As we approach 2019 the global economy teeters on the brink of yet another recession which will plunge geo-political relations into a period of great upheaval and rapid change. In 2019 global stock markets will continue to face unprecedented volatility and gigantic losses as the Ponzi scheme pumped up by the cartel of central banks comes crashing down.

The central bank cartel of the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England together with the Bank of China have flooded their national economies with astronomical sums of money since 2008 in an attempt to stave off collapse of the global financial system.

Their money printing experiment has driven global debt from $177 trillion to over $277 trillion today while interest rates have been artificially suppressed enabling a wealth transfer to the 1% of historic proportions. This massive expansion of central bank balance sheets is illustrated below.

During this period global stock markets surged to new historic heights pumped up as they were by the financial heroin provided by the central bank cartel. The chart below clearly illustrates the correlation between the tremendous growth of the S&P 500 and the money printing by the central bank cartel.
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Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the global economy slows down and the central bank cartel tries to end their money printing colloquially known as Quantitative Tightening.

The withdrawal of this financial heroin is behind the collapse of global stock markets during 2018 that has wiped trillions off the values of a range of inflated assets.

There is a very clear correlation between the shrinking balance sheets of global central banks and the continuing crash of stock markets. The collapse of the stock values of globally systemic banks poses great dangers to the global economy.

The central bank cartel policies of quantitative tightening, as they attempt to wean financial markets off their monetary heroin, are taking us towards a period of stagflation, reminiscent of the 1970s, which will usher in a period of depressed economic growth and rising inflation. Geo-political relations, as in the 1970s period of stagflation, will become even more unstable and volatile intensifying many current conflicts and threatening new wars between nations and military blocs.

The next world recession will pose severe challenges for the great powers as they jostle to maintain control over strategic raw materials, trade relationships and economic resources. Meanwhile,

The great powers will struggle to cope with the devastating consequences of the collapse of inflated assets from bank failures to the return of mass unemployment. They will all face unprecedented social and political upheaval from their own citizens suffering from the effects of economic collapse.

One thing we can be sure of is that 2019 will be very different to 2018 and the years that have gone before as nations struggle to redefine their political and economic relations with one another.

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US Mass Mobilizations: Wars and Financial Plunder  

December 28th, 2018 by Prof. James Petras

First published by Global Research on November 26, 2018

Over the past three decades, the US government has engaged in over a dozen wars, none of which have evoked popular celebrations either before, during or after.  Nor did the government succeed in securing popular support in its efforts to confront the economic crises of 2008 – 2009.

This paper will begin by discussing the major wars of our time, namely the two US invasions of Iraq. We will proceed to analyze the nature of the popular response and the political consequences.

In the second section we will discuss the economic crises of 2008 -2009, the government bailout and popular response. We will conclude by focusing on  the potential powerful changes inherent in mass popular movements.

The Iraq War and the US Public

In the run-up to the two US wars against Iraq, (1990 – 01 and 2003 – 20011) there was no mass war fever, nor did the public celebrate the outcome. On the contrary both wars were preceded by massive protests in the US and among EU allies.  The first Iraqi invasion was opposed by the vast-majority of the US public despite a major mass media and regime propaganda campaign backed by President George H. W. Bush.  Subsequently, President Clinton launched a bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998 with virtually no public support or approval.

March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush launched the second major war against Iraq despite massive protests in all major US cities.  The war was officially concluded by President Obama in December 2011. President Obama’s declaration of a successful conclusion failed to elicit popular agreement.

Several questions arise: Why mass opposition at the start of the Iraq wars and why did they fail to continue?

Why did the public refuse to celebrate President Obama’s ending of the war in 2011?

Why did mass protests of the Iraq wars fail to produce durable political vehicles to secure the peace?

The Anti-Iraq War Syndrome

The massive popular movements which actively opposed the Iraq wars had their roots in several historical sources.  The success of the movements that ended the Viet Nam war, the ideas that mass activity could resist and winwas solidly embedded in large segments of the progressive public.  Moreover, they strongly held the idea that the mass media and Congress could not be trusted; this reinforced the idea that mass direct actionwas essential to reverse Presidential and Pentagon war policies.

The second factor encouraging US mass protest was the fact that the US was internationally isolated. Presidents George H. W. Bush, Sr. and George W. Bush, Jr. launched wars that faced hostile regime and mass opposition in Europe, the Middle East and in the UN General Assembly. US activists felt that they were part of a global movement which could succeed.

Thirdly the advent of Democratic President Clinton did not reverse the mass anti-war movements. The terror bombing of Iraq in December 1998 was destructive  and Clinton’s war against Serbia kept the movements alive and active  To the extent that Clinton avoided large scale long-term wars, he avoided provoking mass movements from re-emerging during the latter part of the 1990’s.

The last big wave of mass anti-war protest occurred from 2003 to 2008.  Mass anti-war protest to war exploded soon after the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11. White House exploited the events to proclaim a global ‘war on terror’, yet the mass popular movements interpreted the same events as a call to oppose new wars in the Middle East.

Anti-war leaders drew activists of the entire decade, envisioning a ‘build-up’ which could prevent the Bush regime from launching a series of wars without end.  Moreover, the vast-majority of the public was not convinced by officials claims that Iraq, weakened and encircled, was stocking ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to attack the US.

Large scale popular protests challenged the mass media, the so called respectable press and ignored the Israeli lobby and other Pentagon warlords demanding an invasion of Iraq.  The vast-majority of American, did not believe they were threatened by Saddam Hussain they felt a greater threat from the White House’s resort to severe repressive legislation like the Patriot Act. Washington’s rapid military defeat of Iraqi forces and its occupation of the Iraqi state led to a decline in the size and scope of the anti-war movement but not to its potential mass base.

Two events led to the demise of the anti-war movements.  The anti-war leaders turned from independent direct action to electoral politics and secondly, they embraced and channeled their followers to support Democratic presidential candidate Obama.  In large part the movement leaders and activists believed that direct action had failed to prevent or end the previous two Iraq wars. Secondly, Obama made a direct demagogic appeal to the peace movement – he promised to end wars and  pursue social justice at home.

With the advent of Obama, many peace leaders and followers joined the Obama political machine .Those who were not coopted were quickly disillusioned on all counts.  Obama continued the ongoing wars and added new ones—Libya, Honduras, Syria. The US occupation in Iraq led to new extremist militia armies, which proceeded to defeat US-trained vassal armies up to the gates of Baghdad. In short time Obama launched a flotilla of warships and warplanes to the South China Sea and dispatched added troops to Afghanistan.

The mass popular movements of the previous two decades were totally disillusioned, betrayed and disoriented.  While most opposed Obama’s ‘new’ and ‘old wars’ they struggled to find new outlets for their anti-war beliefs.  Lacking alternative anti-war movements, they were vulnerable to the war propaganda of the media and the new demagogue of the right. Donald Trump attracted many who opposed the warmonger Hilary Clinton.

The Bank Bailout: Mass Protest Denied

In 2008, at the end of his presidency, President George W. Bush signed off on a massive federal bailout of the biggest Wall Street banks facing faced bankruptcy from their wild speculative profiteering.

In 2009 President Obama endorsed the bailout and urged rapid Congressional approval.  Congress complied to a $700-billion- dollar handout, which according to Forbes(July 14, 2015) rose to $7.77 trillion.  Overnight hundreds of thousands of American demanded Congress rescind the vote. Under immense popular protest, Congress capitulated. However President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership insisted: the bill was slightly modified and approved.  The ‘popular will’ was denied.  The protests were neutralized and dissipated.  The bailout of the banks proceeded, while several million households watched while their homes were foreclosed, despite some local protests.  Among the anti-bank movement, radical proposals flourished, ranging from calls to nationalize them, to demands to let the big banks go bankrupt and provide federal financing for co-operatives and community banks.

Clearly the vast majority of the American people were aware and acted to resist corporate-collusion to plunder taxpayers.

Conclusion: What is to be Done?

Mass popular mobilizations are a reality in the United States.  The problem is that they have not been sustained and the reasons are clear: they lacked political organization which would go beyond protests and reject lesser evil policies.

The anti-war movement which started in opposition to the Iraq war was marginalized by the two dominant parties.  The result was the multiplication of new wars.  By the second year of Obama’s presidency the US was engaged in seven wars.

By the second year of Trump’s Presidency the US was threatening nuclear wars against Russia, Iran and other ‘enemies’ of the empire.  While public opinion was decidedly opposed, the ‘opinion’ barely rippled in the mid-term elections.

Where have the anti-war and anti-bank masses gone? I would argue they are still with us but they cannot turn their voices into action and organization if they remain in the Democratic Party.  Before the movements can turn direct action into effective political and economic transformations, they need to build struggles at every level from the local to the national.

The international conditions are ripening. Washington has alienated countries around the world; it is challenged by allies and faces formidable rivals.  The domestic economy is polarized and the elites are divided.

Mobilizations, as in France today, are self-organized through the internet; the mass media are discredited. The time of liberal and rightwing demagogues is passing; the bombast of Trump arouses the same disgust as ended the Obama regime.

There are optimal conditions for a new comprehensive movement going beyond piecemeal reforms.  The question is whether it is now or in future years or decades?

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Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: U.S. Army (USA) M1A1 Abrams MBT (Main Battle Tank), and personnel from A Company (CO), Task Force 1st Battalion, 35th Armor Regiment (1-35 Armor), 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 1st Armored Division (AD), pose for a photo under the “Hands of Victory” in Ceremony Square, Baghdad, Iraq during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.  (Source: Wikimedia Commons)


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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
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The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) requires that all unaccompanied alien children (UAC) be vaccinated while in ORR custody in accordance with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) catch-up schedule (see this).  The potentially lethal schedule mandated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) ACIP or ages 7 – 18 are acknowledged by the CDC.  

Many of these vaccines have the neurotoxic metallic adjuvant aluminum in the injected solution and some have live viruses in them, (If influenza vaccinations occur, these children will be intra-muscularly injected with the neurotoxic mercury, the second-most poisonous substance (behind plutonium) on the planet.)

An unknowable number of the vaccines can be expected to be contaminated with dangerous extraneous substances, depending on the country of origin and the sloppiness with which the vaccine batch is manufactured.

If all these vaccines are injected at one sitting (as can be expected at the ORR), some of the children will likely develop some sort of (acute and/or chronic) vaccine-induced illness, and some will certainly be so seriously poisoned that they will die.

Given the bureaucratic “efficiency” (and total lack of informed consent or adherence with the Precautionary Principle) with which most children in the US (not just immigrants) are dealt with by American Academy of Pediatrics (APP) pediatricians in their offices, none of the “despised” non-white immigrants kids will have their immunization histories checked prior to the inoculation cocktails being given.

Thus unknown percentages of children who have already been fully vaccinated in their homelands will be at risk of having anaphylactic reactions from the second or third dose of a inoculum to which they had developed a mild allergic reaction (which sets them up for a more serious anaphylactic reaction when the next shot is administered).

Also none of the victims will be even partially informed (much less fully informed in a language that the child victims don’t understand) about the risks or benefits of having so many potentially toxic vaccines intramuscularly injected all at once.

Of course the bureaucratic para-professionals from ORR that are doing the injecting don’t know the risks themselves – nor, as a matter of fact, do the pediatricians in charge, since no safety studies have ever been done on cocktails of vaccines given simultaneously, even in the rat lab!

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Dr Gary G. Kohls is a retired family physician from Duluth, MN, USA. Since his retirement from his holistic mental health practice he has been writing his weekly Duty to Warn column for the Duluth Reader, northeast Minnesota’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns, which are re-published around the world, deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s over-drugging and Big Vaccine’s over-vaccination agendas, as well as other movements that threaten human health, the environment, democracy, civility and the sustainability of all life on earth.  Dr Kohls is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

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The Ironies of a Successful U.S. China Policy

December 28th, 2018 by Chas Freeman

GR Editor’s Note

The following text by Ambassador Chas Freeman provides a critical viewpoint on Sino-US relations by a prominent foreign policy analyst who was part of the 1972 Nixon-Kissinger mission to China which led to the signing of the Shanghai Communique and the normalization of US-China relations.

While Global Research does not endorse Ambassador Freeman’s assessment of US foreign policy and Chinese history, his analysis constitutes a contribution towards resolving the strained US-China relations under the Trump administration. The Sino-US conflict is not limited to trade and advanced technology, at this juncture in our history, the US is planning  to wage war against both China and Russia.

It is worth noting that while the Chinese media has acknowledged Ambassador Freeman’s Remarks, his incisive and timely presentation to the National Committee for U.S.-China Relations has not been reported by the US media.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 27, 2018

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Three days ago, we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Jimmy Carter’s and Deng Xiaoping’s politically courageous decision to normalize relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.  I have been involved in our relations with China in one way or another for fifty years.  Thinking about how China and the world as well as U.S. relations with both have changed over that period, I am struck by many ironies. 

The United States sought to change China’s geopolitical position, not China’s socioeconomic system.  Yet our opening to China informed and enabled major changes in its domestic political economy.

When Washington first reached out to the People’s Republic, it saw China as isolated, vulnerable, and unstable.  We now confront a globally connected and relatively wealthy China with very strong capitalist characteristics.  Our concerns about Chinese weakness have given way to worries that China may have become a formidable – perhaps overwhelming – geoeconomic competitor and that it might displace our influence not just in its region but on the Eurasian landmass and adjacent areas.

When we Americans rediscovered China after decades of enmity and ostracism, we easily reverted to an updated version of the paternalistic missionary mentality we had exhibited in the pre-Communist era, implicitly positioning ourselves as the guardians and tutors of the Chinese.  Now that they have graduated from our tutelage and are themselves becoming a teacher to the world, we are uncertain how to deal with them.  Our opening to China helped it to study, adopt, and adapt the world’s best practices, strengthen itself, and enter a long period of political-economic stability.  The world is more prosperous and stable for that.  But both American hegemony and confidence in our ability to compete are receding.

We sought to counter the Soviet Union by enlisting China in containing it.  But, with China as our partner, we ended up not just containing but bankrupting and destroying the USSR.  (We had quite forgotten that the premise of containment was that, left to itself, the Soviet system would collapse of its own defects.  Four decades later, when – as George Kennan had predicted in arguing for containment– the Soviet system finally succumbed to its infirmities, we were astonished.)  Our attempt to use China to rebalance global geopolitics had vastly exceeded our expectations and altered them fundamentally.

In the 20th century, we wanted China to be able to defend itself against its aggressive neighbors, first Japan, then the USSR.  But, when it became able to do so, it also became able to defend itself against us.  We are not coping well with China’s contributions to the inevitable loss of our seven-decade-long military primacy in East Asia and the Pacific. Instead of finding ways to enlist Chinese power as much as possible in support of our own, we are treating Beijing as a malicious peer competitor and ramping up military confrontation with it in support of a crumbling and likely unsustainable status quo.

Americans never imagined that our outreach to China could transform the world’s ideological dynamics as well as its geopolitical geometry.  The architects of our China policy were not moral crusaders.  Nixon and Kissinger sought to change China’s foreign policy, not its regime or its political system.  With the sole exception of the first year of the Clinton administration, the impulse to reengineer China’s domestic order was a popular hope born of ideological conviction that never became policy.  And when it briefly did become policy, it failed decisively. Americans’ concern for human rights did not disappear but the policy of aggressively bargaining for them was abandoned, leaving only lofty talk and castigation behind it.

The Clinton policy was driven by critics who had consistently argued that the U.S. government should seek China’s democratization as the price of cooperation with it.  With the Cold War over, they thought it high time to insist that China change its politics.  Now the very same critics and their intellectual kin proclaim U.S. engagement with China to have failed because it did not achieve the policy objectives they espoused but were unable to impose on successive American governments.

It is true that we did not Americanize China. [In 1940, Senator Kenneth Wherry famously declared that “with God’s help, we will lift Shanghai up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City.”]  Shanghai is not yet “just like Kansas City.”  And it is true that Chinese realities have not followed the course predicted by liberal political theory.  (One wonders whether it is the theory, not our relationship with China, that needs reconsideration.)  As a result of internal changes in China as well as in the international environment, democracy may no longer seem destined to triumph over all other political dispensations.  Still, for the first time, it now faces no global ideological challenge.  We are in a great power competition that will be decided by socioeconomic performance, not political pretense or presumed ideological virtue. The question is not whether our system is right but whether it enables us to compete with the very competitive variant China has evolved.

Some Americans nostalgic for the simplicities of the Cold War suffer from enemy deprivation syndrome.  They are in earnest search of a hostile ideology against which to orient themselves and see China as the answer to their distress.  After all, when we opened ourselves to China, Beijing advocated the worldwide overthrow of capitalism, the destruction of global multilateral institutions, and the replacement of the American-sponsored liberal world order with Marxist-Leninist hegemony.  But it has been more than four decades since China offered such a challenge. Our policies toward China have played a major role in creating a world that prefers muddling through to anti-American ideological evangelism.  That’s better for us, even if some are not happy about it.

Once President Clinton’s effort to compel China to adopt Western standards of human rights had definitively failed, his administration turned to an effort to incorporate China fully into the American-led world order.  That effort succeeded.  China is now a valued member of the international community and an active participant in its established systems of governance, including all the Bretton Woods legacy institutions.  It has expanded the world order Americans created, not contracted or eroded it, by adding institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Bank, and other development funds.  These organizations and their capital parallel, supplement, complement, and cooperate with the World Bank and regional development banks.  They do not compete with them.

From the founding of our republic two hundred and more years ago, we Americans have seen China as a huge potential export market for our goods and services.  It is now finally on the way to becoming the world’s largest consumer society.  And as it has prospered, China has become our fastest growing export market.  But facts and long-term considerations be damned! It is too late to head off the populist goon squad.

We began our relationship with the People’s Republic with a trade surplus.  That unexpectedly evolved into a massive trade deficit as our companies came to see China as an economical source of manufactures for export to both the United States and other countries.  This has kept consumer prices low and mitigated the increasing inequality of income distribution in ourcountry.

We are now in a trade war that imperils American consumers and both Chinese and American manufacturers.  As our president is fond of saying, we will see how that works out.  My guess is that we will regret replacing globalization with mercantilism and orderly dispute resolution with winner-take-all bilateral bullying.

Mercantilism consists of protectionist policies that aim at government management of trade to maximize exports and minimize imports through high tariffs and import quotas.  Mercantilism seeks self-sufficiency and domestic production at the expense of interdependence and comparative advantage.  This was China’s policy under Mao Zedong.  It is now America’s policy under Donald Trump.  It did not work for China under Mao.  Will it work for America under Trump?  I see no reason to believe it will.

Global supply chains achieve efficiencies by using comparative advantage to create transnational assembly lines.  Washington is now employing tariffs  to disrupt and destroy these.  As the U.S. closes its market, China is reaffirming its commitment to an expanded role in its economy for imports.

China has allowed itself to become dependent on America for a significant part of its food, the top concern of all Chinese governments throughout history.  It relies on high tech U.S. inputs for its most advanced industries.  China has been by far the largest market for U.S.microchips.  It is the only large market outside North America where U.S. car companies have gained significant market share.  And so forth.

The Trump trade war, far from promoting further market opening by China and greater exports from the United States, is providing the Chinese with compelling arguments to eliminate their dependence on American agricultural and industrial products. Can services – in which we have enjoyed a rising surplus – be far behind?

Seven decades ago, the “greatest generation” of Americans led the way in creating the multilateral institutions that regulate the liberal world order in which we and China have since prospered.    Perhaps the oddest thing in this long recitation of ironies is that it is the United States, not China, that is now attempting to withdraw from that order, sabotaging it as we do so.

It is the United States, not China, that is attempting to overthrow multilateralism internationally and replace it with unilateralism.  It is the United States, not China, that is refusing to ratify international agreements and withdrawing from or abrogating those it finds inconvenient or burdensome.  It is the United States, not China, that exhibits open contempt for the sovereignty of other nations by invading, occupying, employing covert action, and making economic war on them to engineer regime change.  It is the United States, not China, that is a cobelligerent in an expanding list of horrifyingly destructive foreign wars.

Our independence began with a robust statement of our ideals and a commitment, as John Quincy Adams later put it, to be “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all … [but] the champion and vindicator only of [our] own.”  One key objective of the liberal order we Americans created was to make the world safe for continuing national self-determination rather than for power politics or ideological homogenization.  How ironic that it is the Chinese, not Americans, who now posit that the consent of the governed, not foreign approval based on ideological criteria, is the source of political legitimacy!  And it is the Chinese, not we Americans, who now go out of their way to show respect for the sovereign diversity of nations!  

We have differences with China and some entirely legitimate complaints about its trade and investment practices.  Experience shows that, with intelligent diplomacy, such disputes with China can be resolved by negotiation.  They do not – indeed must not – constitute a casus belli.  Treating them as such will not just cost us dearly.  It could be fatal.

We have changed China in more ways than we appear to recognize.  We have changed too.  In some ways, internationally, under our 45th president, it seems we have met the enemy and he is who we used to be.

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Ambassador Freeman chairs Projects International, Inc. He is a retired U.S. defense official, diplomat, and interpreter, the recipient of numerous high honors and awards, a popular public speaker, and the author of five books.

On December 28, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) released an official statement inviting the Damascus government to assert control of the areas, from which YPG units had allegedly withdrawn, in particular Manbij. The YPG added that the decision is caused by the Turkish threat and that the group will concentrate its efforts on combating ISIS.

Syrian troops reportedly started entering the town of Manbij in the morning of the same day.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) have continued concentrating troops and military equipment near the Syrian border. According to fresh reports, the TAF has deployed at least 10 M60T battle tanks and several armored vehicles in the province of Kilis.

On December 27, the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation announced the reopening of the country’s embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Abdul Hakim al-Nuaimi was appointed as the UAE’s charge d’affaires in Damascus.

The reopening of the UAE embassy in Syria is another important step in the framework of the broader efforts of the Damascus government to restore its role in the region. Furthermore, this confirms that the UAE sees the Assad government as a legitimate government of Syria. This is something what the UAE’s key ally, the US, has repeatedly challenged by its statements and actions.

Russian companies are reportedly planning to construct an airport in the city of Tartus, as well as joint Syrian-Russian plant to produce vaccines within a framework of agreements signed during the 11th session of the Syrian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission held on December 14th in Damascus. Other notable bilateral projects include rebuilding the car tires’ factory and construction of a new cement plant.

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In 1982, a 40-year-old insurance salesman who sold policies to professional athletes traveled from his home in Lawrence, Kansas, to New York City on a business trip. Shortly before he left, Bob Swan, Jr.—the father of two young daughters, and a man increasingly concerned about the possibility of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union—mentioned to his then-wife Jane that he had had a dream about a film that portrayed an American family and a Russian family in the aftermath of nuclear war and “showed the total absurdity” of such a war. While he was in New York, Swan attended a huge march for nuclear disarmament that was life-changing for him. “When I got back from this amazing experience,” Swan told me when I visited him at his home a few months ago, one of the first things his wife said was: “They announced while you were gone, they’re going to make that film you dreamed about. They’re going to film it in Lawrence.”

The television movie The Day After depicted a full-scale nuclear war and its impacts on people living in and around Kansas City. It became something of a community project in picturesque Lawrence, 40 miles west of Kansas City, where much of the movie was filmed. Thousands of local residents—including students and faculty from the University of Kansas—were recruited as extras for the movie; about 65 of the 80 speaking parts were cast locally. The use of locals was intentional, because the moviemakers wanted to show the grim consequences of a nuclear war for real middle Americans, living in the real middle of the country. By the time the movie ends, almost all of the main characters are dead or dying.

ABC broadcast The Day After on November 20, 1983, with no commercial breaks during the final hour. More than 100 million people saw it—nearly two-thirds of the total viewing audience. It remains one of the most-watched television programs of all time. Brandon Stoddard, then-president of ABC’s motion picture division, called it “the most important movie we’ve ever done.” The Washington Post later described it as “a profound TV moment.” It was arguably the most effective public service announcement in history.

“For those of us who live in Lawrence, it was personal… and it didn’t have a happy ending.”

It was also a turning point for foreign policy. Thirty-five years ago, the United States and the Soviet Union were in a nuclear arms race that had taken them to the brink of war. The Day Afterwas a piercing wakeup shriek, not just for the general public but also for then-President Ronald Reagan. Shortly after he saw the film, Reagan gave a speech saying that he, too, had a dream: that nuclear weapons would be “banished from the face of the Earth.” A few years later, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the first agreement that provided for the elimination of an entire category of nuclear weapons. By the late 1990s, American and Russian leaders had created a stable, treaty-based arms-control infrastructure and expected it to continue improving over time.

Now, however, a long era of nuclear restraint appears to be nearing an end. Tensions between the United States and Russia have risen to levels not seen in decades. Alleging treaty violations by Russia, the White House has announced plans to withdraw from the INF Treaty. Both countries are moving forward with the enormously expensive refurbishment of old and development of new nuclear weapons—a process euphemized as “nuclear modernization.” Leaders on both sides have made inflammatory statements, and no serious negotiations have taken place in recent years.

There are striking parallels between the security situations today and 35 years ago, with one major discordance: Today, nuclear weapons are seldom a front-burner concern, largely being forgotten, underestimated, or ignored by the American public. The United States desperately needs a fresh national conversation about the born-again nuclear arms race—a conversation loud enough to catch the attention of the White House and the Kremlin and lead to resumed dialogue. A look back at The Day After and the role played by ordinary citizens in a small Midwestern city shows how the risk of nuclear war took center stage in 1983, and what it would take for that to happen again in 2018.

Lawrence in ruins as illustrated in Harper's Weekly. The charred remains of the Eldridge House are in the foreground.

A Harper’s Weekly illustration of the 1863 destruction of Lawrence by William Quantrill and Confederate guerillas, with ruins of the Eldridge Hotel in the foreground. Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons

lawrence destroyed

Aftermath of the nuclear attack on Lawrence depicted in The Day After. 

A City in Ashes

In the film, a 12-year-old farm girl named “Joleen” who has heard an alarming report on the radio asks her father, “There’s not going be a war, is there?” That question was “really emotional for me,” says David Longhurst, who was mayor of Lawrence in 1983 and is now in his mid-70s. He had a son who was 12 at the time, and the girl who played “Joleen” was the daughter of close friends. The Day After had a huge impact on the American psyche. But, Longhurst says, “for those of us who live in Lawrence, it had an even greater impact. It was personal … and it didn’t have a happy ending.”

In fact, Lawrence—a small city of less than 100,000, including about 30,000 students at the University of Kansas, that lies between two rivers and is dotted with leafy parks and limestone buildings—has a long history of devastation, followed by repeated resurrection. It was founded by anti-slavery settlers who hoped that Kansas would enter the union as a free state. In 1856, pro-slavery activists led by the county sheriff sacked the town. They burned down the Free State Hotel, but a prominent abolitionist named Col. Shalor Eldridge rebuilt the hotel and named it after himself. The hotel, in the midst of another renovation, is where I met Longhurst a few months ago. A part-owner of the hotel, he showed me its Crystal Ballroom and Big 6 Bar (which dates back to the collegiate sports conference of the speakeasy era).

A much bloodier raid followed in 1863, when Confederate guerillas led by William Quantrill attacked Lawrence, massacring more than 150 men and boys and burning down hundreds of homes and businesses, including the Eldridge Hotel. The town rebuilt, and since the 1860s has adopted as its symbol a phoenix rising from the ashes. So it was perhaps fitting that Lawrence was again reduced to ashes—on film, at least—in 1983.

To turn Lawrence into a war zone, the film’s producers closed sections of Massachusetts Street (downtown’s pedestrian-friendly main street, lined with shops and trees) more than once, blew out the windows of storefronts, gave buildings a charred makeover, and littered downtown with ash, debris, and burned-out vehicles. A few blocks from downtown, the filmmakers built a tent city to house “refugees” under a bridge on the banks of the Kansas River, known locally as the Kaw. Each tent housed a family and some of the possessions they had presumably taken when they fled from devastated homes: a doll here, a radio there.

Image on the right: David Longhurst photographed in 2016 at the Eldridge Hotel, where he is assistant general manager and part-owner. Longhurst was mayor of Lawrence at the time of The Day After broadcast in 1983. Courtesy: Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World

David Longhurst at Eldrige Hotel. (Lawrence Journal-World)

“As you went from tent to tent, it was like going through a neighborhood,” recalls Jack Wright, a now-retired theater professor at the university who became the casting director for the film’s extras, and whose stepdaughter—Ellen Anthony—played “Joleen” in the movie. When I met Wright and his wife Judy (who was an extra in the movie, and whose hint-of-Texas voice immediately reminded me of her daughter Ellen’s) at their house in Lawrence, we looked at magazine clippings and interviews with Ellen that had taken place in their home 35 years earlier.

Wright, who is 75 and still has a grade-school-issued civil defense helmet in his garage, continues to direct and act in theater productions, including a one-man show in which he plays the legendary Kansas newspaper editor William Allen White. Before he dashed off to a rehearsal, he told me what it was like being at the university’s beloved Allen Fieldhouse, home of the Kansas Jayhawks, in 1983 when the basketball court was transformed into a “hospice” littered with cots for the victims of radiation sickness. He remembers that director Nicholas Meyer told the extras not to look at the camera or anything else and reminded them that if a nuclear war had really happened, “nobody would leave this room alive. You’re on your last legs.” It was silent in the vast room, and Wright says the moviemakers at that time were still considering calling the movie Silence in Heaven.

Sometimes, after shooting a scene, the extras talked about nuclear war and what they would lose, what it would mean for a small city in the heart of the country. One of the most haunting lines in the film comes when John Lithgow, playing a university science professor who has survived the nuclear blast, speaks into his shortwave radio: “This is Lawrence. This is Lawrence, Kansas. Is anybody there? Anybody at all?”

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The “refugee” tent city created for The Day After along the banks of the Kansas River. Courtesy: Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World

Beyond Imagining

On Columbus Day in 1983, Ronald Reagan was at Camp David, the wooded presidential retreat in Maryland. That morning, before he boarded a Marine helicopter to fly back to the White House, he previewed an ABC made-for-television movie with the tagline “Beyond imagining.” The Day After deeply affected Reagan, himself a product of Hollywood. He wrote in his diary: “It is powerfully done—all $7 mil. worth. It’s very effective & left me greatly depressed… My own reaction was one of our having to do all we can to have a deterrent & to see there is never a nuclear war.” In an interview last year, Meyer said Reagan’s official biographer told him “the only time he saw Ronald Reagan become upset was after they screened The Day After, and he just went into a funk.”

On November 18, 1983, two days before the film aired on network television, Reagan wrote in his diary of “a most sobering experience” in the Situation Room, where he received a military briefing “on our complete plan in the event of a nuclear attack.” In his 1990 autobiography, An American LifeReagan recalled the briefing: “Simply put, it was a scenario for a sequence of events that could lead to the end of civilization as we knew it. In several ways, the sequence of events described in the briefing paralleled those in the ABC movie. Yet there were still some people at the Pentagon who claimed a nuclear war was ‘winnable.’”

In that same diary entry, Reagan noted that Secretary of State George Shultz would go on ABC “right after it’s [sic] big Nuclear bomb film Sunday night. We know it’s ‘anti-nuke’ propaganda but we’re going to take it over & say it shows why we must keep on doing what we’re doing.”

Two days later, Shultz appeared before the nation and told ABC News’ Ted Koppel that the film was “a vivid and dramatic portrayal of the fact that nuclear war is simply not acceptable,” saying that US nuclear policy had been successful in preventing such a war. “The only reason we have nuclear weapons,” Shultz said, “is to see to it that they aren’t used.” Shultz told Koppel that the United States had a policy not only of deterrence but also of weapons reduction—eventually to zero. (Although ABC and the film’s director were careful to remain ambiguous about which side started the fictional nuclear war, insisting that the film was “not political,” The Day After left no doubt that deterrence had failed.)

After Shultz spoke, Koppel hosted a televised discussion with a distinguished panel of guests, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, author Elie Wiesel, publisher William F. Buckley, Jr., astronomer Carl Sagan, national security expert Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, and former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Their reactions ranged from Buckley’s denunciation of the film as propaganda “that seeks to debilitate the United States,” to Sagan’s comment that a real nuclear war would be even more lethal than depicted in the film because it would be followed by a nuclear winter.

Whatever their intentions, Reagan and Shultz made little progress with the Soviets on nuclear weapons until Gorbachev became General Secretary of the governing Communist Party in March 1985. Immediately afterward, Reagan invited him to a summit. They met in Geneva that November; the meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes but lasted five hours. The next year, in Reykjavik, they came very close to agreeing to destroy all their nuclear weapons, and the director of The Day After received a telegram from the administration telling him, “Don’t think your movie didn’t have any part of this, because it did.” In 1987, the year that The Day After was first shown on Soviet television, the two leaders reached agreement on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. By then, as many as 1 billion people may have seen the film.

Today, commentators such as Fox News political anchor Bret Baier and syndicated radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh claim to see parallels between presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, and between the Reagan-Gorbachev summit and Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Like Reagan, who called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” in a March 1983 address to the National Association of Evangelicals, Trump initially responded to North Korea’s nuclear program with his infamous threat of “fire and fury.”

In the United States and Russia—and now also North Korea—there is still just one person’s finger on the “nuclear button.” When Reagan was president, his first-term chief of staff and other establishment Republicans reportedly feared that Reagan might get the country into a nuclear war. Last year, similar concerns among some of Trump’s fellow Republicans were on public display. Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for example, told the New York Times that Trump’s reckless threats could put the United States “on the path to World War III.”

In 1983, an opinion poll found that about half of Americans thought they would die in a nuclear war. Although nuclear weapons get a smaller share of press attention today than in 1983, a Gallup poll conducted earlier this year reported that Americans fear the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea more than any other “critical threat,” and a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that “about half of Americans are concerned that President Trump might launch a nuclear attack without justification.” The Global Risks Report 2018, published in January by the World Economic Forum and drawn from a survey of the group’s 1,000 members, warned “the North Korea crisis has arguably brought the world closer than it has been for decades to the possible use of nuclear weapons” and has “created uncertainty about the strength of the norms created by decades of work to prevent nuclear conflict.”

Rising Nuclear Tensions: Echoes of 1983

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More than 50 years after the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty declared the intention of 190 nations (including the United States) “to achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race,” the United States and Russia still have enough weapons to destroy the world many times over—and many of them still stand on hair-trigger alert. Just last month, Gorbachev made an urgent plea for actions to prevent a new arms race.

In Hawaii earlier this year, at the height of tensions between the United States and North Korea, residents received a false ballistic-missile alert over television, radio and cellphones. For 38 minutes, many Hawaiians thought they were about to die. The false alarm reminded some experts of Cold War-era false alarms, the most dangerous of which happened late in September 1983—just two months before The Day After aired. The Soviets’ early-warning system erroneously reported incoming American nuclear missiles, and the gut instincts and wise thinking of a Soviet officer, Col. Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, were all that saved the world from catastrophe.

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In early November 1983—less than two weeks before The Day After aired, and less than a month after Reagan saw a preview—NATO conducted a military exercise called Able Archer, which simulated a nuclear attack and included flights by aircraft armed with dummy nuclear warheads. The nonprofit National Security Archive recently published previously-secret Soviet documents showing that “ranking members of Soviet intelligence, military, and the Politburo, to varying degrees, were fearful of a Western first strike in 1983 under the cover of the NATO exercises Autumn Forge 83 and Able Archer 83.” (Autumn Forge, an exercise that airlifted thousands of troops to Europe under radio silence, culminated with the Able Archer simulation.) For the first time, the Soviets put their military on high alert at Polish and East German bases. Like Col. Petrov, Lt. Gen. Leonard Perroots, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence at the US Air Force’s European headquarters, wisely chose not to respond.

