Global Research

The Hybrid War on Venezuela just took a dark turn – literally – after the US used cyber weapons and insider sabotage to attack the country’s power grid last week, cutting off most of its electricity and creating a chain reaction of negative consequences all throughout the Bolivarian Republic. According to unverified reports cited in one of RT’s recent articles on the topic, the Guri hydroelectric power plant – which provides 80% of the country’s power – failed (possibly due to a cyberattack), which was followed by an explosion at the Sidor Substation that was sustaining most of the country’s power in the aftermath of the aforementioned.

The nationwide blackout undoubtedly led to a worsening of living standards for Venezuela’s over 31 million people, affecting everything from the availability of food supplies to hospital services and creating an insecure environment that’s proved irresistible for looters, though it’s unclear at this moment whether the majority of its citizens believe the American narrative that their own government’s incompetence and corruption is to blame.

Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American Senator from Florida, has quickly emerged as one of the most high-profile public faces of the US’ Hybrid War on Venezuela after he attributed the suffering of the South American nation’s people to Maduro in a provocative post that he made on Twitter, which follows other controversial ones in recent weeks such as implying that Chavez’s successor will meet a similar fate as former Libyan leader Gaddafi or former Panamanian one Noriega.

These messages are part of the US’ so-called “strategic communications” strategy for carrying out psychological and information warfare against the Bolivarian Republic, but they’re supposed to come off as “authentic” because Rubio is Hispanic, with the innuendo being that the” brains” behind this campaign think that the target audience will believe what’s being said just because it’s being conveyed by someone with a similar ethno-cultural identity as them. It’s not known whether this simplistic pandering will appeal to Venezuelans in the future, but it has thus far failed to be successful.

Despite the years of on-and-off Color Revolution unrest and the highly publicized “humanitarian aid” provocation that recently took place at the Venezuelan-Colombian border, the US hasn’t managed to unseat Maduro from office despite its non-stop attempts to do so. It was also recently revealed by none other than Trump’s Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams himself in a call with Russian pranksters that the US isn’t seriously considering an invasion of the South American state but is only trying to put maximum pressure on its military so that they either defect from their ranks or stage a coup at Washington’s behest. If he was being sincere, then this implies that the US wants to cut the costs of this rolling regime change operation by keeping its involvement to a minimum and only indirectly intervening at strategic moments in order to add momentum to the anti-government movement, which would explain the latest sanctions and the coordinated cyber-sabotage attack against the country’s power grid.

The weaponization of chaos theory is the central tenet of Hybrid Warfare, and it’s especially applicable for analyzing the reason why the US wanted to shut down Venezuela’s electricity at this specific point in time. Taking advantage of the fact that the country is overly dependent on a single power station (the Guri hydroelectric plant), it was comparatively easy for the US to pull off this covert operation aimed at triggering a domino effect of destabilization all throughout the Bolivarian Republic, one which is intended to heighten anti-government sentiment and increase the odds that a final wave of Color Revolution unrest can be unleashed for overthrowing Maduro.

To assist with this, it’s also possible that American special forces might exploit the electricity cutoff in order to more easily infiltrate across the border and transfer more arms to their anti-government allies on a scale that they wouldn’t be able to do if Venezuela’s border defenses were properly up and running.

Bearing the abovementioned insight in mind, it can be said that the cyberattack and sabotage against Venezuela’s power grid is a Hybrid War provocation with several interconnected objectives. The first is to reinforce the psychological preconditioning operation against the targeted Venezuelan audience by making them think that Maduro’s ouster is imminent, which could in turn inspire some civilians to take to the streets to launch a final Color Revolution push against him concurrent with members of the military defecting to join their side, both of whom might be more motivated by their deteriorating living conditions caused by the blackout than ideological factors.

It should also be assumed that the US is taking advantage of the situation to infiltrate large amounts of arms and other material to its anti-government allies in an attempt to actualize Rubio’s public plans for sparking “widespread unrest” in the country. None of this implies that the regime change operation will finally succeed, but just that the danger that this latest phase poses shouldn’t be underestimated.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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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President Xi Jinping is due to arrive in Italy for an official visit on March 22. The top theme of discussion will be the New Silk Road, or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

A day earlier, in Brussels, the EU is to debate a common strategy related to Chinese investments in Europe.

A substantial part of the EU is already linked de facto with BRI. That includes Greece, Portugal, 11 EU nations belonging to the 16+1 group of China plus Central and Eastern Europe and, for all practical purposes, Italy.

And yet it takes an undersecretary in the Italian economic development ministry, Michele Geraci, to tell the Financial Times that a memorandum of understanding supporting BRI will be signed during Xi’s visit, for all (White House) hell to break loose.

The FT is not shy of editorializing, calling BRI a “contentious infrastructure program.” BRI is a vast, far-reaching, long-term Eurasia integration project, and the only quasi-global development program in the market, any market. It’s especially “contentious” to Washington – because the US government, as I detailed elsewhere, decided to antagonize it instead of profiting from it.

A White House National Security Council spokesperson deriding BRI as a “made by China, for China” project does not make it so. Otherwise, no less than 152 – and counting – nations and international organizations would not have formally endorsed BRI.

China’s semi-official response to the White House, eschewing the usual diplomatic remarks by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came via a scathing, unsigned editorial in the Global Times which accuses Europe of being subjected to Washington’s foreign policy and a transatlantic alliance that is not coherent with its 21^st century needs.

Geraci states the obvious; the BRI link will allow more of Made in Italy to be exported to China. As someone who lives between Europe and Asia, and always discusses BRI while in Italy, I see that all the time. The appeal of Made in Italy for the Chinese consumer – food, fashion, art, interior design, not to mention all those Ferraris and Lamborghinis – is unrivaled, even by France. Chinese tourists just can’t get enough of Venice, Florence, Rome – and shopping in Milan.

Washington can build no case lecturing Italians that a BRI link undermines the US side in the trade war – considering that some sort of Xi-Trump deal may be imminent anyway. Brussels for its part is already deeply divided, especially because of France.

German business knows that China is the present and future market of choice; besides, one of the top terminals of the New Silk Road is Duisburg, in the Ruhr valley.

We’re talking about the 11,000 km-long Yuxinou container cargo train connection, active since 2014; Chongqing, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, all the way to Duisburg. Yuxinou (short for Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe), one of the key corridors of the New Silk Roads, is bound to be upgraded to high-speed rail status in the next decade.

Nearly a year ago I explained in some detail on Asia Times how Italy was already linked to BRI.

Essentially, it’s all about Italy – the number three European nation on naval trade – configured as the top southern European terminal for BRI; the entry door for connectivity routes from east and south while also serving, in a cost-effective manner, scores of destinations west and north.

Absolutely key in the project is the current revamping of the port of Venice – channeling supply lines from China via the Mediterranean towards Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia and Hungary. Venice is being configured as an alternative superport to Rotterdam and Hamburg – which are also BRI-linked. I called it the Battle of the Superports.

Whatever Washington, the City of London and even Brussels may think about it, this is something that Rome – and Milan – identifies as a matter of Italian national interest. And considering the undying Chinese love affair with all manifestations of Made in Italy, win-win, once again, wins.

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist. He is frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Thursday March 7th 2018 Tel Aviv- Jews for Return, hung pictures of six of the children who were shot dead by Israeli soldiers while participating in the return demonstrations that began on the 30th of March 2018 on the streets of Tel Aviv.

Israeli security forces killed 266 participants in the Great March of Return since Refugees for Gaza began protesting last march. This staggering number includes 42 children. Israeli forces killed seven children who participated in the protests since the beginning of 2018.

Santiago Canton, the Chairman of the international investigation that was launched by the United Nations determined last week that there are: “established facts that indicate that the Israeli security forces, committed serious violations of human rights and International Humanitarian Law.”

Sarah Hussein, a member of the special committee, declared that, “the shooting was deliberately aimed at children, people with disabilities, and journalists. Most of the demonstrators were not involved in any form of violence.”

An Israeli sniper killed 15 Year old Saif Adin Zaid from Gaza on Wednesday the 6th of March after the conclusions of the committee were made public.

Posters were hung of: Ahmad Abu ‘Abed, 4, from Gaza; Shot in his father’s arms. Abdel Raouf Salha, age 14, a refugee from Majdal; Hassan Shalabi, age 14, a refugee from Isdod Yosef Aldia, 14, a refugee from Yafa; Hassan Nofal 17 years old a refugee from Yafa; Hamza Ishtawi, 17, from a refugee from Aljia The six children were shot in the past three months without endangering anyone.

The Jewish Israeli, Anti Zionist, activists responded to a call from Gazan organisations who, hoped that the faces of the children killed would awaken the Israeli conscience. The reactions of the passersby were mixed, some expressed shock at the deaths of innocent children, and some slashed the children’s pictures erasing most of their faces and the text describing who they are.

“We are bringing the posters of the faces of the children killed by Israeli soldiers to the streets of Tel aviv to show Israelis the crimes committed in their name in Gaza. The fact that some of the pedestrians erased the children faces is a reflection of the ongoing attempt by Zionist society to erase the existence of Palestinians since 1948.” stated a spokesperson for Jews for Return.

Pictures of Gazan children killed by Israeli soldiers were pasted below the home of Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv.

Pictures of Gazan children killed by Israeli soldiers pasted around the Military base “Hakirya” and the Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv

An hour after the posters of the Gazan children killed by Israeli soldiers were hung by activists under the home of Ehud Barak they were slashed by pedestrians who tried to erase the children’s faces and identities.

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Dr. Helen Caldicott’s March 18th, 2011 press conference in Montreal, sponsored by the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Our thanks to Felton Davis for the transcription from the GRTV Video recording and for the annotations.

“One of the most deadly [nuclear byproducts] is plutonium, named after Pluto, god of the underworld. One millionth of a gram, if you inhale it, would give you cancer. Hypothetically, one pound of plutonium if evenly distributed could give everyone on earth cancer. Each reactor has 250 kilograms of plutonium in it. You only need 2.5 kilograms to make an atomic bomb, because plutonium is what they make bombs with. (Helen Caldicott, March 18, 2011)

This press conference organized by Global Research was held in the context of Helen Caldicott’s public lecture to Montreal on March 18, 2011.

Transcript
First I want to present this report, produced by the New York Academy of Sciences, a report on Chernobyl.  It can be downloaded.(2)  They translated 5,000 articles from Russian for the first time into English.  It seems that nearly a million people have already died as a result of Chernobyl, despite what the WH0(3) says and the IAEA.(4)  This is one of the most monstrous cover-ups in the history of medicine.  Because everybody should know about this.

Then we extrapolate through to Japan.  Japan is by orders of magnitude many times worse than Chernobyl.  Never in my life did I think that six nuclear reactors would be at risk.(5)  I knew that three GE engineers who helped design these Mark I GE reactors, resigned because they knew they were dangerous.(6)

So Japan built them on an earthquake fault.  The reactors partially withstood the earthquake, but the external electricity supply was cut off, and the electricity supplies the cooling water, a million gallons a minute, to each of those six reactors.  Without the cooling water, the water [level] falls, and the rods are so hot they melt, like at Three Mile Island, and at Chernobyl.

So the emergency diesel generators, which are as large as a house, got destroyed by the tsunami, so there is no way to keep the water circulating in the reactors.(7)  Also, on the roofs of the reactors, not within the containment vessel, are cooling pools.  Every year they remove about thirty tons of the most radioactive rods that you can possibly imagine.(8)  Each one is twelve feet long and half an inch thick.  It gives out so much radiation, that if you stand next to it for a couple of minutes, you’ll die.  Not drop dead.  Remember Litvinenko, the Russian, who got poisoned by polonium?(9)  You’ll die like that, with your hair falling out, and bleeding with massive infection, like AIDS patients die.

And [the spent fuel rods] are thermally hot, so they have to be put in a big pool, and continually cooled.  The pool has really no roof.

There have been three hydrogen explosions, blowing off the roof of the building, not the containment vessel of the core, but the roof.  And exposing the cooling pool.(10)  Two of the cooling pools are dry.  They have no water in them.  Meaning that the nuclear fuel rods are covered with a material called zirconium.  When zirconium is exposed to air, it burns, it ignites.  Two of the cooling pools at this moment are burning.  In the cooling pools are many times, like 10 to 20 times more radiation than in each reactor core.  In each reactor core is as much long-lived radiation as would be produced by a thousand Hiroshima-sized bombs.  We are dealing with diabolical energy.

E=MC2 is the energy that blows up nuclear bombs.  Einstein said nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water.(11)  Because that is all nuclear power is used for, to boil water through the massive heat, turn it into steam, and turn a turbine which generates electricity.

Now when you fission uranium, 200 new elements are formed, all of which are much more poisonous to the body than the original uranium.(12)  Although uranium is pretty poisonous.  America used it in Fallujah, and in Baghdad.  And in Fallujah, 80 per cent of the babies being born are grossly deformed.(13)  They’re being born without brains, single eyes, no arms…  The doctors have told the women to stop having babies.  The incidence of childhood cancer has gone up about twelve times.  This is genocide — it’s a nuclear war being conducted in Iraq.  The uranium that they’re using lasts more than 4.5 billion years.  So we’re contaminating the cradle of civilization.  “The coalition of the willing!”

In the nuclear power plants, however, there is a huge amount of radiation: two hundred elements.  Some last seconds, some last millions of years.  Radioactive iodine lasts six weeks, causes thyroid cancer.  That’s why people are saying, “Better take potassium iodide,” because that blocks the thyroid uptake of radioactive iodine, which later can cause thyroid cancer.

In Chernobyl, over 20,000 people have developed thyroid cancer.(14)  They have their thyroids out, and they will die unless they take thyroid replacement every day, like a diabetic has to take insulin.
Strontium-90 will get out, it lasts for 600 years.  It goes to the bone, where it causes bone cancer or leukemia.  Cesium lasts for 600 years — it’s all over Europe.  40 per cent of Europe is still radioactive.  Turkish food is extremely radioactive.  Do not buy Turkish dried apricots, or Turkish hazelnuts.  The Turks were so cross with the Russians, they sent all their radioactive tea over to Russia after Chernobyl.(15)

Forty per cent of Europe is still radioactive.  Farms in Britain, their lambs are so full of cesium they can’t sell them.  Don’t eat European food.

But that’s nothing compared to what’s happening now.  One of the most deadly [nuclear byproducts] is plutonium, named after Pluto, god of the underworld.  One millionth of a gram, if you inhale it, would give you cancer.  Hypothetically, one pound of plutonium if evenly distributed could give everyone on earth cancer.  Each reactor has 250 kilograms of plutonium in it.  You only need 2.5 kilograms to make an atomic bomb, because plutonium is what they make bombs with.

So any country that has a reactor, works with your uranium.  You [Canada] are the biggest exporter of uranium in the world.(16)  Canada sells two things: it sells wheat for life, and uranium for death.  Plutonium is going to get out and spread all over the northern hemisphere.  It’s already heading towards North America now.

Radioactive iodine, plus strontium, plus cesium, plus tritium, and I could go on and* on and on.  When it rains, downs come fallout, and it concentrates in food.  If it gets into the sea, the algae concentrate it, hundreds of times.  And the crustaceans concentrate it, hundreds of times.  And then the little fish, then the big fish, then us.(17)

Because we stand on the apex of the food chain.  You can’t taste these radioactive food elements, you can’t see them, you can’t smell them.  They’re silent.  When you get them inside your body, you don’t suddenly drop dead of cancer, it takes five to sixty years to get your cancer, and when you feel a lump in your breast, it doesn’t say, “I was made by some strontium-90 in a piece of fish you ate twenty years ago.”

All radiation is damaging.  It’s cumulative — each dose you get adds to your risk of getting cancer.  The americium is more dangerous than plutonium — I could go on and on.  Depends if it rains if you’re going to get it or not.  If it rains and the radiation comes down, don’t grow food, and don’t eat the food, and I mean don’t eat it for 600 years.

Radioactive waste from nuclear power is going to be buried, I hear, next to Lake Ontario.  It’s going to leak, last for millions of years, it’s going to get into the water, and into the food chains.  Radioactive waste will induce epidemics of cancer, leukemia, and genetic disease for the rest of time.  This is the greatest public health hazard the world has ever witnessed, apart from the threat every day of nuclear war.

Einstein said “the splitting of the atom changed everything, save man’s mode of thinking” — very profound — “and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”  We are arrogant, we have a lot of hubris, and I think the reptilian mid-brain of some men’s brains is pathological.(18)

We are in a situation where we have harnessed the energy of the sun.  It is totally out of control.  And there’s simply nothing we can do about it.

NOTES

[These notes are not part of Dr. Caldicott’s presentation. They were added by Felton Davis]

1) Helen Caldicott is the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and is the author of “The New Nuclear Danger” (The New Press, 2002).

2) “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe For the People and the Environment,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1

3) “Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident,” World Health Organization. http://www-ns.iaea.org/appraisals/chernobyl.asp

4) “Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident,” International Atomic Energy Agency. http://www-ns.iaea.org/appraisals/chernobyl.asp

5) For a general description of the complex, including cross-sections of the six reactors, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents

6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three
Excerpt: On February 2, 1976, Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh “blew the whistle” on safety problems at nuclear power plants. The three engineers gained the attention of journalists and their disclosures about the threats of nuclear power had a significant impact. They timed their statements to coincide with their resignations from responsible positions in General Electric’s nuclear energy division, and later established themselves as consultants on the nuclear power industry for state governments, federal agencies, and overseas governments.

7) “Japanese Scramble to Avert Meltdowns as Nuclear Crisis Deepens After Quake,” New York Times, March 12, 2011, By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW L. WALD

8) The design manual for General Electric boiling water reactors was posted as a PDF document on the “What Really Happened” website, and can be downloaded at: http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/ge-manual-bwr6-reactor-design-and-operation

9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko
Excerpt: Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, FSB and KGB, who escaped prosecution in Russia and received political asylum in the United Kingdom. He wrote two books, “Blowing up Russia: Terror from within” and “Lubyanka Criminal Group”, where he accused the Russian secret services of staging Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts to bring Vladimir Putin to power.  On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later, becoming the first confirmed victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome. According to doctors, “Litvinenko’s murder represents an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism”. Litvinenko’s allegations about the misdeeds of the FSB and his public deathbed accusations that Russian president Vladimir Putin were behind his unusual malady resulted in worldwide media coverage.

10) “Greater Danger Lies in Spent Fuel Than in Reactors,” Keith Bradsher & Hiroko Tabuchi, NY Times, March 17, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18spent.html

“Radiation Spread Seen; Frantic Repairs Go On,” David Sanger & William J. Broad, NY Times, March 17, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18intel.html

“U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant,” James Glanz & William J. Broad, NY Times, April 6, 2011
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html

“Focus on preventing explosions at Japan nuke plant,” Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press, April 6, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110406/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake_654

11) http://wisequotes.org/nuclear-power-is-one-hell-of-a-way-to-boil-water

12) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_product

13) “US Accused of Using Poison Gases in Fallujah,” Democracy Now, Monday, November 29th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/29/u_s_accused_of_using_poison

“Evidence of Extensive War Crimes, Unprecedented in the annals of legal history,” Niloufer Bhagwat, Global Research, December 11, 2004
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BHA412A.html

“Depleted Uranium Weapons: Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke,” by Dave Lindorff, Global Research, October 20, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15744

“The consequences of a US war crime: Cancer rate in Fallujah worse than Hiroshima,” Tom Eley, World Socialist, July 23, 2010
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/fall-j23.shtml

“Research Links Rise in Fallujah Birth Defects and Cancers to US Assault,” Martin Chulov, The Guardian/UK, December 31, 2010
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/31

14) “Chernobyl’s Continuing Thyroid Impact,”By Mary Shomon, December 15, 2003
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/nuclearexposure/a/chernob.htm

15) “Authorities lied on impact of Chernobyl in Turkey,”Greenpeace Report
http://www.blackraiser.com/cherno.htm

16) WISE Report on the Worldwide Uranium Market http://www.wise-uranium.org/umkt.html

“Why is Uranium Important to Canada?” Canadian Nuclear Association,
http://www.cna.ca/english/pdf/nuclearfacts/04-NuclearFacts-uranium.pdf

17) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation

18) http://www.crystalinks.com/reptilianbrain.html

On March 8, 2019, during a Special Briefing in the State Department, Washington, DC, Elliott Abrams, U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela said in response to a question from a Bloomberg journalist:

QUESTION [Bloomberg journalist]: Mr. Abrams, in the weeks since Juan Guaidó was recognized as the interim president, the Secretary of State and you have sort of intimated that there would be – that the military would flip in – imminently, that something might happen next week or the next week. Have you been disappointed – I mean, you remarked a little bit about the timeline, but have you been disappointed that the military continues to seemingly side with Mr. Maduro?

MR ABRAMS: Wouldn’t say that – I wouldn’t use the word “disappointed.” I would say we continue to call on the Venezuelan military to follow their own constitution. We call on them to restore – it’s better in Spanish – institucionalidad. We don’t really have a word in English – institutionality – but to restore their own proper role in any country. One of the definitions of having a state is having monopoly on force and violence for the security forces of the state. That’s not happening in Venezuela, where the government is using, the regime is using armed gangs, colectivos. One would think that the police and military in any country would find that unacceptable.

So we continue to hope that people in the Venezuelan security forces understand that the future of their country is going to be in much better hands if the Maduro regime comes to an end and the transition to democracy begins. And again, I would say it do until the day that it begins to happen.

Is the US stymied by the union of millions of Venezuelans with the military, including its armed militia, as outlined in a previous Global Research article on this  civilian-military union?

The nemesis which the US is facing started – in the current period – on February 23^rd on the Venezuelan border with Colombia. The US attempt to promote a mutiny among the military and a revolt within the people against Maduro in favour of the US hand -picked and self-proclaimed “president” failed miserably.

The day after this debacle, Mike Pompeo US Secretary of State said on CNN State of the Union (SOTU) with Jack Tapper, February 24, 2019:

“TAPPER: But it seems as though Maduro is not going anywhere near this [US] plan, that he’s holding onto power, and the military seems to be staying with him, at least the military leaders.

POMPEO: It always seems that way, until the day it doesn’t.

I remember, when I was a young soldier patrolling the then East German border. No one predicted on that day in 1989 that that wall would come crumbling down. Predictions are difficult. Picking exact days are difficult. ”

While these words say a lot, one had to see the body language – the sheepish look – on the face of the Secretary of State representing the most powerful military force on earth. He did not seem convinced that the “Berlin Wall moment” would come to Venezuela. That was on February 24, yet as we see above on March 8, Abrams had the same problem.

Why is this? The U.S.-centric mindset has been steeped in the white supremacist notion of the “chosen people” from the time of the 17^th century Pilgrims. It consists, among other features, of the racist outlook that peoples in the “Third World,” such as Latin America, cannot take their destiny in their own hands.

However, the opposite has been – and is – presently taking place. As a result of U.S. policies, democracy in Venezuela has been crossing the Rubicon from participatory democracy to a protagonist one. While the two are similar, especially in comparison with the experience of the Diktat in the capitalist North, there is a qualitative difference. Is it possible that as a result of the US policy toward Venezuela  – which one should recall this March 9 as the anniversary of the Obama 2015 Decree declaring Venezuela to be a threat to the US security – the Bolivarian Revolution’s democracy is becoming “above all” – as Chávez predicted and desired – “protagonist and not only participatory”?

Not only has the Pilgrim “chosen people” guideline for US foreign policy blinded Washington as to its capacity to conquer a country such as Venezuela, the arrogance of the 17the century bible-thumping “City upon a Hill You are the Light of the World” has further inspired the majority of Venezuelans. They are increasingly resisting the US and their allies. The Chavista movement is increasingly becoming the author of its own Bolivarian Revolution, not only participating in it.

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Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and the recently released  Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. As a journalist he collaborates with many web sites in Latin America, Europe and North America including Global Research. Twitter,  Facebook, His website: www.arnoldaugust.com

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Fear them for their technology; fear them for their ideology and their authoritarianism. But embrace interference and involvement in the economy if it involves coal.  This is the fancy hypocrisy of Australian politics, one driven to lunacy and inconsistency by that dark and dirty love. 

The contrast between a fear of Huawei, on the one hand, and an eager opening for a Chinese state-owned enterprise barging its way into the Australian market suggests that those in Canberra have finally twisted themselves into knots.  The latter is particularly striking – the China Energy Engineering Corporation (CEEC), the designated monster behind what promises to be 2000 megawatt of coal generation in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney.  Two plants billed as users of efficient coal-fired technology will supposedly take root in the “failed industrial zone” and give it life.  The cost would be in the order of $8 billion and generate over $17 billion worth of carbon liabilities.

Australia’s dinosaur political class is delighted at the latest foray into environmental spoliation.

“This is exactly what the market needs,” chuffed Coalition backbencher Craig Kelly.

Furthermore, to show that the conservative wing of politics is happy to forfeit any laissez faire credentials regarding the economy when needed, Kelly is keen for generous taxpayers’ support. 

“If the Government needs to underwrite it, if it needs a little help, then that’s what we should be doing.” 

Gone from the conversational babble was China’s February announcement through the Dalian Port authorities restricting Australian coal imports. 

“The goals are to better safeguard the legal rights and interests of Chinese importers and to protect the environment,” explained Geng Shuang of the Chinese foreign ministry. 

The point is worth reiterating, since similar bans were not applied to the coal from other states.  The indefinite ban was the bitter icing on that particular issue, confirming prolonged clearing times for Australian coal since the start of February.

The announcement of the mining venture had its predictable reaction in the environmental movement in Australia.  The Greens federal member for Melbourne was aghast and, as is his wont, got into the realms of hyperbole.  Protests would ensue; mass disaffection would take to the streets.  These latest coal plans, according to Adam Bandt, “will make the Franklin Dam campaign look like a Sunday picnic.”  What of, he said, any acknowledgment of the recent climate shocks gripping the continent? 

“We just had our hottest summer on record. If Labor and Liberal [parties] give this project the tick of approval then you will see civil disobedience in Australia on a scale never seen before.”

Interference by China in Australian matters is enchanting printing presses and stalking the corridors of power in Canberra.  Like other obsessions, it is clear that this one is inconsistent and variable, manifesting in various forms like an inconsistent fever.  James Laurenceson’s Do the Claims Stack Up, Australia Talks China, concludes that

“in each case, the evidence base [on interference] is shown to be divorced from the claims found in headlines, news reports and opinion pieces, revealing just how widespread has become the discourse of the China Threat, China Angst and China Panic”. 

When it comes to coal, the threat transforms; China Blessing, or China Grovelling come to the fore.  (The Yellow Peril becomes the Yellow Salvation.)   

The divorce in terms of reality is also evident in the finance side of things; the mining projects being proposed have yet to find the necessary capital, a point that is proving increasingly difficult for any such concerns.  Kaisun Holdings, the other company involved in the enterprise and also noted for being a “Belt and Road” company, is still on the hunt for “potential investors”.  As with the Indian mining giant Adani, such companies will have to convince those who finance them that coal is good in an increasingly hostile environment.  No money, no project; the equation is uncomplicated.  On paper, Kaisun has a market capitalisation of $33 million.  The Australian joint-venture partner, has a mere $25,000 on paper. 

The Australian Financial Review has also pointed out that the scheme, inspired by Parramatta’s Frank Cavasinni, is being “driven by a small businessman from Western Sydney with no experience in the energy industry.” Ignorance can be golden, but not in certain areas of economic planning.  Such a plant has already received reproach from EnergyAustralia’s executive Mark Collette, who claims that the plant will not provide the flexible capacity in the grid required as users move to the use of low-cost wind and solar power. “Coal as an investment works best as baseload but the market signal is calling for something different, which is flexible capacity.”

Australian politicians, when it comes to mining, prove fickle.  Their views are changeable, climactically variable and their principles are always up for purchase.  They are in office to be bought by the commodities industry, but the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, is firm: there are no plans in the pipeline to approve any coal-fired power stations.

“We are the most resilient state when it comes to our own energy needs.” 

But given that the Australian federal government lacks a coherent, sustainable energy policy, coal lovers feel they are still in with a chance.

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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]

Featured image is from Asianews

The Make America Great Again (MAGA) president has a budget plan. Cut domestic spending and shift more tax money over to the war pigs at the Pentagon. 

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Trump budget calls for massive cuts to social programs, billions of dollars for wall https://t.co/m8CHNrNnpR pic.twitter.com/nuAcs0hnkA

— The Hill (@thehill) February 13, 2018

According to The Washington Post:

President Trump on Monday will propose major spending cuts across a range of domestic government programs while seeking a large increase for the Pentagon, a budget plan that’s already encountering withering opposition from Democrats who control the House, as well as some Republicans.

Reading this, you might think Democrats and a few “moderate” Republicans are responding to the demands of the people, nearly half of them on the dole in one form or another, not because they are shiftless deadbeats, but because the Federal Reserve and the bankster elite have destroyed the economy and corporations have shipped decent paying jobs overseas and robotized many at home. This has resulted in about a third of the US population falling or remaining in poverty while most of the rest live paycheck to paycheck. Only the “one precent” benefit from the windfall of a rigged economy. 

In 2015, candidate Trump promised to reinvigorate the economy and bring the troops home from long stays (occupations) in foreign lands and wind-down the outrageously expensive wars. Trump at the time was taking money and advice from Israel-firsters, most notoriously the Zionist casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and the professional Islamophobe Frank Gaffney. 

In addition, he was taking foreign policy advice from Joseph E. Schmitz, a former Inspector General of the Department of Defense and a former executive with Blackwater Worldwide. Schmitz fled the Pentagon after he was accused of protecting top Bush officials accused of wrongdoing. 

Add the presence of Walid Phares, who is associated with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neocon central organization that teamed up with the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute to propagandize the American people  into supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq and supporting a fallacious war on terror. Prior the 2016 election, I wrote about this process of neoconization in a small ebook, Donald Trump and the War on Islam. 

In other words, Trump was a neocon simpatico well before he was elected. However, it took seasoned establishment neocons such as John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, and Mike Pompeo to make the conversion complete. The Donald has his moments—publicly stating he will remove troops from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan—but on that point he is betrayed time after time by his handlers. 

MAGA is now shorthand for neocon. The MAGA theology is dedicated to war abroad—predicated on long-standing lies and falsifications—and austerity at home with an attendant police state apparatus to frighten and control the mob. Social programs are to be looted, the money handed over to the Pentagon so it might continue building a “new generation” of nuclear weapons, taunting nuke-armed Russia and China, engaging with myriad intelligence agencies (in collusion with the State Department and its subversive NGOs) to undermine elections and kickstart wars, and feeding an already obese Pentagon and its associated industries. 

The richest man in the world’s newspaper didn’t mention the real reason Democrats are upset with Trump. If social programs are slashed and billions of dollars diverted to the war pigs, bedrock Democrat voters will demand socialism, socialist candidates, and a centrally planned economy with plenty of debt dollars to feed and house the plebs. 

Democrats are also war pigs. They are just better at PR and presentation than chest-thumping neocons who cut to the chase. At the end of the day, the path both follow leads to the same destination: endless war in the name of an unsustainable and bankrupt empire.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Salon.com

The Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31 [8 February 2019]

Pushback on human rights in France: “The Republic on the move”- but in the reverse gear(1)

1. For some months now, France has been the scene of turbulent upheaval. Fierce social conflict has long been a defining feature of the country’s political life. It has been a historical given in a nation constructed, for the most part, post-1789 on the basis of a revolution of universal scope that, along with the social advances won in 1936, 1945 and 1968, still exerts a strong hold on the collective memory and the country’s institutions, despite attempts to eradicate all traces of it.

Yet for nearly 40 years, France, like all the other countries of the North without exception, has found itself encased in the deadly straitjacket of devastating neoliberal policies, policies that can only be seen as an extraordinary act of social violence, an assault on labour. Their destructive effects – on individuals, society and even the environment – are propagated by a State that works hand-in-glove with whoever currently wields the most power. They are further aggravated by the constraints of the anti-social content of European Union treaties that the French rejected in the 2005 referendum but which were imposed on them in a denial of democratic process – an additional assault on an entire people. It is this particular perspective, as well as the general context of a systemic crisis of global capitalism, that explains the waves of popular uprisings of increasing intensity that have taken place in recent decades – strike in 1995, riots in the suburbs in 2005-2007, demonstrations in 2000 and 2010. There is now widespread discontent and a general feeling of malaise. The so-called “yellow vests” movement that began in October 2018 is one expression of this, but it is coming up against the worst resurgence of police violence since the Algerian war. In the face of the various protests, all demanding greater social justice, the authorities have chosen to respond with greater repression, to the extent that human rights are regressing at an alarming rate.

 State of emergency: origins of the crackdown

2. The starting point for the ramping up of repression can be clearly identified as the state of emergency proclaimed in metropolitan France on 14 November 2015 in the wake of the previous day’s terrorist attacks, and in the overseas departments on 18 November. Without in any way seeking to minimize the threats posed by the terrorist activities of extreme political Islam, from Al-Qaeda to Daesh, it nevertheless needs stating that the security policy in place since 2015 has also provided an opportunity to force the French people to accept a drastic curtailment of their civil and political rights, beyond what is required to deal with terrorist threats alone. It is true that, after five successive renewals, the state of emergency was lifted on 1 November 2017, but most of the special measures it had provided for had by then acquired the force of law: preventive search and arrest, security perimeters, individual house arrest, border controls, etc., are now authorized under the Act of 30 October 2017 on reinforcement of national security and combating terrorism. Since then there has been a perturbing abuse of this extensive legal arsenal of emergency measures that has had the effect of pushing back public freedoms, notably the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly or demonstration, as well as trade union rights and even the right to physical integrity, all of which are now in serious jeopardy.

3. Those who have recently taken part in demonstrations in France will certainly have witnessed what French and international human rights organizations have been decrying for the last few months: many of the actions of law enforcement agencies are deemed disproportionate and excessively violent; they even resort at times to weapons of war. There is now systematic use of tear gas and water cannons on peaceful protesters and very frequent use of baton rounds (from riot guns, fired at head height, and other so-called “less lethal” weapons), stun grenades and dispersal grenades, the practice of “kettling” to prevent groups from joining up with other demonstrators, random and arbitrary arrest, verbal intimidation, gratuitous provocation and even physical assault. The streets of Paris have seen the deployment of armoured vehicles, mounted police and dog units. On numerous occasions degrading treatment has been inflicted on protesters, including minors. In many cases, people who have committed no crime whatsoever have been clubbed or locked up. Medical supplies have been confiscated from “street doctors” – the volunteer medics who follow the marches and treat the injured. All of these events have shocked the French, which is precisely the effect desired, with a view to halting the uprising. Such police violence is absolutely unacceptable and violates international human rights standards.

