly like insanity. I don’t know how to describe the feeling. You are walking along the street, looking at broken out windows, and the inhabitants come out in slippers, and a man asks you in whisper: “Do you know what you should do to prevent windows breaking out? Open them as for airing.” People start to converse in whispers.

…One woman was crying over the body of her killed husband lying on the kitchen floor, and most of all she worried if she could find a way to bury him.

It was scary to watch the reaction of the children…

Too many militiamen, whom I filmed, were killed in action in the course of these five years that the war has been going on. My father died and three of my close relatives died, and I was not able to attend their funerals or visit their graves. I haven’t seen my mom for four years now. And no one knows, when this all will end.”

EB: Have you ever filmed or witnessed war crimes by the Ukrainian army?

MF: “I think that during the first phase of the war, from May till August of 2014, the Ukrainian Army committed many war crimes. The unreasonable heavy shelling—including with multiple rocket launchers with cluster bomb units—of densely populated areas. They fired at civilian infrastructure.

In the course of a month, the UAF never hit rebel fortifications in Semyonovka. But the pumping station of the Severskiy Donets – Donbass water channel that provided the entire region with water, was destroyed by the UAF twice in June of 2014. The people, who were engaged in repairing of the pipeline, were killed as a result of the shelling. The station was intentionally destroyed, in my opinion.

As a journalist, I always tried to investigate from which positions firing occurred, and what objects were targeted. Even if their aim was, say, a roadblock in a private housing section, they fired on an area of about a square kilometer, destroying everything.

I saw in August of 2015, although it was not possible to record, a tank coming to the belt road of Donetsk each evening and firing all its ammunition load in the direction of the city. It chose maximum range and fired absolutely indiscriminately. I was able to film the results of the shelling, but I could not get closer than a kilometer from the tank. I saw perfectly well the location of this tank and I saw the impact sites.

I tried to do the same in Slavyansk. Many people still say: ‘The shelling was carried out by the rebels.’ It was not so, I did investigate, I came as close to the enemy’s positions as possible, and then, with the help of the witnesses testimonies, Ukrainian reports in free access and satellite images, I found out where such and such batteries were located and what objects they targeted.

They blatantly violated international humanitarian law, violated a rules of warfare rules. Even the Geneva Conventions of 1945 was violated. Article 51 reads: “Neither civilian population as such nor civilian persons shell be the object of attack.”

Even the UN registered that at the moment there was no Russian presence in Donbass. It was an inner civil conflict, and our side did not even have grenade launchers, they only had shot guns. And when the UAF brought artillery here, armaments captured from Ukrainian forces were the initial weapons of the DPR army.

The problem with this conflict is that it is very complex, multilevel, and there are many participants. It is not easily explained to people who have little interest in the events in the post-Soviet space.

There was a country that was called the USSR, and it was inhabited by all kinds of Soviet people, who all accepted a certain social convention – it was accepted at the time when this country was created. Those people agreed to live in this country.

Ukraine was established, and its inhabitants were sure that they all were building the same country. They cohabited in it.

Later, as a result of application of various kinds of political technologies – at first the “Orange Revolution” of 2014, and then EuroMaidan of 2014 – the integrated population was divided into two conflicting groups. A new nation was created artificially – a nation of “nationally conscious Ukrainians”, the main idea of which was to reject everything relevant to Russia and Russian ethnicity. The intentions and hopes of one part of the population differed greatly from those of the other part.

Then, that part of the nation, which was fixated upon Europe and wanted to integrate into the EU, decided that it was able to impose their fixation upon the rest of the population. They suggested that we should forget our history, our ancestors, our language, our ethnicity. They took away my right, and the right of the like-minded people, to consider myself a Russian.

They called me Ukrainian, although I am not Ukrainian. My mother is Ukrainian, and my father was Russian. It is my right to choose my ethnicity. In the Soviet Union I was able to decide, who I was – a Russian, a Ukrainian or a Greek. We were free to identify ourselves. In Ukraine we were stripped of this right.

Ukraine is a country of wide ethnic diversity. It was artificially created out of fragments of two empires: Austro-Hungarian and Russian. If you look at the map, you will see an industrial belt in the southeast of Ukraine. And if we compare this map to the map of languages, we will see, that Donbass has always been populated by Russian-speaking people, identifying themselves as Russians, and it was they who built the industrial belt of Ukraine, which is closely connected with Russia by production chains. This is not just an ethnic conflict, but also a conflict of lifestyle patterns: urban industrial and rural agricultural.

After 2014 the rhetoric of hate started to dominate. MPs on talk shows spoke about the people of lower quality, who lived here in Donetsk. They said our region was populated by children of prostitutes, drug addicts, and criminals.

Then the so-called ‘Revolution of Dignity’ took place, when the oligarchs, and sponsored by them, nationalist groups became the weapon of the collective West.

It should be clear that there are the creators of the game, there are players, and there are chess pieces. The creators of the game known as ‘Ukraine is not Russia’” are in the USA. The EU and NATO are the players, and Ukrainian oligarchs are chess pieces. The nationalists are mere pawns.

There are active players and passive players. Russia was a passive player. During all those years it was just watching. A new type of war was launched, which created a new political nation in Ukraine. The real aim of Maidan was not European integration, but reformatting of the people’s consciousness and war, repressions against those, who opposed the reformatting. The Maidanites did everything in order to ignite the war and create chaos on the border with Russia.

There are many reasons, why people joined the battle. Some people understood the consequences of the course, declared on Maidan and then adopted by its leaders who seized the power. Many people warned about the outcomes of the coup, which Ukraine faces now, five years later: economic collapse, devaluation of the national currency, civil war. Such people did not accept the coup, the fact that decisions were made without their participation. They tried to stop the process. And their counterparts decided to beat them into obedience.

What a part of the population calls ‘The Revolution of Dignity’, the other part calls a coup d’état.

Part of the nation ousted the legitimately-elected President and declared itself the new authorities.

The technology of such revolutions includes complete annihilation of the state foundations. Western instructors themselves explain it to Maidan activists: that they have to destroy the so-called ‘support base’. If there is a nation, there are vertical structures that support the state. They (Western agents) detect those structures, and use swarming technologies against them, creating the appearance that the nation liberates itself from the authorities, whereas it undermines the foundations of the state.

Lots of people saw it and tried to oppose it. Blood was spilled. Maidan activists killed and humiliated the riot police of the Berkut unit [riot police who carried no firearms; they were attacked with Molotov cocktails, bricks and guns]. Some of those police were from the eastern regions.

Ukraine was inhabited by peaceful people mainly, it seemed that civil war was impossible here, the idea itself seemed absurd. In order for the people to start killing each other, the society had to undergo certain stages of transformation. This is the standard theory of crises. Maidan was a technology of bringing the people to war. At each stage, while it was still possible to stop the hostilities, everything was done in order for the conflict to be exacerbated. And then the moment came, when the military started to fire at their own people.

The people of Donbass attempted to oppose this process. Nevertheless, it came that they had been manipulated, too. The people here mirrored everything that their opponents did, but the cynical West that earlier lamented the ‘youths beaten by police (students in Maidan), turned the blind eye to the young children killed by Ukrainian artillery fire in Slavyansk.

There are too many questions to be asked about the activity of various international structures, including the OSCE. They ignored the shelling of Slavyansk, but they registered the killing of a man, allegedly, by rebels, in a basement in Lugansk, although their observers weren’t present.

They allegedly had a rule: ‘We register only what we witness‘. But they mentioned the data of Ukrainian casualty reports it their own reports, in third parties’ words, without being present at the sites.

When Ukrainians carried out an air strike on the Lugansk Regional Administration on June 2, as a result of which eight people died and 28 were injured, the OSCE did not notice it. They also failed to notice a month-long shelling of Slavyansk.

In fact, there would have been no hostilities, if the Ukrainian army had never come here and started killing everyone. I think that the post-Maidan Ukrainian government wanted a war, and they’ve got it.”

EB: Have you filmed outside of the DPR?

MF: “The peculiarity of this conflict is that the journalists working on the rebel side are viewed by Ukraine as terrorists, along with the combatants. Some of the journalists who entered the territory under rebels’ control and tried to report objectively were later arrested in Ukraine. That was why after May 2, 2014, practically no local or Russian journalists attempted to cross the demarcation line. Only Western agencies (and until the middle of 2015, even certain Ukrainian TV channels) could film the events on both sides of the front line. This is one of the factors exacerbating the conflict: the absence of information available on both sides of the front line.

The only instance, when I got to the other side, was before the start of Debaltsevo operation. When the Ukrainian army was preparing to storm Slavyansk and Lisichansk, and also before Ukrainian troops entered Debaltsevo, the civilian population did not receive any warning, there was no evacuation, and no humanitarian corridors were provided.

On the contrary, when the storming of Debaltsevo by the DPR army was about to start, a convoy of buses entered the city, accompanied by the OSCE observers. Its aim was to evacuate the civilians. The Ukrainian side was trying to hinder the evacuation. Ukrainian agents attempted to dissuade the people from leaving for the DPR territory. By chance I met a crazy taxi driver, a former militiaman, who suggested that he would take me to Debaltsevo, having stealthily joined the OSCE convoy.

I attempted to interview members of the Ukrainian military. I was shocked by the fact that they were also human. At that moment, the Ukrainian flag was equal in my perception to the flag of Nazi Germany. After everything I witnessed in Slavyansk, Uglegorsk, Donetsk, after filming so many deaths and so much destruction, I saw enemies in Ukrainian soldiers, and the realization of their human nature made things even worse for me. It was hard to believe that ordinary men could do such horrible things. It was terrifying to be there without any identity card, because the place swarmed with Ukrainian secret services agents. What helped was the presence of many Ukrainian journalists, and we did not differ from them in appearance.

The dwellers of Debaltsevo refused to talk to me, thinking that I represented Ukrainian media, which they totally distrusted. I whispered to them that I was from Donetsk, that I was on their side, but they did not believe me. However, when they did start to speak, I worried for their safety, and for mine as well, because Ukrainian military were everywhere around us, and the locals cursed them and blamed them for the shelling of Debaltsevo. That was one of the scariest moments.”

EB: What equipment would improve the quality of your documentaries and also your safety in filming?

MF: “Before the war, I wanted to learn how to film travel videos. I had one SLR camera, a set of lenses, sound recording equipment – a minimal set. The camera was destroyed at the airport, when I filmed the explosion of a RPG grenade. In 2015, my viewers bought me Canon 6D and some equipment by crowdfunding. Nevertheless, after several years of work in Donbass this equipment got outdated and worn. My colleague Sergey Belous turned for help to one of Moscow businessmen, and the man bought a new camera for me and an excellent lens.

Eventually Sergey and I decided to found Realdoc Productions and work as a team, and gradually with the help of crowdfunding we managed to obtain the minimal set of equipment. Now we are the only ones filming the war in Donbass in 4K.

Today we need a powerful computer that allows to edit videos and post process them in 4K, a professional monitor for color correction as well as a drone for more secure filming. This is the minimal list of equipment.

We also need information support for our crowdfunding. We will also be grateful for translation of our documentaries and vids into foreign languages and sharing them to various web resources. If a person of the same occupation – a producer, videographer or editor – reads this interview and is able to give professional advice, he or she is welcome! We would like to reach the stage when we could receive independent financing.”

EB: What’s the situation like now in the Donbass? How does it compare to previous years?

MF: “We are in the twilight zone, it’s like interregnum. The stupid war will not end. The people are suffering, they are leaving, they are too tired. Militiamen, mostly very young boys, are dying in action every day. The infrastructure is being destroyed constantly.

Donbass has no choice, no possibility of stepping back. Although Ukraine won’t lose anything if it stops fighting, Donbass will lose everything. It is the issue of survival for us, and for Ukraine it is just about grabbing the land. In one of his recent interviews, the Ukrainian Minister of Social Policy openly called the retired people of Donbass “scum”.

It is very difficult to explain war to those, who had never seen it. And it is still more difficult to explain, what is going on in Donbass now. The people in big cities are attempting to live their ordinary peaceful lives, and in the areas close to the front line, subjected to shelling, life is slowly dying out.”

EB: Have any Western media contacted you regarding your war footage and documentaries?

MF: “Only once, and it was an extremely negative experience for me. It resulted in the picture that distorted reality. I risked my life, filming a tank of DPR army that moved forward in order to storm the new terminal of the airport. In their documentary it looked as if a Ukrainian tank is breaking through to the new terminal.

Or, in another instance they totally distorted an absolutely neutral reportage. The interviewed man says: ‘Young people react in different ways, the situation is complicated now. Many of them leave, many enroll in the army.’ They leave only a part of the phrase: ‘the situation is complicated now. Many of them leave.’ The part ‘many enroll in the army’ was simply cut out.”

EB: Are you working on any projects now?

MF: “For me, the key projects are “The demarcation line” and “I am Donbass”. “The demarcation line” tells about the tragic situation in the front-line settlements, in the so-called “grey zone”, where civilians are trying to survive between a rock and a hard place. It is also about the militiamen, who secure the objectives.

I am Donbass” is about the people of our region, about the way they overcome the hardships of the blockade and unrecognized status, how they keep on with their lives, about their thoughts and dreams. I want to show their faces, let them express their hopes, and it is especially important to do, when Kiev is spawning propaganda to dehumanize these people.”

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This article was originally published on Eva Bartlett’s blog site, In Gaza.

Eva Bartlett is an independent writer and rights activist with extensive experience in Syria and in the Gaza Strip, where she lived a cumulative three years (from late 2008 to early 2013).

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US, UK and France May be Complicit in War Crimes in Yemen

September 4th, 2019 by Thomas DeLorenzo

A UN panel reported Tuesday that the US, UK and French governments may be complicit in war crimes for their assistance to the Saudi-led coalition that is attacking and starving civilians in Yemen as a military tactic.

The panel’s report, drawn from interviews with more than 600 victims and witnesses involved with the half-decade long violence in Yemen, describes a pattern of human rights abuses. These include indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, shelling non-military targets and intentionally impeding international aid including food from reaching civilians. In a press release accompanying the report, the panel stated that “the governments of Yemen and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Houthis and affiliated popular committees have enjoyed a pervasive lack of accountability for violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.” In addition, the panel referred a list of more than a 160 people considered “main actors” who are believed to have intimate involvement with the ongoing war crimes to UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet for further inspection. The report called on the international community to monitor the situation in Yemen more closely and ensure protection and justice for the people of Yemen.

In addition, the panel said that it was imperative for “other States to refrain from providing arms that could be used in the conflict,” alluding to the governments of Britain, France and the US. All three countries continue to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia that have been used in the violence. The US Congress passed a bill in July prohibiting the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia that would be used in Yemen, but President Donald Trump vetoed the measure. A British court recently held that UK arms sales were unlawful because the British ministers failed to take into account the civilian damage that the weapons could cause.

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Featured image is from edgarwinkler / Pixabay

While the primary focus for UK military drone operations has been around larger systems like Reaper, the forthcoming ‘Protector’ and Watchkeeper; the UK is increasingly funding the development of smaller drones to engage in war-fighting roles.

Mosquito

At the International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in late July, the MoD announced that through the RAF’s ‘Rapid Capabilities Office’ it had awarded contracts to three companies/consortium to develop a new type of unmanned drone under a project named ‘Mosquito’.  Blue Bear, Boeing, and Callen-Lenz have 12 months to design a ‘remote-carrier’ or ‘loyal wingman’ type drone that could accompany the UK’s Typhoon, F-35 or FCAS/Tempest aircraft.  Flight reported:

Following a one-year development phase, at least one bidder will be selected to build and fly a demonstrator, says Peter Stockel, innovation autonomy challenge lead at the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. “Our aim is to get something in the air before 2023”.

The concept of a ‘loyal wingman’ drone is to fly alongside or slightly ahead of military aircraft and to work in conjunction with that aircraft to undertake various tasks, such as surveillance, electronic warfare (i.e. jamming radars), laser guiding weapons onto targets, or even to carry out air-to-air or air-to-ground strikes. US companies Boeing and Kratos are already developing these types of drones, although they are far larger than the one envisioned by the Mosquito programme. Rather than being directly controlled, this type of drone flies autonomously sharing data and information via the main aircraft. This appears to be the drone project that Gavin Williamson suggested in February – to much bemusement – would be deployed by the end of this year. While it involves multiple drones, it is not a ‘swarming drone’ as such.

Drone swarms squadron to be formed

However, related but separate from the Mosquito development project, the MoD is developing its work around swarming drones (that is, 10 – 20 or more small drones acting in concert).  While much of this work is taking place behind closed doors, the outgoing Chief of the Air Staff, Stephen Hillier, told the Air and Space Power Conference in July:

“For our swarming drones programme, if we had set about this 3 years ago in a traditional acquisition route we would not be where we are today. The Team were set the most challenging objectives and I am confident enough to say the results, thus far, are looking pretty impressive.  So much so that I can declare that we will shortly be forming an Experimental Sqn – Number 216 Squadron – to bring this capability quickly to the frontline.”

We can get a glimpse of what is being developed through some of the work that MoD has been funding over the past few years. In 2016, the MoD launched its ‘Many Drones Make Light Work’ competition.  The competition document stated:

“we want more than 10 UAS to operate in a co-ordinated and closely coupled way to achieve military effect across the electro-magnetic (EM) spectrum (in other words ranging from visible frequencies through to low frequency radio waves), in a contested environment, and all managed by a single operator.”

Companies and universities were invited to submit ideas that would enable swarming drones for “missions in complex urban and littoral environments” such as “tracking individuals; tracking vehicles; area mapping; area surveillance and communications relay.”

Image from ‘Many Drones Make Light Work; competition document

In March 2019, the MoD awarded further funding under the programme to a consortium of companies led by Blue Bear Systems (who are also one of the bidders for the Mosquito programme detailed above) with IQHQ, Plextek, Airbus and the University of Durham.  Managing Director of Blue Bear Systems, Ian Williams-Wynn said:

“The ability to deploy a swarm of low-cost autonomous systems delivers a new paradigm for battlefield operations. During this project we will deploy next generation autonomy, machine learning, and AI to reduce the number of operators required, the time it takes to train them, and the cognitive burden on any operator during active operations. This allows very complex swarm-based missions to be performed simultaneously against single or multiple targets in a time sensitive and highly effective manner.”

This funding, says the MoD press release is to enable a group of 20 drones to be more “self-sufficient … providing the military with the ability to operate in increasingly complex and contested environments.”

For humanitarian purposes (*wink*)

The MoD, though its research arm, DSTL, has also been working in conjunction with the USAF Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) on drone swarming technology.  In March 2019 they jointly organised and publicised a ‘Drone Hackathon Challenge’.  DSTL said

“We are reaching out to industry, academia, tech start-ups, coders, anyone with new ideas and an interest in drones, artificial intelligence or autonomy to help us find and develop new concepts of controlling drones in the most efficient and effective way….”

The end of that sentence went on “to give as much assistance to the emergency services as possible.” The exercise will, said the press release “explore innovative ways to plan missions using multiple systems to assist in the identification and prediction of how wildfires will spread and subsequently find preventative solutions, minimise damage and save lives.”

However, while the event was framed as helping emergency services to use drones to control wildfires, the reality is the two powerful military research laboratories were keen to draw in researchers in universities and elsewhere who would not want their work used for military purposes. Mick Hitchcock, senior technology adviser for AFRL let the cat out of the bag when interviewed by Air Force Magazine:

“The challenge is focused on a humanitarian mission, but in reality, the learning applies very well to … Air Force interests.”

As the magazine reports:

The idea came about last spring when representatives from the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory visited the Wright Brothers Institute in Ohio. At the time, wildfires were ravaging California, and another wildfire had just caused significant damage in the UK. By making it a humanitarian challenge, the two labs were able to reach out to nontraditional small businesses and universities “who may not want to play on a military mission,” Hitchcock said.

Danger of Drones

Research work by the MoD to develop and deploy unmanned systems incorporating AI and autonomy is now expanding rapidly. Our report, Off the Leash: The development of autonomous military drones in the UK published last year, set out the background and many of the dangers of marrying drones with autonomous technology, including unpredictable behaviour, loss of command and control, ‘Normal’ accidents and the inevitability of misuse.

By co-incidence, this week, the Defence Select Committee is taking more evidence for its inquiry, ‘The Domestic Threat of Drones’.  The committee is looking at the danger created within the UK as (ahem) “ever-more advanced drones have become readily available.” While the danger is posed as arising from ‘bad’ use of the technology by others (in this case, terrorists and extremists maliciously using drones within the UK), perhaps it’s time to address the fact that this is an inevitable by-product of the development and growing use of unmanned systems for military purposes. While many continue to baulk at the idea that the technology itself is problematic, both the vertical and horizontal proliferation of drone technology is a danger to global peace and security.