It is not inconceivable that something like the 1983 “war scare” could happen again today. In mid-November, the Russian military jammed GPS signals during a NATO military exercise in Norway. CNN called it “the alliance’s largest exercise since the Cold War.”

In addition to the Able Archer simulation, November 1983 was also the month that NATO began deploying US Pershing II missiles to West Germany. The missiles were intended to counter Soviet medium-range missiles capable of striking anywhere in Europe, and there were huge protests in Germany over their deployment. It is no coincidence that nuclear war begins in The Day After with a gradually escalating conflict in Europe. In one scene, viewers hear a Soviet official mention the “coordinated movement of the Pershing II launchers.”

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that Reagan and Gorbachev signed in 1987 resolved that conflict, banning all ground-launched and air-launched nuclear and conventional missiles (and their launchers) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, or 310 to 3,420 miles. However, Trump said in October that he plans to withdraw from the treaty, and on December 4 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States would withdraw in 60 days if Russia continues its alleged non-compliance. Gorbachev and Shultz, in a Washington Post op-ed published that day, warned that “[a]bandoning the INF Treaty would be a step toward a new arms race, undermining strategic stability and increasing the threat of miscalculation or technical failure leading to an immensely destructive war.”

The United States first accused Russia of violating the treaty in 2014, by testing a banned cruise missile, and later claimed that Russia had deployed such a missile. However, the United States has not yet divulged details about the alleged violation, and there are no arms control talks currently scheduled.

“The one meaningful thing that Trump is doing is trying to get a dialogue going with Putin,” said former Defense Secretary (and chair of the Bulletin‘s Board of Sponsors) William J. Perry at the Bulletin’s annual dinner in Chicago on November 8. But Russia’s refusal to release Ukrainian Navy ships and sailors seized in the Kerch Strait in late November led Trump to cancel a scheduled meeting with Putin at the recent G20 Summit in Argentina, where they had been expected to discuss the fate of both the INF and another treaty for which Reagan and Gorbachev laid the groundwork in Reykjavik: New START, which capped the number of nuclear warheads on deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and deployed heavy bombers. Nuclear experts worry that Trump will let New START expire in February 2021, if only because it is one of President Barack Obama’s signature achievements, at which point there would no longer be any international agreements governing US and Russian nuclear arsenals for the first time in almost 50 years.

A New Arms Race

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When Obama visited the University of Kansas in 2015, he said nothing about nuclear weapons; he spoke of middle-class economics and basketball. Although Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize largely for his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, he nevertheless bequeathed to Trump a 30-year plan to “modernize” the US nuclear arsenal. Based on a Congressional Budget Office report, the Arms Control Association estimates that the United States will spend about $1.2 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars by 2046 on new bombs, missiles, bombers, submarines, and related systems. The Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review calls for a new generation of land-based ICBMs, which experts such as Perry view as an unnecessary and risky component of a nuclear triad that also includes sea- and air-launched nuclear weapons.

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In 1983, the McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas was home to 18 Titan II missiles, the largest ICBM ever deployed by the US Air Force. Reagan was proposing to install the Peacekeeper missile, America’s most controversial ICBM, in Titan II silos and on mobile transporters. Even closer to Lawrence was the Whiteman Air Force Base, east of Kansas City in Missouri, where 150 Minuteman II missiles were deployed.

In The Day After, Minuteman missiles erupt from the plains near farmhouses, and people who see the missile trails above the football stadium and the South Park gazebo in Lawrence understand that a hail of Russian ICBMs will soon follow. There is panic in the streets. When the Russian missiles targeted at Kansas City detonate during the movie’s extended attack sequence, flashing brightly and sending up mushroom clouds, viewers see snippets of footage from actual nuclear tests interspersed with a horrifying, rapid-fire series of “skeletonized” people instantly killed in the midst of everyday activities.

The United States no longer deploys ICBMs near Kansas City. The force has shrunk by about 60 percent, to around 400 missiles now deployed near Air Force bases in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. That’s good news for the people of Lawrence.

The bad news, however, is that the latest Nuclear Posture Review calls for the development of new and dangerous weapons: a new sea-launched cruise missile and a “low-yield” nuclear warhead that could be more “useable” than bigger bombs—and arguably more likely to make military strategists see a nuclear war as winnable rather than suicidal. The United States might even use such a weapon in response to a non-nuclear threat, such as a cyberattack. And Trump seems to be as enamored of his proposed “Space Force” as Reagan was of his “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative.

The Defense Department claims it needs new weapons to respond to new threats from Russia, where Putin in 2016 vowed to modernize its own nuclear weapons to “reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems.” More recently, Putin has bragged about deploying hypersonic missiles capable of traveling at many times the speed of sound “in coming months,” and developing both a global-range, nuclear-powered cruise missile and an underwater nuclear drone. The Russians say they have been forced into these actions by the eastward expansion of NATO and the installation of missile defense systems in Europe. Russia is also developing the world’s biggest missile—so big it could theoretically fly over the South Pole and avoid US missile defenses.

The rash of new threats makes some experts wonder whether the United States and Russia are serious about resolving their differences over the INF Treaty and other matters—or just looking for excuses to lunge into a new arms race. “The opponents of arms control have won,” says Steven E. Miller, director of the International Security Program at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (and a member of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board). “By the end of the 1990s, we had a nuclear order that was internationally regulated and jointly managed. Right now, we’re literally on the edge of having nothing left with regard to nuclear restraint. The case for arms control has to be fought all over again.”

How Activists Hijacked a Movie

Louise Hanson, who is now 78 years old, has been pushing for arms control for most of her adult life. She and her 79-year-old husband Allan, a now-retired professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas, remember being terrified newlyweds listening to news of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis on their car radio at night in Chicago. After they moved to Lawrence, they became leaders in the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice, a group that formed in the 1970s and by 1983 was focused on nuclear weapons. Louise once wrote to her senator, Bob Dole, on 1,000 consecutive days, each time giving him a new reason to halt the nuclear arms race. Today, the Hansons—quick-witted, gracious, and younger-looking than their years—live in a tasteful downtown loft one block from the disaster-struck street that appeared in The Day After.

When the movie came to town, the Coalition recognized it as a golden opportunity. Allan and Louise—she played a “suffering victim” as an extra and elicited a scream from her high-school daughter when she came home in her movie makeup—helped create a local campaign around the movie called “Let Lawrence Live.” They got some unexpected help from a brash, young media strategist named Josh Baran, whose only previous experience was working for the Nuclear Freeze campaign in California. With a budget of only about $50,000 from the Rockefeller Family Fund, Baran and Mark Graham (now director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive) helped make The Day After a national sensation.

Baran and The Day After director Nicholas Meyer had friends in common in California, and one of them made introductions. Baran went to Meyer’s house, saw the film (which was still a work in progress), and took home a copy. When I interviewed Baran by phone last month, he said Meyer told him to “do what you want with it, and don’t tell me.” What Baran did was to create a major publicity campaign for an ABC movie … without ABC’s knowledge or consent. Nowadays this would be called “hijack marketing”: taking advantage of someone else’s event to generate publicity for your own cause. But in 1983, “no one had ever done it,” claims Baran, who now heads Baran Strategies in New York City. “It was a very far out-of-the-box strategy.”

bumper dont wait

Baran traveled around the country, stimulating interest in the forthcoming film among activists and reporters and planning activities around it. “It took off like gangbusters,” he recalls. “About halfway through, I told ABC what I was doing, and they freaked out.” But there was little the network could do about all the free publicity they were getting from Baran.

He attributes the success of the movie to several factors that would be difficult to replicate today. One was that there were only three television networks in 1983, so programs reached a much broader audience. “I would not have wanted to make this as a feature film,” Meyer told the New York Times a week before the film aired. “I did not want to preach to the converted. I wanted to reach the guy who’s waiting for The Flying Nun to come on.”

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Announcement for a “candlelight gathering,” printed in the Lawrence Journal-World classifieds the day before The Day After broadcast. Campanile Hill is adjacent to the University of Kansas stadium featured in the film.

Retired theater professor Jack Wright doubts that such a movie could appear today on television. “I think we’re so politically ostracized now that I don’t know that we could ever have another event like we had in The Day After,” he says. “The groups now are so politicized that they would stop it.”

In 1983, putting the movie on television ensured that it would spark a national conversation, because it would be seen simultaneously by millions of people. Bringing the movie into people’s homes was “was genius really,” says Louise Hanson, “because it made it much more intimate.”

The Day After also benefited from good timing. Jonathan Schell’s seminal 1982 book The Fate of the Earth had awakened readers to the unthinkable prospect of a nuclear war that would devastate most life on the planet. The Nuclear Freeze movement was in full swing; a referendum in Lawrence during the November 1982 election received support from 74 percent of voters. Nuclear war was the number one concern preoccupying the nation. The Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice was holding events around town, like a rally at South Park where they released “balloons not bombs.” The park appears briefly in The Day After, with just-launched missiles visible in the sky above the bandstand. Louise Hanson says she can’t go by that bandstand, even to this day, without seeing those missiles in her mind’s eye.

The film did not significantly increase public support for nuclear arms reductions, but research suggests that it may have made viewers more knowledgeable about nuclear war and caused them to think about it more. For viewers who didn’t want to think about nuclear war, perhaps the biggest emotional punch delivered by the movie was the scene in which a husband drags his screaming wife—who is insisting on making the bed, in a desperate attempt to maintain normality—to their basement shelter.

Has it made any difference? That’s what the Hansons wonder now, 35 years after the movie and the height of the peace movement in Lawrence, as they play a song by a local group for me on their living-room stereo: “Uprising,” the anthem of the local coalition, which has a line that Louise loves: “I feel it in my bones.” The Hansons find it alarming that a fictional movie might have played a key role in changing a president’s views. “We in the peace movement have been, for decades, dangerously close to patting ourselves on the head and being satisfied with consciousness raising,” Louise says. “I see that as hugely insufficient unless you can translate it into policy.”

People to People

Bob Swan, Jr., a genial man with warm blue eyes who has befriended many Russian athletes and met a number of Russian dignitaries, including Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, is hopeful that citizen diplomacy can fill some of the gaps in policy making. He sees lots of connections between Kansas and Russia, everything from the red winter wheat brought to Kansas by Russian Mennonites, to the American and Soviet soldiers who met and embraced at the Elbe River in April 1945 on their way to jointly defeating Nazi Germany. (He proposed and helped organize a 40th anniversary celebration of the meetup in Torgau, Germany, for veterans of both armies.)

A few months after The Day After began filming, Swan founded the first of several groups dedicated to improving relations between Americans and Russians. He called it Athletes United for Peace. The goal was to promote athletic competition instead of nuclear hostility. When I visited him in August, the dining-room table in his home was covered with neatly stacked papers and memorabilia documenting his persistent efforts during the 1980s and ‘90s (the University of Kansas research library has 37 boxes of material from Swan in its archives). He thought he had “retired” from the volunteer work that had consumed so much of his time—and his first marriage—during those years, but now he is thinking about a possible comeback.

Swan met his current wife, Irina Turenko, in 2002 during one of several dozen trips he made to Russia. She was in Russia visiting family when I met Swan at their home, but he showed me a picture from their wedding day in 2006; he and Irina are standing between an American flag and a Russian one. Swan had another visitor on the day I was there: his sharp-tongued fraternity brother Mark Scott, who speaks fluent Russian and was in Lawrence for medical treatment. In 1982, Scott came up with the idea to invite a delegation of Soviet athletes to participate in the Kansas Relays, a three-day track-and-field meet that has been held at the University of Kansas every April since 1923.

Former mayor David Longhurst remembers attending the 1983 reception for the athletes. It was awkward. The Kansans and the Soviets viewed each other with suspicion. Longhurst didn’t speak Russian, and the visitors didn’t speak English. “I was trying to talk to a Soviet shot putter, and we weren’t communicating at all,” Longhurst recalls. “I took out my wallet and showed him a picture of my son. He took out his wallet and showed me a picture of his kids. All of a sudden, we understood one another. The barrier just melted.”

The next day, at the start of the “friendship relays,” Longhurst told the story to the crowd in his welcoming remarks. He said it had occurred to him that it would be wonderful if the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union could meet in “a place like Lawrence” and discover how much they had in common. “The press got hold of that and went nuts,” says Longhurst. The headlines said he had invited the two leaders to come to Lawrence.

Some of his constituents were so enthusiastic about the idea that they launched a campaign to organize what became known as the Meeting for Peace. Dole and other politicians endorsed the initiative. Longhurst and Swan joined a delegation of schoolchildren (including 10-year-old actress Ellen Anthony) that traveled by train to Washington to deliver thousands of postcards to the White House and the Soviet embassy, asking the nations’ leaders to come to Lawrence.

It took Swan and others more than seven years to make it happen, but the Meeting for Peace was finally held in Lawrence and six other Kansas cities in October 1990. By then, it had become a “people-to-people” event rather than a summit. About 300 prestigious Soviet citizens from a variety of regions and backgrounds—including the son of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev—visited Kansas to attend conferences and art shows, stay with Kansas families, celebrate the 100th birthday of Kansas-raised President Dwight D. Eisenhower (a big proponent of people-to-people exchanges to promote international understanding and friendship), and “bury an era” (as a New York Times headline reported). At the opening assembly, the Kansans and their guests applauded wildly when it was announced that Gorbachev had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

After Trump’s inauguration, Swan wrote a long letter to the president and his foreign policy team, proposing a number of ideas for what he called “a remarkable opportunity to improve US-Russia relations,” but he received only a very general reply six months later. Today, Swan remains hopeful about better relations between the two superpowers but says “it’s got to be from the bottom up this time, because our political system is in such disarray.” He hopes that young people will lead a fresh effort to improve relations between Russia and the United States, but it saddens him that “we’ve already done this.”

A Bright Tomorrow?

In one scene in The Day After, a pregnant woman who has taken shelter in the Lawrence hospital along with fallout victims tells her doctor that her overdue baby doesn’t want to be born. You’re holding back hope, he says.

“Hope for what?” she asks. “We knew the score. We knew all about bombs. We knew all about fallout. We knew this could happen for 40 years. Nobody was interested.”

It won’t be long before another 40 years have passed. Americans have not yet perished in a nuclear war or its aftermath, but a new arms race is beginning and the potential for an intentional or accidental nuclear war seems to be rising. As Koppel said in his introduction to the panel discussion that followed The Day After, “There is some good news. If you can, take a quick look out the window. It’s all still there.” But, he asked, “Is the vision that we’ve just seen the future as it will be, or only as it may be? Is there still time?”

The poet Langston Hughes, who spent most of his childhood in Lawrence, wrote a line that the city has adopted as its motto: “We have tomorrow bright before us like a flame.” It was emblazoned on a banner used by local anti-nuclear activists for their 1983 campaign. Today, though, it will take far more than banners or a movie to awaken a new generation to the risks of nuclear war, catch the eye of a president, and instigate a meaningful dialogue between the leaders of the United States and Russia.

There is hope, though. A year ago, the New York Times reported that people close to Trump estimate he spends “at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television.” A two-hour film about ordinary Americans might not interest the president, but a dramatic two-minute video clip of Washington experiencing Lawrence-style devastation might get his attention. Especially if it aired on Fox & Friends.

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NATO Partisans Started a New Cold War with Russia

December 28th, 2018 by Ted Galen Carpenter

When historians examine the first few decades of the so-called post-Cold War era, they are likely to marvel at the clumsy and provocative policies that the United States and its NATO allies pursued toward Russia. Perceptive historians will conclude that a multitude of insensitive actions by those governments poisoned relations with Moscow, and by the latter years of the Obama administration, led to the onset of a new cold war. During the Trump administration, matters grew even worse, and that cold war threatened to turn hot.

Since the history of our era is still being written, we have an opportunity to avoid such a cataclysmic outcome. However, the behavior of America’s political, policy, and media elites in response to the latest parochial quarrel between Russia and Ukraine regarding the Kerch Strait suggests that they learned nothing from their previous blunders. Worse, they seem determined to intensify an already counterproductive, hardline policy toward Moscow.

U.S. leaders managed to get relations with Russia wrong just a few years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. One of the few officials to capture the nature of the West’s bungling and how it fomented tensions was Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense during the final years of George W. Bush’s administration and the first years of Barack Obama’s. In his surprisingly candid memoirs, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, Gates recalls his report to Bush following the 2007 Munich Security Council, at which Russian President Vladimir Putin vented about Western security transgressions, including the planned deployment of a missile defense system in Central Europe.

“When I reported to the president my take on the Munich conference, I shared my belief that from 1993 onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated the magnitude of the Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War . . . .” Yet even that blunt assessment given to Bush did not fully capture Gates’s views on the issue. “What I didn’t tell the president was that I believed the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after [George H. W.] Bush left office in 1993. Getting Gorbachev to acquiesce to a unified Germany as a member of NATO had been a huge accomplishment. But moving so quickly after the collapse of the Soviet Union to incorporate so many of its formerly subjugated states into NATO was a mistake.”

Specific U.S. actions were ill-considered as well, in Gates’s view. “U.S. agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation.”

His list of foolish or arrogant Western actions went on. Citing NATO’s military interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo during Bill Clinton’s administration, Gates noted that “the Russians had long historical ties with Serbia, which we largely ignored.” And in an implicit rebuke to his current boss, Gates asserted that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.” That move was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.” Indeed, events regarding Ukraine after Gates completed his memoirs illustrated that U.S. arrogance and meddling knew few bounds. U.S. officials openly sided with demonstrators who overthrew Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russian government, and then reacted with shock and anger when Russia retaliated by seizing and annexing Crimea.

Gates’s overall assessment of Western, especially U.S., policy toward Russia during the post-Cold War era was unsparingly harsh—and devastatingly accurate: “When Russia was weak in the 1990s and beyond, we did not take Russian interests seriously. We did a poor job of seeing the world from their point of view and managing the relationship for the long term.” Unfortunately, Gates was one of the rare anomalies in the American foreign policy community regarding policy toward Russia.

His criticism, trenchant as it is, still understates the folly of the policies that the United States and its NATO allies have pursued toward Moscow. The treatment that three successive U.S. administrations meted out to a newly capitalist, democratic Russia was appalling myopic. Even before Vladimir Putin came to power—and long before Russia descended into being an illiberal democracy and then an outright authoritarian state—the Western powers treated the country as a de facto enemy. The NATO nations engaged in a series of provocations even though Moscow had engaged in no aggressive conduct that even arguably justified such actions.

The determination to confront Russia has only grown over the years, as the current tensions involving the Kerch Strait illustrate. When Russian security forces fired on three Ukrainian naval vessels that attempted to force a transit of the Kerch Strait (a narrow waterway between Russia’s Taman Peninsula and Russian-annexed Crimea that connects the Black Sea and Sea of Azov), the United States and its NATO allies reacted furiously. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley branded Russia’s conduct “outlaw actions.”

An array of U.S. lawmakers and pundits advocate highly provocative steps in response. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged an increase in U.S. arms sales to Ukraine, asserting, “If Putin starts seeing Russian soldier fatalities, that changes his equation.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-OK) threatened new sanctions on Russia and called for a coordinated response between the United States and its European allies. “If Putin continues his Black Sea bullying,” Inhofe stated, “the United States and Europe must consider imposing additional sanctions on Russia, inserting a greater U.S. and NATO presence in the Black Sea region and increasing military assistance for Ukraine.”

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) echoed those views. Menendez called for tougher sanctions, additional NATO exercises on the Black Sea and more U.S. security aid to Ukraine, “including lethal maritime equipment and weapons.” Some hawks even seem receptive to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s call on NATO to station warships in the Sea of Azov, even though such a step would likely lead to a shooting war between the West and Russia.

Far too many Western (especially American) analyses explicitly or implicitly act as though the United States and its NATO allies worked assiduously to establish cordial relations with Russia but were compelled to adopt hardline policies solely because of Russia’s perversely aggressive conduct. That is a distorted, self-serving portrayal on the part of NATO partisans. It falsely portrays the West as purely a reactive player—that NATO initiatives were never insensitive, provocative, or aggressive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, the opposite is closer to the mark; Russia’s actions, both in terms of timing and virulence, tended to be responses to aggressive Western initiatives. Unfortunately, avid NATO supporters seem determined to double down, insisting that the Trump administration adopt even more uncompromising policies.

Contending that Moscow is to blame for the deterioration of East-West relations because of its military actions in Georgia and Ukraine, as U.S. opinion leaders tend to do, is especially inaccurate. The problems began much earlier than the events in 2008 and 2014. The West humiliated a defeated adversary that showed every sign of wanting to become part of a broader Western community. Expanding NATO and trampling on Russian interests in the Balkans were momentous early measures that torpedoed friendly relations.

Such policy myopia was reminiscent of how the victorious Allies inflicted harsh treatment on a defeated, newly democratic Weimar Germany after World War I. The NATO powers are treating Russia as an enemy, and there is now a serious danger that the country is turning into one. That development would be an especially tragic case of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 750 articles on international affairs.  His latest book is Gullible Superpower: U.S. Support for Bogus Foreign Democratic Movements (forthcoming, February 2019).

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Is There a Way Out of the Afghan Deadlock?

December 28th, 2018 by Martin Berger

Afghanistan has always been of particular interest to world powers and they would most certainly try to conquer it. But not for the sake of earning bragging rights, but to secure control over a bridgehead connecting the countries of Central and South Asia. It is for this reason that over the past few decades, Afghanistan has been the scene of bitter hostilities between major Western powers and local resistance groups unwilling to surrender their sovereignty so that Washington could pursue its own national interests. But this rivalry did nothing to improve living conditions of the local population or ensure peace and security in Afghanistan, instead we witness this proud country being transformed into a brewing pot for instability and chaos. Almost two decades after the initial invasion of this country American servicemen are almost universally perceived as an illegal occupation force here.

As it’s been pointed out by the Stars and Stripes with a special reference to the US Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT) special report, between the start of the year and the end of October, US dropped 5,982 munitions on Afghanistan. Even though this report doesn’t study the whole year, the number stated surpasses the previous annual record of about 5,400 recorded in 2011 at the height of the US troop surge.

Unsurprisingly, the same AFCENT report states that the number of civilian casualties over the same period of time reached an all time high. This results in the Taliban increasing the number of its operations, inflicting one crushing blow on pro-Western security forces after another. So it’s only logical that we see reports stating that Afghan ground forces have suffered heavy casualties in recent months. This brings the total of Afghan soldiers and local policemen who perished since 2015, when local troops took over combat operations from the US and NATO, to a rather grave death toll of 30,000 men.

Just recently, the Brown University released its own evaluation of the Afghan war casualties, stating that at least 140 thousand men lost their lives in direct hostilities. Over the period of seventeen years, at least 6 thousand American servicemen sacrificed their lives defending Washington’s grand designs in Afghanistan, together with eleven hundred servicemen from the countries of the so-called US-led coalition. The authors behind the study showed their exceptional integrity by stating that those the lowest possible number of casualties, as nobody has precise numbers on his hands. To make the matters worse, we don’t have any reports on the number of American men and women who were broken mentally or physically by this brutal war and were sent home in order not to skew the numbers. To make the matters worse, if unofficial sources are to be believed, the total number of casualties of the Afghan war, including those that perished because of the total destruction of the Afghan civil infrastructure, leaves us with a mind-numbing number of one million human lives lost. Additionally, 2,6 million Afghan citizens were displaced in the course of the hostilities and had to flee the country.

That is why the lingering US and NATO military presence in Afghanistan can hardly be described in any other way than a complete and total mess. It seems that local citizens share pretty much the same evaluation of the situation on the ground, as there’s reports of an ever increasing number of protests against the actions of the US Air Force being held all across Afghanistan.

Unsurprisingly, the Weekly Standard would feature an article with a very telling title that goes: The “Afghanistan War Is Over. We Lost”. The article itself states that the Trump administration has been voicing its plans to withdraw American troops, but it never fulfill those due to the nature of American foreign policy.

As it’s been pointed on Zero Hedge, a peaceful Afghanistan led by a single central government is highly unlikely to go in the wake of Washington’s global designs. Yet, Washington loves to brag that the US is playing an instrumental part in bringing peace to Afghanistan, while as a matter of fact it is the only obstacle standing in the way of peaceful negotiations.

Meanwhile, the US-backed Afghan government is rapidly losing ground to the Taliban and other rebel groups. Last year’s report by the Special Inspector General for Reconstruction of Afghanistan states that the government controls or has influence over no more than 57% of the territory of Afghanistan. According to a recent BBC study, Taliban militants are freely operating across 70% of Afghanistan’s lands. According to Pentagon’s evaluation, there was no more than 15 thousand militants operating in Afghanistan a decade ago. Today this figure is believed to exceed 60 thousand men.

It’s been pointed out that it is not the incumbent Afghan government but the United States which is really calling the shots in Afghanistan. Indeed, the US has a number of strategic interests in this region. These interests compel it to stay in Afghanistan. Therefore, the US will naturally be more interested in preserving its broader strategic interests than bring peace to this war-ravaged country. At present, there is a sort of deadlock in the dialogue process between the US-backed Afghan government and the Taliban as both are trying to reach a negotiated settlement on their own terms.

According to the Nation, the US and its allies should seriously evolve a comprehensive exit strategy to completely pull their troops out of Afghanistan. In fact, the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from this conflict is also a major precondition by the Taliban and other insurgent groups to make peace in Afghanistan.

However, NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg would still insist that the price of withdrawal from Afghanistan both in financial expenditures and human lives is going to be much higher that NATO is paying now for staying. This was stated on December 5 at Stoltenberg’s meeting with heads of foreign ministers of the alliance. In his comments on the results of this meeting, the spokesperson for the Afghan high peace council, Sayed Ihsan Taheri stated that NATO and its partners told the Afhgan government that they were prepared to withdraw their troops should the people of Afghanistan explicitly express their will on this matter.

Yet, the Indian Punchline would reveal that the recent Moscow conference on Afghanistan brought to light that the peace talks will get a big fillip if the US and Russia work in tandem. It would also add that everything depends on the Trump administration reversing course and accepting a Russian role. But this will have to be a political decision at the highest level in the White House. So far, the sitting US president has left it to the Pentagon commanders to pursue his Afghan strategy. But the strategy to weaken the Taliban to the point they would sue for peace is simply unworkable and is counterproductive.

Stabilization of Afghanistan is, perhaps, where US-Russia cooperation is “doable”. There is no real backlog of bitterness or contradictions. The US cannot say Russia is responsible for its defeat in Afghanistan. In the interests of regional security and stability in Central Asia, Moscow helped out wherever, whenever the US wanted help. Simply put, what is needed is a reset of the American mindset.

Yet, it’s been added that the US has now started realizing two important things in Afghanistan. Firstly, it looks convinced that it can’t control or stabilize Afghanistan through military means alone. Secondly, it has started considering the Taliban an important reality on the ground without engaging whom through a meaningful dialogue, there can hardly be peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Last month, one could come across numerous reports about Donald Trump evaluating the possibility of visiting Afghanistan before the end of the year. However, it seems unlikely that he will be able to make visit in the last couple days of the year, which means that the White House hasn’t fully grasped the ground realities of Afghanistan. Yet, one can only hope that sooner or later the Trump administration will realize that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is just as imminent as withdrawal from Syria was.

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Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”  

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Brazil: The Economic and Social Plan of the Bolsonaro Government

December 28th, 2018 by Prof. Joao Marcio

“Reformed” captain Jair Bolsonaro already committed to the “market” the handover of all decisions in the economic area to large capital, under the hegemony of financial capital and foreign corporations (as personified in Paulo Guedes and his Chicago Boys, including Levy in the Brazilian Development Bank-BNDES). As per the President’s statements, his will be a government directly headed by businessmen committed to the reduction of the “Brazil cost,” that is, to the increase of private profit. A government with such profile would not only give continuity but also radicalize Michel Temer’s agenda with the aim of implementing the following measures:

1. A brutal reduction in compensation costs for the workforce (that is, a reduction of the minimum wage and the end of various labour rights, combined with a deterioration of working conditions, through the generalization of intermittent work, subcontracting, and the dismantling of labour justice);

2. The private appropriation of all possible natural resources (oil, mined minerals, land, water, and biodiversity), eliminating any bureaucratic or legal obstacles, trampling over traditional populations and environmental concerns. See statements made on reviewing the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve, given that there are 90 (Ninety!!!) corporations presenting requests to exploit its mineral wealth. See Pre-Sal’s wealth, estimated by the FUP (an oil workers’ federation) to be a patrimony of a trillion dollars, already handed over in the bidding processes carried out until now, and which should continue further. In order to eliminate any environmental barrier, he appointed a truculent minister, with no experience, and completely aligned with agribusiness and large capital, who financed him;

3. The privatization of 149 State enterprises of which only part of Petrobras would remain. They foresee that they can gain 850 billion reals for the public coffers, which would contribute to massacring the public deficit, given that this represents only two years of interest that the government pays banks, and included in that servile process, is the approval of the handover of EMBRAER to Boeing, already in the final sales process, awaiting the government’s approval as contemplated in the reserve clause;

4. The privatization of Social Security where the problem is neither the deficit nor the privileges, especially those of judges and the military, which will not be modified. What banks want is the right to implement a private social security plan, dreaming of large pension funds, with a no-cost access to national savings, as is already taking place with the social security of the BB, Caixa, and Petrobras, which turned into large operators in the speculative investment markets;

5. The dismantling and privatizing public education through the chronic resources and investments in schools and universities; the mass implementation of long-distance training via private corporations; the substitution of public hiring process for technicians and professors by subcontracting; the drastic reduction of academic scholarships, research and support for remaining in the university; the imposition of university presidents by the Education Ministry to the detriment of democratic elections by the academic community; and ideological persecution against the freedom of teaching and research;

6. The scrapping and privatization of public health through defunding of the SUS, the weak regulation of private healthcare providers, the generalization of public-private partnerships as a management model, and the substitution of public contests by temporary subcontracting);

7. The privatization of the public financial system – Banco do Brasil, BNB and Caixa – and a subcontracting and privatization process of public services in general. Anything that can provide profit will be transferred to capitalist corporations to benefit;

8. The favoring of the arms industry (both national and foreign), through the liberation of permits and the budget priorities demanded by police and military forces, including agreements with Israel for the provision of equipment;

9. A public security model that is even more bellicose, less responsible to society and legally less accountable, with the liberation of arms sales, the lowering of the legal age to be tried as a criminal to 16, and a punitive process that is going to fill our prisons even more that they already are;

10. Brazil’s foreign alignment and subordination to the economic interests of the USA and also the political alignment with right-wing governments such as Italy, Israel, and Taiwan, creating a militarist agenda that counters its diplomatic tradition and places peace at risk.

Conclusion

Implementing an agenda like this (free market for those on top and “the law of the jungle” for those below) can only be done through intimidation, persecution, and violence. From a personal viewpoint, the President is an idiot: he is coarse, lacks culture, and was never taken seriously, not even in the armed forces. He is only reliable for the “market” (the bourgeoisie, as we said) because he will outsource all strategic decisions of his eventual government, maintaining control for himself only secondary issues to rage about and launch factoids at public opinion. That is the reading of the relevant economic actors paying the bill for his campaign. The problem (for them) is that Bolsonaro is unprepared to even understand all this, which presents a forecast of unpredictability and uncertainty for the “investors” (the capitalists).

Furthermore, the subject has no organized social and party base that is capable of providing mass sustainability (the so-called PSL is a conjunctural phenomenon, without programmatic consistency). On the other hand, Bolsonaro presents an authoritarian manner that constitutes his public figure that he cannot give up without negating himself. It is this grudge that generates an opposite reaction to what has been social plurality and international consensus until now.

In all, this buffoon is actually plausible only to the fanatics that follow him. The capitalists are using him now, but they have already put a price on him, and placed, as an expiration date, the execution of neoliberal reforms (the package of evils against the people and against the national patrimony, in a shock therapy style – for a year or two, at the most). After that, this character will be dispensable.

He will also use “spectacle” as a combat strategy, and he will be selective in dealing with corruption, Sérgio Moro being his minister, reinforcing “carwash” style prosecution – a selective and political use of the law, combined with the violation of constitutional rights, always calibrated according to the conjuncture. The Law of Borges will return: “Everything for our friends, the Law for our enemies!”

The uncertainty (for all) consists of the fact that, once Pandora’s Box is open, the demons will not easily return to it. As stated by Murphy’s Law, nothing is so bad that it cannot get worse.

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Joao Marcio is a professor at the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ).

João Pedro Stedile is an economist and a member of the national coordination of the MST and Via Campesina.

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U.S. Immigration Policy Contributes to Another Child Death

December 28th, 2018 by Physicians for Human Rights

Following the second death of a child in U.S. Border Patrol custody in recent weeks, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) urgently calls for the immediate release of all detained children to community-based settings, access to independent medical providers for all detained children, and an independent investigation into the deaths. An eight-year-old boy from Guatemala, identified as Felipe Alonzo-Gomez, died on Christmas Eve in New Mexico, just two and a half weeks after seven-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin died in Texas.

Kathryn Hampton, PHR’s Asylum Network program officer, said,

“The death of this eight-year-old is a damning indictment of U.S.immigration policy. The Trump administration’s policy of mass detention of children and families is endangering the lives of children and has contributed to an environment that has now led to the deaths of two children in recent weeks. These fatalities are not isolated incidents, but rather represent an institutional failure, both to provide adequate conditions for migrants being held in U.S. custody and also to conduct transparent, timely investigations into repeated failures. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are responsible for all those in their custody and must be held accountable when policies are implemented that increase the risk that children will die, or face inadequate conditions that could have long-lasting effects on their development.”

A CBP statement indicates that the boy had been detained at a highway checkpoint since December 18, which would violate CBP guidelines that cap short-term detention at 72 hours due to inadequate conditions for longer detention, including a lack of beds and sanitation facilities. While CBP has not yet disclosed the cause of death, the cells are known as “hieleras” (ice boxes) and “perreras” (dog kennels), due to the extremely cold conditions and chain link fencing at detention facilities.

 “The 72-hour guideline is not followed or enforced, as Felipe Alonzo-Gomez’s case clearly shows,” Hampton added. “The DHS Office of the Inspector General has recorded the detention of children by CBP for as long as 25 days. Notably, DHS’s medical experts, Drs. Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson, warned of a significant risk of harm to children from an escalation of family detention. These risks are materializing, resulting in flagrant violations of human rights, including child deaths, which can only be expected to increase. PHR and medical professionals have repeatedly called out the health risks of child detention, particularly under the inhumane conditions implemented by the Trump administration as part of its ‘zero-tolerance’immigration enforcement policy. The health risks of detention only increase as the duration of detention and number of children detained increase, particularly in light of DHS’s inability to enforce even its own inadequate safeguards. We know from media reports that the El Paso sector Border Patrol,which had custody of both children who died, had 700 children in its custody as of December 25, despite not having adequate measures in place for caring for children,” added Hampton.