Phase 1: suppression of social movements and unions

4. Since the election as President of Emmanuel Macron – formerly managing partner of the Rothschild investment bank, then Minister of Finance under President François Hollande and responsible for several laws aimed at making the labour market more flexible – the trade unions have re-mobilized. Demonstrations and strikes have spread, especially in sectors such as public transport (SNCF, Air France), energy (gas and electricity), automobiles (Peugeot, Renault), telecommunications (Orange), mass distribution (Carrefour), health services (public hospitals, retirement homes, social security), education (high schools, universities), culture (museums), justice (lawyers, judges), garbage collection, and even financial and company auditing. These diverse social movements, which attracted a large following, lasted throughout the spring of 2018. The response of the authorities was to step up the repression, with a particularly dramatic impact on students (evacuation of campuses), environmental activists occupying “defence zones” (ZAD) and, before that, those protesting against the labour-market flexibilization laws.

5. This was clearly part of the same spiral of repression already in use against the unions for several years, in violation of labour law. The obstacles in the way of trade union activities had multiplied: pay discrimination against trade unionists, unfair dismissal of strikers, pressure in the form of threats or disciplinary sanctions, curtailment of trade union rights and the right to strike, and even criminalization of trade union action (as at Goodyear, Continental and Air France). In addition, recent government reforms to the Labour Code have further penalized social movements: shorter time limits for appealing to industrial tribunals and caps on those tribunals’ compensation awards in cases of unfair dismissal; restrictions on the role of staff representative bodies and the legal remedies available to them; mechanisms for breaking collective agreements without regard for plans for saving jobs or favouring departures by older staff; reversal of the status of norms so that company agreements prevail over sectoral agreements and the law; establishment of national scope for dismissal for economic reasons, to facilitate the laying off of employees in French subsidiaries (while the parent company makes profits on a global scale).

6. President Macron has decided “not to change course”. With no regard for the sufferings and expectations of working men and women, his Government is tightening up its neoliberal policies and, to that end, going ever further down the route of social violence and police repression. The record is horrific, unworthy of a country that claims to be democratic and tolerant. Since the start of the yellow vest movement, there have been 11 accidental deaths. More than 2,000 people have been injured, at least a hundred of them very seriously, with doctors reporting injuries they describe as “war wounds” (hands torn off, eyes put out, disfigurement, multiple fractures and maiming), mainly resulting from baton rounds or shrapnel from grenades, in many cases fired at peaceful protesters. Several people are still in a coma. And what of the psychological shock to teenagers treated as terrorists by the police, forced onto their knees with their hands behind their head, or bundled into vans or cells?

7. Where is this power heading, trampling as it does on its own people and unleashing such violence? On 1 December, for example, 7,940 tear gas grenades were fired, along with 800 dispersal grenades, 339 GLI-F4-type grenades (explosive ordnance), 776 baton rounds and 140,000 litres of water. Between 17 November 2018 and 7 January 2019 alone – according to preliminary and probably not exhaustive figures – 6,475 arrests were made and 5,339 people taken into police custody. Nationwide more than 1,000 convictions have been handed down by the courts. Although most of the sentences are subject to adjustment (such as community service), many are prison terms: 153 committal orders (involving incarceration) have been issued, for example, while 519 summonses have been put out by the criminal investigation police and 372 by the criminal courts. In Paris, 249 persons have been sent for immediate trial, 58 have been given prison sentences and 63 suspended prison sentences. In the French department of La Réunion, the average prison term ordered for local yellow vests is 8 months. As of 10 January 2019 there were still some 200 people associated with these events in prison in France. 

Legitimacy of popular demands

8. In many respects the demands of the yellow vests intersect with those of labour. They demand immediate and tangible improvements to living standards, restoration of purchasing power (wages, pensions, social benefits), strengthening of public services and citizens’ participation in decisions concerning their collective future. In other words, the effective implementation of economic, social and cultural rights in particular, and peoples’ right to self-determination. Insofar as they call for greater social justice, increased respect for human rights and more economic and political democracy, these claims are thoroughly legitimate and attract broad support among the population.

9. The mother of all violence, the violence that has to be halted first of all and as a matter of urgency, the violence from which people are forced to defend themselves – as suggested by the Declaration of Human and Citizens’ Rights in the preamble to the French Constitution – is that generated by the imposition of unjust, merciless, antisocial and undemocratic neoliberal measures; the violence that, in the silence surrounding the price movements of capitalist markets, causes homeless people to die of cold, pushes indebted farmers to suicide and destroys individuals and families by depriving them of jobs, cutting off their electricity and evicting them from their homes; the violence that forces pensioners to turn off the heating because they can’t afford it, or children to skip a meal; the violence that breaks down all solidarity, closes schools, maternity wards and psychiatric hospitals, plunges small tradesmen and craftsmen into despair as they buckle under their overheads, wears out wage workers but does not let them make ends meet. The real violence is there, in this extraordinarily unjust and fundamentally untenable system. In that light, the smashing of bank or supermarket windows by a few isolated or confused individuals, while certainly reprehensible, is no justification for police violence

10. On that basis, CETIM urges the French Government to call an immediate halt to the crackdown on demonstrators and to honour its international obligations in terms of human rights and labour rights, notably by:

– Repealing legislation that nullifies freedoms and curbs labour rights, in accordance with the two international covenants on human rights (civil, political, economic, social and cultural) and with ILO conventions, as ratified by France;

– Ceasing to criminalize social movements in general and the yellow vest movement in particular;

– Permitting an independent investigation into the abuses committed by lawenforcement agencies during the yellow vest demonstrations and prosecuting the perpetrators.

11. CETIM also requests the Human Rights Council to activate its mechanisms as appropriate, in order to conduct an enquiry in France into the violations of the rights of peaceful protesters.

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Our thanks to Defend Democracy Press. for having brought this article to our attention.

Note

*Statement was drafted with the collaboration of Dr. Rémy Herrera, researcher at CNRS, Paris.

Online independent analysis of US-led wars, rampant corruption, corporate greed, civil rights and fraudulent monetary transactions is invariably relegated to the bottom rung of search engine results.

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A Peek into the Horrific Findings of the UN Report on Israel’s Massacre of Gaza Protesters

By Robert Inlakesh, March 10, 2019

The commission found serious human rights violations that may constitute crimes against humanity and called on Israel to “Lift the blockade on Gaza with immediate effect.

Can We Divest from Weapons Dealers?

By Kathy Kelly, March 10, 2019

Consider this: The 2018 U.S. Census Report tallies U.S. exports of bullets to other countries. Topping the list is $123 million-worth of bullets to Afghanistan—an eight-fold rise over the number of bullets sold in 2017 and far more than the number of bullets sold to any other country.

Neoliberalism and “The Vietnam Model”. Who Won the Vietnam War?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 09, 2019

Fifty four years ago, March 8, 1965 marks the commencement of the Vietnam war.

April 1975 marks the official end of the Vietnam War.

Yet today, almost 44 year later Vietnam is an impoverished country.  The Hanoi government is a US proxy regime. Vietnam has become a new cheap labor frontier of the global economy. Neoliberalism prevails.

The Pentagon’s Missing Trillions. What You Need to Know

By James Corbett and Mark Skidmore, March 09, 2019

Dr. Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University joins us to discuss his research with Catherine Austin Fitts into the $21 trillion in unaccounted transactions on the books of the US Department of Defence and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Has Trump Gone Full Neocon??

By Mike Whitney, March 09, 2019

The details of what took place at the Hanoi Summit strongly suggests that President Donald Trump has joined the neocons in their quest to strangle the North Korean economy and bring about regime change.

The Psychosis of the Neocons: Senator Marco Rubio “Makes Fun” of the Suffering of the Venezuelan People

By Kurt Nimmo, March 09, 2019

Marco Rubio, the neocon senator from Florida, considers a suspicious power outage across Venezuela to be funny. He would no doubt feel different if his mother was on a ventilator in a Caracas hospital—then again. 

Assad’s Tehran Visit Signals Iran’s Victory in Syria

By Tony Cartalucci, March 09, 2019

The significance of the trip cannot be understated – it was a message sent to those who orchestrated the proxy war against Syria that Damascus has prevailed and instead of driving a wedge between it and its allies in Moscow and Tehran – it has only drawn these regional powers closer together.

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If you’re reading this blast, you’re aware of some of the ways the U.S. empire has manipulated in its latest attempt at a coup in Venezuela. In an act of brazen illegality, the Trump administration has barred the Bolivarian republic from being able to access its own money in foreign banks and has transported “humanitarian aid” that was embedded with materials that could have been used by the largely white supremacist opposition to ferment violence against the Venezuelan government.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has been at the forefront of efforts to uncover the truth and spread the word, whether marching in the streets; rallying a crowd as member Asantewaa Mawusi Nkrumah-Ture has done; transporting member Efia Nwangaza to serve as a 2018 election observer in Venezuela; or speaking to a crowd about the connection between Venezuela and the U.S. military occupation of Africa, as you see National Organizer Ajamu Baraka and member Maurice Carney doing March 1 at Yale University in the photo below.

We have also released statements on Venezuela that we encourage you to read and share:

1. Why We Must Oppose U.S. Intervention in Venezuela
2. Black Working Class Will Never Abandon Venezuela!
3. Black Alliance for Peace Says Struggle in Haiti and Venezuela Connected (an in-depth version was published by Black Agenda Report)

To gather the full range of evidence on U.S. manipulations, interference and efforts to sabotage, a delegation of 13 leaders from peace, civil rights and women’s organizations are heading to Venezuela tomorrow for five days.

BAP will be represented on that delegation!

After the delegation returns to the United States, it will report its initial findings at a press conference held the morning of March 18 at the United Nations.

At 7 p.m. that day, the U.S. Peace Council will hold a public conference call, too.

BAP invites all defenders of peace, social justice, international law and national sovereignty to join us on this conference call.

Please register for the March 18 public call.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Finally, BAP is gearing up for actions on March 16 in opposition to the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and from March 30 through April 4 in opposition to NATO, which will include a BAP-organized street action on April 4. Please consider supporting us with a generous donation. We need to raise $5,000 to cover travel, food and accommodations for our activists during that period.

No compromise.

No retreat.

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Featured image is from BAP

This was written in June 2018.

International observers to Venezuela’s elections have written to Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, about the problems with the EU declaration on the elections.

You can read a short extract of the EU declaration statement and the letter in response below. You can read the full EU declaration here.

“Major obstacles to the participation of opposition political parties and their leaders, an unbalanced composition of the National Electoral Council, biased electoral conditions, numerous reported irregularities during the Election Day, including vote buying, stood in the way of fair and equitable elections.”

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Dear Ms Mogherini,

I was a member of a roughly hundred-strong core of observers of the May 20 Venezuelan election. We met senior representatives of all the candidates, and questioned them closely. We met with the president and two vice-presidents of the Supreme Judicial Tribunal. We examined the electoral system in detail and, on election day, observed voting procedures across the country.

We noted, in particular, not only the sophistication of the voting system which, in our collective view, is fraud-proof, but also that every stage, from the vote itself to the collation of returns, their verification and electronic submission, was conducted in the presence of representatives of the contending parties. As for “reporting irregularities”, we would be interested to hear of examples, since the reporting system is exceptionally rigorous and tamper-free. We doubt you have any evidence to back up the EU’s claim of “numerous reporting irregularities”.

We were unanimous in concluding that the elections were conducted fairly, that the election conditions were not biased, that genuine irregularities were exceptionally few and of a very minor nature. There was no vote buying because there is no way that a vote CAN be bought. The procedure itself precludes any possibility of anyone knowing how a voter cast her or his vote; and it is impossible – as we verified – for an individual to vote more than once or for anyone to vote on behalf of someone else.

In short, the claims in your press release are fabrications of the most disgraceful kind, based on hearsay and not on evidence and unworthy of the EU. It has not escaped notice that the EU was invited to send observers to the election and declined to do so. NONE of the criticism in your EU press release is, therefore, based on direct EU observation in the field.

I would be happy to discuss this further with you and to put you or your colleagues in touch with other observers – among whom were senior politicians, academics, election officials, journalists and civil servants from many different nations including: Spain, UK, Northern Ireland, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Honduras, Italy, several Caribbean countries, South Africa, Tunisia, China, Russia,and the United States (sic).

Yours sincerely,

Jeremy Fox, journalist / writer
Jospeh Farrell, Board of the Centre for Investigative Journalism
Calvin Tucker, journalist MS
Dr Francisco Dominguez, Latin American Studies, Middlesex University

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The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council have released a powerful report, on the Gaza ‘Great Return March’ demonstrations, stating that they have grounds to believe Israel committed International War Crimes against demonstrators during “large-scale civilian protests”.

The 22-page document has been condemned by the Israeli government, as there is talk of Israel being brought to the International Court of Justice and tried for war crimes and violations of International Law against demonstrations that “were civilian in nature”.

The commission conducted 325 interviews and meetings with victims, witnesses, government officials and members of civil society, from all sides, and gathered more than 8,000 documents, including affidavits, medical reports, open source reports, social media content, written submissions and expert legal opinions, video and drone footage, and photographs.”

Razan al-Najjar, the 21 year old Gaza medic killed by an Israeli sniper on June 1, treating an injured man, undated photo from Palestine Live on twitter.

Here are the most important points concluded in the report:

• The commission found in the killings of 189 demonstrators between 30 March and 31 December 2018, 183 were killed with live ammunition, including 35 children, 3 health workers and 2 members of the Press. Only 29 of those killed were members of Palestinian armed groups.
• Only 4 Israeli snipers were lightly injured, none were killed by demonstrators.
• 23,313 Palestinian demonstrators were injured during the 2018 demonstrations, 6106 with live ammunition, “contributing to the highest toll of injuries recorded in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2005.
• On the killing of child demonstrators, the commission found “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot them intentionally, knowing that they were children”.
• On the killing of health workers, “the commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers intentionally shot health workers, despite seeing that they were clearly marked as such”.
• On the killings of journalists, “the commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot journalists intentionally, despite seeing that they were clearly marked as such”.
• The commission found that both male and female protestors were shot in the groin. The female victims told the commission they are now “unlikely to be able to have children”.
• The policy of the Israeli Minister of Defense, was to deny passage to any person injured during demonstrations, causing unnecessary deaths and life changing injuries.
• According to the commission, except in two possible cases, “the use of live ammunition by Israeli security forces against demonstrators was unlawful”.
• Israel used a “disproportionate use of force”.
• The “demonstrators were shot in violation of their right to life or of the principle of distinction under international humanitarian law”.
• The commission found “reasonable grounds to believe that the excessive use of force by Israeli security forces violated the rights” of thousands of demonstrators who were peaceful.
• The commission found “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel violated “The Convention on the Rights of the Child”.
• “Violations of international law, such as those committed by Israeli security forces and set out in this report, give rise to State responsibility…”.

The commission found serious human rights violations that may constitute crimes against humanity and called on Israel to “Lift the blockade on Gaza with immediate effect.

The often repeated Israeli claims of the protests being inspired and organized by “Hamas terrorists”, were also addressed in the report, which stated that the demonstrations were inspired by the internet posts of 34-year-old Palestinian poet and journalist, Ahmed Abu Artema, with the demonstrations being organized by “A higher national committee and 12 subcommittees.”

The report went on to say, that

“while the members of the committee held diverse political views, they stated that their unifying element was the principle that the march was to be “fully peaceful from beginning to end” and demonstrators would be unarmed”.

Activities such as the use of incendiary kites, cutting barbed wire or tire burning were organized by “self-declared” units. The report further states “the commission found no evidence to suggest that they were directed or coordinated by armed groups”.

The commission interviewed what it called an international journalist who said,

“I have covered wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya. I have never seen anything like this. The slow methodical shooting. It was just shocking…”

The commission also noted that Israel refused to assist with the UN investigation and did not “cooperate or provide information.”

The following is a sample of the cases investigated by the commission.

March 30 demonstrations

Injury of 17 Mohammed Ajouri (17 years old)

“Israeli forces shot Mohammad, a student-athlete, in the back of his right leg as he gave onions to demonstrators to relieve tear-gas symptoms, approximately 300 m from the fence. His leg had to be amputated.”

The murder of Abdel Fatah Nabi (18 years old)

“Israeli forces killed Abed, from Beit Lahia, when they shot him in the back of the head as he ran, carrying a tyre, away from and about 400 m from the separation fence.”

The murder of Bader Sabagh (19 years old)

“Bader, from Jabaliya, was killed by Israeli forces when they shot him in the head as he stood smoking a cigarette 300 m from the separation fence.”

Injury and murder of schoolgirl (13 years old) and Marwan Qudieh (45 years old)

“Israeli forces injured a schoolgirl with bullet fragmentation. As she lay on the ground, four men attempted to evacuate her. The forces shot three of them, killing Marwan Qudieh (45) from Khuzaa village and injuring a potato seller and another man in the legs. One of the rescuers had to have a leg amputated.”

Injury of Alaa Dali (21 years old)

“Alaa, a member of the Palestinian cycling team, was shot by Israeli forces in the leg as he stood holding his bicycle, wearing his cycling kit, watching the demonstrations, approximately 300 m from the separation fence. His right leg had to be amputated, ending his cycling career.”

May 14 demonstration, seven children killed

“On 14 May, Israeli security forces shot and killed seven children: a girl, Wisal Khalil (14), and six boys: Izzedine al-Samak (13); Said al-Kheir (15); Ahmad al-Sha’ar (15); Talal Matar (15); Saadi Abu Salah (16); and Ibrahim al-Zarqa (17).”

The murder of Mohammad Najar (33 years old)

“Israeli forces shot Mohammad, a naval police officer, in the chest, killing him, as he sat on a hill with a friend, around 500 m from the separation fence.”

The murder of Yasser Abu Naja (11 years old)

“On 29 June, Israeli forces killed Yasser from Khan Younis with a shot to the head as he was hiding with two friends behind a bin, approximately 200 m from the separation fence. The children had been chanting national slogans at Israeli forces.”

The murder of Nasser Mosabeh (11 years old)

“Nasser was from Khan Younis. On 28 September, Israeli forces shot him in the back of the head as he stood 250 m from the separation fence. He died the same day.”

The murder of Razan Al-Najar (20 years old)

“On 1 June, an Israeli sniper bullet hit Razan, of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society and who at the time was wearing a white paramedic vest and standing with other volunteer paramedics approximately 110 m from the separation fence, in the chest at the Khuzaa site, east of Khan Younis. She died in hospital.”

The murder of Yasser Murtaja (30 years old)

“On 6 April, Yasser, a journalist from Gaza City, was shot in the lower abdomen by Israeli forces at the Khan Younis site while he was filming the demonstrations for a documentary. He was wearing a blue helmet and a dark blue bulletproof vest clearly marked “Press”. He died the following day.”

Amputation of Abed Nofal (11 years old)

“On 17 April, Abed, a schoolboy from the Bureij refugee camp, was shot by Israeli forces while he was playing football near the separation fence. His leg had to be amputated.”

The extended version of the report is set to be released on March 18, 2019. The commission recommended that UN members consider imposing individual sanctions, such as travel bans or an asset freezes on those responsible.

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Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, political analyst and human rights activist who specializes in delivering insight into the geopolitical scene of the Middle East, specializing in the political and humanitarian situation in Palestine.

Featured image is from Ma’an News agency

Impoverished people living in numerous countries today would stand a far better chance of survival, and risk far less trauma, if weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, stopped manufacturing and selling death-dealing products.

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About three decades ago, I taught writing at one of Chicago’s alternative high schools. It’s easy to recall some of their stories—fast-paced, dramatic, sometimes tender. I would beg my students to three-hole-punch each essay or poem and leave it in a binder on our classroom shelf, anxious not to lose the documentation of their talents and ideas.

Some of the youngsters I taught told me they were members of gangs. Looking down from the window of my second-floor classroom, I sometimes wondered if I was watching them selling drugs in broad daylight as they embraced one another on the street below.

Tragically, in the two years that I taught at Prologue High School, three students were killed. Colleagues told me that they generally buried three students per year. They died, primarily, from gunshot wounds. I think they could have survived their teenage years if weapons and ammunition hadn’t been available.

Similarly, I believe impoverished populations of numerous countries at war today would stand a far better chance of survival, and risk far less trauma, if weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, stopped manufacturing and selling death-dealing products. It would also help if the people living in countries that export deadly weapons were well-informed about the consequences these businesses bring.

Consider this: The 2018 U.S. Census Report tallies U.S. exports of bullets to other countries. Topping the list is $123 million-worth of bullets to Afghanistan—an eight-fold rise over the number of bullets sold in 2017 and far more than the number of bullets sold to any other country.

During a recent visit to Afghanistan, I heard many people voice intense fear of what would happen if civil war breaks out. It seems to me that those who manufacture bullets are doing all they can to hasten the likelihood and deadly outcome of an armed struggle.

But rather than help people here in the United States understand conditions in countries where the U.S. conducts airstrikes, President Donald Trump is hiding the facts.

On March 6, 2019, Trump revoked portions of a 2016 executive order imposed by President Barack Obama requiring annual reports on the number of strikes taken and an assessment of combatant and civilian deaths. Trump has removed the section of the mandate specifically covering civilian casualties caused by CIA airstrikes, and whether they were caused by drones or “manned” warplanes.

A U.S. State Department email message said the reporting requirements are “superfluous” because the Department of Defense already must file a full report of all civilian casualties caused by military strikes. However, the report required from the Pentagon doesn’t cover airstrikes conducted by the CIA.

And last year, the White House simply ignored the reporting requirement.

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Democracy is based on information. You can’t have democracy if people have no information about crucial issues. Uninformed about military practices and foreign policy, U.S. citizens become disinterested.

I lived alongside civilians in Iraq during the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing of Baghdad. In the hospital emergency rooms I heard survivors asking, through screams and tears, why they were being attacked. Since that time, in multiple visits to Kabul, I have heard the same agonized question.

The majority of Afghanistan’s population consists of women and children. When civilians in that country die because of U.S. attacks—whether within or beyond “areas of active hostilities”; whether conducted by the CIA or the Department of Defense; whether using manned or unmanned warplanes—the attack is almost certain to cause overwhelming grief. Often the survivors feel rage and may want revenge. But many feel despair and find their only option is to flee.

Children at the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Street Kids School in Kabul.

Imagine a home in your neighborhood suddenly demolished by a secret attack; you have no idea why this family was targeted, or why women and children in this family were killed. If another such attack happened, wouldn’t you consider moving?

Reporting for The New York Times, Mujib Mashal recently interviewed a farmer from Afghanistan’s Helmand province displaced by fighting and now unable to feed his family. “About 13.5 million people are surviving on one meal or less a day,” Mashal writes, “and 54 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of a $1 a day.”

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Last week, an international crisis sharply escalated in a “dogfight” between India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed states. The crisis has been somewhat defused. Media reports quickly focused on the relative military strength of both countries—observing, for example, that the dilapidated state of India’s jet fighters could be a “win” for U.S. weapons manufacturers.

“It is hard to sell a front-line fighter to a country that isn’t threatened,” said an analyst with the Lexington Institute. “Boeing and Lockheed Martin both have a better chance of selling now because suddenly India feels threatened.”

A few weeks ago, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited heads of state in Pakistan and India. Photos showed warm embraces and respectful receptions.

The CEO of Lockheed Martin, Marillyn Hewson, also embraces the Saudi government. She serves on the boards of trustees of two Saudi technological universities, and presides over a company that has been awarded “a nine-figure down payment on a $15 billion missile-defense system for Saudi Arabia.” The Saudis will acquire new state-of-the-art weapons even as they continue bludgeoning civilians in Yemen during a war orchestrated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And the Saudis will build military alliances with nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

With both India and Pakistan possessing nuclear weapons, every effort should be made to stop the flow of weapons into the region. But major weapon making companies bluntly assert that the bottom line in the decision is their profit.

Attending funerals for young people in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, at the time one of the poorest in Chicago, I felt deep dismay over the profits that motivated gun runners who sold weapons to students, some of whom would be soon fatally wounded. In the ensuing decades, larger, more ambitious weapon peddlers have engendered and prolonged fighting between warlords, within and beyond the United States.

How different our world could be if efforts were instead directed toward education, health care, and community welfare.

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Kathy Kelly is Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Featured image: Through the winter duvet project of the Afghan Peace Volunteers about 1600 duvets were distributed to Afghan families struggling to meet basic needs. Since 2001, and at a cost of 800 billion dollars, the U.S. military has inflicted aerial bombings, ground attacks, drone warfare, and extensive surveillance on Afghan citizens. (Source: Dr. Hakim via The Progressive)

To: Eurozone governments; President of the Eurogroup, Mário Centeno; President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi

Petition

We stand with Greece, demanding a path to an economic recovery that truly values people’s lives and dignity. Start by returning interest made on Greek government bonds.

Why is this important?

The Greek people have been crushed under the pressure of austerity terms. Hospitals can barely offer basic care, with 1 nurse for 40 patients.

[1] Wages keep falling. Pensions have been cut a dozen times since 2010.

[2] Unemployment has more than doubled. [3]

And the bailout money meant to “help” Greeks get out of this situation? Eurozone countries have made billions in interest from it. [4]

But Europe’s finance ministers have the power to change course. If we show them that Europeans don’t want to profit from Greece’s despair, they can no longer act unchecked and claim to act on our behalf.

The European Central Bank (ECB) started buying Greek government bonds in 2010, when Greece needed its first bailout. If the ECB didn’t purchase the bonds, Greece would have reduced their value. But the ECB prevented Greece from doing so as a condition for a bailout package. Each year the inflated bonds make a massive sum in interest, which used to be returned to Greece. [5]

That changed in 2015, when the Greek people voted against more government cuts that affect everyday life. As a punishment for refusing the cuts, the Eurozone countries decided to pocket the interest from the bonds, instead of returning them to Greece as previously agreed. [6]

After years of austerity, twelve rounds of tax increases and severe cuts to public services, the Greek people can’t afford to be taken advantage of any longer. The Greek people need us to support them in their struggle now more than ever before.

If we stand up, we can get the interest from these bonds returned to Greece, and demand that economic recovery must also value people’s lives and dignity. Together, we have the power to show the Greek people that we stand with them. And to show our governments that we expect solidarity, not exploitation.

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Notes

[1] “’Patients who should live are dying’: Greece’s public health meltdown,” The Guardian, 1 January 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/01/patients-dying-greece-public-health-meltdown

[2] “Greek pensioners protest benefit cuts, pin hopes on court,” Reuters, 10 October 2017. https://www.reuters.com/article/eurozone-greece-pensioners-protests/greek-pensioners-protest-benefit-cuts-pin-hopes-on-court-idUSL8N1MH1SN

[3] “Unemployment by sex and age – monthly average,” Eurostat. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-datasets/-/UNE_RT_M

[4] “ECB Profits from Greek Bond Holdings at €7.8 Billion,” Greek Reporter, 10 October 2017. http://greece.greekreporter.com/2017/10/10/ecb-profits-from-greek-bond-holdings-at-e7-8-billion/

[5] “ECB to swap Greek bonds to avoid forced losses -sources,” Reuters, 16 February 2012. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-greece/ecb-to-swap-greek-bonds-to-avoid-forced-losses-sources-idUSTRE81F1EK20120216

[6] “Eurozone unlocks €10.3bn bailout loan for Greece,” The Guardian, 25 May 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/24/eurozone-officials-hope-to-give-greece-next-tranche-of-bailout

Featured image is from WeMove.EU

India-Pakistan relations are in crisis. The Indian people have been impoverished by PM Modi’s neoliberal agenda.

Elections are forthcoming in India.

This carefully research article reveals the working of this corrupt monetary  policy agenda. 

Will Prime Minister Modi’s demonetization policy –which has contributed to impoverishing millions of people– be an issue in the election campaign? 

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In early November 2016, without warning, the Indian government declared the two largest denomination bills invalid, abolishing over 80 percent of circulating cash by value. Amidst all the commotion and outrage this caused, nobody seems to have taken note of the decisive role that Washington played in this. That is surprising, as Washington’s role has been disguised only very superficially.

India-Pakistan relations are in crisis. Elections are forthcoming in India. The incisive article by Colin Todhunter  addresses the issue of Prime Minister Modi’s  “business friendly” role in opening the door to the plunder of India’s agriculture. First published in June 2016

Describing itself as a major ‘global communications, stakeholder engagement and business strategy’ company, APCO Worldwide is a lobby/PR agency with firm links to the Wall Street/corporate America establishment (arguably, part of it) and functions to serve its global agenda. India PM Narendra Modi turned to APCO to help transform his image and turn him into electable pro-corporate PM material. It also helped Modi get the message out that what he achieved in Gujarat as Chief Minister was a miracle of economic neoliberalism, although the actual reality is quite different.

In APCO’s India brochure, there is the claim that India’s resilience in weathering the global downturn and financial crisis has made governments, policy-makers, economists, corporate houses and fund managers believe that the country can play a significant role in the recovery of the global economy in the years ahead.

With Modi now at the political helm, the government is doing the bidding of global biotech companies and is currently trying to push through herbicide-tolerant GM mustard based on fraudulent tests and ‘regulatory delinquency‘, which will not only open the door to further GM crops but will boost the sales of Bayer’s glufinosate herbicide. In addition, plans have been announced to introduce 100% foreign direct investment in certain sectors of the economy, including food processing.

Neoliberal dogma

The opening up of India to GMOs and foreign capital is supported by rhetoric about increasing agricultural efficiency, creating jobs and boosting GDP growth. Such rhetoric mirrors that of the pro-business, neoliberal dogma we see in APCO’s brochure for India. It is the type of jargon that is rolled out by powerful corporate players and their compliant politicians across the world who seek to try to convince the public that an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few – via deregulations, privatisations and lower labour and environmental protection standards, etc – is for their own benefit because it is good for ‘growth’.

From Greece to Spain and from the US to the UK, we are able to see this rhetoric for what it really is: record profits and massive increases in wealth (ie ‘growth) and control for elite interests and, for the rest, disempowerment, surveillance, austerity, job losses, the erosion of rights, weak unions, cuts to public services, bankrupt governments and opaque, corrupt trade deals.

APCO describes India as a trillion-dollar market. Note that the emphasis is not on redistributing the country’s wealth among its citizens but on exploiting markets. Whiles hundreds of millions live in poverty and hundreds of millions of others hover close to poverty, the combined wealth of India’s richest 296 individuals is $478 billion, some 22% of India’s GDP. According to the ‘World Wealth Report 2015‘, there were 198,000 ‘high net worth’ individuals in India in 2014, while in 2013 the figure stood at 156,000.

Global Finance Integrity has shown that the outflow of illicit funds into foreign bank accounts has accelerated since opening up the economy to global capital in the early nineties. High net worth individuals (the very rich) are the biggest culprits here. Not so much conforming to neoliberal ‘trickle down’ ideology but neoliberal ‘funnel out’, where tax havens across the globe exist for corporations and individual to stash their untaxed and unaccounted for wealth.

APCO likes to talk about positioning international funds and facilitating corporations’ ability to exploit markets, sell products and secure profit. In other words, colonising key sectors, regions and nations to serve the needs of US-dominated international capital.

Paving the way for plunder

It is notable that Modi recently stated that India is now one of the most business friendly countries in the world. The code for being ‘business friendly’ is lowering labour, environmental, health and consumer protection standards, while reducing taxes and tariffs and facilitating the acquisition of public assets via privatisation and instituting policy frameworks that work to the advantage of foreign (US/Western) corporations.

When the World Bank rates countries on their level of ‘Ease of Doing Business’, it means nation states facilitating policies that force working people to take part in a race to the bottom based on free market fundamentalism. The more ‘compliant’ national governments make their populations and regulations, the more attractive foreign capital is tempted to invest.

The World Bank’s ‘Enabling the Business of Agriculture’ – supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID – entails opening up markets to Western agribusiness and their fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and patented seeds (listen to this, especially from 13 mins).

It might lead some wonder whose interests are really being served.

Anyone who is aware of the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture and the links with the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty will know the answer to that as far as Indian is concerned. Those two projects form part of an overall plan to subjugate Indian agriculture to the needs of foreign corporations (see this article from 1999).

Politicians are clever at using poor management, bad administration and overblown or inept bureaucracies as an excuse for privatisation and dereugulation. Margaret Thatcher was an expert at this: if something does not work correctly because of bad management, privatise it; underinvest in something, make it seem like a basket case and privatise it; pump up a sector with public funds to turn it into a profitable, efficient enterprise then sell it off to the private sector. The tactics and ideology of and the justification for neoliberal economic policies take many forms.

And Indian agriculture has witnessed gross underinvestment over the years, whereby it is now wrongly depicted as a basket case and underperforming and ripe for a sell off to those very interests who had a stake in its underinvestment.

Leaving climate considerations aside, Britain used to be nearly self-sufficient in energy, with coal being the lynch pin. Since the 1980s, pits have been closed and the mining industry barely exists. Pits were deemed ‘uneconomical’ or ‘inefficient’. Now Britain imports coal, engages in costly wars to grab energy resources and pays the unemployed to do nothing rather than dig coal.  There is enough coal in Britain to last for hundreds of years. It would have made better economic sense to have kept these pits open (see this, this and this).

Neoliberalism is merely ideology masquerading as ‘economics’. The mines were closed in order to destroy the miners’ union, the strongest and most militant of Britain’s unions at the time who would have stood in the way of the economic plunder by and financialisation of Britain’s economy that followed. Energy security and livelihoods and towns and villages were decimated. And now we have the media celebrating ‘job creation’ when a new supermarket opens a branch to create a handful of jobs in what was once an area of full employment (while ignoring local store owners whose livelihoods are put in jeopardy).

And Indian farmers are now confronted by the similar forces of neoliberal capitalism.

India has many examples of poor management or inept bureaucracies and there are certainly deficiencies in food logistics. But rather than reform or improve them, the mantra is to let the market take over: a euphemism for letting powerful corporations take control; the very transnational corporations that manipulate markets, write trade agreements and institute a regime of intellectual property rights thereby indicating that the ‘free’ market only exists in the warped delusions of those who churn out clichés about letting the market decide or giving control to the ‘free’ market.

The destruction of livelihoods under the guise of ‘job creation’

But doesn’t FDI and foreign firms entering India ‘create jobs’. Yes, at least according to the neoliberal ideologues appearing in the media who claim that foreign investment is good for jobs and good for business. Just how many actually get created is another matter.

What is overlooked, however, are the jobs that were lost in the first place to ‘open up’ sectors to foreign capital. For example, Cargill may set up a food or seed processing plant that employs a few hundred people, but what about the agricultural jobs that were deliberately eradicated in the first place or the village-level processors who were cynically put out of business so Cargill could gain a financially lucrative foothold?