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Nigeria’s military government headed by Murtala Muhammed (1938-1976) and Olusegun Obasanjo (b. 1937) from July 1975 to October 1979 was one that was marked by its implacable opposition to Apartheid and colonialism in southern Africa.

The hardline stance it took was predicted by U.S. embassy dispatches which considered both men to be fundamentally anti-West in attitude. Prior to coming to power, Obasanjo had, with the backing of troops, sought to evict US embassy agencies from annex premises by staging a 24-hour occupation. It was a portent of the radical attitude both men would take when they held the reins of power.

Brigadier Murtala Muhammed, an army signals officer, and Brigadier Olusegun Obasanjo, an army engineer were on the radar of the American embassy in Lagos, Nigeria long before they seized power in a military coup. And as a result of the observations and analysis provided by the ambassador and other staff, the United States came to consider each to be dangerous firebrands when it came to their dealings with the West and their attitude to the Apartheid regime of South Africa.

Appraisals of the character of both men are contained in declassified State Department cables dispatched from the US embassy before and after the coup which overthrew General Yakubu Gowon on July 29th 1975. One accurately described Muhammed as an “impetuous, ruthless man”, while another considered Obasanjo to be -again correctly- a “strong-willed egocentric” young man. And with their coming to power in the aftermath of the anti-Gowon putsch, it was correctly predicted that a Muhammed and Obasanjo-led junta (including M.D. Yusuf, the Inspector-General of Police) would formulate an even harder line policy in relation to southern Africa, which would lead to friction with the United States government, which at the time was pro-dialogue and anti-sanctions. Both men were seen as being particularly sensitive to issues which raised the question of anti-black racism and the liberation struggles in southern Africa which centred on Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia-Zimbabwe and South Africa.

A communication titled “Nigeria’s New Leaders: A Preliminary Estimate” which was dispatched to Washington on Wednesday, July 30th 1975, noted that three years earlier at a conference on foreign policy, both Muhammed and Obasanjo had entered into what they felt was an “extraordinary” exchange on southern Africa, with the impulsive Muhammed insisting that Nigeria should send combatant troops “to South Africa”, and Obasanjo retorting to his hot-headed colleague: “O.K. you can go to South Africa, but I’m staying here.”

Despite his caution on that issue, Obasanjo was also, nonetheless, seen to be hardline. A cable dated July 14th 1975 which ruminated on US-Nigerian relationships in the wake of Obasanjo’s invasion of Embassy property, noted the following:

Notwithstanding his usual reputation as jovial and openly pro-American, Obasanjo has in the past expressed strong feelings on American policies in Africa. He is reportedly deeply committed to the African liberation struggle; he has discounted the prospects of cooperation with the “white-controlled” world and prior to April 1974 had accused NATO of encouraging, arming and financing Portugal to carry suppression and genocide. He is said to believe that in a showdown, the US and NATO would be allies of South Africa and Rhodesia.

The forecast of hardline policies would be borne out.

At an appearance at a special Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in January 1976 during which the majority of member nations formally recognised the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola) as the legitimate representative of Angolan self-determination, Muhammed’s “Africa Has Come of Age” speech captured attention. The speech itself was a rebuttal of the sentiments expressed to Muhammed by US President Gerald Ford in a letter the Federal Military Government made public in January 1976. Muhammed was offended by what he perceived as the lecturing tone of Ford about the decision of Muhammed’s government to give official recognition to the MPLA. Muhammed considered Ford’s objection to the Soviet and Cuban-backed organisation as evidence of Washington’s implicit support for Apartheid South Africa and lack of commitment to Black African self-determination.

The concluding portion of his speech went:

Mr. Chairman, when I contemplate the evils of apartheid, my heart bleeds and I am sure the heart of every true-blooded African bleeds … Rather than join hands with the forces fighting for self-determination and against racism and apartheid, the United States policy-makers clearly decided that it was in the best interests of their country to maintain white supremacy and minority regimes in Africa.

Africa has come of age. It is no longer under the orbit of any extra-continental power. It should no longer take orders from any country, however powerful. The fortunes of Africa are in our hands to make or mar. For too long we have been kicked around. For too long we have been treated like adolescents who cannot discern their interests and act accordingly. For too long it has been presumed that the African needs outside ‘experts’ to tell him who are his friends and who are his enemies.

The time has come when we should make it clear that we can decide for ourselves; that we know our interests; that we are capable of resolving African problems without presumptuous lessons in ideological dangers which more often than not, have no relevance for us; not for the problem at hand.

Muhammed was assassinated one month later in an abortive coup. But as Head of State, Obasanjo stepped up financial aid and logistical support for the liberation movements in southern Africa, as well as giving moral support to the so-called Frontline States. He hosted Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere on a state visit in 1976 and visited Kenneth Kaunda and Samora Machel respectively of Zambia and Mozambique in 1977. His government hosted a major anti-Apartheid conference in Lagos in August 1977 (the World Conference for Action against Apartheid), and in the previous year, his government withdrew the Nigerian contingent to the Montreal Olympics; a measure taken in relation to the 1978 Commonwealth Games in New Zealand. Both actions in relation to sporting events were predicated on the disapproval of continuing sporting links by Western nations with South Africa. In 1979, the Obasanjo government also took the draconian measure of nationalising British Petroleum (BP) in Nigeria because it alleged that the British government had allowed BP to sell crude oil to South Africa.

These actions justified the assessment given by the American embassy about his debate with Muhammed several years before they came to power, that it “revealed an intense, emotional commitment to more militant measures in southern Africa.”

Obasanjo’s words were as frank and pointed as his actions. When marking the end of Nyerere’s visit in 1976, he praised Nyerere’s role in what he described as “the march towards the total liberation of Africa from foreign rule, colonial oppression, economic exploitation and the heretical bigotry of white minority supremacy on our African soil”. And in his speech at the World Conference for Action against Apartheid, he sounded the following warning:

It will no longer help for our so-called friends to adopt pious postures and preach non-violence when our enemies are inflicting mental and physical violence on us. We shall no longer watch the racists of Pretoria devise improvements to their machinery of terror and repression. We should no longer be just outraged, we must act.

That tenor of the ‘Murtala-Obasanjo’ government was consistently reflected through the role of Brigadier Joseph Garba, the soldier who served as Nigeria’s Minister for External Affairs from 1975 to 1978. Muhammed took a mischievous delight in a photograph of the tall Garba shaking hands with the diminutive Henry Kissinger, on the grounds that it showed someone “looking down” on the imperious US Secretary of State. It was through Garba that the government led by Muhammed and Obasanjo made crucial decisions in relation to southern Africa, one of the most critical having been the recognition granted to the MPLA. Many analysts have argued that while it wrecked the chances of reconciliation between the three movements contending for power, it nonetheless prevented a South African takeover of Luanda.

While both Muhammed and Obasanjo have controversial, and even highly divisive aspects to their legacies, each man’s contribution to the struggle for Black African liberation must be noted and remembered for general posterity, as well as serving as a reminder to those elites in South Africa who stir the pot of anti-Nigerian sentiment and xenophobia against African migrants residing in that country.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Adeyinka Makinde.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Fear and Loathing Under Modi’s Second Term

September 4th, 2019 by Asad Ismi

The Pakistani feminist poet Fahmida Riaz, who moved to India from Pakistan in the 1980s to escape that country’s Islamic fundamentalist military dictatorship, only to encounter growing Hindu funda- mentalism in her new home, captured the experience in a poem (translated and abridged) that has become more prescient over time:

You turned out to be just like us, Equally stupid, wallowing in the past… Your demon of religion dances like a clown,
Whatever you do will be upside down You too will sit deep in thought
Who is Hindu, who is not…

Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947 as a state for Muslims while India remained secular. But since 2014, under the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the country has become increasingly dominated by religious fundamentalism that is tolerated and openly encouraged by the government. Mob lynching of Muslims and other minorities (80% of Indians are Hindu and 14% are Muslim) is common.

An election in the spring, which many expected to chip away at Modi’s support, in the end produced an even stronger second majority for the BJP, giving the extreme nationalist party 302 out of 542 seats in parliament compared to 282 seats in the 2014 election. The main opposition Congress Party got only 53 seats.

Modi won at the polls in May despite a weakening economy marked by plummeting investment, record unemployment, a crisis in agriculture and a looming environmental disaster, which will see 21 Indian cities run out of water in 2020, affecting 600 million people. Modi’s two main fiscal initiatives in his first term — demonetization and the introduction of a goods and services tax (GST) — were also badly received. Taking 86% of banknotes out of circulation caused massive losses to poor people, damaged economic growth and failed to remove illicit money from the economy as planned. The complexity of the GST led many small businesses to lay off staff.

But such problems were likely far from the minds of hundreds of millions of Modi’s supporters, who are attracted “not through concrete economic policies but through the politics of emotion — negative emotion such as fear, anger, hatred for the neighbour, for minorities and women,” according to Nikita Sud, associate professor of development studies at Oxford University and author of the 2012 book Liberalisation, Hindu Nationalism and the State (Oxford University Press). “During the campaign, the economy was barely mentioned, nor was the agricultural crisis. Modi’s campaign focused mainly on the threat of terrorism and national security and promoted the fear that if you do not elect us, terrorism will increase.”

Modi’s election campaign was helped greatly by the February 14 suicide attack in Kashmir. The Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed Isa claimed responsibility for the incident, which killed 40 soldiers and shocked India. The BJP had lost elections in three key states in November 2018 and was leak- ing support to the Congress Party. The killing of Indian soldiers and India’s retaliatory airstrikes into Pakistan reversed this political situation and ensured the BJP a majority.

As I’ve written in the Monitor before (“Modi and the criminalization of Indi- an politics,” September/October 2014), Modi’s hostility toward India’s Muslim population is well-known. In a sworn statement to India’s Supreme Court in 2011, a former senior police chief alleged Modi had “allowed” a bloody religious riot in Gujarat in 2002 when he was chief minister of the state, to let Hindus “vent their anger,” an accusation Modi denies. At least 1,000 people were killed in the mob violence, most of them Muslims.

Sud tells me that Modi and the BJP’s subversion of the media would have played a role in their second election victory. “[P]articular corporate houses close to the Modi government control large parts of the media, which ensures that economic matters that the government has failed at, such as demonetization, are not brought up,” she says.

“There is a similarity in the politics of India and Pakistan now,” she continues, echoing the poet Riaz. “[T]his othering of minorities, blasphemy accusations, sedition charges, and patriotism constantly being stressed. These are the similarities, but the big difference is that the Indian army does not have the kind of power that the Pakistan army does to totally dominate the country.”

Sud says it’s ironic how Modi is using hatred of Pakistan to make India more like Pakistan.

Mujibur Rehman, author of the 2018 book Saffron Power: Reflections on Indian Politics (Routledge) and an assistant professor of politics at Jamia Millia Islamia University in India’s capital city of New Delhi, explains that

“the majority of Indian media appears to be compromised and work as the Modi government’s wing of information and broadcasting.”

If Indian voters gave Modi one more chance, he adds, it was “because they did not find his opponents credible.”

Modi’s main opponent was and is Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Gandhi family that has dominated Indian politics and the Congress Party since India’s independence in 1947. Gandhi’s electoral strategy was to attack Modi for being corrupt, but this had little effect coming from a party with its own history of graft in power. The election result has reduced Congress to its weakest point ever; the party is close to being wiped out in northern India.

“There are some similarities in the ways things are un- folding in India and Pakistan,” says Rehman. “But I would not say India is becoming like Pakistan. Similarities are in the domain of minority rights, religious freedom; we do see lots of violations in India in recent years, which resembles Pakistan’s state of affairs.

“But India still has its constitution and there are dis- senting voices and political forces. Also, India is nowhere close to a situation where we could see [as in Pakistan] the overthrow of its democratically elected regime. I do not see any possibility of a military or dictator takeover of the Pakistan kind in India. India is still a democracy, but a democracy can also see violations, massive violations, which is what we are witnessing.”

The dramatic rise in mob lynching of Muslims, Dalits (also known as “untouchables,” the lowest caste in the Hindu caste system) and other non-Hindus are an example of the violations Rehman is talking about. Alarmed and in response to the violence, 49 Indian celebrities sent an open letter to Prime Minister Modi on July 23 condemning “a definite decline in the percentage of convictions” against hate crimes since his government first took office.

The letter points out that 254 religious identity–based hate crimes were reported between January 1, 2009 and October 29, 2018 “where at least 91 persons were killed and 579 were injured.” Muslims were the victims in 62% of cases and Christians in 2%, according to the Citizen’s Religious Hate-Crime Watch.

“About 90 per cent of these attacks were reported after May 2014 when your government assumed power nationally,” the celebrities write.

Kapil Komireddi, author of the 2019 book Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India (Hurst), has written that Modi’s second term “will take India to a dark place,” and that his party “has unleashed forces that are irreversibly transforming the country,” with Indian democracy “now the chief enabler of Hindu extremism.” In the Guardian (U.K.), Komireddi claimed shortly before the May elections that the normally incorruptible India election commission “functioned during this vote as an arm of Modi’s BJP, too timid even to issue perfunctory censures of the prime minister’s egregious use of religious sloganeering.” According to the writer, India’s military has been politicized, “and the judiciary plunged into the most existential threat to its independence since 1975, when Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution and ruled as a dictator for 21 months.”

Indian and foreign corporations have praised the BJP’s economic and state reforms, which are redistributing wealth upwards. At a cost of 500 billion rupees (about $9.5 billion), the Indian election this year was the most expensive in the country’s — and world — history, topping the 2016 U.S. election by half a billion dollars. Much of this was financed by electoral bonds bought by corporations, with 84% of the money going to the BJP.

“The entire election process has been corporatized and the corporate sector is very much funding political parties,” says Sud, a sign of fascism “which is very worrying.”

Indian activist Xavier Dias, who has worked in support of the rights of Adivasi [Indigenous] communities in Jharkhand state for 45 years, tells me that the “fascist new liberalization” of India is being resisted on a significant scale.

“Despite a very heavy powerful state, in every corner of India the resistance movements are growing. The working class through their unions are on strike all over the country, resisting privatization and regressive changes in labour laws. Farmers are resisting also and demanding more help from the government. Women in villages are up in arms and Adivasis now too are better organized,” he says.

“But the damage to the country is so deep and wide- spread that even if the BJP is defeated, India will take at least 20 years to recover from the damage. The soul of India is drenched in blood.”

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This article was originally published on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (page 44).

Asad Ismi is an award-winning writer and radio documentary-maker. He covers international politics for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor (CCPA Monitor), Canada’s biggest leftist magazine (by circulation) where this article was originally published. Asad has written on the politics of 64 countries and is a regular contributer to Global Research. For his publications visit www.asadismi.info.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

ISIS R Us. US-NATO Support ISIS and Al Qaeda Globally

September 4th, 2019 by Mark Taliano

U.S-led NATO and its allies support ISIS and al Qaeda globally. They supported al Qaeda to destroy Libya, they support al Qaeda/ISIS and their affiliates in Syria and in Iraq, and now evidence demonstrates that they are also supporting al Qaeda/ISIS in Yemen.

The irrefutable evidence that the West supports these internationally-proclaimed terrorists in Syria, Iraq, and Libya has been available for years. Now, thanks to the efforts of investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, we see strong evidence that the West supports ISIS in Yemen as well. In her September 1, 2019 article, “Islamic State weapons in Yemen traced back to US Government: Serbia files (part 1)” the evidence is available for the world to see.

“Recently,” writes Gaytandzhieva,

” I anonymously received explosive documents from the Serbian state-owned arms companies Krusik and Jugoimport SDPR, including e-mails, internal memos, contracts, photos, delivery schedules, and packing lists with lot numbers of weapons and their buyers. Among the leaked documents I also received scanned passports of arms dealers and government officials from the US, Saudi Arabia and UAE. They have been involved in the trafficking of at least 3 million pieces of Serbian weapons (mortar shells and rockets) to Yemen and Syria in the last three years.

Tracking the lot number of these Serbian weapons I was able to identify and trace mortar shells in the hands of Islamic State terrorists in Yemen back to their buyer – the US Government. These documents expose the biggest lie in the US foreign policy – officially fighting terrorism while secretly supporting it.” (1)

Whereas Western foreign policy is on the wrong side of international law, humanity, morality, and civilization itself, the “Axis of Resistance” holds the higher ground.

Whereas the West and its allies vilify and oppose Hezbollah, for example, evidence demonstrates that instead of slaughtering Christians in Syria, as the West’s ISIS/al Qaeda proxies do, Hezbollah protects them.

Reverend Andrew Ashdown offers this example in a recent Facebook commentary:

“In this moving video, the monks and nuns at the monastery of St. James the Mutilated in Wars, Syria describe how H’zb’llah protected the monastery when the area was occupied by ISIS. In November 2015, I spent three nights at the monastery when ISIS frontlines were still only 1km away. There were nightly battles..we had little sleep, but the young H’zb’llah fighters were committed to protecting the monastery. Indeed they swore they would give their lives to do so, and to protect the Christian presence. The monks and nuns referred to them as ‘angels’. It is more than ironic that the British government supports the Islamist terrorists who have targeted all who do not follow their radical ideology and who have destroyed Churches and mosques, whilst declaring H’zb’llah, who have been instrumental in helping protect numerous Christian towns and villages in Syria, to be ‘terrorists’.”

Hezbollah fighters protecting Christians in Syria

As Canadians, we must reassess our geo-political orientations. We must denounce our government’s foreign policies. And we must re-examine our own self-image — which is based on the Lie, rather than the Truth.

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

Note

(1) Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, “Islamic State weapons in Yemen traced back to US Government: Serbia files (part 1)” ARMS WATCH, 1 September, 2019. (http://armswatch.com/islamic-state-weapons-in-yemen-traced-back-to-us-government-serbia-files-part-1/?fbclid=IwAR0OIH5Jh52xobWC4jLT8HLSqbzxcnchqAiaWYev7cNGBkDGq2iEdx0TU3E) Accessed 3 September, 2019

Featured image is from the author


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During July 18-20, 1969 a gathering in Oakland, California sought to galvanize a broad cross section of progressive and revolutionary organizations across the United States into a united front opposing the escalating repressive policies leveled principally at the African American people.

This National Revolutionary Conference for a United Front Against Fascism (UFAF) was conceived and constructed by the Black Panther Party. This organization which grew out of the Civil Rights Movement of earlier years and the mass rebellions which struck urban areas throughout the country beginning during the period of 1962-64 and extending through 1965-1968, radicalized a significant sector of youth within the larger municipalities, the rural south and the college campuses.

In response to the rapidly shifting mood of the African American struggle, the federal government unleashed a wave of repressive measures resulting in the deaths of such luminaries as Medgar Evers; three Civil Rights workers in Mississippi during the Summer of 1964; Malcolm X of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU); Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); to name only a few of the most widely known.

Although the initial framework and structures for the movement emerged from the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Lowndes County, Alabama in 1965-66, leading to the ascendancy of Stokely Carmichael as chair of that pioneering organization in May 1966, the concept of independent political parties under the banner of the Black Panther spread throughout the state and the country. All during the course of 1966, Black Panther groups were established in cities such as Detroit, New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles, etc.

Image on the right: Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale delivering address at the National Conference for a United Front Against Fascism, July 18-20, 1969

In the Bay Area city of Oakland, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, two student and community activists formed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BBPSD) in October of 1966. The Panthers purchased arms, sold copies of Mao Tse-tung’s Red Book, established patrols to monitor the actions of the police, founding a weekly newspaper which by July 1969 was circulated to hundreds of thousands in order to build political clout within African American and broader communities.

After a series of encounters with law-enforcement and an armed march on the State Capitol building in Sacramento on May 2, 1967 to oppose the passage of the Mulford Act which was designed to restrict the capacity of African Americans to publically carry weapons, the Party was soon identified by the state apparatus for containment and liquidation. A shoot-out on October 28 of the same year left two white Oakland police shot, one fatally, along with the wounding and arrest of BPPSD co-founder Huey P. Newton.

In the aftermath of the October 28 confrontation, the reputation of the BPPSD rapidly spread prompting significant growth within the organization. Chapters sprung up around the U.S. during 1968. The Oakland-based Panthers would form an alliance with the newly-created Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) where they ran candidates for several offices including U.S. Congress and President.

Building a United Front Against Repression

By mid-1969, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had labeled the Black Panther Party (BPP) as the most dangerous of all of the radical and revolutionary groups in operation at the time. Local field offices were encouraged to develop tactics aimed at disrupting and neutralizing the Party and its leadership.