PHR calls for the immediate implementation of the following measures, consistent with U.S.obligations under international human rights law and best practices for child welfare:

  1. A transparent, impartial, and independent investigation into the deaths of these children which must involve medical professionals, including pediatric specialists, with access to all medical information related to the case. The proposed internal review by the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility is insufficient and the DHS Office of the Inspector General must investigate overall conditions in CBP short-term holding facilities and all other DHS facilities holding children.
  2. DHS must transfer all children held in Border Patrol custody to developmentally appropriate settings, allow independent experts to evaluate conditions of confinement, and must pursue community-based alternatives to detention.
  3. Congress must prioritize oversight of DHS operational agencies, including the introduction of legally-binding standards related to medical screening and medical care for all detainees and financial support for alternatives to detention, especially for children and families.
  4. CBP must ensure thorough medical screening by qualified health professionals for all those in its custody without delay, with adequate provision for language interpretation.
  5. CBP must provide safe channels for asylum seekers and ensure capacity at ports of entry to process those who come to the border with a credible fear of persecution in a safe, timely, and humane manner.

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The History of Pan-Africanism and National Liberation

December 28th, 2018 by Abayomi Azikiwe

Six decades have passed since the gathering of the First All-African People’s Conference (AAPC) in Accra, Ghana during December 8-13, 1958.

At this time Ghana was the fountainhead of Pan-Africanism where the previous year the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and its founder Dr. Kwame Nkrumah won independence from British colonialism.

Immediately after the declaration of liberation, Nkrumah proclaimed in his inaugural speech on March 6, 1957 that the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total independence of the African continent. Later in mid-April 1958 the First Conference of Independent African States (CIAS) was held in Accra with eight liberated governments in attendance.

Kwame Nkrumah at the All African People’s Conference, Dec. 1958

Nonetheless, the AAPC was much different in character than the CIAS. There were approximately 300 delegates in attendance representing 65 different national liberation movements, trade unions and mass organizations from 28 countries.

At the time there were nine independent African states and all of them sent representatives to the AAPC with the exception of Sudan which had just undergone a military coup on November 17. Leading members of the anti-racist movement in apartheid Union of South Africa were not present either since many were ensnarled in the racist legal system which had indicted over 150 Congress movement organizers for treason in 1956.

The African National Congress (ANC) had three official delegates at the conference, one of whom was from the United States. Writers Ezekiel Mphahlele and Alfred Hutchinson were the other ANC representatives while Rev. Guthrie Michael Scott was there from Southwest Africa (later Namibia).

These delegates even from independent states came to Accra not as envoys of their governments. They were present representing their political parties, labor organizations and mass struggles.

Delegations traveled to Ghana for the AAPC from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, which was in the throes of an armed struggle against French imperialism led by the National Liberation Front (FLN). There were also leaders from Somalia, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar.  The British colonies of Nyasaland (later Malawi), Northern and Southern Rhodesia (today Zambia and Zimbabwe), had significant representation.

Africans Demand Liberation (1958) (Source: British Pathé)

Others from the Cameroons, divided between French and British colonialists, along with Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Togoland were present in large numbers. The language barriers between French and British outposts seemed to be overcome through translations and bi-lingual delegates illustrating the genuine pan-African character of the conference.

George Padmore, a longtime Communist and Pan-Africanist writer and organizer from the Caribbean nation of Trinidad, served as the principle convener of the AAPC. During this period Padmore was Nkrumah’s chief advisor on African affairs while he resided in Ghana.

Kenyan trade union organizer Tom Mboya chaired the five day conference. Other notables were Patrice Lumumba of the newly-created Congolese National Movement (MNC) and Frantz Fanon of Martinique representing the Algerian FLN.

Official observers attended from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) where messages of solidarity were sent by leaders Chou en-Lai and Nikita Khrushchev. The official position of the AAPC was non-alignment and positive neutrality in regard to international affairs. However, the U.S. and other western states were severely criticized for their colonialist and imperialist policies.

The AAPC had a large multi-racial observer-delegation from the U.S. which included Congressman Charles Diggs, Jr. of Detroit; Mary-Louise Hooper, a wealthy heiress and campaigner for civil rights and the struggle against apartheid, who represented the ANC in Accra; Dr. Marguerite Cartwright, a prominent African American sociologist and journalist whose columns appeared regularly in various publications including the Pittsburgh Courier and Amsterdam News of New York; Claude A. Barnett, the founder of the Associated Negro Press (ANP) which publicized events in colonial and post-colonial Africa for decades; Etta Moten-Barnett, a well-known actress-artist and the wife of Claude A. Barnett; Eslanda Robeson, an anthropologist and writer who was a co-founder of the Council on African Affairs (CAA) and the wife of African American artist and actor Paul Robeson; Shirley Graham-Du Bois, a composer, writer and leading member of the U.S. Communist Party, who read an extensive address penned by her husband; among others.

All African People’s Conference American Committee on Africa (ACOA) delegation, Dec. 1958

This gathering was a milestone in the Pan-African struggle being the first international gathering on the continent which brought together various parties and non-governmental forces to map out a strategy for the total liberation of Africa. Nkrumah in his concluding address called for the formation of a United States of Africa.

Pan-Africanism and National Liberation

Of course the movement towards liberation and equality among African people was accelerating by the late 1950s in various parts of the continent and the Diaspora. The AAPC would hold two additional summits: in Tunis in January 1960 and Cairo in March 1961.

On June 4, 1962, Nkrumah and the CPP hosted the Nationalist Conference of African Freedom Fighters in Accra. The Ghanaian leader’s address to the 1962 meeting identified imperialism as the main enemy of African people fighting for their liberation.

By early 1963 there were over 30 independent African states on the continent. On the 25th of May the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was formed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which established a Liberation Committee designed to provide material aid to those still fighting to overthrow colonialism.

However, Nkrumah at the founding OAU Summit distributed his classic work entitled “Africa Must Unite” where he dedicated an entire chapter to the political economy of neo-colonialism, the mechanism utilized to continue western imperialist domination over the land, resources, waterways and people of the continent.

Just two years later (1965), Nkrumah published “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism,” where the U.S. capitalist system was exposed for its role as being the major impediment to genuine African liberation and unity. Nkrumah and the CPP were committed to building a socialist Ghana and Africa, noting this was a prerequisite to the unity which is necessary for the region to move beyond neo-colonialism.

Nevertheless, the anti-imperialist states in Africa constituted a minority surrounded by pro-western client governments which were weak and fragile. The internal class and political contradictions in Ghana during the mid-1960s opened the way for the U.S. administration of the-then President Lyndon B. Johnson to engineer the overthrow of Nkrumah while he was out of the country on a mission to end the Vietnam War. When Nkrumah arrived in Peking, People’s Republic of China on February 24, 1966, he was informed by Premier Chou en-Lai that the CPP had been toppled by lower-ranking military officers and police.

Nkrumah soon resettled in Guinea-Conakry where the-then President Ahmed Sekou Toure declared the Ghanaian leader as co-president. Nkrumah remained in Guinea where he wrote prolifically on the emerging armed phase of the African Revolution and the burgeoning class struggle. By 1971 he was sent to Romania for medical treatment where he died on April 27, 1972.

Revolutionary Pan-African Renewal Needed for the 21st Century

Even with the transformation of the OAU to the African Union (AU) in 2002, the continent remains underdeveloped and fragmented. Many of the programs advocated by Nkrumah at the AAPC and the first three summits of the OAU (1963-1965) have been adopted, the most recent of which is the creation of an African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) on March 21, 2018 in Rwanda. However, these measures absent of a coordinated socialist revolutionary program for the strengthening of the working class, farmers and youth will not result in a United Africa based upon the interests of the majority.

Military intervention by the U.S. and other NATO countries is continuing to render the continent defenseless in the face of growing imperialist intrigue designed to facilitate the exploitation of the natural wealth and labor of the people. The coup against Nkrumah was part and parcel of a series of maneuvers to prevent the economic and consequent politically independent existence of Africa.

The destruction of Libya by the Pentagon and NATO in 2011 illustrates the mortal dangers of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). Libya, the most advanced country in Africa under the former martyred leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi, in 2018 is continuing as a major source of instability and reaction where Africans are sold into human bondage, often facing death in the Mediterranean while seeking an elusive “better life” in Europe, further institutionalizing the theft of national sovereign wealth which has rendered the North African state destitute.

Pentagon bombs are being dropped on a weekly basis in the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia while AFRICOM military bases are utilized as spring boards to carry out the genocidal war against neighboring Yemen, a Washington-led war which utilizes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to carry out the imperialist biddings of Wall Street and the White House.

Pan-Africanism in the 21st century must be built from the ranks of the proletariat and the popular stratums of the continent. The stability and defense of Africa will be secured when the masses take control of the resources and labor of the people, guaranteeing socialism on a regional scale.

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

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One of the most enduring popular movements of 2018 has been the ongoing Great March of Return in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Since 30 March, thousands of Palestinians in the small coastal territory have demonstrated along the boundary with Israel, demanding the implementation of Palestinian refugees’ right of return and an end to the crippling 11-year siege of Gaza.

But such high-scale mobilisation has come at a high cost: according to Middle East Eye’s calculations, 190 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces within the scope of the demonstrations between 30 March and 30 November – equivalent to one Palestinian killed every 31 hours in eight months.

The numbers exclude more than 50 victims of air strikes or other Israeli military actions when demonstrations were not taking place.

The death toll peaked on 14 May – the day the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem – when 68 people were killed.

During that same time frame, more than 25,000 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. One Israeli soldier was also killed within the context of the March.

The Gaza Ministry of Health has identified and released the names, ages, and towns of Palestinians killed: from these, MEE has narrowed the list down to those killed during the protests.

While Israel has claimed that the protests have been orchestrated by Hamas, the de facto ruling party in Gaza that is deemed a terrorist organisation by Israel and the US, the organisers of the March have rejected these claims. For its part Hamas has not formally recognised any of the slain Palestinians as belonging to its organisation.

Among the dead are members of other Palestinian resistance groups – such as Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – as well as journalists, paramedics, farmers, people with disabilities and children. The UN General Assembly denounced Israel’s use of force against the demonstrators as “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate”, while many rights groups slammed it as illegal, “horrifying” and “calculated”.

The extent of the fatalities may be daunting, but behind each number is an individual. Through the list below MEE has tried, as much as possible, to put a name, face and a story to the casualties of a protest movement that continues to this day.

March: The protest begins

The Great March of Return began on 30 March, when Palestinians commemorate Land Day, a day to denounce Israeli expropriation of Palestinian lands.

The demonstration drew thousands of people to tent encampments along the boundary between Gaza and Israel – but during that one day, Israeli forces fatally shot 19 Palestinians, five of whom succumbed to their wounds days later.

Ahmed al-Ayidi, 17, died four months and one week after being shot in the head, marking the longest gap between injury and death during the March.

1. Jihad Zuhair Abu Gamous, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, was the first casualty of the Great March of Return. The father of four was shot in the head on 30 March and died in hospital shortly afterwards.

2. Mohammed Kamal al-Najjar, 25, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the abdomen east of Jabaliya.

3. Ibrahim Salah Abu Shaar, 25, from the Rafah governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the neck in Rafah.

4. Amin Mansour Abu Muammar, 22, from the Rafah governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the head in Rafah.

5. Naji Abdullah Abu Hjeir, 25, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was killed on 30 March during protests near al-Bureij.

6. Abd al-Qader Mardy al-Hawajri, 42, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was killed on 30 March near the border east of the village of Juhr al-Deek.

7. Mahmoud Saadi Rahmi, 33, from the Gaza City governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the chest east of Gaza City.

8. Mohammed Naim Abu Amro, 27, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the stomach and killed on 30 March near Jabaliya. At the time he was assisting an injured protester who had fallen to the ground. Abu Amro was a well-known artist in Gaza.

9. Ahmed Ibrahim Ashour Odeh, 19, from the Gaza City governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the head east of Gaza City.

10. Jihad Ahmed Farina, 35, from the Gaza City governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the head east of Gaza City.

11. Bader Fayeq al-Sabbagh, 22, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the head east of Jabaliya. He was 300 metres from the boundary fence as he and his brother observed protests from a distance.

12. Abd al-Fattah Bahjat Abd al-Nabi, 18, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 30 March after being shot in the back. He was running away from the Gaza-Israel boundary east of Jabaliya, northern Gaza.

13. Sari Walid Abu Odeh, 27, a farmer from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 30 March by artillery shells northeast of Beit Hanoun. He had tried to rescue injured protesters running towards the fields where he was working, 300 metres from the boundary fence.

14. Hamdan Ismail Abu Amsha, 23, another farmer from the North Gaza governorate, died on 30 March. He was killed by Israeli shelling alongside his colleague Sari Abu Odeh (above).

15. Faris Mahmoud Mohammed al-Raqab, 26, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the stomach on 30 March east of Khan Younis. He succumbed to his injuries on 2 April.

16. Shadi Hamdan al-Kashef, 34, from the Rafah governorate, was shot in the head on 30 March and succumbed to his injuries six days later on 5 April.

17. Thaer Mohammed Rabaa, 30, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 30 March and succumbed to his wounds a week later on 6 April.

18. Marwan Awad Qudeih, 45, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot with expanding bullets in the legs on 30 March near Khuzaa east of Khan Younis, fracturing bones and severing arteries. The father of seven succumbed to his wounds nine days later on 8 April.

19. Ahmed Jihad al-Ayidi, 17, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the head on 30 March in central Gaza. The teen was eventually transferred to a Palestinian hospital in the occupied West Bank on 24 April, but remained in critical condition until his death on 5 August, four months and a week later.

April: First full month of marches

Demonstrators tear away barbed wire along the fence separating Gaza from Israel (M Hajjar/MEE)

In the first full month of the March, demonstrators gathered at tent encampments on a daily basis.

Israeli forces fatally shot 25 Palestinians: among the dead were journalists Yasser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein.

20. Ahmed Omar Arafa, 25, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died on 3 April after being shot in the back and arm east of al-Bureij.

21. Mujahid Nabil al-Khudari, 23, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 5 April by an Israeli drone during protests near the Erez border crossing.

22. Mohammed Sayid Moussa al-Hajj Saleh, 33, from the Rafah governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the abdomen and chest east of Gaza City.

23. Alaa Yahya al-Zamili, 14, from the Rafah governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the neck east of Rafah.

24. Sedqi Faraj Abu Etaiwi, 45, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the neck east of al-Bureij.

25. Ibrahim Ziyad Salama al-Aur, 20, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the head east of al-Bureij.

 

26. Hussein Mohammed Adnan Madi, 13, from the Gaza City governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the stomach east of Gaza City. A day before his death, MEE photographer Mohammed al-Hajjar had taken a picture of the teenager.

27. Osama Khamis Qudeih, 39, from the Khan Younis governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the head east of Khan Younis.

28. Majdi Ramadan Shabat, 38, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 6 April after being shot in the neck east of Gaza City.

29. Yasser Murtaja, 31, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the abdomen on 6 April. A photojournalist at Ain Media Production company, he was wearing a vest marked “Press” when he was shot. He succumbed to his wounds the following morning on 7 April in hospital, leaving behind a wife and a two-year-old son.

30. Hamza Abd al-Aal, 22, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the head on 6 April east of al-Bureij. He died the next day in hospital.

31. Abdullah Mohammed al-Shahri, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed by Israeli forces on 12 April.

32. Islam Mahmoud Haraz Allah, 28, from the North Gaza governorate, died on 13 April after being shot in the abdomen east of Gaza City.

33. Ahmed Mohammed Ashraf Abu Hussein, 26, a freelance photographer and journalist from the North Gaza governorate, was shot in the abdomen with an expanding bullet on 13 April east of Jabaliya while covering the protests. He was transferred to the West Bank then Israel for treatment but died on 24 May, 42 days after being shot.

34. Ahmed Rashad al-Athamna, 24, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the neck on 20 April east of Jabaliya.

35. Ahmed Nabil Abu Aql, 24, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 20 April with a bullet to the back of the head as he stood 150 metres from the boundary fence, according to witnesses. Abu Aql had been on crutches since December 2017, when he was shot in the leg during another demonstration.

 

36. Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub, 14, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 20 April after being shot in the head with an expanding bullet east of Jabaliya.

37. Saad Abd al-Majid Abu Taha, 23, from the Khan Younis governorate, died on 20 April after being shot in the neck during protests east of Khan Younis.

38. Abdullah Mohammed Jibril al-Shamali, 20, from the Rafah governorate, was shot on 20 April while standing some 700 metres away from the boundary fence, succumbing to his wounds two days later on 22 April.

39. Tahrir Mahmoud Wahbah, 18, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head on 20 April east of Khan Younis. Wahbah, who was deaf, was reportedly caught on camerawhen he was shot with his back turned to Israeli soldiers. He died from his wounds three days later on 23 April.

40. Abd al-Salam Eid Zuhdi Bakr, 33, from the Khan Younis governorate, was killed on 27 April after being shot in the stomach east of Khuzaa.

41. Mohammed Amin al-Maqid, 21 from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 27 April during protests east of Khan Younis.

42. Khalil Naim Mustafa Atallah, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 27 April east of Gaza City.

43. Azzam Hilal Uweida, 15, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head on 27 April near Khuzaa. He succumbed to his injuries the following morning on 28 April.

44. Anas Shawqi Abu Assar, 19, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot on 27 April and succumbed to his wounds a week later on 3 May.

May: Scores killed in one day

The Great March of Return was initially intended to end on 15 May, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. But 14 May – the same day that the United States inaugurated its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem – turned out to be the be deadliest day of the March so far, accounting for more than one-third of casualties during the eight-month period.

In total, 73 Palestinians were fatally shot by Israeli forces during that month – 68 of them on 14 May. The bloodshed garnered international condemnation, and galvanised protesters to continue demonstrating for their rights.

45. Jabr Salem Abu Mustafa, 40, from the Khan Younis governorate, died on 11 May after being shot in the chest east of Khan Younis.

46. Jamal Abd al-Rahman Afana, 15, from the Rafah governorate, was shot by Israeli forces on 11 May and succumbed to his wounds a day later on 12 May.

47. Izz al-Din Moussa Mohammed al-Samak, 14, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was killed on 14 May by a bullet to the abdomen in central Gaza.

48. Wassal Fadel Izzat al-Sheikh Khalil, 15, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was killed on 14 May by a bullet to the head in central Gaza. She was the first of two Palestinian women to be killed by Israeli forces during the Great March of Return.

49. Ahmed Adel Moussa al-Shaer, 16, from the Khan Younis governorate, was killed on 14 May by a bullet to the chest east of Khan Younis. Islamic Jihad later announced that Shaer had been one of its members.

50. Sayid Mohammed Abu al-Kheir, 16, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May.

51. Imad Ali Sadeq al-Sheikh, 19, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May.

52. Zayed Mohammed Hassan Omar, 19, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the chest on 14 May east of Gaza City.

53. Mutasem Fawzi Mohammed Abu Luli, 20, from the Rafah governorate, was shot in the head on 14 May east of Rafah.

54. Anas Hamdan Salem Qudeih, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the chest and killed on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

55. Mohammed Abd al-Salam Harraz, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May.

 

56. Yahya Ismail Rajab al-Dakour, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May.

57. Mustafa Mohammed Samir al-Masri, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May east of Gaza City.

58. Izz al-Din Nahed Salman al-Uweiti, 23, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head and killed on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

59. Mahmoud Mustafa Ahmed Assaf, 23, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 14 May.

60. Ahmed Fayez Harb Shehada, 23, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

61. Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansour, 25, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

62. Mohammed Ashraf Abu Sitta, 26, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot in the chest and killed on 14 May in northern Gaza.

63. Bilal Ahmed Saleh Abu Daqqa, 26, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head and killed on 14 May east Khan Younis.

64. Ahmed Majed Qassem Attallah, 27, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the thigh, severing a main artery, on 14 May east of Gaza City. He died later that day.

65. Mahmoud Rabah Elayyan Abu Muammar, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head and killed on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

66. Musab Yousef Ibrahim Abu Leila, 28, from the Gaza City governorate, was hit by shrapnel in the back that penetrated his body below the heart on 14 May in the northern Gaza Strip. He died from his wounds on the same day.

67. Ahmed Fawzi Kamel al-Tater, 28, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the shoulder and back on 14 May east of Rafah.

68. Ubeida Salem Abd Rabbo Farhan, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 14 May. Islamic Jihad later announced that Farhan had been a member of its al-Quds Brigades.

69. Jihad Mufid Abd al-Monim al-Farra, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

70. Fadi Hassan Salman Abu Salmi, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Khan Younis. Fadi had been using a wheelchair after his legs were amputated following an Israeli air strike in 2008. Islamic Jihad later announced that Farhan had been one of its members.

71. Motaz Bassam Kamel al-Nuno, 31, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May. He was reportedly a member of the Internal Security Department of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.

72. Mohammed Riyad Abd al-Rahman al-Amoudi, 31, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May.

73. Jihad Mohammed Osman Moussa, 31, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 14 May. He was reportedly a member of the Internal Security Department of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.

74. Shaher Mahmoud Mohammed al-Madhoun, 32, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

75. Moussa Jabr Abd al-Salam Abu Hassanin, 35, a paramedic from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May while working for the Palestinian Authority Civil Defence Department treating wounded demonstrators.

76. Mohammed Mahmoud Abd al-Moti Abd al-Aal, 39, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May.

77. Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Hamdan, 27, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

78. Ismail Khalil Ramadan al-Dahouk, 30, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

79. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Rantisi, 27, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 14 May.

80. Mahmoud Yahya Abd al-Wahab Hussein, 24, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May in the central Gaza Strip.

81. Ahmed Abdullah Abdullah al-Adini, 30, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May in central Gaza.

82. Saadi Sayid Fahmi Abu Salah, 16, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May in northern Gaza.

83. Ahmed Zuheir Hamed al-Shawa, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Gaza City.

84. Mohammed Hani Husni al-Najjar, 33, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May in northern Gaza.

85. Fadel Mohammed Atta Habashi, 34, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the neck on 14 May east of Gaza City.

86. Mahmoud Suleiman Ibrahim Aql, 32, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the knee and thigh on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

87. Mohammed Hassan Mustafa al-Abbadleh, 25, from the Khan Younis governorate, was killed on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

88. Mokhtar Kamel Abu Khamash, 23, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May in central Gaza.

89. Abd al-Salam Yousef Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Wahab, 39, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

90. Ali Mohammed Ahmed Khafaja, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Rafah.

91. Mahmoud Hamad Saber Abu Touaima, 23, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

92. Kamel Jihad Kamel Muhanna, 19, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

93. Ahmed Salem Elayyan al-Jurf, 24, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the pelvis on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

94. Abd al-Rahman Sami Abu Matar, 18, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Gaza City.

95. Mohammed Abd al-Rahman Ali Meqdad, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis.

96. Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundiya, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 May east of Gaza City.

97. Mohammed Samir Mohammed Idweidar, 27, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May in central Gaza.

98. Samer Nael Awni al-Shawa, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 14 May east of Gaza City.

99. Yazan Ibrahim Mohammed Tubasi, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the eye on 14 May east of Gaza City.

100. Imad Mohammed Khalil al-Nafar, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being hit by shrapnel in the shoulder, neck and back on 14 May east of Gaza City.

101. Amr Jumaa Abu Foul, 32, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Gaza City and succumbed to his wounds the following day on 15 May.

102. Ahmed Abed Abu Samra, 21, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Jabaliya and died five days later on 19 May.

103. Mouin Abd al-Hamid al-Saie, 58, from the Gaza City governorate, was injured on 14 May and succumbed to his wounds five days later on 19 May.

104. Mohammed Mazen Elayyan, 20, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the head on 14 May east of al-Bureij and died five days later on 19 May.

105. Mohannad Bakr Abu Tahoun, 20, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the head on 14 May, and died in a West Bank hospital 10 days later on 24 May.

106. Yasser Sami Saad al-Din Habib, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot on 14 May and died in a Jerusalem hospital 11 days later on 25 May.

107. Hussein Salem Abu Uwaida, 41, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the spine on 14 May as he was selling ice cream and water to demonstrators east of Gaza City, reportedly hundreds of metres away from the boundary fence. He succumbed to his wounds 12 days later on 26 May.

108. Nasser Aref Abd al-Raouf al-Areini, 28, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Jabaliya. He died from his wounds two weeks later on 28 May.

109. Naji Maysara Abdullah Ghneim, 22, from the Rafah governorate, was injured on 14 May east of Rafah. He succumbed to his wounds in a Jerusalem hospital 16 days later on 30 May.

110. Mohammed Naim Hamada, 30, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Gaza City. He died three weeks later on 3 June.

111. Mohammed Ghassan Abu Daqqa, 22, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot on 14 May east of Khuzaa town, and succumbed to his wounds in a Jerusalem hospital one month and one week later on 20 June.

112. Sari Dahoud al-Shobaki, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the neck on 14 May, damaging his spinal cord and leaving him quadriplegic. His father, a doctor, accompanied him to Jerusalem where he was transferred for treatment, but Shobaki eventually died two months and five days later on 18 July.

113. Majd Suheil Mohammed Uqail, 26, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 May in northern Gaza, and succumbed to his wounds two months and 11 days later on 24 July.

114. Wissam Yousef Hijazi, 30, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head on 14 May east of Khan Younis. He was referred to an Egyptian hospital for treatment, but died from his wounds three months later while waiting to cross at the Rafah Border Terminal between Gaza and Egypt on 12 August.

115. Talal Adel Ibrahim Matar, 16, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the head on 15 May east of Gaza City.

116. Nasser Ahmed Mahmoud Ghurab, 52, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 15 May.

117. Bilal Bdeir Hussein al-Ashram, 18, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest and leg on 15 May.

June: Medic among the dead

Israeli forces killed 13 Palestinians during protests, three of whom succumbed to their wounds later. The killing in particular of volunteer paramedic Razan al-Najjar sparked condemnation.

Meanwhile, some Palestinian demonstrators began flying incendiary kites and balloons into Israel, sparking fires during the dry season and dominating Israeli media coverage throughout the summer.

118. Razan Ashraf al-Najjar, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate, a volunteer paramedic, was shot in the chest on 1 June east of Khan Younis while helping wounded demonstrators. She was the second woman and second paramedic to be killed by Israeli forces.

119. Imad Nabil Abu Darabeh, 20, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 8 June east of Jabaliya.

120. Ziyad Jadallah Abd al-Qader al-Brim, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, was killed on 8 June east of Khan Younis.

121. Haitham Khalil Mohammed al-Jamal, 15, from the Rafah governorate, was killed on 8 June east of Khan Younis.

122. Yousef Salim al-Fasih, 29, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 8 June east of Gaza City.

123. Ahmed Ziyad Tawfiq al-Assi, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate was shot in the head on 8 June east of Khan Younis and succumbed to his wounds six days later, on 14 June.

124. Karam Ibrahim Arafat, 26, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the head on 8 June east of Khan Younis, dying from his wounds one month and 16 days later on 23 July.

125. Zakariya Hussein Bashbash, 13, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot on 15 June east of al-Bureij. He died from his wounds three days later on 18 June.

126. Sabri Ahmed Abu Khader, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 18 June east of Gaza City, only five months after getting married.

127. Osama Khalil Abu Khater, 29, from the Khan Younis governorate died after being shot in the stomach on 24 June east of Khan Younis.

128. Abd al-Fattah Mustafa Abu Azoum, 17, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the head by Israeli tank fire while seeking to cross the boundary fence on 28 June near Rafah.

129. Mohammed Fawzi al-Hamayda, 24, from the Rafah governorate, was killed on 29 June east of al-Bureij.

130. Yasser Amjad Abu al-Naja, 12, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 29 June east of Khuzaa.

July: Israeli law further drives protests

The protests increasingly took place on Fridays, as the summer heat and exhaustion took their toll on daily demonstrations.

Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians during protests in July while Aviv Levy, a 21-year-old Israeli soldier from Petah Tikva, was killed by a Palestinian sniper.

In an alleged bid to fight incendiary kites, Israel temporarily halted fuel deliveries to Gaza. It also launched several air strikes, which kill at least 11 people (their names are not included here).

On 19 July, the Knesset passes the nation-state law, which cemented in Israel’s Basic Law the country’s status as a Jewish state. This is denounced as further enshrining discrimination against Palestinians into Israeli legislation.

131. Mohammed Jamal Abu Halima, 22, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being hit by shrapnel in the chest on 6 July east of Gaza City.

132. Othman Rami Heles, 14, from the Gaza City governorate was shot and killed on 13 July east of Gaza City.

133. Ahmed Yahya Atallah Yaghi, 26, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 13 July east of Gaza City.

134. Mohammed Nasser Shurrab, 20, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot on 13 July east of Khan Younis, succumbing to his wounds the next day, on 14 July.

135. Amjad Fayez Hamduna, 19, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 14 July east of Jabaliya, dying 25 days later, on 7 August

136. Mohammed Sharif Badwan, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest east of Gaza City.

137. Majdi Ramzi al-Satari, 12, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the head on 27 July east of Rafah.

138. Ghazi Mohammed Abu Mustafa, 44, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 27 July east of Khan Younis. He had also been injured in protests the previous month.

139. Moamin Fathi al-Hams, 17, from the Rafah governorate, was shot in the chest on 27 July east of Rafah. He died from his wounds the following day on 28 July.

August: The truce that never was

Seven Palestinians died during August, including medic Abdullah al-Qutati, and Ali al-Aloul, who at 65 was the oldest fatal casualty of the March.

Meanwhile, the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas intensified, with deadly air strikesand rocket fire. Egypt attempted to mediate a long-lasting truce between the two parties – much to the Palestinian Authority’s displeasure. In the end the much-discussed ceasefire amounted to nothing.

140. Moath Zayid al-Suri, 15, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot in the stomach on 3 August east of al-Bureij, succumbing to his wounds the following day on 4 August.

141. Suheib Abd al-Salam al-Kashif, 16, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot on 3 August east of Khan Younis. He died one month and 13 days later on 15 September.

142. Abdullah Sabri al-Qutati, 22, a volunteer paramedic from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 10 August while providing medical care to a demonstrator, Ali al-Aloul (below), who had just been hit by live ammunition and also died that same day.

143. Ali Sayid al-Aloul, 65, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot on 10 August east of Rafah. In addition to being the oldest Palestinian killed by Israeli forces during the March, paramedic Abdullah al-Qutati (above), was fatally shot while attempting to save Aloul’s life.

144. Ahmed Jamal Salim Abu Luli, 41, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the abdomen on 11 August east of Rafah.

145. Saadi Akram Muammar, 27, from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 17 August near Rafah. His wife was seven months pregnant at the time with their third child.

146. Karim Abu Fatayer, 28, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head – with a bullet that went through his eye – on 25 August east of al-Bureij.

September: Casualties rise again

After a slow-down in deaths during the summer, fatalities related to the Great March rose again as Egyptian efforts for a Hamas-Israel deal seemingly collapsed.

Israeli forces fatally shot 20 Palestinians in September, including 11-year-old Shadi Abd al-Aal, the youngest fatality of the March.

Meanwhile, the United States announced that it was cutting all its funding to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, sparking employee strikes.

Palestinians in Gaza also marked with bitterness the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords.

147. Bilal Mustafa Khafaja, 17, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 7 September east of Rafah.

148. Ahmed Musbah Abu Tuyur, 16, from the Rafah governorate, was shot on 7 September east of Rafah city, succumbing to his wounds a day later on 8 September. A video shared on social media – whose authenticity could not be confirmed by MEE – purported to show the teen’s death.

149. Mohammed Bassam Mohammed Shakhsa, 25, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the head on 13 September east of Gaza City.

150. Shadi Abd al-Aziz Abd al-Aal, 11, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the head on 14 September east of Jabaliya as he was reportedly throwing stones some 70 metres from the boundary – too far to reach soldiers stationed behind the fence. He is the youngest Palestinian killed by Israeli forces during the March of Return so far.

151. Hani Ramzi Afana, 21, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 September east of Rafah.

152. Mohammed Khalil Ghazi Shaqura, 21, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 14 September east of al-Bureij.

153. Naji Jamil Abu Assi, 17, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being hit by an Israeli missile on 18 September east of Khan Younis, alongside his cousin Alaa Abu Assi (below).

154. Alaa Ziyad Abu Assi, 20, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being hit by an Israeli missile on 18 September east of Khan Younis, alongside his cousin Naji Abu Assi (above).

155. Mohammed Ahmed Abu Naji, 33, from the North Gaza governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 18 September near Beit Hanoun.

156. Ahmed Mohammed Muhsin Omar, 23, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 18 September near Beit Hanoun, only one day before his birthday.

157. Moamin Ibrahim Abu Eyada, 15, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the head on 19 September east of Rafah.

158. Karim Mohammed Ali Kollab, 25, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot on 21 September east of Gaza City.

159. Imad Woud Ishteiwi, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the head on 23 September east of Gaza City.

160. Mohammed Fayez Salim Abu al-Sadaq, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, was killed on 24 September in northern Gaza.

161. Mohammed Nayef al-Houm, 14, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the lower back on 28 September east of al-Bureij.

162. Mohammed Ashraf al-Awawdeh, 23, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 28 September near al-Bureij.

163. Iyad Khalil Ahmed al-Shaer, 18, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 28 September east of Gaza City.

164. Mohammed Walid Mustafa Haniyeh, 32, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the face on 28 September east of Gaza City.

165. Nasser Azmi Mohammed Musbeh, 12, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 28 September east of Khan Yunis.

166. Mohammed Ali Mohammed al-Anshasi, 19, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the stomach on 28 September near al-Bureij.

October: Calls for Gaza crackdown

Gaza’s ministry of health recorded 22 Palestinian fatalities relating to the Great March in October, as far-right Israeli politicians called for a stronger crackdown on the protests and a “strong blow” against Hamas – up to and including the possibility of all-out war.

The Israeli army launched nearly 90 air strikes on 27 October alone in the highest-intensity offensive on Gaza since the summer, with Palestinian factions firing some 35 rockets.

Meanwhile Qatar stepped in financially to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza with Israel’s approval, paying for fuel imports and civil servant salaries.

167. Ahmed Samir Abu Habil, 15, from the north Gaza governorate, died after he was hit by a high-velocity tear gas canister that lodged itself in his head on 3 October near Beit Hanoun.

168. Mahmoud Akram Mohammed Abu Samaan, 24, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 5 October east of Gaza City.

169. Fares Hafez al-Sirsawi, 13, from the Gaza City governorate, died after being shot in the chest on 5 October east of Gaza City.

170. Hussein Fathi al-Raqab, 19, from the Khan Younis governorate, died after being shot in the head on 6 October near Khan Younis.

171. Abdullah Barham Suleiman al-Daghmeh, 24, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

172. Ahmed Abdullah Abu Naim, 17, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

173. Ahmed Ibrahim Zaki al-Tawil, 27, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

174. Mohammed Abd al-Hafez Yousef Ismail, 29, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

175. Tamer Iyad Abu Ermana, 21, from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

176. Mohammed Ashraf Mohammed al-Awada, 21, from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian (PFLP) announced after his death that he had been a member.

177. Afifi Mahmoud Atta Afifi, 18, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

178. Mohammed Issam Abbas, 21, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 12 October.

179. Saddam al-Abed Mohammed Abu Shalash, 27, from the North Gaza governorate, was shot on 15 October near Beit Lahiya, succumbing to his wounds a day later on 16 October.