But won’t farmers better off as foreign firms enter the supply chain to create ‘efficiency’? Again, we need only look at the plight of farmers in India who were tied into contracts with Pepsico. Farmers were pushed into debt, reliance on one company and were paid a pittance

India is looking to US corporations to ‘develop’ its food and agriculture sector with foreign investment in retail, cold storage and various other infrastructure. Envisioning what this could mean for India, Devinder Sharma describes how the industrialised US system of food and agriculture relies on massive taxpayer subsidies and has destroyed many farmers’ livelihoods. The fact that US agriculture now employs a tiny fraction of the population serves as a stark reminder for what is in store for Indian farmers. Sharma notes that agribusiness companies rake in huge profits, while depressed farmer incomes, poverty and higher retail prices become the norm.

For farmers in India, the vast majority are not to be empowered but displaced from the land. Farming is being made financially non-viable for small farmers, seeds are to be privatised as intellectual property rights are redefined (facilitated by prominent Trojan horse figures), land is to be acquired and an industrialised, foreign corporate-controlled food production, processing and retail system is to be implemented.

The long-term plan is for an urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Wal-Mart-type supermarkets that offer highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food contaminated with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security. This would be disastrous for farmers, public health and local livelihoods.

It begs the question: is the ‘Walmartisation’ of food and agriculture where India really wants to be heading?

While APCO wraps up the potential for economic plunder in corporate jargon, others cut through such technocratic rhetoric to expose the politics, motivations, players and corruption that are driving the restructuring of India and its agriculture:

“The WTO, with the TRIPS Agreement written by Monsanto and the Agreement on Agriculture written by Cargill, was the beginning of a new Corporate Imperialism. This imperialism is articulated by President Obama in suggesting that the resources, economies and markets of Asia – where half of humanity lives – are “up for grabs”. Trade Agreements like the TPP/TTIP/WTO, written in secret by Industry looking for raw materials, captive markets, lower labour costs and lower taxes, are what make it appear as though the land of South East Asia is “up for grabs” for palm oil plantations to the highest bribe… or that the farmers and food security of India are disposable as long as there is a giant market for chemicals and patented seed.” – Vandana Shiva, ‘Corporate imperialism – the only reason for GMO‘

From Africa to India, corporate America and global agribusiness are intent on colonising food and agriculture by recasting them in their own financially lucrative images, picking out only the most profitable sections of supply chains, while relying on public money to facilitate their profits.

The alternative would be to protect indigenous agriculture from rigged global trade and trade deals and corrupt markets and to implement a shift to sustainable, localised agriculture based on actual science (and appropriate price and/or income support and infrastructure). Instead, we see the push for bogus ‘solutions’ like GMOs and the side-lining of rational analysis and science in favour of neoliberal ideology.

Low input, sustainable models of food production and notions of independence and local or regional self-reliance do not provide opportunities to global agribusiness or international funds to exploit markets, sell their products and cash in on APCO’s vision of a trillion-dollar corporate hijack; moreover, they have little in common with Bill Gates/USAID’s vision for an Africa dominated by global agribusiness.

Modi was elected on 31 percent of the vote in 2014. It was heralded as a landslide victory due to the number of seats secured in parliament. Are those voters now getting what they wanted – or will they eventually get more than they bargained for?

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This  article was first published by Sustainable Pulse in 2016

The Munich Environmental Institute (Umweltinstitut München) has released shocking results (February) of laboratory testing it has completed on 14 of the most sold beers in Germany. The probable carcinogen and World’s most used herbicide – glyphosate – was found in all of the 14 beers tested.

German Beer – Glyphosate Testing Results:

Hasseröder Pils – 29,74 μg/l (ppb)
Jever Pils – 23,04 μg/l
Warsteiner Pils – 20,73 μg/l
Radeberger Pilsner – 12,01 μg/l
Veltins Pilsener – 5,78 μg/l
Oettinger Pils – 3,86 μg/l
König Pilsener – 3,35 μg/l
Krombacher Pils – 2,99 μg/l
Erdinger Weißbier – 2,92 μg/l
Paulaner Weißbier – 0,66 μg/l
Bitburger Pils – 0,55 μg/l
Beck’s Pils – 0,50 μg/l
Franziskaner Weißbier – 0,49 μg/l
Augustiner Helles – 0,46 μg/l

In 2015 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency IARC declared that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen.

The German Brewers’ Association, reacted by calling the study by the Munich Environmental Institute “not credible”, but admitted that low residues of the probable human carcinogen glyphosate could not be prevented, because “the herbicide is now found virtually everywhere after decades of use in agriculture”.

Sustainable Pulse Director Henry Rowlands stated Thursday:

“Stone-Age industry funded science suggested that the higher the dose of a chemical the more dangerous it was, however modern independent science has discovered that many toxic chemicals have as much or more of an influence on our health at low doses– these chemicals are known as hormone hackers (endocrine disruptors).

“A study from March 2015 stated that the health costs to the European Union of hormone hacking chemicals is over $ 150 Billion per year! The study stated that lower IQ, adult obesity and 5% or more of autism cases are all linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors.

“Glyphosate is likely to be one of these hormone hacking chemicals according to independent science. Find more information on this here.”

First published on February 14, 2019

Pakistan’s promising economic potential, international connectivity capabilities, and unparalleled geostrategic location combine with its world-class military and proven diplomatic finesse over the decades to turn the South Asian country into the global pivot state of the 21^st century.

As astounding as it may sound to most observers, the global pivot state of the 21^st century isn’t China, the US, nor Russia, but Pakistan. The South Asian state regrettably has a terrible international reputation as a result of the joint Indo-American infowar that’s been waged against it over the past few decades, but an objective look at the country’s geostrategic and domestic capabilities reveals that it’s in a prime position to influentially shape the contours of the coming century. It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that China had the foresight to partner with it decades before anyone else did, but other Great Powers like Russia are finally awakening to its importance, and this is in turn making Pakistan the most strategically sought-after country in the world.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is Beijing’s flagship project of its world-changing Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) because it crucially enables the People’s Republic to avoid the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca hotspots and obtain reliable access to the Mideast and Africa, which provide China with energy resources for its economy and growing consumer markets for its products, respectively. BRI is redirecting global trade routes from West to East and literally building the basis for the emerging Multipolar World Order, so considering Pakistan’s irreplaceably important role in this process by virtue of CPEC, China’s South Asian partner can be reconceptualized as the cornerstone of Beijing’s future world vision. This in and of itself makes Pakistan pivotal, but there’s actually much more to it than just that.

CPEC isn’t just a “highway” from Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea but a series of megaprojects through which Pakistan can transform itself from being a passive object of International Relations to a leading subject of the rapidly changing global order if it creatively expands this central corridor throughout the rest of the supercontinent in order to become the Zipper of Eurasia.

The country’s domestic economic potential is extremely promising when remembering that it’s a nation of over 200 million people uniquely positioned at the crossroads of China’s future trade route with the rest of the “Global South”. With this in mind, Prime Minister Khan recently told the world at the UAE’s World Government Summit not to “miss the boat” and lose out on their chance to capitalize off of his country’s expected growth.

It’s little wonder then that major investment players such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are jumping at the opportunity to take part in this before any of their competitors can, wanting to get ahead of the race by establishing a premier presence in Pakistan as it becomes the shortest trade route between their economies and China’s. That’s not all there is to it, however, since Pakistan is capable of expanding CPEC in the Northern, Western, and Southern directions via the CPEC+ branch corridors to connect itself with Central Asia and Russia, the rest of West Asia (Iran, Turkey), and Africa, which could altogether make it the Convergence of Civilizations and the antidote to Huntington’s poisonous attempt to divide and rule the Eastern Hemisphere through his “Clash of Civilizations” thesis.

Building off of its CPEC+ civilizational-geostrategic connectivity prospects, Pakistan can institutionalize its role as the Zipper of Eurasia by bringing together the two incipient multilateral strategic partnerships that it’s a part of – the Multipolar CENTO with Iran and Turkey, and the Multipolar Trilateral with China and Russia – to form the Golden Ring of Multipolar Great Powers smack dab in the center of Eurasia, greatly aided as it would be by the instrumental role that Islamabad will naturally play in the post-American multipolar blueprint for Afghanistan. Pakistan can pull this off because it has a proven track record of diplomatic success in balancing between various powers, be it the US and China or Saudi Arabia and Iran, and its world-class nuclear-armed military is an impressive partner for all.

Simply put, Pakistan is the pivot state upon which all of China’s future plans depend, therefore recasting it as the kingmaker of the New Cold War and the world-changing multipolar processes of the 21^st century. That said, Pakistan is also a pivot state in its own right, one that’s capable of zipping together the various forces of Eurasia and becoming the convergence point of the Eastern Hemisphere’s many diverse civilizations, which can be institutionalized through the Golden Ring framework that it’s the key component of. Prophetically, Pakistani founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah predicted all of this when he famously proclaimed in 1948 that “Pakistan is the pivot of the world, placed on the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves”, and each passing day proves that he was right.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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.

Dr. Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University joins us to discuss his research with Catherine Austin Fitts into the $21 trillion in unaccounted transactions on the books of the US Department of Defence and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We discuss what we know and don’t know about the subject, the Pentagon’s nonsensical and inadequate excuses for the debacle, the new accounting guideline that legally allows every department of the federal government to create fake and altered books for public consumption, the recent failed Pentagon audit, the government’s refusal to provide any information about the problem, the failure of congress to pursue the issue, and the failure of the press to report on it.

Remanding Chelsea Manning into federal custody for contempt on Friday, jailing her for invoking her constitutional rights, refusing to answer prosecutorial and grand juror questions, is one of countless examples of grand jury abuses of power – symptomatic of police state rule, how things work in the US.

Manning was constitutionally justified saying:

“I will not comply with this, or any grand jury. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system,” adding:

“The grand jury’s questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case in which I testified for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous public testimony.”

“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally (and legally) object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”

“…I resent being forced to endanger myself by participating in this predatory practice.” In response to each question asked, she said:

“I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the question is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights.”

Her response was and remains constitutionally protected. That’s not good enough in America, the rule of law long ago abandoned. Congressionally and judicially supported executive diktat power replaced it.

Forever wars of aggression against nations threatening no one is Exhibit A. So are numerous police state laws of the land, largely enacted post-9/11 – the USA Patriot Act most abusive.

It’s unconstitutional for violating the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Americans can be prosecuted for claimed association with “undesirable group(s).”

They’re subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures by unchecked surveillance powers of the state, their privacy compromised.

Due process, habeas rights, and equal justice under law greatly eroded. All of the above are hallmarks of police state rule.

Manning’s First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment rights were violated. She was wrongfully imprisoned for invoking her free expression rights, justifiably revealing US high crimes of war and against humanity in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Subjecting her to unreasonable searches and seizures violated her Fourth Amendment rights. Her Fifth Amendment rights of due process, protection from self-incrimination, and possible double jeopardy were violated.

So was her Sixth Amendment right of a public trial represented by counsel, an impartial jury, and nature of possible charges against her.

Subjecting her to cruel and unusual punishments, including the threat to her freedom and well-being, by demanding she testify before a grand jury in secret without counsel violated her Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment rights.

As originally conceived, the grand jury system was established as a “sword” against individuals accused of crimes, as well as a “shield” against oppressive, arbitrary authority.

A former New York Court of Appeals chief judge once said under the US grand jury system, prosecutors control what jurors hear. Their manipulative practices can “indict a ham sandwich” – an overstatement to highlight an unjust system.

The Supreme Court earlier ruled that federal grand jury prosecutors need not adhere to customary trial rules and procedures. Nor must they reveal evidence exculpating defendants.

Instead of protecting the public from oppressive government, they function largely as a “sword” against fundamental constitutional rights because of their manipulative practices, doing whatever it takes to get indictments they seek.

Grand juries are convened to determine if there’s probable cause to indict, most often a super-majority of jurors required, at times a simple majority.

Instead of being a protective “community voice,” most often they’re a prosecutorial tool to indict – an unconstitutional system that should have been restructured or abolished long ago.

Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC) founder and executive director Lauren Regan explained grand jury abuses, saying:

“…I have represented dozens and dozens of clients who were subpoenaed to testify as witnesses at State and Federal Grand Juries regarding government investigations.”

“A grand jury is a secret tribunal where a citizen is forced to answer questions by a prosecutor, often against their will.”

“They are not allowed to have an attorney in the grand jury room to advise them while the questioning takes place. There is no Judge in the grand jury room to oversee the fairness or legitimacy of the proceedings.”

“The prosecutor alone determines what evidence will be provided to the grand jurors, and that alone forms the basis of their deliberations and their determination regarding whether a felony indictment will issue.”

“The prosecutor becomes the grand jurors’ friend: he (or she) controls their bathroom breaks, meals, and whether they can return to their work, families, and lives.”

“The prosecutor, a politically elected position, works very closely with police every day and generally exhibits bias toward police as a result of this familiar relationship. The prosecutor holds enormous power over the outcome of a grand jury proceeding.”

Witnesses risk unwitting self-incrimination, even when guilty of no crimes, denied their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in cases where prosecutors impose immunity – yet able to game the system to their advantage if wanting a witness indicted.

That’s why Manning refused to cooperate, invoking her constitutional rights to remain silent, free from possible self-incrimination, along with potentially helping the prosecutor build a case against another targeted individual – namely Julian Assange, why the grand jury she was called before to testify was convened in the first place.

Eastern District of Virginia court Judge Claude Hilton ordered her detained unless she agrees to testify, or until the grand jury she was subpoenaed to appear before concludes its work.

She could be detained as a political prisoner indefinitely. At the completion of the current grand jury’s work, she can be subpoenaed to testify before a newly convened grand jury – a way to keep her imprisoned.

That’s what oppressive rule is all about, the rights of many thousands of Americans violated – countless numbers for political reasons like Manning.

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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.

Don’t you think something is fishy when the presstitutes orchestrate a fake news “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela, but totally ignore the real humanitarian crises in Yemen and Gaza?  

Don’t you think something is really very rotten when the expert, Alfred Maurice de Zayas,  sent by the UN to Venezuela to evaluate the situation finds no interest by any Western media or any Western government in his report?

Don’t you think it is a bit much for Washington to steal $21 billion of Venezuela’s money, impose sanctions in an effort to destabilize the country and to drive the Venezuelan government to its knees, blame Venezuelan socialism (essentially nationalization of the oil company) for bringing “starvation to the people,” and offer a measly $21 million in “humanitarian aid.”

As the United States is completely devoid of any print or TV media, it falls upon internet media such as this website to perform the missing function of honest journalism.  

As for the alleged starvation and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, Zayas has this to say:

The December 2017 and March 2018 reports of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) list food crises in 37 countries. “The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is not among them.”

“In 2017, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela requested medical aid from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the plea was rejected, because Venezuela ‘is still a high-income country … and as such is not eligible’.”

The “crisis” in Venezuela “cannot be compared with the humanitarian crises in Gaza, Yemen, Libya, the Syrian Arab Republic, Iraq, Haiti, Mali, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, or Myanmar, among others.”

In order to discredit selected governments, failures in the field of human rights are maximized so as to make violent overthrow more palatable. Human rights are being “weaponized” against rivals.

In paragraph 37 of his report, de Zayas says:

  “Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns with the intention of forcing them to surrender. Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees. A difference, perhaps, is that twenty-first century sanctions are accompanied by the manipulation of public opinion through ‘fake news’, aggressive public relations and a pseudo-human rights rhetoric so as to give the impression that a human rights ‘end’ justifies the criminal means. There is not only a horizontal juridical world order governed by the Charter of the United Nations and principles of sovereign equality, but also a vertical world order reflecting the hierarchy of a geopolitical system that links dominant States with the rest of the world according to military and economic power. It is the latter, geopolitical system that generates geopolitical crimes, hitherto in total impunity.”

He expresses concern about the level of polarization and disinformation that surrounds every narrative about Venezuela. 

“A disquieting media campaign seeks to force observers into a preconceived view that there is a ‘humanitarian crisis’ in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. An independent expert must be wary of hyperbole, bearing in mind that ‘humanitarian crisis’ is a term of art (terminus technicus) that can be misused as a pretext for military intervention.”

In order to discredit selected governments, failures in the field of human rights are maximized so as to make violent overthrow more palatable. Human rights are being ‘weaponized’ against rivals.

A political solution is blocked because “certain countries [the US] do not want to see a peaceful solution to the Venezuelan conflict and prefer to prolong the suffering of the people of that country, with the expectation that the situation will reach the threshold of a humanitarian crisis and provoke a military intervention to impose a regime change.”

Washington’s attack on Venezuela is in violation of established international law.

“The principles of non-intervention and non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign States belong to customary international law and have been reaffirmed in General Assembly resolutions, notably 2625 (XXV) and 3314 (XXIX), and in the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. Article 32 of the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, adopted by the General Assembly in 1974, stipulates that no State may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another State in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights.”  Chapter 4, article 19, of the Charter of the OAS stipulates that “No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements.”

Zayas reports that an atmosphere of intimidation accompanied the mission, attempting to pressure him into a predetermined matrix. He received letters from American-financed NGOs asking him not to proceed on his own, dictating to him the report he should write. Prior to his arrival in Venezuela, a propaganda campaign was launched against him on Facebook and Twitter questioning his integrity and accusing  him of bias. (See this) 

As Washington’s sanctions and currency manipulations constitute geopolitical crimes, Zayas asks what reparations are due to the victims of sanctions.  He recommends that the International Criminal Court investigate Washington’s coercive measures that can cause death from malnutrition and lack of medicines and medical equipment. 

“Despite being the first UN official to visit and report from Venezuela in 21 years, Mr de Zayas said his research into the causes of the country’s economic crisis has so far largely been ignored by the UN and the media, and caused little debate within the Human Rights Council.

“He believes his report has been ignored because it goes against the popular narrative that Venezuela needs regime change.” (See this)

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and an abundance of other natural resources including gold, bauxite and coltan. But under the Maduro government they’re not accessible to US and transnational corporations.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

This article was originally published in August 2014.

There is a scene from Danny Devito’s fine film Hoffa when Jimmy Hoffa is organizing a teamsters’ strike in the midst of WW2. As he walks through the trucking company yard the strikers there keep asking him what and when. One of his subordinates runs up to him and tells him “Tobin called and said to call it off Jimmy!” Hoffa ponders for but a moment and says very loudly “Everyone says I’m wrong so I must be right!” And he signals the men to move forward towards the corporate entrance.

For that minority of us who reject both this Military Industrial Empire and its Two Party ‘One Party’ system, we are marginalized and ostracized. For that smaller segment of our grouping that holds to most of the conspiracy theories of empire… Wow!! We are just simply crazy! Factor out the way out theories of aliens, the shape shifting reptilians,  etc. That is not what this writer is speaking about. No, I and others who study history and truth (which our controlled mainstream media is directed not to cover) are labeled crazy for believing:

• FDR and his inner circle, with help from Churchill and the Brits, knew of the soon to be attack on Pearl Harbor. They chose to keep the Air Craft carriers out at sea while allowing the Japanese to proceed with their plans, so as to get us into the war.
• FDR and Churchill kept putting off the plans for a second front (Operation Overlord) for as long as possible. This agenda was to allow the Germans and Russians to continue killing each other off. If Stalin did not threaten them with making a separate peace deal with Hitler after the German defeat at Stalingrad, the invasion of Normandy might have been pushed back even further.
• Truman gave the OK to drop A-bombs on Japan for two major reasons: A) to let the Russians know that we had the bomb and could make more than one at a time and B) to keep Russia from getting into Japan before the war ended. As far as the excuse given of ‘saving American lives‘ that would have been naturally very true if in fact we had to invade Japan. The real fact is that the Russians had already brokered a deal allowing the Japanese high command to surrender and keep the emperor… that was all that was needed in the spring of ‘45.
• The U-2 flights of the 50s and early 60s proved that the Soviet Union was much weaker than us militarily, especially in the area of volume of missiles and other weaponry. This fact was withheld not only from the American public, but from most of the Congress as well. When Eisenhower, too late in the game (as he knew the truth for most of his presidency) warned us in his farewell address of the Military Industrial Complex, the die had been cast, and jingoism was in full gear, so much so that…
• When JFK had his epiphany, beginning after the Bay of Pigs and finalized during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he went from a cold warrior to a born again patriot. Sadly, the mechanism for the Coup d’Etat was churning rapidly. Oswald was nothing more than a Naval Intelligence undercover operative who was used as a patsy for the killing of our president. Anyone who studies the many facts and chain of events in this story knows that as David Ferrie told Jim Garrison “It’s an enigma inside of an enigma“. It wasn’t the mob that killed JFK (maybe the shooters came from the mob) rather it was elements within our own government that ordered the hit and masterminded the cover-up.

• Robert Kennedy knew too much concerning the Coup d’Etat…and when he was on the verge of becoming President in ‘68 (“And now it’s on to Chicago and the nomination”) … boom! Another patsy, Sirhan, was mind controlled to take the fall. As for Martin Luther King, in ’67 he stopped focusing on Civil Rights and lashed out at the Vietnam War (“… the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today- my own government“) and then in spring of ‘68 first ventured  involvement into labor unrest (Memphis sanitation workers strike) and … boom!
• Anyone with half a mind knows that Reagan and his crew orchestrated the deal with the Iranians in the fall of ’80 to hold off releasing the hostages until after the election. Come on, I mean minutes after assuming office on Jan 20^th 1981 Iran releases the hostages! Imagine how such an underhanded act should have been covered by our news media? It wasn’t and still isn’t even discussed much.
• Bush Sr. on July 25^th 1990 sent his Ambassador April Glaspie to meet with Saddam Hussein. During their conversation she stated “We have no opinion in your Arab/Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait… Secretary of State Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.” Then, Iraq went into Kuwait and the trap was set. You know the rest. (see image below, retreating Iraqi forces)

• The election of 2000 was one of the most heinous acts of fraud and trickery in the history of American politics. Many books have been written on it, so this writer will not waste his time on the details. Even Vincent Bugliosi, who I hardly ever agree with on things, wrote eloquently (The Betrayal of America) on this disgraceful episode. This all connects, according to most conspiracy researchers to….
• September 11^th 2001. I mean, how dumb the American public was (and is) to disregard the myriad of facts of what transpired that day. The coincidence (?) that on that very day NORAD was conducting Operation Vigilant Guardian involving the fake hijacking of airliners…while the real thing was going on! How many demolition experts have to be assembled to contradict the government version of the two towers going down like pancakes from burning jet fuel? The truth of the matter, according to these experts, is that there had to have been explosives planted in those buildings to coincide with the planes crashing into them. The You Tube of the three NYC veteran firemen watching it happen in real time on a television screen is interesting. One remarks “Did you see that? Boom boom boom! “And another one answers “Controlled demolition.”  Forget all the countless facts concerning this case, and just digest the two given above. Could Bin Laden and his gang get the access and lengthy time it would take to place highly intricate and carefully hidden explosives into both buildings? Come on!
• After he sat like a dodo in that Sarasota classroom for seven minutes after the 2^nd plane hit the tower, Bush Junior is taken on a cross country tour on Air Force One. He then returns home to direct the American public to “Go out and shop“, while he sits with his handlers to plot the upcoming invasion of Iraq… oh sorry, I mean Afghanistan. No! Richard Clarke was told to find the evidence to connect Hussein and Iraq with 9/11. A little more than a year later, and countless cherry pickings of what the Bush gang called intelligence, they get Colin Powell to ‘sell his soul‘ and deliver to the UN (see image right) the best fiction your tax money could buy… and soon after we invade and occupy and you know the rest. The Congress, like the lap dogs they were (and are) goes along to get along with the Bush/Cheney gang’s agenda. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year are thrown down the rabbit hole of military spending… until it reaches around 50% of our federal tax dollars. Imagine how many roads, schools, libraries, clinics, hospitals, police and fire personnel … that a portion of that increased spending could have been used to save our economy? Finally, to add insult to injury we have …
• Mr. Hope and Change 2008. Mr. Obama speaks like a preacher and acts like a stooge for the empire. He promised to close Gitmo (never happened). He promised to deal with torture and then allowed extraordinary rendition (grabbing someone here in the USA and rushing them, hooded and manacled, to some foreign nation that does in fact conduct torture). Under his stewardship (or lack of) A) Military spending reached an all time high (56% in 2011 fiscal year) and we keep our military footprint in the Middle East, B) As a candidate in 2008, he took in almost three times the amount of donations from the private health care industry than McCain- thus ObamaCare was a gift to the private health insurers. His handlers, and those of the ‘Two Party/ One Party System, would not allow Medicare for All, C) He continued the phony and disgraceful bailout of the Wall Street banksters. Obama could have spent a fraction of that TARP money by putting the ailing bankster banks and investment houses into receivership, and keeping the employees at their jobs. By having Uncle Sam purchase all the bad mortgage related paper for 10 and 20 cents on the dollar, many foreclosed homes would be off the market. Foreclosed homeowners would keep their homes through lengthier mortgages, thus lower monthly payments. This would not only raise the value of all homes, but stimulate the economy. Builders, cabinetmakers, hardware wholesale and retail businesses… every aspect of the housing industry would see great progress. Not to be. Instead, Obama allowed the corporate beast to create an ever increasing rental housing machine that makes serfs out of more and more of us.

“It’s all right Ma, I’m only bleeding!“

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his work posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Jared Rodriguez / Truthout

The details of what took place at the Hanoi Summit strongly suggests that President Donald Trump has joined the neocons in their quest to strangle the North Korean economy and bring about regime change. As it happens, the Trump delegation did not negotiate in good faith or make an honest attempt to resolve the nuclear issue but, instead, piled on a list of unrelated demands that they knew would blow up the summit. Multiple reports point to John Bolton as the author of the plan to sabotage the meetings which seems to be the case. Check out this excerpt from the Pearls and Irritations website:

“In his article on the Hanoi talks … Richard Broinowski reported that a senior Asian diplomat, in Canberra, had told him that an important reason for the break-up of the talks was that Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, had persuaded Trump to add, at the end, the demand that DPRK also disclose it’s holdings of chemical and biological weapons.This report has now been confirmed by a report published in the March 4th edition of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which cites a statement by the DPRK Foreign Minister, Ri Yong-Ho, in Hanoi, that “John Bolton disrupted the talks by demanding that North Korea disclose it’s chemical and biological arsenal as well as it’s nuclear arsenals”. This would seem to answer the question I posed in my article on whether or not a spanner had been thrown into the works and if so, by whom? Not unusually, there seems to have been no report of this highly salient fact by western mainstream media.” (John Menadue–Pearls and Irritations)

The new list of demands was confirmed in an article at The Guardian on Thursday which said:

“The US is demanding North Korea destroy all its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons before receiving any sanctions relief…Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said the US president was open to another summit with Kim, but that the US wanted to discuss a “big deal” involving complete disarmament in return for comprehensive sanctions relief….

“Nobody in the administration advocates a step-by-step approach. In all cases the expectation is the complete denuclearisation of North Korea as a condition for all the other steps being taken,” the official said, confirming that Trump had also called on Kim to get rid of all North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons at the same time.” (“North Korea must give up all nuclear weapons before any sanctions relief, says US “, The Guardian)

The Trump administration’s objective in changing the focus from nuclear weapons to a more comprehensive disarmament was not intended to simply “move the goalposts” but to undermine mutual trust to the extent that future negotiations would be impossible. Trump’s performance in Hanoi suggests that he is now willing to participate in a confrontational and potentially-explosive strategy in exchange for the tacit support of the neocons and foreign policy establishment elites who have opposed any cooperation with the DPRK from the very beginning. Trump supporters– who felt that the president was sincere in promising a non-interventionist “America First” foreign policy– should pay close attention to these recent developments as they portend a dramatic reversal in Trump’s stated position. The President appears to be abandoning his campaign promises to garner greater political support from his former adversaries.

There’s always been ferocious opposition to negotiations with the DPRK, particularly from foreign policy elites see great benefit in preserving the status quo. It is in their interests to continue the 65 year-long occupation of a divided peninsula in a strategically located region. Washington’s military presence allows it counter emerging rivals and assert its dominance a full 10,000 miles from its own shores. That is why any movement towards constructive dialogue, peace or reunification is avoided like the plague. It’s because elites figure that peace will inevitably undermine public support for a permanent US military presence in the South.

Maintaining a 30,000-man garrison in South Korea also allows Washington to preserve its role as regional policeman, further encircle China and Russia, dictate how the South Korean Army may or may not be used under the terms of the Combined Forces Command, strengthen America’s influence in the critical Asia-Pacific theater, and provide the essential military component needed to implement America’s “pivot to Asia.” For these reasons, foreign policy elites oppose any change in the present arrangement, which is why they have used their agents in the intelligence community, the administration, the military and the media to torpedo any move towards resolution or reconciliation.

Some readers might remember how the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, tried to sabotage the upcoming summit just a month before Trump was scheduled to meet Kim Jong un in Hanoi. Coats appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on January 29, 2019– accompanied by the Directors of the CIA and FBI– and told the Committee that, in the his estimation, Kim would never give up his nukes:

“We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD (weapons of mass destruction) capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.”

Coats testimony was clearly crafted for political purposes. He was not trying to inform the senate about a sensitive matter of national security. He was using his high office to apply political pressure on the president. He chose to use the prestigious setting of the Senate chamber to throw cold water on Trump’s policy of engagement and dialogue. His objective was to reinforce feelings of distrust towards Kim Jong un and to strengthen public opposition to the summit. Coat’s performance provides another glaring illustration of how politicized the intelligence community has become.

Coat’s appearance on Capitol Hill was the first shot fired at the Trump-Kim bandwagon. The next, and perhaps most effective was Bolton’s bombshell delivered during the talks themselves. Bolton’s additional demands gave Kim no choice but to end the meetings and delay any further concessions on denuclearization. Clearly, this was Bolton’s objective from the get go.

The summit was followed by an intensive propaganda campaign aimed at shifting the blame for the meetings’ failure from the Trump camp to North Korea. Hundreds of cookie-cutter articles– many featuring scratchy satellite photos of partially abandoned bunkers– popped up in headlines across the country overnight. The obvious aim of this saturation campaign was to convince the American people that Kim was reopening his ballistic missile sites in clear violation of the agreement he made with President Trump in Singapore. The media was trying to drive home the same point as DNI chief Dan Coats, that is, that North Korea cannot be trusted and that Kim is “a cheater”. Of course, a closer analysis of these articles, suggests that it is not Kim that can’t be trusted but the unscrupulous western media that consistently shapes its narrative to suit the interests of foreign policy elites.

Let’s test this theory on the piece that was published on March 5, by the New York Times titled “North Korea Has Started Rebuilding Key Missile-Test Facilities, Analysts Say”. Here’s an excerpt:

“Speaking to lawmakers behind closed doors at South Korea’s National Assembly on Tuesday, officials from its National Intelligence Service indicated that North Korea had been rebuilding the Tongchang-ri facilities even before the Hanoi summit meeting, South Korean news media reported on Wednesday.

North Korea may have wanted to rebuild them in order to make their dismantling more dramatic if the Hanoi summit produced a deal with the Americans, the intelligence officials were quoted as saying. Or it may have wanted the option to resume rocket tests if the Hanoi talks broke down, they said.”(New York Times)

“Resume rocket tests”? What rocket tests? By the Times own admission, the facilities were used “to launch satellites into orbit and test engines”. The site is a satellite launching pad not a ballistic missile launching pad. There’s a big difference, and I would argue, the Times knows what that difference is, they merely fudge the details in order to hoodwink their readers. And the reason they want to hoodwink their readers is so their readers believe that North Korea cannot be trusted. That’s how war propaganda works, by helping to strengthen public opposition to peaceful negotiations and a final resolution of the nuclear crisis.

And let’s be clear, Kim has kept his word, he has not resumed the nuclear weapons tests or the ballistic missile tests. Also, the United States can call “the satellite program a front for developing intercontinental ballistic missiles”, but that doesn’t change the fact that a satellite launch site is a satellite launch site. It is not a ballistic missile site. Check out this short clip from Tim Shorrock at http://peaceinkoreanews.timshorrock.com

“As I pointed out yesterday on Twitter, the US Defense Intelligence Agency, in a report earlier this year, classified Sohae as a satellite launch site that “supported satellite launch cycles in 2012 and 2016,” NOT as a missile site.” …

[Sohae] is a space launch center that was completed in 2011. There was a lot of work and a lot of money sunk into it. North Korea, despite what a lot of people think, has a serious space program. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Secondly, it has been used trying to put satellites in space and launching space vehicles. It has not been used for missile tests. …

OK, got it? It’s a satellite launch facility where engines for ICBMs have been tested. But it’s not a missile site…

….the stories from CSIS and NBC are clearly designed to drum up support for a return to the more confrontational, no-compromise “maximum pressure” campaign that brought US-DPRK tensions to a boiling point in the first place. That’s propaganda, not news.”(“CSIS and NBC provide a case study in war propaganda”, Tim Shorrock)

Bottom line: Kim hasn’t done anything wrong and he hasn’t violated the terms of the deal he made with Trump. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Trump who promised to discontinue the provocative
joint-military exercises the US conducts twice a year with South Korea, but went back on his word. Here’s the story:

On Thursday, the United States and South Korea began weeklong joint military drills on the Korean peninsula in clear violation of the agreement that was signed by President Donald Trump and North Korea Chairman Kim Jong un in Singapore in June, 2018. The military exercises, which are called “Dong Maeng” or “Alliance”, are a rehearsal for an invasion and “decapitation” of the government in Pyongyang. And while the maneuvers have largely been ignored in the western media, they were sharply criticized by North Korea’s state-run KCNA which issued the following statement:

“The threatening moves of the South Korean military and the US are a clear violation of the DPRK-US joint statement (in Singapore) in which both parties agreed to reduce hostilities and tension. These drills undermine the desire of the Korean people and the international community for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”

It’s not clear whether President Trump or South Korean President Moon Jae-in approved the drills or not. It could be that both country’s military leaders simply made the decision by themselves. But doesn’t that suggest that their agendas are more closely aligned with the foreign policy bigshots then they are with people who want to resolve the nuclear issue, ease sanctions, normalize relations and end the 65 year-long war with North Korea?

The fact that powerful people are trying to derail the peace process doesn’t make peace any less desirable. It just means that the peacemakers are going to have to show as much resolve as the warmongers. Kim Jong un appears to be determined to meet the challenge head-on and try to put this 7 decade-long nightmare behind him. That’s the kind of doggedness it’s going to take to succeed. We wish him luck.

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Syria and its allies are preparing their missiles for a forthcoming battle with Israel if Tel Aviv decides to open fire against significant military positions under the control of the Syrian army.