Several hundred BPP members and supporters were arrested on largely trumped up charges, others were driven into exile, while many died in confrontations with law-enforcement personnel. Bobby Hutton, one of the early recruits of Newton and Seale, who served as the Party treasurer at the age of 17, was gunned down in cold blood by Oakland police on August 6, 1968. Later John Huggins and Alprentice Bunchy Carter, two leaders of the Los Angeles chapter were killed in January 1969 on the campus of the University of California by members of the US organization headed by Ron Karenga. The Panthers were in a political struggle with US members over the control of the Black Student Union (BSU) at UCLA. A brief physical clash led to the assassination of Carter and Huggins.

Other leading Party members including Erika Huggins and Bobby Seale were arrested and charged with murder conspiracy in the brutal torture and killing of a New York Panther named Alex Rackley who was accused of being a police informant. Seale was also brought to Chicago as a defendant in the trial charging that 8 movement leaders had conspired to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in August 1968.

An article published in the weekly Black Panther newspaper on May 31, 1969 made an appeal for people around the U.S. attend the UFAF Conference. The July 18-20 gathering attracted an estimated crowd between 3,000-5,000 people, a majority, approximately 90%, being European Americans.

Various organizations and activists attended the Conference including members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Young Patriots Organization of Chicago, a white youth group composed of people from Appalachia; Young Lords Organization (YLO), a Puerto Rican group similar in posture to the BPP; Herbert Aptheker, a Marxist historian and then member of the Communist Party, USA; movement Attys. William Kunstler and Charles Gerry; Dr. Marlene Dixon, who had been terminated for her activism from the University of Chicago; Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., then of SCLC Operation Breadbasket; the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), the family and supporters of Los Siete del la Raza, a group of seven Chicanos charged in the killing of a San Francisco police officer in a confrontation; among others.

Chairman Bobby Seale opened the Conference with an appeal for unity among progressive forces throughout the U.S. He warned against the problems associated with ideological conflict and emphasized the necessity of concrete political action against the rising tide of fascism.

One of the highlights of the Conference was a Women’s panel featuring Elaine Brown, a Central Committee member of the BPP, who read a statement from prison written by Erika Huggins; Evelyn Harris of the NWRO; Carol Henry of the BPP; Penny Nakatsu, a Japanese American activist and later lawyer; Dr. Marlene Dixon; and Roberta Alexander of the BPP. The women emphasized that the struggle against male domination, patriarchy and chauvinism was integral in the fight to defeat fascism.

Contradictions and Conflicts: Strategic and Tactical Questions in Defining Fascism

Of course the ideological and political differences within the Left and National Liberation Movements in the U.S. during mid-1969 could not be avoided at the UFAF Conference. One major incident was the physical exclusion of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), an organization which evolved from the splits within the CPUSA during the late 1950s after the rise of Nikita Khrushchev to the leadership in the Soviet Union and the subsequent ideological positions emanating from developments inside the world socialist movement.

PLP youth members had entered SDS in previous years, and as a result, sharp ideological differences would surface over the role of students, workers and the nationally oppressed in the Left movement in the U.S. The June 18-23, 1969 SDS national conference in Chicago had voted to expel PLP for what it described as disruptive behavior.

At a March 30, 1969 national leadership meeting of SDS in Austin, Texas the organization had passed a resolution recognizing the BPP as the vanguard of the liberation struggle among African Americans. This position was opposed by the PLP faction of SDS. The alliance with the Panthers is cited as an influencing factor in the purging of PLP at the June 18-23 national conference of SDS in Chicago.

Nonetheless, disagreements would arise between the leaderships of both the Panthers and SDS over the question of community control of the police. A mandate was given to delegates of the UFAF Conference to launch petition campaigns aimed at community control of police in African American, Chicano, Asian and white neighborhoods. SDS held the view that the concept of community control of police agencies did not apply among European Americans unless it was directed by class conscious working class organizations.

Following the conclusion of the UFAF, Mark Rudd and other SDS national leaders adopted a resolution rejecting the mandate of seeking to build support for community control of police in white neighborhoods. This decision drew the ire of Panther leaders Bobby Seale and David Hillard, the Chief of Staff of the Party.

An article published in the August 16 edition of the-then New York-based Guardian newspaper outlined the conflict saying:

“Referring to SDS’s agreement to support the petition in the ‘colonies’ (black and brown communities) but not in the ‘oppressor country’ (white America), Hilliard wrote in the Black Panther: ‘How abstract and divorced from the reality of the world around them they must be to think that the Black Panther Party would allow them to leave their communities and begin to organize the colony; to control the fascists in the oppressor country is a very definite step towards white people’s power, because James Rector [a white youth killed by police in Berkeley during the confrontations over People’s Park in May 1969] was not shotgunned to death in the black community. It seems they prefer to allow the already legitimate reactionary forces to take root or sanctuary in the white communities.’ Stating that the ‘Black Panther Party will not be dictated to by people who are obviously bourgeois procrastinators,’ Hilliard went on to imply that SDS, among other groups, was ‘at best national socialist’ (i.e., fascist).” (See this)

Black Panther Party led National Conference for a United Front Against Fascism delegates in Oakland, July 18-20, 1969

This same above-mentioned report went on to illustrate the obvious frustrations of the Panther leadership with SDS, noting:

“In the interview with Guardian correspondent Goldberg, the Panther leaders described many white radicals as ‘bourgeois Boy Scouts,’ and ‘little petty racists.’ ‘All revolutionaries and all revolutionary organizations eventually have to make a choice between revolution and counter-revolution,’ Hilliard said. ‘If they will not take the lead from the vanguard, then they will have to move to the other side. From now on we will not take theory, but actions as the basis for the coalitions we make. The Young Patriots [a Chicago white working-class youth organization] are the only revolutionaries we respect that ever came out of the mother country.’ Then Hillard added, “[T]he only revolutionary force in the bourgeois mother country is the women.’ In the Guardian interview, the Panther leaders defended their community control petition as ‘revolutionary,’ saying that community control of police would eventually lead to “liberated zones” and that when the people really controlled the police forces, you had in actuality a “people’s militia.’ Seale and Hilliard argued that by refusing to circulate the petition in the white community, white radicals were giving fascist elements sanctuary there. Seale said that over 1500 persons had signed up at the UFAF conference to work on the National Committees to Combat Fascism, and circulate the community control petition. ‘When you circulate that petition, you are moving in direct opposition to the chief opponents of the revolutionary movement,’ he said.”

Moreover, the lack of agreement over a clear definition of what is fascism would aggravate these ideological and political conflicts. Historically, this was not a new problem. With the emergence of fascism in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s there were different explanations regarding the character of fascism and the struggle to eliminate state repression.

In Italy, Communist leader Antonio Gramsci wrote in a 1921 essay on what he analyzes as the “Two Fascism.” On the actual social origins of the phenomenon Gramsci says:

“The crisis of fascism, about whose origins and causes so much is now being written, can easily be explained by a serious examination of the evolution of the fascist movement itself…. Due to their trenchant opposition to the socialist movement they obtained the support of the capitalists and the authorities. This aspect of the Fasci was inherited in part from the conflict between the Socialist Party and the ‘interventionist’ associations during the war years. They emerged during the same period when the rural landowners were feeling the need to create a White Guard to tackle the growing workers’ organizations. The gangs that were already organized and armed by the big landowners soon adopted the label Fasci for themselves too. With their subsequent development, these gangs would acquire their own distinct character – as a White Guard of capitalism against the class organs of the proletariat.” (See this)

Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922 and would serve as an inspiration to Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. The rise of fascism on a foreign policy level lead to the calamitous second imperialist war, and from an African viewpoint, it began with the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

Leon Trotsky, the exiled (1928-1940) co-leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and head of the Red Army in the Civil War against counter-revolutionaries backed by the imperialist countries during 1918-1921, wrote extensively on the rise of fascism in Germany over the period of 1928-1933. Trotsky viewed fascism as arising among the petty-bourgeois elements in alliance with the capitalist class. In essence fascism is characterized by a mass movement of reactionary elements which seeks power in its own name, as developments in Italy and Germany would reveal. (See this)

Later Bulgarian Communist, Georgi Dimitrov, who was put on trial in Germany after the rise of the Nazis, called for a United Front Against War & Fascism in 1935. The Panther’s approach was more akin to Dimitrov, accepting a similar name as the Third International’s efforts of the 1930s and early 1940s. (See this)

With specific reference to the Panthers in 1969, the debate over whether the U.S. had become a fascist state and society was theoretically abstract. The African American people had been brought to North America for the purpose of enslavement. There had never been any genuine social equality or self-determination for the African population. Reconstruction after the Civil War of 1861-65 had been betrayed due to a compromise among all leading sectors of the ruling class of the period. The burgeoning Civil Rights, Black Power and revolutionary movements of the mid-20thcentury had been subjected to severe repression by the capitalist state and supported by the majority of white constituents whether they were members of the Democratic or Republican parties.

Consequently, the Panther lexicon, and that of many other elements in the Left and African American movements of the 1960s and 1970s, suggested that fascism had already arrived as a fact of state policy and societal institutions. The poster issued by the BPP which promoted the UFAF had as a sub-text: “Fascism: The Power of Finance Capital.” Therefore, the priority of the Party was to first defeat fascism as a prerequisite to the ultimate struggle to build socialism.

George Jackson, who after 1970 became a much read theoretician of the BPP and the revolutionary prisoners’ movement in general, advanced the notion often attributed to Mussolini declaring that:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

Whether this is an accurate quote from the Italian fascist or not and if this definition is accepted, then fascism has been in existence for decades in the U.S.

So therefore, if this is the case regarding the contemporary character of the capitalist state in the U.S., it does not necessarily provide answers as it relates to the questions of fighting fascism in the modern period of President Donald Trump, who is routinely categorized by many leftists and liberals as a neo-fascist. The putative neo-fascism of Trump can be distinguished from the National Front of France and other formations in Western Europe which operate outside of the mainstream liberal, conservative and social democratic parties.

The outcomes from the UFAF led to the creation of National Committees to Combat Fascism (NCCF) in several cities. In many cases the NCCFs became de facto BPP chapters (labeled as organizing bureaus) such as what occurred in Detroit in the second half of 1969 in the aftermath of the decision by some cadre locally as well as the national office to close down the previously existing BPP chapter.

In other areas such as Berkeley, California, an Intercommunal Committee to Combat Fascism (ICCF) was formed by white activists who worked in close collaboration with the Black Panther Party of the same city. ICCF sought to build solidarity in white areas with the BPP and its programs. The Berkeley grouping took up the petition drive for community control seriously and placed it as a referendum on the ballot in early 1970.

Lessons for 2019: Trumpism and Neo-Fascism

In the era of the Trump presidency there is an enormous amount of usage of the term fascism. Many of Trump’s positions including the targeting of nationally oppressed peoples, xenophobia, misogyny, the scapegoating of immigrants, massive tax cuts and direct aid to the capitalist class along with the military industrial complex, embody the character of fascist domestic policy. Although Left, African American, Asian, Middle Eastern and Latinx political groupings are still allowed to function openly, their weakness in relationship to the conservative political base, the state apparatus, security forces and the Pentagon, can in no way reassure those who fear and contemplate far more aggressive measures to curtail dissent and enhance exploitation and oppression.

The prison industrial complex has grown exponentially since 1969. Today well over two million people in the U.S., who are disproportionately people of color, are being housed in the correctional facilities. Detention camps for migrant workers and asylum seekers have been compared to concentration camps during World War II.

Trump’s campaign rallies are centered-around him as a political personality. The administration has refused to acknowledge the rising wave of racist violence across the U.S. where scores of white supremacists and other neo-fascist groupings are active utilizing social media and direct contact with their constituencies as well as those they are trying to recruit. Presidential rhetoric and demagoguery encourages racist violence, the rejection of scientific findings related to climate change, extreme hostilities towards Muslims and immigrants, all under the guise of American (actually white) nationalism.

This atmosphere of mass shootings such as in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, compounded by police and vigilante attacks on African Americans and Latinx people, has resulted in a social culture of apprehension and caution. Despite the claims of an economic boom, tens of millions remain trapped in poverty, which has a racialized and gendered character. Volatility in the global financial markets during the summer of 2019 raised fears of another economic downturn similar or even perhaps worse than what occurred in 2008. The trade wars against the People’s Republic of China and European Union (EU) states through the imposition of tariffs is worsening the plight of those within the agricultural, retail and manufacturing sectors of the U.S. capitalist system.

Today in 2019 there is no Black Panther Party (BPP) or a comparable organization to take on the administration, the capitalist class and their supporters through a program of effective mobilization, organization and political education. This is the principal task of anti-fascists in the contemporary era and that is the imperatives of building revolutionary organizations which have the capacity to reach millions with a program of sweeping social transformation and socialist development.

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

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Concealing the Truth

September 4th, 2019 by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

Concealing the truth from the people is not unusual in politics. It is perhaps more pronounced in global politics partly because it is more difficult to hold powerful global actors accountable. That might is right is an adage that rings true at the international level more than in the domestic arena.

There are currently a number of international issues where the truth is concealed or camouflaged. The demonstrations in Hong Kong for instance which have gone on for weeks are perceived by a lot of people as a struggle for freedom and democracy against an authoritarian government in Beijing. The truth may be a little more complex. It may be in the interest of certain elements in some Western capitals to encourage mass protests in Hong Kong as part of their larger agenda to create instability in China. This in turn may be aimed at curbing China’s rise as a global power which its adversaries perceive as a challenge to their hegemony of the planet.

The crisis in Kashmir is another example of an issue where the entire story may not be known to the people. While changes made to the Indian Constitution have been presented by the government in New Delhi as an attempt to integrate the disputed territory into the national structure, the real reason may be more closely aligned to the ideological orientation of the present BJP leadership. This is why it may have serious repercussions for India’s religious diversity which has been its civilizational hallmark.

A third region in crisis may also reveal that the underlying causes may be quite different from what has been portrayed in the media. Iran has been depicted as the country that is responsible for the present tensions in West Asia. Even if we confined our observation to the immediate circumstance, it is obvious that it is the United States’ decision to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal of July 2015 that is the real reason for the tensions. Why President Trump moved in that direction has a lot to do with increased Israeli and Saudi influence over the White House and their misperception of the power dynamics in West Asia.

Perhaps an even more blatant instance of concealing the truth is the continuing crisis in Venezuela. The US and some of its allies are trying to convey the impression that if the oil-rich state is grappling with serious economic challenges it is due entirely to an oppressive leadership pursuing socialist policies. The truth is that unending schemes and ploys by the US since the presidency of Hugo Chavez which even witnessed a failed coup against him in April 2002 are the main cause of Venezuela’s woes.

If the truth about what is happening in relation to Venezuela, Iran, Kashmir and Hong Kong is not widely known it is largely because the media, old and new, serve the interests of the powerful. This may not be obvious to many of us because these are on-going crises in constant flux. A quick look at some past episodes may be useful.

In August 1964, the US leadership alleged that North Vietnamese ships had fired at US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. The allegation provided the justification for the US to intensify its aggression against North Vietnam. The truth is there was no North Vietnamese attack against US ships. The incident was invented as the US Secretary of Defence at that time Robert McNamara admitted years later.

To justify US military action against Iraq when the latter invaded Kuwait in August 1990, a story was concocted that accused Iraqi soldiers of plucking babies out of their incubators and throwing them onto the floor of a hospital in Kuwait. The fabrication was designed to incite public anger against an “utterly brutal and inhuman regime” in Baghdad.  A few years later a monstrous lie was invented about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in order to convince the world that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was totally justified.

A more recent example of political lying was the accusation that Bashar Al-Assad of Syria was responsible for a chemical gas attack in Eastern Ghouta on the 21st of August 2013.  It was the celebrated investigative journalist Seymour Hersh who revealed the truth: that the Western backed rebels were behind the chemical attack.

More than any country in West Asia it is tiny Cuba that has borne the brunt of its huge neighbour’s lies and distortions. Since its Revolution in 1959, it has been constantly accused of fomenting instability and violence in Latin America. And yet, it is the US through its agents and proxies that has orchestrated acts of terror against Cuba the most infamous of which was the downing of a Cuban commercial plane on the 6th of October 1976 that killed 73 people including a number of children. The mastermind of that heinous crime Posada Carilles was given protection in the US until his death in May 2018.

Why lies are propagated so frequently and the truth sacrificed so easily, it is not difficult to understand. It is because the powerful want to protect their power at all costs. Sometimes this would require targeting their foes without proof.

This may be true of two final episodes which I have kept to the end because both have not been investigated thoroughly and therefore one cannot draw definite conclusions. The 9-11 tragedy and the MH 17 disaster though different in many ways are similar in some respects. In both cases, a certain party pointed fingers at the “culprits” almost immediately without presenting an iota of evidence. US officials and the media accused Osama bin Laden of planning  9-11 within hours of the attacks upon the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Similarly, the then US Secretary of State, John Kerry stated that

“There is overwhelming evidence of Russia complicity in the downing of a Malaysia airline plane,” as quoted in the BBC on the 21stof July 2014, 4 days after the disaster. Kerry did not bother to provide any evidence.

It is equally significant that in both cases important questions about the actual episodes have remained unanswered. In the 9-11 episode, it is still unclear what caused the collapse of a third tower in the vicinity of the Twin Towers and what exactly hit the Pentagon. Likewise, in the case of MH 17, the official version of what had caused the downing of the plane does not blend with some eye-witness accounts or with expert analysis of the nature of the damage to the cockpit.

9-11 was the raison d’etre for the US led onslaught on Afghanistan on the 7th of October 2001. More important, it ignited the US led War on Terror that lasted more than a decade and was seen by many Muslims as an affront to their identity and their dignity. Is it a coincidence that after the July 17th air disaster — the overwhelming majority killed were Europeans —- European governments were more supportive of severe economic sanctions against Russia proposed by the US some months before? Did the disaster unwittingly achieve some geopolitical objective?

It is only if we continue to ask probing questions that the truth that is concealed will be revealed for the good of everyone.

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Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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“These are the times that try men’s souls.” ― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

Take heed, America.

Our losses are mounting with every passing day.

What began with the post-9/11 passage of the USA Patriot Act  has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The citizenry’s unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security has resulted in a society where the nation is being locked down into a militarized, mechanized, hypersensitive, legalistic, self-righteous, goose-stepping antithesis of every principle upon which this nation was founded.

Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, police violence and the like—all of which have been sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—our constitutional freedoms have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded.

The rights embodied in the Constitution, if not already eviscerated, are on life support.

Free speech, the right to protest, the right to challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, accountability and transparency in government, privacy, press, sovereignty, assembly, bodily integrity, representative government: all of these and more have become casualties in the government’s war on the American people, a war that has grown more pronounced since 9/11.

Indeed, since the towers fell on 9/11, the U.S. government has posed a greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist, extremist or foreign entity ever could.

While nearly 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government and its agents have easily killed at least ten times that number of civilians in the U.S. and abroad since 9/11 through its police shootings, SWAT team raids, drone strikes and profit-driven efforts to police the globe, sell weapons to foreign nations (which too often fall into the hands of terrorists), and foment civil unrest in order to keep the military industrial complex gainfully employed.

The American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, denied due process, and killed.

In allowing ourselves to be distracted by terror drills, foreign wars, color-coded warnings, underwear bombers and other carefully constructed exercises in propaganda, sleight of hand, and obfuscation, we failed to recognize that the U.S. government—the government that was supposed to be a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”—has become the enemy of the people.

This is a government that has grown so corrupt, greedy, power-hungry and tyrannical over the course of the past 240-plus years that our constitutional republic has since given way to idiocracy, and representative government has given way to a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

This is a government that, in conjunction with its corporate partners, views the citizenry as consumers and bits of data to be bought, sold and traded

This is a government that spies on and treats its people as if they have no right to privacy, especially in their own homes.

This is a government that is laying the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data as a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors. Incredibly, as part of a proposal being considered by the Trump Administration, a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.

This is a government that routinely engages in taxation without representation, whose elected officials lobby for our votes only to ignore us once elected.

This is a government comprised of petty bureaucrats, vigilantes masquerading as cops, and faceless technicians.

This is a government that railroads taxpayers into financing government programs whose only purpose is to increase the power and wealth of the corporate elite.

This is a government—a warring empire—that forces its taxpayers to pay for wars abroad that serve no other purpose except to expand the reach of the military industrial complex.

This is a government that subjects its people to scans, searches, pat downs and other indignities by the TSA and VIPR raids on so-called “soft” targets like shopping malls and bus depots by black-clad, Darth Vader look-alikes.

This is a government that uses fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, to track the citizenry’s movements, record their conversations, and catalogue their transactions.