180. Muntaser Mohammed Ismail al-Baz, 17, from the Deir al-Balah governorate, died after being shot in the head on 23 October near al-Bureij.

181. Mohammed Khaled Mahmoud Abd al-Nabi, 27, from the North Gaza governorate, was killed on 26 October east of Jabaliya.

182. Nassar Iyad Abu Tim, 19, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 26 October east of Khan Younis.

183. Ahmed Sayid Abu Lubda, 22, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 26 October east of Khan Younis.

184. Ayesh Ghassan Shaat, 23, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot and killed on 26 October east of Khan Younis.

185. Mujahid Ziyad Zaki Aql, 23, from the Deir al-Balah governorate was shot on 26 October and succumbed to his wounds a day later on 27 October.

186. Yahya Bader Mohammed al-Hassanat, 37, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot in the head on 26 October east of al-Bureij. He died from his wounds two days later on 28 October.

187. Ahmed Khaled al-Najjar, 21, from the Khan Younis governorate, was shot in the stomach with an expanding bullet on 26 October east of Khan Younis, succumbing to his wounds 13 days later in a hospital in the West Bank, on 7 November.

188. Mohammed Abd al-Hay Abu Ubada, 27, from the Gaza City governorate, was shot and killed on 30 October near Beit Lahiya. Abu Ubada had been injured three times since the beginning of the March of Return.

November: Israeli raid

The expectation might be that the situation in Gaza was relatively calm in November, given that there were only two fatalities related to the Great March.

Far from it. On 11 November, an undercover Israeli squad was discovered deep inside Gaza, sparking a deadly exchange of fire and the subsequent resignation of Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman in protest at a ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, Hollywood stars collected $60m for the Israeli army in a highly criticised fundraising gala.

189. Mohammed Alaa Mahmoud Abu Shabin, 20, from the Rafah governorate, was shot and killed on 8 November east of al-Maghazi refugee camp.

190. Rami Wael Ishaq Qahman, 28, from the Rafah governorate, died after being shot in the neck on 9 November east of Rafah.

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Photo sources

March: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 1-3, 5, 6, 10-15, 18, 19; International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC): 7-9, 16.

April: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 23, 25, 26, 28, 31, 34, 37, 42; IMEMC: 20, 21, 29, 32, 35, 38, 41, 43, 44; Middle East Eye: 33; Ma’an News Agency: 39; social media: 40.

May: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 45, 48- 50, 53-57, 60-62, 69, 70-76, 78-80, 83, 84, 90, 101, 108, 113; IMEMC: 46, 47, 103-107, 109-112, 114, 115.

June: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 122, 130; IMEMC: 119-121, 123, 124, 127, 128; Middle East Eye: 118; Defense for Children Palestine: 125.

July: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 131, 137, 138; IMEMC: 134, 135, 136, 139.

August: IMEMC: 140, 141, 143, 144, 146; Middle East Eye: 142.

September: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 151-156; IMEMC: 147, 149, 157-166.

October: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 168-175, 177, 183-186, 188; IMEMC: 167, 178, 180.

November: Israel-Palestine Timeline: 189, 190.

Featured image is from Maan News Agency

The Plight of Children in a Neoliberal World

December 28th, 2018 by Peter Koenig

The NYT wrote yesterday, Christmas Day, that an 8-year old Guatemalan boy died in US Border Control custody. The circumstances are not clear, or are simply not reported. A month earlier, a 7-year old girl, also from Guatemala, died also in US Border Control custody. Here too, the circumstances are not revealed. How many more children, not mentioned by any media, or any statistics have already perished, trying to make their way to a better future? – A better future, because their real and beloved future in their own countries has been miserably destroyed by the US empire’s imposed corporate abuse and fascist-like dictatorships. But who cares, they are just children of illegal immigrants; children separated from their parents – to dissuade parents to migrate to the US of A. – Welcome to paradise of hell!

Currently a large portion of the US Government is shut down, due to a budget dispute between President Trump – and the ultra-rightwing of the Republican Party breathing down his neck – and the Democrats. At stake are US$5 billion for a Border Wall Trump requests as part of the general budget, and the Democrats refuse to sign-off on it. The Border Wall would have countless nefarious and more serious killer effects. More kids in border custody, some dehydrated, some simply exhausted from the long journey, some sick – all separated from their parents, maybe for good, and neglected by US Authorities – and most of them just simply left to their plight – which in many cases may be death.

Welcome to the Land of the Free, the land of exemplary democracy!

Are Trump and his handlers murderers? – Yes, they are. There is absolutely no doubt. Not just for the abject, inhuman abuse of migrants and migrant children – but for killing children and adults in the ever-increasing number of wars and conflicts around the globe, waged and initiated by the US, NATO – and the European puppets’ armies. He – Trump, could stop them at once. He may risk his life, but somebody who aspires to such high office must take risks. Besides, his life may be at stake for many more reasons. Enemies abound. A life is just a life – highly precious, though, to be saved by all means – but killing wantonly millions of children – the future of civilization – what is that, if not a crime of the very, very highest degree, a crime of unfathomable dimensions, a crime that should be punishable by – well, let’s just call it by a war crimes court à la Nuremberg.

If someone would tell Trump that he is a murderer, would he grasp it? Would his conscience kick in and make him realize what he is doing – he the all-powerful, who could stop it all? – Or would he simply call his secret service to arrest you and put you behind bars for insulting him – albeit, telling him the truth? – We may never know. I have asked a similar question about Obama. How can they sleep at night? Do they take a pill that eradicates their conscience, their human brain power? – I truly wonder. It’s been known for ever that power intoxicates. But to that extent? No repenting, not even after the four- or eight-year’s tour of duty? – No. Rather collect astronomical talking fees, cash-in on the power of indiscriminate killing.

Trump’s predecessors for hundred-plus years back, belong to the same clan of criminals. Their crimes have become the new normal. The west watches over their killings on TV – with media reports that banalize war and war death as normal, because war is war – where it belongs to. And it’s so profitable. It’s the industry of killing – killing babies and their mothers, adolescents, starving them to death, destroying their systems of minimal hygiene – Yemen – a case in point; Syria is in the same league, Afghanistan, Iraq —- the list is endless. Hundreds of thousands of children were killed and are still being killed in the world’s longest war, seventeen years and counting – in Afghanistan. Nobody seems to care. Afghanistan, one of the resource richest countries on earth, has no future; not as long as it is dominated by greedy, murderous western powers, ahead of all – the corporate and military US of A.

Killing is the name of the game. And mind you, this killing spree is driven by a blood-thirsty elite of bankers, pharma-kings, weapon industrialists, GMO-agri-businesses, hydrocarbon kingpins – a dark deep-state elite that feeds on the idea that the world is over-populated and must be reduced by factors of thousands, so that this small elite may survive much longer on the ever-diminishing resources of Mother Earth.

This is no joke. Infamous top war criminal, Henry Kissinger, propagated this idea already in the 1960s as a prominent member of the Rockefeller clan, called “Bilderberg Society”. The Bilderbergers’ objective Numero Uno is just that – reducing the world population by any means. War is one of them. And who to target best? – Children, of course. They are the gene-bearers of future generations. If gone, there are no off-springs, nobody to lead the world into a better future, a future of peace – yes, a future of peace, because these children have known war and would most likely opt for a different set of life values.

And imagine the suffering of these children until they eventually succumb to death? – Many without parents, without shelter, food, health care – let alone minimal education – being exposed to the abuses of humanity – unpaid hard labor, rape, diseases. The west not just watches on, but helps their plight along – by supplying weapons, bullets, bombs to those who do the killing.

The western public takes it – as, well, the new normal. We can’t imagine a world without war, a world in peace. That’s the extent to which we have been indoctrinated. And as we live in comfort – what is easier to believe than what we are told by the presstitute? – No worries, our leaders (sic) do the right thing; we are safe. And just in case there is any doubt, the governments concerned ‘launch’ a ‘false flag’ terror attack, justifying more sever crack-downs on the population – to, indeed, keep them safe by militarization of society – all the while continuing killing children with their mothers and relatives – children alone, children on the move as refugees, children as slaves – children uncounted by any statistics.

Trump, yes, he is a murderer. And the Border Wall is a murder weapon. Assassins are also Trump’s predecessors, not least Obama, who knowingly killed thousands of children through his extra-judiciary drone attacks – and let’s stress this – of which he boasted to personally approve each and every one of these drone killings. Clinton killed Haitians by the thousands, many of them children, through his forced “free” trade agreements, giving US corporations access to child labor, miserably paid child labor – which was and is nothing more than legalized enslavement, often leading to impoverishment, famine, disease and death.

When will justice be done? Or, are we talking about justice ‘after death’? – Are we talking about a collective Karma that will eventually pull our entire civilization down the drain – into an inescapable abyss, giving room to a new beginning?

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21stCentury; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.  He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from The Daily Dot

The Baloch separatist mastermind behind the recent terrorist attack against the Chinese consulate in Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi has been assassinated by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan after he was reportedly sent there by India in an effort to distance New Delhi from its proxy after that audacious incident, raising serious questions about whether the South Asian state’s RAW intelligence agency had him killed in a false flag attack because he “knew too much” or Modi blundered by sending him to his death at the hands of others without realizing it.

Achu’s Assassination

Terrorist-on-terrorist violence carried out in “Global South” countries usually doesn’t cause headline news anywhere in the world, but what just happened in Afghanistan yesterday got everyone talking in South Asia because of the profound implications that it’s bound to have. Aslam Achu, the mastermind behind last month’s terrorist attack against the Chinese consulate in Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi (the chaotic dynamics of which soon thereafter spilled over the border two weeks later by contributing to the terrorist attack in Iran’s Chabahar port), was assassinated by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar after he was reportedly sent there by India earlier this month in a desperate bid to distance itself from its terrorist proxy after such back-to-back high-profile incidents from its asset threatened to undermine New Delhi’s delicate relations with China and Iran.

Throwing Used Tissues In The Trash

Dr. Jumma Marri Khan, the founder of the Overseas Pakistani Baloch Unity (OPBU) organization that works towards reintegrating wayward Baloch abroad back into the Pakistani mainstream, warned his ethnic compatriots just a few weeks ago against being used as “tissue paper” by India in what can be seen in hindsight as a prescient prediction about the fate that would ultimately befall Achu in Afghanistan. In fact, the assassination of this terrorist leader at the hands of other terrorists sends a very disturbing message about what might await all of India’s intelligence assets – whether Baloch or others – in the event that they too become too much of a liability to the country’s Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), which could have the unintended effect of deterring others from wanting to collaborate with it in the future.

Modi Spilled India’s Secret

It’s been almost two and a half years since Indian Prime Minister Modi infamously brought up the Baloch in his August 2016 Independence Day speech and confirmed what Pakistan had been saying for years about RAW’s patronage of separatist-terrorist groups on its territory, especially seeing as how the country captured Hybrid War operative Kalbushan Jadhav earlier that year who eventually confessed to working on behalf of the neighboring country’s intelligence agency to carry out attacks in Balochistan. This needless bragging put RAW and its Baloch assets in an awkward position because both had hitherto vehemently denied any association with one another but then all of a sudden Modi spilled India’s secret to the whole world on live TV because he got carried away thumping his “56-inch chest”.

Rumblings Of Dissent Within RAW?

Now that the cat was out of the bag, India temporarily went full-throttle with its open support for the Baloch separatist cause, doing everything from broadcasting incendiary radio programs into the Pakistani region to taking up the issue at the UN. This, however, evidently caused serious divisions within RAW over the wisdom of advertising its association with those forces in the event that they (expectedly) got out of control and became a serious liability for New Delhi. That’s why schizophrenic behavior soon followed such as India signaling that it would grant citizenship to some separatist leaders around that time but failing to fulfill their request to this day, as well as announcing their participation at a recent “human rights” conference only to postpone it at the last minute.

RAW False Flag vs. Modi’s Blunder

Whether Achu was ordered by his RAW handlers to carry out the Karachi attack or “went rogue” and did it on his own volition to impress Modi, the international consequences of his terrorist actions made him much too big of a liability for India to continue associating with and resulted in him being sent to Afghanistan as New Delhi struggled to deal with the diplomatic fallout of what he did. Seeing as how the war-torn country is one of the most dangerous places on this planet, he was either transferred there by RAW to be killed after a false flag attack for “knowing too much” or was sloppily dispatched there by Modi despite the fact that the premier should have known that he’d probably be killed at the hands of other terrorists soon enough.

Ruining RAW’s Reputation

Whatever the reason may be behind why Achu was sent to his ultimate death in Afghanistan, that doesn’t change the fact that RAW’s current and future assets can never trust it again after they saw for themselves how he was treated like used tissue paper and thrown in the trash just like Dr. Jumma predicted. One way or another, India ended up getting rid of one of its most important intelligence assets in a surprisingly cruel way instead of “quietly retiring” him somewhere safe after he outlived his many years of usefulness, which will inevitably affect its recruiting prospects among possible agents for the foreseeable future since they can’t ever be sure that they won’t follow in his footsteps and meet a similarly dismal fate when their time is done too.

The Fake News Cover-Up

Regardless of whether it’s RAW or Modi himself that’s most responsible for Achu’s dramatic death, the fake news narrative is already circulating that Pakistan is to blame in order to cover up what happened and attempt to control the collateral damage that this incident wrought to the reputation of India’s intelligence services. Former Pakistani Ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani, the chief figure most directly involved in the 2011 “Memogate” scandal where a faction of the Pakistani state asked the US for assistance against the country’s military (and who has since been living in self-imposed exile in America after being charged with treason), tweeted a provocative message implying that Islamabad was behind Aslu’s suicide bomber assassination but inadvertently revealed the invisible hand of India’s perception managers by pushing forth a narrative that aligns with their interests.

Aftershocks From Balochistan To Congress

Aslu’s assassination is bound reverberate from Balochistan to India’s Congress opposition party. About the first, Dr. Jumma’s OPBU looks even more attractive than ever before to RAW-aligned Baloch separatists abroad after they can no longer rely on their patron to ensure their security, while the consequent ruining of RAW’s reputation could be picked up by Congress following its surprise victory in several recent regional elections in order to become a heated political issue ahead of next year’s general election. The aftershocks of this incident might therefore be even more far-reaching and impactful in the long term than the terrorist attack that Aslu masterminded as part of the Hybrid War on CPEC, unintentionally contributing to Pakistan’s stability and possibly even the democratic ouster of Modi from office (the latter of which might occur with a wink from some RAW factions).

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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 Samaa TV

Reporting from Kabul, December 27, 2018. The announcement of withdrawal of the US forces from Syria and then Afghanistan was truly incredible to many US allies in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Although, some believe that Trump pulled the forces out to add a victory on his presidential track record to win a vote for himself and his party in the upcoming presidential election, this is not true especially about Afghanistan which tells a different story. Part of America’s presence in Syria was driven by Israeli interests such as containment of Iranian influence and the decision has infuriated Tel Aviv.

Since months, the US has been working to recast Afghan policy and the withdrawal of 7,000 troops from the total 14,000 is not a sudden decision, but part of a new agenda which is already noticeable in the recent US movements in Afghanistan.

President Trump’s apparently abrupt and insistent decision to remove boots from Syria and Afghanistan that met with reactions, pleas and even resignations from US lawmakers and Generals indicates that the chief decision-making panel is behind the doors to whom Trump only serve as a speaker because unlike common sense, Trump is a nonentity to decide all by himself. The Pentagon before and under James Mattis has defended military presence both in Syria and Afghanistan.

The US has its nine mega bases legalized across Afghanistan and it will keep a few thousand noncombatant soldiers there, as it has already halted or wound down the combat operations.

This is a time the US is not greatly engaged in Afghanistan that the withdrawal would affect its presence or influence. The insurgents have captured more than half of country; conclaves under peace talks are vaguely underway to negotiate the future fate of Afghanistan; the presidential election is scheduled for April 2019, all of which sets the stage for the US to implement the new giant plans.

It has been months since the US special representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad (image right) has been bargaining with the Taliban and regional states allegedly about peace, but the secrets have been unfolding day by day. If the US had decided the withdrawal with most of Afghanistan under government control, it could signal some optimism for a prosperous future. But now with militants seizing the control of major cities and districts, the US exit as well as covert talks with militants namely Taliban in Qatar or UAE reveal that a huge change is on the horizon in Afghanistan to the likely detriment of its nation.

Reports confirm that the US’s agreement with Saudi Arabia and UAE have caused the half of American soldiers to depart from Afghanistan. It is also noted that former Pakistani Chief of Staff General Raheel Sharif who has also commanded the Saudi-led Yemen war at the former’s request, has nudged Saudi Arabia and UAE to dispatch forces to Afghanistan. The Gulf States’ forces are said to be deployed in southern Afghanistan to “help quell any possible unrest arisen out of US and NATO exit”. But if something of sorts happens, it will only mean to take the reins of control from the US, without any intention to bring peace, or in other words, to keep, as two of the huge moneymaking sources, the drug trade and the illegal mining of rare earth elements running.

Following April 2019 presidential election, the new government in Kabul will be designed carefully to be able to secure the US interests. For the US, installing a vigilant, obedient and dedicated government is at the top of agenda. Every time an Afghan president gets nearer to the end of his term, it prompts the US policy makers to deliberate on replacing it with the most loyal candidate. Everyone knows that the current dual leadership government led by President Ashraf Ghani and the Chief Executive Abdullah was hammered out behind the doors under the chairmanship of former Secretary of State John Kerry.

Now at this juncture of time, Trump believes that when the US interests can be maintained without the physical presence of US forces, why should they bear the cost of keeping soldiers and get themselves entangled into violence. Trump and his key policy-makers are of opinion that Afghanistan now has reliable degree of pawns in necktie and arms devotedly loyal to the US to secure its ubiquitous economic and political as well as military interests. It no longer feels the need to remain in large number that may also help it escape long criticism of intervention from inside America.

The US expects the next Afghan president and its government to keep Russia or Iran at arm’s length. Afghanistan’s judiciary, legislative and executive power is centralized to president who is authorized to take critical decisions without referral or accountability to any other government authority. And this is the reason that a candidate fit and proper for the US can hold the entire nation’s fate at hand to rule according to the US’s best interests.

But this will not be sufficient and under the new agenda, the US will reportedly rely on Arab (and possibly Pakistani) forces to take lead of Afghanistan, as negotiations are in progress over who should fill the gaps created by partial US departure.

Kandahar’s police chief Taadin Khan, the younger brother of former powerful chief Abdul Raziq, has said that Pakistan has sent its own representatives in the guise of Taliban members to peace talks in Dubai in a bid to win more concessions on the threshold of major transition in Afghanistan.

The US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s hasty frequent trips to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and Arab States in recent months was nothing but efforts to inform and reach a consensus with the involved states about the shift in US Policy on Afghanistan.

One more development that points to the actuality of major policy change in Afghanistan is that Pakistan has started building the barbed-wire fence along disputed “Durand Line” border with Afghanistan in 2018 that is set to be completed by 2019. Before the construction of the fence, militants trained and armed in tribal areas of Pakistan would cross the border into Afghanistan without a minimal resistance from either side.

And now under Ashraf Ghani’s government when the Taliban and other militant groups have placed their anchor in respective regions, gained an easy and less-resisted foothold in parts of Afghanistan, built their Afghan brand of training camps and gotten their presence almost legalized in the face of the Afghan government and the US, Pakistan no longer sees need for its territories to be used for harboring and exporting extremism into Afghanistan as it is conscious of likely twist in the US strategies on Afghanistan.

Kandahar’s powerful police Chief Abdul Raziq who was assassinated at an inside job in a suicide attack following a press conference with top US General Scott Miller, had strongly stood up to Pakistan’s border fencing when the scheme reached to the stretch of his province. Raziq’s murder was partly fueled by his anti-Pakistani stand and resistance to building of fence.

Unfortunately, in such vulnerable times when each foreign state holding a stake in Afghan war struggle to extract more interests, Afghanistan’s capital Kabul usually witnesses indiscriminate and illogical armed attacks on non-military government buildings. On Monday, armed assailants stormed the building of the National Authority for Disabled People and Martyrs’ Families following a powerful suicide attack in front of the gate, as the employees were preparing to leave the office for the day. The attack killed nearly 50 people as the attackers would fire on civil workers when they moved floor by floor.

No group claimed the responsibility for it, and nor any militant group should accept it, because it is the war of regional intelligence agencies that intentionally take lives of normal Afghan people as a means of pressure against the Afghan government or other involved parties.

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On December 26, militants of the al-Qaeda-linked Wa Harid al-Muminin operations room conducted a hit and run attack on several positions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in northern Lattakia. According to pro-militant sources, over 20 SAA soldiers were killed.

Another version of the events claims that the SAA repelled the attack in the villages of Nakhshiba, Ruysat al-Malik and Ayn al-Qantra killing most of the attackers.

In late November, Wa Harid al-Muminin carried out a similar attack on SAA positions in northern Lattakia. At that time, 5 militants were killed by the SAA.

The SAA deployed hundreds of well-equipped soldiers from the 1st Division and the Republican Guards west of the town of Manbi, which is controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Multiple pro-government sources speculate that the SAA will soon enter the SDF-held town of Manbij just like it had entered the nearby village of Arima. A military source contacted by SouthFront refused to confirm or deny these claims.

Meanwhile, reports appeared that a delegation of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate will visit Damascus soon to discuss the escalation in northeastern Syria. According to reports, the delegation, alongside with the Russians, will mediate negotiations between the Damascus government and the SDF’s political wing, known as the Syrian Democratic Council.

The SDF press center claimed that more than 236 ISIS members had been killed in the recent clashes and US-led coalition airstrikes in the area of Hajin in northeastern Syria. The SDF provided neither photos nor videos to confirm such a high level of casualties among ISIS members. After the establishment of control in Hajin, the SDF continued its efforts to regain the rest of the ISIS-held villages on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. However, it has achieved only limited progress.

A high-level Turkish delegation, including Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, presidential aide Ibrahim Kalin, National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, will visit Moscow this weekend to discuss the situation in northeastern Syria. Ankara is probably seeking Russian support or at least neutrality in the event of a new Turkish military operation in the region against the Kurdish-dominated SDF.

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Selected Articles: US Troop Withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan

December 27th, 2018 by Global Research News

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Security and Counter-Intelligence: Pakistan’s New Regulations Regarding International NGOs

By Andrew Korybko, December 27, 2018

Pakistan’s recent regulation of International NGOs (INGOs) must be followed up by additional security measures by the counter-intelligence services in order to root out the rest of the foreign intelligence agents that have embedded themselves inside the country, but any possible gains on this front won’t be sustainable unless Islamabad properly addresses the socio-economic issues that make it susceptible to INGO infiltration in the first place.

What’s Behind U.S. Troop Withdrawals Announced for Syria and Afghanistan?

By Sara Flounders, December 27, 2018

The announced withdrawal of the remaining 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria and a partial withdrawal from Afghanistan does not mean an end to the Pentagon’s aggressive militarism and endless U.S. wars – in Syria, in Afghanistan, in the region or globally.

The Mattis Dilemma

By Philip Giraldi, December 27, 2018

The resignation letter of Secretary of Defense James Mattis that was published last Thursday revealed much of the Deep State mindset that has produced the foreign policy catastrophes of the past seventeen years.

Failed Regime Change in Nicaragua. OAS and Amnesty International: Killing, Torturing Sandinistas Is OK

By Stephen Sefton, December 27, 2018

Between April and July this year, Nicaragua suffered an extremely violent attempt at regime change supported by the US government and its allies. Crucial integral components of that coup attempt were bad faith reporting by international human rights organizations and extremely distorted news coverage by Western media.

Trump Is Leaving Behind a Trap for Russia, Turkey and Iran in Syria

By Elijah J. Magnier, December 27, 2018

The US executive order of withdrawal from Syria has been signed off on, indicating that President Trump is determined to recall the few thousands US troops in Syria back home.

Trump May be Seeking a Win-Win Outcome in Syria

By Mark Taliano and Tasnim News Agency, December 27, 2018

As I explain in my book, the entire “war on terror” is a fraud, since the West supports all of the terrorists in Syria, including ISIS (Daesh). Unfortunately, war propaganda in the West’s post-democratic, new Fascist societies is a growth industry so most North Americans have yet to figure this out.  They probably never will.

You Only Get Fired for “Telling the Truth”: Marc Lamont Hill Fired by CNN for “Criticizing the Israeli Government”

By Mark Lamont Hill and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 27, 2018

In recent decades, the Israeli government has moved further and further to the right, normalizing settler colonialism and its accompanying logics of denial, destruction, displacement, and death.

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An End to Empires

December 27th, 2018 by Richard Galustian

President Trump’s announcement, seemingly unilaterally, without advice from his military advisors or the Pentagon, has shocked and rocked American Military’s status quo strategy that has failed us all since post 9/11, yet the overwhelming majority of the American people and the world’s thinking population seem to love Trump’s decision. 

That Trump has said that it’s remaining meagre 2000 troops in Syria will be withdrawn is a popular decision for the people. It’s also very symbolic.

Those American soldiers left in Afghanistan will hopefully no doubt follow.

In short and to be concise, this is why its popular for the people and a disaster for the Deep State:

  • It is a sign that the US, well that its President, might finally be abandoning the disastrous ‘regime change’ policy pursuits’ and a sign of the beginning of the end of the stranglehold ‘the Military Industrial and Security Complex’ has on Washington.
  • that American military adventures might end eventually in ALL nations. Nations do NOT need US Military protection, whether calling itself ‘a World Peacekeeper’ or the rather more disparaging thing that it really is, a country who believes in stealing gas and oil and land grabbing; as an imperialistic ambitious hyper-super Military State and aspiring ‘American Empire.’
  • It would make this OpEd too long to give all the reasons in detail why I now make the following statements. I assume that readers have a sufficiently high standard of political understanding and historical knowledge combined with sophistication, to know.
  • If there are that don’t, I suggest they read up on the subjects and educate themselves.
  • There is ZERO threat to the United States and the Western world from either Russia or China and (laughable to even have to say it) Iran. There are of course with these countries conflicting economic interests that must be dealt with using diplomacy tools.
  • the ONLY country that is affected by US withdrawal from Syria, and it MUST be said, is the illegally created country of Israel and its apartheid Netanyahu regime.
  • America must stop trying to be the policeman of the world; stop wars and conflicts which are today at around 15 by, in the main, US surrogates, and spend such money saved on US infrastructure and the American people.
  • As far as Britain is concerned, She must ‘regain’ Her independence not only from Europe with a full BREXIT, but She must forget the illusion that Britain any longer have any semblance of a ‘Special Relationship with the US. Moreover Britain must stop ‘following like a puppy’ to paraphrase George Bush’s overheard comment to then British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The insane wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria that America has typically dragged UK Forces into must end. British troops have been injured and died for example especially in Afghanistan, for nothing.

So Trump’s Syria withdrawal caused uproar in Washington. Good. The immediate most prominent protest was by Trump’s defence secretary Mattis, who resigned.

There will be others. And good riddance to these warmongers. The day Bolton and Pompei resign will be the day that people will realise that they are going through the process of freeing themselves of the shackles, the stranglehold of Neocon politics that have dominated the 21st Century in America, remember triggered by ‘their’ 9/11; ‘their’ Pearl Harbour’.

Other less important knee jerk reactions followed Trump’s announcement about military withdrawals, from the usual suspects notably the ‘bought’ Western main stream media being the most vocal.

However, here is the alternative point of view:

As stated earlier herein, it is ludicrous to believe that Russia, China or even Iran pose a real threat to America. It is American militarism and Imperialism that is the uppermost threat to the world.

Russia’s albeit rather dislikable President Putin has raised many times his fears for humanity should a nuclear conflict occur and frankly he makes far more sense than his western counterparts.

Potential nuclear war is one of the three key issues that the worlds leaders should be addressing; the others being the effect of overpopulation and of course the environment.

America withdrawing from conflicts that do not concern it would be a huge boon and relief to the world’s citizens.

The US should spend more time and effort on helping the world address its environmental issues to save the planet and stop denying the scientific evidence on climate change.

The many trillions of dollars the US would save on trimming its Pentagon budget; on stopping Her involvement in pointless world conflicts, benefiting only the 1% super rich, could be much more usefully spent on a new FDR type deal for the people. Examples would be in health, social care, education and improving the lot of the disabled veterans living suffering with the mental and physical effects of fighting in ludicrous pointless wars like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

It is clear that the UK does not have any special relationship with the US and should stop being it’s lapdog and sending troops to fight wars that do not pose any threat to Her interests. Again, why does not Britain not concentrate Her efforts closer to home where austerity and Brexit indecision are crippling the nation?

Israel is of course going to be effected by US troops pulling out of Syria – so what. Israel is NOT part of America.

The insanity in America in this regard today is no better exemplified by this example. Can someone explain why an American, a children’s teacher, lost her job for declining to sign a document requiring she refuse to boycott Israel?

The US Government issued document required her to affirm “that she does not currently boycott Israel and will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract.” When she declined to sign, she “was forced to terminate her contractual relationship with the school district.”

What the hell has, what in effect is a pledge of allegiance to Israel got to do with an American citizen? Point made I hope!

In conclusion turning to the great Mark Twain who said that “history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme”.

Specifically addressing wars in Afghanistan in particular, Winston Churchill had a unique insight and personal experience of that country and its peoples.

A war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Of that there is no doubt.

Churchill summed up the two British wars against Afghanistan in the 19th Century, which Britain both lost, describing British policy in Afghanistan in 1897 as:

“Financially it is ruinous. Morally it is wicked. Militarily it is an open question and politically it is a blunder.”

What’s changed? This remains absolutely true in the 21st Century.

For anyone with interest in history, the term “North-West Frontier” holds ominous resonances.

In the 21st Century repeat of the folly of going to war in Afghanistan, we see the great truth of Mark Twain’s comment.

How did we so quickly forget that 250,000 Soviet troops in relatively recent history lost their war in Afghanistan?

Why do we never learn the lessons of history?

America’s imperialistic Military Neocon ambitions need to be stopped and one hopes President Trump might be the man to do it.

There can be no more empires is the hope otherwise we must expect nuclear Armageddon this century.

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Banishing Truth

December 27th, 2018 by Chris Hedges

The investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, in his memoir “Reporter,” describes a moment when as a young reporter he overheard a Chicago cop admit to murdering an African-American man. The murdered man had been falsely described by police as a robbery suspect who had been shot while trying to avoid arrest. Hersh frantically called his editor to ask what to do.

“The editor urged me to do nothing,” he writes. “It would be my word versus that of all the cops involved, and all would accuse me of lying. The message was clear: I did not have a story. But of course I did.” He describes himself as “full of despair at my weakness and the weakness of a profession that dealt so easily with compromise and self-censorship.”

Hersh, the greatest investigative reporter of his generation, uncovered the U.S. military’s chemical weapons program, which used thousands of soldiers and volunteers, including pacifists from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, as unwitting human guinea pigs to measure the impact of biological agents including tularemia, yellow fever, Rift Valley fever and the plague. He broke the story of the My Lai massacre. He exposed Henry Kissinger’s wiretapping of his closest aides at the National Security Council (NSC) and journalists, the CIA’s funding of violent extremist groups to overthrow the Chilean President Salvador Allende, the CIA’s spying on domestic dissidents within the United States, the sadistic torture practices at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by American soldiers and contractors and the lies told by the Obama administration about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Yet he begins his memoir by the candid admission, familiar to any reporter, that there are crimes and events committed by the powerful you never write about, at least if you want to keep your job. One of his laments in the book is his decision not to follow up on a report he received that disgraced President Richard Nixon had hit his wife, Pat, and she had ended up in an emergency room in California.

Reporters embedded with military units in Iraq and Afghanistan routinely witness atrocities and often war crimes committed by the U.S. military, yet they know that access is dependent on keeping quiet. This collusion between the press and the powerful is a fundamental feature of journalism, one that even someone as courageous as Hersh, at least a few times, was forced to accept. And yet, there comes a time when reporters, at least the good ones, decide to sacrifice their careers to tell the truth. Hersh, relentlessly chronicling the crimes of the late empire, including the widespread use of torture, indiscriminate military strikes on civilian targets and targeted assassinations, has for this reason been virtually blacklisted in the American media. And the loss of his voice—he used to work for The New York Times and later The New Yorker—is evidence that the press, always flawed, has now been neutered by corporate power. Hersh’s memoir is as much about his remarkable career as it is about the death of investigative journalism and the transformation of news into a national reality television show that subsists on gossip, invective, officially approved narratives and leaks and entertainment.

Investigative journalism depends not only on reporters such as Hersh, but as importantly on men and women inside the systems of power who have the moral courage to expose lies and make public crimes. Writing off any institution, no matter how nefarious the activity, as filled with the irredeemable is a mistake.

“There are many officers, including generals and admirals, who understood that the oath of office they took was a commitment to uphold and defend the Constitution and not the President, or an immediate superior,” he writes. “They deserve my respect and got it. Want to be a good military reporter? Find those officers.”

One of the heroes in Hersh’s book is Ron Ridenhour, who served in a combat unit in Vietnam and who initiated the army’s investigation into the My Lai massacre and generously helped Hersh track down eyewitnesses and participants.

The government’s wholesale surveillance, however, has crippled the ability of those with a conscience, such as Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, to expose the crimes of state and remain undetected. The Obama administration charged eight people under the Espionage Act of leaking to the media—Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Stephen Kim, Chelsea Manning, Donald Sachtleben, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden—effectively ending the vital connection between investigative reporters and sources inside the government.

This government persecution has, by default, left the exposure of government lies, fraud and crimes to hackers. And this is the reason hackers, and those who publish their material such as Julian Assange at WikiLeaks, are relentlessly persecuted. The goal of the corporate state is to hermetically seal their activities, especially those that violate the law, from outside oversight or observation. And this goal is very far advanced.

Hersh notes throughout his memoir that, like all good reporters, he constantly battled his editors and fellow reporters as much as he did the government or corporations. There is a species of reporter you can see on most cable news programs and on the floor of the newsrooms at papers such as The New York Times who make their living as courtiers to the powerful. They will, at times, critique the excesses of power but never the virtues of the systems of power, including corporate capitalism or the motivations of the ruling elites. They detest reporters, like Hersh, whose reporting exposes their collusion.

The Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal was held in 1967 in Europe during the Vietnam War. It included the testimony of three American soldiers who spoke of watching soldiers and Marines routinely pump indiscriminate rounds of ammunition into villages with no regard for civilian casualties. Most of the American press dismissed the findings of the tribunal.  The Times foreign affairs columnist, C.L. Sulzberger, launched a venomous attack against the Noble Prize-winning philosopher and mathematician, who was then 94 years old. Sulzberger, a member of the family that owned the paper, wrote that Russell had “outlived his own conscious idea and become clay in unscrupulous hands.” The tribunal, Sulzberger went on, “cannot fairly be laid at the door of the wasted peer whose bodily endurance outpaced his brain.”

Hersh, however, tipped off by the testimony at the tribunal, eventually uncovered the My Lai massacre. But no publication would touch it. Magazines such as Life and Look turned down the story. “I was devastated, and frightened by the extent of self-censorship I was encountering in my profession,” Hersh writes. He finally published the story with the obscure, anti-war Dispatch News Service. Major publications, including The New York Times, along with Newsweek and Time, ignored the report. Hersh kept digging. More lurid facts about the massacre came to light.  It became too big to dismiss, as hard as the mainstream media initially tried, and Hersh was awarded the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. The only officer convicted of the war crime, which left 106 men, women and children dead, was Lt. William Calley, who spent three months and 13 days in prison.