Well informed sources say that “it all depends on the direction the Israeli elections will take. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu estimates his chances are high enough to win a second term, then he will not venture any time soon into a new confrontation with Syria and its allies. The date of the next battle will be postponed. But, if he believes he will lose the election, then the possibility of his initiating a battle becomes very high. A serious battle between Israel on one hand and Syria and Iran on the other would be sufficient enough to postpone the elections. Netanyahu doesn’t have many choices: either he wins the election and postpones the corruption court case against him, or he goes to jail”.

US European Command (EUCOM) recently send military airplanes, along with 200 US servicemen, carrying THAAD anti-ballistic missile defence systems to be deployed in southern Israel. The official reason for deployment of this very modern and sophisticated system is said to be preparation for a joint drill between Israel and the US. THAAD will enhance the already existing Israeli anti-missile interception defence systems. These are “Iron Dome” for short-range, “David Sling” for tactical missiles and “The Arrow” for intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“The US doesn’t trust the Israeli system, and thus the THAAD system was deployed to hunt down any missiles launched by the Syrian or Iranian forces deployed in Syria as these promised in case of a battle triggered and provoked by Netanyahu. Both Syria and Iran promised immediate retaliation if Israel bombs any significant military positions in those countries. This is why the US has decided to take part in this confrontation, convinced that any future battle will be devastating for all parties”.

President Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Tehran made it clear to all involved in the Syrian war, especially the EU and the US, that Damascus will never ask Iran to withdraw from Syria to please third parties or in exchange for reconstruction or a normalisation of the relationship between the Arabs and Syria or between the West and Syria.

“The visit of the Syrian President to Iran helped President Putin clarify to his visitor Netanyahu that Moscow cannot help Israel with its request to get Iran out of Syria. The relationship between Syria and Iran is robust – Putin explained to his guest, as Damascus has learned –and Russia is in no position to ask for a change in the strategic relationship between the two countries”, said the source.

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Featured image is from EJM

To all those who share our sense of urgency about the worsening international situation, and the grave danger that war poses for the world today, we issue this Appeal for a united and powerful response.

At this critical moment, ending militarism, aggression and war, averting climate catastrophe, and tackling poverty, social disparity and related global problems should be humanity’s top priorities. Instead, political elites, especially in the countries of the NATO alliance including Canada, are pushing the world in the opposite direction.

We are witnessing the emergence of a ‘new cold war’ and the deliberate cultivation of Russophobia and Sino-phobia, along with other forms of fear-mongering and demonization. In North America, rearmament, bullying tactics and glorification of militarism seem the order of the day. While US President Donald Trump has been particularly shrill in his attacks against peace, his Democratic Party rivals frequently attempt to out-flank him with their hawkish rhetoric. The principles of international law – respect for the full equality and sovereignty of all countries, non-interference, and the resolution of disputes through peaceful negotiation, not threats and aggression – are being increasingly violated. Important agreements such as the Iran Nuclear deal (JCPOA) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces/INF treaty are being unilaterally cancelled.

The arms race is accelerating, and weapons systems relentlessly “modernized”. Globally, military spending is now over a trillion dollars a year, with the expanding US military budget leading the way. Foreign military bases are spreading like a metastasizing cancer, and the world’s armed forces are now the largest single global source of carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption.

As regional and international flashpoints sharpen, the danger of global war – involving the main nuclear powers – looms ever larger. The NATO encirclement of the Russian Federation is tightening, and economic and military pressures, as well as propaganda attacks against the People’s Republic of China are growing. Backed by Washington, Israel’s rulers are escalating their repressive, apartheid policies against the Palestinian people in besieged Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Imperialist “regime change” campaigns are targeting Venezuela, Nicaragua and other countries around the world. The US occupation of Afghanistan is now entering its 18th year, with no end in sight. Canada’s arms sales are helping the Saudi regime conduct a vicious war against the people of Yemen. Even the hopeful signs of progress on the Korean peninsula towards a peaceful resolution of that longstanding conflict are being undermined by hawkish forces inside the US Administration and the military-industrial complex.

The widespread advance of racist, national chauvinist, and neo-fascist movements is adding to global instability. The deepening economic crisis of capitalism is fuelling increased rivalries, trade and tariff wars, even predictions of another global economic meltdown. The crisis of climate change is already bringing destructive weather systems, droughts, rising ocean levels, and other dire consequences.

Canada’s Role

In the face of this rapidly deteriorating situation, Canada should and must be a voice of reason and restraint, and a principled advocate for peace and disarmament. Instead, however, Ottawa has become one of the most bellicose voices marching to the ‘drums of war’. The current Liberal government of Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland has tilted Canadian foreign and defence policies in a far-right, militarist and interventionist direction, and its bloated war budget squanders valuable resources which would be better spent on socially useful purposes. Any hope that this government would slash carbon emissions, or prioritize the needs of workers, Indigenous peoples, the poor and marginalized, seniors and youth, has vanished. Instead, Canadian military spending is skyrocketing, from the current levels of $20 billion, to a projected $36 billion by the middle of the next decade.

Across Canada, a number of useful and important peace & solidarity initiatives are taking place. But we must face the reality that overall, the peace movement in Canada and internationally today is not sufficient to address these many dangerous and interrelated threats. Unlike earlier periods – the 1980s with its huge mobilizations against the danger of nuclear war, or the early 2000s when millions protested the invasion of Iraq – the anti-war movement today is far smaller. The doctrine of “responsibility to protect”, which the imperialist powers use as a pretext for their geopolitical agenda, has disoriented and neutralized popular resistance.

Today it is more urgent than ever to foster greater cooperation, and unity of action among all of the forces for peace, solidarity and social justice. In the view of the Canadian Peace Congress, the absolutely imperative task of our times is to build powerful mass mobilizations for a decisive shift in Canadian and global politics, away from confrontation and militarism, and towards peace and disarmament. Only such a change can give the human race a realistic chance to save the planet from war and environmental disaster, and to improve the lives of billions of people.

But success requires far more than well-meaning phrases. Common action to transform Canadian foreign and defence polices toward peace and disarmament is needed now! We call upon all the diverse forces in our movement to set aside differences, unite around our shared concerns, and build campaigns to push back the threat of war and militarism, before it is too late!

The Canadian Peace Congress stands committed to this urgent and decisive goal and welcomes dialogue and joint action with any and all peace and solidarity groups and other concerned organizations and movements to help work for its realization.

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Marco Rubio, the neocon senator from Florida, considers a suspicious power outage across Venezuela to be funny. He would no doubt feel different if his mother was on a ventilator in a Caracas hospital—then again. 

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A few weeks ago the #MaduroRegime blamed iguanas for causing a large electric grid blackout.

We have now received the first video of what caused tonight’s unprecedented nationwide blackout in #Venezuela: #SinLuz pic.twitter.com/TnYevG2GA0

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 8, 2019

Rubio’s little joke is comparable to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s national television chortle over the rape and murder of Gaddafi in Libya. 

However, the top award for sociopathic viciousness remains on Madeleine Albright’s mantle of accomplishments. Albright was a protege of the late Zbigniew Brzezinski. She also went on national television and declared the engineered murder of half a million Iraqi children during the medieval siege of Iraq to be “worth it.” For her service to the Empire, she received the Senator H. John Heinz III Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award handed out annually by the Jefferson Awards Foundation.

With no food, electricity, or medicine, hospitals in #Venezuela are closer to the 1800s than 2019. This is what a socialist society looks like… pic.twitter.com/a1jcGHIOzS

— Prof. Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) March 8, 2019

Mr. Hanke, an economics professor at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, ignores the intensified economic warfare waged by the United States against the people of Venezuela. Indeed, socialism is a failed system. However, in the case of Maduro and Venezuela, its inherent failures were helped along by a strong dose of covert subversion by the US. 

“That sabotage by the private sector has taken the form of hoarding of selected items, price speculation, keeping supermarket shelves empty, sending food shipments to neighboring countries, even setting food warehouse stockpiles on fire. This purposely-generated scarcity creates chaos and discontent, further undermining the government,” writes Joyce Nelson. 

The use of “financial weapons” is detailed in the Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare booklet, made public by WikiLeaks. The document has been described as an instruction manual for subversion of nations unwilling to submit to neoliberal bankster loan shark schemes. 

What's happening with Venezuela? @WikiLeaks' publication of US coup manual FM3-05.130, Unconventional Warfare [UW], provides insight

DOS=Department of State
IC=Intelligence Community
UWOA=UW operations area
ARSOF=US Army Special Operations Forceshttps://t.co/8q4oQfsMzY pic.twitter.com/ez0tGqheSw

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 28, 2019

“WikiLeaks drew particular attention to a segment of the publication entitled ‘Financial Instrument of U.S. National Power and Unconventional Warfare.’ This section outlines how the US government, in its own words, uses ‘financial weapons’ to wage ‘economic warfare’ against foreign governments that try to pursue an independent path,” writes Ben Norton. 

The Pentagon document explains how the US “can use financial power as a weapon in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war” and adds that, “manipulation of U.S. financial strength can leverage the policies and cooperation of state governments.”

Rubio has continued to tweet out jokes as babies are manually ventilated in dark hospitals and ICU life-support systems fail. 

Tonight the “Baghdad Bob” of #Caracas @jorgerpsuv revealed I caused the nationwide & ongoing electric power outage in #Venezuela.

My apologies to people of Venezuela. I must have pressed the wrong thing on the “electronic attack” app I downloaded from Apple. My bad. https://t.co/5oZURMSnrB

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 8, 2019

According to Telesur, a satellite television network funded by the Venezuelan government, the widespread power outage is part of an “electric war” waged by the US. 

“We want to send a message to the international community: just three minutes after the attack, Marco Rubio, once again, as a crime reporter, reported on the event that was happening in our country. Mr. Rubio, I want to inform you that, in a few hours, the Venezuelan people and the international community will know the truth. We’ll know that your rotten hands—supported by your lackeys who permanently attack the Venezuelan people—are involved in this event,” Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez announced on Thursday. 

A premature baby in cardiac arrest in a hospital with no electric power, #Venezuela has over 15h with no power #MaduroRegime blames an “Electric War” led by the US https://t.co/wBLqe2HTf9

— Juan Giarrizzo 🇻🇪 (@Juanmicroguy) March 8, 2019

Venezuela said its Guri dam, one of the largest hydroelectric dams in the world, was sabotaged by a US subversion operation.

“The government is saying that the opposition and its leader Juan Guaido are behind this attack, as well as the US,” Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reported from Caracas. 

Marco Rubio’s callous attempts to make fun of the suffering of the Venezuelan people reveals the psychosis of the neocons and their fellow travelers. 

They are responsible for mass murder and genocide, most recently in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and much of Africa, particularly Somalia. Iran is also suffering from punitive sanctions. More alarming, the neocons and their “humanitarian interventionist” bedfellows are behind efforts to aggressively confront Russia and China, two countries bristling with nuclear warheads. 

The latest attempt to take down Venezuela and punish its people for electing a government outside the stranglehold of the globalists has failed. 

In the weeks ahead, we can expect more serious and deadly subversion operations conducted by the US. This will inspire Marco Rubio to send out more tweets mocking the suffering of millions of Venezuelans. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

If you repeat your own lies enough—so goes the apocryphal Goebbels quote—you start to believe them yourself. For two decades, the Venezuelan opposition and its supporters in Washington have smeared Hugo Chávez and now his successor, Nicolás Maduro, as despotic strongmen kept in power solely through military force and paltry payouts to the poor. So it’s no surprise that they are once again underestimating both Chavismo and the resilience of its supporters today.

Underestimating the People

We’ve seen this all before: On April 11 of 2002, the Venezuelan opposition—according to the most credible accounts—unleashed snipers on its own supporters and used the ensuing deaths to justify a coup against Hugo Chávez. But the opposition dramatically overplayed its hand and underestimated the Chavista grassroots, who it routinely smeared as the blind followers of a populist strongman. When coup leaders abolished all branches of government and scrapped the constitution, hundreds of thousands of poor Venezuelans poured into the streets demanding, and eventually forcing, Chávez’s return to power.

Much has changed since 2002. A perfect storm of Chávez’s death, collapsing global oil prices, a mismanaged system of currency controls, ferocious aggression from the opposition and—more recently—U.S. sanctions, has thrown the Venezuelan economy into a tailspin. Many of the impressive accomplishments of the Bolivarian Revolution—in health care, education and poverty reduction—have quickly evaporated, producing frustration, confusion and desperation among even Chavismo’s most hardline supporters.

So when opposition backbencher Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president of Venezuela on January 23, he and his co-conspirators thought the military would quickly fragment before eventually falling in line behind the self-proclaimed president. Things didn’t work that way: Aside from a handful of soldiers and the U.S. military attaché, the Venezuelan armed forces remained solidly behind Nicolás Maduro. And despite large demonstrations both for and against the government, there have been no signs of sustained, mass resistance in the streets in favor of the coup either.

Why? In part because the frustration many poor Venezuelans feel today is just that: frustration. They are fed up with the economic crisis, and many place at least a share of the blame on Maduro. But as in the past, most don’t see frustration as justifying undemocratic regime change, much less foreign intervention—which the majority of Venezuelans oppose. What’s more, wanting the economy to improve has not led many to identify with opposition parties that still represent the most elite sectors of Venezuelan society and have offered no credible solutions to the economic crisis.

The Trojan Horse of Humanitarian Aid

But if much has changed, much has also stayed the same: Unable to believe that the poor might hold such a nuanced position, the opposition has again overplayed its hand and bet it all on yet another failed coup. February 23 marked one month since Guaidó’s self-coronation, and also the expiration of the 30-day period during which any interim president must hold new elections. According to even the opposition’s contrived reading of the Venezuelan Constitution, since Guaidó never called those elections, he has no remaining claim to the presidency. And so it was that on February 23, Guaidó resorted to increasingly desperate measures, attempting to provoke a crisis by forcing deliveries of US-provided “humanitarian aid” across the border.

It’s not difficult to debunk this false humanitarianism. The United Nations refused to participate in what it deemed “politicized” aid shipments, and the Red Cross denounced the border charade as “not humanitarian aid”—and rebuked the unauthorized use of Red Cross insignia by opposition forces. Given that Contra war criminal Elliott Abrams is now in charge of U.S. policy in Venezuela, it’s worth recalling that U.S.-backed Contras used the Red Cross insignia toward similar ends in Nicaragua.

And then there’s also basic math: While the opposition mounted a spectacle to deliver a few million dollars in aid, U.S. sanctions have already cost Venezuela billions, and will cost billions more. Economist Mark Weisbrot estimates the death toll of the sanctions to be “in the thousands or tens of thousands so far,” with more deaths from Trump’s draconian tightening of the sanctions almost guaranteed.

In contrast, the Trump government essentially handed over the keys of Citgo’s bank accounts and assets—worth around $7 billion—to Guaidó, who has also demanded control of more than a billion dollars’ worth of Venezuelan gold held by the Bank of England. And if we harbored any illusions about the humanitarian credentials of the Venezuelan opposition, it’s worth noting that it routinely attacks a social welfare infrastructure it associates with Chavismo—most recently burning a warehouse where subsidized food bundles known as CLAPs were packaged and distributed.

Provocation on the Border

On February 23, as in 2002, the opposition sought to sow blood and chaos to justify its coup, but this time it was unsuccessful. Any objective analysis of video footage from the Colombian border makes this clear: On the Venezuelan side, Venezuelan troops were standing in a single line behind riot shields. On the Colombian side, masked opposition protesters hurled molotov cocktails toward them. When two “aid” trucks suddenly burst into flames, Guaidó and most of the media immediately blamed the fire on Maduro. So overwhelming was this media narrative that few observers seemed to notice that the trucks never reached the Venezuelan side, and were almost certainly ignited by those same molotovs.

Desperate for any pretext to justify foreign intervention, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) even blamed Maduro when an opposition lawmaker and his aide were “poisoned” on the Colombian side of the border. Despite an utter lack of any evidence, the international press ran with the story. But it turned out the assemblyman was apparently drugged and robbed by sex workers he had brought back to his room after a night of partying. And when long-simmering tensions between the Venezuelan military and indigenous Pemones on the southern border with Brazil led to violent clashes and several deaths, their longstanding concerns were opportunistically folded into the opposition narrative about aid deliveries. Opposition parties had been stoking dissent among indigenous groups for years, and many of those involved in clashes were less concerned with aid shipments than with what they perceived as years of corrupt military activity in the region.

The opposition has been oddly silent about its own violence, however. When three defecting Venezuelan soldiers hijacked armored personnel carriers, driving them at full speed into the border barriers in order to defect to the Colombian side, they struck a crowd of civilians that included Nicole Kramm, a Chilean photojournalist. Kramm, who was nearly killed in the attack—and whose camera was running the entire time—later described the scene: “This was an attack on civilians. I can’t believe they are being treated as heroes. If I didn’t run, and was 15 centimeters closer, I would not be here to tell you this.”

The Danger Isn’t Over

“Plan A” failed on January 23rd and “Plan B” similarly failed a month later, leaving Guaidó in dire straits and without a clear path forward. When he attempted to reach out to disaffected Chavistas by tweeting that Hugo Chávez would not approve of Maduro’s actions, Guaidó was attacked by his own supporters on Twitter, revealing old tensions simmering within the opposition coalition. And with all other options exhausted, Guaidó and U.S. vice president Mike Pence failed to convince the Lima Group—a regional coalition of mostly right-wing governments and Canada—to support military intervention. With the threat of U.S. intervention stirring dissension even within the cabinet of far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, Guaidó’s coup appears to be on its last legs.

This doesn’t mean that the danger is over, however. On Monday, Guaidó made a less-than-triumphant return to Venezuela and, despite his violation of a travel ban, the government has opted not to arrest him for now. If anything, Maduro will protect him at all costs: Amid threats on Guaidó’s life, the Lima Group has warned of dire consequences should anything happen to him. If Guaidó were to be killed, however, it would almost certainly be at the hands of a Venezuelan right-wing eager to provoke military intervention (the government has dismantled similar plots in the past).

In the coming months, U.S. sanctions will continue to tighten the economic screws, heaping suffering on those who always suffer most—the poorest Venezuelans—while waiting out defections from the military and the population as a whole. In 1990, Nicaraguans voted the Sandinistas out of power, knowing full well that if they didn’t, both U.S. sanctions and the Contra War would continue. With many of the same people once again in charge of U.S. policy today, the strategy remains the same: to “make the economy scream,” in Nixon’s words. This coup may be failing, but Washington will fail and try again. Venezuela can’t afford to fail even once.

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For the first time since war broke out in Syria in 2011, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has travelled to Iran to meet Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

President Assad had only travelled outside of Syria on two other occasions during the war – both times to Russia.

The significance of the trip cannot be understated – it was a message sent to those who orchestrated the proxy war against Syria that Damascus has prevailed and instead of driving a wedge between it and its allies in Moscow and Tehran – it has only drawn these regional powers closer together.

The symbol of solidarity between Syria and Iran comes at a time when Washington finds itself vacillating between a full withdrawal from Syria, a redeployment to Iraq, or an attempt to drag out the conclusion of the Syrian conflict for as long as possible by keeping US forces there indefinitely.

The Washington Post in its article, “Syria’s Assad visits Iran in rare trip abroad,” would admit:

U.S. officials said Trump’s decision authorizing a small number of U.S. troops to stay is a key step in creating a larger multinational observer force that would monitor a so-called safe zone along Syria’s border with Turkey. The buffer zone is meant to prevent clashes between Turkey and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces. It is also aimed at preventing Assad’s forces and Iran-backed fighters from seizing more territory.

The US will also seek to preserve militants – many of which are openly aligned with designated terrorist organizations – still occupying the northern Syrian governorate of Idlib.

While the US has certainly failed in its goal of regime change in Syria and even as it appears weak and confused regarding its policy in Syria and the Middle East in general – its potential to prolong the Syrian conflict and leave the nation more or less permanently divided persists.

Iran is in Syria for Good 

President Assad’s visit to Iran was not only a symbolic gesture of gratitude for Iran’s role in helping Syria prevail over US aggression – it is also a clear sign that Iranian influence has only grown in Syria. Iranian-backed militias have spread across both Syria and Iraq to confront US and Persian Gulf-backed terrorists including various factions of Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) itself.

Washington’s gamble banked on what it had hoped would be a relatively quick regime change operation following along the same lines as the US-backed proxy war in Libya. The Syrian government was meant to fold quickly – the US appears not to have anticipated its resilience nor the eventual Russian military intervention in 2015. Washington may also not have anticipated the scale and efficacy of the commitment made by Tehran.

Instead of liquidating one of Iran’s allies thus further isolating Tehran ahead of US-backed regime change efforts aimed directly at Iran – the terrorist proxies the US and its regional partners sponsored in Syria served as impetus for Tehran to broaden and deepen the presence of its forces – including militias sponsored by Iran – across the region, and specifically in Syria and Iraq.

US policy papers predating the 2011 proxy war against Syria – including the RAND Corporation’s 2009 publication titled, “Dangerous But Not Omnipotent : Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East,” noted that much of Iran’s domestic and regional policies revolved around self-defense.

The RAND paper itself would note:

Iran’s strategy is largely defensive, but with some offensive elements. Iran’s strategy of protecting the regime against internal threats, deterring aggression, safeguarding the homeland if aggression occurs, and extending influence is in large part a defensive one that also serves some aggressive tendencies when coupled with expressions of Iranian regional aspirations. It is in part a response to U.S. policy pronouncements and posture in the region, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Iranian leadership takes very seriously the threat of invasion given the open discussion in the United States of regime change, speeches defining Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” and efforts by U.S. forces to secure base access in states surrounding Iran.

Iran’s significant and long-term investments in sponsoring resistance forces including Hezbollah and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) across the Middle East coupled with Russia’s significant conventional military capabilities left little chance for success for US-sponsored militants – with Russia’s role in Syria preventing a more muscular conventional military response from the US when its proxy forces began to crumble.

The US and its regional partners – particularly Israel – have expressed a determination to dislodge the growing Iranian presence their own proxy war on Syria necessitated. However, despite repeated Israeli airstrikes on Syrian territory – it is clear that such airstrikes alone will accomplish very little and in the long-term even signals weakness that will only further rally Iran’s allies, justify their continued expansion across the region, and further broaden and deepen their positions well beyond Iran’s own borders – making a US-led regime change war against Iran itself a more remote possibility than ever.

America’s Flagging Unipolar Order 

The US faces an ignominious retreat from the Middle East – as well as from other areas around the globe. Its refusal to shift from its 20th century unipolar hegemonic ambitions to a constructive 21st century multipolar player may be closing permanently windows of opportunity that will cost it significantly as others displace its influence and reach in regions like the Middle East.Russia and Iran are clearly benefactors of Washington’s stubbornness. But as Russia and Iran have both repeatedly expressed a desire for more constructive relations with the United States – perhaps policymakers in Washington believe they can risk pursuing destructive hegemonic ambitions to carve out or coerce from the region the best position possible in the Middle East before coming to the table to negotiate.

Tony Cartalucci is Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

Elated, with the single-mindedness of the “We” of the many, suddenly aware of its power, the crowd pours out of the narrow street in which it was crammed, to the spacious Place de la Republique while singing the Marseillaise. It is by far the most popular song among Yellow Vests.

The second most popular is the WWII partisans’ song (Chant des Partisans), though with slightly changed lyrics. Now the song calls for the “toothless”, the “illiterate”, the “slackers”, the “stubborn Gaullois”– as Macron and his servants called the people who refuse to embrace his “reforms” – to rise against the Financial Elite, sparing not tears and blood, just as the French patriots did when they fought against the Germans. Occasionally you can also hear them singing the Internationale, which, anyway, was an adaptation of the Marseillaise.

Originally the song of the French Revolution, La Marseillaise is now the official national anthem of France. It calls “les enfants (the children) de la patrie”, the “citizens” to “take up arms” and raise the “bloody banners” against “tyranny” as the “day of glory” has arrived.

The ghost of the revolution

There is a one dominant analogy which is drawn, indirectly but explicitly by all –  whether by discussing with representatives of the French establishment or by watching the Yellow Vests’ demonstrations or by listening to the slogans and songs of the protesters here in France, the analogy is strongly felt throughout the last three months during which this original movement, despite the unavoidable fatigue, continues its mobilizations, taking by storm the French rural and peri-urban areas, several provincial cities, while now it also attempts to penetrate the “Suburbs”, the forts of the French working class.

The inescapable comparison which appears in a variety of forms, be they planned or spontaneous, is the Great French Revolution of 1789.

Its ghosts seem to haunt the French and their country. Whether it is because they want to dispel its notion or draw inspiration from it, I am not sure, but in the end, this is the analogy which, one way or another, is drawn by everyone; both the demonstrators and those siding with the government.

Anyone who wants to make a political argument sound convincing in today’s France, is rushing to “borrow” a character or a symbol of 1789. “You’re like Mirabeau” a “leftist” critic said lashing out at Mélenchon the other day, accusing him of being overly compromising.

Either through symbols and historical analogies or collective memory, the memory has been passed down through ten generations of the French people. The mother of Europe and modern Democracy faces now up to its past, in search of its future.

France, all of its classes – save perhaps for the English-speaking managers of French multinational corporations and some extreme neo-liberals and neoconservatives who are ashamed of their country’s history – remains inherently proud of its Revolution, even if it shudders at its memory.

The hour of tear gas

Although the Marseillaise announces the coming of the day of glory, for the time being, it is only the “hour of tear gas,” as canisters hellishly rain down upon the demonstration as it leaves the Place de la Republique. “Damn you” I say, talking to myself, having spotted Eric Drouet, the lorry driver who became a “star” of the Vests’ movement, but unable to catch up to get an interview with him. I was caught in the rampage which scattered the crowd, some of us fleeing to refuge and others pushing on.

Drouet has a few hundred thousand followers on his Facebook page and is now becoming as difficult to talk to as it is to talk to the Prime Minister.

But the tear gas these days in France is no joke. There are many who started their day that morning with both their eyes and arms ending in the evening in a hospital one of these appendages missing.  The police’s crackdown is of course a double-edged sword, having already been condemned by Amnesty International, law experts and government MPs.

On the one hand, it discourages some people from joining the demonstrations but on the other it inspires anger. At the same time, police officers seem to have reached their limit, having spent days and nights in the streets over the last three months, counting injuries without getting paid overtime in order to suppress the demonstrators, among whom they might find their own wives!

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In Memory of Dave Vasey who knew first-hand about official callousness toward life in the small town of Walkerton where people died needlessly of water contamination. Dave dedicated his too short life to fighting against climate injustice, militarization, and the austerity state.

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I read the Canadian news today: “Pipeline expansion should be approved: regulator.”

Regulators ignorantly, negligently, criminally, and in contempt of life, yet again gave the go-ahead to money over incontestable science. Liberal democratic Canada is in league with Brazil’s military dictatorship and the Lima Group in overthrowing the Maduro government in Venezuela, and in deforesting the “lungs of the earth.” Theirs is a triple crime, of thrice proliferating greenhouse gas emissions at this time of the Earth’s sixth great extinction event. Venezuela is all about oil. The pipelines transport high emitting diluted bitumen from the tar sands, and Jair Bolsonaro aims to expand biofuel production (and criminalize the Landless Peasant Movement). These mega-projects involve deforestation of the boreal forest and the tropical Amazon rainforest, destroying the Earth’s major terrestrial carbon sink and amplifying the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Informed Consent

Are these arbiters of life on Earth, Justin Trudeau, Jair Bolsonaro et al, subject to the Nuremberg laws on individual responsibility, with the implication that decision-makers need to be fully informed and not just claim to follow orders? The legal underpinnings of the doctrine of informed consent upholds a standard of knowledge. It came out of the Tuskegee experiments in which Black men were not informed that they were subjects of a medical experiment.

The legal norm of knowledge was based on breast cancer cases in which it was found that women at all levels of education could be fully informed about the state of knowledge about breast cancer and its treatments. Unfortunately, in the sociopathic mill of American legality, “informed consent” in medical practice and in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People turned into its exact opposite – a perfunctory formality, a checklist document that protects power from countersuits. Yet the critical importance of knowing is central. The “ostrich defense,” burying one’s head in the sand, and evasion through plausible deniability, are fundamentally dishonest.

The decisions around pipelines, the tar sands, and deforestation of the boreal and tropical forests, reflect extreme disregard of facts about the state of the climate. Alarmingly, not-knowing, for multiple reasons, characterizes all levels of governmental and nongovernmental bodies. Willful disregard for the full facts also applies to the new standard set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Congress of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 12-year time line aiming to cap temperature rise at 1.5°C ignores the very dynamics of the climate system and the hegemonic principles espoused in the political/economic system. Their climate predictions leave out the dynamics of amplifying feedbacks and are also skewed by leaving out the extent of ice melt in the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctica. The predictions do not include the evidence from the paleoclimate record, which indicates that current greenhouse gas concentrations correlate with alarmingly higher temperatures and sea-level rise, and that in the past, climate change occurred in rapid shifts.

There is a grandiose sense of omnipotence at work, as if this is still the best of all possible worlds, while all evidence points to the inevitable, irreversible melting of all Earth’s ice, and the inevitable mass migrations that will be necessary.

A Barrel of Oil Trumps a Human Life

At the base is the belief that all can be commodified and monetized. The same unit of measurement is used to price a barrel of oil and human life. It is the exchange value of a person’s life, and the barrel of oil has more value in this society. Jonathan Schell, writing about nuclear weapons,¹ describes the exterminism of liberal civilization. Nuclearism did not arise “to face extraordinary danger whether from Germany, Japan or the Soviet Union, but for more deep-seated, unarticulated reasons growing out of its own, freely chosen conceptions of national security… an intrinsic element of the dominant liberal civilization itself – an evil that first grew and still grows from within that civilization rather than being imposed from without.” Schell writes of the “pointless slaughter and destructive fury from the midst of that same liberal civilization.”

In liberalism as infamously enunciated by Margaret Thatcher, there is no such thing as society. More problematic than people’s relationship to the environment is people’s relationship with each other and what to do about power. In much of English literature, even family ties are torn asunder. The main child characters are orphaned or sacrificed for power. 16th century Shakespeare wrote of Romeo and Juliet’s cruel parents, Cordelia’s death due to her narcissistic father King Lear, child-killers Macbeth and entitled Richard III. In Anglophone countries, there is a long history of separating children from their families. 18th century Jonathan Swift wrote of the anti-human, monetized underside of Enlightenment thinking: “A Modest Proposal” recommended that parents could relieve themselves of the responsibility of caring for their children by selling them for food to rich people. What a contrast to writers of former British colonies like Rohinton Mistry who sensitively portrays ordinary decency and caring in the novel Family Matters. Climate historians Bonneuil and Fressoz identify the very specific causes of the climate catastrophe as coming from the British political economic order under liberalism, and that “Anglocene” more helpfully clarifies this era than Anthropocene.

Who do I mean by “et al”? They are people in positions of influence and power who have not taken it upon themselves to be fully informed about the state of the climate or of society: the National Energy Board, corporate shareholders, pension boards, international financial institutions, private banks, and the military/industrial/security complex. How many people in the government have read James Hansen’s 2009 book Storms of My Grandchildren, explaining the climate system? Can they explain climate sensitivity, amplifying feedbacks, carbon sinks, or paleoclimate findings? Do they know what is exempt under the Kyoto Protocol? My experience is that they cannot answer these questions. Do they even know about the Nuclear Ban Treaty and that their ignorance and inaction cause premature death?

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Judith Deutsch is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, and former president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She can be reached at [email protected].

First published on October 30, 2014

For many years after the Vietnam War, we enjoyed the “Vietnam syndrome,” in which US presidents hesitated to launch substantial military attacks on other countries. They feared intense opposition akin to the powerful movement that helped bring an end to the war in Vietnam. But in 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, George H.W. Bush declared, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!”

With George W. Bush’s wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and Barack Obama’s drone wars in seven Muslim-majority countries and his escalating wars in Iraq and Syria, we have apparently moved beyond the Vietnam syndrome. By planting disinformation in the public realm, the government has built support for its recent wars, as it did with Vietnam.

Now the Pentagon is planning to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War by launching a $30 million program to rewrite and sanitize its history. Replete with a fancy interactive website, the effort is aimed at teaching schoolchildren a revisionist history of the war. The program is focused on honoring our service members who fought in Vietnam. But conspicuously absent from the website is a description of the antiwar movement, at the heart of which was the GI movement.

Thousands of GIs participated in the antiwar movement. Many felt betrayed by their government. They established coffee houses and underground newspapers where they shared information about resistance. During the course of the war, more than 500,000 soldiers deserted. The strength of the rebellion of ground troops caused the military to shift to an air war. Ultimately, the war claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans. Untold numbers were wounded and returned with post-traumatic stress disorder. In an astounding statistic, more Vietnam veterans have committed suicide than were killed in the war.

Millions of Americans, many of us students on college campuses, marched, demonstrated, spoke out, sang and protested against the war. Thousands were arrested and some, at Kent State and Jackson State, were killed. The military draft and images of dead Vietnamese galvanized the movement. On November 15, 1969, in what was the largest protest demonstration in Washington, DC, at that time, 250,000 people marched on the nation’s capital, demanding an end to the war. Yet the Pentagon’s website merely refers to it as a “massive protest.”

But Americans weren’t the only ones dying. Between 2 and 3 million Indochinese – in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – were killed. War crimes – such as the My Lai massacre – were common. In 1968, US soldiers slaughtered 500 unarmed old men, women and children in the Vietnamese village of My Lai. Yet the Pentagon website refers only to the “My Lai Incident,” despite the fact that it is customarily referred to as a massacre.

One of the most shameful legacies of the Vietnam War is the US military’s use of the deadly defoliant Agent Orange, dioxin. The military sprayed it unsparingly over much of Vietnam’s land. An estimated 3 million Vietnamese still suffer the effects of those deadly chemical defoliants. Tens of thousands of US soldiers were also affected. It has caused birth defects in hundreds of thousands of children, both in Vietnam and the United States. It is currently affecting the second and third generations of people directly exposed to Agent Orange decades ago. Certain cancers, diabetes, and spina bifida and other serious birth defects can be traced to Agent Orange exposure. In addition, the chemicals destroyed much of the natural environment of Vietnam; the soil in many “hot spots” near former US army bases remains contaminated.

In the Paris Peace Accords signed in 1973, the Nixon administration pledged to contribute $3 billion toward healing the wounds of war and the post-war reconstruction of Vietnam. That promise remains unfulfilled.

Despite the continuing damage and injury wrought by Agent Orange, the Pentagon website makes scant mention of “Operation Ranch Hand.” It says that from 1961 to 1971, the US sprayed 18 million gallons of chemicals over 20 percent of South Vietnam’s jungles and 36 percent of its mangrove forests. But the website does not cite the devastating effects of that spraying.