This is a government whose wall-to-wall surveillance has given rise to a suspect society in which the burden of proof has been reversed such that Americans are now assumed guilty until or unless they can prove their innocence.

This is a government that treats its people like second-class citizens who have no rights, and is working overtime to stigmatize and dehumanize any and all who do not fit with the government’s plans for this country.

This is a government that uses free speech zones, roving bubble zones and trespass laws to silence, censor and marginalize Americans and restrict their First Amendment right to speak truth to power. The kinds of speech the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation, prosecution and outright elimination include: hate speech, bullying speech, intolerant speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, incendiary speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, right-wing speech, left-wing speech, extremist speech, politically incorrect speech, etc.

This is a government that adopts laws that criminalize Americans for otherwise lawful activities such as holding religious studies at home, growing vegetables in their yard, and collecting rainwater.

This is a government that persists in renewing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely.

This is a government that saddled us with the Patriot Act, which opened the door to all manner of government abuses and intrusions on our privacy.

This is a government that, in direct opposition to the dire warnings of those who founded our country, has allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a standing army by way of programs that transfer surplus military hardware to local and state police.

This is a government that has militarized American’s domestic police, equipping them with military weapons such as “tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft,” in addition to armored vehicles, sound cannons and the like.

This is a government that has provided cover to police when they shoot and kill unarmed individuals just for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

This is a government that has allowed private corporations to get rich at taxpayer expense by locking people up for life for non-violent crimes. There are thousands of people in America serving life sentences for non-violent crimes, including theft of a jacket, siphoning gasoline from a truck, stealing tools, and attempting to cash a stolen check. It costs roughly $29,000 a year per inmate just to keep these nonviolent offenders in prison. Meanwhile, American prisons have become the source of cheap labor for Corporate America.

This is a government that has created a Constitution-free zone within 100 miles inland of the border around the United States, paving the way for Border Patrol agents to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. Nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.

This is a government that treats public school students as if they were prison inmates, enforcing zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, and indoctrinating them with teaching that emphasizes rote memorization and test-taking over learning, synthesizing and critical thinking.

This is a government that is operating in the negative on every front: it’s spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad. Meanwhile, the nation’s sorely neglected infrastructure—railroads, water pipelines, ports, dams, bridges, airports and roads—is rapidly deteriorating.

This is a government that has empowered police departments to make a profit at the expense of those they have sworn to protect through the use of asset forfeiture laws, speed traps, and red light cameras.

This is a government whose gun violence—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—poses a greater threat to the safety and security of the nation than any mass shooter. There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.

This is a government that has allowed the presidency to become a dictatorship operating above and beyond the law, regardless of which party is in power.

This is a government that treats dissidents, whistleblowers and freedom fighters as enemies of the state.

This is a government that has in recent decades unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.

This is a government that allows its agents to break laws with immunity while average Americans get the book thrown at them.

This is a government that speaks in a language of force. What is this language of force? Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Contempt of cop charges.

This is a government that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security, national crises and national emergencies.

This is a government that exports violence worldwide, with one of this country’s most profitable exports being weapons. Indeed, the United States, the world’s largest exporter of arms, has been selling violence to the world in order to prop up the military industrial complex and maintain its endless wars abroad.

This is a government that is consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

This is a government that routinely undermines the Constitution and rides roughshod over the rights of the citizenry, eviscerating individual freedoms so that its own powers can be expanded.

This is a government that believes it has the authority to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation, the Constitution be damned.

In other words, this is not a government that believes in, let alone upholds, freedom.

So where does that leave us?

As always, the first step begins with “we the people.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, our power as a citizenry comes from our ability to agree and stand united on certain freedom principles that should be non-negotiable.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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Many have already noticed: The U.S. really, really doesn’t feel like the world leader, or even as a ‘first world country’. Of course, I write that sarcastically, as I detest expressions like ‘first world’, and the ‘third world’. But readers know what I mean.

Bridges, subways, inner cities, everything is crumbling, falling apart. When I used to live in New York City, more than two decades ago, returning from Japan was shocking: the US felt like a poor, deprived country, full of problems, misery, of confused and depressed people, homeless individuals; in short – desperados. Now, I feel the same when I land in the US after spending some time in China.

And it gets much worse. What the West used to accuse the Soviet Union of, is now actually clearly detectable in the United States and the United Kingdom themselves: surveillance is at every step, these days; in New York, London, Sydney, and even in the countryside. Every move a person makes, every purchase, every computer click, is registered; somewhere, somehow. And this monitoring is, mostly, not even illegal.

Speech is controlled by political correctness. Someone behind the scenes decides what is acceptable and what is not, what is desirable or not, and even what is permissible. You make one ‘mistake’ and you are out; from the teaching positions at the universities, or from the media outlets.

In such conditions, humor cannot thrive, and satire dies. It is not unlike religious fundamentalism: you get destroyed if you ‘offend’. In such circumstances, writers cannot write ground-breaking novels, because true novels offend by definition, and always push the boundaries. As a result, almost nobody reads novels, anymore.

Only toothless, ‘controlled humor’ is permitted. No punches can be administered intuitively. Everything has to be calculated in advance. No ‘outrageous’ political fiction can pass the ‘invisible censorship’ in the West (and so, novels as a form have almost died). Those who read in Russian or Chinese languages know perfectly well, that the fiction in Russia and China, is much more provocative and avant-garde.

In the West, poetry has died, too. And so has philosophy, which has been reduced to a boring, stale and indigestible academic discipline.

While Hollywood and the mass media keep producing, relentlessly, all sorts of highly insulting and stereotypical racist junk (mainly against the Chinese, Russians, Arabs, Latinos and others), great writers and filmmakers who want to ridicule the Western regime and its structure, have already been silenced. You can only humiliate non-Westerners in a way that is approved (again: somewhere, somehow), but God forbid, you dare to criticize the pro-Western elites who are ruining their countries on behalf of London and Washington, in the Gulf, Southeast Asia or Africa – that would be ‘patronizing’ and ‘racist’. A great arrangement for the Empire and its servants, isn’t it?

We all know what has happened to Julian Assange, and to Edward Snowden. In the West, people are disappearing, getting arrested, censored. Millions are losing jobs: in the media, publishing houses, and in the film studios. The Cold War era appears to be relatively ‘tolerant’, compared to what is taking place now.

Social media constantly represses ‘uncomfortable’ individuals, ‘unacceptable’ media outlets, and too ‘unorthodox’ thoughts.

Travel has become a boot camp. This is where they break you. Move through the Western airports and you will encounter the vulgar, insulting ‘securistan’. Now, you are not just expected to pull down your pants if ordered, or take off your shoes, or throw away all your bottles containing liquids: you are expected to smile, to grin brightly, like an idiot. You are supposed to show how eager, how cooperative you are: to answer loudly, looking straight into the eyes of your tormentors. If you get humiliated, still, be polite. If you want to fly, show that you are enjoying this stupid and useless humiliation, administered for one and only reason: to break you, to make you pathetic and submissive. To teach you where you really belong. Or else. Or else! We all know what will happen if you refuse to ‘cooperate’.

*

Now, ‘they’ will use double-speak to let you know that all this is for your own good. It will not be pronounced, but you would be made to sense it: ‘you are being protected from those horrible Third World monsters, madmen, perverts.’ And of course, from Putin, from the Chinese Communists, from the butcher Maduro, from Assad, or from the Iranian Shi’a fanatics.

The regime is fighting for you, it cares for you, it is protecting you.

Sure, if you live in the UK or the US, the chances are that you are deep in debt, depressed and with no prospects for the future. Maybe your children are hungry, maybe, in the US, you cannot afford the medical care. Most likely, you cannot afford housing in your own city. Perhaps you are forced to have two or three jobs.

But at least, you know that your ‘wise leaders’ in the White House, Congress, Pentagon and security agencies, are working day and night, protecting you from countless conspiracies, from vicious attacks from abroad, and from those evil Chinese and Russians, who are busy building progressive and egalitarian societies.

Lucky you!

*

Except: something does not add up here.

For years and decades, you were told how free you were. And how oppressed, unfree, those against whom you are being protected, are.

You were told how rich you are, and how miserable “the others” were.

To stop those deprived and deranged hordes, some serious measures had to be applied. A right-wing death-squad in some Central American or Southeast Asian country had to be trained in US military camps; a thoroughly absolutist and corrupt monarch had to be supported and pampered; a military fascist coup had to be arranged. Millions raped, tens of thousands of corpses. Not pretty at all, but you know… necessary. For your own good, North American or European citizens; for your own good…. Even for the good of the country that we designated for our ‘liberation’.

Few dissidents in the West have been protesting, for decades. No one has been paying much attention to them. Most of them became ‘unemployable’, and were silenced through misery and the inability to pay their basic bills.

But suddenly…

What happened, suddenly? Because something really happened…

*

The Empire got tired of plundering the non-Western parts of the world, exclusively.

Well-conditioned, brainwashed and scared, the Western public began to get treated with the same spite, as people in the plundered and miserable parts of the world. Well, not yet, not exactly. There are still some essential differences, but the trend is definitely there.

The Western public cannot do too much to protect itself, really. The regime knows everything about everybody: it spies on every citizen: where he or she walks, what he or she eats, drives, flies, watches, consumes, reads. There are no secrets, anymore.

You are an atheist? No need to ‘confess’. You are confessing every minute, with each and every computer click, by pressing the remote control button, or by shopping on Amazon.

Is Big Brother watching? Oh no; now there is much more detailed surveillance. Big Brother is watching, recording and analyzing.

General Pinochet of Chile used to brag that without his knowledge, no leaf could ever move. The old, fascist scumbag was bragging; exaggerating. On the other hand, Western rulers say nothing, but they clearly know what they are doing. Without their knowledge, nothing moves and nobody moves.

Arriving from China, from Russia or Cuba, the first thing that strikes me is how disciplined, obedient and scared, the Europeans and North Americans really are. They subconsciously know that they are being controlled and cannot do anything about it.

When trains get delayed or cancelled, they sheepishly murmur half-audible curses. Their medical benefits get reduced; they accept, or quietly commit suicide. Their public infrastructure crumbles; they say nothing, remembering the ‘good old days’.

Why is it that I feel hope, I laugh with the people, in Mexico City, Johannesburg or Beijing? Why is there so much warmth in the geographically cold cities of Vladivostok or Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka? Why are the people of London, Paris, Long Angeles looking so concerned, so depressed?

Some historically poor countries are on the rise. And the people there show appreciation for every tiny improvement. Nothing is more beautiful than optimism.

The West has fought the so-called “third world” for many, long decades; oppressing it, tormenting it, looting it, violating its people. It prevented them from choosing their own governments. Now it has gone overboard: it is attempting to control and to oppress the entire world, including its own citizens.

As various countries all over the world are getting back onto their feet, resisting pressure from Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, people in the West are increasingly getting treated by their governments with the spite that used to be reserved exclusively for the “under-developed nations” (yes, another disgusting expression).

Clearly, the West has “learnt from itself”.

While countries like Russia, China, Vietnam, Mexico, Iran and others are surging forward, many previously rich colonialist and neo-colonialist empires are now beginning to resemble the “Third World”.

These days, it is very sad being a writer in New York City or in London. Just as it is frightening to be poor. Or being different. All over the world, the roles are being reversed.

*

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

This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Four of his latest books are China and Ecological Civilizationwith John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. His Patreon

Featured image is from NEO

Global Research Editor’s Note

The following text by Arash Norouzi first published by the Mossadegh Project and Global Research in January 2007 confirms that the alleged “Wiped Off the Map” statement  by Iran’s (former) president was never made.

In the light of recent US threats directed against Iran, we are reposting this important article.

Iran does not constitute a threat to Israel.

The rumor was fabricated by the American media with a view to discrediting Iran’s head of state and providing a justification for waging an all out war on Iran.

Iran is blamed for refusing to abide by the “reasonable demands” of “the international community”.

In recent developments, Iran is persistently described as threatening the security of Israel. And Israel is described as instrumental in determining US foreign policy.

Realities are twisted and turned upside down. Iran is being accused of wanting to start a war.

The threat to global security comes from the US-NATO-Israel military alliance, which is now threatening Iran. The use of  tactical nuclear weapons against Iran on a preemptive basis is contemplated.

If Iran is attacked, we are potentially in a World War III scenario.

It is essential to dispel the fabrications of the Western media.

Iran does not constitute a threat to Global Security.

Iran does not possess a nuclear weapons program. Iran does not constitute a threat to Israel.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 25 September 2010,  24 May 2019, September 4, 2019
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Wiped off  The Map: The Rumor of the Century

by Arash Norouzi

Global Research, January 20, 2007

The Mossadegh Project
Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran’s President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, “Israel must be wiped off the map”. Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made, as the following article will prove.

  BACKGROUND:

On Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at a program, reportedly attended by thousands, titled “The World Without Zionism”. Large posters surrounding him displayed this title prominently in English, obviously for the benefit of the international press. Below the poster’s title was a slick graphic depicting an hour glass containing planet Earth at its top. Two small round orbs representing the United States and Israel are shown falling through the hour glass’ narrow neck and crashing to the bottom.

Before we get to the infamous remark, it’s important to note that the “quote” in question was itself a quote— they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office.

 THE ACTUAL QUOTE:

So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in farsi:

  “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.”

That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word “Regime“, pronounced just like the English word with an extra “eh” sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase “rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods” (regime occupying Jerusalem).

So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want “wiped from the map”? The answer is: nothing. That’s because the word “map” was never used. The Persian word for map, “nagsheh“, is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase “wipe out” ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran’s President threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”, despite never having uttered the words “map”, “wipe out” or even “Israel”.

THE PROOF:

The full quote translated directly to English:

     “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”.

Word by word translation:

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).

Here is the full transcript of the speech in farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad’s web site

www.president.ir/farsi/ahmadinejad/speeches/1384/aban-84/840804sahyonizm.htm

THE SPEECH AND CONTEXT:

While the false “wiped off the map” extract has been repeated infinitely without verification, Ahmadinejad’s actual speech itself has been almost entirely ignored. Given the importance placed on the “map” comment, it would be sensible to present his words in their full context to get a fuller understanding of his position. In fact, by looking at the entire speech, there is a clear, logical trajectory leading up to his call for a “world without Zionism”. One may disagree with his reasoning, but critical appraisals are infeasible without first knowing what that reasoning is.

In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West’s apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the “Zionist regime” was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world’s struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.

Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America’s powerful grip on the region via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:

(1) The Shah of Iran- the U.S. installed monarch

(2) The Soviet Union

(3) Iran’s former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein

In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini’s own words foretelling that individual regime’s demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini’s unfulfilled wish: “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise”. This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.

THE ORIGIN:

One may wonder: where did this false interpretation originate? Who is responsible for the translation that has sparked such worldwide controversy? The answer is surprising.

The inflammatory “wiped off the map” quote was first disseminated not by Iran’s enemies, but by Iran itself. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran’s official propaganda arm, used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. International media including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Time magazine and countless others picked up the IRNA quote and made headlines out of it without verifying its accuracy, and rarely referring to the source. Iran’s Foreign Minister soon attempted to clarify the statement, but the quote had a life of its own. Though the IRNA wording was inaccurate and misleading, the media assumed it was true, and besides, it made great copy.

Amid heated wrangling over Iran’s nuclear program, and months of continuous, unfounded accusations against Iran in an attempt to rally support for preemptive strikes against the country, the imperialists had just been handed the perfect raison d’être to invade. To the war hawks, it was a gift from the skies.

It should be noted that in other references to the conference, the IRNA’s translation changed. For instance, “map” was replaced with “earth”. In some articles it was “The Qods occupier regime should be eliminated from the surface of earth”, or the similar “The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth”. The inconsistency of the IRNA’s translation should be evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language.

THE REACTION: 

The mistranslated “wiped off the map” quote attributed to Iran’s President has been spread worldwide, repeated thousands of times in international media, and prompted the denouncements of numerous world leaders. Virtually every major and minor media outlet has published or broadcast this false statement to the masses. Big news agencies such as The Associated Press and Reuters refer to the misquote, literally, on an almost daily basis.

Following news of Iran’s remark, condemnation was swift. British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed “revulsion” and implied that it might be necessary to attack Iran. U.N. chief Kofi Annan cancelled his scheduled trip to Iran due to the controversy. Ariel Sharon demanded that Iran be expelled from the United Nations for calling for Israel’s destruction. Shimon Peres, more than once, threatened to wipe Iran off the map. More recently, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who has warned that Iran is “preparing another holocaust for the Jewish state” is calling for Ahmadinejad to be tried for war crimes for inciting genocide.

The artificial quote has also been subject to additional alterations. U.S. officials and media often take the liberty of dropping the “map” reference altogether, replacing it with the more acutely threatening phrase “wipe Israel off the face of the earth”. Newspaper and magazine articles dutifully report Ahmadinejad has “called for the destruction of Israel”, as do senior officials in the United States government.

President George W. Bush said the comments represented a “specific threat” to destroy Israel. In a March 2006 speech in Cleveland, Bush vowed he would resort to war to protect Israel from Iran, because, “..the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel.” Former Presidential advisor Richard Clarke told Australian TV that Iran “talks openly about destroying Israel”, and insists, “The President of Iran has said repeatedly that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth”. In an October 2006 interview with Amy Goodman, former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter referred to Ahmadinejad as “the idiot that comes out and says really stupid, vile things, such as, ‘It is the goal of Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the earth’ “. The consensus is clear.

Confusing matters further, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pontificates rather than give a direct answer when questioned about the statement, such as in Lally Weymouth’s Washington Post interview in September 2006:

Are you really serious when you say that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth?

We need to look at the scene in the Middle East — 60 years of war, 60 years of displacement, 60 years of conflict, not even a day of peace. Look at the war in Lebanon, the war in Gaza — what are the reasons for these conditions? We need to address and resolve the root problem.

Your suggestion is to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth?

Our suggestion is very clear:… Let the Palestinian people decide their fate in a free and fair referendum, and the result, whatever it is, should be accepted…. The people with no roots there are now ruling the land.

You’ve been quoted as saying that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Is that your belief?

What I have said has made my position clear. If we look at a map of the Middle East from 70 years ago…

So, the answer is yes, you do believe that it should be wiped off the face of the Earth?

Are you asking me yes or no? Is this a test? Do you respect the right to self-determination for the Palestinian nation? Yes or no? Is Palestine, as a nation, considered a nation with the right to live under humane conditions or not? Let’s allow those rights to be enforced for these 5 million displaced people.

The exchange is typical of Ahmadinejad’s interviews with the American media. Predictably, both Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked if he wants to “wipe Israel off the map”. As usual, the question is thrown back in the reporter’s face with his standard “Don’t the Palestinians have rights?, etc.” retort (which is never directly answered either). Yet he never confirms the “map” comment to be true.

This did not prevent Anderson Cooper from referring to earlier portions of his interview after a commercial break and lying, “as he said earlier, he wants Israel wiped off the map”.

Even if every media outlet in the world were to retract the mistranslated quote tomorrow, the major damage has already been done, providing the groundwork for the next phase of disinformation: complete character demonization. Ahmadinejad, we are told, is the next Hitler, a grave threat to world peace who wants to bring about a new Holocaust. According to some detractors, he not only wants to destroy Israel, but after that, he will nuke America, and then Europe! An October 2006 memo titled Words of Hate: Iran’s Escalating Threats released by the powerful Israeli lobby group AIPAC opens with the warning, “Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian leaders are issuing increasingly belligerent statements threatening to destroy the United States, Europe and Israel.” These claims not only fabricate an unsubstantiated threat, but assume far more power than he actually possesses. Alarmists would be better off monitoring the statements of the ultra-conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who holds the most power in Iran.

As Iran’s U.N. Press Officer, M.A. Mohammadi, complained to The Washington Post in a June 2006 letter:

It is not amazing at all, the pick-and-choose approach of highlighting the misinterpreted remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in October and ignoring this month’s remarks by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that “We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state.”

The Israeli government has milked every drop of the spurious quote to its supposed advantage. In her September 2006 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni accused Iran of working to nuke Israel and bully the world. “They speak proudly and openly of their desire to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’ And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective to imperil the region and threaten the world.” Addressing the threat in December, a fervent Prime Minister Ehud Olmert inadvertently disclosed that his country already possesses nuclear weapons: “We have never threatened any nation with annihilation. Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?”

MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY: 

On December 13, 2006, more than a year after The World Without Zionism conference, two leading Israeli newspapers, The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, published reports of a renewed threat from Ahmadinejad. The Jerusalem Post’s headline was Ahmadinejad: Israel will be ‘wiped out’, while Haaretz posted the title Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference: Israel will ‘soon be wiped out’.
Where did they get their information? It turns out that both papers, like most American and western media, rely heavily on write ups by news wire services such as the Associated Press and Reuters as a source for their articles. Sure enough, their sources are in fact December 12th articles by Reuter’s Paul Hughes [Iran president says Israel’s days are numbered], and the AP’s Ali Akbar Dareini [Iran President: Israel Will be wiped out].

The first five paragraphs of the Haaretz article, credited to “Haaretz Service and Agencies”, are plagiarized almost 100% from the first five paragraphs of the Reuters piece. The only difference is that Haaretz changed “the Jewish state” to “Israel” in the second paragraph, otherwise they are identical.

The Jerusalem Post article by Herb Keinon pilfers from both the Reuters and AP stories. Like Haaretz, it uses the following Ahmadinejad quote without attribution: [“Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out,” he added]. Another passage apparently relies on an IRNA report:

“The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom,” Ahmadinejad said at Tuesday’s meeting with the conference participants in his offices, according to Iran’s official news agency, IRNA. 

He said elections should be held among “Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner.”

Once again, the first sentence above was wholly plagiarized from the AP article. The second sentence was also the same, except “He called for elections” became “He said elections should be held..”.

It gets more interesting.

The quote used in the original AP article and copied in The Jerusalem Post article supposedly derives from the IRNA. If true, this can easily be checked. Care to find out? Go to:
www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0612134902101231.htm

There you will discover the actual IRNA quote was:

“As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated”.

Compare this to the alleged IRNA quote reported by the Associated Press:

“The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom”.

In the IRNA’s actual report, the Zionist regime will vanish just as the Soviet Union disappeared. Vanish. Disappear. In the dishonest AP version, the Zionist regime will be “wiped out”. And how will it be wiped out? “The same way the Soviet Union was”. Rather than imply a military threat or escalation in rhetoric, this reference to Russia actually validates the intended meaning of Ahmadinejad’s previous misinterpreted anti-Zionist statements.

What has just been demonstrated is irrefutable proof of media manipulation and propaganda in action. The AP deliberately alters an IRNA quote to sound more threatening. The Israeli media not only repeats the fake quote but also steals the original authors’ words. The unsuspecting public reads this, forms an opinion and supports unnecessary wars of aggression, presented as self defense, based on the misinformation.

This scenario mirrors the kind of false claims that led to the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, a war now widely viewed as a catastrophic mistake. And yet the Bush administration and the compliant corporate media continue to marinate in propaganda and speculation about attacking Iraq’s much larger and more formidable neighbor, Iran. Most of this rests on the unproven assumption that Iran is building nuclear weapons, and the lie that Iran has vowed to physically destroy Israel. Given its scope and potentially disastrous outcome, all this amounts to what is arguably the rumor of the century.

Iran’s President has written two rather philosophical letters to America. In his first letter, he pointed out that “History shows us that oppressive and cruel governments do not survive”. With this statement, Ahmadinejad has also projected the outcome of his own backwards regime, which will likewise “vanish from the page of time”.

 

Arash Norouzi is an artist and co-founder of The Mossadegh Project

It’s hardly surprising The New York Times and The Washington Post didn’t bother to report on the rally at the British Home Office in support of Julian Assange.

A quick search of the news reveals AOL and Reuters reported on the rally which featured Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. If not for Waters’ celebrity, it’s possible no corporate media outlet would have covered the event. 

Julian Assange is no longer news. His torture at Belmarsh prison is not worthy of reportage. Far too many establishment “journalists” (professional government script readers) believe Julian Assange is getting what he deserves for the crime of exposing the serial murder of the state in foreign lands that have not and are not capable of harming Americans. Now that task is left to white nationalists and conspiracy theorists, according to the state and its media. 

“How do we put ourselves in the position of a Julian Assange in solitary confinement, or with that kid in Syria or Palestine or Rohingya, being blown to bits by these people in this building here?” said Waters. 

I admit surprise Reuters would include this quote. It is at the very core of the issue—the US and Britain are guilty of war crimes and Julian Assange is one of a handful of brave people revealing the truth about the wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Afghanistan. 

It’s not so much the snuff video of US soldiers remotely and casually slaughtering journalists and others, including children, in Iraq. It’s more about the tranche of emails lifted from the DNC revealing how mendacious and viciously manipulative the organization is with people like Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and John Podesta calling the shots. 

Meanwhile, large segments of a loosely defined alternative media are under attack. 

“New concerns are being raised that online conservative media outlets could face federally imposed censorship going into the 2020 elections,” writes Paul Bedard. 

Years after Republicans on the Federal Election Commission claimed Democrats were targeting conservative speech on outlets like the Drudge Report, the liberal head of the FEC is teaming with an anti-Trump free speech advocacy group to host a symposium targeting online “disinformation.”

The September event is inspired by Russia’s online efforts during the 2016 election and is expected to include Republicans and Democrats as well as big internet firms such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

Politico reported this week that FEC Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub is hosting the event and summoned the tech giants. Her invitation reads, “The goal of the symposium will be to identify effective policy approaches and practical tools that can minimize the disruption and confusion sown by fraudulent news and propaganda in the 2020 campaign,” according to the outlet.

Politico:

The FEC has been largely ineffective in recent years, with commissioners unable to agree on nearly anything. And it’s slated to become even more hamstrung with the departure of Commissioner Matthew Petersen, effective Saturday. That move will leave the FEC with only three of its six seats filled—and without the quorum needed to vote on substantial matters.

Forget the confusion and uncertainty at the FEC. For a government bureaucracy, this is normal behavior. After Democrats take back the government, they will fully empower the FEC to go after “conservatives” and anyone else who challenges the narrative or supports a presidential candidate not pre-approved by the ruling elite, now popularly known as the Deep State. The gossamer-thin excuse for this inquisition is Russia and its unproven and clownishly ludicrous supposed attempt to collude with Trump during the election. 

“Google, Facebook and Twitter have been invited by the head of the Federal Election Commission to explore ways to combat digital disinformation in the 2020 elections,” Bloomberg reports. 

The all-day symposium on Sept. 17 will examine new types of false information spread online that could be used to influence elections. In 2016, Russia used online platforms in a bid to support the candidacy of President Donald Trump, according U.S. intelligence agencies.

Ellen Weintraub, the head of the agency, is co-hosting the event, which will also include academics, congressional staffers and political organizations, according to an official at the agency. 

The Russian collusion BS—widely debunked yet accepted as gospel by many Democrats—will serve as a cover for this witch hunt billed as a symposium. 

The social networks have been widely criticized for allowing the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency to abuse their platforms during the 2016 election. Many of the Russian ads and posts, which were viewed by millions of people, disparaged Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, boosted Donald Trump or stoked divisions in American society, such as those over the Black Lives Matter movement.

Notice how Politico continues this outrageous conspiracy theory. It is only possible because this idiotic theory has been pushed by the state and its media since 2016. It is drilled in the heads of millions of people too lazy or busy to read beyond headlines, let alone do independent research on political issues. 

Politico, however, is not considered a dangerous white nationalist conspiracy website, the kind the FBI is now scrutinizing. It continues to skewer facts and set the stage for denying an untold number of Americans their First Amendment right to free speech. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Hezbollah Won’t Tolerate Israeli Aggression

September 4th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Make no mistake. Israel is run by anti-democratic hardliners. Nuclear armed and dangerous, along with maintaining stockpiles of chemical, biological, and other banned terror weapons, Israel is a Middle East menace.

It’s second only to the regional threat posed by the US presence — the real axis of evil, along with their NATO and despotic Arab state allies.

Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s government. In May 2018 general elections, its candidates and allies won a 67-seat majority of parliament’s 128 seats – equally divided between Muslims and Christians.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called parliamentary results a “political and moral victory” for the resistance — giving the group and its allies power to veto legislation they consider unacceptable.

Under Lebanon’s confessional system, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the parliament speaker a Shia Muslim.

Hezbollah is falsely designated a terrorist organization by the State Department, at the behest of Israel.

It’s nothing of the sort, maintaining a military wing for self-defense alone — in a part of the world boiling from US/NATO/Israeli aggression.

In a Monday televised address, Nasrallah warned Israel of a strong response if it attacks Lebanese territory aggressively, saying:

If the IDF “attack(s), then all your borders and forces will be at risk.”

Hezbollah is much stronger than during 2006 Israeli aggression on Lebanon, embarrassing IDF ground forces at the time.

Its thousands of missiles and rockets can strike targets anywhere in Israel if the IDF attacks its positions or strikes other Lebanese targets.

In response to Israel’s preemptive attack on Lebanese soil in late August, Nasrallah announced the “start of a new phase, Hezbollah “no longer” observing red lines.

He vowed strong retaliation “deep inside” Israel if further IDF aggression occurs, adding:

“(T)here is a new battlefield which is targeting Israeli drones in Lebanon’s skies” — referring to the incursion and crash of two IDF UAVs near Beirut in late August.

Israeli warplanes repeatedly and aggressively attack Syrian targets from Lebanese airspace.

“We have a higher level of deterrence now, and we have changed the rules of engagement,” Nasrallah stressed, adding:

“…Israeli aggression is over…(W)e will no longer tolerate Israeli violation of Lebanon airspace.” He vowed to retaliate against unlawful IDF incursions.

“The Lebanese have the right to defend themselves, and we will defend. There is now a new operational space, and it is Lebanon’s skies. When it comes to dealing with the UAVs, it will happen. I won’t specify when and how, but it will come,” Nasrallah stressed.

With full support and encouragement from both right wings of the US war party, Israel operates with impunity.

The world community never held it accountable for its high crimes against defenseless Palestinians and regional states, nor its repeated breaches of Security Council resolutions and other international laws.

Is another Israeli war on Lebanon coming? On September 17, Israeli Knesset elections will be held.

If Netanyahu’s Likud party and hard right allies fail to gain a coalition majority, maybe things will cool down for a while.

If he’s reelected prime minister again, anything ahead is possible.

At the same time, he faces bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges, an October 2 and 3 pre-indictment hearing scheduled.

The jury is out on whether he’ll be held accountable for the above offenses.

No Israeli politician (or high-ranking IDF official) was ever held accountable for high crimes against Palestinians, supporting terrorism, or terror-bombing other countries – far more serious crimes than civil wrongdoing.

A Final Comment

DEBKAfile (DF) is connected to Israeli military intelligence. On Monday, it published a propaganda report, falsely claiming Iran and Hezbollah “plot(ed) (an) anti-Israel drive at (a) secret Beirut summit” in August.

DF admitted having no knowledge of what may have been discussed by Iranian and Hezbollah officials, if a Beirut summit actually occurred last month.

DF falsely claimed their officials discussed “a counsel of war to set out a joint program of operations against US and Israeli Middle East targets in the coming weeks.”

The Islamic Republic and Hezbollah never preemptively attacked another country — what the US, NATO, and Israel do repeatedly.

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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 Russia-Mongolia Strategic Partnership

September 4th, 2019 by Padraig McGrath

On September 2nd, Russian President Vladimir Putin began a 2-day visit to the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, at the conclusion of which a permanent treaty of mutual friendship and extensive strategic partnership will be signed with Mongolian President Khaltmaagiin Battulga. This new treaty contains a particular focus on infrastructural cooperation, but also includes economic and scientific aspects. In a parallel development, the East Asia Railroad Community initiative will include North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and Mongolia, and there are hopes that it might also develop into a strategic partnership encompassing trade, energy-cooperation and some security-cooperation.

Undoubtedly, the personal affinity between Presidents Putin and Battulga, enhanced by their achievements as elite judokas, has smoothed the path to this treaty. However, in order to understand Mongolia’s developmental trajectory and its mutually beneficial relations with both Russia and China, we need to look beyond interpersonal considerations.

First let’s look at the historical, geographical, demographic and economic fundamentals.

Mongolia has the world’s 18th largest surface-area but only the world’s 134th largest population. It has the lowest population-density of any sovereign nation-state on Earth. However, Mongolia also has extremely impressive mineral-deposits, with copper, gold and coal the most notable among them. Minerals account for 80% of all Mongolian exports, with livestock accounting for most of the rest.

Put those facts together, and prima facie we might initially be justified in imagining that Mongolians were perpetually prone to geo-strategic anxiety. However, there seems to be very little evidence that this is actually the case. Mongolia serves as an exemplary case of pragmatic, non-conflictual geo-political management on the part of its own leadership, and also on the part of both the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. The depth and complexity of the interconnections between the developmental trajectories of Russia, Mongolia and China as distinct but cross-pollinating civilizations, and the interconnections between their ancestral populations, lie far beyond the scope of this article, so I will limit my discussion of the historical background, beginning with the immediate post-war period.

Upon the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, a treaty of mutual recognition was signed with Mongolia, and the PRC agreed to recognize Mongolia’s admission to the United Nations, finally settling the sovereignty issue once and for all, in 1961. Cooperation between the Soviet Union and Mongolia was extensive. In an interview with the Mongolian newspaper Odriyn Sonin published on September 1st, President Putin drew attention to the joint Russian-Mongolian victory over the Japanese in the battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, which delayed Japan’s entry into the second world war, and thereby made more Red Army units available for the Battle of Moscow. President Putin also made a point of noting Russia’s debt of gratitude to the Mongolian people, who sent aid to the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. This aid included sending horses to Soviet cavalry-units and warm clothes for Red Army soldiers.

However, with that heart-warming history cursorily laid out, it still hardly requires explanation that, given Mongolia’s geography, demographics and natural resources, the maintenance of a stable and secure Mongolia will always require pragmatic, non-conflictual geo-political management by Mongolia’s own political leadership, and by the political leaderships of the Russian Federation and the PRC.

The good news is that this is actually happening.

All parties concerned recognize that the world needs buffers.

Isn’t there a lesson in here for the architects of the Ukrainian catastrophe?

Regarding Ukraine, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people argue that

“President Kuchma (or Yanukovych) made the mistake of trying to sit on two stools….”

I have always been bemused by this argument – in the cases of both Kuchma and Yanukovych, “sitting on two stools” was the only pragmatic or viable policy. As long as Russia could have secured protections against its markets being flooded through entrepôt-trade and against the prospect of NATO advancing to its borders, and as long as the EU didn’t get greedy for yet another colony, then the policy of “sitting on two stools” would have been the optimal policy for the maintenance of a secure, stable and prosperous Ukraine.

Unfortunately, the EU leadership just wasn’t prepared to make those kinds of pragmatic compromises. The Eurasian Customs Union offered Ukraine $15 billion in aid with no strings attached, immediate quota-free access to all of its markets, and equal partner status. The EU wasn’t prepared to match that offer – they just wanted an agricultural colony with some “human rights” lullabies mixed in to pacify the gullible natives (a bit like the British persuading Aboriginal Australians to relinquish any claim to their ancestral lands in exchange for bags of coloured glass beads).

The Aboriginals had never seen glass before, let alone shiny coloured glass. They reasoned that it must have been very valuable.

Anyway, back to Ukraine, as soon as the Eurasian Customs Union offered Ukraine a better trade-deal than the EU was prepared to offer, it immediately triggered a pro-western coup d’etat.

In contradistinction, isn’t Mongolia a refreshing example of geo-political pragmatism?

President Battulga understands that his nation’s sovereignty is best maintained through a balanced trade-policy and FDI-policy. Furthermore, he is absolutely committed to the principle, which is enshrined in Mongolia’s constitution, that Mongolia’s natural resources belong to Mongolia’s people, and should be used for their benefit. What we see in Mongolia is a model of sovereignism which is premised on multilateral, mutually respectful recognition of Mongolia’s status as a natural buffer.

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Video: Russia Accuses US of Sabotaging Idlib Ceasefire

September 4th, 2019 by South Front

On September 1, the Russian Defense Ministry said that the recent US strike on Idlib province had “endangered the truce” in the area and “violated all previous arrangements.” The defense ministry noted that the air raid led to “multiple casualties and destruction”.

On August 31, CENTCOM announced that the US military “conducted a strike against al-Qaida in Syria leadership at a facility north of Idlib”. It claimed that the strike “will further degrade their ability to conduct future attacks and destabilize the region.”

The strike took place shortly after the start of a unilateral truce announced by the Syrian Armed Forces in the Idlib zone. Local sources say that the strike targeted a camp of the al-Qaeda-affilated militant group Ansar al-Tawhid. However, no casualties among the group’s top leadership or other prominent terrorist commanders operating in the area were reported.

Watch the video here.

Despite this, the situation in the Idlib zone remains relatively calm after the start of the ceasefire on August 31. Both pro-government forces and militants accuse each other of sporadic artillery strikes. Nonetheless, no notable clashes were reported.

Meanwhile, the US and Turkey already faced some difficulties in the implementation of the northeastern Syria ‘safe zone’ agreement. On August 31, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened that Turkey will apply its own plan of action, if Turkish soldiers are not allowed to control the safe-zone area. He said that Turkey has “no time and patience” and that it wants to actually create a safe-zone with own soldiers guarding it.

These remarks demonstrate a rift between the Turkish and US stance on the question. In northeastern Syria, Washington mostly relies on Kurdish separatist armed groups that Turkey sees as terrorist organizations. So, the sides have a quite different vision of how this safe zone should look.

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Inevitable Withdrawal: The US-Taliban Deal

September 4th, 2019 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

It took gallons and flagons of blood, but it eventuated, a squeeze of history into a parchment of possibility: the Taliban eventually pushed the sole superpower on this expiring earth to a deal of some consequence.  (The stress is on the some – the consequence is almost always unknown.) 

“In principle, on paper, yes we have reached an agreement,” claimed the US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad on the Afghan channel ToloNews.  “But it is not final until the president of the United States also agrees to it.”

The agreement entails the withdrawal (the public relations feature of the exercise teasingly calls this “pulling out”) of 5,400 troops from the current complement of 14,000 within 135 days of signature.  Five military bases will close or be transferred to the Afghan government.  In return, the Taliban has given an undertaking never to host forces with the intention of attacking the US and its interests.

Exactitude, however, is eluding the press and those keen to get to the marrow.  Word on the policy grapevine is that this is part of an inexorable process that will see a full evacuation within 16 months, though this remains gossip.

The entire process has its exclusions, qualifications and mutual deceptions.  In it is a concession, reluctant but ultimately accepted, that the Taliban was a credible power that could never be ignored.  To date, the US has held nine rounds of talks, a seemingly dragged out process with one ultimate outcome: a reduction, and ultimate exit of combat forces.

The Taliban was not, as the thesis of certain US strategists, a foreign bacillus moving its way through the Afghan body politic, the imposition of a global fundamentalist corporation.  Corrupt local officials of the second rank, however, were also very much part and parcel of the effort, rendering any containment strategy meaningless.

A narrative popular and equally fallacious was the notion that the Taliban had suffered defeat and would miraculously move into the back pages of history.  Similar views were expressed during the failed effort by the United States to combat the Viet Cong in South Vietnam.  An elaborate calculus was created, a mirage facilitated through language: the body count became a means of confusing numbers with political effect.

Time and time again, the Taliban demonstrated that B52s, well-equipped foreign forces and cruise missiles could not extricate them from the land that has claimed so many empires.  Politics can only ever be the realisation of tribes, collectives, peoples; weapons and material are unkind and useful companions, but never viable electors or officials.

Even now, the desire to remain from those in overfunded think tanks and well-furnished boardrooms, namely former diplomats engaged on the Afghan project, is stubborn and delusionary.  If withdrawal is to take place, goes that tune, it should hinge on a pre-existing peace agreement.  An open letter published by the Atlantic Council by nine former US State Department officials previously connected with the country is a babbling affair.

“If a peace agreement is going to succeed, we and others need to be committed to continued support for peace consolidation.  This will require monitoring compliance, tamping down of those extremists opposed to peace, and supporting good governance and economic growth with international assistance.”

The presumptuousness of this tone is remarkable, heavy with work planning jargon and spread sheet nonsense.  There is no peace to keep, nor governance worth preserving.  Instead, the authors of the note, including such failed bureaucratic luminaries as John Negroponte, Robert P. Finn and Ronald E. Neumann, opt for the imperial line: the US can afford staying in Afghanistan because the Afghans are the ones fighting and dying.  (Again, this is Vietnam redux, an Afghan equivalent of Vietnamisation.)  In their words,

“US fatalities are tragic, but the number of those killed in combat make up less than 20 percent of the US troops who died in non-combat training incidents.”

All good, then.