Papers like the New York Times pride themselves on their special access to the powerful, even if that access turns them into a public relations arm of the elites. This desire for access—which news organizations feel gives them prestige and an inside seat, although the information they are fed is usually lies or half-truths—pits conscientious reporters like Hersh against most editors and reporters in the newsroom. Hersh, who at the time was working for the Times, describes sitting across from another reporter, Bernard Gwertzman, who was covering Henry Kissinger and the NSC.

“There was a near-daily ritual involving Bernie that stunned me,” Hersh writes. “On far too many afternoons around 5:00, Max Frankel’s secretary would approach Bernie and tell him that Max [the Times’ bureau chief in Washington] was at that moment on the phone with ‘Henry’ and the call would soon he switched to him. Sure enough, in a few moments Bernie would avidly begin scratching notes as he listened to Kissinger—he listened far more than he talked—and the result was a foreign policy story that invariably led the paper the next morning, with quotes from an unnamed senior government official. After a week or two of observing the process, I asked the always affable and straightforward Bernie if he ever checked what Henry was telling him with Bill Rogers, the secretary of state, or Mel Laird at the Pentagon. “Oh no,’ he said. ‘If I did that, Henry wouldn’t speak to us.’”

The Washington Post broke the Watergate story, in which operatives for the Nixon White House in June 1972 broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington while Hersh was at the Times. Kissinger’s assurances—Hersh writes that Kissinger “lied the way most people breathed”—that it was not an event of consequence saw the top editors at The New York Times initially ignore it. The paper, however, finally embarrassed by the revelations in The Washington Post, threw Hersh onto the story, although the paper’s executive editor, Abe Rosenthal, called Hersh with a mixture of affection and wariness “my little commie.”

Hersh left the paper after a massive expose he and Jeff Gerth wrote about the corporation Gulf and Western, which carried out fraud, abuse, tax avoidance and had connections with the mob, was rewritten by cautious and timid editors. Charles Bluhdorn, the CEO of Gulf and Western, socialized with the publisher Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger. Bluhdorn used his connections at the paper to discredit Hersh and Gerth, as well as bombard the paper with accusatory letters and menacing phone calls. When Hersh filed his 15,000-word expose, the business editor, John Lee, and “his ass-kissing coterie of moronic editors,” perhaps fearful of being sued, neutered it. It was one thing, Hersh found, to go up against a public institution. It was something else to take on a private institution. He would never again work regularly for a newspaper.

“The experience was frustrating and enervating,” he writes. “Writing about corporate America had sapped my energy, disappointed the editors, and unnerved me. There would be no check on corporate America, I feared: Greed had won out. The ugly fight with Gulf and Western had rattled the publisher and the editors to the point that the editors who ran the business pages had been allowed to vitiate and undercut the good work Jeff and I had done. … The courage the Times had shown in confronting the wrath of a president and an attorney general in the crisis over the Pentagon Papers in 1971 was nowhere to be seen when confronted by a gaggle of corporate con men. …”

His reporting, however, continued to relentlessly expose the falsifications in official narratives. The Navy intelligence official, Jonathan Pollard, for example, had been caught spying for Israel in 1985 and given a life sentence. Hersh found that Pollard primarily stole documents on how the United States spied on the Soviet Union. The Israeli government, Hersh suspected, “was trading Pollard’s information to Moscow in exchange for the emigration of Soviet Jews with skills and expertise needed by Israel.” Pollard was released, after heavy Israeli pressure, in 2015 and now lives in Israel.

The later part of Hersh’s career is the most distressing. He was writing for The New Yorker when Barack Obama was elected president. David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, socialized with Obama and was apparently wary of offending the president. When Hersh exposed the fictitious narrative spun out by the Obama administration about the killing of Bin Laden, the magazine killed the story, running instead a report about the raid, provided by the administration, from the point of view of one of the SEALs who was on the mission. Hersh resigned. He published the account of the raid in the London Review of Books, the beginning of his current exile to foreign publications. When we most urgently need Hersh and good investigative reporters like him, they have largely disappeared. A democracy, at best, tolerates them. A failed democracy, like ours, banishes them, and when it does, it kills its press.

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Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Featured image is from Mr. Fish/Truthdig

Russia’s Defense Ministry has said Israel carried out airstrikes on Syrian targets as two civilian flights were landing in Beirut and Damascus, putting passengers at risk.

The Israeli military put two civilian airliners in immediate danger, Igor Konashenkov, the Defense Ministry spokesman, told reporters.

“Provocative acts by the Israeli Air Force endangered two passenger jets when six of their F-16s carried out airstrikes on Syria from Lebanese airspace.”

The IDF’s F-16 flew in as civilian jets were landing at Beirut and Damascus airport. The Syrian military didn’t deploy surface-to-air missiles and electronic jamming “to prevent a tragedy” and let Damascus air traffic control divert one of the passenger jets to a reserve airport in Khmeimim.

The Israeli Air Force used as many as 16 US-made laser-guided GBU-39 bombs, but only two of them reached their targets. Most were intercepted by Syria’s air defenses, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Two precision munitions hit a logistics compound 7km away from Damascus, injuring three personnel there.

The statement largely confirmed a previous report by Syria’s state-run news agency SANA that went public overnight. Israel has not confirmed the strikes, but reported that the IDF activated its air defense systems to shoot down a Syrian anti-aircraft missile.

Head of IDF’s International Media Branch has refused to comment on the allegations to Russian media.

Israel repeatedly carried out strikes on targets on Syrian soil that it regards as threats to its security. Damascus blasts those strikes as illegitimate acts of aggression and has threatened not to let them go unanswered.

Syrian airspace has seen a number of dangerous incidents. In September, a tragic sequence of events led to the downing of a Russian surveillance Il-20 plane, which killed all 15 crew on board. The plane was shot down by Syrian air defense units as Israel’s F-16s effectively used it as cover during the attack on its neighbor.

Israel firmly denied any culpability.

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Pakistan’s recent regulation of International NGOs (INGOs) must be followed up by additional security measures by the counter-intelligence services in order to root out the rest of the foreign intelligence agents that have embedded themselves inside the country, but any possible gains on this front won’t be sustainable unless Islamabad properly addresses the socio-economic issues that make it susceptible to INGO infiltration in the first place.

It’s been roughly two and a half months since Pakistan decreed that 18 International NGOs (INGOs) had 60 days to discontinue their operations in the country prior to reregistering their organizations after complying with Islamabad’s new requirements, making this an appropriate moment to reflect on what might come next. The author’s previous piece on this topic discussed how “Pakistan Hit Back At Hybrid War Plots By Restricting Hostile INGOs” and briefly elaborated on some of the methods that foreign intelligence services have utilized to infiltrate the country under the cover of international aid groups, explaining just how serious of a threat this has become in Pakistan and other “Global South” countries.

Keenly aware of this, the state boldly made the decision to curtail the activities of the most threatening INGOs but prudently allowed them the possibility of continuing to operate in the country as long as they purged themselves of the hostile elements that were interfering with Pakistan’s domestic political processes and surreptitiously carrying out surveillance activities against its citizens. This pragmatic decision could conceivably see some INGOs return to their apolitical socio-economic roots in carrying out important humanitarian functions designed to help the local populace, but it can’t be taken for granted that this will happen unless the proper security measures are in place.

All countries across the world have permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (or “deep states”) that work behind the scenes to secure the citizens’ interests, but none are more important in ensuring Democratic Security than the counter-intelligence operatives who are responsible for identifying the foreign intelligence agents embedded within the country. They probably played a role in exposing how certain spy agencies were abusing INGOs in order to carry out their Hybrid War plots against Pakistan, so it makes sense for them to continue their work in going as high up the chain of command as possible in order to uncover these groups’ in-country handlers.

Foreign intelligence agencies spilled into Pakistan after 9/11 and have been a problem ever since, but it’s only in recent years that Pakistan began to take active measures to root out these threats. It’s in this context that the INGO regulatory move should be seen and from where one can better predict the direction that it might naturally lead. The individuals who abused their INGO roles to carry out hostile activities against the Pakistani state were presumably being handled by foreign intelligence agents inside of the country, so it’s incumbent on the relevant authorities to do everything within their power to identify and remove these forces.

Even in the best-case scenario where the counter-intelligence services fully succeed with their mission, that still won’t be enough to secure the Pakistani state unless a sustainable solution is spearheaded that properly addresses the socio-economic issues that make the country susceptible to INGO infiltration in the first place. These organizations are operating in Pakistan because the state is unable to meet the needs of a certain segment of its population, but China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) could be expanded from its hard infrastructural focus into the realm of social development to assist its ally with this ambitious task.

China, which has one of the world’s strictest INGO regulations, clearly understands the Hybrid War risks that these groups could pose, so it’s in its best interests to help Pakistan liberate itself from these forces by financing Pakistani-run NGOs that will gradually replace them. Just like the US has USAID, BRI could experiment with BRI-Aid in Pakistan prior to perfecting this model for export all across the Silk Road. The host government (in this case Pakistan) could cooperate with local stakeholders to carry out feasibility studies and facilitate China’s financing of the most important projects, thus representing the most effective solution in the long term.

It needs to be remembered that Democratic Security can only be ensured through a combination of counter-intelligence and socio-economic development whereby the nation’s security services deal with Hybrid War threats while its civil society works to remove the conditions that helped them take root. There’s no doubt that the Pakistani state is more than capable of handling the first-mentioned of these requirements, but it might need some help from China to finance the latter half of this solution if it’s to guarantee that foreign intelligence agents aren’t ever able to infiltrate back into the country under the guise of INGO workers.

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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.

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The “Self-Genocide” of the West, Preparing its Populations for War

December 27th, 2018 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Stephen Cohen and I are branded “Russian dupes” and “Putin agents,” because we object to the highly orchestrated and false portrayal of Russia as a threat to the West, a portrayal that is leading to war.  The purpose of this orchestration is to prevent President Trump or any future president from reducing the dangerous tensions between nuclear powers that have accumulated since the Clinton regime.  The military/security complex has resurrected its Cold War enemy so necessary for its outsized budget and power and intends to keep Russia as The Enemy.

The Democrats have an interest in the villification of Russia as “Russiagate” explains Hillary’s loss of the 2016 Presidential election and gives Democrats hope of removing President Trump from office.  The media lacks independence, knowledge, and integrity and is the tool used by the military/security complex to control explanations, a prostitution of the media that has made the term “presstitutes” an accurate description.  As strategic and Russian studies are largely funded by the military/security complex, the universities are also complicit in the march toward nuclear war. Republicans are as dependent as Democrats on funding from the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby.

All of this self-serving is driving America and its vassals to war with Russia, which might also mean with China.  The war would be nuclear and be the end of the West, an act of self-genocide. The US national security establishment is so crazed that Trump’s efforts to get off the war track and onto a peace track are characterized as treason and a threat to US national security.  See this for example.

The Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience are fabrications.  They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings that diplomacy can overcome.  What they see now is the West preparing its populations for war.  It is this perception for which the West is solely responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was during the long Cold War.

In his just published book, War With Russia? (reviewed here), Stephen Cohen documents the creation of the “Russian threat” that serves a few material interests at the expense of life on earth.  

In the article below, Cohen asks if it is more important to impeach Trump than to avoid nuclear war.

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Do Russiagate Promoters Prefer Impeaching Trump to Avoiding War With Russia?

by Stephen F. Cohen

The Nation, December 19, 2018

The new Cold War is not a mere replica of its 40-year predecessor, which the world survived. In vital ways, it is more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, as illustrated by events in 2018, among them:

The militarization of the new Cold War intensified, with direct or proxy US-Russian military confrontations in the Baltic region, Ukraine, and Syria; the onset of another nuclear arms race with both sides in quest of more “usable” weapons; mounting, but entirely unsubstantiated, claims by influential Cold War lobbies, such as the Atlantic Council, that Moscow is contemplating an invasion of Europe; and the growing influence of Moscow’s own “hawks.” The previous Cold War was also highly militarized, but never directly on Russia’s own borders, as is this one, from the small nations of Eastern Europe to Ukraine, a process that continued to unfold in 2018.

Russiagate—allegations that President Trump is strongly influenced by or even under the sway of the Kremlin, for which there remains no actual evidence—continued to escalate as a dangerous and unprecedented factor in the new Cold War. What began as suggestions that the Kremlin had “meddled” in the 2016 US presidential election grew into mainstream insinuations, even assertions, that the Kremlin put Trump in the White House. The result has been to all but shackle Trump as a crisis-negotiator with Russian President Putin. Thus, for attending a July summit meeting with Putin in Helsinki—during which Trump defended the legitimacy of his own presidency—he was widely denounced by mainstream US media and politicians as having committed “treason.” And twice subsequently Trump was compelled to cancel scheduled meetings with Putin. Americans may reasonably ask whether the politicians, journalists, and organizations that assail Trump for the same kind of summit diplomacy practiced by every president since Eisenhower actually prefer trying to impeach Trump to avoiding war with Russia.

Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda?

The same question can be asked of major mainstream media outlets that have virtually abandoned the reasonably balanced and fact-based reporting and commentary they practiced during the latter stages of the preceding Cold War. In 2018, for example, their nonfactual, surreal allegation that “Putin’s Russia attacked American democracy” in 2016 became an orthodox dogma and the pivot of their Russiagate and new Cold War narrative. Also unlike during the preceding Cold War, they continued to exclude dissenting, alternative reporting, perspectives, and opinions. Still more, these media outlets persist in relying heavily on former intelligence chiefs as sources and commentators, even though the role of these intel officials in the origins of the Russiagate narrative now seems clear. A striking example of media malpractice was coverage of the maritime conflict between Ukrainian and Russian gunboats on November 25, in the Kerch straits between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. All empirical evidence available, as well as Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s desperate need to bolster his chances for reelection in March 2019, strongly indicated that this was a deliberate provocation by Kiev. But the US mainstream media portrayed it instead as yet another instance of “Putin’s aggression.” Thus was a dangerous US-Russian proxy war fundamentally misrepresented to the American public.

In large part due to such media malpractice, and despite the escalating dangers in US-Russian relations, in 2018 there continued to be no significant anti–Cold War opposition anywhere in mainstream American political life—not in Congress, the major political parties, think tanks, or on college campuses, only a very few individual dissenters. Accordingly, the policy of détente with Russia, or what Trump has repeatedly called “cooperation with Russia,” still found no significant supporters in mainstream politics, even though it was the policy of other Republican presidents, notably Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan. Trump has tried, but he has been thwarted, repeatedly again in 2018.

Meanwhile, the charge that Russia “attacked American democracy” and continues to do so might best be applied to Russiagate promoters themselves. Their allegations have undermined the America presidency as an institution and cast doubt on US elections. By criminalizing both “contacts with Russia” and proposals for “better relations,” and by threatening to weed out a capacious and nebulous body of “disinformation” in US media, they have considerably diminished the vaunted American marketplace of free speech and ideas. Also under growing assault are traditional concepts of US political justice, which, at least based on what is known in regard to Russia, have been abused in the cases of Gen. Michael Flynn and, in Soviet-like fashion, of Maria Butina. At worst, this young Russian woman seems to have been an undeclared (but candidly open) advocate of “better relations” and an ardent proponent of her own country. For this, something long pursued by young Americans in Russia as well, she was held for months in solitary confinement until she confessed—that is, entered a plea. And this in a nation that has long officially “promoted” democracy abroad.

Finally, while US political and media elites remained obsessed with the fictions of Russiagate—which increasingly appears to be Russiagate without Russia and instead mostly tax-fraud-gate and sex-gate—post–Soviet Russia continued its remarkable rise as a diplomatic great power, primarily, though not only, in the East, as documented recently in three highly

informed publications far from and scarcely noted by the US political-media establishment. Meanwhile, Washington’s primary base of allies in world affairs, the European Union, continued its slide into self-inflicted, ever-deepening crisis. (See this)

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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.

Demand Transparency in Medicare for All

December 27th, 2018 by Margaret Flowers

One of the most important pieces of legislation of our times, one that will impact every person in the United States, is currently being drafted in a non-transparent and non-participatory process by a small group of insiders. Rep. Pramila Jayapal is redrafting HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which has existed for 15 years and is based on the Physician’s Working Group Proposal, the work of the single payer movement.

Single payer activists are calling on Jayapal to share the content of her draft so the extensive expertise of the single payer movement can advise her. On Monday, December 17, 2018, the Health Over Profit for Everyone campaign delivered a letter to Congresswoman Jayapal requesting her to share a draft text of HR 676 with the single payer movement for review and input. See, Letter to Congresswoman Jayapal – Release the text of HR 676.

The letter was developed at an in-depth strategy conference that developed a plan for success, How We Win National Improved Medicare for All. The strategy includes, as an immediate priority, protecting and improving HR 676, which has the support of 123 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. The letter to Jayapal points out a red flag, stating:

“Some of your public statements recently have caused concern. In particular, statements about your desire to align the text with the Senate bill, S 1804, which is inferior to HR 676. Indeed, the Senate Bill is so deficient that many in the single payer movement cannot support it unless it is significantly revised.”

Click here to take action.

This comparison between the House Bill and S.1804, whose lead sponsor is Sen. Bernie Sanders, describes some of the serious deficiencies of that bill. Many single payer advocates cannot support the Sanders bill because, for example, it leaves out people who require long-term care, protects the profits of investor-owned providers and has loopholes that allow the insurance industry to continue to participate, making it, in essence, a multi-payer bill. HOPE will also focus attention on Sanders and his co-sponsors to push for improvements to that bill, but the threats to the gold standard bill, HR 676, are more imminent.

Jayapal should follow the lead of Green New Deal legislative advocates. They published a Google Doc with the draft of the Green New Deal legislation. This approach would allow the single payer movement to see the draft and provide Jayapal’s office with comments on it. There is a lot of experience and expertise in the single payer movement that should be involved in order to produce the best bill possible.

The letter points out that the single payer movement wants to be a strong ally to Rep. Jayapal and do all it can to help pass HR 676. A transparent and participatory process will ensure a bill is introduced that the movement can support and can feel confident mobilizing people to help make national improved Medicare for all a reality. Jayapal should see mass participation of the movement as a way to strengthen the bill and its chance for passage.

At the same time, there is anger in the single payer movement at Jayapal’s lack of transparency and that a bill that will impact everyone is being drafted by a small group of insiders. People are ready to protest the lack of transparency and participation but want to give Jayapal the opportunity to do the right thing before escalating to protest.

Click here to take action.

The strategy report points out that the Democratic Party has undermined the single payer movement multiple times, pointing to the Clinton era when HillaryCare created concentrated private insurance corporations and required people to buy insurance, and ObamaCare, which required people to buy private insurance as well. Neither administration would consider single payer Medicare for all, despite majority support.

They also point to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s recent refusal to endorse Medicare for all while listing a host of false policy approaches that will not solve the US healthcare crisis. And Speaker Pelosi is criticized for sending the single payer movement down the false path of state legislation when single payer is not possible at the state level. These refusals by Democratic  leadership to support meaningful reform come when the United States has a major healthcare crisis — 30,000 people die annually because they do not have insurance, the life expectancy of people in the US is decreasing and more than 100,000 deaths could be prevented annually if the US had a single payer system like France or the United Kingdom. There is too much at stake. People will not let the Democrats send the movement off course again.

Everyone should take action because healthcare impacts everyone. Contact Congresswoman Jayapal.  HOPE has created a tool for you to use to Call Rep. Jayapal and urge her to release the text. When you contact her office, let them know about how the Green New Deal draft legislation has been made public and demand the same be done for HR 676.

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Letter To Congresswoman Jayapal – Release The Text Of HR 676

The Honorable Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal
319 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Ms. Jayapal:

We Write To You As Longtime Advocates For National Improved Medicare For All As Embodied In The Current Version Of HR 676. We Have Championed HR 676 For The Past Fifteen Years, Working With Congressman John Conyers And His Staff.

We Have A Deep Appreciation For Your Willingness To Not Only Take On The Lead Sponsorship Of HR 676 But Also To Create A Medicare For All Caucus. We Believe We Share A Common Vision Of A National, Universal, Publicly-Funded, Comprehensive And High-Quality Healthcare System In The United States.

We Understand That You Are Rewriting HR 676 Before You Introduce It In 2019. It Is Important To Us That HR 676 Not Be Weakened In This Process, But Be Made Stronger. We Ask That You Release A Draft Of The Text Of The Revised HR 676 So That Longtime Single Payer Advocates Can Read It And Share Our Views With You Before The Bill Is Introduced.

Transparency Matters Greatly To Us As Does Getting The Policy Right. HR 676 Must Be Strong From The Outset So That As It Goes Through The Legislative Process, We Can Be Sure The Final Bill Will Solve The Healthcare Crisis In The United States.

We Know You Have Met With Representatives Of Some Groups. Opening Up The Process Will Ensure That The Best Information On Expanded And Improved Medicare For All Is Contained In The Bill. And, It Will Ensure That The Whole Single Payer Movement Is In Support Of The Bill.

Some Of Your Public Statements Recently Have Caused Concern. In Particular, Statements About Your Desire To Align The Text With The Senate Bill, S 1804, Which Is Inferior To HR 676. Indeed, The Senate Bill Is So Deficient That Many In The Single Payer Movement Cannot Support It Unless It Is Significantly Revised. We Want The House Bill To Remain Strong And Fully Supported By The Entire Single Payer Movement As The Gold Standard That The Senate Must Measure Up To.

We Are Committed To Winning National Improved Medicare For All And Believe The Movement Is Capable Of Winning This Issue In The Near Future. It Will Be A Historic Victory For The United States. We Want To Help You Succeed In Leading This Effort.

We Urge You To Release A Draft Copy Of The New Legislation Before The End Of The Year So People Can Have Input Before It Is Made Final. We Are Being Asked To Mobilize Support For The New HR 676, But We Cannot Support A Bill We Have Not Seen.

Please Let Us Know As Soon As Possible If You Are Willing To Release A Draft Copy Of The New Legislation For Input And When We Can Expect To Receive It.

Kind Regards,

Margaret Flowers, MD, Coordinator, Health Over Profit For Everyone Campaign

Kip Sullivan, Health Care For All Minnesota

Leigh K. Haynes – People’s Health Movement-USA*

Eric Naumburg, M.D., M.P.H., Healthcare Is A Human Right Maryland

Kevin Zeese, Co-Director, Popular Resistance

Kay Tillow, Coordinator, All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care–HR 676

Sumitra Joy, National Consumer Voice Leadership Council-Member Elect*

Health Care For All Minnesota

Bill Moyer, Backbone Campaign

James Squire, MD United For Single Payer

Lee Stanfield, HOPE Steering Committee, Founder Of Single-Payer NOW Tucson*

Jody Coss And Ed Klein, Co-Directors, HOPE In The Midwest

Vanessa Beck, MSW, Coordinating Committee, Black Alliance For Peace*

Anne Scheetz, MD, Physicians For A National Health Program, Illinois Single-Payer Coalition, Chicago ADAPT, HOPE

Donna M. Ellington, M.Ed., EdS, Social Media Influencer

Ethel Long-Scott, Executive Director, Women’s Economic Agenda Project*

Bruce G Trigg, MD,  Addiction Medicine Consultant

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This article was originally published on Health Over Profit.

Featured image is from HOP

On June 5, 1947, in an address at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall introduced a European self-help program financed by the United States to the tune of 13 billion dollars (about $110 billion by 2018 estimates), and more than 16 European nations accepted the money to jumpstart their economy, What no one ever talks about is that the Marshall Plan hugely benefited the American economy as well. 1

Most of that money would be used to buy goods from the United States, and they had to be shipped across the Atlantic on American merchant vessels. So the US saw this as a win-win situation where they could financially help European nations while (in their minds) stop the march of Communism across the landscape, and money could be made all around. After all, the US doesn’t do anything for free. The country prospered, as companies were able to find markets in Europe and sell their products.2 And who paid for all of this? Why the American taxpayer, of course, convinced that we would stop Communism if we agreed to this huge payout.

It was successful for its time. Many of those countries in Europe who benefited became the founding members of the EU some 50 years later.

But there is no “Marshall Plan for Iraq. In fact, there is no Marshall plan for the Middle East.” It is to the benefit of the current axis of evil, the US/Israel/Saudi triumverate to keep the Middle East in constant uproar.

It doesn’t take long to see what the US has done to Iraq. You just have to go and spend time there. For me, it was teaching Reconciliation English for five weeks in Najaf, Iraq, a conservative Shia city where Muqtadā al-Ṣadr3 lives in an encampment so heavily guarded, it almost looked like the behemoth that is called ‘the American Embassy,’ in Iraq, one of the ugliest and most intimidating places I visited while there.

There is debris in the streets and on the sidewalks everywhere, and people just walk around it, seeming not to see it any longer. Some days, there is no sun, only a mazied look of orange dust that shimmers straight out of a ‘Mad Max” scene. When it rained the three days I was there, the sky actually turned blue for a few hours and the air smelled of rain and sweetness before the dust came back in and covered everything. The cars, the shops, the outdoor cafés, the kid’s playgrounds; everything is covered in dust. And it’s not the ‘OK… they are close to a desert, dust.’ It’s sticky, yellow grit.

The electricity goes off and on, and the Iraqis just smile and say, “give it 20 minutes and the private generators will kick in. It’s more expensive, but what can we do?” There are wires everywhere, hanging from poles just above the heads of pedestrians, but it seems to work.

The water can’t be drunk, except the poorer Iraqis do drink it. If at all possible, people buy water or have a filter system in their homes. Sami, the founder of the school for Reconciliation English, gives people a demonstration every time a visitor from out of Iraq comes, to show them what the water looks like. The US war machine has poisoned the water sources. For example, pollution in the Tigris river (the other main river is the Euphrates, and that’s not much better, as oil wastes are pouring into it) is the result of Iraqi and US military waste. The river is contaminated with war waste and toxins, and residents of smaller impoverished cities are often left with no alternative but to drink it.4

And then there is the land. When I arrived and was driven into Najaf, I could see small white and grey structures dotted across the lands alongside some of the roads. I asked what they were. “Greenhouses,” was the reply from Mustafa. “You see, we can’t plant anything in the ground any longer. It’s contaminated by uranium and dioxins, so we buy most of our fruits and vegetables from Iran or Turkey. The beautiful displays of fruits and vegetables you’ll see in the market all come from somewhere else. We have started raising our own tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouses.”  It was all said so matter-of-factly.

I found I was the only one constantly outraged over the five weeks I was there.

The US has poisoned Iraq’s water, ground and air to such a degree, no one knows what the lasting impact will be.

And yet… and yet… during the Al Arbaeen march to Kerbala, the Iraqi people fed more than 15 million pilgrims, took care of them, gave them shelter and provided medical care for them, all at no cost. I was stunned at the generosity and kindness as I watched the march unfold.5

And yet… the young women and men English teachers at Sami’s school would listen to my stories and wistfully wonder if they would ever be able to travel to ‘the West,’ since the US (even though it has lifted the ban against Muslims from Iraq) told Katie Sunshine Struble and me that ‘Under no circumstances will we ever give any of these people visas to visit the US,” (some of them had already visited and were all professionals). “You have no idea who we keep out of the US for your protection.”

When I demurred and said I doubted we were in any danger from the Iraqis who had already been vetted, the horrid man from the Embassy actually said, “We turn away almost everyone from Nigeria for your benefit. You have no idea who tries to stay in the US.” Then, looking at the two of us who were fair-skinned and blonde, he actually said, “And we refused three people from Sweden as well.”

I will never forget that visit, the walls and sniper towers (that looked as though they had been built by Israel) of the American Embassy in Iraq, the sneering contempt we faced when we tried to talk about visas (OK, we DID say we were coming to talk about shipping books, then changed the subject) and the entire atmosphere. I ended up with flashback PTSD from the times I was faced with the same suffocating behavior in occupied Palestine.

And yet… I never once felt anything but respect and kindness from every Iraqi I encountered. They know the difference between the American military who invaded and destroyed their country and the American people, something we Americans certainly don’t know.

Ana aasiffa, my dear Iraqi friends…ana aasiffa. (I am sorry)

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Greta Berlin is the Co-Founder of the Free Gaza movement, www.freegaza.org and the author/editor of Freedom Sailors, a book about the first successful trip to Gaza in August 2008 . She is also an English teacher and has spent the past few years (after her retirement) teaching English in Morocco, Spain and Iraq. 

Notes

1 https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/democrac/57.htm

2 https://www.marshallfoundation.org/marshall/the-marshall-plan/history-marshall-plan/

3 https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/muqtada-al-sadr-iraq-militia-leader-turned-champion-poor-180517053738881.html

4 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/22/iraq-nuclear-contaminated-sites

5 https://www.opednews.com/articles/Marching-Toward-Kerbala-Th-by-Greta-Berlin-Family_Islam_Purpose-181020-228.html

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The announced withdrawal of the remaining 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria and a partial withdrawal from Afghanistan does not mean an end to the Pentagon’s aggressive militarism and endless U.S. wars – in Syria, in Afghanistan, in the region or globally.

The U.S. military has 170,000 troops stationed outside the U.S. in 150 countries, in more than 800 overseas bases. Nearly 40,000 are assigned to classified missions in locations that Washington refuses to even disclose. Because the Pentagon has continually renamed and shuffled its forces in the Middle East, it’s impossible to know how many troops are on standby and how many are on rotation.

But this surprise “troop withdrawal” announcement — regardless of its limitations, regardless of U.S. military strength — exposes the increasingly untenable U.S. imperialist global position and the fraying condition of all of its historic alliances.

The announcement has opened a chasm within U.S. ruling circles. Resignations from the Trump administration and ensuing denunciations are calling the attention of the masses to the heated conflict.

The top echelons of the Democratic Party and corporate media “talking heads” are in an uproar of opposition. They are attacking Trump for “caving in” to Iran and Russia and allegedly endangering national security — by which they mean he is harming U.S. imperialist interests.

Their charges only confirm that both the racist Trump and his ruling-class opponents are imperialist war criminals and enemies of the people of the world. The pro-militarist criticisms of Trump are themselves reactionary.

A progressive working-class analysis

Trump’s abrupt announcement — with no known discussion with policy makers, without any consultation with co-conspirators in the NATO war alliance — is indeed a departure from the U.S. hegemonic strategy of the past 75 years.

That departure is behind “Mad Dog” Mattis’s resignation as Trump’s Secretary of Defense. Mattis, lauded as the “grownup” in the Trump cabinet, has bulwarked relations with U.S. allies using his Pentagon position. His nickname comes from his infamous statement about U.S. war in Afghanistan: “It’s fun to shoot some people. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot.” (New York Times, Feb. 4, 2005) Mattis is also notorious as the U.S. commander responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Iraqi civilians in Fallujah in 2004.

Mattis’ resignation reflects how the announced withdrawal is a dramatic break with countries that have collaborated with the U.S. in Syria, such as France, Germany, Belgium and Britain. All of them are former colonial powers that destroyed Indigenous cultures and looted the Americas, Africa and Asia.

The rulers of these countries were all determined to re-colonize the Arab world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Other willing partners in imperialist crime were Saudi Arabia and Israel. They were willing to commit to war on Syria based on the assumption they would share in the looting of the country. Their official threadbare cover was that they were fighting a “war on terror.”

Trump surprised them with this major U.S. policy shift in the region, which  increases imperialist instability.

U.S. tries to exploit national differences

According to numerous media reports, Trump made his decision based on a long phone call with Turkish President Erdogan. Erdogan has threatened to launch a military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG forces in northeast Syria, where U.S. troops are based. Erdogan made it clear that the U.S. cannot have Turkey as an ally and also have a Kurdish U.S.-proxy statelet.

This is an unsolvable dilemma for the U.S. imperialists, whose corporate rulers have not been able to destabilize Syria and carry out “regime change.” Washington’s open demand from day one was the resignation of President Bashar Assad and all existing government officials. It hasn’t happened.

The U.S. goal was the appointment of a Syrian government, subservient to Western interests, which would establish an electoral process under the control and vetting of the major imperialist powers. This is the meaning of the vague term “regime change.”

On Washington’s drawing board, it looked like an easy plan.

To this end, the U.S. political-military establishment attempted to exploit every possible difference, based on the many religious, ethnic and national groups within Syria, including the Kurdish forces. The entire U.S. and Western effort was to carve Syria into pieces, all in the name of “defending” oppressed nationalities and “democracy.”

This effort to weaponize sectarian differences was implemented with the influence of the reactionary Saudi regime. Foreign-funded mercenary death squads operated openly in Syria. Supplies were air-dropped in massive quantities.

The outside imperialist and Saudi efforts sought to mobilize reactionary elements in the majority Sunni Arab population against Christians, Alawis, Druzes, Shi’a, Yazidis, Armenians, Kurdish, Turkmen and numerous smaller national, ethnic and religious groupings and recent refugees. Among Syria’s 23 million population (counting those who have recently left the country) are more than a half million Palestinian refugees and 1.5 million Iraqi refugees.

The U.S. spent eight years orchestrating participation of Western imperialist powers and Gulf monarchies in its imperialist endeavor. Despite four years of bombing that decimated the country’s infrastructure, the introduction of tens of thousands of heavily armed and well-funded mercenaries, intense international political pressure, and strangling economic sanctions, Syria still remains unconquered.

Solidarity combats sectarian division in Syria

Syria resisted the attempted takeover on two fronts. Of course, the government organized a defensive military struggle. But the most important weapon was the constant reliance on the fact that Syria is a mosaic of many religious, ethnic and national groupings that are all able to coexist through a secular state.

The positive face of the struggle to maintain national independence was visible in every picture, every delegation, every mobilization and every mass rally. These stressed the rich cultural diversity and the unity of the whole people.

Syria also invited Hezbollah’s well-organized military units from Lebanon, and then Iranian and Russian military assistance, to aid in defense against this imperialist attack, part of an expanding regional conflict.

Almost all the tens of thousands of reactionary foreign mercenaries funded and trained by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have now been defeated, along with the fanatical ISIS forces who held large areas of Syria. Though each armed group was capable of massive destruction, the different mercenary militias were divided and competed with each other, based on who was sponsoring them.

National pride in Syria’s accomplishments and defense of Syria’s sovereignty succeeded in keeping the country intact.

Diminishing U.S. ability to dominate globe

The U.S. has been dealt a different but similar failure in Afghanistan. Despite an open and direct U.S. invasion of the country in 2001 and years of occupation, with the rotation of a million troops, Washington’s brutal “pacification” program in Afghanistan has failed. Corruption may be endemic in an occupation, but so is resistance. Today, not one base of occupation or one national road in the country is secure.

The Afghanistan war is now the longest in U.S. history, with no end in sight and no prospect of establishing a stable puppet regime.

An additional crisis for U.S. imperialism is mounting international opposition to the civilian casualties and starvation in Yemen. Even with U.S.-supplied high-tech arms and a U.S. naval blockade, its proxy, Saudi Arabia, has not succeeded in crushing resistance in Yemen.

Meanwhile, against all possible odds, the Palestinian resistance continues against U.S.-proxy Israel. This resistance is a 21st-century reality that even the latest generation of U.S.-provided weapons cannot seem to reverse.