The incomplete history contained on the Pentagon website stirred more than 500 veterans of the US peace movement during the Vietnam era to sign a petition to Lt. Gen. Claude M. “Mick” Kicklighter. It asks that the official program “include viewpoints, speakers and educational materials that represent a full and fair reflection of the issues which divided our country during the war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.” The petition cites the “many thousands of veterans” who opposed the war, the “draft refusals of many thousands of young Americans,” the “millions who exercised their rights as American citizens by marching, praying, organizing moratoriums, writing letters to Congress,” and “those who were tried by our government for civil disobedience or who died in protests.” And, the petition says, “very importantly, we cannot forget the millions of victims of the war, both military and civilian, who died in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, nor those who perished or were hurt in its aftermath by land mines, unexploded ordnance, Agent Orange and refugee flight.”

Antiwar activists who signed the petition include Tom Hayden and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. “All of us remember that the Pentagon got us into this war in Vietnam with its version of the truth,” Hayden said in an interview with The New York Times. “If you conduct a war, you shouldn’t be in charge of narrating it,” he added.

Veterans for Peace (VFP) is organizing an alternative commemoration of the Vietnam War. “One of the biggest concerns for us,” VFP executive director Michael McPhearson told the Times, “is that if a full narrative is not remembered, the government will use the narrative it creates to continue to conduct wars around the world – as a propaganda tool.”

Indeed, just as Lyndon B. Johnson used the manufactured Tonkin Gulf incident as a pretext to escalate the Vietnam War, George W. Bush relied on mythical weapons of mass destruction to justify his war on Iraq, and the “war on terror” to justify his invasion of Afghanistan. And Obama justifies his drone wars by citing national security considerations, even though he creates more enemies of the United States as he kills thousands of civilians. ISIS and Khorasan (which no one in Syria heard of until about three weeks ago) are the new enemies Obama is using to justify his wars in Iraq and Syria, although he admits they pose no imminent threat to the United States. The Vietnam syndrome has been replaced by the “Permanent War.”

It is no cliché that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. Unless we are provided an honest accounting of the disgraceful history of the US war on Vietnam, we will be ill equipped to protest the current and future wars conducted in our name.

Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham will continue its attacks on the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Russian forces around Idlib province, a spokesman for the terrorist group said in an official video message released on March 6. Abu Khalid al-Shami threatened that the SAA and Russian forces with “long dark nights” and “black days stained with blood.”

This statement came in response to a recent resumption of SAA strikes on terror infrastructure of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies in the province.

An acute humanitarian crisis is developing in the Rukban refugee camp, which is located near the US military garrison in al-Tanf. On March 5, the Russian Defense Ministry released satellite images showing the real living conditions in the camp.

• A waste deposit is located in close proximity to the living accommodations.
• A notable part of the camp is tents and sheds, which means that no conditions allowing a permanent residence of thousands of people have been created.
• No subsistence warehouses or meal stations are being observed.
• Food and other goods can be get only in pop-up markets controlled by militants.

The Russian military said that US-backed forces are preventing civilians from leaving the site. It stressed that the Rukban area is no more a refugee camp. It is a reservation area with hostages.

The Russian side pointed out that the US military is opposing to the evacuation of civilians and spreading rumors that they will be persecuted by the Damascus government. US-backed militants demand notable sums in USD from people who want to leave the camp.

The statement added that about 35,000 people have declared their readiness to return to the government-controlled part of the country.

Earlier in March, Deputy Spokesperson of the US State Department said that Washington is against the Syrian-Russian plan to evacuate people from the area because it does not meet “protection standards”. Nonetheless, he did not point out what standards are being met by the living conditions created for refugees by US-backed forces in Rukban.

On March 6, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to deploy Israeli warships to help tackle suspected Iranian efforts to continue export oil via maritime routes to skirt US sanctions. Netanyahu stressed that Israeli sailors are well-trained and adept at carrying out sea missions against adversaries. However, he failed to explain how a relatively small Israeli naval force is going to block maritime routes used by Iran. Most likely, the Israeli Prime Minister expects that in the event of a naval confrontation with Iran, the Israeli force will be directly supported by the US Navy. This would explain where Israel is going to find resources to achieve a victory in a supposed standoff.

While this kind of statements are a common practice for Israeli politicians exploiting tensions with Iran to score some political points, they also show that Israel may have been planning to expand its military actions against Iranian and Iranian backed forces outside the Syrian battleground.

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A popular Indian online media outlet published a piece purporting that part of one of the Pakistani Prime Minister’s latest speeches was intended to “exploit India’s fault lines under Modi’s rule”, which implies that the self-professed “world’s largest democracy” is taking a page from its American ally’s infowar playbook by concocting a Russiagate-like hysteria ahead of general elections this May designed to deflect attention away from India’s many domestic troubles by making it taboo to talk them lest one inadvertently ‘plays into Pakistan’s hands’.

The Quint, a popular Indian online information outlet, published a piece titled “How Imran Khan Is Exploiting India’s Fault Lines Under Modi’s Rule” which puppets that the Pakistani Prime Minister tailored part of one of his recent speeches in such a way as to meddle in India’s domestic affairs ahead of its upcoming elections this May. The article admittedly makes some interesting points by analyzing the historic and political contexts of PM Khan’s words that he specifically addressed to the Indian audience, but it would be amiss to suggest that this amounts to “exploiting India’s fault lines” in the way that’s implied within the text.

It’s veritably true that India is an ultra-diverse country and that the many preexisting identity fault lines that it inherited since independence are widening at a worrying pace under the majoritarian rule of the Hindutva ideologues led by Prime Minister Modi, but it doesn’t amount to “exploitation” for anyone — whether a citizen or non-citizen alike — to hint at that fact or directly talk about it. Actually, it’s contradictory to the democratic principles upon which the self-professed “world’s largest democracy” claims to espouse to believe that the expression of one’s freedom of speech in that manner is anything nefarious.

There’s no doubt that state and non-state actors sometimes do abuse those freedoms in order to destabilize targeted states per the modus operandi of Hybrid Wars, but PM Khan’s commentary on the situation in his country’s neighbor and especially the occupied region of Kashmir doesn’t fit the criteria of weaponized rhetoric. To claim otherwise, like is being implied in The Quint’s piece, is to take a page from the infowar playbook of India’s American ally to concoct a Russiagate-like hysteria that could troublingly make it taboo to talk about India’s manifold domestic problems lest one inadvertently “plays into Pakistan’s hands”.

Trump’s public and “deep state” foes have been alleging for over two and a half years already that RT’s hosting of dissident American voices and its critical coverage of the US’ many domestic problems was tantamount to “meddling” in the country’s affairs so as to “hack” the 2016 election in Trump’s favor, similar to what The Quint implied that PM Khan was doing with one of his latest speeches by directly addressing the Indian people ahead of their national elections in May in order supposedly to tip the scales against Modi. This is a very dangerous narrative to introduce into Indian society because it runs the risk of pressuring people to self-censor their constructive criticism of the contemporary state of affairs in their country, which some believe have become much more divisive because of the BJP’s demagogic divide-and-rule re-election strategy and not due to anything having to do with Pakistan or PM Khan.

India is already plagued by WhatsApp-driven mob lynchings, so it’s not far-fetched to imagine that dissidents who publicly express the aforementioned observation about the root cause of India’s hyper-partisan political environment and worsening identity differences could become the next targets of ultra-jingoist mob violence on the basis that they’re “Pakistani agents” or at the very least “useful idiots”. The BJP community leaders who manage massive WhatsApp groups might also deliberately spread fake news in this respect about their political opponents in order to incite their indoctrinated minions into attacking those people or their followers, following the cow lynching model that they’re suspected of successfully employing against Muslims.

Not only is this terrifying from humanitarian and democratic perspectives, but it’s also counterproductive from a pragmatic one because it will only lead to the worsening of those said fault lines instead of making any progress on fixing them, which could ultimately culminate in the creation of many “mini-Kashmirs” all across the country in the worst-case scenario. Therefore, instead of pointing to PM Khan and painting him as a Hybrid War boogeyman per the US’ infowar playbook of copying and pasting the Russiagate fake news narrative into an Indian context, the country would do best to look inward when searching for the source of its many worsening fault lines and prioritizing addressing them before it’s too late.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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.

Featured image is from Business Today

Recent Buzzfeed reports about WWF hiring ‘paramilitary forces’ to fight poaching and the associated human rights abuses of local peoples show the urgent need for a shift in current conservation models.

Forest Peoples Programme Director, James Whitehead today said:

“To protect the world’s forests and wildlife while respecting the rights of those who have lived for generations in these areas we need a fundamental change in the approach taken to conservation globally.”

“The National Park model of excluding indigenous peoples and local communities is fundamentally flawed – we have witnessed countless examples of human rights abuses in conservation projects, stretching back to our formation in the 1990s.”

Yet conservation and human rights are not intrinsically opposed. There is mounting evidence that conservation based on respect for the rights of traditional owners of the lands is more effective than exclusionary protected areas. For example, in the Amazon deforestation is between 2 and 6 times lower in areas where indigenous people have land rights.

Despite the long-standing formal commitments of WWF and many other conservation agencies to respect human rights, the reality experienced by many communities on the ground is very different and the abuses very real.

“With so much information now in the public domain, governments, conservationists and donors cannot ignore these abuses,” said Whitehead.

”At this time of threats from climate change and environmental destruction, the need to place conservation in the hands of those well placed to ensure the worlds biodiversity is secured is critical,” he added.

“Now is the time for a real shift to a conservation model that works to uphold and extend the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities.”

FPP calls on the donor community to step up and ensure that none of their funding results in rights abuses and that it in fact invests in the types of conservation that strengthens the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, and ultimately provides the most effective protection for our natural environments.

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The identities of civil servants who investigated British involvement in India’s Golden Temple massacre will remain secret, despite concerns that they could have potentially tampered with key evidence.

An anonymity order from the Information Commissioner means the government will not have to admit whether top officials active during the massacre were later allowed to control what files investigators saw.

The commissioner made the ruling after Whitehall claimed its staff could be targeted on social media which “may cause them distress.”

Indian troops shelled the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984, in a military operation against Sikh dissidents who were occupying their faith’s holiest site.

Hundreds if not thousands of Sikh pilgrims perished in the cross-fire.

In 2014, newly declassified British government files revealed that Margaret Thatcher had sent an SAS officer to advise Indian commanders how to raid the temple just months before the operation unfolded.

The revelation caused outrage among British Sikhs and then-prime minister David Cameron immediately launched a review — although he stopped short of ordering a full public inquiry.

Mr Cameron’s in-house review was conducted at breakneck speed by a Cabinet Office team and absolved the British military of any wrongdoing.

His probe claimed that the SAS role was “limited” and the officer’s advice was not heeded.

Sikh groups branded the review a “whitewash” and it later emerged that the Cabinet Office had not been given access to a crucial special forces file.

Concerns escalated further when Whitehall admitted in 2017 that it had allowed retired diplomats to select what files the Cabinet Office team saw.

The government then refused to rule out whether these ex-diplomats included a man called Bruce Cleghorn.

Just before the massacre Mr Cleghorn wrote a secret Foreign Office memo in 1984 about “the threat of Sikh terrorism,” warning:

“It would be dangerous if HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] were to become identified, in the minds of Sikhs in the UK, with some more determined action by the Indian government, in particular any attempt to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar.”

Mr Cleghorn later went on to become a British ambassador before taking on a more low profile role at the Foreign Office as a “sensitivity reviewer,” vetting the department’s old files before they are released to the National Archives.

He was working in this sensitivity reviewer role in 2014 when the prime minister ordered the probe.

The Foreign Office has confirmed that its sensitivity reviewers were tasked with selecting files for the PM’s probe.

However, the department has refused to answer a freedom of information request by the Morning Star which asked if Mr Cleghorn himself was allowed to select files.

The Foreign Office told the Information Commissioner that the probe was “a significant and emotive issue for the Sikh community and if the identity of the sensitivity reviewers involved in the review were released then this could lead to significant activity on social media that could lead to them receiving attention that may cause them distress.”

In making her decision, Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said “even the perception of a possible conflict of interest adds weight to the argument” that the Foreign Office should reveal who took part in the review.

However, the Commissioner ultimately concluded that Mr Cleghorn’s right to privacy outweighed the public interest in knowing whether the probe’s integrity was tainted.

The decision has outraged Slough Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi.

He told the Morning Star:

“There seems to be a serious conflict of interest at the heart of the review into the British government’s involvement with the 1984 massacre at Sri Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) Amritsar.

“Given the enormous loss of life, there is overwhelming public interest in ensuring the government conducts the most transparent investigation.

“To ensure justice, I reiterate the demand for an independent inquiry, which I’m proud to say the Labour Party manifesto called for in 2017.”

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I still do not know what happened in the Skripal saga, which perhaps might more respectfully be termed the Sturgess saga. I cannot believe the Russian account of Boshirov and Petrov, because if those were their real identities, those identities would have been firmly established and displayed by now. But that does not mean they attempted to kill the Skripals, and there are many key elements to the official British account which are also simply incredible.

Governments play dark games, and a dark game was played out in Salisbury which involved at least the British state, Russian agents (possibly on behalf of the state), Orbis Intelligence and the BBC. Anybody who believes it is simple to identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in this situation is a fool. When it comes to state actors and the intelligence services, frequently there are no “good guys”, as I personally witnessed from the inside over torture, extraordinary rendition and the illegal invasion of Iraq. But in the face of a massive media campaign to validate the British government story about the Skripals, here are ten of the things I do not believe in the official account:

1) PURE

This was the point that led me to return to the subject of the Skripals, even though it has brought me more abuse than I had received in my 15 year career as a whistleblower.

A few months ago, I was in truth demoralised by the amount of abuse I was receiving about the collapse of the Russian identity story of Boshirov and Petrov. I had never claimed the poisoning, if any, was not carried out by Russians, only that there were many other possibilities. I understood the case against the Russian state is still far from established, whoever Boshirov and Petrov really are, and I did not (and do not) accept Bellingcat’s conjectures and dodgy evidence as conclusive identification. But I did not enjoy at all the constant online taunts, and therefore was not inclined to take the subject further.

It is in this mood that I received more information from my original FCO source, who had told me, correctly, that Porton Down could not and would not attest that the “novichok” sample was made in Russia, and explained that the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” was an agreed Whitehall line to cover this up.

She wanted to explain to me that the British government was pulling a similar trick over the use of the word “pure”. The OPCW report had concluded that the sample provided to them by the British government was “of high purity” with an “almost complete absence of impurities”. This had been spun by the British government as evidence that the novichok was “military grade” and could only be produced by a state.

But actually that is not what the OPCW technical experts were attempting to signal. The sample provided to the OPCW had allegedly been swabbed from the Skripals’ door handle. It had been on that door handle for several days before it was allegedly discovered there. In that time it had been contacted allegedly by the hands of the Skripals and of DC Bailey, and the gloves of numerous investigators. It had of course been exposed to whatever film of dirt or dust was on the door handle. It had been exposed to whatever pollution was in the rain and whatever dust and pollen was blowing around. In these circumstances, it is incredible that the sample provided “had an almost complete absence of impurities”.

A sample cannot have a complete absence of impurities after being on a used doorknob, outdoors, for several days. The sample provided was, on the contrary, straight out of a laboratory.

The government’s contention that “almost complete absence of impurities” meant “military grade” was complete nonsense. There is no such thing as “military grade” novichok. It has never been issued to any military, anywhere. The novichok programme was designed to produce an organo-phosphate poison which could quickly be knocked up from readily available commercial ingredients. It was not part of an actual defence industry manufacturing programme.

There is a final problem with the “of high purity” angle. First we had the Theresa May story that the “novichok” was extremely deadly, many times more deadly than VX, in minute traces. Then, when the Skripals did not die, it was explained to us that this was because it had degraded in the rain. This was famously put forward by Dan Kaszeta, formerly of US Intelligence and the White House and self-proclaimed chemical weapons expert – which expertise has been strenuously denied by real experts.

What we did not know then, but we do know now, is that Kaszeta was secretly being paid to produce this propaganda by the British government via the Integrity Initiative.

So the first thing I cannot believe is that the British government produced a sample with an “almost complete absence of impurities” from several days on the Skripals’ doorknob. Nor can I believe that if “extremely pure” the substance therefore was not fatal to the Skripals.

2) Raising the Roof

Three days ago Sky News had an outside broadcast from the front of the Skripals’ house in Salisbury, where they explained that the roof had been removed and replaced due to contamination with “novichok”.

I cannot believe that a gel, allegedly smeared or painted onto the doorknob, migrated upwards to get into the roof of a two storey house, in such a manner that the roof had to be destroyed, but the house inbetween did not. As the MSM never questions the official narrative, there has never been an official answer as to how the gel got from the doorknob to the roof. Remember that traces of the “novichok” were allegedly found in a hotel room in Poplar, which is still in use as a hotel room and did not have to be destroyed, and an entire bottle of it was allegedly found in Charlie Rowley’s house, which has not had to be destroyed. Novichok was found in Zizzi’s restaurant, which did not have to be destroyed.

So we are talking about novichok in threatening quantities – more than the traces allegedly found in the hotel in Poplar – being in the Skripals’ roof. How could this happen?

As I said in the onset, I do not know what happened, I only know what I do not believe. There are theories that Skripal and his daughter might themselves have been involved with novichok in some way. On the face of it, its presence in their roof might support that theory.

The second thing I do not believe is that the Skripals’ roof became contaminated by gel on their doorknob so that the roof had to be destroyed, whereas no other affected properties, nor the rest of the Skripals’ house, had to be destroyed.

3) Nursing Care

The very first person to discover the Skripals ill on a park bench in Salisbury just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army, who chanced to be walking past them on her way back from a birthday party. How lucky was that? The odds are about the same as the chance of my vacuum cleaner breaking down just before James Dyson knocks at my door to ask for directions. There are very few people indeed in the UK trained to give nursing care to victims of chemical weapon attack, and of all the people who might have walked past, it just happened to be the most senior of them!

The government is always trying to get good publicity for its armed forces, and you would think that the heroic role of its off-duty personnel in saving random poisoned Russian double agents they just happened to chance across, would have been proclaimed as a triumph for the British military. Yet it was kept secret for ten months. We were not told about the involvement of Colonel Alison McCourt (image on the right) until January of this year, when it came out by accident. Swollen with maternal pride, Col. McCourt nominated her daughter for an award from the local radio station for her role in helping give first aid to the Skripals, and young Abigail revealed her mother’s identity on local radio – and the fact her mother was there “with her” administering first aid.

Even then, the compliant MSM played along, with the Guardian and Sky News both among those running stories emphasising entirely the Enid Blyton narrative of “plucky teenager saves the Skripals”, and scarcely mentioning the Army’s Chief Nurse who was looking after the Skripals “with little Abigail”.

I want to emphasise again that Col. Alison McCourt is not the chief nurse of a particular unit or hospital, she is the Chief Nurse of the entire British Army. Her presence was kept entirely quiet by the media for ten months, when all sorts of stories were run in the MSM about who the first responders were – various doctors and police officers being mentioned.

If you believe that it is coincidence that the Chief Nurse of the British Army was the first person to discover the Skripals ill, you are a credulous fool. And why was it kept quiet?

4) Remarkable Metabolisms

This has been noted many times, but no satisfactory answer has ever been given. The official story is that the Skripals were poisoned by their door handle, but then well enough to go out to a pub, feed some ducks, and have a big lunch in Zizzi’s, before being instantly stricken and disabled, both at precisely the same time.

The Skripals were of very different ages, genders and weights. That an agent which took hours to act but then kicks in with immediate disabling effect, so they could not call for help, would affect two such entirely different metabolisms at precisely the same time, has never been satisfactorily explained. Dosage would have an effect and of course the doorknob method would give an uncontrolled dosage.

But that the two different random dosages were such that they affected each of these two very different people at just the same moment, so that neither could call for help, is an extreme coincidence. It is almost as unlikely as the person who walks by next being the Chief Nurse of the British Army.

5) 11 Days

After the poisoning of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, the Police cordoned off Charlie Rowley’s home and began a search for “Novichok”, in an attitude of extreme urgency because it was believed this poison was out amidst the public. They were specifically searching for a small phial of liquid. Yet it took 11 days of the search before they allegedly discovered the “novichok” in a perfume bottle sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter – and only after they had discovered the clue of the perfume bottle package in the bin the day before, after ten days of search.

The bottle was out of its packaging and “novichok”, of which the tiniest amount is deadly, had been squirted out of its nozzle at least twice, by both Rowley and Sturgess, and possibly more often. The exterior of the bottle/nozzle was therefore contaminated. Yet the house, unlike the Skripals’ roof space, has not had to be destroyed.

I do not believe it took the Police eleven days to find the very thing they were looking for, in plain sight as exactly the small bottle of liquid sought, on a kitchen bench. What else was happening?

6) Mark Urban/Pablo Miller

The BBC’s “Diplomatic Editor” is a regular conduit for the security services. He fronted much of the BBC’s original coverage of the Skripal story. Yet he concealed from the viewers the fact that he had been in regular contact with Sergei Skripal for months before the alleged poisoning, and had held several meetings with Skripal.

This is extraordinary behaviour. It was the biggest news story in the world, and news organisations, including the BBC, were scrambling to fill in the Skripals’ back story. Yet the journalist who had the inside info on the world’s biggest news story, and was actually reporting on it, kept that knowledge to himself. Why? Urban was not only passing up a career defining opportunity, it was unethical of him to continually report on the story without revealing to the viewers his extensive contacts with Skripal.

The British government had two immediate reactions to the Skripal incident. Within the first 48 hours, it blamed Russia, and it slapped a D(SMA) notice banning all media mention of Skripal’s MI6 handler, Pablo Miller. By yet another one of those extraordinary coincidences, Miller and Urban know each other well, having both been officers together in the Royal Tank Regiment, of the same rank and joining the Regiment the same year.

I have sent the following questions to Mark Urban, repeatedly. There has been no response:

To: [email protected]

Dear Mark,

As you may know, I am a journalist working in alternative media, a member of the NUJ, as well as a former British Ambassador. I am researching the Skripal case.

I wish to ask you the following questions.

1) When the Skripals were first poisoned, it was the largest news story in the entire World and you were uniquely positioned having held several meetings with Sergei Skripal the previous year. Yet faced with what should have been a massive career break, you withheld that unique information on a major story from the public for four months. Why?

2) You were an officer in the Royal Tank Regiment together with Skripal’s MI6 handler, Pablo Miller, who also lived in Salisbury. Have you maintained friendship with Miller over the years and how often do you communicate?

3) When you met Skripal in Salisbury, was Miller present all or part of the time, or did you meet Miller separately?

4) Was the BBC aware of your meetings with Miller and/or Skripal at the time?

5) When, four months later, you told the world about your meetings with Skripal after the Rowley/Sturgess incident, you said you had met him to research a book. Yet the only forthcoming book by you advertised is on the Skripal attack. What was the subject of your discussions with Skripal?

6) Pablo Miller worked for Orbis Intelligence. Do you know if Miller contributed to the Christopher Steele dossier on Trump/Russia?

7) Did you discuss the Trump dossier with Skripal and/or Miller?

8) Do you know whether Skripal contributed to the Trump dossier?

9) In your Newsnight piece following the Rowley/Sturgess incident, you stated that security service sources had told you that Yulia Skripal’s telephone may have been bugged. Since January 2017, how many security service briefings or discussions have you had on any of the matter above.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Craig Murray

The lack of openness of Urban in refusing to answer these questions, and the role played by the BBC and the MSM in general in marching in unquestioning lockstep with the British government narrative, plus the “coincidence” of Urban’s relationship with Pablo Miller, give further reason for scepticism of the official narrative.

7) Four Months

The official narrative insists that Boshirov and Petrov brought “novichok” into the country; that minute quantities could kill; that they disposed of the novichok that did kill Dawn Sturgess. It must therefore have been of the highest priority to inform the public of the movements of the suspects and the possible locations where deadly traces of “novichok” must be lurking.

Yet there was at least a four month gap between the police searching the Poplar hotel where Boshirov and Petrov were staying, allegedly discovering traces of novichok in the hotel room, and the police informing the hotel management, let alone the public, of the discovery. That is four months in which a cleaner might have fatally stumbled across more novichok in the hotel. Four months in which another guest in the same hotel might have had something lurking in their bag which they had picked up. Four months in which there might have been a container of novichok sitting in a hedge near the hotel. Yet for four months the police did not think any of this was urgent enough to tell anybody.

The astonishing thing is that it was a full three months after the death of Dawn Sturgess before the hotel were informed, the public were informed, or the pictures of “Boshirov” and “Petrov” in Salisbury released. There could be no clearer indication that the authorities did not actually believe that any threat from residual novichok was connected to the movements of Boshirov and Petrov.

Similarly the metadata on the famous CCTV images of Boshirov and Petrov in Salisbury, published in September by the Met Police, showed that all the stills were prepared by the Met on the morning of 9 May – a full four months before they were released to the public. But this makes no sense at all. Why wait a full four months for people’s memories to fade before issuing an appeal to the public for information? This makes no sense at all from an investigation viewpoint. It makes even less sense from a public health viewpoint.

If the authorities were genuinely worried about the possible presence of deadly novichok, and wished to track it down, why one earth would you wait for four months before you published the images showing the faces and clothing and the whereabouts of the people you believe were distributing it?

The only possible conclusion from the amazing four month delays both in informing the hotel, and in revealing the Boshirov and Petrov CCTV footage to the public, is that the Metropolitan Police did not actually believe there was a public health danger that the two had left a trail of novichok. Were the official story true, this extraordinary failure to take timely action in a public health emergency may have contributed to the death of Dawn Sturgess.

The metadat shows Police processed all the Salisbury CCTV images of Boshirov and Petrov a month before Charlie Rowley picked up the perfume. The authorities claim the CCTV images show they could have been to the charity bin to dump the novichok. Which begs the question, if the Police really believed they had CCTV of the movements of the men with the novichok, why did they not subsequently exhaustively search everywhere the CCTV shows they could have been, including that charity bin?

The far more probable conclusion appears to be that the lack of urgency is explained by the fact that the link between Boshirov and Petrov and “novichok” is a narrative those involved in the investigation do not take seriously.

8) The Bungling Spies

There are elements of the accepted narrative of Boshirov and Petrov’s movements that do not make sense. As the excellent local Salisbury blog the Blogmire points out, the CCTV footage shows Boshirov and Petrov, after they had allegedly coated the door handle with novichok, returning towards the railway station but walking straight past it, into the centre of Salisbury (and missing their first getaway train in the process). They then wander around Salisbury apparently aimlessly, famously window shopping which is caught on CCTV, and according to the official narrative disposing of the used but inexplicably still cellophane-sealed perfume/novichok in a charity donation bin, having walked past numerous potential disposal sites en route including the railway embankment and the bins at the Shell garage.

But the really interesting thing, highlighted by the blogmire, is that the closest CCTV ever caught them to the Skripals’ house is fully 500 metres, at the Shell garage, walking along the opposite side of the road from the turning to the Skripals. There is a second CCTV camera at the garage which would have caught them crossing the road and turning down towards the Skripals’ house, but no such video or still image – potentially the most important of all the CCTV footage – has ever been released.

However the 500 metres is not the closest the CCTV places the agents to the Skripals. From 13.45 to 13.48, on their saunter into town, Boshirov and Petrov were caught on CCTV at Dawaulders coinshop a maximum of 200 metres away from the Skripals, who at the same time were at Avon Playground. The bin at Avon playground became, over two days in the immediate aftermath of the Skripal “attack”, the scene of extremely intensive investigation. Yet the Boshirov and Petrov excursion – during their getaway from attempted murder – into Salisbury town centre has been treated as entirely pointless and unimportant by the official story.

Finally, the behaviour of Boshirov and Petrov in the early hours before the attack makes no sense whatsoever. On the one hand we are told these are highly trained, experienced and senior GRU agents; on the other hand, we are told they were partying in their room all night, drawing attention to themselves with loud noise, smoking weed and entertaining a prostitute in the room in which they were storing, and perhaps creating, the “novichok”.

The idea that, before an extremely delicate murder operation involving handling a poison, a tiny accident with which would kill them, professionals would stay up all night and drink heavily and take drugs is a nonsense. Apart from the obvious effect on their own metabolisms, they were risking authorities being called because of the noise and a search being instituted because of the drugs.

That they did this while in possession of the novichok and hours before they made the attack, is something I simply do not believe.

9) The Skripals’ Movements

Until the narrative changed to Boshirov and Petrov arriving in Salisbury just before lunchtime and painting the doorknob, the official story had been that the Skripals left home around 9am and had not returned. They had both switched off their mobile phones, an interesting and still unexplained point. As you would expect in a city as covered in CCTV as Salisbury, their early morning journey was easily traced and the position of their car at various times was given by the police.

Yet no evidence of their return journey has ever been offered. There is now a tiny window between Boshirov and Petrov arriving, painting the doorknob apparently with the Skripals now inexplicably back inside their home, and the Skripals leaving again by car, so quickly after the doorknob painting that they catch up with Boshirov and Petrov – or certainly being no more than 200 metres from them in Salisbury City Centre. There is undoubtedly a huge amount of CCTV video of the Skripals’ movements which has never been released. For example, the parents of one of the boys who Sergei was chatting with while feeding the ducks, was shown “clear” footage by the Police of the Skripals at the pond, yet this has never been released. This however is the moment at which the evidence puts Boshirov and Petrov at the closest to them. What does the concealed CCTV of the Skripals with the ducks show?

Why has so little detail of the Skripals’ movements that day been released? What do all the withheld CCTV images of the Skripals in Salisbury show?

10) The Sealed Bottle

Only in the last couple of days have the police finally admitted there is a real problem with the fact that Charlie Rowley insists that the perfume bottle was fully sealed, and the cellophane difficult to remove, when he discovered it. Why the charity collection bin had not been emptied for three months has never been explained either. Rowley’s recollection is supported by the fact that the entire packaging was discovered by the police in his bin – why would Boshirov and Petrov have been carrying the cellophane around with them if they had opened the package? Why – and how – would they reseal it outdoors in Salisbury before dumping it?

Furthermore, there was a gap of three months between the police finding the perfume bottle, and the police releasing details of the brand and photos of it, despite the fact the police believed there could be more out there. Again the news management agenda totally belies the official narrative of the need to protect the public in a public health emergency.

This part of the narrative is plainly nonsense.

Bonus Point – The Integrity Initiative

The Integrity Initiative specifically paid Dan Kaszeta to publish articles on the Skripal case. In the weekly collections of social media postings the Integrity Initiative sent to the FCO to show its activity, over 80% were about the Skripals.

Governments do not institute secret campaigns to put out covert propaganda in order to tell the truth. The Integrity Initiative, with secret FCO and MOD sourced subsidies to MSM figures to put out the government narrative, is very plainly a disinformation exercise. More bluntly, if the Integrity Initiative is promoting it, you know it is not true.

Most sinister of all is the Skripal Group convened by the Integrity Initiative. This group includes Pablo Miller, Skripal’s MI6 handler, and senior representatives of Porton Down, the BBC, the CIA, the FCO and the MOD. Even if all the other ludicrously weak points in the government narrative did not exist, the Integrity Initiative activity in itself would lead me to understand the British government is concealing something important.

Conclusion

I do not know what happened in Salisbury. Plainly spy games were being played between Russia and the UK, quite likely linked to the Skripals and/or the NATO chemical weapons exercise then taking place on Salisbury Plain yet another one of those astonishing coincidences.

What I do know is that major planks of the UK government narrative simply do not stand up to scrutiny.

Plainly the Russian authorities have lied about the identity of Boshirov and Petrov. What is astonishing is the alacrity with which the MSM and the political elite have rallied around the childish logical fallacy that because the Russian Government has lied, therefore the British Government must be telling the truth. It is abundantly plain to me that both governments are lying, and the spy games being played out that day were very much more complicated than a pointless revenge attack on the Skripals.

I do not believe the British Government. I have given you the key points where the official narrative completely fails to stand up. These are by no means exhaustive, and I much look forward to reading your own views.

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In a devastating admission of system failure, the Metropolitan Police have said that criminal charges in the matter of the Grenfell Tower block conflagration in West London that killed 72 people on June 14th 2017, are now unlikely to brought until 2021 –  if at all.

Of course, those individuals responsible have presumably already now liquidated their assets and relocated abroad and those companies implicated have, no doubt, likewise re-arranged their assets, executives and professional advisors, accordingly.  Now, in the light of this unprecedented decision of system failure, they have another two years to complete their arrangements.

The facts of the matter are crystal clear.  Polymer foams have been known for over 40 years to be fire-accelerants and to emit deadly hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B) gas when ignited.   This information has been in public domain for decades and all architects, surveyors, building inspectors, manufacturers and suppliers would have been well aware of the dangers of using such highly combustible and toxic material inside or outside any residential building in the UK, or anywhere else.

The documented dangers were deliberately ignored.  Seventy-two died as a result of gross negligence and no criminal charges have been brought to date.

It is a double catastrophe, for the bereaved, for Britain’s judicial system and for those tens of thousands who still live in buildings containing fire-accelerant polymer foam.

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

For most of the last five decades, it has been assumed that the Tonkin Gulf incident was a deception by Lyndon Johnson to justify war in Vietnam. But the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam on Aug. 4, 1964, in retaliation for an alleged naval attack that never happened — and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that followed was not a move by LBJ to get the American people to support a U.S. war in Vietnam.

The real deception on that day was that Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara’s misled LBJ by withholding from him the information that the U.S. commander in the Gulf — who had initially reported an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on U.S. warships — had later expressed serious doubts about the initial report and was calling for a full investigation by daylight. That withholding of information from LBJ represented a brazen move to usurp the President’s constitutional power of decision on the use of military force.

Image: Dean Rusk, Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert McNamara in Cabinet Room meeting February 1968. (Photo credit: Yoichi R. Okamoto, White House Press Office)

McNamara’s deception is documented in the declassified files on the Tonkin Gulf episode in the Lyndon Johnson library, which this writer used to piece together the untold story of the Tonkin Gulf episode in a 2005 book on the U.S. entry into war in Vietnam. It is a key element of a wider story of how the national security state, including both military and civilian officials, tried repeatedly to pressure LBJ to commit the United States to a wider  war in Vietnam.

Johnson had refused to retaliate two days earlier for a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. naval vessels carrying out electronic surveillance operations. But he accepted McNamara’s recommendation for retaliatory strikes on Aug. 4 based on reports of a second attack. But after that decision, the U.S. task force commander in the Gulf, Capt. John Herrick, began to send messages expressing doubt about the initial reports and suggested a “complete evaluation” before any action was taken in response.

McNamara had read Herrick’s message by mid-afternoon, and when he called the Pacific Commander, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp Jr., he learned that Herrick had expressed further doubt about the incident based on conversations with the crew of the Maddox. Sharp specifically recommended that McNamara “hold this execute” of the U.S. airstrikes planned for the evening while he sought to confirm that the attack had taken place.