In a sign of ruthless bargaining, the Taliban continued the bloodletting even as the deal was being ironed of evident wrinkles.  This movement knows nothing of peace but all about the life of war: death is its sovereign; corpses, its crop.  On Monday, the Green Village in Kabul was targeted by a truck bomb, leaving 16 dead (this toll being bound to rise).  It was a reminder that the Taliban, masters of whole swathes of the countryside, can also strike deep in the capital itself.  The killings also supplied the Afghan government a salutary reminder of its impotence, underscored by the fact that President Ashraf Ghani played no role in the Qatar talks.

This leaves us with the realisation that much cruelty is on the horizon.  The victory of the Taliban is an occasion to cheer the bloodying of the imperialist’s nose.  But they will not leave documents of enlightenment, speeches to inspire.  This agreement will provide little comfort for those keen to read a text unmolested or seek an education free of crippling dogma. Interior cannibalisation is assured, with civil war a distinct possibility.  Tribal war is bound to continue.

As this takes place, the hope for President Donald Trump and his officials will no doubt be similar to the British when they finally upped stakes on instruction from Prime Minister David Cameron: forget that the whole thing ever happened.

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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]

Credible reports have been circulating that this year’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok will see the formalization of the Vladivostok-Chennai Maritime Corridor between the Russian Far East and India, which would be the key to comprehensively diversifying Russia’s “Pivot to Asia” and “balancing” China.

“Rusi-Hindi Bhai Bhai” (“Russians and Indians are brothers”), the Soviet-era slogan celebrating the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership, is back with a bang as these two Great Powers take their relations to the global level ahead of Prime Minister Modi’s upcoming visit to the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok later this week as President Putin’s guest of honor. Credible reports have been circulating that they’ll formalize the Vladivostok-Chennai Maritime Corridor (VCMC), which would be the key to comprehensively diversifying Russia’s “Pivot to Asia” away from its current dependence on China if it comes to pass. Russia, just like India, is very sensitive about becoming dependent on any single partner, which is why these two have been rapidly moving to restore their historic relations after the long lull that sent in after the end of the Old Cold War because they believe that their counterpart can help them “balance” (or “multi-align” in Indian strategic parlance) between other Great Powers (namely China in this specific context) in the emerging Multipolar World Order.

The VCMC is the perfect manifestation of this strategy because it’s economically driven and therefore can’t officially be regarded with suspicion by China. The concept is simple enough, and it’s that Russian resources from both the Far East (and also the Arctic) will be exported through the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the Andaman Sea en route to the Bay of Bengal, with the energy basis of this corridor eventually expanding to include real-sector economic trade as well. With time, it can also naturally evolve to include Japan, which is India’s joint co-founder of the “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” (AAGC) that’s informally supposed to fill the niches that China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) neglects and therefore partially compete with it in a sense, as well as those three Great Powers’ mutual Vietnamese, Indonesian, and other partners along the way. Not only could it create the pretext for Russia to expand its naval influence in the so-called “Indo-Pacific” through regular patrols along this route, but it could also fulfill the same role for India too.

In fact, there have been reports floating around since the end of last year that Russia and India are interested in signing a LEMOA-like military logistics pact with one another for using some of each other’s military facilities on a case-by-case basis just like India has already clinched with the US and France. From the Russian perspective, this could enable Moscow’s return to the Afro-Asian (“Indian”) Ocean, while India could establish a regular naval presence in the Sea of Japan as a “mirror response” to China doing the same in the aforementioned ocean via what some have described as the so-called “string of pearls” strategy. It’s this second-mentioned element that makes a prospective LEMOA-like pact so strategically enticing for Russian decision maker since it would structurally amount to “balancing” China, albeit indirectly and in a non-aggressive way that could always be “plausibly denied”. That scenario would be a dream come true for India because its political culture places a heavy emphasis on symbolism for both internal and external messaging purposes.

It could even be the case that India’s intense interest in investing in the Russian Far East is partially designed to “sweeten the deal” and make this LEMOA-like pact possible. From the Indian strategic standpoint, the dispatch of regular “freedom of navigation patrols” along the VCMC would strengthen its presence in the South China Sea and also set the precedent of expanding its naval influence along China’s eastern coast as well. This wouldn’t be militarily significant in any substantial sense but it would nevertheless provide symbolic leverage for India to use vis-a-vis its other “balancing”/”multi-aligning” act between the US and China, all facilitated by Russia through the prospective LEMOA-like pact and therefore making Moscow’s partner even more geostrategically indispensable than it already (believes that it) is. So long as the “brotherly” trust between Russia and India can be maintained, then this enhanced international role could work out to both of their long-term benefit, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that these grand plans hinge on the successful creation of the VCMC.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The Real Reason Johnson Prorogued Parliament

September 4th, 2019 by True Publica

Just as I predicted last year, the Conservative party is now in its implosion stage.

Dec 2018:  “David Cameron, advised by pro-Brexit think tanks has brought a type of political chaos in Britain one could only imagine in some far-off banana republic. Remarkably, the Tories have not just divided the country, they have placed the country into a no-win position and quite possibly done so for a very long time to come. They have not just failed Brexit and the electorate but have created a toxic political environment leading to the economic detriment to all those except those that can afford it. They have principally done little but to divide society and make everyone poorer, whilst making a mockery of democracy. The Conservative party is finished all bar a miracle of some sort.

However, it is also now clear that Boris Johnson’s team does, in fact, have a plan. Proroguing parliament was just a part of it and that has become clear now that Johnson is withdrawing the whip from Tory MPs who do not toe the no-deal Brexit line.

For clarity this means, Johnson is prepared to throw dissenters under the bus. By throwing them out of the party, and instantly threatening them to stand as Independents – he could even go as far carrying out that threat and call a general election. Then there’s even the possibility of deferring the October 31st no-deal deadline. ‘Do or die’ for no-deal just became ‘do it or die’ for Conservative party survival. About a quarter of MP’s have voted against no-deal. The very survival of the party is now staring at about 70 MP’s in the face with a gun to their heads. This is a huge gamble by Johnson.

For Conservative MP’s on the side of no-deal, it is a career-ending decision. If they vote with the government, their principles will have been thrown overboard in front of the public eye and they will be thrown out (or stand-down) at the next election anyway. If they don’t, they get thrown out. And if they do get thrown out in any numbers – Labour may well get in anyway. At best this is political coercion, just plain old blackmail – by a dictatorial government prepared to sweep away the very principles of democracy.

As far back as 2015, well before Brexit was even an option on the table, I predicted the Tory move towards an authoritarian state and Boris Johnson has proved to be the man to hammer home that ideology.

A dictator and the techno-Stalinist

Some of the big hitters in the party have no choice. They will vote against, people like Philip Hammond, David Gauke, Dominic Grieve and Rory Stewart. By tomorrow, Johnson’s wafer-thin majority will have gone.

What we are seeing here is unprecedented. It’s a good thing this lot were not around some 75 years ago at another time of crisis.

By tomorrow, the Tory majority of 1 could be somewhere around minus 12-15. In a bad case scenario, it might reach 20. Any more, well, who knows.

Johnson is being told what to do by Dominic Cummings. His most recent behaviour in treating employees in the manner he did in any normal corporate environment would have resulted in his instant dismissal, not that anyone would have allowed him to reach hire-and-fire status in the first place.

Johnson is a puppet to a techno-Stalinist who creates something called ‘deterministic chaos.’ Cummings likes to unseat normality or traditional ways of doing things and rapidly changes the environment through the chaos he created and then seizes control with a pre-determined solution.

Poroguing parliament, throwing out MP’s, maybe calling a general election is all part of a plan. It makes you wonder what’s next?

A Troubling week

We know from latest polling that voters oppose Johnson’s suspension of Parliament by 47 per cent to 27 per cent. We know the spats between the Lib Dems and Labour will come to an end this week having been forced together by #stopthecoup. The extremes of this government have also made Jeremy Corbyn look positively middle-of-the-road and this will be boosting his general appeal. The right-wing press is playing into the hands of the left as sentiment changes because of real political and economic fear of what the Tories are doing to the country.

Democracy itself is now very seriously threatened – especially this coming Thursday when a case is brought about the legality of Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for five weeks from next week. If this decision goes Johnson’s way it will permanently alter the balance of power between any Prime Minister and representative MPs, between executive and legislature. ‘Executive’ decision-making is not democracy.

This week will see all sorts of chaotic headlines. Tuesday, when parliament convenes after this chaotic and stressful summer break, there will be an emergency debate – that may well culminate in a vote that would allow MPs to seize control of the order paper, on Wednesday and probably Thursday too. Wednesday, there’s a Bill to debate stalling the 31st deadline until the spring. Then, if that passes, it goes to the Lords, if that passes an emergency weekend sitting in the Commons will follow and if that’s successful – off it goes to the Queen for a signature – assuming Johnson is prepared to take it that is – all in a week.

As for the general election, if one is called – this will be a dreadful spectacle fought out in public and with the public. Expect trouble. This will be the most unedifying extravaganza of the very worst in political thuggery imaginable. By then, the public will be exhausted and will go with anyone strong enough to lead. This is how democracy dies – it’s happened a thousand times before.

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We are careening towards the most extreme form of Brexit imaginable – flouncing out of the European Union (EU) after 46 years without any transition plan. Operation Yellowhammer, a leaked secret report from the government’s own officials predicted that the most likely outcome of this no-deal Brexit would be shortages of medicines and fresh foods, civil unrest and transport chaos. In short, the most vulnerable people will suffer terribly. Many will die.

Boris Johnson is a man who clawed his way to power through the votes of a mere 0.13 per cent of the population. His lies are so profuse and extreme they would make Pinocchio blush. During the 2016 Brexit referendum, he was driven around in a big red bus plastered with false claims about how much money Britain gave to be a member of the EU. The numbers were so wrong, the UK’s chief statistician had to refute them – the best estimates find that Britain gets economic benefits from being in the EU that are about ten to twenty times as large as the financial cost of membership (see box on “the economics bit” below). Like so many populists, Johnson is a son of the wealthy privileged elite, who promises nirvana to a polarised country weakened by decades of stagnant wages and austerity. And like so many in the rabidly Eurosceptic UK media, his journalistic career was made from fabricating stories about European regulations. He was sacked not once, but twice by his editor for lying.

Johnson has no political compass except his preening ambition.

boris johnson

Boris Johnson visits Pilgrim Hospital in Boston. Photo: Number 10 via a CC_BY-NC-ND 2.0 licence

The transparent ploy of his government is to pretend to seek a new deal, while running down the clock to October 31st. Brexiters demand the elimination of the “Irish backstop”, which is the insurance policy to prevent the return of a hard border in Ireland in the current withdrawal agreement. However, three years of intense discussion and negotiation have shown that although there are plenty of alternatives (such as staying within the single market like non-EU Norway), none of these solutions satisfy the numerous other demands of the Brexiters.

Why a no-deal Brexit is so profoundly undemocratic

The mantra of the no-dealers, played on “bleat and repeat” in the supine mass media, is that we must “respect” the vote and leave for the sake of democracy. But it needs shouting throughout the land: There is no mandate for a no-deal Brexit.

The idea that the UK would crash out of the EU was not on the 2016 ballot paper. Johnson himself said that chances of no deal were a “million to one.” The country was split down the middle by the vote with two of the four nations of the UK voting to remain – Scotland and Northern Ireland. Polling now consistently puts Remain ahead of any sort of Leave, let alone its most extreme form. This is hardly surprising as now the public are more aware of what Brexit actually means.

Since few voters wanted or want a no-deal style Brexit, why should the suicide cult minority who do clamour to crash out of the EU, dictate to the majority? Should they be able to thrust their twisted ideology down the unwilling throats of the people?

Parliament has voted consistently to block a no-deal Brexit. Consequently, Johnson has come up with a clever new wheeze – simply dissolving the legislature in advance of the Brexit deadline, so Members of Parliament cannot stop it, no matter what. The last time this happened was when King Charles did it in the 1640s, which sparked the English Civil War and resulted in a beheading.

It is clear that the gang who rule Britain have no real respect for democracy. It is simply nauseating that they will stop at nothing to advance their agenda.

How did we get here?

The EU has been a force for peace between nations who were at war for millennia. By building the largest single market on planet Earth, it has enabled these warring tribes to trade and grow closer. European countries fight each other over fishing quotas instead of bloody fields. This accomplishment was without blood and battles, but through a growing club who realised that our mutual self-interest lay in cooperation instead of conflict. Britain has been a proud member of this club, helping build the single market and guiding the club’s expansion to help bring prosperity and stability to countries formerly under the yoke of fascism in Southern Europe and Communism in Eastern Europe.

Brexiters are the vanguard of the populist nationalists who hate the EU, because it promotes a rules-based liberal order rather than a tribally based struggle for power. Trump and Putin love a weakened Europe that they can bend to their will. They undermine the international cooperation, which is our only hope to deal with the global challenges humanity faces. No wonder these authoritarians reject policies to tackle climate change. They reject reason, facts and experts. They want to return to a nativist world based on gut instinct, where civility is overruled by the mob, manipulated of course by the iron fist of the demagogue.

Why Brexit is so financially painful

Image result for gerard lyons

The no-deal crisis matters viscerally, as crashing out will hit hard. However, even after the adjustment when medicines and food supply chains recover, the worst is yet to come. Johnson has been promoting his economic lackey, Gerard Lyons (image on the right, from Wikimedia Commons), to head the Bank of England and therefore end its political independence. Lyons admits that no-deal Brexit will cause pain, but believes in a “Nike Swoosh” recovery. But the true picture will be one of a “dead cat bounce”. There will be a temporary recovery after the No-Deal chaos subsides, but then the inevitable relative economic decline will kick in making Britain poorer than it would been if we remain.

The economics of Brexit are almost trivially easy, which is why there is near-universal agreement among experts that Brexit will cost us dear. Trade costs rise with our closest neighbours from both tariffs and regulatory divergence, so trade will fall. Since the lesson of human development is that trade makes us average richer, Brexit will make us poorer. And the more extreme is the form of Brexit, the bigger is the fall of trade and income. The gory details and spurious counter-arguments are in the box below.

The pain will accumulate gradually. Brexit is a cunning domestic abuser of the economy. He hits us where the bruises do not show easily – it will be a gradual accumulation of financial pain over many, many years. Johnson will not be able to hide the violent assault of a No Deal. However, when the economic police are called, he will inevitably blame our nosy European neighbours, doubtlessly recording it on their iPhones. Alternatively, it will be the traitors within who are the enemies of the people.

We can argue over the exact magnitude of the Brexit pain. My best guess is that after a decade or two, British national income per head will be a tenth smaller under a no-deal Brexit than it would be if we remain in the EU.

Ten per cent of GDP sounds anodyne – is a loss of £200 billion per year a manageable number? Ten percent off public services means 11,000 fewer hospital doctors, almost 3,500 fewer GPs and 31,000 fewer nurses. Therefore, less diagnosis and treatment, longer waiting times and more people living in more pain. It means 12,600 fewer police – more crime, fewer clear-ups and more misery. It means 45,000 fewer teachers – bigger classes, less learning and more failure before kids’ lives have even begun.

Please do not tell me that we can avoid the cuts to the NHS because we can take bigger cuts elsewhere. Fewer cuts to the NHS mean more cuts elsewhere.

Instead of cutting services, could we just raise tax? Offsetting a £82 billion less public spending means increasing the basic rate of income tax by another 15 pence in the pound. At a time when wages will be stagnating, this will not be a pretty sight.

Let us be generous and say the losses are only half what I think they are – 5 per cent of GDP. This is actually the estimated long-run loss of Theresa May’s deal made by the independent UK in a Changing Europe, a softer situation than no deal. This will mean “only” a £100bn lower income hit so 22,500 fewer teachers and 15,000 fewer nurses.

The bottom line

We have known for a long time that Brexit is an economic disaster and now we also know that undemocratic no-deal Brexit is a political disaster. But it is also a moral disaster. A conscious decision to subject huge numbers to financial misery and see people hurt and die due to loss of public services and economic dislocation is simply unforgivable. Even if no deal were supported by an overwhelming mass of people – and the opposite is the case – it would still be wrong. If your sister were about to start a heroin habit, would you simply shrug and say “well it’s her choice”? Or, would you fight as hard as you could to stop her?

The people and parliament should not allow their rights to be trampled. Despite the looming darkness, we must prevent the assault on truth and democracy that Johnson’s odious regime represents. Britain is in the front line in this global battle.

And remember – it’s not over until it’s over.

Now the economics bit

Even though the economic arguments for EU membership are less important than the political and ethical case, I am a professional economist, so here are a few notes for the interested.

It is abundantly clear that Brexit entails an economic loss. The only real question really is how big the loss will be under different forms of Brexit. The best discussion of this is here, from the politically independent think-tank UK in a Changing Europe.

The conclusions are similar to my pre-referendum analysis as well as the recent Brexit assessments by the government, the Bank of England and NIESR. Indeed, all credible independent studies are in broad agreement that Brexit reduces average incomes, but the softer the Brexit; the lower will be the economic losses. This is why there is such a strong consensus among economists that leaving the EU will economically harm the UK.

The strength of this consensus is similar to that among medical experts about the harm caused by smoking or among meteorologists over the reality of climate change. This is why it is so ridiculous that the BBC and other broadcasters in the name of ‘balance’ give equal prominence to pro-Brexit economists as they do to those reflecting the profession’s opinion. The bulk of the UK press is virulently pro-Leave, so also heavily promotes the motley Brexit crew, whose models have been thoroughly, repeatedly debunked.

Often one hears the refrain that ‘economic forecasts are always wrong’ so should be ignored. A doctor cannot predict the age at which you will die if you start smoking two packets of cigarettes a day, but she is on firm grounds forecasting that your new smoking habit will be bad for your health.

Brexit economic analysis is generally not a forecast of what will be the exact size of the economy post-Brexit, but rather an analysis of the difference in economic outcomes if the UK leaves compared with if the UK remained. Brexit will not abolish the technological progress that the economy has managed to exploit over the last 250 years in order to grow. It will just mean that we are poorer given whatever the state of technology and world demand conditions that emerge over the next few decades.

A variant of the above argument is that economists’ forecasts have all been proven wrong by how well the UK economy grew after the vote in 2016. For example, David Davis, the former Secretary of State for Brexit, said that ‘previous Treasury forecasts had been proved wrong and were based on flawed assumptions’, citing in evidence that the UK economy had grown by over 2.8 per cent in the 18 months since the referendum, whereas the Treasury had forecast it would shrink.

This is an example of wilful misunderstanding. The general prediction was that the economy would grow by 2 per cent less than expected because of Brexit. And in fact, this is broadly what has happened since the vote – the UK economy has slipped from being at the top of the G7 growth league to the bottom. Moreover, observers reckon that GDP per capita is about 2 per cent lower than expected due to the Brexit vote.

It is true that economists thought that there would be a bigger immediate hit from the Brexit vote, whereas it took a few quarters before the economy started to slow down significantly relative to other countries. Therefore, although the forecasts got the overall hit about right, they got the timing wrong.

There were probably two reasons for this. First, modelling assumed that the negative immediate impact would come from the rational expectations of consumers of lower future real income growth. However, many people actually believed the propaganda on the Leave side that there would be no economic fallout from Brexit, so they continued spending much as before. It was only gradually when reality dawned that consumer confidence took a knock (for example, when the large fall in the value of sterling started to feed through into higher food prices and more expensive foreign holidays).
The second reason was that the Treasury analysis assumed that Article 50 would be activated immediately, whereas it was nine months later when Theresa May did this. The slowdown of the economy followed this as uncertainty started to spike.

Finally, it is worth pointing out Brexit has not yet happened. The majority of work, including my own, focuses on what happens after Brexit occurs, which is currently slated to be after the ‘transition period’ ends in 2020. Negative effects now are due to expectations about what might happen in the future, and these are notoriously hard to model.

The trouble will really start when true Brexit hits the fan.

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This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Brexit blog, nor LSE. It first appeared at LSE Business Review.

John van Reenen is a professor at MIT’s department of economics and Sloan School of Management. From October 2003 to July 2016 he was professor of economics and the director of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at LSE. He has published widely on the economics of innovation, labour markets and productivity. In 2009 he received the Yrjö Jahnsson Award, the European equivalent to the US Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years to the best economist in Europe under the age of 45. In 2014 he won the European Investment Bank prize for excellence in economic and social research.

Featured image is from TruePublica

On August 28, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced an attempt to roll back key provisions of the 2016 New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), which provide critical health and safety protections to prevent harm to public health from methane emissions and prevent potential methane leaks. Physicians for Social Responsibility opposes any attempt to roll back the NSPS.

In the proposed amended rule, the EPA will aim to eliminate federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to inspect for and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities. Across the country, health professionals, scientists, community members, elected officials and even oil and gas industry companies themselves such as BP, Shell, and Exxon have spoken out in opposition to these rollbacks.