Despite the confident, aggressive tone of Trump’s sudden announcement, it nevertheless reflects a diminishing U.S. capacity to dominate the world — regardless of who is in the Oval Office. The current media and political brouhaha is about where to lay the blame for this diminished capacity, and how to reverse the slide of U.S. power.

Media speculation is that Trump, faced with a wall of political opposition for his racist, sexist and anti-migrant actions, is cynically trying to shore up his own base. Though Trump’s base is racist and right-wing, it sees no interest for itself in another U.S. war — just like every other sector of the U.S. masses.

Trump actually made campaign promises to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and end U.S. involvement in Afghanistan — but no one in U.S. ruling circles expected him to follow through on those promises.

Why Syria is on U.S. hit list

Syria has been targeted by the U.S. for decades based on its militant Arab nationalism, its support of the Palestinian struggle, its opposition to the Israeli state — which is an imperialist beachhead in the region — and its nationalized oil and state-regulated economy.

Before being placed on the U.S. hit list, Syria had a relatively high standard of living and rate of development in the region.

The U.S. effort to destroy Syria moved into high gear when President George W. Bush included Syria in his 2002 “Axis of Evil” list of countries slated for overthrow. In 2013, Washington imposed  economic sanctions on Syria that were intentionally dislocating. Washington charged Syria with not making the “right decisions” at the time of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Wikileaks documents exposed CIA subversion plans in 2006, and its efforts in fomenting dissent and supplying weapons drops by 2009.

In 2011 U.S. operatives began to manipulate the mass ferment that toppled U.S.-supported military dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, called the “Arab Spring.” This ferment gave the U.S. an opening for undercover efforts to topple the anti-imperialist governments in Libya and Syria.

Seven months of U.S. bombing did succeed in ripping apart Libya in 2011, thereby shredding every development gain in a country that had enjoyed the highest standard of living in Africa. The extensive development aid that Libya had provided throughout Africa was left in ruins. The U.S. immediately seized the opening to position new military bases throughout Africa.

Obama administration officials, especially Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, all but announced that they expected a similar and even faster success in Syria. The early predictions were that, under direct U.S. pressure, the Syrian government would collapse within weeks.

Washington invited all its allies to participate in the shredding of Syria. Not wanting to be left out of the promise for future looting, France, Britain Turkey, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE funded proxy attack forces. Jordan provided open-border training camps. Israel provided backdoor access through the Syrian province of Golan that Israel has occupied since 1967.

An endless series of international conferences on Syria, hosted by the United Nations or the European Union, were held in Geneva, Washington, London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin. A rotating assortment of collaborators who had no base in Syria were appointed to set up a new proxy government. These puppet forces could not agree with each other and their contending backers maneuvered endlessly.

The existing Syrian government was never a participant in any meaningful way in these grand conferences to decide the future of their country.

Then Secretary of Defense James Mattis repeated the arrogant U.S. demand as recently as August 2018: “Our goal is to move the Syrian civil war into the Geneva process so the Syrian people can establish a new government that is not led by Assad.”

Other “humanitarian conferences” were held to focus on the 5.5 million Syrian refugees who had fled the destruction. But the conferences’ real purpose was also to raise demands for a “negotiated settlement” that gave international bodies some effective control over Syrian sovereignty.

Each of these conferences made it clear that no aid in reconstruction or resettlement would be forthcoming unless there was a government in place that was to their liking.

Additional in the effort to legitimize the U.S. takeover was a multi-pronged effort on social media to demonize Syria and its leadership. It was a campaign intended to silence and demoralize any opposition.

Many good community-based activists, who knew little about Syria, were taken in. Even those who resisted the U.S. war message absorbed a deep suspicion of the forces fighting to defend Syria, as a secular state, from the concerted effort to pull it apart.

What is role of Turkey and Kurds?

The day before Trump’s Dec. 18 announcement to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, there was a meeting in Geneva on Syria — one that excluded the U.S. and imperialist EU countries.

Instead, meeting on the future of Syria were the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and, surprisingly, Turkey.

These three countries are opposed, for different reasons and interests, to the uninvited, massively destructive U.S. role in Syria. At the recent conference, according to the Guardian newspaper, they pledged to move forward with “a viable and lasting Syrian-owned, Syrian-led, UN-facilitated political process.” (Dec. 18)

Turkey, an especially strategic member of the U.S.-commanded NATO military alliance, has been sharply opposed to the U.S. use of the YPG Kurdish forces in Syria. Turkey is engaged in a decades-long war against the national aspirations of the 15 million oppressed Kurdish population in Turkey, where the Kurds make up almost 20 percent of the population.

The much smaller Kurdish minority in Syria, amounting to 1.5 million, decided to take advantage of the vacuum created by the weakened central Syrian government to establish a long-sought Kurdish homeland as an autonomous area. They did not, however, call for the overthrow of the Syrian government or of President Assad’s ouster.

The political umbrella representing the Syrian Kurds, the SGF, has held official meetings with the Syrian government in Damascus. At these meetings President Assad made it clear that the government welcomed “open doors” and discussion with the Kurds, but that all foreign occupiers, including the U.S. and Turkish forces, must leave Syria.

The Syrian Kurdish delegation made it clear that their goal is a political deal to safeguard their autonomy. The Syrian central government, engaged in a struggle to save the whole country, did not oppose Kurdish autonomy. The future federated status of the Kurds was left open. (tinyurl.com/ycrvng9b)

In May 2017 Washington, anxious to create a statelet or proxy state in the oil-rich area of northeast Syria, armed the Kurdish YPG forces in an effort to create an army dependent on the U.S. With al-Qaeda ISIS forces on one side and a U.S. bombing onslaught on the other, the Kurdish YPG militias were boxed into an alliance with the U.S.

The Turkish regime appeared apprehensive that U.S. arms supplied to Iraqi Kurds with the U.S. aim of keeping Iraq divided, and U.S. arms supplied to Syrian Kurds with the U.S. aim of keeping Syria divided, would easily reach the more numerous and more oppressed Kurds in Turkey.

Current hand wringing by the U.S. media that Trump’s announced withdrawal means a U.S. military presence will no longer “protect” the Kurds in Syria is disingenuous.

The U.S. goal all along has been to establish its own base in the region and keep all other forces divided and in contention.

Now Turkey’s participation with Russia and Iran in the recent conference, and the growing possibility of Turkey’s break with NATO — perhaps even military intervention where Turkey’s army confronts U.S. forces — has caught Washington in a tangled web of its own making.

Russia, Iran or — ?  Which country is next?

Russian and Iranian assistance to Syria is defensive in character.

If the U.S. were to succeed in overturning the government in Syria — as it did in Iraq and Libya — certainly Russia and Iran, which both resist U.S. domination, seem likely to be next on the U.S. list for attack.

The antiwar movement also needs to remain vigilant. U.S. forces are still massed on the ground in the Near East, in drone bases in African countries, in naval convoys off the shores of China and in the Far East.

There are still U.S. troops, aircraft carriers, nuclear subs and drones in the immediate area of Syria, looking for a new opportunity or a staged provocation.

As the Pentagon did in Iraq, there are many ways to rebrand or rename U.S. troops in Syria and launch a new imperialist initiative.

Antiwar and progressive forces need to maintain a clear and consistent demand to bring all U.S. troops and advisors home, close the bases, and end all occupation and sanctions.

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Sara Flounders has traveled twice to Syria in solidarity delegations during the U.S. war against that country. She is co-director of the International Action Center and helps coordinate the United National Antiwar Coalition, the Hands Off Syria Campaign, and the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases. Sara Flounders is a frequent contributor to Global Research

The Mattis Dilemma

December 27th, 2018 by Philip Giraldi

The resignation letter of Secretary of Defense James Mattis that was published last Thursday revealed much of the Deep State mindset that has produced the foreign policy catastrophes of the past seventeen years. Mattis, an active duty general in the Marine Corps who reportedly occasionally reads books, received a lot of good press during his time at Defense, sometimes being referred to as “the only adult in the room” when President Donald Trump’s national security and foreign policy team was meeting. Conveniently forgotten are Mattis comments relating to how to “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” His sobriquet in the Corps was “Mad Dog.”

In the media firestorm that has followed upon General Mattis’s resignation, he has been generally lauded as a highly experienced and respected leader who has numerous friends on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Of course, the press coverage should be taken with a grain of salt as it is designed less to praise Mattis and more to get at Trump over the decision to leave Syria, which is being assailed by both neoliberals and neoconservatives who believe that war is the health of the state.

The arguments against the Trump decisions to depart from Syria and downsize in Afghanistan are contrived for the most part and based on the premise that American intervention in places that Washington deems not to be sufficiently promoting democracy, rule of law and free trade is a good thing. Peter Ford, former British Ambassador to Syria, put it nicely when discussing the reaction in the media:

“Trump’s critics…will have the vapors about ‘losing ground to Russia’, ‘making Iran’s day’, and ‘abdicating influence,’ but their criticism is ill-founded. Contrary to their apparent belief, the US does not have a God-given right to send its forces anywhere on the planet it deems fit. Withdrawal will see the US in one respect at least follow the international rules-based system we are so fond of enjoining on others, and will therefore be a victory of sorts for upholders of international law.”

The central argument of the Mattis resignation letter that is being cited by critics relates to Washington’s relationship with the rest of the world and is framed as a failure by President Trump to understand who are friends and who are enemies. Mattis wrote

“One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies.

“Similarly, I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions – to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.

“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.”

General Mattis does indeed hold views that were shaped by four decades of experience, but most of it was bad and produced wrong conclusions about America’s place in the world. The Cold War was essentially a bi-polar conflict pitting two adversaries that had the ability to destroy all life on the planet. It generated a Manichean viewpoint on good vs. evil that did not reflect reality which was succeeded by a global war on terror declared by Washington that also exploited the good and evil paradigm. Mattis was a product of that kind of thinking, which was also fueled by the concept of American exceptionalism, which saw the United States as the proper promoter and enforcer of universal values.

There is, of course, another viewpoint, which is that American blundering and use of force as a first option has, in fact, created the current dystopia. The United States is not currently venerated as a force for good, quite the opposite. Opinion polls suggest that Washington is overwhelmingly viewed negatively worldwide and it is perceived as being the nation most likely to start wars. That is not exactly what the nation’s Founders envisioned back in 1783.

Trump is right about leaving Syria where nothing beyond prolonging the bloody conflict is being accomplished. Mattis is wrong about supporting “friends.” For an educated man, he misreads history. The First World War and Second World War developed as they did because of alliances. Countries that appear friendly can exploit relationships with other more powerful nations that will have devastating results. Alliances should be temporary, coming and going based on the interests of the nations involved. In the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia are not actually friends of the United States, and are engaged instead in manipulating Washington to suit their own purposes. Mattis does not understand that and sees a permanent state of war requiring the continued existence of NATO, for example, as a vehicle for deterrence and peace. It is neither. Its very existence depends on a perception of being threatened even where no threat exists, which has poisoned the relationship with Russia since the fall of communism. Worse still, that false perception of threat can lead to war and a global nuclear holocaust.

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

Featured image is from SCF

Featured image: USS San Joaquin County (LST-1122)’s starboard propeller being removed/changed by divers from USS Ajax (AR-6) date and location unknown. US Navy photo.

First published by Global Research on June 19, 2020

A crucial element of Japan’s 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security with the United States, was that no nuclear weapons would be stationed within Japanese territory. Unknown to successive pro-American governments in Japan, along with the country’s population, was that this key provision was being violated in the most blatant fashion.

That same year, 1960, a mere couple of hundred yards off the coast of Iwakuni – a little known southern Japanese city – there was anchored an American flat-bottomed ship, the USS San Joaquin County. This seemingly innocuous vessel, at 328 feet long, was acting under the guise of an “electronics repair ship”, having first arrived at Iwakuni in September 1959.

In reality the San Joaquin County, which was afloat in Iwakuni’s tidal waters, was weighed down with nuclear weapons. The vessel, classified as an LST for “Landing Ship, Tank” or alternatively “tank landing ship”, was comfortably positioned within the three-mile limit of Japanese territorial waters. It was therefore stationed well inside the region of Japan, as even the most hawkish US official would have been forced to concede.

Had news of this massive breach of Japanese sovereignty leaked out, it would very likely have resulted in the demise of any American-friendly government in the country. Such a discovery may also have led to the US losing each of its precious military bases in Japan, along with a collapse of diplomatic relations between the states. Worst of all, a new Japanese administration could have shifted alliances toward Communist China and the USSR, in another blow to US hegemony in this key region.

Less than two decades earlier, two of Japan’s cities were leveled by US atomic bombs, some of the defining moments in human history. The attacks led to a nuclear domino effect, beginning with the USSR in 1949, and continuing with a further seven countries now possessing nuclear arsenals. The final death toll from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings is estimated at over 200,000. The Japanese had not forgotten these callous attacks; hence the specific clause in the 1960 mutual security treaty, that no nuclear weapons be situated within Japan’s territory.

USS San Joaquin County (LST-1122) moored pierside Naval Station Yokosuka, Japan in 1968. Photo by Larry Roszkowiak 

Meanwhile, far from having “station ship duties”, the real job description of the San Joaquin County was to deliver its nuclear arsenal to a handful of US bombers, permanently placed at Iwakuni for general war missions. During a nuclear emergency, the San Joaquin County would sail the 200 yards or so ashore, and lay down anchor. The front of the ship opened like a clamshell, whereby amphibious tractors emerged carrying the nuclear bombs; the vehicles rolled down a ramp and into the shallow water, or directly onto the beach. From there, the nuclear-laden tractors would travel to Iwakuni’s airstrip, loading the precious cargo onto the American planes.

A small Marine air base was located at Iwakuni, which had a covert understanding in which its bombers would receive their nuclear weapons after just minutes. They would in fact obtain their nuclear stockpiles six to 10 hours in advance of any other American bombers in Japan. However, in the event of any attacks on Communist states, the likelihood is the Iwakuni aircraft would have been held back. They may well have been ordered to wait until other US planes in Japan were armed with their own nuclear bombs, before flying off at a similar time. The contingencies at Iwakuni, to swiftly attack the USSR and China, would probably have been rendered meaningless in any case.

The nuclear situation at Iwakuni was not well known even among US Air Force and Navy planners. Yet it was common knowledge among personnel at the Iwakuni air base itself. This highly classified information could easily have been leaked, by accident or otherwise, to civilians such as the Japanese girlfriends of American crews at Iwakuni. What’s more, US planners had suspected this secret nuclear arsenal had already been discovered by Chinese or Russian spies – who would reveal their groundbreaking information at the most inopportune time. On some occasions, the San Joaquin County openly rehearsed its landing of the tractors with their cargo, in full view of the coastline.

In a separate instance, it would have been a routine operation for Communist frogmen (military scuba divers) to target the vulnerable “repair ship” with mines. Sabotage directed against the San Joaquin County could have resulted in a partial or full nuclear explosion, releasing huge amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Iwakuni is only 26 miles from Hiroshima and, in such a case, that city may have experienced a second catastrophe within a generation.

Despite all the risks, the San Joaquin County remained at Iwakuni through periods of the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In July 1966, the San Joaquin County sailed to Guam for repairs; months following that in late November 1966, it relocated to Okinawa, a US-controlled island 1,200 km south of Iwakuni. Earlier that year the American ambassador to Japan, Edwin Reischauer, had learned of the ship’s presence at Iwakuni through a leak to his office. Reischauer threatened to resign unless it was moved clear of the Japanese mainland.

USS San Joaquin County (LST-1122) moored pierside at Naval Station Guam in 1968. Photo by Larry Roszkowiak

Gerald W. Johnson, the US special assistant to the secretary of defense for atomic weapons and energy, was responsible for knowing the precise location of every nuclear weapon in the world. However, Johnson was utterly unaware of the nuclear cargo hidden away in the San Joaquin County. Indeed, he was deliberately deceived, being led to believe the ship was present to conduct electronic overhauls – such deception ranking as an extremely serious offense.

Nor was Johnson aware of nuclear arsenals present in other American vessels, on or near, Japanese shorelines. US warships regularly arrived into Japanese ports for rest periods, which was vital for bolstering morale among travel-weary crew members. Also unknown to many in the Japanese government, along with the country’s general population, was that these ships were almost all loaded with nuclear weapons.

This further applied to the aircraft carriers that arrived into Japanese harbors – which carried nuclear bombs destined for American aircraft – and elsewhere, the large US destroyers, which were armed with masses of nuclear torpedoes. None of the American vessels ever bothered to deposit their nuclear arsenals to bases, before sailing into Japanese territorial waters.

These realities were supported by US Rear Admiral Eugene La Rocque, who said in 1974 that:

 “My experience has been that any ship that is capable of carrying nuclear weapons carries nuclear weapons. They do not offload them when they go into foreign ports such as Japan, or other countries. If they are capable of carrying them, they normally keep them aboard ship at all times”.

This seems likely to be the case today.

The American vessels could be stationed at port for weeks on end, so virtually all year round there were nuclear weapons not far from Japanese civilian areas. Soviet Union war planners were undoubtedly aware these American ships were filled to the rafters with nuclear bombs – which in event of attack would be used against the USSR, the Chinese, or (most likely) both. As a result, Japan’s coastal regions constituted high priority targets for possible nuclear attacks directed from Moscow.

What’s more, with so many nuclear-armed craft sailing around in confined areas along Japan’s coasts, there was always a chance of an accidental collision, or other unforeseen incident. This could have led to a semi or full detonation of a nuclear bomb. The risk was small, but when multiplied by the presence of so many American ships straddled along the shorelines, it was hardly insignificant. The political opposition in Japan, along with anti-nuclear activists, would hardly have been impressed (had they known), nor would Emperor Hirohito one can guess.

When top level Japanese officials were asked if the US ships had nuclear bombs aboard, they spoke with baseless confidence that there were none. They would point to not having been notified by the Americans of the presence of such weapons. The US Department of Defense retains the same policy until today – they refuse to confirm or deny the presence, or absence, of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world.

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

Between April and July this year, Nicaragua suffered an extremely violent attempt at regime change supported by the US government and its allies. Crucial integral components of that coup attempt were bad faith reporting by international human rights organizations and extremely distorted news coverage by Western media. Partisan human rights organizations and media falsely blamed Nicaragua’s Sandinista government for almost all the deaths during the coup, when the reverse is true. Over two hundred Sandinista supporters, uninvolved passers-by and police were killed and hundreds suffered intimidation, abuse and torture at the hands of the US supported opposition forces. By default, organizations like the Inter American Commission for Human Rights and Amnesty International make clear they could hardly care less.

The clearest failure in their false reporting of the conflict is the sinister, ridiculous insistence that the Nicaraguan opposition engaged principally in peaceful protest, a claim beyond absurd given the number of Sandinista and police casualties. This deliberately deceitful coverage of events in Nicaragua reflects the broad contamination of Western societies by what economist Bill Black and others call “control fraud” whereby companies, especially powerful financial companies, use superficially legitimate accounts and auditing controls deliberately to mislead investors. Such companies report inflated assets and minimal costs giving a deliberately untrue and misleading view of their company’s financial position. These powerful companies crowd out honest business practice and manipulate political leaders so as to co-opt justice officials and escape criminal prosecution.

The US government’s failed regime change attempt in Nicaragua this year, like the US offensives against Venezuela or Iran, for example, reveal how this corrupt process reaches into Western institutions of all kinds. Western non-profits, news media and multilateral institutions operate as one enormous corrupt combination via an infinite disinformation feedback loop, denying their countries’ peoples a true and fair view of world events. They falsely inflate how good and morally superior they are, their assets, while deceitfully minimizing the costs, the countless victims and the incalculable suffering. So the populations invested in that vast fraudulent concern think the system’s purported controls, like the media and the non governmental sector, work just fine when, in fact, almost everything is corrupt.

In Nicaragua’s case, two events demonstrate this reality very clearly. Firstly, Western reports on Nicaragua either completely omitted or else glibly dismissed the murderous attack last May on a Sandinista media outlet, Nuevo Radio Ya. The attack resulted from a false sensationalist claim by Miguel Mora, of the opposition’s propaganda outlet 100% Noticias, that his TV station was under attack that day. Mora appealed for opposition activists to attack Nuevo Radio Ya, which they did, setting it on fire, holding over 20 radio staff under siege and then shooting at firefighters and police attempting to control the fire and rescue the people inside. Only the bravery of the rescue services and the radio station staff prevented more severe injury and loss of life. That story has never been told in Western media except by probably the only two genuinely independent US writers to visit Nicaragua during the failed coup, Max Blumenthal and Dan Kovalik.

US writer Max Blumenthal talking to radio workers at the burnt out shell of a radio station attacked by opposition activists in May this year (Source: author)

A second incident, among dozens of similar cases, also demonstrates the corruption of the Western human rights industry and their media accomplices. Last week, the Nicaraguan authorities made public the results of a painstaking investigation into one of the headline atrocities the IACHR and Amnesty International attributed to the government when it took place on June 16th. That day a family of six including two children burned to death in an arson attack on their house. Immediately, the virulent opposition human rights organization CENIDH had its activists on the scene falsely accusing the government of the crime. Within hours the IACHR were also attributing the heinous attack to the government. Now, after months of investigation, the police have identified four of the arsonists on the basis of accusations by survivors of the fire, witness identification and testimony, forensic analysis and incriminating material from opposition social media. Two of the accused have been sent for trial and two are fugitives.

Very early during the coup attempt, the Nicaraguan government invited the OAS to send an Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts to assist the Nicaraguan authorities in their investigations as part of the IACHR mission in Nicaragua. But the IACHR presented what it called a final report to the Permanent Council of the OAS before that expert group had even started work. Now, the expert group has presented a report covering events up to May 30th that, predictably, reproduces the self-same false information as the earlier peremptory IACHR report based on reports by opposition media and human rights organizations. Like the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights before it, the IACHR expert group broke the terms of its original agreement with the government by engaging in activities it had no authority to undertake.

The term of the expert group’s visit had already expired when, on December 19th, the government decided to suspend the IACHR bodies’ presence in Nicaragua, accusing them of supporting the country’s minority opposition and its efforts to overthrow Nicaragua’s constitutional government. Earlier, the Interior Ministry on December 14th confirmed the National Assembly’s measure canceling the legal status of nine non-profit organizations who made illegal use of their resources to participate in and actively support the coup attempt. Those NGOs represent 0.2% of around 4300 non-profits registered with the country’s Interior Ministry. In another move to dismantle the opposition networks involved in the failed coup attempt, the government applied the country’s long standing legislation against incitement to hatred and arrested Miguel Mora, head of 100% Noticias, based on dozens of accusations by Sandinista victims of opposition violence, citing Mora for his hateful instigation of attacks suffered by them and their relatives.

As in the case of measures by the Venezuelan authorities to protect their country’s society from similar crimes, Western media coverage of these recent events in Nicaragua misrepresents them as moves by a dictatorship. But for people in Nicaragua they represent legitimate measures to defend the rule of law, economic stability and citizen security. Western media and human rights organization persistently omit sadistic, murderous opposition violence and grotesquely misrepresent steps by the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan governments to protect people from it. By covering up the opposition’s crimes they make themselves accomplices to them, as the Nicaraguan government noted in relation to the IACHR, it “ constitutes a platform for the broadcasting of false information to promote international sanctions against our country as did the IACHR official Maria Claudia Pulido in her visit to the United States last September 27th, promoting from overseas the rupture of constitutional order and the attempted coup d’etat against Nicaragua’s legitimate government, thus violating the impartiality established in the OAS Charter.”

By refusing to acknowledge the reality of wholesale murderous opposition violence during the failed coup attempt, the IACHR and its NGO camp followers like Amnesty International have confirmed they are accessories to the US government’s regime change operation in Nicaragua. They have been willing accomplices to the killing, burning, rape, abuse and torture of hundreds of Sandinistas, which they have tried disgracefully to cover up.

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The US executive order of withdrawal from Syria has been signed off on, indicating that President Trump is determined to recall the few thousands US troops in Syria back home. It is well known that regular troops are much more vulnerable during withdrawal operations than in combat or deployment positions. Accordingly, the withdrawal, which seems to be happening despite widespread scepticism in Syria and Iraq, will likely take less than the announced 100 days to complete. US military command keeps the dates secret to avoid casualties. Although the departure of the US is much welcomed by all parties in and around Syria – except for the Kurds – Trump is intentionally leaving behind a very chaotic situation in the Levant, and is setting a deadly trap for Russia in the first place, but also for Iran and Turkey.

Judging from what Presidents Trump and Erdogan said to each other during their last phone conversations, it seems the US establishment has decided to leave Syria in Turkey’s hands. This is far from an innocent move. Indeed, the Pentagon has deliberately pushed the several thousand ISIS fighters in the area under its control to the shore of the Euphrates river, facing the Syrian Army and its allies on the Deir-Ezzour front. This means that, in case of a fast US withdrawal coordinated with Turkey, Ankara’s troops will be able to move into the Kurdish-Arab province of al-Hasaka, starting perhaps with Manbij or Tal Abiad, facing no opposition from ISIS for the simple reason that there aren’t any ISIS militants in the area. The two cities are hundreds of kilometres away from the ISIS-controlled area along the Euphrates in Deir-Ezzour.

Turkey can eradicate ISIS in Manbij, Tel Abiad, Ain Arab, Raqqah and all the way to Qamishli simply because ISIS is not present in the entire area but along the Euphrates opposite the Syrian Army forces where the US pushed it.

In the case of a sudden Turkish attack, the YPG Kurdish forces (Syrian PKK) will have to rush towards the advancing Turkish troops and try to slow them down, waiting for the Syrian government’s help and allowing civilians to leave towards Damascus controlled areas or to flee toward Iraqi Kurdistan. Such a move will disrupt the Turkish-Russian-Syrian relationship. Moscow has already warned Turkey against moving into the northeast Syria. Any Turkish move, or even the advance of its jihadist proxy forces in Syria, amassed on the border of the Kurdish controlled provinces, will trigger a reshuffle in the relationships between Moscow and Ankara and between Moscow and Damascus. Such a realignment can only be avoided if President Erdogan resists the temptation to invade and accedes to Russia’s clear preference that the US departure be followed by discussions about the future of the area.

Turkey was already contemplating – according to well-informed sources in Syria – annexing the north of Syria rather than occupying it. Any occupation of Syrian territory will generate international complications and lack of recognition worldwide. However, Turkey has learned from Northern Cyprus that annexation can continue for decades with only sporadic reactions from the international community. Russia’s annexation of Crimea might be taken as a precedent.

If Erdogan doesn’t coordinate with Russia and Iran, the Idlib front will be opened. Pretexts are not lacking since the jihadists are continuously violating the cease-fire agreed in Astana. A Turkish invasion will lead the Syrian Army to attack Idlib, the city and rural area under jihadist control, while also attacking ISIS on the Euphrates with a view to a quick victory.

Any possible ISIS future massacre and attacks in the Kurdish controlled provinces will give a retroactive moral legitimacy to the past years of US occupation of Syria territory. Pundits and US establishment officials will tell the world how the illegal US presence in Syria over the years had served to fight terrorism (ISIS).

In Damascus there is a growing understanding between Kurds and government representatives, as negotiations continue,  about how they will face ISIS together once the US pulls out all forces, a withdrawal expected in less than one month.

There is a need for military coordination to create a secure passage for the troops to squeeze ISIS between two forces on several fronts along the Euphrates river before it expands toward the vast area of al-Hasaka. That will require the support of Russian Air Force, the Syrian Special forces, Iranian ground forces allies and Hezbollah to participate in this very decisive battle to end ISIS, a job the USA did not find time for during the last couple of years of its occupation of the same area.

The YPG will find themselves cooperating with Russia after having fought under USA command for many years. Simultaneously, more Syrian and allied forces will be pushed towards Idlib to prevent the jihadists from taking advantage of the ISIS extermination operation to attack.

For Turkey, any unilateral plan to move into Syria without coordinating with Russia is not to its full advantage. US withdrawal will allow Turkey to reach neither ISIS nor the rich oil and gas fields in DeirEzzour, including al-Omar’s abundant oil and Conoco gas fields. These will be targeted and reached by the Syrian government forces and their allies only after the US withdraws its forces. Last February, Damascus ordered its forces to cross the Euphrates in an attempt to attack ISIS and control the oil and gas fields. These were attacked by the US coalition, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Syrian and Russian Wagner contractors.

Turkish combat skills were not very impressive when Turkish forces clashed with ISIS in many areas, including Jarablus, Al Rai and Dabiq, in 2016. The forces of Ankara were able to control these cities only after a deal with ISIS who managed to absorb the first wave of attack and inflict severe losses on Turkish forces during the first weeks. ISIS pulled out once the battle was doomed and it was attacked from the rear.

It is likely that neither the Turkish army and its allies nor the Kurdish YPG are capable of defeating ISIS alone. The Syrian army, on the other hand, with the help of their allies and the Russians, have driven ISIS out of many places on the Syrian geography including Palmyra, Suweida and surrounding steppe, spread over tens of thousands of kilometres, in urban and open area warfare.

What is certain is that the Kurds have everything to lose from Trump’s decision to withdraw, as he daily gives more indications that he wants to end his occupation of northeast Syria in favour of Turkey. They have profited greatly from the US presence, thinking it would never end. Now they don’t have many choices unless they have developed suicidal tendencies, as their decision in Afrin suggests.

The quick US withdrawal is expected and even designed to create, no doubt, an initial confusion in the triangle Turkey-Syria-Iraq in the first months. ISIS, Turkey, and al-Qaeda may take advantage of this, hoping to turn the situation to their advantage. Nevertheless, this withdrawal will no doubt be a long-term blessing to the Syrian government, whose officials had not dared to hope for such an outcome. The US establishment has been a source of continuous havoc in the Levant and especially to the “Axis of the Resistance”; it has been the protector of al-Qaeda (in Idlib) and ISIS (in the area Trump declares his intention to withdraw from) in Syria and Iraq. Its departure is a sign that the US is coming to grips with the fact that its hegemony is no longer unilateral. Russia is moving forward while the US is backing off in the Middle East.

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“O little town of Bethlehem/How still we see thee lie/Above thy deep and dreamless sleep/The silent stars go by,” runs the famous Christmas carol sung all over the English-speaking world as it celebrates Christmas.

On Christmas Eve midnight mass will sound out from Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the legendary birthplace of Jesus Christ, proclaiming he will bring “peace to men on earth”.

The real Bethlehem

Nothing could be further from the truth than the image of a sweet, untroubled Bethlehem as depicted in a carol originally created by the pious imagination of a Victorian Western-Christian. Generations of Christian children have been brought up on it, and its mythical power is such that few of them realise what or even where Bethlehem is.

A well-educated English friend I had known for years was recently surprised to learn that Bethlehem was located in Palestine. In her mind the town was more a legend than an actual place, and connected to Jews, if to anyone.

That idea is still widespread and has been instrumental in keeping Western-Christians disengaged from the real Bethlehem and unsupportive of its struggle for survival. The city I saw on a visit earlier this year was a travesty of the place the Christmas carol depicts and an indictment of Western Christianity’s abject failure to sustain one of its holiest shrines.

In today’s Bethlehem “dreamless sleep” is more like a nightmare, and the town can only “lie still” when Israel’s occupation ends.

Israel’s brutal vandalism

Bethlehem and its outlying villages of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour have been traditionally the most Christian of Palestine’s places, even though Bethlehem has a Muslim majority now. Until Israel’s occupation in 1967 the city had been an important social, cultural and economic hub, and one of Palestine’s most ancient localities. Its name “Beit Lahem” goes back to Canaanite times, when it was a shrine to the Canaanite god, Lahm or Lahem.

Its architecture is testament to its rich history: Roman and Byzantine, when the Empress Helena had the Church of the Nativity built over the supposed cave of Jesus’ birthplace in 327; followed by the Muslim conquests of 637, and then the crusader occupation from 1099 until ended by Saladin in 1187; the succeeding Ottomans built the city’s walls in the early 16th century, their rule terminated by the British Mandate from 1922 to 1948.

In 1995 Bethlehem was transferred to Palestinain Authority control, although it remains under Israel’s overall rule.

Despite their variation, none of these preceding historical periods was ever associated with the brutal vandalism and destructiveness of Israel’s current occupation. Leaving Jerusalem southwards to travel the nine kilometre distance to Bethlehem, I took a wrong turn and found myself on a fast, modern highway without another Palestinain driver in sight.

I had stumbled by accident onto a Jews-only settler bypass road, one of two that skirt Bethlehem and connect with its encircling settlements. I soon realised the purpose of the operation: To pretend that no one else exists in the area but Jews.

A sad place

There are 22 Israeli settlements encircling Bethlehem, cutting off its exits and confiscating its agricultural land. They glower down from the surrounding hills and house more settlers than all of Bethlehem and its neighbourhoods. To the north is Har Homa, a settlement that until 2000 was an ancient, densely wooded hill called Jabal Abu Ghneim.

Israel uprooted the trees and replaced them with a colony of dreary, box-like houses, which it threatened to turn into a Bethlehem look-alike for tourists. Nokidim, to the east, is the current residence of Israel’s hard-line former defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

Since 2015 Israel has closed off Bethlehem’s fertile Cremisan Valley to its Palestinain owners, and announced in June of this year a massive settlement expansion along the route between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Rachel’s tomb, Bethlehem’s historic landmark on the main Jerusalem-Bethlehem road and an area traditionally buzzing with shops and restaurants, is now blocked off by the wall and reserved exclusively for Jews. Muslim worshippers who venerated the tomb (and built it) cannot go there. It is a sad place, deserted and lifeless. In the shadow of the wall most businesses have closed and as the noose tightens around Bethlehem, none will be left.

Israel’s relentless penetration to the heart of Bethlehem is unmistakable. Bethlehem is deliberately isolated behind the formidable separation barrier, surrounded by checkpoints, and its economy strangulated. Its main source of prosperity had been tourism with two million annual visitors and a thriving souvenir market of classic olive wood and mother-of-pearl carvings.

It was also a rich agricultural area with a successful wine industry. But most of its land has been confiscated, and draconian restrictions on movement to and from Bethlehem have reduced tourism and pilgrim numbers drastically. Today its population of 220,00, including 20,000 refugees, have the highest unemployment rate in the occupied territories, second only to that of Gaza.

Saving Bethlehem

Sitting in the “cafe” outside the Walled Off Hotel at the entrance to Bethlehem, I had a vivid experience of what Israel’s occupation feels like. The hotel is in effect a piece of installation art, created by the British artist, Banksy, to highlight the plight of Bethlehem.

The only view from the hotel windows is of Israel’s hideous eight-metre wall, whose huge grey slabs are a mere car’s width away.

Stretching forward, you can almost touch it. I remember how its sinister watchtowers and surveillance cameras bore down on me oppressively. It was a scene out of a horror film.

To date, and despite church delegations, papal visits, and public expressions of concern, nothing Christians have done has halted or reversed Israel’s destruction of a city so uniquely holy to Christendom. If they can do nothing to save Bethlehem, they can at least stop singing a carol that mocks its sad reality.

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Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian doctor, academic and author.

After the decision made by the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on November 27, the parishes of the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox churches in Western Europe are in a brown study on their future. However, they have no choice, really. The resolution of the Synod clearly obliges them to be distributed among the local dioceses of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. If they join any other ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it is most likely that the Phanar will break off canonical relations with them. And the unilateral proclamation of independence will lead them in schism and cause losing of recognition in the Orthodox world.