But McNamara told Sharp he preferred to “continue the execute order in effect” while he waited for “a definite fix” from Sharp about what had actually happened.

McNamara then proceeded to issue the strike execute order without consulting with LBJ about what he had learned from Sharp, thus depriving him of the choice of cancelling the retaliatory strike before an investigation could reveal the truth.

At the White House meeting that night, McNamara again asserted flatly that U.S. ships had been attacked in the Gulf.  When questioned about the evidence, McNamara said, “Only highly classified information nails down the incident.” But the NSA intercept of a North Vietnamese message that McNamara cited as confirmation could not possibly have been related to the Aug. 4 incident, as intelligence analysts quickly determined based from the time-date group of the message.

LBJ began to suspect that McNamara had kept vital information from him, and immediately ordered national security adviser McGeorge Bundy to find out whether the alleged attack had actually taken place and required McNamara’s office to submit a complete chronology of McNamara’s contacts with the military on Aug. 4 for the White House indicating what had transpired in each of them.

But that chronology shows that McNamara continued to hide the substance of the conversation with Admiral Sharp from LBJ. It omitted Sharp’s revelation that Capt. Herrick considered the “whole situation” to be “in doubt” and was calling for a “daylight recce [reconnaissance]” before any decision to retaliate, as well as Sharp’s agreement with Herrick’s recommendation. It also falsely portrayed McNamara as having agreed with Sharp that the execute order should be delayed until confirming evidence was found.

Contrary to the assumption that LBJ used the Tonkin Gulf incident to move U.S. policy firmly onto a track for military intervention, it actually widened the differences between Johnson and his national security advisers over Vietnam policy. Within days after the episode Johnson had learned enough to be convinced that the alleged attack had not occurred and he responded by halting both the CIA-managed commando raids on the North Vietnamese coast U.S. and the U.S. naval patrols near the coast.

In fact, McNamara’s deception on Aug. 4 was just one of 12 distinct episodes in which top U.S. national security officials attempted to press a reluctant LBJ to begin a bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

In September 1964, McNamara and other top officials tried to get LBJ to approve a deliberately provocative policy of naval patrols running much closer to the North Vietnamese coast and at the same time as the commando raids. They hoped for another incident that would justify a bombing program. But Johnson insisted that the naval patrols stay at least 20 miles away from the coast and stopped the commando operations.

Six weeks after the Tonkin Gulf bombing, on Sept. 18, 1964, McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk claimed yet another North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. destroyer in Gulf and tried to get LBJ to approve another retaliatory strike. But a skeptical LBJ told McNamara, “You just came in a few weeks ago and said they’re launching an attack on us – they’re firing at us, and we got through with the firing and concluded maybe they hadn’t fired at all.”

After LBJ was elected in November 1964, he continued to resist a unanimous formal policy recommendation of his advisers that he should begin the systematic bombing of North Vietnam. He stubbornly argued for three more months that there was no point in bombing the North as long as the South was divided and unstable.

Johnson also refused to oppose the demoralized South Vietnamese government negotiating a neutralist agreement with the Communists, much to his advisers’ chagrin. McGeorge Bundy later recalled in an oral history interview that he concluded that Johnson was “coming to a decision … to lose” in South Vietnam.

LBJ only capitulated to the pressure from his advisers after McNamara and Bundy wrote a joint letter to him in late January 1965 making it clear that responsibility for U.S. “humiliation” in South Vietnam would rest squarely on his shoulders if he continued his policy of “passivity.” Fearing, with good reason, that his own top national security advisers would turn on him and blame him for the loss of South Vietnam, LBJ eventually began the bombing of North Vietnam.

He was then sucked into the maelstrom of the Vietnam War, which he defended publicly and privately, leading to the logical but mistaken conclusion that he had been the main force behind the push for war all along.

The deeper lesson of the Tonkin Gulf episode is how a group of senior national security officials can seek determinedly through hardball – and even illicit – tactics to advance a war agenda, even knowing that the President of the United States is resisting it.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published Feb. 14.

The Pentagon rerouted millions of dollars’ worth of weapons and vehicles from Iraq to Syria in the second half of 2018, Al-Monitor has learned, as US-backed forces cornered the last remnants of the Islamic State (IS).

In a series of notifications to Congress reviewed by Al-Monitor, the Defense Department said it had determined that a bevy of supplies purchased by the Pentagon for the Iraqi military would instead go to the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Pentagon sent lawmakers its last reprogramming notification for 2018 on Dec. 31, 12 days after President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw US troops from Syria.

The stock of equipment includes nearly 50 Humvees, 20 mine-resistant vehicles, 40 enhanced armament carriers and nearly 700 light anti-tank weapons. The Pentagon also approved the transfer of more than 2,400 mortar rounds, 25 mine rollers and dozens of charges used to destroy mines and other explosives, the letters indicate.

Cmdr. Sean Robertson, a Pentagon spokesman, would not confirm whether the supplies had been moved, citing government policy. When Al-Monitor reported the transfer of route clearance equipment to Syria in June, he said it would “assist the SDF in successfully retaking the last remaining [IS-held] territory in Syria.”

“Ensuring that the SDF are sufficiently equipped has been critical to the SDF’s hard-fought campaign to liberate the Middle Euphrates River Valley from [IS] control,” he said last month. “The [Defense] department will always exercise effective and efficient use of the train-and-equip funding appropriated by Congress.”

Experts said the equipment may help the SDF further diminish IS, which beefed up its urban defenses with car bombs, booby traps and other battlefield hazards. Al-Monitor first reported that the Pentagon was transferring equipment from Iraq to Syria in June.

The equipment would be helpful, “particularly to be able to overcome entrenched [IS] defenses” and vehicle-born improvised explosive devices, which the militant group used extensively to slow US-backed forces in Syria’s Middle Euphrates River Valley, said Nick Heras, a Middle East fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Mazlum Kobane, the SDF’s top commander, said last week IS is just days away from losing control of all its territory in Syria. But the shift in resources may come at a cost for Iraq, which is struggling to regain its military footing even after declaring IS defeated in 2017.

The Pentagon budgeted $800 million to rebuild the country’s armed forces last spring. But experts worry that without US boots on the ground in next-door Syria, Iraq could be forced to pick up the slack, taking on an expeditionary role fighting IS across the border.

“When you don’t have intelligence on the ground and you lose some of the things that are leaving, it will become much more pinpricks from the outside,” said Linda Robinson, a senior defense researcher at the RAND Corporation. “It will become a much more difficult fight to prosecute. It’s first a question of the wolf at the door and then the wolf across the border.”

As Iraq looks to beef up its counterinsurgency operations against IS, and US forces take on more of a training mission, Ambassador Fareed Yasseen said the US troop and equipment presence in Iraq remains to be seen.

“It will certainly mean more American troops if we get American equipment,” Yasseen said. “It will probably mean less if we buy European or Russian equipment. The American equipment is pretty expensive, and we’re cash-strapped.”

The envoy’s assessment aligns with incoming US Central Command chief, Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, who told Congress in December that Iraq will not be able to pay to maintain US equipment.

Yasseen said Iraq will likely see an “internationalization of the Western military presence that’s there in support of Iraqi military capabilities.” That includes a new NATO training operation led by Canadian Gen. Dany Fortin. The US-led coalition fighting in Iraq told the Pentagon’s inspector general last month that training of Iraqi forces “is of a basic nature” and does not fit US definitions of counterinsurgency instruction.

Though the president visited US troops at al-Asad air base in December, he did not meet with Iraqi officials.

“Every minute we try to spend putting the Humpty Dumpty back together again we are reducing our opportunity to solidify Iraq,” Robinson said. “We have to look at all of the pieces on the chessboard and make the right decision.”

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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.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced plans to strip gray wolves of Endangered Species Act protection across the lower 48 states.

If finalized the proposal will allow trophy hunting and trapping of wolves in the Great Lakes states. It will slow or completely halt recovery of wolves in more of their former range.

“This disgusting proposal would be a death sentence for gray wolves across the country,” said Collette Adkins, a senior attorney at the Center. “The Trump administration is dead set on appeasing special interests that want to kill wolves. We’re working hard to stop them.”

The proposal would remove federal protections for all gray wolves, with the exception of Mexican gray wolves, which are listed separately under the Endangered Species Act.

Congress stripped wolves in Idaho and Montana of protections in 2011, and the Fish and Wildlife Service stripped protection from Wyoming wolves in 2017. This led to the killing of thousands of wolves and cessation of further recovery in these states.

The Fish and Wildlife Service also stripped protection from gray wolves in the Great Lakes region in 2011, allowing trophy hunting and trapping seasons in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, but the courts restored protection in 2014.

“The courts have repeatedly slammed the Fish and Wildlife Service for prematurely removing wolf protections, but the agency has now come back with its most egregious scheme yet,” said Adkins. “Once again, we’ll take it to the courts and do everything we can to stop this illegal effort to kill wolf protections.”

Gray wolf numbers in these states have only recently recovered to pre-hunt numbers. These hunts will start anew if the Trump administration’s proposal is finalized.

The proposal will also all but ensure that wolves are not allowed to recover in the Adirondacks, southern Rockies and elsewhere that scientists have identified suitable habitat.

“The livestock industry and trophy hunters want wolves dead, but we’ll make sure the feds fulfill their obligation to restore wolves across the country,” Adkins added.

Background

Volunteer wolf advocates around the nation are gathering this week to oppose the Trump administration’s plans. The “Wild for Wolves” events are part of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Call of the Wild campaign.

On December 17, 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Humane Society of the United States petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to maintain protection for gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act.

On Nov. 14, 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for violating the Endangered Species Act by never providing a comprehensive recovery plan for gray wolves nationwide. If successful, that lawsuit would mean that wolves must remain federally protected until the Service implements a national recovery plan.

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Predictably during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, Republican chairman Marco Rubio condemned Venezuela’s Maduro as a “clear danger” and a “threat to the national security of the US.” To be expected the hearing was filled with plenty of threats and talk of flipping “military elites” and enforcing tougher sanctions. 

But perhaps unexpected was just how out in the open and brazen Rubio’s own admissions of how far he’s willing to go in promoting regime change in Caracas. In public testimony he called on the US to promote “widespread unrest” in order to eventually bring down the Maduro government.

It appears Rubio is now urging the White House to initiate a full-on “Syria option” for Venezuela, which implies covert arming, funding, and militarization of the opposition to reach peak escalation and confrontation with the government, perhaps inviting broader external military intervention, similar to efforts to topple Syria’s Assad over the past years.

We’ve commented before about how popular anti-Maduro protests seemed to have lost significant momentum of late, pretty much fading out altogether over the past couple weeks, after tensions came to a head on Feb. 23 when US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido led a failed attempt to get an unauthorized humanitarian aid convoy across the Colombian-Venezuelan border.

This as it appeared the opposition was itching for a provocation that might draw the US and regional allies into some of kind of more direct intervention, and as a significant uptick in US military flights went to and from Colombia near the border with Venezuela.

At Senate hearing on Venezuela just now, Marco Rubio called for the US to promote “widespread unrest” (violent guarimba riots) as a means of encouraging regime change. His proposal was met with approval. https://t.co/PDBCNoi4Q5 pic.twitter.com/OIEk0K0O7G

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 7, 2019

During Thursday’s Senate hearing, there appeared a willingness to admit the fact that it appears Maduro is not going anywhere anytime soon, for example, when the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, said,

“Confronting tyranny requires sustained commitment. But Maduro is not invincible. He’s far from it.”

Though issuing plenty of threats of tighter sanctions and strangling Venezuelan oil exports, the Democrats on the committee stopped short of endorsing military action:

“The support that we have lent unequivocally on Venezuela does not include the use of force,” Menendez said further.

However, Rubio’s extreme “regime change by any means possible” hawkishness was on full display. Journalist Max Blumenthal reports:

At Senate hearing on Venezuela just now, Marco Rubio called for the US to promote “widespread unrest” as a means of encouraging regime change. His proposal was met with approval.

Blumenthal noted this was a reference to instigating further “violent guarimba riots” — referencing the local Spanish word — that have been a feature of Venezuelan city streets since Maduro was sworn in for a second six year term in January, and which has further represented the more violent side of Venezuelan politics for years.

Journalist Clifton Ross, who has long reported from on the ground in Venezuela, explained the term as follows:

Your Spanish lesson for the day is guarimba, (feminine, as in ‘me voy a la guarimba’ I’m going to the guarimba) the blocking of roads, lighting of tires, and sometimes involving defensive acts of rock-throwing, a practice adopted by the Venezuelan opposition in response to elections they feel are unfair. Those who participate in the guarimbasare known as guarimberos. It is presently the season of guarimbas, and one can only hope, for the sake of the nation, that they will soon come to an end.

Though Maduro has survived the latest round of international pressure to succumb to internal coup efforts led by a US-supported opposition, the fires of unrest Venezuela don’t look to be extinguishable anytime soon.

As Ben Norton also pointed out on Thursday while speaking of using “humanitarian aid” as a pretext for regime change: “They’re not even hiding it at this point.”

They're not even hiding it at this point: Venezuela's US-backed neoliberal opposition leader Antonio Ledezma is openly admitting the strategy is to falsely claim Venezuela needs "humanitarian intervention" on "R2P" grounds, just like Yugoslavia and Libyahttps://t.co/lh8wuMwnIg

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 7, 2019

Indeed, Rubio personally promised just this during hearing:

“To those in Venezuela: Your fight for freedom and restoration of democracy is our fight, and the free world has not and will not forget you,” he said, and added, “We [the United States] will be [focused] on this as long as it takes.”

Earlier in the day Rubio told Fox News that:

“Trump won’t give up until Maduro is gone in Venezuela.”

More ominously, Rubio predicted during the hearing, “Venezuela is going to enter a period of suffering no nation in our hemisphere has confronted in modern history,” in reference to the Venezuelan military blocking US aid shipments and tightening sanctions.

Of course Rubio laid all blame for the dire future plight of common Venezuelans on the Maduro regime alone, and not on his own admitted desire to stir yet more unrest in the country.

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Featured image is from Gage Skidmore/Flickr

In the United States, as Rep Omar pointed out, politicians on both sides of the aisle in both Houses routinely fall over themselves to pledge fealty and taxpayer dollars to Israel. 

The Trump administration is virtually owned by the state of Israel. Donald Trump has taken money from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and other wealthy pro-Israel donors. His daughter converted to Orthodox Judaism in 2009. Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, also an Orthodox Jew, is close to the Netanyahu regime in Israel. Two established neocons, John Bolton and Elliot Abrams, and a convert, Mike Pompeo, are bedrock supporters of the Israeli mission to establish dominance in the Middle East, diminish the native Palestinian population, and steal land from its neighbors.

Enter Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a failed presidential candidate desperately trying to stay politically relevant. 

Cruz and the notorious neocon senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, introduced companion resolutions demanding the US recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Syrian territory prior to the Six-Day War in 1967.

Today @SenTomCotton, @RepGallagher & I today introduced companion bills establishing that it shall be the policy of the United States to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. –> https://t.co/G5sHtAecZQ

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) February 26, 2019

Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Mike Gallagher urging the US to annex the Golan Heights. https://t.co/ay5lOEiFOD

— Empire News (@imperienytt) February 28, 2019

Colonel Jan Mühren, a former UN observer stationed in the Golan Heights and West Bank during the war, told a Dutch current affairs program Israel “provoked most border incidents as part of its strategy to annex more land,” illegal under international law, specifically the Fourth Geneva and Hague Conventions. The Golan was officially annexed by Israel in 1981. In December of that year, United Nations Security Council resolution 497 denounced Israel’s annexation. 

Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan admitted in 1976 Israel had masterminded over 80% of the hostilities on the border with Syria. In 1997 The New York Times quoted Dayan as saying 

I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was.

Israel has long coveted the resources of the Golan Heights. She planned to dispute the 1923 border and claim the Hula swamp and monopolize Lake Galilee. The stolen water would then be diverted downstream from the Jordan for exclusive use by Israel’s National Water Carrier. The Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan was paid for by the United States (see “Rivers of Discord: International Water Disputes in the Middle East”). 

The Israeli state also attempted to seize water resources in Lebanon. Its 1978 invasion of South Lebanon was codenamed “Operation Litani,” named after the Litani River, a vital water resource for the people of southern Lebanon. The PLO provided a convenient excuse for the invasion when it established what the corporate media at the time called a “quasi-state” (while completely ignoring an-Nakba, the forced expulsion—ethic cleansing—of around a million Palestinians, many thousands fleeing to southern Lebanon to escape massacres committed by the Israeli army). 

In other words, Israel stole hundreds of square miles of Syrian territory primarily to exploit its water resources and expand its border for the establishment of illegal settlements. Thanks to the United States and its domination of the United Nations, Israel has been allowed to violate numerous resolutions condemning its behavior vis-à-vis the Palestinians. 

For Ted Cruz and his cohort Tom Cotton, making the once divided Jerusalem—now largely ethnically cleansed of Arabs (this is called the “Judaization of Jerusalem” in politespeak)—the capitol of Israel was not hardly enough. Now Congress must recognize and support the outright theft of land and natural resources by Israel in direct violation of international law. 

The introduced bill states that it is “the sense of Congress that… Israel’s security from attacks from Syria and Lebanon cannot be assured without Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights” and “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of a peace agreement between Israel and Syria will be an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.” The proposed legislationstates that recognizing Israel’s theft of the Golan is “in the United States national security interest,” which it obviously isn’t unless we consider Israel the fifty-first state of the US, which it may as well be. 

It remains to be seen if this bill will get traction in Congress. However, considering the staunch support for Israel in Congress, and the overwhelming influence of AIPAC and around sixty other Jewish lobbying groups (including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Zionist Council, the American Jewish Committee, and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations), the resolution may receive a warm and enthusiastic reception in Congress. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

On March 6, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) delivered a massive rocket strike on positions of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in Jisr al-Shughur in the northwestern part of Idlib province. This was the first such strike in this area in five months.

The strike reportedly came in response to the recent increase in militant shelling of government-held areas in northwestern Hama, which has been causing  civilian casualties on a regular basis.

Separately, the SAA carried out a rocket strike on the headquarters of Jaysh al-Izza near the town of Khan Shaykhun in southern Idlib. The HQ was fully destroyed and 7 militants, including the group’s prominent field commander Majid al-Said, were eliminated.

Jaysh al-Izza is one of the key allies of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) in northern Hama and southern Idlib. Despite this, mainstream media outlets describe it as a moderate opposition group. At various different times during the war, Jaysh al-Izza was receiving supports from the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The SAA renewed its efforts aimed at destroying militant infrastructure within the Idlib de-escalation zone just recently. This forced decision came as the only effective response to continued violations of the ceasefire regime by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Jaysh al-Izza, the TIP and their al-Qaeda-linked allies.

Pro-government sources speculate that the SAA may soon launch a limited military operation in the agreed demilitarized zone in order to force radicals to withdraw from it and to put an end to the constant shelling of civilian areas. However, this decision faces multiple diplomatic obstacles.

Meanwhile, the so-called de-escalation zone has become the source of another threat – the growing activity of ISIS cells.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham claimed that it had cracked down on an ISIS cell, captured its leader and a weapons depot in the town of Atarib in western Aleppo. The depot was full of assault rifles, remote-controlled improvised explosive devices and other equipment.

Last week, an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself up in the city of Idlib killing several Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members. Following the attack, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham executed ten ISIS members on the site of the explosion. Despite this public move, the terrorist group appears to be unable to stop the expansion of ISIS cells within the Idlib zone. One of the key reasons for this is that the groups ideologies are similar in multiple aspects. Therefore, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members not satisfied with the lack of large-scale operations against the SAA could opt to join ISIS.

Members of local pro-government militia prevented an infiltration attempt by a group of ISIS members near the town of Taraba in northern al-Suwayda. They opened fire on a unit of the terrorist group conducting reconnaissance in the area, but were not able to eliminate it.

In the second part of 2018, the SAA conducted a military operation against ISIS cells operating in the desert area on the administrative border between al-Suwayda and Damascus. Despite this, ISIS cells started resurfacing in the area in February 2019. Local sources say that ISIS members are infiltrating the area through the US-occupied zone of al-Tanf.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces continue their operation against ISIS in the Euphrates Valley. The ISIS resistance has been mostly overcome and terrorists are now surrendering to the US-backed force.

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The organic movement has been seen as a fad and a trend by many, but others call it a necessity in a changing world where toxic chemicals are increasingly killing life from the bottom of the food chain up, including people as the story of terminally ill groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson demonstrated.

Organic agriculture is still a ways off from becoming truly mainstream in the United States, especially with companies like Bayer (now the owner of Monsanto) renewing their push for more pesticides and new technology-intensive methods of farming.

But even as the U.S. continues to approve new “longer-lasting” GMOs, harsh, toxic pesticides and other unnatural “innovations,” other parts of the world are anteing up on organic farming like never before.

While these changes have been far from simple, places like the Himalayan state of Sikkim in India are making immense progress, helping to support the health of pollinators, human beings, and the environment in the process.

Indian state first go 100% organic

In January 2016, the state of Sikkim, in the shadow of the world’s third-tallest peak Mt. Kanchenjunga, succeeded in becoming the first fully organic state in India, and probably the world. A few short years later, there are still plenty of kinks to be worked out, but the benefits are being seen first hand.

Bee populations are said to be rebounding, with plants dependent on bee pollination like cardamom providing much higher yields. Cardamom for example has risen by more than 30% since 2014, a report from The Washington Post said.

Tourism to the region has also increased nearly 70% since the state went organic according to the BBC (see video below), and soil health has rebounded tremendously, as is usually the case when organic methods are applied. Marketed as an eco-friendly dream destination, the region boasts 500 species of butterflies, 4,500 types of flowering plants, and rare wildlife like the red panda, Himalayan bear, snow leopards and yaks.

The state also received a Future Policy Award 2018 at a UN ceremony in Rome, beating out 51 other nominees from 25 countries worldwide for best promoting agro-ecology.

While many farmers have struggled in the years following Sikkim’s mandated switch to organic, they have also said that their crop yields have rebounded to what they were before the change. In response to the increasing signs of success, Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi has recognized the state for its contributions and pledged further support for organic farmers throughout India.

Thus far, there have also been concerns about ineffectiveness of the bio-pesticides being used in place of synthetic ones, as well as rising prices and diseases affecting crops.

The state has also had to rely on conventional crops from West Bengal to help feed its population while farmers continue to learn how best to maximize yields with assistance from government programs.

But positive signs abound, as shown in the BBC report below.

The world’s biggest GMO docu-series is BACK and free to watch now through March 10, 21019! Click here to secure your spot and watch GMOs Revealed now, the future of our food system depends upon it! Here’s the link to watch one more time.

Yields up for all but one crop in India’s first organic state

While individual farmers have reported difficulties in multiple cases including much lower income in some places, as a whole things seemed to be looking up yield-wise as of April 2017, when it was reported that productivity per capita among four major crop types had risen.

The Sikkim mandarin orange, a local specialty crop, saw yields per capita drop 22% from 2010-2011 to 2015-2016.

But during that same time period, all other fruits rose by 5% on average, total spices including ginger and cash crop turmeric rose 2%, large cardamom rose .8%, and all roots & tubers including potatoes rose by .6%.

Officials say that the health of the environment, which had been suffering under the conventional system of agriculture, has improved, however, as has the health of the locals.

“It’s had a huge impact,” said Khorlo Bhutia, Sikkim’s secretary of horticulture and cash crop development. “It’s because of the good environment – chemical-free air, water, food – all these factors.”

The country is serious about passing them on to the rest of the world, although the process is one fraught with challenges and hard work.

“This is a big moment for India,” said India’s minister of agriculture and farmers’ welfare Radha Mohan Singh in 2018, adding that people have slowly been jumping on board with the idea of going 100% organic.

Sikkim is currently offering organic agriculture modules for students in the fourth and fifth grades, in stark contrast to the United States where propaganda from chemical companies like Monsanto has infiltrated students’ textbooks.

“The approach Sikkim has started will be adopted by the whole world tomorrow,” he said, in a speech that stretched five hours. “This is our vision!”

Renowned organic activist and author Vandana Shiva has also joined in the project, as shown in the video below.

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Featured image: Yogita Limaye of the BBC network in Sikkim, India. (Source: AltHealthWorks.com)

For a while, all the guns have fallen silent.

I am near Idlib, the last stronghold of the terrorists in Syria. The area where the deadliest anti-government fighters, most of them injected into Syria from Turkey, with Saudi, Qatari and Western ‘help’, are literally holed up, ready for the final showdown.

Just yesterday, mortars were falling on villages near the invisible frontline, separating government troops and the terrorist forces of Al Nusra Front. The day before yesterday, two explosions rocked the earth, only a couple of meters from where we are now standing.

They call it a ceasefire. But it’s not. It is one-sided. To be more precise: the Syrian army is waiting, patiently. Its cannons are pointing towards the positions of the enemy, but the orders from Damascus are clear: do not fire.

The enemy has no scruples. It provokes, endlessly. It fires and bombs, indiscriminately. It kills. Along the frontline, thousands of houses are already ruined. Nothing gets spared: residential districts, sport gymnasiums, even bakeries. There is an established routine: assaults by the terrorists, rescue operations organized by Syrian armed forces (SAA – Syrian Arab Army) and Syrian National Defense Forces, then immediate rebuilding of the damage.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrian people have lost their lives in this war. Millions had to leave their homeland. Millions have been internally displaced. For many, the conflict became a routine. Rescue operations became routine. Rebuilding tasks became routine, too.

Now, it is clear that the final victory is near. Syria survived the worse. It is still bleeding, but most of its territories are beginning to heal. People are slowly returning home, from Lebanon and Turkey, from Germany and elsewhere. They go through rubble – their former homes. They sit down and cry. Then, they get up and start rebuilding. That’s in other parts of the country: Duma, Homs, Aleppo, Deir ez-Zur.

But in the villages and towns north of Hama and towards Idlib, the war is far from being over.

In the town of Squalbiah, Commander Nabel Al-Abdallah of the National Defense Forces (NDF) explained to me:

“SAA could easily use force and win militarily; it could take Idlib. But the SAA operates under command of President Assad, who believes in negotiations. If we take the city now, there would be huge casualties.”

*

The situation is not as simple, as we would like it to be. Victory may be near, but the West is not giving up, nor is Turkey. There are still pockets that are held by the US and French troops, and around Idlib (including Manbij), a large area is still controlled by the terrorists, who were transported here from all corners of Syria, under the Russian-sponsored agreement.

And there is more to it: My sources in Syria shared the latest:

“Some 4 months ago, the ’new ISIS’ appeared in the south of Idlib, not far from where we are right now. They were injected into Syria by the Turks. They were wearing brand new uniforms, white long dresses. Before, they were recognizable by black or gray outfits – ‘Afghan-style’. They now call themselves ‘Hurras Aldeen’, or ‘The Guardians of Religion’. Why? In order for the United States, and the West in general, to continue to support them. The ISIS are officially on the list of the terrorist organizations’, but this new ‘brand’ is not.”

I ask Commander Nabel Al-Abdallah, what the West really wants? He replies, immediately:

“The West wants terrorism to spread to Russia and China. Many terrorists work and fight directly for the interests of the United States.

We need to take care of the innocent civilians. But we also have to find the solution, very quickly. If we fail, terrorism will spread all around the world.”

We sit in the Commander’s provisory headquarters, having a quick cup of tea, before moving to the frontline.

He wants to say something. He thinks, how. It is not easy. Nothing is easy under the circumstances, but he tries, and what he utters makes sense:

“If we don’t have solution, soon, terrorists will damage the world. Our problems are not just the ISIS, but above all, the ideology that they represent. They use Islam, they say that they fight in the name of Islam, but they are backed by the United States. And here, the SAA, our military and our defense forces, are fighting for the world, not just for Syria.”

We embrace and I go. His men drive me in a military vehicle to the outskirts of As Suqaylabiyah (also known as Squalbiah). From there, I photograph a hospital and the positions of Al Nusra Front. They are there, right in front of me, just a couple of hundreds of meters.

I am told that I am like a sitting duck, exposed. I work fast. Luckily, today the terrorists are not in the mood for shooting.

Before returning to the vehicle, I try to imagine how life must be there, under Al Nusra Front or the ISIS occupation.

From the hill where I stand, the entire area looks green, fertile and immensely beautiful. But I know, I clearly understand that it is hell on earth for those who live in those houses down below; in the villages and towns controlled by some of the most brutal terrorists on earth.

I also know that, these terrorist monsters are here on foreign orders, trying to destroy Syria, simply because its government and people have been refusing to succumb to the Western imperialist dictates.

Here, it is not only about theory. The lives of millions have been already destroyed. Here it is all concrete and practical – it is reality.

We can hear explosions, in a distance. The war may be over in Damascus, but not here. Not here, yet.

*

My friend Yamen is from the city of Salamiyah, some 50 kilometers from Hama. Only recently the area around his home town was liberated from the extremist groups.

Twenty kilometers west from Salamiyah lies the predominantly Ismaili village of Al Kafat, which used to be surrounded by both Al-Nusra Front and the ISIS.

Mr. Abdullah, President of local Ismaili Council, recalls the horrors which his fellow citizens had to endure:

“In the past, we had two car bomb explosions here. In January 2014, 19 people were killed, 40 houses totally destroyed and 300 damaged. Fighting was only 200 meters away from here. Both Al-Nusra Front and ISIS surrounded the village, and were cooperating. We are very close to one of the main roads, so for the terrorists, it was an extremely important strategic position. This entire area was finally liberated only in January 2018.”

Whom do they blame?

Mr. Abdullah does not hesitate:

“Saudis, Turks, the USA, Europe, Qatar…”

We walk through the village. Some homes are still lying in ruins, but most of them have at least been partially restored. On the walls and above several shops, I can see the portrait of a beautiful young woman, who was killed during one of the terrorist assaults. 65 villagers were slaughtered, in total. Before the war, the population of the village was 3,500, but traumatized and impoverished by war, many decided to leave and now only 2,500 inhabitants live here, cultivating olive trees, herding sheep and cows.

Image on the right: These women survived life under ISIS

Before my visit here, I was told that education played an extremely important role in defending this place, and in keeping morale high during the darkest days of combat and crises. Mr. Abdullah readily confirmed it:

“The human brain has the capacity to solve problems, and to defuse crises. During a war like this, education is extremely important. Or more precisely, it is mainly about learning, not only about education. Al-Nusra and ISIS – they are synonymous with ignorance. If your brain is strong, it easily defeats ignorance. I think we succeeded here. And look now: this poor village has at this moment 103 students attending universities, all over Syria.”

As we drive on, east, large portraits of a brother of my friend Yamen decorate many military posts. He was one of the legendary commanders here, but was killed in 2017.

Then I see a castle: monstrous, more than two millennia old, overlooking the city of Salamiyah. There are green fields all around, so much beauty, in all the corners of Syria.

“Come back and visit all these marvels when the war is over,” someone around me jokes.

I don’t see it as a joke.

“I will,” I think. “I definitely will”. But we have to win, and win very soon, as soon as possible! To make sure that nothing else goes up in flames.

*

I drop my bag in at a local inn in Salamiyah, and ask my comrades to drive me on, further east. I want to see, to feel how life was under ISIS, and how it is now.

There are ruins, all around us. I saw plenty of terrible urban ruins during my previous visit: all around Homs and the outskirts of Damascus.

Here I see rural ruins, in their own way as horrifying as those scarring all the major cities of Syria.

This entire area had recently been a frontline. Or it was screaming in the hands of the terrorist groups, mainly ISIS.

Now it is a minefield. The road is cleared, but not the fields; not the remains of the villages.

I photograph a tank that used to belong to the ISIS; burned and badly damaged. It is an old Soviet tank, which used to belong to the Syrian army. It was captured by the ISIS, and then destroyed by either the SAA or a Russian airplane. Next to the tank – a chicken farm burned to the ground.

The Lieutenant, who is accompanying me, goes on, monotonously, with his grizzly account:

“Today, outside Salamiyeh, 8 people were killed by the landmines.”

We leave the vehicle, and walk slowly down the road, which is full of craters.

Suddenly, the Lieutenant stops without any warning:

“And here, my cousin was killed by another mine.”

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We reach Hardaneh Village, but almost no one is left here. There are ruins everywhere. Before – 500 people lived here, now only 30. This is where heavy fighting against the ISIS took place. 13 local people were killed, 21 soldiers ‘martyred’. Other civilians were forced to leave.

Mr. Mohammad Ahmad Jobur is the local administrator (el muchtar), 80 years old:

“First, we fought ISIS, but they overwhelmed us. Most of us had to leave. Now some of us returned, but only few…Yes, now we have electricity; at least 3 hours a day, and our children can go to school. The old school was destroyed by the ISIS, so kids are now collected and taken to a bigger town for education. Every villager wants to come back, but most of the families have no money to rebuild their houses and farms. The government made a list of the people whose dwellings were destroyed. They will get help, but help will be distributed gradually, stage by stage.”

Naturally: almost the entire country lies in ruins.

Are villagers optimistic about the future?

“Yes, very optimistic,” declares the village chief. “If we get help, if we can rebuild, we will all come back.”

But then, they show me the water wells, destroyed by the ISIS.

It is all smiles through tears. So far only 30 have come back. How many will come home this year?

I asked the chief what the main aim of the ISIS was?

“No aim, no logic. ISIS was created by the West. They tried to destroy everything, this village, this area, this entire country. They made no sense… they do not think like us… they only brought destruction.”

*

Soha, a village even further east, a place where men, women and children were forced to live under the ISIS.

I am invited into a traditional house. People sit in a circle. Several younger women are hiding their faces, not wanting to be photographed. I can only guess why. Others don’t care. What happened here; what horrors took place? Nobody will pronounce it all.

This is a traditional village inhabited by a local tribe; very conservative.

Testimonies begin to flow:

“First, they banned us from smoking, and shaving. Women had to cover their faces and feet; they had to wear black… Strict rules were imposed… education was banned. The ISIS created terrible prisons… They were often beating us with rubber hoses, in public. Some people were beheaded. Severed heads were exhibited above the main square.”

“When ISIS arrived, they brought with them their slaves – kidnapped people from Raqqah. Some women got stoned in public, alive. Other women were thrown to their death from the roofs and from other high places. They were amputating hands… Various women were forced to marry ISIS fighters…”

An uncomfortable silence followed, before the topic got changed.

“They killed 2 men from this village…”

Some say more, many more.

Several youngsters joined the ISIS. 3 or 4… ISIS would pay $200 to each new combatant who subscribed. And of course, they were promising heaven…

In one of the villages, I am shown a big rusty cage for ‘infidels’ and “sinners”. People were locked in there like wild animals, and kept exposed, in the open.