The climate and health risks associated with exposure to methane endanger American communities. According to the EPA’s own website,

“The [oil and gas] industry is a significant source of emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential more than 25 times that of carbon dioxide.”

In fact, the number is estimated to be much higher: according to a 2014 Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), methane is 34 times as potent as carbon dioxide over 100 years, and 86 times as potent over 20 years.

In response to the proposed rollback of the New Source Performance Standards, Physicians for Social Responsibility issued the following comment:

“The administration’s proposed rollback of the 2016 New Source Performance Standards is reckless and dangerous. It puts communities at further risk of harm, and threatens public health and safety,” said Barbara Gottlieb, Environment and Health Program Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility. 

“Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York recently released the sixth edition of the seminal fracking science Compendium, which presents a large body of scientific research showing that gas and oil operations leak methane even more than was previously documented. That adds to the global climate crisis.  And the other pollutants that leak alongside the methane endanger the health of people who live near wells and compressor stations.”

“This misguided move undoes vital health and safety protections and puts us all at risk for further harm from climate change,” Gottlieb continued. “Even the oil and gas industry opposes this regulatory rollback. You can be sure the health community does. Remember, the Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to safeguard public health from environmental hazards, not put us in harm’s way to grovel to the oil and gas industry.”

In December 2018, Physicians for Social Responsibility submitted comments to Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler protesting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s proposed weakening of for the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), co-signed by 19 other health organizations representing a broad spectrum of national, regional and state organizations, including some of the preeminent national health organizations.

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The US Constitution never granted the federal government authority to create a central bank. The Founders, having lived through hyperinflation themselves, understood that government should never have a printing press at its disposal. But from the very beginning of America’s founding, the desire for a crony central bank was strong.

In fact, two attempts were made at creating a permanent central bank in America prior to the creation of the Fed. Fortunately, the charter for The First Bank was allowed to expire in 1811, and President Andrew Jackson closed down the Second Bank in 1833.

But, unfortunately, a third attempt was successful and the Federal Reserve was unconstitutionally created by Congress in 1913. Americans have been living under a corrupt and immoral monetary system ever since. The Federal Reserve is the printing press that has financed the creation of the largest government to ever exist. Endless welfare and endless military spending are both made possible by the Federal Reserve. The Fed can just print the money for whatever the US establishment wants, so those of us who long for a Constitutional and limited government have few tools at our disposal.

Despite all the propaganda claiming “independence,” the Fed has always been a deeply political institution. Because the Fed is a government-created monopoly with key government-appointed employees, its so-called “independence” is a mere fiction. However, the US Congress created the Fed with legislation; it can also abolish the Fed with legislation.

Last week, the facade of Federal Reserve “independence” was dealt a severe blow. Ironically, the person who broadcast to the world that the Fed is anything but “independent” was ex-New York Fed President Bill Dudley. Dudley wrote that,

“Trump’s re-election arguably presents a threat to the United States’ and global economy, and if the goal of monetary policy is to achieve the best long-term economic outcome, the Fed’s officials should consider how their decisions would affect the political outcome of 2020.”

The timing of Dudley’s threats to use Fed monetary policy to affect the outcome of a US election couldn’t come at a more striking time. After all, for more than two solid years Americans have been bombarded with fabricated stories about Russians rigging our elections. And yet here is a Federal Reserve official threatening to do the same exact thing – but this time for real!

Whether it’s the mainstream media, the CIA, the FBI, or now the Federal Reserve, more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that there is a Deep State in America and its interests have nothing to do with American liberty. In fact, our liberty is what the Deep State wants to abolish.

When it comes to the Federal Reserve, I stand firmly by my conviction that it needs to be audited and then ended as soon as possible.

America’s Founders were not perfect. They were human beings just as capable of error as we are. But they had a remarkable understanding of the ideas of liberty. They understood that liberty cannot exist with a government that has access to a printing press. Sound money and liberty go hand-in-hand. If we want to enjoy the blessings of Liberty, we must audit and then end the Federal Reserve!

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Featured image: William Dudley, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, speaks on December 7, 2009 during the World Leaders Forum at Columbia University in New York. (Source: STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

We’re All Julian Assange

September 4th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Forcefully dragged from Ecuador’s London embassy by UK police and imprisoned at the behest of Trump regime hardliners, Julian Assange is being slowly killed for the “crime” of truth-telling journalism.

Ruling authorities of both nations want it suppressed, operating in cahoots with each other, virtually all Western states going the same way.

They’re fantasy democracies, not the real thing they pretend to be, serving privileged interests exclusively, exploiting most others, partnering in endless wars on humanity at home and abroad.

Assange faces multiple phony US charges. The Trump regime formally requested his extradition to the US. Will he ever arrive?

Isolated in London’s Belmarsh prison under harsh conditions, his health deteriorating, a slow-motion Jeffrey Epstein fate may await him.

US dark forces wanted Epstein silenced to hide his connection to high-level US and international figures involved in sex with and trafficking of young girls below the age of consent — a public trial naming names avoided.

Do they want embarrassing kangaroo court US v. Assange proceedings avoided for similar reasons? Likely so.

It held, proceedings will amount to speech and media freedoms v. dark forces claiming the extrajudicial right to suppress them for phony national security reasons.

Assange may perish before going on trial in the US. UK authorities are slowly killing him by neglect.

His arrest, imprisonment and mistreatment constitute a mortal blow to what just societies hold dear, fundamental rights abandoned in the West, tyranny replacing them.

What’s happening to Assange puts everyone publicly expressing views that differ from the official narrative at risk.

We’re all Julian Assange. His fate is ours. Who’s next on the US/UK hit list to silence?

Will both countries and other Western ones formally abandon speech, media and academic freedoms on the phony pretext of protecting national security?

Censorship in the West already is the new normal, especially in the US.

Social media, Google, and other tech giants are complicit with US  ruling authorities to control the message, wanting content differing from the official narrative suppressed — notably online.

Is digital democracy, the last frontier of free and open expression, the only reliable independent space for real news, information and analysis, letting anyone freely express views on any topics, targeted for elimination?

A planned Trump executive order reportedly intends to censor the Internet for phony national security reasons.

What’s going on is the hallmark of totalitarian rule. When truth-telling and dissent are considered existential threats, free and open societies no longer exist — the slippery slope where the US and other Western states are heading.

Defend WikiLeaks.org urges universal support for Assange, saying the following:

He’s “an Australian journalist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. Julian was the editor of WikiLeaks until September 2018: six months of his effective incommunicado detention in the Ecuadorian embassy in London then prompted Julian to appoint Kristin Hrafnsson as WikiLeaks editor-in-chief. Julian remains WikiLeaks’ publisher.”

“Wikileaks’ publications have had enormous impact. They have changed many peoples’ views of governments, enabling them to see their secrets.”

“They have changed journalism as a practice, as debates have raged over the ethics of secrecy, transparency and reporting on stolen documents.”

“WikiLeaks has gained the admiration of people and organizations all over the world, as evidenced in the numerous awards it has won.”

“For these contributions to public accountability and the historical record, Assange has been arrested in the United Kingdom and indicted in the United States.”

“The US requests Assange’s extradition and has charged him with 17 counts under the Espionage Act of 1917 for the publication of truthful material in the public interest.”

“Assange is the first journalist in history the US has charged with Espionage for publishing.”

“He also faces one count of conspiracy to commit computer crime based on his alleged reporter-source communications with whistleblower Chelsea Manning.”

“This charge would criminalize basic journalistic activity, as the indictment details alleged attempts to help Manning protect her anonymity as a journalistic source.”

“An extradition hearing has been scheduled for February 2020. If extradited, Assange faces the prospect of life imprisonment in the United States. He is currently imprisoned in HMP Belmarsh, in London.”

He’s languishing in harsh solitary confinement, torture by other means, slow-motion mind and body destruction, the toll on his physical and mental health clear to those who’ve seen him.

On Monday, John Pilger said Assange’s mistreatment is all about silencing dissent.

“Speak up now,” he urged, or face “the silence of a new kind of tyranny.”

After visiting Assange in August, Pilger tweeted:

“Do not forget Julian #Assange. Or you will lose him.”

“I saw him in Belmarsh prison and his health has deteriorated. Treated worse than a murderer, he is isolated, medicated and denied the tools to fight the bogus charges of a US extradition. I now fear for him. Do not forget him.”

Separately, Pilger stressed that

“all of us…all journalists…all publishers who do their job…are in danger.”

On Monday, Pilger said he spoke to Assange over the weekend, saying:

“The behavior of the British government towards Julian Assange is a disgrace. A profanity on the very notion of human rights.”

“It’s no exaggeration to say that the treatment and persecution of Julian Assange is the way that dictatorships treat a political prisoner.”

“When I asked Julian what he would like me to say today, he was adamant. ‘Say it’s not just me. It’s much wider. It’s all of us. It’s all journalists and publishers who do their job who are in danger.’ ”

“(N)o matter who you are or where you are, if you expose the crimes of governments you will be hunted down, kidnapped and sent to the US as a spy” — a truth-telling enemy of the state.

Assange’s mother Christine earlier tweeted the following:

“My son Julian Assange is being slowly, cruelly & unlawfully assassinated by the US/UK Govts for multi-award winning journalism revealing war crimes & corruption! I’m tweeting/retweeting #FreeAssangeNOW.”

After visiting him in Belmarsh prison last spring, accompanied by two medical experts on the effects of torture and other forms of abuse, UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer slammed his mistreatment, saying:

His “health has been seriously affected by the extremely hostile and arbitrary environment he has been exposed to for many years” — compounded by imprisonment at Belmarsh on orders from the Trump regime.

Besides poor physical health needing treatment not adequately gotten, Assange showed “all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”

After visiting him last month at Belmarsh prison, Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton said

“I hugged him, and he told me that this place he was in (is) hell.”

On Monday outside the UK Home Office, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, a committed Assange supporter, sang “Wish You Were Here” from his hit album.

Speaking to hundreds assembled to hear him, he said

“Julian Assange, we are with you. Free Julian Assange.”

Before performing, he said Assange is “locked up” in isolation 23 hours a day.

“How do we put ourselves in the position of a Julian Assange in solitary confinement, or with that kid in Syria or Palestine or Rohingya, being blown to bits by these people in this building here?”

“How do we put ourselves in the position of the parents of that child who will spend the rest of his life on crutches?

“It is called empathy and it is the most valuable thing any human being can possess in their lives.”

Establishment media abandoned Assange. They cheered his unjustifiable April 11 police state arrest.

The NYT, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and other establishment media consider him no free-press hero — denigrating and vilifying him like whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

She’s indefinitely imprisoned in the US for not abandoning her constitutional right to remain silent, refusing to give potentially harmful to Assange grand jury testimony.

We’re all Julian and Chelsea. Their fate may be ours for speaking truth to power — our fundamental right dark forces want abolished.

Slow-motion tyranny in the US and other Western societies heads toward becoming full-blown.

Post-9/11 in the US, police state laws, presidential executive orders, national security and homeland security presidential directives, and congressionally authorized state terror made the nation unsafe and unfit to live in.

The same goes for Britain and other Western societies — run by increasingly tyrannical regimes.

Resisting tyranny is a universal right. Failure to act may doom us all to a deplorable state with no rights or futures.

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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.

Selected Articles: Boris Johnson Threatens to Suspend Parliament

September 4th, 2019 by Global Research News

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Boris Johnson Threatens to Suspend Parliament, Reminiscent of Dissolution of the Reichstag in Nazi Germany?

By Hans Stehling, September 03, 2019

In 1933 Germany, democracy was threatened and finally destroyed by the Nazi Party who eliminated those who opposed their Fascist ideology of mass murder and genocide.

Ottawa Goes to Havana to Talk Venezuela. Returns Empty-handed

By Nino Pagliccia, September 03, 2019

Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland has just concluded a working visit to Cuba on August 28 intended to discuss the “crisis in Venezuela” with her Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez.

Did Trump Tacitly Threaten to Use Biological Weapons to Exterminate 10 Million?

By Terje Maloy, September 03, 2019

Since president Trump now has come out and openly admitted that plans for a genocide are contemplated, it is  reasonable to look at what practical means the US military machine has for implementing this criminal undertaking, which is tantamount to genocide.

The Meaning of Human Life

By Van Robison, September 03, 2019

Human life is precious, limited in time and delicate, fragile and unpredictable. There seems to be two types of humans on earth and they are those with no conscience and those who have compassion, empathy and genuine concern for others.

The West’s “Humanitarian” Claims as Syrian War Nears Endgame

By Tony Cartalucci, September 02, 2019

Headlines emanating from the West regarding Syria’s ongoing war have a common theme – allegations of Syria and Russia’s “ruthless barrage” of the northern region of Idlib.

Governing the Earth: Current Political Chaos Demands a Transformation of the United Nations

By Emanuel Pastreich, September 02, 2019

The destruction of the Amazon jungles by right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro threatens to end our civilization and to condemn the next generation to death and destruction.

Venezuela, Ukraine, Hong Kong, … : Color Revolutions and Regime Change, A Modern Scourge Spawning Economic Destabilization and Civil War

By Carla Stea, September 02, 2019

There are innumerable examples throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but three of the most notorious demonstrations of Washington, and its European cohorts incubating massive human tragedy and/or civil wars can be exemplified by Washington’s cultivation, indeed creation of toxic opposition movements whose goal is the destabilization and destruction of progressive governments and egalitarian economic and social structures.

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Hurricane Wars. Awaiting Another Deadly Storm

September 3rd, 2019 by Philip A Farruggio

As we in Florida await in our (hopefully) boarded up and sandbagged homes the arrival of but another deadly storm, one has time to sit and ponder things. This writer lived through a major hurricane assault, when Mathew trampled through Port Orange, Florida in October of 2016. We were lucky while being the unlucky neighbors in our 50 unit sub division. As we lay on the master bedroom floor with our two frightened kittens, 100 mph winds tore a pine tree and sent it flying through our roof. Moments earlier, I had crawled to our bedroom window, pulled down the shade and watched the pine trees five yards from our townhome. They were already waving like a flag on a frigate in a storm. I turned to my wife and actually said: “If one of those trees crashes into our bedroom, we’ll all be dead! Lucky for us, the unlucky family, nature chose the upstairs bedroom to have the tree go flying through its ceiling. Two hours later, after having used every towel and comforter we owned to soak up the monsoon like buckets of rain flowing down our walls and ceilings, we finally evacuated.

It seems every year our country has Category 4 or 5 deadly hurricanes invading our space. Yet, the infrastructure of our nation is still not up to snuff. Why? Well, half of our federal taxes goes to what the con men in Washington (both ’embedded in empire’ political parties) like to label Defense Spending AKA Phony Wars Spending.

Keeping ONE soldier in Afghanistan or on one of our many bases in Iraq costs over $1,000,000 a year. Imagine how that money could have been spent to place our power lines underground, as they have in Europe. Imagine how the Army Corps of Engineers could have used some of that over $700 Billion dollars going to military spending. They could have created real flood protection for New Orleans and Houston before those monster hurricanes attacked. Regardless of whomever occupies the White House and Congress, the subject of drastically cutting military spending is synonymous to trashing motherhood.

To this writer my experience with FEMA had been a sick joke. After the hurricane destroyed our home, and we had to live elsewhere for over FIVE months, we begged FEMA to help us.

NO! Their estimators said sorry on our need for funds to supplement our shitty homeowners insurance (Did you know that our policy did NOT even cover spoilage from our freezer and refrigerator?). Sorry, you don’t qualify, they answered us in their rejection letter.

Meanwhile, right after the hurricane my wife began having panic attacks which she previously NEVER experienced in her 50 + years on earth. She had no health coverage other than an expensive and shitty hospitalization plan ( another victim of the ‘too expensive private insurance’ under Obama Care).

We sent in claims to FEMA for reimbursement for the semi successful acupuncture and Chinese herbs treatments from our Doctor of Chinese Medicine. FEMA did the usual rejection and double talk to justify their action… or rather their lack of. So, we had to go to Senator Nelson’s office and found a ‘gem’ of a young staffer who had the empathy for us that ALL elected officials should have. He contacted FEMA after their 2nd rejection letter and put on the pressure needed. They finally rescinded their rejection and  reimbursed us.

Why did FEMA do what it did to us, and do worse for millions of others in disaster areas?

The easy answer is that THEY DON’T HAVE THE BUDGETING NEEDED!

Plain and simple folks! FEMA has become, to a certain extent, a public relations outfit.

They send out hundreds of field reps to sign people up after a disaster and then reject or underpay most of us for damages etc. Look at Houston.

FEMA could not get the proper cots needed to supply the shelters.

Why? NOT ENOUGH FUNDING!

Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico saw President Cheetos throwing paper towels out to a crowd when he finally took time out to visit (As I write this he is out playing golf while the Bahamas is destroyed and the monster approaches us).

You won’t hear Trump or really any of the so called ‘Feel your pain’ Democrats coming before the cameras and demanding that this obscene military spending be substantially CUT NOW, and sent back to fund the myriad of ‘safety nets’ we need here at home. Wake up folks and understand why many of us suffer unnecessarily.

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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].

Help Global Research Ride the Storm

September 3rd, 2019 by The Global Research Team

Dear Readers,

We find ourselves in troubled waters. Global Research, like many independent voices all over the globe, is feeling the effects of online measures set up to curtail access to our website, and by consequence, hinder our finances. We sail on despite the unpredictable currents and unfavourable forecasts. We can’t steer this ship alone however, we need your help!

We would be greatly indebted to you for any donation large or small. Can you contribute to help us meet our monthly running costs? Make no mistake, we intend to be here for years to come, but for the time being we ask for your help to stay afloat as we ride the storm out. Here’s how you can help:

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We understand that times are tough for everyone. If a financial contribution is not something you can currently envision, but you would like to help out, please see below for details on becoming a Global Research Volunteer…

With measures being put in place to reduce our reach (such as tacit online censorship of independent media) there are a number of ways you can help us make sure that the questions we ask continue to be heard:
  • Establish an email list of some fifty friends and family and forward the Global Research Newsletter and/or your favourite Global Research articles to this list on a daily basis.
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Nea Kavala Refugee Camp: Hell in Northern Greece

September 3rd, 2019 by Abshir

I  cried when I heard that the Greek government said  that it is going to send 1000 refugees from Moiria camp on Lesbos to Nea Kavala on the mainland. They want to relieve the pressure on the camp with all its new arrivals. I heard that the refugees to be moved were all seen as ‘vulnerable’.

I want to shout out “Don’t Go”, “please don’t go”.

I was a ‘vulnerable’refugee on Samos and In March this year I was moved to the mainland with over 300 refugees from Samos. I was sent to the Nea Kavala Camp.  I lived there for 4 months.

It is HELL.

It is CRUEL

It is SH..IT

If I had known what was waiting in this desolate camp in northern Greece I would not have moved. They would have had to carry me there by force. But I knew nothing of this camp. They told me nothing. They never asked me if I wanted to move.

When you are held on the islands like Samos you get the idea that the mainland is a better place to be. They say this a lot on Samos. The mainland has better resources and facilities than the island. This is what we hear.

As I quickly learned THIS IS NOT TRUE AT ALL. And yes, I want to shout this out. Please listen.

Nea Kavala Camp is one of hell’s chosen spots in Greece. And to think that this government sees it as a suitable place for vulnerable refugees shows to me how much it must hate us. Nobody should be expected to stay there.

Shock! All of us from Samos were shocked by what we found there. It was so unbelievable. In just a few days many I traveled with left the camp, disappearing in the night to try and find a better place to stay in Thessaloniki or Athens. They had nowhere to go to. Most had little money. But they wouldn’t stay.

An old photo but shows lack of shelter

First, Nea Kavala Camp is an old military airfield. It is in flat and boring countryside. There are no trees. It is isolated. It is at least a 20 minute walk to the nearest shop. The nearest village is a 40 minute walk . What you see are lines of tents and cabins with no shade and no protection.

I was in my own room in Samos town. I shared a bathroom and a kitchen. It had a washing machine. It had electricity. It had wi fi.

In Nea Kavala I was given a tent. On my own which was something ok. But no bed, no electricity, no reliable wi fi, no personal security ( my tent was robbed 4 times of food and clothes). Now I faced long queues for the toilet, for the shower and days waiting to wash my clothes. Because I was given the tent and food my monthly allowance was cut


my tent

from 150 to 90 euros. The food from the army was disgusting. I couldn’t eat it or face the queues and stress in getting the food so lived for most of the time on croissants, bananas and milk from the supermarket.