The governing bodies of the Archdiocese are located in Paris, France. Most parishes and monasteries are also located in this country. Thus, if they decide to comply with the resolution of the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, they will be headed by the Metropolitan of France, Emmanuel Adamakis. Will it contribute to the integration of believers of the Russian tradition into the structures of the Ecumenical Patriarchate? Most likely it won’t.

And the problem is not just in the arrogant attitude of the Ecumenical Patriarchate hierarchs to non-Greek believers, resulting in the existence of parallel national jurisdictions under the rule of Constantinople in territories that already have their Greek bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (for example, the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in the USA and Canada overlapping with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America).

There is one more significant factor: even the Greek believers themselves are not enthusiastic about the reign of Metropolitan Emmanuel. For example, His Eminence has been criticized for promoting unworthy hierarchs, covering frauds and intrigues that ensured their career success. He is also accused of ignoring the immorality and sexual misconduct of the subordinate clergy. For example, police has documented a case of sexual harassment of a parishioner by Fr. Nicholas Kakavelakis. However, Metropolitan Emmanuel did nothing in response.

As a director of the Office of the Orthodox Church under the auspices of the European Union, and then Vice-President of the Council of European Churches, Metropolitan Emmanuel regularly meets with politicians and leaders of various non-governmental organizations whose liberal positions greatly contradict the teaching of the Church. At the same time, he does not communicate concerns of the Orthodox believers about this clearly. Did he express the worries of his flock about the legalization of same-sex marriage by President Hollande in 2013? Did he bring attention to the anti-Christian tendencies in Western society during his meetings with representatives of other churches? Absolutely not.

On the contrary, Metropolitan Emmanuel is a regular guest at the annual galas of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France, CRIF) – an organization that maintains friendly contacts with the French Jewish LGBT group Beit Haverim!

Moreover, there are loud rumors about himself being an alleged sodomite. For example, during his vacation in Lesbos, he was seen in the company of a young man and their relationships were very suspicious. It seems that it was too embarrassing for eyewitnesses to describe what they unwittingly heard from the Orthodox bishop. Therefore, they criticized the least serious violation of the canons, namely, they condemned Met. Emmanuel for beard shaving and wearing frivolous secular clothes.

Thus, although the majority in the former archdiocese of the Russian churches in Europe has become quite indifferent to the Russian tradition and has been largely “Europeanized”, they are still too conservative to accept such behavior and are not willing to have such a Metropolitan as their Primate.

At the same time, the rumors that Metropolitan Emmanuel is the main candidate for Archbishopric Throne of America become more and more widespread. If this is true and European Orthodox will in turn receive a more conservative shepherd, everyone will be satisfied and there will be no serious conflicts.

The difficulty is that the Western European Exarchate has already been dissolved but the Archbishop Demetrios of America is still in full power. Reportedly, His Eminence will not leave at least until next Easter. And an Extraordinary General Assembly of the Diocesan Governing Union of Russian Orthodox Associations in Western Europe (a meeting of clergy and laity) is scheduled for February 23 next year.

Thus, even if the Phanar had a plan to quietly reshuffle the Primates, something must have gone wrong and all their cards were mixed up. As a result, at least for a while, the execution of the resolution of the Synod of Constantinople will mean for Russian parishes in Europe a transition under the authority of Metropolitan Emmanuel of France. And this, despite the fact that the latter has ties to the leadership of the Archdiocese, will not be easy.

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Sophia Iliadi is a freelance blogger from Athens, currently based in the US. She’s written a couple of articles for Veterans Today, voreini.gr, exapsalmos.gr.

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Trump May be Seeking a Win-Win Outcome in Syria

December 27th, 2018 by Mark Taliano

“The Axis of Resistance is effectively wiping out terrorism in Syria – terrorism supported by the West – and for this, we should all be grateful,” Mark Taliano said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.

“Did the on-going military success against Western-supported terrorism affect Trump’s decision? I would think so,” he said.

“It means the world is shifting towards a multi-polar orientation, and Trump may be aware of this. Maybe he is cutting his losses and seeking a win-win outcome which will benefit both the US and its fabricated enemies,” the analyst added.

Taliano is an author and independent investigative reporter who recently returned from a trip to Syria with the Third International Tour of Peace to Syria. In his new book titled “Voices from Syria”, he combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes mainstream media narratives about the dirty war on Syria.

The following is the full text of the interview.

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Tasnim: As you know, US President Donald Trump has recently decided to withdraw all US troops from Syria. Given that Trump is a businessman and thinks only about profit, what are the reasons behind this decision? What do you think about the possibility of the total withdrawal? Would he keep US strongholds in Syria?

Taliano: Yes, Trump announced that he was going to withdraw all US troops from Syria. It could mean anything, since Western politicians have no credibility. They say one thing and do another. They are largely puppets to deep state, de facto unelected politicians.

Nonetheless, I am very pleased that he at least made the statement for a couple of reasons.

First, it reveals the vacuousness of the fake Left and fake Progressives who infest Western discourse with their empty, uninformed anti-war posturing.  Any person who opposes such a decision (as the fake Left and fake Progressives do) is clearly pro-war of aggression. So they have lost all credibility to anyone who is paying attention.

Second, Trump’s statement means that it might just happen. Maybe he will pull US troops from Syria.  If he does, then that is extraordinarily commendable. Maybe Trump realizes that the neo-con project, spawn of the 911 false flag, is a disaster, as it is. The Western war criminals are perpetuating an overseas holocaust, they are draining public treasuries, and they are gaining nothing apart from permanent residency in the War Criminal Hall of Infamy.  So, from a business perspective, maybe he realizes that it is a lost cause and he should divert public monies to something productive, rather than to the black hole of the Pentagon and assorted agencies.

Tasnim: Trump’s withdrawal plan has been met with widespread opposition inside and outside the US. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has said he deeply regrets the controversial decision. “An ally must be dependable,” said Macron, who reportedly called Trump to warn him against the plan. US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the US envoy to the global coalition fighting the Daesh terrorist group, Brett McGurk, resigned in protest over Trump’s decision. In your opinion, why is Trump insisting on his decision?

Taliano: As I explain in my book, the entire “war on terror” is a fraud, since the West supports all of the terrorists in Syria, including ISIS (Daesh). Unfortunately, war propaganda in the West’s post-democratic, new Fascist societies is a growth industry so most North Americans have yet to figure this out.  They probably never will.  I am very happy that some of these pro-terrorist, pro-wars of aggression public figures are resigning. I wish they would all face war crimes trials at the Hague and then leave the scene permanently. If Bolton and Pompeo do not resign, they should. Again, I wish they would. If Trump could divest himself of these criminals, then he would be truly “draining the swamp”, and that would be commendable.

President Macron of France is a self-serving puppet for the transnational oligarch class globalists who are destroying the world. French people are generally more sophisticated than their North American counterparts, with a better awareness of geopolitical realities, so they are waking up to the fact that neoliberalism is a failed economic ideology. The international banksters and transnational monopolies are profiting from the warmongering while 99 % of domestic populations are paying the price in terms of taxes, destroyed economies, increased poverty, and so on.  Socialism exists in France and elsewhere, but it is strictly socialism for the publicly bailed-out oligarch classes. The French, and most notably the Gilets Jaunes are seemingly aware of this. I commend the French for rising up against Macron and all that he and his government represent.

Tasnim: Some analysts say that the US withdrawal would be a victory for Iran. What is your assessment of the Islamic Republic’s role in developments which led Trump to take such a decision?

Taliano: Iran has played an important role in the war against international terrorism. Iran’s role in Syria is legal, and effective. The Axis of Resistance is effectively wiping out terrorism in Syria – terrorism supported by the West – and for this we should all be grateful. So, if wiping out terrorists is a victory for Iran, then so be it. It is a well-earned victory. Most North Americans would applaud Iran’s role in Syria if they could only disabuse themselves of the war propaganda that assaults and victimizes them twenty- four hours a day. Iran does not have an empire, nor does it seek an empire.  It does not commit wars of aggression against other countries, and it respects international law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other nations, including its own.  Already the West is waging criminal economic war against Iran, and anyone who is paying attention knows that Iran is the West’s next target, so Iran has all the more incentive to fight terrorism. Western-supported terrorism is a direct threat to the Middle East and Iran must defend its national security.

Did the on-going military success against Western-supported terrorism affect Trump’s decision? I would think so. It means the world is shifting towards a multi-polar orientation, and Trump may be aware of this. Maybe he is “cutting his losses” and seeking a “win-win” outcome which will benefit both the US and its fabricated “enemies”. This would be a positive outcome.

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This article was originally published on Tasnim News Agency.

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.


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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

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Hindsight will best explain what only guesswork can do now. US equity market action in December has been uncharacteristically ugly for this time of year – the worst performance since December 1931 during the Great Depression.

Santa failed to arrive pre-Christmas like most often this time of year. Christmas eve market action was unprecedented – the worst ever for the Dow.

The day after the Wall Street Journal headlined “The Dow’s Worst Christmas Eve.” Bloomberg News was just as glum, headlining “US Stocks Endure Worst Pre-Christmas Day on Record.”

The Nasdaq was practically in bear market territory before Wall Street trading began yesterday. The S&P 500 approaches it, reaching a 20-month low.

The Dow is 18.77% off its October 3 high, the S&P 500 19.77% below its September 20 peak, and the Nasdaq is off 22% from its August high following Wednesday trading.

The global stock market and New York Stock Exchange composite indexes peaked in January. The Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq hung on, failing to roll over until late summer/early fall, high-fliers hammered most.

Noted investor Jeffrey Grundlach said bear market conditions arrived, believing we’re in one, saying:

“(W)e’ve had the first leg down, and the second leg down is usually more painful than the first leg down if this is indeed a bear market.”

He believes what’s going on isn’t short-term, things unlikely to be followed by resumption of the longest US bull market on record in the coming days or weeks.

Lots of factors contribute to bear markets. Economist Hyman Minsky warned about times like now. He constructed a “financial instability hypothesis,” building on the work of John Maynard Keynes.

It showed how speculative bubbles grow out of outsized greed, asset values collapsing in the end-game part of a seven-stage up-then-reverse journey downward.

It’s a “Minsky Moment,” what he called “revulsion” when euphoria turns to panic. Large investors bail out, followed by market meltdown. Whether it’s happening now will best be known in the weeks and months ahead.

According to Minsky, over a prolonged period of prosperity, investors pile into risk assets until lending exceeds what borrowers can pay off from incoming revenues.

When over-indebted investors sell to cover loan obligations, rising markets spiral lower. The final stage of bubble deflation happens when cheap credit ends. Downward momentum is much greater and faster than when markets are rising.

It’s going on now, the Fed raising interest rates and unwinding $50 billion in proceeds from its $4.5 trillion+ balance sheet monthly, reinvesting the rest – a reverse quantitative easing (QE).

The Fed’s balance sheet was around $800 billion at the start of the 2008-09 financial crisis. The longest-ever US bull market began in March 2009 – fueled by trillions of dollars of Fed created liquidity along with near-zero interest rates, not market fundamentals.

What stimulated years of speculative excess ended, the main factor driving markets lower.

Wall Street got an added boost by the great GOP tax cut heist last December, solely benefitting corporate America and high-net worth individuals, using their windfall to create greater wealth than already, including by stock market speculation – unrelated to stimulating economic growth and jobs creation.

In November, David Stockman warned of a steep market selloff, believing signs have been signaling it, saying:

“No one has outlawed recessions. We’re within a year or two of one. Fair value of the S&P going into the next recession is well below 2000, 1500 — way below where we are today.”

“If you’re a rational investor, you need only two words in your vocabulary: Trump and sell. He’s playing with fire at the very top of an aging expansion.”

“He’s attacking the Fed for going too quick when it’s been dithering for eight years.” After nine hikes, the Fed’s benchmark short rate is historically low at from 2.25 – 2.50%.

Trump’s trade war with China risks exacerbating a market selloff if it persists or worsens in the new year.

When sentiment turns negative, buyers hesitate stepping in (a so-called “buyers’ strike”). Things up or down have a way of taking on a life of their own.

Since October, negative sentiment outweighed positives. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin heightened market jitters by holding an emergency meeting of major Wall Street banks by phone – JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley.

They comprise the president’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the so-called “Plunge Protection Team,” created in the aftermath of the October 1987 market crash.

One analyst called convening them to discuss market turmoil the “financial equivalent of yelling fire in a crowed theater.”

Others fear the most dismal December in memory so far may signal the bull market’s end, perhaps a significant selloff ahead in the new year.

Will 2019 bring greater market fire and fury? Only Cassandra was good at predicting future events.

I’ll stick to what’s ongoing domestically and geopolitically with a final comment.

Trump’s tenure so far has been hostile to peace, equity and justice for everyone at home and abroad.

It’s hard being optimistic for what lies ahead, things more likely to worsen, not improve – aside from what happens on Wall Street and world markets.

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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.

Late on December 25, the Israeli Air Force carried out a missile strike on targets in the Damascus International Airport area. According to reports, Israeli F-16I jets launched at least 16 missiles from Lebanese airspace.

The Syrian media stressed that the Air Defense Forces (SADF) had intercepted most of the hostile missiles, but acknowledged that at least 3 Syrian servicemen had been injured in the incident. The SADF also fired several missiles at Israeli jets involved in the strike. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that they had employed their own air defense systems to protect the jets.

The Syrian side did not use the S-300 air defense system delivered by Russia to repel the airstrike. Syrian personnel have not yet finished the necessary training. According to experts, the Syrian S-300 system will be put on a combat duty in the second half of January or in early February 2019.

The recent Israeli strike came a day after the Russian Defense Ministry announced that 150 servicemen of one of the surface to air-missile regiments of Russia’s Central Military District had returned from Syria.

On December 25, Syrian Army soldiers, backed up by Russian servicemen, entered the village of Arima west of the town of Manbij, a stronghold of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Previously, Arima was controlled by the SDF. However, its current status is unclear. Pro-SDF sources claim that the village will be jointly controlled by the SDF and the Syrian Army. Pro-government sources claim that the village was handed over to the government.

Local sources claim that this move is the first stage of the implementation of a broader agreement, which may son be reached between the Damascus government, Russia and the Kurdish-dominated SDF.

Since the US decision to withdraw its troops from Syria and the resumption of Turkish threats to launch a new military operation against Kurdish armed groups in northern Syria, the SDF has desperately been seeking a new protector from Ankara. The Damascus government and Russia are one of the options considered by the Kurdish leadership. Another option is to hope that the remaining US personnel and French troops will be able to prevent a Turkish offensive along the entire contact line between the SDF and the Turkish military.

Meanwhile, Ankara continued its military build-up in Turkish regions bordering with northern Syria. Recently, a batch of Leopard 2A4 battle tanks  were reportedly sent to the area.

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“Palestinians continue to live under the threat of random violence by Israeli military and police: disproportionate violence within the West Bank and Gaza, unprompted violence in the face of peaceful protest, and misdirected violence by an Israeli state that systematically fails to distinguish between civilians and combatants….

In recent decades, the Israeli government has moved further and further to the right, normalizing settler colonialism and its accompanying logics of denial, destruction, displacement, and death. Despite international condemnation, settlement expansion has continued. At the same time, home demolitions and state-enforced displacement continue to uproot Palestinian communities. For Gazans, the eleven-year Israeli (and Egyptian) blockade by land, air, and sea has created the largest open-air prison in the world.  …

We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grass-roots action, local action and international action that will give us what justice requires and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea,” (Marc Lamont Hill, November 28, 2018 at the United Nations)

Fired for telling the truth.

Did CNN fire Mark Lamont Hill following pressures from the Zionist Anti Defamation League (ADL)?

The ADL and others said the “river to the sea” phrase is code for the destruction of Israel often used by Hamas and groups bent on its destruction.

“Those calling for ‘from the river to the sea’ are calling for an end to the State of Israel,” the ADL’s Senior Vice President for International Affairs, Sharon Nazarian, said in a statement, adding that the annual event at the UN “promotes divisiveness and hate.” (Boston Globe, November 30, 2018, emphasis added)

Mark Lamont Hall was fired for telling the truth.

Does anybody at CNN get fired for NOT reporting the crimes committed by Israel against the People of Palestine.

It’s called “lying through omission”. But you will not be fired for lying.

Unspoken Truth:

  • From 1945 Until Today – 20 to 30 Million People Killed in US led wars.
  • 291,880 bombs and missiles by the U.S. and its allies since 2001 dropped on Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen since 2001.

Is it reported by CNN? They might acknowledge the figures without mentioning that it is a crime against humanity.

Terrorism is “Made in the USA”. Al Qaeda is a creation of  the CIA. The “Global War on Terrorism” is a Fabrication used to justify US-NATO military interventions on humanitarian grounds (“Responsibility to Protect”).

That’s the “unspoken truth”. Again best not mention it on CNN if you want to keep your job.

The four year “counter-terrorism” bombing campaign against Iraq and Syria initiated by Obama in 2014 was NOT intended to target the Islamic State (ISIS). Its objective was to destroy Syria and Iraq. That is the unspoken truth.

Lying is the “New Normal” at CNN.

You only get fired for saying the truth. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 26, 2018

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Marc Lamont Hill: Interview on the Breakfast Club 

Marc Lamont Hill’s presentation at the United Nations, November 28, 2018

Full Transcript of Marc Lamont Hill’s statement at the United Nations

Mr Secretary General, chairman, ambassadors, and your excellencies — good afternoon. It is with great honor and humility that I accept the opportunity to speak before you. As a scholar, as an activist, and as a citizen, I am profoundly interested in the plight of the Palestinian people as well as the broader ethical, moral, and political implications of their struggle for freedom and justice, as well as equality. As such, this annual convening represents a critical intervention. It also represents a site of possibility.

On the other hand, it shows considerable irony. As you well know, this year marks the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This declaration was produced out of the rubble and contradictions of World War II, and it was intended to offer a clear ethical and moral outline of the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings, irrespective of race, religion, class, gender, or geography, are entitled.

This declaration, of course, has been far from perfect, both in design and in execution. Too often we have framed human rights through the lens of the West. We viewed it through the gaze of colonialism, and we have assessed them through the limited prism of our own experiences. Simply put, the powerful have too often attempted to universalize their own particular and local values.

Still, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has offered us a flawed but functional starting point from which to articulate basic moral and ethical ambitions as global citizens. These ambitions have been particularly helpful when attempting to keep track of the vulnerable against the backdrop of imperialism, exploitative economic arrangements, white supremacy, patriarchy, and all the other entanglements of the modern nation state.

For this reason, it is indeed ironic and sad that this year also marks the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, the great catastrophe in May 1948 that resulted in the expulsion, murder, and to date permanent dislocation of more than a million Palestinians. For every minute that the global community has articulated a clear and lucid framework for human rights, the Palestinian people have been deprived of the most fundamental of them.

While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that all people are “born free and equal in dignity and rights,” the Israeli nation state continues to restrict freedom and undermine equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as those in the West Bank and Gaza. At the current moment, there are more than sixty Israeli laws that deny Palestinians access to full citizenship rights simply because they’re not Jewish. From housing to education to family reunification, it is clear that any freedoms naturally endowed to all human beings are actively being stripped away from Palestinians through Israeli statecraft.

While human rights promise the right to life, liberty, and security of person, Palestinians continue to live under the threat of random violence by Israeli military and police: disproportionate violence within the West Bank and Gaza, unprompted violence in the face of peaceful protest, and misdirected violence by an Israeli state that systematically fails to distinguish between civilians and combatants.

While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects us against torture and cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Palestinians continue to be physically and psychologically tortured by the Israeli criminal justice system — a term I can only use with irony.

As human rights groups around the world have noted, the use of solitary confinement constitutes a clear and indisputable form of torture, yet in the West Bank, Palestinians are routinely subjected to solitary confinement and indefinite detention — often without any formal charges being filed. Last year, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that physical torture in “exceptional cases,” including ticking time bomb situations, constitutes acceptable means by which to engage in torture.

Although these exceptions are themselves a violation of the absolute human right not to be tortured, Israeli security operates in practice in such a way that nearly all Palestinian cases are viewed as exceptional. Nearly every Palestinian is understood to be a potential terrorist, thereby making them susceptible to ticking time bomb investigation tactics at all times. As such, Israel’s practices are routinely in clear violation of the UN’s convention on torture, which was signed by Israel in 1986 and ratified in 1991.

While the Declaration of Human Rights insists that no one be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile, Palestinians are routinely denied due process of law. West Bank Palestinians are regularly placed under administrative detention, a framework that allows them to be incarcerated for up to six months and can be extended after judicial review without being charged with a crime. The only thing needed for such outcomes is the ambiguous claim of a security threat, a claim used by the Israeli state at all times, at all costs, and for all reasons. Through this vagueness, Palestinians are routinely punished for their political views rather than any actual threat of violence.

The Declaration of Human Rights insists that all humans are entitled to a “fair and public hearing by an impartial tribunal.” Israeli military courts — the exclusive adjudicator, largely, for West Bank residents, and in some cases Palestinian citizens of Israel — have a conviction rate of more than 99 percent. That suggests that Palestinians are either more guilty than any other group in human history, or that the Israeli government is unwilling or incapable of offering fair and impartial trials for Palestinians.

The Declaration of Human Rights promises the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state, as well as the right to leave any country including “his [sic] own” and to return to said country. It is impossible to travel throughout historic Palestine and not see the blatant restriction of movement between cities in the occupied Palestinian territories as well as inside the state of Israel. Standing checkpoints, temporary or flying checkpoints, annexation walls, and other security barriers prevent Palestinians from moving freely both within areas legally designated by the Israeli government and cosigned by the Palestinian Authority under the terms of Oslo. But also we see in Gaza the restriction of movement that is so severe that it literally defines life in the area.

I promise you that I will not exhaust all of my time by enumerating every human rights violation perpetrated by the Israeli government. These are well-known and have been well-documented by every credible human rights organization in the world. Rather, I would like to speak to you about the urgency of the current moment.

As we speak, the conditions on the ground for Palestinian people are worsening. In recent decades, the Israeli government has moved further and further to the right, normalizing settler colonialism and its accompanying logics of denial, destruction, displacement, and death. Despite international condemnation, settlement expansion has continued. At the same time, home demolitions and state-enforced displacement continue to uproot Palestinian communities. For Gazans, the eleven-year Israeli (and Egyptian) blockade by land, air, and sea has created the largest open-air prison in the world.

With only 4 percent potable water, electricity access that is limited to four hours per day, 50 percent unemployment, and the looming threat of Israeli bombs, Gaza continues to constitute one of the most pressing humanitarian crises of the current moment. In the West Bank, conditions are not much better. Unemployment is generally around 18 percent, with frequent loss of income due to Israeli military closures, making it impossible for Palestinian workers to get access to jobs. Settlements and the extra land allocated for them, as well as closed military zones and other restrictions, make it impossible for Palestinian towns to grow.

And in the midst of it all, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s administration has become increasingly indifferent to critique, censure, or even scorn from the international community for its practices. Perhaps the most glaring example of this indifference as well as the urgency of the current moment is the recently passed Nation State Law. Through this basic law, the Israeli state has officially rejected Arabic as an official state language. It has described settlement expansion both inside and outside of the Green Line as a national value, and it has reinforced the fact that Israel is not a state of all of its citizens.

In May of this year, President Trump officially moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, which he recognized as the undivided capital of Israel. This choice not only flew in the face of international law and precedent, but also constituted a powerful provocation and a diplomatic deathblow. In late August, President Trump then permanently reneged on America’s commitment to funding UNRWA [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East], a move that now leaves millions of Palestinian refugees in medical, economic, and educational peril. Moreover, the move serves as a political strong-arm tactic, whereby the United States is unilaterally attempting to resolve, through the Trump administration, the final status of Palestinian refugees.

While President Trump’s policies have been the most dramatic, it is important that I stress to you, to reiterate to you, that they are not wildly out of step with American policy. Cuts to UNRWA is an idea that has been raised in Washington for years, dating back at least to the George W. Bush administration.

President Trump’s decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem caused enormous controversy, but he was merely implementing a bipartisan law Congress passed in 1995. And in so doing, he executed what has already been official United States policy and fulfilled a promise made by every United States president and presidential candidate, Democrat and Republican, for a very long time.

With regard to the question of Palestine, Donald Trump is not an exception to American policy. Rather, Donald Trump is a more transparent and aggressive iteration of it.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, the words offered today by everyone in this room are a necessary component of our resistance efforts. We need powerful, counterintuitive, dangerous, and courageous words. But we must also offer more than just words. Words will not stop the village of Khan al-Ahmar, with its makeshift schools created by local Bedouin villagers, from being demolished in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Words will not stop poets like Dareen Tatour from being caged in Israeli jails for having the audacity to speak the truth about the conditions of struggle on her own personal Facebook page. Words will not stop peaceful protesters in Gaza from being killed as they fight for freedom against Israel’s still-undeclared borders.

Regarding the question of Palestine, beyond words, we must ask the question: what does justice require? To truly engage in acts of solidarity, we must make our words flesh. Our solidarity must be more than a noun. Our solidarity must become a verb.

As a black American, my understanding of action, and solidarity action, is rooted in our own tradition of struggle. As black Americans resisted slavery, as well as Jim Crow laws that transformed us from a slave state to an apartheid state, we did so through multiple tactics and strategies. It is this array of tactics that I appeal to as I advocate for concrete action from all of us in this room.

Solidarity from the international community demands that we embrace boycott, divestment, and sanctions as a critical means by which to hold Israel accountable for its treatment of Palestinian people. This movement, which emerged out of the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society, offers a nonviolent means by which to demand a return to the pre-1967 borders, full rights for Palestinians citizens, and the right of return as dictated by international law.

Solidarity demands that we no longer allow politicians or political parties to remain silent on the question of Palestine. We can no longer, in particular, allow the political left to remain radical or even progressive on every issue — from the environment to war to the economy — except for Palestine.

Contrary to Western mythology, black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Gandhian nonviolence. Rather, slave revolts and self-defense and tactics otherwise divergent from Dr King or Mahatma Gandhi were equally important to preserving safety and attaining freedom. If we’re to operate in true solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must allow the same range of opportunity and political possibility. If we are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must recognize the right of an occupied people to defend itself.

We must prioritize peace. But we must not romanticize or fetishize it. We must advocate and promote nonviolence at every opportunity, but we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing.

At the current moment, there is little reason for optimism. Optimism, of course, is the belief that good will inevitably prevail over evil, that justice will inevitably win out. In the course of human history — and certainly, even in the course of the United Nations — there is no evidence of such a proposition. Optimism is unsophisticated. Optimism is immature. Optimism is what my students have when they take examinations that they did not study for. Some become quite religious at that time. But regardless of their strategies of optimism, the outcome is far from guaranteed or even likely.

What I’m challenging us to do, in the spirit of solidarity, is not to embrace optimism but to embrace radical hope. Radical hope is a belief that despite the odds, despite the considerable measures against justice and peace, despite the legacy of hatred and imperialism and white supremacy and patriarchy and homophobia, despite these systems of power that have normalized settler colonialism, despite these structures, we can still win. We can still prevail.

One motivation for my hope in the liberation and ultimate self-determination of the Palestinian people comes in August of 2014. Black Americans were in Ferguson, Missouri, in the Midwest of the United States, protesting the death of a young man named Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American male who had been killed by a law enforcement agent. And as we protested, I saw two things that provided hope for the Palestinian struggle.

One was that for the first time in my entire life of activism, I saw a sea of Palestinian people. I saw a sea of Palestinian flags in the crowd saying that we must form a solidarity project. We must struggle together in order to resist, because state violence in the United States and state violence in Brazil and state violence in Syria and state violence in Egypt and state violence in South Africa and state violence in Palestine are all of the same sort. And we finally understood that we must work together and not turn on each other, but instead turn to each other.

And later that night when the police began to tear gas us, Mariam Barghouti tweeted us from Ramallah. She, along with other Palestinian youth activists, told us that the tear gas that we were experiencing was only temporary. They gave us tips for how to wash our eyes out. They told us how to make gas masks out of T-shirts. They gave us permission to think and dream beyond our local conditions by giving us a transnational or a global solidarity project.

And from those tweets and social media messages, we began then to organize together. We brought a delegation of black activists to Palestine, and we saw the connections between the police in New York City who are being trained by Israeli soldiers and the type of policing we were experiencing in New York City. We began to see relationships of resistance, and we began to build and struggle and organize together. That spirit of solidarity, a solidarity that is bound up not just in ideology but in action, is the way out.

So as we stand here on the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the tragic commemoration of the Nakba, we have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and international action that will give us what justice requires — and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea. Thank you for your time.

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The North African state of Sudan is currently experiencing serious political War unrest as it attempts to gradually transition from the Saudi-led camp to the Turkish-Qatari one, and the geopolitical fate of this beleaguered but strategically positioned country will have serious implications for the future of multipolarity in Africa.  

Sudan, no stranger to externally provoked conflicts within its borders, is once again suffering from serious Hybrid War unrest as a violent anti-government protest movement exploded onto the national scene over the past week. The North African country had recently invited Russia to construct the segments of the North-South and East-West Trans-African Railways that are expected to traverse through its territory and President Bashar just paid the first-ever visit of an Arab head of state to Syria since that country’s conflict first broke out almost eight years ago, making many observers suspect that the timing of the latest destabilization attempt wasn’t coincidental.

Before going any further, it needs to be objectively recognized that there are genuine socio-economic concerns in Sudan that created the preexisting political conditions that foreign actors are presently exploiting. This means that the blame for the latest turmoil should be partially shared by the government for its many shortcomings, the so-called “international community” for failing to support the country after going along with the US’ decades-long policy of “isolating” it, and the external elements that are actively provoking violence there. This already complex situation is further complicated by the context in which it’s occurring.

It’s one thing for the impoverished masses to protest against their dismal socio-economic conditions and another thing entirely for them to do so violently by torching the local headquarters of the ruling party like they did in the strategic railway hub of Atbara, which was meant to interfere with the rest of the country’s access to the outside world via the nearby Red Sea coastal city of Port Sudan and potentially exacerbate the national crisis. On top of that, an opposition leader returned to the country after self-imposed exile around the same time and openly called for regime change, which proves that an incipient Color Revolution is indeed underway.

Whoever the foreign forces behind this unrest may be, they aren’t targeting Sudan only because of its economic cooperation with Russia and political support to Syria since these are relatively recent developments whereas the ongoing developments evidently took some time to plan beforehand. The real reason why Sudan is under Hybrid War attack is because it’s gradually transitioning from the Saudi-led camp to the Turkish-Qatari one in what is increasingly becoming one of the New Cold War’s most impactful “defections” because of the far-reaching consequences that it could have for multipolarity.

Sudan’s geostrategic position makes it indispensable to China’s Silk Road vision for Africa, but it’s also of premier attractiveness for Turkey too after Ankara clinched a deal almost exactly 12 months ago to rebuild the Red Sea port of Suakin. This alarmed the GCC for a few reasons, not least of which is because Turkey is allied with Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s Qatari nemesis but also because Sudan is supposed to be their military ally in the War on Yemen. Khartoum reiterated its commitment to that conflict just a few days ago but then Qatar extended its full support to Sudan right afterwards.

There’s no doubt that Sudan is trying to realign itself away from the GCC and closer to Turkey and Qatar, both of which are very close to Russia nowadays too, and it shouldn’t be forgotten that Khartoum invited Moscow to build a naval base along its coast during President Bashir’s meeting last year in Moscow with his Russian counterpart. He even warned during that time that the US wants to balkanize his country into five separate parts, a scenario that might be in the process of happening if the current Hybrid War unrest isn’t properly dealt with before it acquires critical mass and passes the point of no return.

Another point to keep in mind is that Sudan is actively cooperating with Russia in seeking to broker a political solution to the long-running conflict in the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR) where Moscow is militarily involved in an indirect capacity per UNSC approval. Although the Khartoum peace process earlier this year didn’t yield any tangible results, it was nevertheless a step in the right direction, one which might be endangered if Sudan continues to slide further into chaos and ultimately becomes a failed state. That could have profoundly negative implications for the CAR’s fledgling peace process and might reverse the progress over the past year.

Altogether, the destabilization of Sudan could undermine China’s Silk Road connectivity plans for Africa as well as spill over into the neighboring countries of CAR, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, all of which are currently struggling with various degrees of unrest of as it is. Russia and Turkey’s strategic interests in the Red Sea region and their Sudanese gateway into the Sahel could also be jeopardized, as could the foothold that Qatar is trying to establish on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula. While the GCC might lose a valuable military ally in the War on Yemen, Sudan’s collapse could conceivably be to their benefit if it spoils Turkey and Qatar’s plans.

That’s not to say that the GCC has a direct hand in what’s happening just because of a superficial interpretation of the “qui bono” principle, but just that it’s nevertheless capable of turning Sudan’s deepening destabilization into a relative advantage when compared to the strategic losses that China, Russia, Turkey, and Qatar would receive in that scenario. Likewise, Sudan’s successful reorientation away from the GCC would comparatively harm their interests much more than the aforementioned states’, which stand to gain in the event that this happens. Considering this, it’s clear to see that Sudan has suddenly become a country of consequence in the New Cold War.

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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.

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First published on February 14, 2015

The objectives of the US military presence in Africa are well documented: counter Chinese influence and control strategic locations and natural resources including oil reserves. This was confirmed more than 8 years ago by the US State Department:

In 2007, US State Department advisor Dr. J. Peter Pham commented on AFRICOM’s strategic objectives of “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.” (Nile Bowie, CIA Covert Ops in Nigeria: Fertile Ground for US Sponsored Balkanization Global Research, 11 April 2012)

At the beginning of February 2015,  AFRICOM’s “head General David Rodriguez called for a large-scale US-led ‘counterinsurgency’ campaign against groups in West Africa during remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC:

In similar remarks at a the US Army West Point academy last week, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) chief General Joseph Votel said that US commando teams must prepare for new deployments against Boko Haram and the Islamic State. ” (Thomas Gaist, US AFRICOM Commander Calls for “Huge” Military Campaign in West Africa, World Socialist Web Site, February 02, 2015)

Mark P. Fancher highlighted the hypocrisy and the “imperialist arrogance” of western countries, which “notwithstanding the universal condemnation of colonialism”, are evermore willing “to publicly declare (without apologies) their plans to expand and coordinate their military presence in Africa.” (Mark P. Fancher, Arrogant Western Military Coordination and the New/Old Threat to Africa, Black Agenda Report, 4 February 2015)

Now more troops from Benin, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Chad are being sent to fight against Boko Haram.

This new war on yet another shadowy terrorist entity in Africa is reminiscent of the failed Kony 2012 propaganda campaign cloaked in humanitarian ideals. It is used as a smoke screen to avoid addressing the issue of the victims of the war on terror, the real causes of terrorism and to justify another military invasion. It is true that Boko Haram makes victims, however the goal of Western intervention in Africa is not to come to their rescue.

The deadliest conflict in the world since the Second World War and still raging is happening in Congo and the Western elite and its media couldn’t care less. That alone shows that military interventions are not intended to save lives.

To understand why the media focuses on Boko Haram, we need to know what it is and who is behind it.  What is the underlying context, what interests are being served?

Is Boko Haram another US clandestine operation?

Boko Haram is based in northeast Nigeria, the most populated country and largest economy in Africa. Nigeria is the largest oil producer of the continent with 3.4% of the World’s  reserves of crude oil.