ISIS cage for infidels and sinners

I see the destroyed ‘police’ building of the ISIS. At one point I am offered some papers – documents – which are just scattered all over the floor. I don’t want to take any with me, not even as a ‘souvenir’.

Testimonies continue to flow:

“They were beheading people for being in possession of mobile phones… Local villagers were disappearing… they were kidnapped…”

At some point, I have to halt this flow of testimonies. I can hardly process all that is being said. People are shouting over each other. One day, someone should take it all down, to record it, to file it. I do what I can, but I realize that it is not enough. It is never enough. The scale of the tragedy is too great.

By now it is getting dark… and then it is dark. I have to return to Salamiyeh, to rest a bit; to sleep for a few hours, and then to return to the frontline, where both the Syrian and Russian soldiers are bravely facing the enemy. Where they are doing all that is humanly possible to prevent those gangsters sponsored by the West and their allies, from returning to the already liberated areas of the country.

But before I fall asleep, I recall; I am haunted by the image of a little girl who survived the occupation of her village by the ISIS. She stood resting her back against the wall. She looked at me for a while, then lifted her hands and moved her fingers quickly across her throat.

*

The next day, the Commander of the National Defense Forces in Muhradah, Simon Al Wakel, drives me all around the city and the outskirts, Kalashnikov resting next to his seat. It is a quick and matter-of-fact ‘tour’:

“This is where the mortars landed two days ago, there is a power plant which was liberated from the terrorists, and this is a huge gymnasium attacked by the terrorists simply because they hate that our girls excel in volleyball and basketball.”

Image on the right: Driving  to the front with Commander Simon

We talk to locals. Commander Simon gets stopped in the middle of the streets, embraced by total strangers, kissed on both cheeks.

“I have been targeted more than 60 times,” he tells me. One of his former cars is rotting at a remote parking lot, after it was hit and burned by the terrorists.

He shrugs his shoulders:

“Russians and Turks negotiated the ceasefire, but obviously, terrorists do not respect any agreements.”

We return to the frontline. I am shown the Syrian cannons pointing towards the positions of Al Nusra Front. The local headquarters of the terrorists is clearly visible, not too far from the magnificent ruins of the Sheizar Citadel.

First, I see the Syrian soldiers, operating slightly outdated Soviet as well as newer Russian equipment: armed vehicles, tanks, “Katyushas”. Then I spot several Russian boys settling down in two houses with a commanding view of the valley and the enemy territory.

Both the Syrian and Russian armies, shoulder to shoulder, are now facing the last enclave of the terrorists.

I wave at the Russians, and they wave back at me.

Everyone seems to be in a good mood. We are winning. We are ‘almost there’.

We all also know that it is still too early to celebrate. Terrorists from all over the world are hoarded in the area in and around the city of Idlib. The US, UK and French “Special Forces” are operating in several parts of the country. The Turkish military keeps holding big chunk of the Syrian land.

The weather is clear. The green fields are fertile and beautiful. The nearby citadel is imposing. Just a little bit more of determination and endurance, and this wonderful country will be fully liberated.

We all realize it, but no one is celebrating, yet. Nobody is smiling. The facial expressions of the Syrian and Russian comrades are serious. Men are looking down towards the valley, weapons ready. They are fully concentrated. Anything may happen; anytime.

I know why there are no smiles; we all know: Soon, we may defeat the enemy.Soon, the war may end. But hundreds of thousands of Syrian people have already died.

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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.

All images in this article are from the author. Featured image: Territory held by Al Nusrah Front, including their military hospital

There is an immense amount of criticism of Putin, especially coming from America, most of it empty criticism which ignores realities and genuine analysis. For the more thoughtful, it represents only the stink and noise of propaganda, and not honest criticism in its true sense at all.

In politics, and especially in the direction of a country’s foreign affairs, there are certain behaviors and ideas and attitudes which mark out a person as exceptional. I think there can be no doubt, Putin is just such a person, and I am very much inclined to say, the preeminent one of our time. Frankly, compared with Putin’s skills, Donald Trump comes off as a noisy circus act, a sideshow carnival barker, and not an appealing one. He has an outsized impact in the world only because he represents the most powerful country on earth and has embraced all the prejudices and desires of its power establishment, not because of the skilfulness of his actions or the insight of his mind. Obama made a better public impression, but if you analyze his actions, you see a man of immense and unwarranted ego, a very secretive and unethical man, and a man who held no worthy ideals he promoted. He was superficial in many things. And he was completely compliant to the power establishment, leaving no mark of his own to speak of.

Putin is a man who advocates cooperation among states, who argues against exceptionalism, who wants his country to have peace so that it can grow and advance, a man lacking any frightening or tyrannical ideologies, a man who invariably refers to other countries abroad, even when they are being uncooperative, in respectful terms as “our partners,” a man who knows how to prioritize, as in defense spending, a man with a keen eye for talent who has some other exceptional people assisting him – men of the calibre of Lavrov or Shoygu, a man who supports worthy international organizations like the UN, a man who only reluctantly uses force but uses it effectively when required, a highly restrained man in almost everything he does, a man who loves his country and culture but does not try foisting them off on everyone else as we see almost continuously from American presidents, a man with a keen eye for developing trends and patterns in the world, a man with an eye, too, for the main chance, a man whose decisions are made calmly and in light of a lot of understanding. That’s quite a list.

The differences between recent American leaders, all truly mediocre, and Putin probably has something to do with the two counties’ relative situations over the last few decades. After all, if the support isn’t there for someone like Putin, you won’t get him. Russia’s huge Soviet empire collapsed in humiliation in 1991. The country was put through desperate straits, literally its own great depression with people begging or selling pathetic trinkets on the streets. And America made no real effort to assist. Indeed, quite the opposite, it kicked someone who was down and tried to shake all the loose change from his pockets. Out of Russia’s desperation came a man of remarkable skills, a rather obscure figure, but one who proved extremely popular and was obviously supported by enough powerful and important people to employ his skills for the county’s recovery and advance.

And he showed no weakness or flinching when dealing with some of the extremely wealthy men who in fact became wealthy by striping assets from the dying Soviet Union, men who then also used their wealth to challenge the country’s much-needed new leadership. He was, of course, excoriated in the United States, but to the best of my understanding, he did what was necessary for progress. The results are to be seen in a remarkably revitalized Russia. Everywhere, important projects are underway. New highways, new airports, major new bridges, new rail lines and subways, a new spaceport, new projects and cooperative efforts with a whole list of countries, new efforts in technology and science, and Russia has become the world’s largest exporter of wheat. Putin also has committed Russia to offering the world grain crops free of all GMOs and other contaminants, a very insightful effort to lock-in what have been growing premium markets for such products, even among Americans.

The military, which badly declined after the fall of the USSR, has been receiving new and remarkable weapons, the products of focused research efforts. New high-tech tanks, artillery, ships, and planes. In strategic weapons, Russia now produces several unprecedented ones, a great achievement which was done without spending unholy amounts of money, Russia’s military budget being less than a tenth that of the United States. Putin’s caution and pragmatism dictate that Russia’s first priority is to become as healthy as possibly, so it needs peace, for decades. Few Westerners appreciate the devastating impact of the USSR’s collapse, but even before that, the Soviet empire had its own slow debilitating impact. Russia’s economic system was not efficient and competitive. The effects of that over many years accumulated. The USSR always did maintain the ability to produce big engineering projects such as dams and space flight, but it always was sorely lacking in the small and refined things of life that an efficient economy automatically sees are provided.

The new strategic weapons are an unfortunate necessity, but the United States threatens Russia as perhaps never before with the expansion of NATO membership right to the Russian border, something breaking specific American promises of years back. And it has been running tanks all over Europe and then digging them in them right at the frontier just to make a point. It has deployed multiple-use covered missile launchers not far from the border which may as easily contain offensive intermediate-range ground-to-ground nuclear missiles as the defensive anti-missile missiles claimed to be their purpose. And it has torn up one of the most important nuclear-weapons treaties we had, the INF Treaty, pertaining to intermediate-range missiles. Intermediate-range nuclear missiles based in Europe give the United States the ability to strike Russia with little warning, their ten-minute flight path compares to a roughly thirty-minute flight path for an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) coming from America. These are extremely de-stabilizing, as are the counter-measures Russia felt it must take, Russian intermediate-range nuclear missile aimed at European centers. Everyone eventually recognized that, and that’s why the treaty was successfully completed. Europeans appreciated no longer becoming the immediate battlefield in a nuclear war.

But relations with the United States now have entered a new world, and it is not a brave one. America’s power establishment has assumed new goals and priorities, and in those, Russia is not viewed well, despite its new identity as a nation ready to participate and peacefully compete with everyone, a nation without the kind of extreme ideology communism was, a kind of secular religious faith. Despite its readiness to participate in all Western organizations and forums and discussions, it is viewed with a new hostility by America. It is arbitrarily regarded as an opponent, as an ongoing threat. As I discuss below, America, too, has been in kind of a decline, and the response of its leadership to that fact involves flexing its muscles and extracting concessions and privileges and exerting a new dominance in the world, a response not based in economic competition and diplomatic leadership, a response carrying a great deal of danger.

And, very importantly, its response is one that involves not only bypassing international organizations, but, in many cases, working hard to bend them to its purposes. There are many examples, but America’s treatment of the UN has been foremost. It has in the recent past refused for considerable periods to pay its treaty-obliged dues until it saw changes it unilaterally demanded. It has dropped out of some important agencies completely, most notably UNESCO. In general, it has intimidated an international organization into better accommodating American priorities, including very much imperial ones opposed to what the UN is supposed to be about. And it has used this intimidation and non-cooperativeness to influence the nature of leadership at the UN, the last few Secretaries-General being timid on very important matters and ineffective in general. That’s just the way America likes them to be now. A harsh Neocon like Madeleine Albright won her government-service spurs at the UN by engineering the departure of an unwanted Secretary-General.

Promoting coups is not a new activity for the United States. There is a long postwar record, including Iran’s democratic government in the 1950s, Guatemala’s democratic government in the 1950s, and Chile’s democratic government in 1973. But the recent coup in Ukraine represented something rather new, a very provocative activity right on a major Russian border. It was also against an elected government and in a country which shares with Russia a history and culture going back more than a thousand years to the predecessor state of Kievan Rus. Yes, there are resentments in Ukraine from the Soviet era, and those are what the United States exploited, but the country was democratically governed. In any event, staging a coup in a large bordering country is a very serious provocation. You can just imagine the violent American reaction to one in Mexico or Canada.

The new, post-coup government in Ukraine also made many provocative and plainly untrue statements. The ineffective, and frequently ridiculous, President Poroshenko kept telling Europeans that Russian troops and armor were invading his country. Only his brave army was holding the hordes back. He was literally that silly at times. Of course, none of it was ever true. American spy satellites would quickly detect any Russian movement, and they never did. In an effort to put the wild claims into perspective, treating them with the contempt they deserved, Putin once said that if he wanted to, he could be in Kiev in two weeks. Undoubtedly true, too. Well, the statement was taken completely out of context, treated as a threat by America’s always-faithful-to-the-narrative press. Journalism in the service of government policy – all of it, from the most elevated newspapers and broadcasters to the humblest. And I think that nicely illustrates the absurdity of events in Ukraine and the way they have been used.

The United States paid for the coup in Ukraine. We even know how much money it spent, five billion dollars, thanks to the overheard words of one of America’s most unpleasant former diplomats, Victoria Nuland. The idea was to threaten Russia with the long Ukrainian border being put into genuinely hostile hands. Never mind that the government driven from office with gunfire in the streets from paid thugs was democratically elected. Never mind that many of the groups with which the United States cooperated in this effort were right-wing extremists, a few of them resembling outright Nazis, complete with armbands and symbols and torchlight parades. And never mind that the government America installed was incompetent, not only sending Ukraine’s economy into a tailspin but promptly igniting a completely unnecessary civil war.

The large native, Russian-speaking population (roughly 30% of the country) is completely dominant in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Those two regions partly turned the tables by seceding from Ukraine with its government which early-on worked to suppress historic Russian-language rights and carried on a lot of activities to make those with any Russian associations feel very unwelcome. It’s a deliberately provocative environment, and, as we all know from our press, not a day goes by in Washington without anti-Russian rhetoric and unsupported charges. While Washington greatly failed in this effort, it nevertheless succeeded in generating instability and hostility along a major Russian border. It also gained talking points with which to pressure NATO into some new arrangements.

In the case of Crimea, it is important to remember that it has been Russian since the time of Catherine the Great. It only was in recent history that Crimea became part of Ukraine, and that happened with the stroke of a pen, an administrative adjustment during the days of the USSR, the very USSR the people now running Ukraine so despise, rejecting almost everything ever done, except for the administrative transfer of Crimea apparently. Just one of those little ironies of history. The people who live in Crimea speak Russian, and they did not welcome the new Ukrainian government’s heavy-handed, nationalist, anti-Russian drive around Ukrainian language and culture, necessarily a narrow, claustrophobic effort since the late USSR was a multi-national and multi-lingual state, and given Crimea’s much longer-term history as part of Russia. Even during Crimea’s recent past as part of Ukraine, Russia continued to maintain, under lease, its major naval base at Sevastopol on the Black Sea, so the connections with Russia have been continuous.

In virtually every newspaper story you read and in places like Wikipedia on the Internet, you will see the word “annexation” used to describe Crimea’s relationship with Russia. It simply is not an accurate description, but its constant use is a very good measure of America’s ability to saturate media with its desired version of events. The people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from an unfriendly new Ukraine, and they voted to petition Russia’s admitting them as part of the country. How can you call the results of free and open votes annexation? Well, only the same way you can tell the twice-elected President of Venezuela that he is not President and that another man, who did not even run in the election and administered the oath of office to himself, is the President. This is the kind of Alice-in-Wonderland stuff that comes as part of America’s new drive for dominance. It simply paints the roses red. What is claimed to have happened in Crimea provides the only support for charges of Russian aggression, the laying on of all kinds of sanctions, and running around all over Europe tearing up road surfaces with tanks. This is the atmosphere within which Putin must work, trying to maintain as many sound relationships with Europe as he can, and he actually has been quite successful. A number of prominent European politicians, especially retired ones who aren’t under the immediate pressures of politics and relations with America, have voiced support for Russia. Some have even visited Crimea by invitation and toured. And Russia’s major new gas pipeline into Europe, Nord Stream 2, proceeds despite constant American pressure against it. It is at this writing 70% complete. The Europeans cannot just abandon their long-term ally, the United States, even though I’m sure they understand the illusions and false claims of the current situation. The United States also retains considerable capacity to hurt Europe financially, so they rush into nothing, but I believe there can be no doubt that American words and actions have significantly weakened old and important relationships. No one likes being lied to, and they like even less having to pretend lies are truth.

Putin has been more cautious in the case of the secession of another Russian-speaking portion of Ukraine, an even larger one in population and in economic importance, the Eastern portion called Donbass. The people there declared two republics, Donetsk and Luhansk, and they petitioned to be admitted as part of Russia. But Russia does not officially recognize them although it has sent large volumes of aid as they were besieged by the new Ukrainian government. The government of Ukraine started a small civil war in the region. Russia supports the Minsk Accords, which it helped to write, accords to reunite the region with Ukraine but which require Ukraine to grant it a degree of constitutional autonomy to the region. This is a reasonable approach to ending the conflict, but it is not easy to implement. It is not something looked favorably upon by Ukraine’s right-wing extremists who push the government hard, having even threatened it at times. The entire business has been mired in difficulties from the start. Ukraine displayed remarkable military incompetence in this civil war against a much smaller opponent. It tried to increase the size of its forces with conscription in the West of Ukraine, but the number of no-shows and run-aways grew embarrassingly large. And, of course, none of this even needed to happen had the new government’s policies been sensible and fair in the first place. But you got no pressure from the United States over fairness. It is merely content to have caused a lot of difficulties on Russia’s border. And there is the matter of the shoot-down of Malaysian Airlines’ Flight MH-17, which my study of the circumstances suggests unequivocally was an act by Ukraine, whether accidental or deliberate. The United States has pushed hard to have this blamed on Russia, so as to not discredit its installed Ukrainian government, but the facts, as we know them, simply do not support that conclusion. The United States has shamefully pressured a NATO member, Holland, not even a central party to the event, to conduct a long and tortoise-paced investigation of the crash. It has ignored key evidence, and all of its interim conclusions can readily be seen as couched in the kind of suggestive but inexact language criminal lawyers advise their clients to use in court. What we see in Ukraine, is government incompetence, almost uniformly in all its activities, and again there is no concern expressed by the United States about all the difficulties – economic, military, and social – its efforts have caused for the Ukrainian people.

Putin’s adroit handling of the coup in Ukraine, frustrating many of America’s aims without getting Russia involved in conflict, determined Washington to further stoke-up anti-Russian feeling in Europe. You must always remember that NATO does represent a vehicle for the peaceful American occupation of Europe, Europe being an important economic competitor and potentially a major world power. The obsolescence of the original arguments for NATO – the threat of the USSR and the massive Red Army, now both long passed into history – had the potential to see America eventually lose its occupying perch in Europe.

Russian-threat hype added force to recent efforts over the last decade and a half to have inconsequential new states admitted to NATO, some of them having the attraction of borders with Russia and lots of simmering old anti-Soviet hostilities. Certainly, countries like Estonia or Latvia bring neither military nor economic strength to the organization. Other small states, such as Slovenia or Slovakia or Montenegro just fill holes in the map of Europe, so NATO is a contiguous mass. The small states are in fact potentially a serious drag. But for America, they were attractive new members because they are so grateful about being asked “to play with the big boys.” Their votes as part of the organization effectively dilute the influence of the larger, older states, such as France or Germany, who sometimes disagree with the United States, and some of whom have been developing new relationships with modern Russia. The entire series of American activities in Europe after the disappearance of the USSR represents absolutely nothing constructive, indeed, quite the opposite.

As I mentioned, America, too, has been in a kind of decline, but absolutely nothing resembling what Russia experienced. America’s establishment has come to realize that over the last couple of decades it is in a relative decline. It went from producing, after WWII, about forty percent of what the world used to twenty-something percent, and all signs point to the trend continuing. America was waking-up from an extended fantasy – a period when fluffy notions like “the American Dream” were embraced as real, a period explained by the simple fact that after the war all of America’s serious competitors had been flattened. America was waking to a time when those competitors were coming back and a time when fierce new competitors were rising. The “Dream” part of the advertising slogan, “the American Dream,” became all too apparent.

During that period of unique prosperity and power following WWII, a good deal of America’s leadership became what people who have been given too much often tend to become, spoiled and corrupt, unable to make good decisions in many cases, indulging in god-like notions of the planet being run for their benefit, and always, steadily leaving behind their own people’s welfare for imperial concerns abroad. The entire ethic of the New Deal period evaporated, and by the 1990s, a Democratic President like Clinton could actually make a speech bragging about “ending welfare as we know it.”

The people who really run the country, its power establishment, fixed on a new strategy to address uncomfortable realities. That strategy involves using America’s still great military and financial power to dominate international affairs in a more obvious and palpable way than ever. Dominance became an openly-discussed theme, as it rarely was before, in the hope, over time, of squeezing concessions and advantages from others to regain or at least hold on to its global position. This is an openly aggressive posture that has been assumed. No more pretence of being a nice guy. And it was actively promoted by a new political faction in Washington, the Neocons, a group who share certain interests and see America’s use of power as serving those interests. They have been open advocates of using military force to get things you want, and they hold many important and influential posts. Perhaps their greatest common interest is the welfare of Israel, and they see an America perceived as aggressive best serving Israel’s security.

It is important to note that while Russia maintains excellent relations with Israel – Putin has been visited often by Israel’s Prime Minister – nevertheless, by virtue of its sheer size and geographical location and military power, Russia is seen as a barrier to America’s more unrestrained use of power. “Russia” is almost a dirty word for many of America’s Neocon faction and for many Israelis. Russia’s recent decisive assistance to Syria in fighting gangs of terrorists introduced and supported from outside was viewed about as negatively as is possible. That is war Israel wanted President Assad to lose, and it secretly gave a great deal of assistance to the terrorists. It was hoping to secure a permanent hold on the Golan, grab even another slice of Syria as a buffer for its illegal residents in Golan, all while seeing one of the region’s leaders it most dislikes eliminated. It worked closely in the effort with Saudi Arabia’s murderous Crown Prince, and America oversaw and encouraged all aspects of a dirty war to topple a legitimate government which has remained fairly popular with its people despite years of agonizing conflict and endless dishonest American claims about such matters as chemical weapons. Assad is seen as a defender of the rights of Syria’s diverse religious groups, including its many Christians.

So, there is a built-in powerful negative towards Russia in Washington power circles for which there is no clear possible remedy or correction, and, indeed, no matter how reasonably Putin behaves, his country faces this opposition. For some American politicians, and very notably Hillary Clinton, this has proved a handy tool, Clinton long having been a close-to fanatical supporter of Israeli interests. The fact has earned her a great deal of campaign funding and other support over the years. Clinton’s ego also just could not take the fact that she lost the election to the leader of “the deplorables,” as she once called Trump’s supporters, so in dark claims of Russian interference, supported by absolutely no proof whatsoever, she protects her ego. And long before election day, Clinton had a hand in exploiting attitudes about Russia in another way. She is known to have paid, at least in part, for the fraudulent Steele Dossier commissioned from an ex-British spy. It was used to try to discredit Trump over Russian connections.

This dislike for Russia by the Neocons and other boosters of resurgent American power really is what is at the heart of America’s current Russophobia obsession, not any threatening actions by Russia. It becomes a kind of vicious circle with new accusations piled on all the time by various actors each with their own motives, and it is clearly quite dangerous.

So, these are the positions of the two countries today, Russia having risen quite impressively from the depths under a remarkably able leader, extremely popular and well-supported by powerful elements of its society, versus America, now in a much different kind of decline than what Russia experienced, led by an establishment group with rather less-than-honorable intentions and with a political system virtually designed to produce no real leaders who might interfere with establishment plans.

Putin is further supported from the outside by the rising colossus of China, one of the great miracle stories of our time. In the past, the two countries have not always been friends, and America, in the time of Nixon, actually worked at playing one off against the other. But that is no more. The American establishment’s intentions for China are too clear. It is virtually reneging on many old promises such as those around Taiwan being an integral part of China, it is treating China as an unwanted competitor, accusing it of every nefarious activity you can think of to impede its economic progress and demanding trade concessions as though China had been an unfair competitor rather than just a new, more successful one. America is now attacking in every way possible – from questioning motives and methods to trying to generate opposition by participants – China’s unprecedented and magnificent global enterprise, the Silk Road Project, a project dwarfing the great canals of the past and destined to bring new prosperity to all participants through trade. It hardly represents a positive attitude to oppose and impede it.

Putin is exactly the kind of man to quickly recognize and embrace a project like that. Russia is also rushing to help China greatly increase its supply of natural gas from Siberia’s immense reserves in order to decrease its dependence on coal. The first great new pipeline is almost finished.

So, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, both highly intelligent leaders, have a great many weighty common interests in working together as never before. America’s new policies have been a driving force in bringing them together, and there is no reason to expect any diminishment of that force. Recent American international behavior requires others to accept what Putin likes to call America’s “exceptionalism,” its position first and above all other nations, its self-granted privilege of not having to play by the same rules as everyone else – its status of “the indispensable nation” as one of America’s more arrogant diplomats put it not very long ago – and it requires that from two major, proud, and ancient societies which cannot possibly grant it.

America’s dependence on its gigantic military and security establishment represents a serious long-term weakness in many ways, even though it provides the very foundation of the American establishment’s new strategy for dominance. Empires, after all, while benefiting the privileged segments of a society, are a drag on most of its citizens, depriving them of many benefits, including the simple, important benefit of good and caring national government. America spends more than ten times as much as Russia on its military. China, compared to not many years ago, has increased its military spending greatly, but for a country with such a huge economy, second only to the United States and likely to overtake it before long, it still spends less than a quarter of what the United States does. And America does not even have the money to pay for its atrociously large military. It borrows the money, and who do you think pays the stream of interest payments for those massive borrowings? You’d be right if you said all of its ordinary, tax-paying citizens without privileges. They also are “on the hook” for the ultimate negative economic consequences of all this debt and borrowing.

Of course, from a world perspective, America’s military represents an ongoing threat to peace and security, much the opposite of what is claimed for it inside the United States. Great standing armies have always represented threats, and here is the greatest standing army in history. Many historical analyses hold them largely responsible for such terrible conflicts as WWI (a war whose outcome made WWII inevitable also). When such power is at hand, the temptation to use it is constant, and its very presence distorts all attitudes and decisions. Many of America’s own Founders understood that, but it has been forgotten by the contemporary American establishment in its relentless pursuit of empire and influence.

Security expenses are hard to compare, so much is secretive, but the United States with its 17 separate national security agencies and such a vast enterprise as the NSA’s new archipelago of facilities stuffed with hi-tech gear and supercomputers which spy on and record every American plus others would put any other country out of the competition. Again, the demands of the American establishment utterly compromise the interests of the country’s own citizens at large. Indeed, now in security matters, ordinary Americans have been pretty much reduced to a herd, each with an identifying tag stapled to his ear.

Russia’s democracy may be quite imperfect, but America’s – what it had of one, it never from the beginning identified itself actually as a democracy – has been transformed into plutocracy with an elaborate window-dressing simulation of democracy, an arrangement in which the state’s resources are committed to its privileged class and the advance of empire. And, as I’ve written many times, you can have a decent country or you can have an empire, but you cannot have both.

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Press and citizenry continue to discuss former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen’s testimony before Congress on February 27.

Russiagate skeptics and supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange are taking particular note of what Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie said to Cohen:

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REP. THOMAS MASSIE: You said—and this is also in your testimony—in the days before the Democratic convention, you became privy to a conversation that some of Hillary Clinton’s emails would be leaked. Is that correct?

MICHAEL COHEN: Correct.

REP. THOMAS MASSIE: OK. Was that in—you said late July. Do you know the exact day?

MICHAEL COHEN: I believe it was either the 18th or the 19th, and I would guess that it would be on the 19th.

REP. THOMAS MASSIE: But it was definitely July?

MICHAEL COHEN: I believe so, yes.

REP. THOMAS MASSIE: Do you know that was public knowledge in June? This was Mr. Assange. And I’d like to submit this [Guardian article quoting Julian Assange in June 2016]. Unanimous consent to submit this for the record.

REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Without objection, so ordered.

REP. THOMAS MASSIE: Mr. Assange reported to the media on June 12th that those emails would be leaked. So, I’m not saying you have fake news; I’m saying you have old news, and there’s really not much to that.

Finally, a US Congressman stated what should have been obvious all along, and it was read into the Congressional Record. The investigation wears no clothes to anyone paying attention, but the Russiagate faithful press are spinning this as desperately as they are Robert Mueller’s failure to find hard evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton, despite a two-year, 25-million-dollar investigation.

Democracy Now! reported what Massie said, but only within an interview with Marcy Wheeler, who responded,

“Julian Assange said publicly that he had material on Hillary Clinton. What Julian Assange never said publicly is ‘I’m going to drop it at the beginning of the DNC’ [Democratic National Convention]. And so, what is interesting about Cohen’s story—and, to be clear, it’s unlikely that he really did speak directly with Julian Assange—we know from a bunch of Stone’s other claims that when he claimed to be speaking directly with Assange, he instead was speaking with a cutout, like Jerome Corsi or like Randy Credico.”

Wheeler said that Assange did not publicly reveal the timing of the release, yet Stone (through Corsi or Credico) knew the timing, implying, according to Wheeler, that they had actual communication with Wikileaks, but there’s no hard evidence of that and the timing was entirely predictable given the date of the Democratic National Convention.

Wheeler’s among the worst of the Russiagate faithful now embroidering the facts. Is she saying that journalists should not publish for maximum impact? Or simply that Wikileaks should not? Would she impose the same standard on the New York Times, the Washington Post, or her own aptly named blog, EmptyWheel.net?

Neither releasing information nor knowing the date that it would be released are a crime. And even if Donald Trump did know the release date, what impact could that possibly have? How was Trump supposed to have used prior knowledge of the date on which Wikileaks would release the DNC and Podesta emails? They were guaranteed to be the day’s biggest headlines whether he knew their release date or not, so even if he did, it would have had absolutely no impact.

Any earnest journalist is going to release whatever they’ve got for maximum impact at whatever time and in whatever outlet they can. Any earnest news outlet is going to rush to publish a big story as fast as they can. And the DNC and Podesta emails were guaranteed to be a huge story no matter who knew of them or their publication date in advance.

Russiagators too flustered to admit failure

Admitting that they’ve propagandized Americans into a state of mass psychosis about Russian interference and infiltration could embarrass the Russiagate faithful press as much as admitting that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq should have embarrassed that theory’s proponents. It should be remembered, however, that New York Times reporter Judith Miller neither acknowledged being embarrassed nor apologized for leading us into that criminal war of aggression, and neither did Robert Mueller, the special Russiagate prosecutor now lionized by Trump-hating liberals. During the run-up to the 03/20/2003 attack on Iraq, Mueller told Congress,

“As Director Kennedy has pointed out, Secretary Powell prevented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical, or radiological material.”

In the United States of Amnesia, however, this is all long past, less significant than sportscasters’ speculation as to who will win the NBA Finals and the NBA MVP award in coming months. Disengagement is the most fundamental fact of American political life, and propagandists know they can count on it.

The record of Mueller’s Iraq War lie has not been played on cable TV. No journalist, media outlet, or public official has gone to prison for the war crime of spreading lies to justify war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Iraq, and none will go to prison for Russiagate lies even if they lead to nuclear war. Who’ll be left to prosecute? However, unless and until that eventuality, exposure could be embarrassing for the Russiagate faithful. It could damage whatever credibility they have left with anyone listening, so they’re scrambling. Someone may even put their narrative at risk by mounting an edit challenge to the Wikipedia entry titled “Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Elections,” even though it has almost 500 footnotes and is so long that Wikipedia includes an editorial note that “this article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably.” It would be a good start to challenge the opening sentence, which reads as though it were established fact: “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goal of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political discord in the United States.” (See Wikipedia: Editing policy for instructions on its collective knowledge creation practice.)

Why haven’t recorded phone calls been submitted in evidence?

Regarding telephone calls between Julian Assange, Randy Credico, Jerome Corsi, Roger Stone, Donald Trump or anyone else, they no doubt would have been recorded and therefore readily available as evidence. On February 27, Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan and associate of Wikileaks and Julian Assange, tweeted:

“Anybody who believes that Julian Assange was able to phone Roger Stone [or Randy Credico or Jerome Corsi] from inside the Ecuadorian Embassy with neither the GCHQ, NSA, CIA, MI5, or FBI intercepting the call is severely deluded. The combined budget of those agencies is 41 billion US dollars. Michael Cohen’s testimony is obvious nonsense.”

Applauding Congressman Thomas Massie from Across the Partisan Divide

Northern Kentucky’s Republican Congressional Representative Thomas Massie deserves huge thanks for finally stating the obvious last week in the Hall of Congress and having it read into the Congressional Record. By doing so he demonstrated that Donald Trump’s polarizing election doesn’t inform every political decision, alliance, or coalition from that date forward. Massie is a libertarian Republican and member of the Liberty Caucus, and readers no doubt disagree with him about a long list of core positions on taxation, limited government, and free markets, but not on Russiagate, Wikileaks, and Julian Assange. On August 16, 2018, Real Clear Politics published his editorial “Russia Hysteria Undercuts Our Values, Impedes Relations.”

Shortly before his exchange with Cohen, Massie voted with the Democrat-majority House of Representatives to overturn President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration, then tweeted:

“’If we violate the Constitution to build a wall, then the wall protects nothing. If legislators always vote with the President, we have a king. If legislators always vote with the prevailing wind, we have mob rule. If legislators always vote with the Constitution, we have a Republic.”

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Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from France 24

The latest Kashmir Crisis resulted in a stunning reversal of international perceptions about India and Pakistan whereby the self-professed “world’s largest democracy” has now been recast as a rogue state wanting to wage a war of aggression on unproven pretexts while the previously presumed “rogue state” of Pakistan has been revealed to be a responsible international actor fighting to uphold the UN-enshrined rules-based international order that the US and “Israel’s” South Asian ally is dangerously trying to undermine.

The Kashmir Crisis of 2019 will go down in history as the moment when international perceptions about India and Pakistan were stunningly reversed. The fast-moving multi-dimensional developments that took place between the last week of February and the first week of March did more than anything else to ruin India’s global reputation (mostly through its own reckless actions) while greatly improving Pakistan’s, something that few observers could have expected because they’d been so heavily indoctrinated with decades-old outdated dogmas that they never paid attention to how much both countries had changed by the beginning of the New Cold War. What follows is a concise breakdown of the 10 main military, diplomatic, and soft power points that caused the world to never see India and Pakistan the same way again:

Military

Pakistan Responded Proportionately To India:

Many commentators previously presumed that Pakistan lacked the conventional capabilities to respond tit-for-tat to India because of the numerical mismatch between their two militaries and the defense budgets funding them, but Pakistan proved just how wrong such superficial comparisons are when it responded proportionately and even managed to down at last one of India’s planes.

Pakistan Preemptively Prevented An MH-17-Like False Flag Attack:

By preemptively closing down its airspace to civilian airliners during the climax of the Kashmir Crisis, Pakistan prevented India from staging an MH-17-like false flag attack and blaming it on Islamabad in order to ratchet up the international pressure against its adversary, which prudently contributed to the forthcoming de-escalation that later unfolded.

The Pakistan Navy Detected And Deterred An Indian Submarine’s Infiltration Attempt:

Once again contradicting the international “experts” who never expected that the Pakistani military could ever pose a challenge to its Indian counterpart,  the Pakistan Navy detected and deterred an Indian submarine’s infiltration attempt and therefore proved its worth as a valuable branch of the Armed Forces that’s more than capable of punching well above its weight.

Diplomatic

Russia Expressed Its Willingness To Mediate Between India And Pakistan:

Bruising India’s wannabe-“superpower” ego and its supremacist self-perception relative to Pakistan, Russia showed that it regards India and Pakistan as equals in accordance with international law by expressing its willingness to mediate between them and even host peace talks if both parties were interested, which undercut India’s international prestige while raising Pakistan’s.

India Outright Rejected Russia’s Or Anyone Else’s Mediation Efforts While Pakistan Welcomed Them:

The Indian Ambassador to Russia told Sputnik that his country wouldn’t accept any mediation offer from anyone if it was formally made in the future while the Pakistani Foreign Minister enthusiastically welcomed the possibility of international – and especially Russian – assistance in this respect, which went a long way towards reshaping how Russia regards these two South Asian nations.