Of course I had to stop my Greek classes on Samos. But in Nea Kavala there was NOTHING like that. None of the people responsible for the camp stayed at Nea Kavala. Even the Camp Manager who I got to know only came for a few hours a day. She told me she was frightened by the place. The only people there all the time were some soldiers involved with the meals and some police. The police could not be bothered with  us. I reported my thefts each time to be told to go away. They were always rude and aggressive.

Nea Kavala is in the north of Greece near the border with Macedonia. It has long and cold winters. In the first few weeks it was  very cold at night and we had a lot of rain. On the second night an old woman in the next tent died and I am sure the cold finished her life. We had just one blanket each. Over Easter the sewage system broke and I found a river of sewage flowing past my tent. It took days to repair because of the holidays.

Then came the summer. We cooked in our tents. No shade. No where to get cool. Torture.

This is where they are sending over a thousand vulnerable refugees. There will be many children and older people. Their tents are waiting!

I am sure that there are other mainland camps just as bad. I just know Nea Kavala. It is not a place for human beings. The refugees being moved there must be told. The world must be told. When you now hear that refugees are being moved from the islands to the mainland don’t assume that they are going to a better place. Listen to us! Don’t stand by in silence. Please.

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All images in this article are from Samos Chronicles; featured image: Leaving Lesbos for Nea Kavala (Sept 2nd 2019 Ekathimerini photo)

In 1933 Germany, democracy was threatened and finally destroyed by the Nazi Party who eliminated those who opposed their Fascist ideology of mass murder and genocide.  Hitler and his cohort of Storm Troopers persuaded the German Head of State, General Paul Von Hindenburg President of the Reich (Reichspräsident), to dissolve the Reichstag and to rule directly by Presidential decree.  Soon after, he was persuaded to appoint Hitler as his Chancellor. The die for the Second World War had been cast.

The National Socialists used every political machination, including extreme violence where necessary, to achieve their objectives in demolishing the Weimar Republic. They succeeded, and the infamous Third Reich was born.  Just five years later, on November 1938, the Holocaust was instituted with the Kristallnacht pogrom and the destruction of synagogues throughout Germany.  It would take another seven years and more than 50 million lives, including those of six million Jews, before Nazism would finally be defeated, worldwide.

That program of civil unrest eerily reflected certain facets of the current Right-wing, extremist, political scene in various European capitals today – which is a sobering thought, indeed.

Now, seventy years later, we have once again a dangerous political instability in both Britain and parts of Europe where the far Right is growing increasingly in power and influence and the threat of violence against minorities, with all that that entails. Furthermore, the flames are being fanned by a Right-wing,  rabble-rousing, American president who is an integral factor in Europe’s future of political violence and dissent.  That is the second sobering thought.

We are now living in very dangerous times in which the stakes are extremely high and democracy as we know it is at the greatest risk to its survival since the end of World War Two. The bolts that hold the wheels of democratic government are loosening, and loosening fast, throughout much of Europe.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TruePublica

Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland has just concluded a working visit to Cuba on August 28 intended to discuss the “crisis in Venezuela” with her Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez. A reading of the news release from the Ministry indicates that there were no tangible results aside from a statement that the two foreign ministers had “different perspectives on the crisis in Venezuela”, having agreed to disagree, and that “senior officials would stay in contact and continue to exchange views”.

If Ottawa’s intention was to break the close Cuba-Venezuela relationship, that is as close to a diplomatic statement of failure as it gets. Cuba on the other hand has been much more explicit about the “different perspectives” in its official Cuban Foreign Ministry website stating,

the Cuban minister reiterated the firm and unchanging solidarity of Cuba with the Constitutional President Nicolás Maduro Moros, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the civic-military union of its people.” It also added, “he proposed to Canada to contribute to [the] elimination” of U.S. unilateral coercive measures that hurt the Venezuelan people.

This impasse raises more questions than it answers.

This has been the third visit to Havana by Chrystia Freeland this year. This last visit was preceded by a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Ottawa last August 22. Freeland received Pompeo with lots of praises for him and the wars that Canada has fought alongside the U.S. She also announced the agenda for the meeting, which included the “crisis in Venezuela”.

Few days later Ottawa officially announced that Freeland would travel to Havana to meet with her counterpart, and they would “continue their ongoing discussions on the crisis in Venezuela and the potential for Cuba to play a positive role toward a peaceful resolution.

Was there any formal request for Cuba’s role? What would that role be? Maybe the role required a predetermined outcome? One that Cuba could not accept?

There is no doubt that Cuba is considered an important actor vis-à-vis Venezuela. The U.S. administration perceives Cuba as key to sustaining the Government of Nicolas Maduro. It is not clear how – maybe politically – given that both countries are under severe U.S. economic and financial blockades.

One additional item has been on the agenda: “the United States’ decision to end the suspension of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act.” The U.S. implemented Title III last May 2. Canada immediately responded that Canadians doing business in Cuba are protected under Canadian law against any extraterritorial U.S. legislation. Therefore, this seems to be an issue that does not concern Canada.

What was the point, then, of “discussing” a U.S. law affecting Cuba?

Is it possible that Freeland was bringing the metaphorical carrot (or stick) on behalf of Pompeo to persuade Cuba to break ranks with Venezuela?

We do not know, but we do know that Ottawa is determined to produce a regime change in Venezuela along side Washington in favor of self-appointed “interim” president Juan Guaido. We also know that Freeland is not one that gives up easily.

Do Ottawa or Washington really believe that Havana will break with Caracas in order to benefit from a relief on the U.S. blockade? Unlikely. Cuba has a 60-year-old track record of unbroken resistance.

Given the long-standing diplomatic relationship between Canada and Cuba, Ottawa may have limited capability to put any pressure on Havana without jeopardizing the relationship. But it is still possible to send signals of disapproval. A series of events could be construed as such.

Last January the Canadian government cut back half of its Havana embassy staff claiming health concerns resulting from unproven “sonic attacks”. Later on May 8, following the first visit to Cuba by Freeland in March, Ottawa announced major reduction of consular services in Havana that severely affected Cubans applying for those services. On May 16 Freeland traveled to Cuba again. Then in June, Cuban Bruno Rodriguez visited Ottawa and in late July some consular services are re-established in Havana.

Are the links between these events coincidental, or do they reflect some message in a diplomatic language?

The intensity of the exchanges between Canada and Cuba this year has been quite high. This intensity is only consistent with a high degree of negotiations on important issues, Venezuela being the obvious one. But given the balance of forces between Canada and Cuba we can only assume that Cuba is being pressured to make some significant concession. There is no expectation that Chrystia Freeland will grasp the parallel that Cuba-Venezuela relationship is just as important to the two countries as her professed Canada-U.S. relationship.

At first reading, Chrystia Freeland trip to Havana to “talk” Venezuela accomplished nothing of relevance if the intention was to pull Cuba away from Venezuela. How will the Canadian government react to this diplomatic failure?

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Nino Pagliccia is an activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. He is a retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” (2014). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

“We could win that war so fast if I wanted to kill 10 million people … which I don’t. I’m not looking to kill a big portion of that country [Afghanistan],”

“I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone,” 

“It would be over in — literally, in 10 days. And I don’t want to do — I don’t want to go that route.” (ABC July 24.2019) (emphasis added)

“As I’ve said, and I’ll say it any number of times – and this is not using nuclear – we could win that war in a week if we wanted to fight it, but I’m not looking to kill 10 million people,” (quoted by Press TV, Aug 21.2019) (emphasis added)

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Should these cynical statements be taken seriously?

Since president Trump now has come out and openly admitted that plans for a genocide are contemplated, it is  reasonable to look at what practical means the US military machine has for implementing this criminal undertaking, which is tantamount to genocide.

Ten million is a lot of people to kill without using nuclear weapons. Even a decade of war in Indochina, with massive aerial bombing, only managed to kill an estimated 4 million people, so an air campaign in Afghanistan would be insufficient to achieve something on this scale. Other governments who tried similar projects, found out that it takes time and effort; using death squads, murder on such a scale would take several years; use of chemical means would require an impractical concentration of the targeted populations. Starvation is a tried and tested method, but would obviously require more than 10 days.

Basically, it could not be done quickly with conventional means, and since Trump claimed there are no nuclear weapons involved, it leaves the US military with few options. Disregarding futuristic weapons programs, the only known things that can achieve something similar are – biological weapons.

In 2010 the US Air Force published a counterproliferation paper,”Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens“, where it discussed several biological weapons threats, carefully framing the problem as a defense against these. The traditional way of dispersal, perfected since the early trials in the Korean war, is mentioned: “using a single bomber and with the right weather conditions on an unprotected population, a 10 ton biological agent dispersed in the environment could affect an area equal to 100,000 km2″, (p6) (the size of Indiana)

But there is obviously a flaw to releasing a ‘normal’ super-virus able to kill 10 million people in a short period of time – namely how would they stop it from spreading to the rest of the world?

Even if they could hermetically seal Afghanistan, there are international aid workers, mercenaries, local collaborators and others there that the US would not want harmed. The Air Force paper tells us:

In 1997, a study was conducted to identify future threats and uses of advanced biological warfare agents. The JASON group, composed of academic scientists, served as technical advisers to the U. S. government. Their study generated six broad classes of genetically engineered pathogens that could pose serious threats to society. These include but are not limited to binary biological weapons, designer genes, gene therapy as a weapon, stealth viruses, host-swapping diseases, and designer diseases.

So we get possibilities like:

Stealth Viruses: The basic concept of this potential bioweapon is to “produce a tightly regulated, cryptic viral infection that can enter and spread in human cells using vectors” (similar to the gene therapy) and then stay dormant for a period of time until triggered by an internal or external signal. The signal then could stimulate the virus to cause severe damage to the system. Stealth viruses could also be tailored to secretly infect a targeted population for an extended period using the threat of activation to blackmail the target [p15] (emphasis added)

The Air Force paper discusses the possibility of a «disease that could wipe out the whole population or a certain ethnic group.» The paper states that unlike nuclear weapons, “a biological warfare program has no unambiguous signatures to differentiate its legitimacy for conducting biotechnology research vis-à-vis research for offensive military biological weapons.”

Given that the United States is going for bust in its quest for Full Spectrum Dominance, there is a high likelihood that if such weapons can be produced, the US will have them – and if we interpret president Trump this way, they already have been deployed.

And would someone ever stoop so low as to use humanitarian programs as a cover for warfare activities? It is worth recalling sham hepatitis B vaccine program used by the CIA to collect DNA in the neighborhood where bin Laden was hiding, creating massive mistrust in the local population against all vaccine programs.

One thing I found particularly shocking when researching this article, was the substantial support Trump’s genocidal words found in the reader comments in corporate Western media. Perhaps one can’t expect anything else when Afghans consistently have been depicted in popular culture as murderous, frothing fanatics, from a “shithole country”, all deserving to die for rather tenuous links to a crime (the events Sept 11. 2001) that happened before most Afghans were born.

Being so demonized, the Afghan population would be especially easy testing ground for biological warfare. Foreign armies and intelligence services have had free hand to prepare anything they might want for 18 years now.

That biological research targeting specific ethnic groups is an area of research that is ongoing and not limited to only some parts of the world, was highlighted again in 2017, when the US Air Force got exposed seeking to obtain genetic and tissue samples that are “collected from Russia and must be Caucasian” and would “not consider tissue samples from Ukraine.”

The head of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, warned in 2015 of “the production of military oriented biological weapons and the very large funding allocated to this,“ where he especially mentioned biolabs in former Soviet republics. “This is tens of billions of dollars. Additionally, the number of laboratories under US jurisdiction or control has increased 20 times.” (emphasis added)

Trump’s threats, possibly meant as a blunt bargaining tool in peace talks with the Taliban, may have revealed more than he intended. If the international community ever should be strong enough to impose a Nuremberg-like trial, this is prime evidence.

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This article was originally published on Midt i fleisen.

Terje Maloy is a Norwegian/Australian blogger and translator. This article is Creative Commons 4.0 for non-commercial purposes.

Amazónia, os incendiários gritam: ‘Há fogo!’

September 3rd, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

Perante a propagação dos incêndios na Amazónia, a Cimeira do G7 mudo a sua agenda para ‘enfrentar a emergência’. Os Sete – França, Alemanha, Grã-Bretanha, Itália, Japão, Canadá e Estados Unidos – assumiram, juntamente com a União Europeia, o papel de Corpo de Bombeiros planetário.

O Presidente Macron, como bombeiro chefe, lançou o alarme “a nossa casa está a arder”. O Presidente Trump prometeu o máximo empenho dos EUA no trabalho de extinção.

Os holofotes da comunicação mediática concentram-se nos incêndios no Brasil, deixando todo o resto na sombra. Primeiro de tudo, o facto de que está a ser destruída não só a floresta amazónica (dois terços da área são do Brasil), reduzida quase 10 mil km2 por ano em 2010-2015, mas também a floresta tropical da África equatorial e a floresta meridional e oriental da Ásia. As florestas tropicais perderam, em média, a cada ano, uma área equivalente à área total do Piemonte, Lombardia e Veneto.

Embora as condições sejam diferentes de área para área, a causa fundamental é a mesma: a exploração intensiva e destrutiva dos recursos naturais para obter o máximo lucro.

Na Amazónia, abatem-se árvores para obter madeira valiosa destinada à exportação. A floresta residual é queimada para usar essas áreas para culturas e agricultura intensiva também destinadas à exportação. Esses terrenos muito frágeis, uma vez degradados, são abandonados e, portanto, são desarborizadas novas áreas. O mesmo método destrutivo é adoptado, provocando graves danos ambientais, para explorar os depósitos amazónicos de ouro, diamantes, bauxite, zinco, manganês, ferro, petróleo e carvão. Também contribui para a destruição da floresta amazónica, a construção de enormes bacias hidroeléctricas, destinadas a fornecer energia para as actividades industriais,

A exploração intensiva e destrutiva da Amazónia é praticada por empresas brasileiras, fundamentalmente controladas – por meio de participações, mecanismos financeiros e redes comerciais – pelos principais grupos multinacionais e financeiros do G7 e de outros países.

Por exemplo, a JBS, proprietária de 35 fábricas de processamento de carne no Brasil, onde 80 mil bovinos são abatidos por dia, possui filiais importantes nos EUA, Canadá e Austrália e é amplamente controlada através de parcelas de dívida dos credores: JP Morgan (EUA), Barclays (GB) e os grupos financeiros da Volkswagen e da Daimler (Alemanha).

A Marfrig, em segundo lugar depois da JBS, pertence 93% a investidores americanos, franceses, italianos e outros investidores europeus e norte-americanos.

A Noruega, que hoje ameaça retaliação económica contra o Brasil pela destruição da Amazónia, provoca na mesma Amazónia, graves danos ambientais e sanitários através do seu grupo multinacional Hydro (metade do qual é propriedade do Estado norueguês), que explora as jazidas de bauxite para a produção de alumínio, tanto que foi colocado sob investigação no Brasil.

Os governos do G7 e outros, que hoje criticam formalmente o Presidente brasileiro Bolsonaro, para limpar a consciência perante a reacção do público, são os mesmos que favoreceram a sua ascensão ao poder, para que as suas multinacionais e os seus grupos financeiros tivessem as mãos ainda mais livres, na exploração da Amazónia.

A ser atacadas estão, sobretudo, as comunidades indígenas, em cujos territórios se concentram as actividades de desflorestação ilegal. Sob os olhos de Tereza Cristina, Ministra da Agricultura de Bolsonaro, cuja família de latifundiários, tem uma longa história de ocupação fraudulenta e violenta, das terras das comunidades indígenas.

Manlio Dinucci

 

 

 

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Amazzonia, gli incendiari gridano al fuoco

September 3rd, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

Di fronte al dilagare degli incendi in Amazzonia, il vertice del G7 ha cambiato la sua agenda per «affrontare l’emergenza». I Sette – Francia, Germania, Gran Bretagna, Italia, Giappone, Canada e Stati uniti – hanno assunto, insieme all’Unione europea, il ruolo di vigili del fuoco planetari.

Il presidente Macron, in veste di capo pompiere, ha lanciato l’allarme «la nostra casa è in fiamme». Il presidente Trump ha promesso il massimo impegno statunitense  nell’opera di spegnimento.

I riflettori mediatici si concentrano sugli incendi in Brasile, lasciando in ombra tutto il resto. Anzitutto il fatto che ad essere distrutta non è solo la foresta amazzonica (per i due terzi brasiliana), ridottasi nel 2010-2015 di quasi 10 mila km2 l’anno,  ma anche la foresta tropicale dell’Africa equatoriale e quella nell’Asia sud-orientale. Le foreste tropicali hanno perso, in media ogni anno, una superficie equivalente a quella complessiva di Piemonte, Lombardia e Veneto.

Pur differendo le condizioni  da zona a zona, la causa fondamentale è la stessa: lo sfruttamento intensivo e distruttivo delle risorse naturali per ottenere il massimo profitto.

In Amazzonia si abbattono gli alberi per ricavarne legname pregiato destinato all’esportazione. La foresta residua viene bruciata per adibire tali aree a colture e allevamenti destinati anch’essi all’esportazione. Questi terreni molto fragili, una volta degradati, vengono abbandonati e si deforestano quindi nuove aree. Lo stesso metodo distruttivo viene adottato, provocando gravi danni ambientali, per sfruttare  i giacimenti amazzonici di oro, diamanti, bauxite, zinco, manganese, ferro, petrolio, carbone. Contribuisce alla distruzione della foresta amazzonica anche la costruzione di immensi bacini idroelettrici, destinati a fornire energia per le attività industriali.

Lo sfruttamento intensivo e distruttivo dell’Amazzonia viene praticato da compagnie brasiliane, fondamentalmente controllate – attraverso partecipazioni azionarie, meccanismi finanziari e reti commerciali – dai maggiori gruppi multinazionali e finanziari del G7 e di altri paesi.

Ad esempio la JBS, che possiede in Brasile 35 impianti di lavorazione di carni dove si macellano 80 mila bovini al giorno, ha importanti sedi in Usa, Canada e Australia, ed è  largamente controllata attraverso quote del debito dai gruppi finanziari creditori: la JP Morgan (Usa), la Barclays (GB) e le finanziarie della Volkswagen e Daimler (Germania).

La Marfrig, al secondo posto dopo la JBS, appartiene per il 93% a investitori statunitensi, francesi, italiani e ad altri europei e nordamericani.

La Norvegia, che oggi minaccia ritorsioni economiche contro il Brasile per la distruzione dell’Amazzonia, provoca in Amazzonia gravi danni ambientali e sanitari con il proprio gruppo multinazionale Hydro (per la metà di proprietà statale) che sfrutta i giacimenti di bauxite per la produzione di alluminio, tanto che è stato messo sotto inchiesta in Brasile.

I governi del G7 e altri, che oggi criticano formalmente  il presidente brasiliano Bolsonaro per pulirsi la coscienza di fronte alla reazione dell’opinione pubblica, sono gli stessi che ne hanno favorito l’ascesa al potere perché le loro multinazionali e i loro gruppi finanziari abbiano le mani ancora più libere nello sfruttamento dell’Amazzonia.

Ad essere attaccate sono soprattutto le comunità indigene, nei cui territori si concentrano le attività illegali di deforestazione. Sotto gli occhi di Tereza Cristina, ministra dell’agricoltura di Bolsonaro, la cui famiglia di latifondisti ha una lunga storia di occupazione fraudolenta e violenta delle terre delle comunità indigene.

Manlio Dinucci

 

 il manifesto, 3 settembre 2019

  • Posted in Italiano
  • Comments Off on Amazzonia, gli incendiari gridano al fuoco

The Meaning of Human Life

September 3rd, 2019 by Van Robison

Human life is precious, limited in time and delicate, fragile and unpredictable. There seems to be two types of humans on earth and they are those with no conscience and those who have compassion, empathy and genuine concern for others.

Astoundingly after thousands of years of human existence, the world of humanity is at odds with one another to the extreme of perpetual animosities resulting in endless wars of death and destruction, which never serve a valid or legitimate purpose in human life on earth.

Every war ever fought among human beings, has always and forever will be for selfish motives of conquest against others. Every war is fueled by mass-propaganda, lies, distortions and motives that serve no purpose, other than the sick mentality of the psychopaths in power.

The meaning of human life on earth is not and never will be the property of human governments, warmongers or the violent. Human life is very limited and even those in power have a short window. They will all die. The perverted mentality of humans in power is a mental sickness beyond the comprehension of the majority of all humans on earth. What gain is control and power over the entire world, all natural resources on earth, all people on earth, all geography on earth and all everything on earth, when those who ascend to such power will die and their end is death guaranteed?

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