The OIC Slammed India For Its Atrocities In Kashmir:

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) slammed India for its atrocities in Kashmir despite hosting its Foreign Minister as the bloc’s official guest of honor during its latest summit, powerfully sending the message that it considers the Kashmir issue to be of premier importance for the international Muslim community (“Ummah”) and the rest of humanity in general.

India’s “Economic Diplomacy” Miserably Failed To Achieve Anything Of Political Significance:

India had hitherto assumed that the billions of dollars’ worth of deals that it signed with Russia and the Gulf States would eventually lead to them politically supporting it when the need arose, yet New Delhi’s “economic diplomacy” failed to get Moscow to “compromise” on its joint anti-terrorist and Afghan-related interests with Islamabad just as it failed to get the OIC to sell out its co-confessionals in Kashmir.

Soft Power

PM Khan’s Consistent Peacemaking vs. PM Modi’s Incessant Warmongering:

The contrast between the Pakistani and Indian Prime Ministers couldn’t be clearer, both in the context of the latest Kashmir Crisis and in the months-long run-up to it, because PM Khan’s consistent peacemaking statements were the complete opposite of PM Modi’s incessant warmongering ones and proved that the Pakistani leader was behaving much more responsibly than the Indian one.

Indian Media Exposed For Being Military Proxies

Most of the world naively thought that the self-professed “world’s largest democracy” had a “free and fair” media environment, but this was exposed as a total misconception after Indian media marched in lockstep with the military by braying for Pakistani blood, even going as far as spreading regular fake news reports in order to rile up the population into “seeking (nuclear) revenge” against Pakistan.

“Democracy” Debunked:

India staked the bulk of its international reputation on being regarded as the “world’s largest democracy”, but this untrue notion was decisively debunked by none other than its own government after the ruling party’s Finance Minister scandalously implied that the opposition’s dissent is treasonous all because they questioned the authorities’ claims after no proof was ever presented to support them.

Concluding Thoughts

The dramatic events of the past two weeks proved to the world that Pakistan is a responsible power that will fight to protect the UN-enshrined rules-based international order in the face of India’s irresponsible attempts to undermine it at the behest of its American and “Israeli” allies on unproven pretexts, leading to Pakistan becoming the champion of regional – and consequently, global – stability while India was recast as the rogue state committed to destroying it. India’s international reputation is irreparably ruined while Pakistan’s has immensely improved, both in the realms of international norms and geostrategy. India will always be important because of its location and attractive consumer and labor market potentials, but there’s no more denying that it’s now a US pawn for destabilizing the global pivot state.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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.

Featured image is from South Front

At the Human Rights Council in Geneva, David Boyd, Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, insisted that air pollution is a “silent, sometimes invisible, prolific killer” which affected women and girls more than men.

This is despite the fact that the right to a healthy environment is legally recognised by 155 States, Dr. Boyd explained.

“Air pollutants are everywhere, largely caused by burning fossil fuels for electricity, transportation and heating, as well as from industrial activities, poor waste management and agricultural practices,” he said.

Air pollution is present both inside homes and outside and is responsible for the premature death of seven million people each year, including 600,000 children, according to the Special Rapporteur’s report.

“Every hour, 800 people are dying, many after years of suffering, from cancer, respiratory illnesses or heart disease directly caused by breathing polluted air,” he said, before highlighting that these deaths were preventable.

Cleaner cooking fuel switch cuts indoor pollution  

Some States, such as Indonesia have begun to address the problem of indoor air pollution linked to cooking by helping millions of poor families switch to cleaner cooking technologies.

In 2018, we saw hope in growing action and global commitment to new ways of doing business that tackle the environmental challenges we face. Read more in @UNEnvironment's 2018 Annual Report. https://t.co/sZaNTon1pX

— Joyce Msuya (@JoyceMsuya) March 4, 2019

To read the complete UN release click here

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Featured image is from UNICEF/Batbaatar

The powerful have always had defenders.  Power seeps into the system, corrupts, controls and, ultimately, assumes an authority that does wonders to destroy an appraisal of fairness.  To be there is to assume that matters are natural, a habit.  As David Hume made clear, such an instance creates the basis of error: because it has been accepted for generations and through precedent does not make it a law or an acceptable practice. 

To be fair is, in a sense, to relinquish the advantages of power and accept the levelling nature of balance.  To be fair is to understand power as a danger.  For the highest cleric in the Catholic Church to receive a formal conviction in terms of historical child abuse is an example of bringing a certain power to account. 

“He did have in his mind,” observed the County Court’s chief judge Peter Kidd in the pre-sentence hearing, “some sense of impunity.” 

The Pell conviction is also an example of defenders running to barricades in the name of protection, hoping that faith prevails over evidence, belief over the allegedly crude advances of the secular realm.  As that philosopher of revolution Frantz Fanon appositely noted, those holders of a strong core belief, when “presented with evidence that works against that belief” repel what is placed before them.  Cognitive dissonance must be avoided.

The issue for some of Pell’s defenders is not one of finding justice but its impossibility for those who see a being beyond capture, and past conduct beyond censure.  Forget the victims and what the convicted person did to them.  Some other ploy is at work.   

Guy Rundle got heavy at Crikey, claiming that the conviction of Pell had to be a significant moment in the culture wars.

“The full court press by Bolt, Henderson, Akerman, Devine et al marked them off pretty decisively from the parliamentary wing of the right (with the rule-proving exception of Craig Kelly), who were quick to ring-fence Pell from what remains of their politics.”

This has assumed fabulous contortions.  To know a man is to presume an all-conquering, wilting innocence, pushing evidentiary findings to the outer limits.  No legal system could possibly corrupt this personalised sense of he of certain cloth of Church; to have met a creature in garb, even not necessarily believing him, is to acknowledge a person as beyond guilt.

The matter must, therefore, be far more fundamental, a big picture plot as to why Pell must suffer.  It might be the vengeful in search of a sacrificial lamb, the Cardinal’s conviction as a rite for purification.  It might be the Church in search of a cleansing alibi.  It is not possible to claim that Pell is guilty, shouts reactionary columnist Miranda Devine, because no jury could possibly claim to be unbiased.  Would that problem be alleviated by a jury of other peers, priests, maybe? 

Devine, herself a Catholic, has never been shy to suggest a conspiracy.  There is always something else at work.  In 2017, she claimed in an off-the-edge tweet that Victoria’s Police Chief Graham Ashton was “desperate or a distraction from the crime epidemic he’s incapable of stopping”. Catholics, she suggested in the language of sectarian fear, were being hunted. 

Andrew Bolt, who holds court at Sky News and The Herald Sun, similarly cannot fathom what has been done to the fallen cleric, and assumes that self-opinion can become canonical.

  “Declaration: I have met Pell perhaps five times in my life and I like him,” admitted the one-dimensional polemicist. “I am not Catholic or even a Christian.  He is a scapegoat, not a child abuser.  In my opinion.”   

The opinion caveat is important for Bolt.  Having landed in hot water previously for not clarifying that his opinion as just that, the Federal Court gave him a good wrapping over the knuckles for what was, at its core, shoddy journalism on “White Aboriginals”.  But on this occasion, the self-proclaimed rabblerouser felt he was on to something.

“Cardinal George Pell has been falsely convicted of sexually abusing two boys in their early teens. That’s my opinion, based on the overwhelming evidence.”   

Not that Bolt actually saw the evidence or was exposed to it, but he is nonetheless content suggesting that the victims’ reluctance to initially report the abuse (has he any understanding of Church history?), and the business of the room where the abuse was said to have taken place, suggested innocence.  Furthermore, “the man I know seems not just incapable of such abuse, but so intelligent and cautious that he would never risk his brilliant career and good name on such a mad assault in such a public place.”  Bolt, ever the purveyor of the shallow view and ignorant formulation of human nature.  Perhaps he suggests that the cleric was simply too intelligent to have been genuinely caught? 

A dangerous twilight zone has developed.  The critics have shown, in searing fashion, that they do not believe that guilt could ever be associated with certain figures of office.  In this sense, they betray a posh-boy, aristocratic perversion: people of a certain class can never wrong; people of some groups (African migrants, for instance) always do.  Kill, maim, rape and maul, yes, but never assume that any code, criminal or otherwise, applies to certain members.   

This is entertaining if teasing idiocy.  The very people who believe in necessary rules assume that these should be selectively applied.  There have always been pleasant, decent murderers, but thinking otherwise changes it.  There are entertaining child abusers of high standing, and thinking them charming and ambitious makes abuse improbable.  There are bon vivant genocidal maniacs, dressed well and hoping for a historical kill, and thinking them good company turns them into miraculous innocents.   

Such conduct, including messages of support from former Australian Prime Ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott, brings to mind the good character references, and beliefs, of the recently canonised Mother Teresa (now St. Teresa of Calcutta), who kept good company with the dictatorial likes of Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti, and swindling millionaires such as Charles Keating. The latter, an anti-pornographic crusader of frothing fanaticism, liked talking about God and family values even as he perpetrated financial fraud with sociopathic enthusiasm.  The Saint simply believed they were incapable of crime.  For some, that is all that matters, and laws should be best forgotten.

The process will have to run its course and the cardinal’s run of the legal system is far from over.  Pell’s defence team will no doubt be reassessing the evidence with forensic aptitude, and point out errors or doubts.  But that does not discredit a verdict arrived at through formal processes in the presence of a jury and a well summing up by the judge. The danger in such doubting circumstances is that those good souls who are duly selected to serve on a panel of peers are deemed, if not expendable, then dangerous to the health of the defendant.   

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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]

Featured image: Cardinal George Pell (Source: Salt and Light / Youtube)

The Socialist Equality Party denounces the March 3 physical assault on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The political differences between the SEP and Corbyn are well known and unbridgeable. But we unreservedly call on workers and young people to defend him from any attack by the extreme right.

The March 3 events are a serious warning of the dangerous right-wing political climate being whipped-up by Britain’s ruling elite and its media outlets. It points to the need for heightened political vigilance and a determined political struggle against all those political forces giving succour to the far-right.

Corbyn was visiting the Muslim Welfare Centre in north London during the annual “Visit My Mosque” day, attached to Finsbury Park mosque. John Murphy, 31, was in attendance and approached Corbyn from behind, hitting him on the head with an egg in his fist.

Murphy screamed, “When you vote you get what you vote for.” He later made clear this was an attack on Corbyn’s acceptance of a possible second referendum on Britain leaving the European Union should Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposed Brexit deal or Labour’s alternative proposal fail.

Alongside Corbyn on Sunday was Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, who wrote on social media,

“I was there. He punched Jeremy very hard. He happened to have an egg in his palm. But it could have been a knife. Horrible.”

It was left to bystanders to come to Corbyn’s aid, surrounding Murphy and calling the police. Inexplicably, it appears that no police officers were present to protect the Labour leader. According to reports, it was only after the assault that a marked police van with uniformed officers arrived in the centre’s driveway. No serious explanation has been given for the seemingly total absence of security protection for one of the most prominent political figures in Britain.

Murphy has since been charged by Scotland Yard with Assault by Beating and will appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court March 19.

A physical attack on a leading politician would normally receive saturation press coverage. However, the media response to the incident was belated, sporadic and deliberately framed to trivialise the issue.

Across the political spectrum, the attack was described as Corbyn being “egged.” The state broadcaster, the BBC, wrote of an egg being “thrown.” The Sun ran as its headline, “Br-Eggs-it.” Few newspapers even reported Abbott’s description of the incident, or that of well-known Labour Skwawkbox blogger that “It was an attempt to punch him in the face not just egg him…”

Significantly, the Metropolitan Police statement also wrongly referred to an egg being “thrown.”

The right-wing Guido Fawkes blog, frequently cited in the mainstream media, carried an interview with Murphy, publishing his jokes about having “squished an egg on Jeremy Corbyn’s head.” Murphy decried Corbyn as an associate of Hamas and the IRA, claiming his own actions were in defence of the “democratic rights of most of our country…”

The fascist-minded commentators on the blog roared in approval of the attack. One referred to Corbyn as “Jewemy,” while another declared, “Shame it wasn’t a grenade.”

The impulse for Murphy’s attack is the toxic atmosphere generated by Brexit, and the relentless and hysterical state campaign against Corbyn and the “left.” There is a sinister and deadly logic to these attacks.

On June 19, 2017, Darren Osborne drove a rented van at a group of worshipers on the street outside Finsbury Park Mosque and the Muslim Welfare Centre, injuring 12 people and killing Makram Ali, who died of multiple wounds. Osborne was jailed in February 2018 for murder and attempted murder and sentenced to serve at least 43 years in prison—with the judge stating that he was guilty of “terrorist murder.”

During the trial, Osborne admitted he had planned to murder Corbyn and London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan at a June 18 Al Quds protest in central London. He had chosen Finsbury Park because “It was Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency.” Osborne was radicalised by the fascist propaganda of Britain First and the anti-Muslim diatribes of Tommy Robinson.

Just one year before Osborne’s attack, the fascist Thomas Mair murdered Labour MP Jo Cox. As he repeatedly shot and stabbed her, he shouted, “Britain first! This is for Britain. Britain will always come first.” Cox was killed just one week prior to the referendum vote on Britain’s continued membership of the EU. She was a high-profile supporter of the Remain campaign.

Politics in the UK is increasingly frenzied. The ruling class is split into warring factions fighting over whether they should leave or remain in the EU, but the orientation of the entire ruling class is ever further to the right. Above and beyond their differences over Brexit is a common aim to massively escalate the austerity measures against the working class and a growing fear of the social opposition this is generating.

Corbyn is being vilified despite his constant political retreats and willingness to abandon every policy on which he won popular support. This only proves that the real targets of the state witch-hunt against Corbyn are the hundreds of thousands of workers and young people seeking a left-wing alternative to capitalism. For this reason, Corbyn is still routinely denounced as a threat to national security who has effectively “destroyed” the Labour Party by attracting an influx of left-leaning members.

This offensive invariably brings the official political parties—Conservative and Labour—into alignment with the far right, above all thanks to their common espousal of anti-communist rhetoric. It is no accident that the physical assault on Corbyn follows last month’s separate attacks by fascists on Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery—which were similarly downplayed by the media and all but ignored by the police.

Despite the clear and present danger posed by the growth of far-right and fascist parties throughout Europe, an incessant slander campaign is underway—led by an alliance of Labour’s Blairite right wing, the Tories and the media—portraying Labour as a hotbed of anti-Semitism. It was left to Momentum leader Jon Lansman to blurt out the real target of this filthy campaign, when he said the source of these alleged “hardcore anti-Semitic opinions” was Labour’s “300,000 or more new members.”

In the Orwellian universe occupied by Lansman, Labour’s Deputy-Leader Tom Watson and self-appointed Independent Group MP Luciana Berger, left-wing opponents of Zionism who defend the Palestinian people represent a greater danger to the Jewish people than does fascism. This lie is repeated endlessly, despite the steady escalation of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim violence—and despite Israel’s own alignment with fascist and anti-Semitic parties from Victor Orbán’s Fidesz to Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord.

The campaign continued without interruption the morning after the attack on Corbyn. Blairite MP Siobhain McDonagh told John Humphrys on BBC Radio Four that anti-Semitism is “very much part… of hard left politics, to be against capitalists and to see Jewish people as the financiers of capital. Ergo you are anti-Jewish people.”

When Humphrys asked, “In other words, to be anti-capitalist you have to be anti-Semitic?” McDonagh replied, “Yes.” This astonishing libel against socialism passed without comment from the BBC’s presenter.

Just two MPs on the party’s right-wing have issued statements condemning the attack on Corbyn. The rest stayed silent—too busy plotting to expel the party’s “anti-capitalist” members using bogus accusations of anti-Semitism.

Corbyn too has remained silent on the Finsbury Park assault and on the right-wing offensive that led to it. He cannot point out what scores of his supporters on social media have: Corbyn’s attacker comes from the right, but his readiness to act has been shaped by the efforts, led by the Blairites, to demonize and delegitimise the left.

As has been demonstrated again and again throughout history, including in the fate of Corbyn’s hero Salvador Allende in Chile, it is the tragedy of an impotent reformism that it is not only incapable of fighting for socialism, but even of defending itself. Even the most basic struggle for democratic rights requires a genuinely socialist politics, entirely opposed to that represented by Corbyn.

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On October 20, 2018, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the bilateral Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia. The INF was signed by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987. The treaty eliminated 2,692 land-based missiles with ranges of 500 km to 5,500 km. On February 1, 2019, the United States suspended its participation in the treaty, and Russia responded by withdrawing from the treaty the following day.

This comes at a time of heightening belligerence by the United States and its allies against countries beyond the ongoing military operations in the Middle East. Particularly since the Ukraine/Russia crisis of 2014/15, current targets include Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and now Venezuela. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday Clock to 2 minutes until midnight: military strategy from the U.S., its NATO partners, and Israel, appallingly includes the first-strike deployment of nuclear weapons based on a belief that a nuclear war is winnable and that nuclear weapons can be used like conventional weapons. The abrogation of the INF Treaty follows the massive $1.1-trillion investment in nuclear weapons by former President Barack Obama, and it comes as the Trump administration opens the possibility of Saudi Arabia’s development of its own nuclear weapons arsenal.

Unipolar World

The end of the Cold War was a pivotal turning point in world history, a time when nuclear weapons should have been eliminated and when the level of atmospheric greenhouse gases could have been maintained at a safe level. Instead, the United States took the lead in expanding NATO and persisting with energy and economic policies that accelerate greenhouse gas emissions. The United States has long claimed a number of entitlements for unilateral foreign policy interventions which allow a wide range of measures to protect oil supplies and to undertake military actions with impunity. Since the 1990s massive expansion of the American overseas military capabilities, the U.S. is now estimated to be operating some 800 to 1000 military bases worldwide. Indeed, the U.S. now appears to be engaged in ‘permanent war’, with any number of interventions in contravention of international law (such as it is) – wars that have come at the cost of millions of lives.

The abrogation of the INF nuclear arms control treaty comes after former U.S. President Barack Obama allocated $1.1-trillion for modernizing American nuclear weapons. In the words of the late Jonathan Schell, a lifelong opponent of nuclearization: “[T]he United States and its nuclear allies did not build nuclear weapons chiefly in order to face extraordinary danger, whether from Germany, Japan, or the Soviet Union, but for more deep-seated, unarticulated reasons growing out of its own, freely chosen conceptions of national security. Nuclear arsenals will seem to have been less a response to any particular external threat, totalitarian or otherwise, than an intrinsic element of the dominant liberal civilization itself – an evil that first grew and still grows from within that civilization rather than being imposed from without.” Schell angrily asks what is it about liberalism that pushes it again and again to “pointless slaughter and destructive fury.”

The United States has driven the arms race: it detonated the first atomic bomb, built the first ballistic-missile-launching submarine, assembled a massive stockpile of strategic missiles and multiple warheads, and developed computerized guidance systems for weapons (including drones and others). The United States refused to ratify the UN Conference on Disarmament’s Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (final draft in June 1996). In 2002, G.W. Bush made the unilateral decision to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union which subsequently led to the development and installation of missile defense systems.

The work of Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests that installed missile defense systems surrounding Russia and China are easily convertible to offense and that their close range falls within the INF Treaty. He writes that missile defense deployment of weapons is undetectable by current Russian and Chinese technology, leading to a scenario in which these countries could launch a pre-emptive strike without having full knowledge about whether there actually is an imminent threat. The Cold War strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) no longer deters nuclear warfare. Missile Defense provides an incentive to both sides to launch first strike annihilation before a retaliatory strike is possible.

Dismantle NATO!

The United States and NATO justify armed interventions under false pretexts, the most notorious recent examples being ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq and overblown reports of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. At the same time, there is (phony) secrecy about Israel’s nuclear weapons program and political coverage of Israel’s weapons programs and deployments. At the time of the 2014-15 Ukraine/Russia crisis, German newspaper Der Spiegel quoted NATO General Breedlove that “40,000 Russian troops were ‘massing’.” But they noted that “[i]n the age of forensic satellite evidence, he offered none. There is in fact no evidence of mass Russian troop movement.”

In Canada, there is little knowledge about Canada’s active participation in building missile defense systems or Canada’s involvement in nuclear weapons proliferation. In 1963, former prime minister Lester Pearson signed an agreement with the United States to acquire nuclear warheads for its Bomarc ground-to-air missiles. In violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Canada supplied India with the technology for making its nuclear weapons. Canada contributes RADARSAT remote sensing technology for NATO’s missile defence system, and most recently participated in provocative NATO war games close to Russia’s and China’s borders. Canada did not participate in any of the preparatory meetings in Oslo (March 2013), Nayarit (February 2014) and Vienna (December 2014) leading to the nuclear ban treaty.

Dismantling NATO and the entire military/industrial complex urgently needs to be in the forefront of political education and action, especially with the ominous shift to militarized authoritarianism in much of the world and the willingness to launch nuclear war. Canada’s hypocritical self-image as a ‘peace-loving decent country’ blinds the public to Canada’s role, and the aggressive interventionist policies being pursued by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland.

Street protests by the ant-war movement have at times been large and worldwide but have had limited effect in eliminating nuclear weapons or, without sustained and long periods of organizing, in stopping war. Nor have the growing climate justice and ecological movement at this time made any dent in decreasing overall greenhouse gas emissions, the other threat to all human life. At present, there is no cohesive anti-war movement in either Canada or the USA. Nuclear war, climate disaster, and extraordinary poverty are appalling atrocities that require united, cooperative, informed, courageous, and unrelenting opposition. It is a crucial test of the emerging socialist and green movements in North America to rebuild peace and international solidarity movements capable of challenging North American imperialism and the new arms race.

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Featured image is from The Bullet

Make no mistake – On the eve of yet another US war for oil, what usually preempts intervention into a sovereign state is the pretext of a humanitarian crisis as espoused by a co-opted mainstream media that rarely challenges the government diktat in foreign policy decisions.  One only has to look at Iraq or Libya for instance. In the case of Venezuela, do not be taken in by the mainstream media in Britain and America – they are merely parroting what they are being told to say. We’ve seen it all before.

From the New York Times that reports a back up plan is needed to prevent a Venezuelan famine to the Financial Times that appeals for desperate economic aid to reach the country. The mainstream media is even reporting that Venezuelan soldiers are starving to death but the truth is very different from what is little more than unadulterated propaganda peddled out on a mass scale.

Broadly speaking, the Western mainstream media are reporting about the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and blaming the socialist leader Nicolas Maduro for his dictatorial mismanagement and therefore the crisis, the truth is quite different.

Testimony

Testimony from the human rights investigator designated by the United Nations to assess the situation in Venezuela has been completely ignored.

Alfred De Zayas was the first UN investigator to go to Venezuela in 21 years – he has written a total of 13 reports for the UN Human Rights Council.

“I am the first and only UN rapporteur to have visited Venezuela in 21 years.  I have opened the door for other rapporteurs and even for the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, who was officially invited in December.  My visit lasted from 26 November to 5 December.  I met with members of the National Assembly, chamber of commerce, diplomatic corps, opposition groups, non-governmental organizations, church leaders, professors university students.

There was no “humanitarian crisis”, as confirmed to me – nothing to compare with Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Central African Republic, etc.  But indeed there was a scarcity of foods and medicines.  The situation has gotten much worse since Dec. 2017 because of Trumps sanctions and the economic and financial blockade.”

This report on Venezuela by the United Nation’s own staff is important. De Zayas was himself completely bewildered as to how his reports have been totally ignored. In an attempt to get an audience De Zayas was interviewed by Abby Martin from the Empire Files in late February.

In the interview, De Zayas says:

“if you know a humanitarian crisis in places like Gaza, Syria Sudan, Yemen and the like you wouldn’t say there was a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.”

“And at no point when I was walking the streets of Venezuela that I felt threatened or saw violence and did not consider the country was experiencing a humanitarian crisis – but I do see human rights being used more and more to destroy human rights with the complicity of the mainstream media.”

“I think it would have been sensible to say that the BBC or Washington Post or FT … well – at no time since my report to the human rights council at the UN have I been approached by any of these organisations who actually have a responsibility to inform the wider public of what is really happening.

What is particularly Machiavellian is the cause of an economic crisis that threatens to become a humanitarian crisis – that’s what the US has done through the financial blockade and then goes on to say they are going to offer humanitarian help.

The so-called President-in-waiting Juan Guaidó is merely the jockey – he is riding in the trojan horse of the US – but the solution  is easier than the band-aid offered than simply food and medicine – the solution is in my report – that I told the Human Rights Council – is that the financial blockade has had extremely adverse human rights impacts.

A country as wealthy as Venezuela should have been able to borrow money on its enormous natural resoures to buy and sell like any one else. But because of the enormous US threats metered out, the banks have been closing the accounts of the Venezuelan government and of the state oil company.

Already some of the biggest banks, without notice, closed the bank accounts of the Bank of Venezuela.  They blocked the shipment of more than 300,000 doses of life-saving insulin and $1.65 bn of money spent by the Venezuelan government for the purchase of food and medicine, which was blocked.

The Venezuelan state oil company has not been able to move its money to buy all these things – it needs that money to buy food and medicine.

Other US banks are withholding transfers from other country banks to Venezuela for the supply of electricy. Yet more have stopped the transfer of money for the supply of dialysis supplies including supplies to children.

You see here the immorality of it – there is personal criminal liabilty for the impact of these sanctions. I am certain that the increase in child mortality, the increase in maternal mortality, the increased deaths for lack of medical supplies and drugs is a direct result of this blockade where the government of Venezuela has not been able to supply what it needs to its people.”

“The government (of Venezuela) is being asphyxiated and that was the name of the game. What the US government intended to do was to create a situation whereby the people or the military would topple the government and then the 1% could again come in and again control the wealth of Venezuela.”

“Venezuela has succeeded in bringing millions and millions of its people out of extreme poverty. Nobody cared in the 1980s and 90s that millions were starving to death – it was a government that was palatable to the US government – but the moment a left-wing government came to power the priority of Washington was to topple it.

The Bank of England – is yet another violation of international law (for withholding Venezuela’s gold sale) – but try to bring the US or UK to the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice, it is impossible. What is important now is for the UN to adopt a resolution condemning the sanctions and ask that they are lifted because they kill.

I would also like to see the prosecutor of the International Court investigate to what extent the number of deaths related to the sanctions imposed by the US – amount to a violation of article 7 of the Statute of Rome – it defines crimes against humanity.”

“When you deliberately impose sanctions and social blockades – effectively an economic war that asphyxiates a country economy and thereby make it very difficult for that country to provide food and medical supplies, the consequence is that thousands die – you have a case of crimes against humanity.”

De Zayas continues –

“But the narrative in the mainstream press completely ignores it – when they refer to a humanitarian crisis they put the entire fault on the government and they say – well socialism is a proven failure, therefore, you have to have regime change.”

International response 

Abby Martin goes on to point out that the narrative by the mainstream media blocks another reality in this story. For instance, according to most of the mainstream media, most of the world’s leaders support America’s wishes and want Maduro out of power. However, not reported is that 51 countries in Africa recognise the Venezuelan elected leader in Maduro – only one recognises the unelected leader in waiting – that is Morroco.

Out of all the nations covering the whole of Asia, only Australia recognises Guido – 33 nations recognise Maduro.

In the Middle-East, it is only Israel supports that Guido – all other nations support Maduro. It is the same in the Americas and Caribbean – 17 countries support Guaidó – but 19 support Maduro. It goes without saying that some of those countries that back the USA in pressuring for regime change are either sycophants or the scared and have little choice in such matters.

The BBC reports that – “The UK, France, Germany, Spain and other European countries have officially recognised opposition leader Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela” – without actually saying that a number of European countries were solidly against regime change. Italy, Norway, Ireland, the Vatican and Switzerland were among them.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s official position was, as expected, that “further steps” were being considered, “including the use of sanctions.”

Alfred De Zayas continues:

“International law has been violated by interferring in the internal affarirs of states. The right to self determination is guaranteed by international law – it is not the right of the UN to decide this.

The use of force and the threat of the use of force is illegal and the US has threatnend time and time again that a military option is on the table with regard to Venezuela, this would be a major violation of international law.

It is true to say that 80 per cent of Venezuelan people had never heard of Guido.”

Abby Martin then goes on to discuss who is Juan Guaidó – with much of the report stating he spent most of his educational in the USA and has deep roots in causing violent street protests using right wing political activists. Guaidó was also involved in a US attempt of regime change back in 2002.

Martin makes the point that by 2010 the US government and other groups were pouring $50m a year into funding a Venezuelan opposition movement – with Guaidó being groomed for the operation.

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Trump apparently wants to control 5G in a ‘state-run’ socialist twist to American capitalism—and now there are indications that it could become part of the 2020 election campaign.

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign team renewed its controversial pitch on nationalizing the country’s 5G network. In other words, the government would have control of 5G airwaves and lease access to private wireless providers.

Kayleigh McEnany, a Trump 2020 campaign spokeswoman, told Politico that a wholesale 5G market would drive down costs and provide access to millions of Americans who are currently underserved.

“This is in line with President Trump’s agenda to benefit all Americans, regardless of geography,” McEnany said. Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, has been also pushing for a plan that would involve a nationwide 5G network.

Last month, President Trump himself wrote on social media about 5G, saying that

“American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind.”

“I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard,” he tweeted. (We’ll let the fact that there is no such thing as 6G technology slide for the sake of election campaigning). 

Not everyone’s on board the nationalization train, though. There are some in the White House who would prefer the industry lead this game. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, for one, believes wireless companies should manage the build-out of 5G. Feeling the heat over this talk of nationalization, even McEnany and Parscale later walked back their calls for government control of 5G, saying they were expressing their own personal opinions—not Trump’s.

The idea of a wholesale network is being pushed by little known wireless company Rivada Networks. However, it should be noted that Peter Thiel and Karl Rove, who both have close ties to the Republican party and are strong President Trump supporters, have invested in Rivada.

While this new campaign is ostensibly aimed at reducing costs and providing rural residents with fast internet, motives aren’t always what they appear to be.

We heard about this plan last year, too, when the administration thought it would test the waters and gauge public sentiment. It’s wasn’t very successful, taking a lot of heat from critics in the industry and from the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). It also got crushed by lawmakers on both sides of the gaping political divide. It was quickly shoved under the rug.

But China keeps coming back around.

A memo from a National Security Council official, obtained by Axios, insisted that a strong, government-controlled 5G network is necessary as a bulwark against Chinese threats to America’s economy and cyber security.

“China has achieved a dominant position in the manufacture and operation of network infrastructure…China is the dominant malicious actor in the Information Domain,” the memo read.

In the meantime, U.S. mobile providers such as  AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, for example, are investing heavily in this area and have promised to make 5G a reality later this year.

However, they are still lagging behind Chinese companies, Huawei primarily, one of the biggest phone makers and telecommunications kit providers in the world and the company that has been the target of U.S. lobbying over national security and economy concerns.

The US administration has recently announced it is considered barring American companies from using equipment from Chinese companies and called on its allies to do the same.

So, the elephant in the 5G room is China—not “underserved” American farmers—however, nice that might sound for the 2020 campaign. Much of China’s power comes from the fact that the government controls everything. But the suggestion is that if America wants to beat China, it has to become China, and nationalization is the first step.

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This article was originally published on January 30, 2018.

On the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Baltimore University hosted more than 200 activists in the peace, environment, and social justice movements to launch a new initiative known as the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases, the Nation reported.

In a series of panels that lasted over two days, the conference attendees highlighted the horrors of American foreign policy despite the fact Martin Luther King warned against these horrors over 50 years ago, a fitting reminder to heed the warnings of Dr. King.

According to the panel, the U.S. has over 800 formal military bases in 80 countries, “a number that could exceed 1,000 if you count troops stationed at embassies and missions and so-called ‘lily-pond’ bases, with some 138,000 soldiers stationed around the globe,” the Nation notes.

According to David Vine, author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Overseas Harm America and the World, maintaining bases and troops overseas cost $85 to $100 billion in 2014, while the total for bases and troops in war zones was between $160 billion and $200 billion.

The Nation also highlighted Vine’s claim that only some 11 other countries have bases in foreign countries, around 70 altogether. Russia is believed to have at least 26 bases in nine countries. They are mainly in former Soviet states, as well as Syria and Vietnam. The U.K., France, and Turkey have around four to ten bases each, and a handful of global bases are occupied by India, China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. This might all change in the years to come, however, as China may be looking to build bases of its own in the Middle East.

Once the U.S. establishes itself militarily in a nation, it rarely leaves. Consider that after the defeat of Germany in World War II, the U.S. never left the country. It has maintained its bases there ever since. Germany’s Ramstein base is now the “hub” for America’s global drone assassination program throughout the Middle East.

The British spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has been using a base in North Yorkshire called Menwith Hill to assist with America’s targeted killings in the Middle East, using an unknown number of employees.

This is but one example of how American bases overseas can be used to commit mass suffering in the Middle East, and the effects of these bases on the local populations are far too many to document.

For example, in Okinawa, Japan, the U.S. was suspected of housing and burying Agent Orange at its unpopular base in Futenma. Protests are not uncommon, with a specific sit-in protest lasting more than 5,000 consecutive days, as reported by the Japan Times at the end of last year. Rapes, theft, assaults, and murders committed by U.S. personnel there are all rather common.

The most famous incident involved the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemen in 1995. The Okinawans have been protesting the U.S. military presence ever since, but the U.S. refuses to budge (with the exception of its proposal to relocate the base to a separate location, which is yet to appease the locals’ concerns).

“U.S. bases in Korea and Japan are vehicles of the Cold-War threat of China. Bases are not the spoils of the past war as some believe; they are the purpose of the war,” Satoko Oka Norimatsu, editor of the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus and author of Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States,told Anti-Media. Norimatsu also said resisting the U.S. base presence and its plans to relocate is important for Okinawa because “U.S. bases concentrated in Okinawa are a form of colonial oppression by Japan that’s continuing for over four centuries.”

“Some people in Okinawa believe that if Japan as a whole wants to maintain the U.S.-Japan military alliance, it should be Japan who carries these bases and not Okinawa,” she added.

Okinawa is just one instance of anti-U.S. sentiment brought on by its unwelcome military presence. In Okinawa, the U.S. reportedly takes up about one-fifth of Okinawan land. In 2004, Gangnam Style singer Psy released a song that was heavily critical of the U.S. military after an incident caused by a military vehicle that killed two young Korean girls. According to CNN:

“CNN was able to translate the lyrics as saying, ‘Kill those f–ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives and those who ordered them to torture,’ and going on to say, ‘Kill them all slowly and painfully,’ as well as ‘daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers.’”

It may be for this reason that the Nation, one of the few outlets to document this issue over the past few years, is highlighting the movement to bring an end to this disastrous and unnecessary foreign policy, which at its heart turns local populations against the U.S. across the globe.

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Featured image is from The Anti-Media