In May 2014, African Renaissance News published an in-depth report on Boko Haram, wondering whether it could be another CIA covert operation to take control of Nigeria:

[T]he greatest prize for AFRICOM and its goal to plant a PAX AMERICANA in Africa would be when it succeeds in the most strategic African country, NIGERIA. This is where the raging issue of BOKO HARAM and the widely reported prediction by the United States Intelligence Council on the disintegration of Nigeria by 2015 comes into perspective…(Atheling P Reginald Mavengira, “Humanitarian Intervention” in Nigeria: Is the Boko Haram Insurgency Another CIA Covert Operation? Wikileaks, African Renaissance News, May 08, 2014)

In the 70’s an 80’s Nigeria assisted several African countries “in clear opposition and defiance to the interests of the United States and its western allies which resulted in a setback for Western initiatives in Africa at the time.” (Ibid.)

Nigeria exerted its influence in the region through the leadership of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG, right), an army consisting of soldiers from various African countries and set up by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and which intervened in the Liberian civil war in the 90’s. Liberia was founded in 1821 by the US and led by American-Liberians for over a century.

The Western powers, first and foremost the US, are obviously not willing to let Africans have a multinational army in which they have no leading role. ACRI, which later became Africom, was formed in 2000 to contain Nigeria’s influence and counter ECOMOG, thus avoiding the emergence of an African military force led by Africans.

According to Wikileaks reports mentioned in Mavengira’s article above, the US embassy in Nigeria serves as an

operating base for wide and far reaching acts of subversion against Nigeriawhich include but [are] not limited to eavesdropping on Nigerian government communication, financial espionage on leading Nigerians, support and funding of subversive groups and insurgents, sponsoring of divisive propaganda among the disparate groups of Nigeria and the use of visa blackmail to induce and coerce high ranking Nigerians into acting in favour of US interests.” (Mavengira, op., cit., emphasis added)

Mavengira is part of the GREENWHITE Coalition, “a citizen’s volunteer watchdog made up of Nigerians of all ethnic groups and religious persuasions.” He writes that the ultimate goal of the American clandestine operations in his country is “to eliminate Nigeria as a potential strategic rival to the US in the African continent.” (Ibid.)

An investigation into Boko Haram by the Greenwhite Coalition revealed that the “Boko Haram campaign is a covert operation organized by the American Central Intelligence Agency, CIA and coordinated by the American Embassy in Nigeria.” The U.S has used its embassy for covert operations before. The one in Benghazi was proven to be a base for a covert gun-running operation to arm the mercenaries fighting against Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. As for the embassy in Ukraine, a video from November 2013 emerged recently showing a Ukrainian parliamentarian exposing it as the central point of yet another clandestine operation designed to foment civil unrest and overthrow the democratically-elected government.

The Greenwhite Coalition report on Boko Haram reveals a three stage plan of the National Intelligence Council of the United States to “Pakistanize” Nigeria, internationalize the crisis and divide the country under a UN mandate and occupying force. The plan “predicts” Nigeria’s disintegration for 2015. It is worth quoting at length:

The whole [National Intelligence Council] report actually is a coded statement of intentions on how [by] using destabilization plots the US plans to eventually dismember Nigeria […]

Stage 1: Pakistanizing Nigeria

With the scourge of Boko Haram as an existential reality, in the coming months the spate of bombings and attacks on public buildings are likely to escalate.

The goal is to exacerbate tension and mutual suspicion among adherents of the two faiths in Nigeria and leading to sectarian violence […]

Stage 2: Internationalizing the Crisis

[T]here will be calls from the United States, European Union and United Nations for a halt to the violence. […] For effect, there will be carpet bombing coverage by the International media on the Nigerian crisis with so-called experts discussing all the ramifications who will strive to create the impression that only benevolent foreign intervention could resolve the crisis.

Stage 3: The Great Carve out under UN Mandate

There will be proposals first for an international peace keeping force to intervene and separate the warring groups and or for a UN mandate for various parts of Nigeria to come under mandated occupying powers. Of course behind the scenes the US and its allies would have secretly worked out which areas of Nigeria to occupy guided as it were by naked economic interests […] (Ibid., emphasis added)

In 2012, Nile Bowie wrote:

The Nigerian Tribune has reported that Boko Haram receives funding from different groups from Saudi Arabia and the UK, specifically from the Al-Muntada Trust Fund, headquartered in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia’s Islamic World Society [8]. During an interview conducted by Al-Jazeera with Abu Mousab Abdel Wadoud, the AQIM leader states that Algeria-based organizations have provided arms to Nigeria’s Boko Haram movement “to defend Muslims in Nigeria and stop the advance of a minority of Crusaders” [9].

It remains highly documented that members of Al-Qaeda (AQIM) and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who fought among the Libyan rebels directly received arms [10] and logistical support [11] from NATO bloc countries during the Libyan conflict in 2011[…]

Image: Abdelhakim Belhadj, rebel leader during the 2011 war in Libya and former commander of the Al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

As covertly supporting terrorist organizations to achieve foreign policy aims appears to be the commanding prerequisite of foreign policy operations under the Obama Administration, Boko Haram exists as a separate arm of the US destabilization apparatus, aimed at shattering Africa’s most populous nation and biggest potential market. (Nile Bowie, CIA Covert Ops in Nigeria: Fertile Ground for US Sponsored Balkanization Global Research, 11 April 2012)

Reports also indicate that some Nigerian commanders may be involved in fuelling the insurgency.

According to the report, a Nigerian soldier in Borno state confirmed that Boko Haram attacked Gamboru Ngala in their presence but their commander asked them not to repel the attack. The soldier told BBC Hausa Service that choppers hovered in the air while the attacks were ongoing. 300 people were killed, houses and a market burnt while soldiers watched and were ordered not to render assistance to those being attacked.  The soldier said that the Boko Haram insurgency will end when superior officers in the army cease to fuel it.

At the abductions of Chibok girls, one soldier in an interview told SaharaReporters,

“…we were ordered to arrest vehicles carrying the girls but just as we started the mission, another order was issued that we should pull back. I can assure you, nobody gave us any directives to look for anybody.”

Some soldiers suspect  that their commanders reveal military operations to the Boko Haram sect. (Audu Liberty Oseni, Who is Protecting Boko Haram. Is the Nigerian Government involved in a Conspiracy?, africanexecutive.com, May 28, 2014)

Could it be that these commanders have been coerced by elements in the U.S. embassy, as suggested by the aforementioned Greewhite Coalition investigation?

Boko Haram: The next chapter in the fraudulent, costly, destructive and murderous war on terror?

It has been clearly demonstrated that the so-called war on terror has increased terrorism. As Nick Turse explained:

[Ten] years after Washington began pouring taxpayer dollars into counterterrorism and stability efforts across Africa and its forces first began operating from Camp Lemonnier [Djibouti], the continent has experienced profound changes, just not those the U.S. sought. The University of Birmingham’s Berny Sèbe ticks off post-revolutionary Libya, the collapse of Mali, the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria, the coup in the Central African Republic, and violence in Africa’s Great Lakes region as evidence of increasing volatility. “The continent is certainly more unstable today than it was in the early 2000s, when the U.S. started to intervene more directly,” he told me. (Nick Turse, The Terror Diaspora: The U.S. Military and Obama’s Scramble for Africa, Tom Dispatch, June 18, 2013)

What exactly does the U.S. seek in Africa?

When it comes to overseas interventions, decades of history have shown that the stated intents of the U.S. Army are never its real intents. The real intent is never to save humans, but always to save profits and power. US-NATO interventions do not save. They kill.

US-led interventions since the beginning of the century have killed hundreds of thousands, if not over a million innocent people. It’s hard to tell because NATO does not really want to know how many civilians it kills. As The Guardian noted in August 2011, except for a brief period, there was “no high-profile international project dedicated to recording deaths in the Libya conflict”.

In February 2014, “at least 21,000 civilians [were] estimated to have died violent deaths as a result of the war” in Afghanistan according to Cost of War. As for Iraq, by May 2014 “at least 133,000 civilians [were] killed by direct violence since the invasion.”

As for Libya, the mainstream media first lied about the fact that Gaddafi initiated the violence by attacking peaceful protesters, a false narrative intended to demonize Gaddafi and galvanize public opinion in favour of yet another military intervention. As the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs reported, “violence was actually initiated by the protesters.”

It stated further:

The government responded to the rebels militarily but never intentionally targeted civilians or resorted to “indiscriminate” force, as Western media claimed […]

The biggest misconception about NATO’s intervention is that it saved lives and benefited Libya and its neighbors. In reality, when NATO intervened in mid-March 2011, Qaddafi already had regained control of most of Libya, while the rebels were retreating rapidly toward Egypt. Thus, the conflict was about to end, barely six weeks after it started, at a toll of about 1,000 dead, including soldiers, rebels, and civilians caught in the crossfire. By intervening, NATO enabled the rebels to resume their attack, which prolonged the war for another seven months and caused at least 7,000 more deaths. (Alan Kuperman, Lessons from Libya: How Not to Intervene, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, September 2013)

Despite these figures, the media will once again try to convince us that what the world needs most at the moment is to get rid of the terrorist group Boko Haram and that a military intervention is the only solution, even though the so-called war on terror has actually increased terrorism globally. As Washington’s Blog pointed out in 2013, “global terrorism had been falling from 1992 until 2004… but has been skyrocketing since 2004.”

The Guardian reported back in November 2014:

The Global Terrorism Index recorded almost 18,000 deaths last year, a jump of about 60% over the previous year. Four groups were responsible for most of them: Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and Syria; Boko Haram in Nigeria; the Taliban in Afghanistan; and al-Qaida in various parts of the world. (Ewen MacAskill, Fivefold increase in terrorism fatalities since 9/11, says report, The Guardian, November, 18, 2014)

What the Guardian fails to mention is that all these groups, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State, have been, in one way or another, armed, trained and financed by the US-NATO alliance and their allies in the Middle East.

Thanks to the covert support of Western countries, arms dealers and bankers profiting from killing and destruction, the war on terror is alive and well. The West advocates for endless military interventions, pretending to ignore the real causes of terrorism and the reason why it expands, hiding its role in it and thereby clearly showing its real intent: fuelling terrorism to destabilize and destroy nations, thus justifying military invasion and achieving their conquest of the African continent’s richest lands under the pretext of saving the world from terror.


Selected articles on Boko Haram

Audu Liberty Oseni, Who is Protecting Boko Haram. Is the Nigerian Government involved in a Conspiracy?, africanexecutive.com, May 28, 2014

Kurt Nimmo, U.S. and France Target Boko Haram and Focus on Africa’s Strategic Minerals, Infowars, January 14, 2015

Emile Schepers, Boko Haram: An Extremism Firmly Rooted in Nigeria’s Colonial Past, Morning Star, May 17, 2014

Ajamu Baraka, The Destabilization of Africa and the Role of “Shadowy Islamists”. From Benghazi to Boko Haram, Black Agenda Report 14 May 2014

Glen Ford, Coming Soon: A U.S. Death Squad Program for West Africa Black Agenda Report, May 28, 2014

Adeyinka Makinde, Nigeria: Candidate for Political Destabilization and “Regime Change”?, adeyinkamakinde.blogspot.co.uk, June 15, 2013

Kurt Nimmo, Is Boko Haram An “Intelligence Asset”? Terror Attack in Nigeria Opens Door to Africom, Infowars.com, May 10, 2014

Prof. Horace Campbell, Boko Haram: “Economic Fundamentalism” and Impoverishment Send Unemployed Youths Into Religious Militias, Pambazuka News 4 June 2014

Abayomi Azikiwe, The Militarization of the African Continent: AFRICOM Expands Operations in Cooperation With Europe, Global Research, April 22, 2014

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Is Kissing a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” a “Terrorist Act”?

December 26th, 2018 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

an earlier version of this article  was published by Global Research on April 25, 2103

In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush stated in no uncertain terms that  “State sponsors of terrorism” would be considered as “terrorists”.

“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”.

But there is always an “Exception that the Proves the Rule”  and that is George W. Bush himself. 

When George W. Bush respectfully kisses King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, does this mean that Dubya could –by some stretch of the imagination– be considered a “suspected terrorist”, who should never have been elected president of the United States of America?

The answer is negative: Kissing  “State sponsors of terrorism” on the mouth is not defined by the FBI as “suspicious behavior”.

The Global War on Terrorism’s  “New Normal“: “Good Guy” Terrorists

Establishing political ties with “State sponsors of terrorism”  is now considered to be part of a “New Normal”, a humanitarian endeavor intent upon spreading  American democracy Worldwide.

NATO  calls it  “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

Former Secretary of State John Kerry concurs:  financial aid to Syria’s Al Nusra, an affiliate of Al Qaeda is part of an R2P mandate.

There are now “‘good guy terrorists” and “bad guy terrorists” as well as “moderate terrorists”.

Financial aid is channeled to Al Qaeda “good guy terrorists” to protect Syrians against the terrorists  (New York Times,  April 20, 2013)

 Al Nusra  “Good Guy Terrorists” supported by John Kerry

The Bush and bin Laden Families

Now let us turn our attention to the Bin Laden Family.

The Bushes and bin Ladens are long-time friends.

We know that the late Osama bin Laden was a “bad guy”:  “Enemy Number One”.

He is a disgrace to members of the bin Laden family, who reluctantly provided him with “pocket money”, which was used to develop Al Qaeda (The Base).  He is referred to as a “Black Sheep”.

There is nothing wrong, therefore, in socializing and doing business with family members of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, including the late Salem bin Laden and Osama’s brother Shafiq bin Laden of the Carlyle Group.

Its all part of a “good guys project” of going after Osama,  the “Black Sheep”,  and waging the “Global War on Terrorism”.

Confirmed by the Washington Post, “fellow investors” of the Carlyle Group Osama’s brother Shafiq bin Laden and former President H.G.W. Bush met at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel one day before 9/11 (see image below):

It didn’t help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden [Shafiq bin Laden]. Former president Bush [senior, seem image above], a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. (Greg Schneider, Pairing the Powerful With the Rich, Washington Post, March 16, 2003)

Launched on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush is the political architect of the “Global War on Terrorism” commonly referred to as GWOT. 

On the evening of September 11, 2001, president George W. Bush pronounced a historic speech in which he defined the relationship between “terrorists’ and “state sponsors of terrorism”:

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. 

In a subsequent address to the joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate on September 20, 2001:

“We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime [state sponsor of terrorism].

Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” – President George W. Bush, 20 September 2001

Now let us pause and reflect

Bush seems to be caught up in the contradictions of his own political rhetoric, the  “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” conundrum:

“I am with myself and I am also with the terrorists” (paraphrase)

The House of Saud provides financial aid to the terrorists. And so does the bin Laden family. Worst Case scenario:  There may be a “conflict of interest”.

According to The Washington based CATO Institute (November 2001) Saudi Arabia is a “prime sponsor of terrorism”

The U.S. government has warned that it will treat regimes that harbor or assist terrorist organizations the same way that it treats the organizations themselves. Yet if Washington is serious about that policy, it ought to regard Saudi Arabia as a prime sponsor of international terrorism. Indeed, that country should have been included for years on the U.S. State Department’s annual list of governments guilty of sponsoring terrorism.

The One Trillion Dollar Foreign Policy Question

What is  ultimately involved is that the US government is the ultimate “state sponsor” of those who sponsor terrorism.

The US government supports the House of Saud. In turn, the Saudi monarchy supports Al Qaeda.

It follows pari passu:  the US government is a “State sponsor of Terrorism”.  QED.

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Bear in mind Dubya is asking the question.

And now we are asking you, our readers, the question:

Is Dubya  “with us”, or “with the terrorists.” either/or, both or neither?

        

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The Oil Game Has Changed

December 26th, 2018 by Marwan Salamah

The Players Have Changed

US oil production is rapidly growing and has reached 11.2 million barrels per day in Nov 2018, is expected to reach 12.05 m/bpd next April and 12.29 m/bpd by yearend 2019. The pipelines bottleneck will be resolved by the end of 2019 including pipelines to the export ports enabling the US to substantially increase its oil exports and compete with everybody else. And, with $60 – 80 prices being profitable for the US shale producers, this becomes the ceiling for oil prices, and woe to those needing higher prices to breakeven or balance their budgets.

With the dramatic rise of US oil production (its 2018 increase is greater than Nigeria’s total production), the oil market is now dominated by three players: The USA, Russia and Saudi Arabia who jointly represent 30 – 40% of total world production, giving them control of oil prices and hence, the fate of the world.

At the same time, OPEC’s power to influence oil market and prices seems to be declining. The evident discord among its members regarding increasing and lowering production levels and quotas is becoming more vocal, which further weakens the cartel and hastens its possible demise, inviting more confusion, lower prices, higher costs and weaker economies.

While there are many outcomes, we examine here a scenario where the goals and objectives of the three big producers are contradictory. Additionally, the assumption that the small producers will tamely submit to the big producers, despite representing above 60% of production, unjustly ignores their rights as well as capabilities.

The Goals of the Players

The likely goals of the players may be assumed as:

The US Goals: One of its primary goals is to shrink its balance of trade deficit and turn it into a surplus. One method is to cease importing oil and become a major exporter. This is evident in the US policy in support of shale oil extraction through Fracking despite the consensus on its damaging effects on the environment. The US has supported and funded the research in Fracking and continues to support Frackers financially, politically and taxwise.

As for increasing its oil exports, it has shrewdly increased the supply of its product, is marketing it aggressively and is systematically undermining the competition. Some examples are:

–        Its attempts to weaken the Russian economy through economic sanctions and to block Russian gas sales to Europe, thus opening the European market to US liquid Gas LNG despite it being much more expensive.

–        This particular goal is important because of the large gas content of the US shale oil wells, which if not sold is burnt as waste. It also hampers the producers’ ability to increase production, which in turn delays the plan to increase exports. The US has been exerting huge efforts to sell its LNG to everybody; friends, allies and even foes and its gas exports have quadrupled in 2017 and is expected to become the third largest gas exporter by 2020!

–        Its attempts to reduce competitors’ supplies. The choking of the Venezuelan oil industry and economy is a prime example as well as the sanctions on Iran, the destruction of Libya, etc.

Russia’s Goals: For centuries, Russia has been faced by conspiracies and wars designed to weaken it regardless of the nature of its government; be it Imperial Czarist, Soviet Communist, or a Capitalistic Republic. Its sheer size and natural wealth and resources have always made it an attractive target for the West. And despite the economic and social destruction it witnessed after the collapse of communism, it has been able to rebuild itself to levels way better than ever before.

But rebuilding is a difficult and costly exercise and requires huge capital investments and the support of friends. It soon discovered that its friends were few and many held ill will towards it. It is also hampered by Western economic sanctions and threatened by a NATO military cordon. It had to rely on oil and gas revenues in rebuilding itself until the oil price crash of 2014 when it quickly redirected its efforts towards the agriculture and armaments sectors and soon succeeded in becoming the world’s largest wheat producer and the second largest seller of sophisticated weapons.

On this basis, one would expect Russia to be extremely wary of entering any oil alliance with the US, and is expected to continue its goal of developing and expanding its oil & gas production and exports.

Saudi Arabia: It is different to its two large producer colleagues (USA and Russia). It doesn’t have well a developed multi-sector economy to shield it from the disasters of oil price declines and, since 2014, has been suffering from persistent budget deficits. This has now been addressed by the ambitious ‘Vision 2030’ plan to transform the economy into multi sectors, industries and revenues. However, until that occurs, oil prices could remain below $60 – 80 and the ensuing budget deficits could erode the country’s financial reserves. Nor is borrowing likely to be a viable solution.

Based on the negative outlook for oil prices, Saudi may opt to increase its production and exports to halt or reduce its budgetary bleeding. Such a goal is implied in its determination to introduce alternative energy sources (Solar, wind, hydraulic and nuclear) to reduce local oil consumption freeing more for export. It is also rapidly increasing its investments in developing new and existing oil fields.

The Other Oil Producers: In view of their relatively small individual size, they have little say and are at the mercy of the big boys. However, they have been suffering for several years from reduced revenues and rising expenses. Their initial reflex-reaction may be to jack-up oil production, but that could trigger a 2014-like crash and with a worse financial outcome. They need a different solution that increases their collective power. An alliance similar to OPEC may be their best option, subject to it being much more cohesive and mutually supportive. Something that would pool their oil as a single unit with a centralized management of all technical, production and marketing operations, and, most importantly, stand ready to financially support any member that stumbles. Of course, this would require a lot of wisdom and forward thinking and, only time will tell.

The Consumers: Their eternal goal is lower oil prices, and they may get it. Producer disagreements and disputes are a god-send and it is in the consumers’ interest to play them off against each other.

Conclusion

Nothing remains constant. The present weak oil demand coupled with the rise in production have lowered prices at a time when the world is racing towards alternative energy sources. At the same time, the oil producers (including the big boys) are suffering from economic hardships that are threatening to become catastrophes, and they all see their salvation in increasing their oil production and sales.

The big producers are powerful, but their individual goals are contradictory and unlikely to be reconciled – except, maybe, through arm twisting, conspiracies or wars. However, they seem fully united against the small producers.

In return, the smaller producers may initially react individually, but are unlikely to succeed. They will eventually realize their need for collective action to defend themselves, especially as they represent over 60% of world oil production. However, any such move will be resisted by the big boys and could, in the, worse case, lead to military interventions and/or false flags. Therefore, the sooner they act collectively to counter the negative odds facing them, the better are their chances of survival.

The above is a description of one hypothetical scenario, which may or may not come to be. However, wisdom dictates that all concerned parties consider it carefully, study its possible outcomes and prepare a plan “B”.

Marwan Salamah, is a Kuwaiti economic consultant and publishes articles on his blog: marsalpost.com

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Maxim Grigoriev of the “Foundation for the Study of Democracy”, discussed this and other findings gleaned from interviews with numerous individuals, including former terrorists, in Syria, during a video-taped presentation entitled, “Roundtable Discussion on the Middle East Issues: Activities of the White Helmets Organization in Syria” under UN auspices.

One interview subject, Omar Al-Mustafa — who wanted to be a White Helmet but wasn’t accepted because he wasn’t al Nusra Front (al Qaeda) — recounted the following:

“People evacuated by the White Helmets often did not come back alive.  For example, a person receives a minor injury, is rescued, evacuated, and then brought back with their stomach cut open and with their internal organs missing.  I heard that a little girl was injured.  They took her to Turkey and brought back in three days, dead and with no internal organs. People were scared.  When someone got injured, they were afraid to call the White Helmets and ask for help.”

Grigoriev’s findings, presented at the U.N, are consistent with previous on-the ground investigations, including those of pioneering investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley (also featured in the Roundtable presentation), and Prof. Tim Anderson. 

In October, 2017, locals told Prof. Tim Anderson that the building pictured below had been used for organ trafficking.

Additionally, the Director-General of Syria’s Coroner’s Office, Houssein Noufel, reported in November, 2016, that body organs from 15,000 Syrians were sold over the course of six years. [1]

A litany of crimes committed by the White Helmets is documented in the video below.

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Equally disturbing, however, is that Western agencies, including Amnesty International, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and Western media, use the White Helmets as sources for their stories.

A U.K document entitled, “Syria Resilience CSSF Programme Study” states, in reference to the White Helmets, which it names Syrian Civil Defence (SCD),

“In addition to service delivery, SCD provide an invaluable reporting and advocacy role, being nominated again this year for the Nobel Peace Prize. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have stated that SCD are their most routinely reliable source for reporting. Throughout the bombardment by Russia since September 2015, SCD has provided essential corroboration that strikes were not targeting Da’esh but moderate opposition entities. This has provided confidence to statements made by UK and other international leaders made in condemnation of Russian actions.”

Amply documented, the “news” that the White Helmets report to Amnesty, SOHR, and myriad government sources, consists of fake news and staged rescues. Consider these screen grabs from the above video on UNWeb TV:

Colonial media uses terrorist-embedded sources for their criminal disinformation campaigns, and these campaigns amount to (criminal) war propaganda.

Testimonies such as those above provide evidence-based counter-narratives which Western governments and their agencies have disappeared for years.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Notes

[1]“Body Organs of Over 15,000 Syrians Sold in Six Years: Coroner’s Office.” FARS NEWS AGENCY, 17 November, 2016. Global Research, 18 November, 2016.( https://www.globalresearch.ca/body-organs-of-over-15000-syrians-sold-in-six-years-coroners-office/5557626) Accessed 25 December, 2018.

[2 ]Syria Resilience CSSF Programme Study. (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/630409/Syria_Resilience_2017.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0B8DBRudQ-bxEo5mESFmnoKgoQgGHa7ibhGeAHizt19Io41zmGEubrN_w) Accessed 25 December, 2018.


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There is a great uproar over the recent decision by US President Trump to pull US troops out of Syria, announcing his reason for doing so is that ISIS, the so-called Islamic State, has largely been defeated. What lies behind the decision and more important, what was behind the surprise emergence of ISIS across Syria in 2014 brings the spotlight to yet-classified documents of the Obama term. If the reorganized Justice Department is compelled to make these documents public in lawsuits or Freedom of Information requests, it could rock organizations such as the CIA and many in the Obama camp.

In 2010 the US Administration under President Barack Obama developed a top secret blueprint for the most ambitious and far-ranging series of US-backed regime change across the Islamic Middle East since World War I and the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement. It was to set off a wave of wars and chaos, of failed states and floods of war refugees unimaginable to the most cynical veteran diplomat, and beyond the belief of most lay persons in the world.

In August, 2010, six months before Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was launched by the Washington NGOs including the NED, the Soros Foundations, Freedom House and others, President Obama signed Presidential Study Directive-11 (PDS-11), ordering Washington government agencies to prepare for “change.”  The change was to be a radical policy calling for Washington’s backing for the secret fundamentalist Islamic Muslim Brotherhood sect across the Middle East Muslim world, and with it, the unleashing of a reign of terror that would change the entire world.

According to US Congressional testimony of Peter Hoekstra, former Chairman of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Obama Administration PSD-11 directive–as of March 2017 still classified Top Secret–“ordered a government-wide reassessment of prospects for political reform in the Middle East and of the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the process. “

A Grandiose Task Force

To draft the contents of PSD-11, a top secret task force was established within the Obama National Security Council (NSC), headed by Dennis Ross, Samantha Power, Gayle Smith, Ben Rhodes and Michael McFaul.

The PSD-11 Task Force members were remarkable in many regards. Samantha Power, who would go on to become Obama’s UN Ambassador and lead the demonizing of Russia after the CIA’s Ukraine Color Revolution coup in 2014, was to play an instrumental role in convincing President Obama that Libya’s Mohammar Qaddafi must be militarily removed for what she called  “humanitarian reasons.” Dennis Ross, accused by Palestinian opponents of being “more pro-Israeli than the Israelis,” co-founded the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-sponsored Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). He was Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Director at the NSC for the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia when he was part of the PSD-11 task force.

Gayle Smith would later go on in 2015 to head the USAID, the CIA-linked State Department agency that funneled US taxpayer millions to finance the NGOs of the Arab Spring and other Color Revolution regime changes. Michael McFaul, who once described himself as a “specialist on democracy, anti-dictator movements, revolutions,” was later named Obama’s Ambassador to Moscow where he coordinated opposition protests against Putin.

The Top Secret PSD-11 report that the Task Force drew up was partially revealed in a series of legal Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department. Released official documents revealed that the NSC Task Force had concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “viable movement” for the US Government to support throughout North Africa and the Middle East. A resulting Presidential directive ordered American diplomats to make contacts with top Muslim Brotherhood leaders and gave active support to the organization’s drive for power in key nations like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria, at the 2011 outset of the “Arab Spring.” The PDS-11 secret paper came to the bizarre conclusion that the Muslim Brotherhood’s brand of political Islam, combined with its fervent nationalism, could lead to “reform and stability.” It was a lie, a lie well known to the Obama PSD-11 Task Force members.

The True Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan–Arabic for The Brotherhood–is a secret masonic-like organization with a covert  or underground terrorist arm and a public facade of “peaceful doing of charity.” It was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna who developed the cult’s guiding motto. The credo of his Society of Muslim Brothers was incorporated into a chant of six short phrases:

Allah is our goal; The Prophet is our Leader; The Qur’an is our Constitution; Jihad is our Way; Death in the service of Allah is the loftiest of our wishes; Allah is Great, Allah is Great.

Al-Banna created a secret or hidden arm of the Ikhwan in Egypt and later worldwide, known as the Special Section (al-nizam al-khass), or, as it was referred to by the British in Egypt, the Secret Apparatus (al-jihaz al-sirri). That was the military wing of the Brotherhood, in effect, the “assassination bureau.” Al-Banna taught his recruits, exclusively male, that “Jihad is an obligation of every Muslim.” He preached the nobility of “Death in the Service of Allah,” and wrote, Allah grants a “noble life to that nation which knows how to die a noble death.” He preached a death cult in which “Victory can only come with the mastery of the ‘Art of Death.’” For the Brotherhood that “mastery” was perfected in the killing of “infidels” in Jihad or Holy War in the name of Allah. The infidels could be other Muslims such as Shi’ite or Sufi who did not follow Al-Banna’s strict Sunni practice, or Christians.

Hasan Al-Banna called for adoption of the very strict Islamic Shari’a law, the complete segregation of male and female students, with a separate curriculum for girls, a prohibition of dancing, and a call for Islamic states to eventually unify in a Caliphate.

During World War II, leading Muslim Brotherhood figures spent exile from British-controlled Egypt by fleeing to Berlin where, among others, Al Banna’s close Muslim brotherhood ally, Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, worked intimately with the SS and Heinrich Himmler to create special Muslim Brotherhood terror units of the SS, so-called Handschar SS, to kill Soviet soldiers and Jews. In the 1950’s the CIA discovered the Nazi Muslim Brotherhood recruits in exile in postwar Munich and decided they could be “useful.”

Virtually every major Jihadist terrorist organization and leader has come out of the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden, who worked for the CIA in Pakistan recruiting Jihadist Mujahideen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, was a Muslim Brotherhood member who was recruited by the CIA and Saudi Intelligence head Prince Turki al-Faisal, to create what came to be called Al Qaeda. Other known terrorist members of the Ikhwan were Al Qaeda’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and the blind Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman who recently died in a US prison serving time for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Sheikh Omar was accused of conspiring to assassinate Egypt’s Mubarak and masterminding the Muslim Brotherhood assassination of Anwar Sadat in addition to the bombing of the World Trade Center.

The members of the Obama Administration National Security Council PSD-11 Task Force that recommended a US Government embrace of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood in Islamic countries of the Arab Middle East, knew very well who they were dealing with. Since the 1950’s the CIA had worked with the Ikhwan around the world. Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda in Iraq and in Syria, al Nusra Front in Syria, as well as the so-called Islamic State or ISIS all were created out of Muslim Brotherhood networks, changing names as a chameleon lizard changes color to suit its surroundings.

The origins of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria and later of ISIS , the murderous wars and chaos sweeping across the Arab Middle East and into Western Europe since 2010, could all be directly traced back to those Washington Obama policies, their so-called Arab Spring, coming from that August 2010 PSD-11 Presidential Task Force directive. This is what threatens to come out with declassification of US Justice Department files in the coming months. Some in Washington speak of treason, a strong word.

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

Featured image is from NEO


The Global Economic Crisis

The Great Depression of the XXI Century

Michel Chossudovsky (Editor)

Global Research

Each of the authors in this timely collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people’s lives.

In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The meltdown of financial markets was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation.

The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the U.S. and its NATO allies.

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This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken.

“This important collection offers the reader a most comprehensive analysis of the various facets – especially the financial, social and military ramifications – from an outstanding list of world-class social thinkers.”
-Mario Seccareccia, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa

“In-depth investigations of the inner workings of the plutocracy in crisis, presented by some of our best politico-economic analysts. This book should help put to rest the hallucinations of ‘free market’ ideology.
-Michael Parenti, author of God and His Demons and Contrary Notions

“Provides a very readable exposé of a global economic system, manipulated by a handful of extremely powerful economic actors for their own benefit, to enrich a few at the expense of an ever-growing majority.
-David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor Revisited

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Joy to the World Postponed

December 26th, 2018 by Stephen Lendman

Imperial America and predatory capitalism are the grinches that steal every holiday season, and all other times of the year worldwide.

There’s no joy in war theaters, or for countless millions in America, the West, and elsewhere – one or two missed paychecks from homelessness, hunger and despair.

On any given night in America, more than 600,000 individuals are homeless. Some estimates are much higher, things worsening over time because of bipartisan opposition in Washington to peace, equity and justice for all.

Many of the homeless in America are combat veterans. America treats its own with disdain. No longer involved in US wars of aggression, they’re unwanted, on their own, and out of luck back home.

Other working individuals or families with children, earning poverty or sub-poverty wages, are forced to make tough choices, unable to afford all essentials to life.

The American dream for tens of millions in the country is nightmarish. Imagine trying to survive homeless on Chicago’s mean streets in winter where I live.

According to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, over 80,000 in city were homeless in 2016, its latest estimate.

The Housing and Urban Development (HUD) definition of homelessness includes individuals or families without “a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.”

The Department of Education’s definition, focusing on children and youths, includes individuals “sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; or are abandoned…”

Many homeless individuals or families in America double up with others, an unsatisfactory temporary arrangement.

In Chicago and other cities, some ride public transportation all night to stay warm. Others are without shelter of any kind.

Many cities have overnight warming centers. Yet they’re avoided by many homeless persons over safety issues. Women fear possible sexual assault or rape.

Theft, violence, other abuses, and unsanitary conditions make these facilities dangerous and inhospitable.

Homelessness in America is a national scandal, a political and economic issue, affected by cuts in federally funded low-income housing, especially since the 1980s.

Other vital social programs eroded or were eliminated, symptomatic of an uncaring nation. The world’s richest one doesn’t give a damn about its poor and disadvantaged – its resources increasingly earmarked for militarism, endless wars, and corporate handouts.

An August 2018 Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) study, titled “How Hungry is America?” found food insecurity in the country is widespread, affecting nearly one in six households nationwide in 2017.

Children are especially deprived, nearly one in five affected by what the study called “food hardship.”

FRAC president Jim Weill explained that

“food hardship is a serious national problem that requires a serious national response.”

“Too many people in every region, state, and community have been left behind in the economic recovery from the Great Recession, and are still struggling to put food on the table.”

The so-called “Great Recession” is a protracted/unreported Great Depression for tens of millions of Americans, including the 21.3% of unemployed working-age individuals (according to Shadowstats), and countless tens of millions more way underemployed – victims of an unprecedented wealth disparity in the country, the same thing going on throughout the West and most elsewhere.

Low wages don’t keep up with inflation. Benefits provided by companies are eroding. Social justice throughout the West is on a chopping block for elimination.

For tens of millions of suffering people in US war theaters, hardships, dangers, and misery take on entirely new meanings.

There’s no joy to the world this holiday season or any other time of year for most people in most parts of the world – enduring a daily struggle to get by, struggling to stay alive in active war theaters.

They’re victims of US-led dark forces, inflicting enormous harm on most people worldwide to benefit the privileged few.

There’s no dreaming of what the neocon-CIA-connected Washington Post called “a bright Christmas.”

The forecast includes endless wars, growing poverty, human misery and suffering, along with indifference by officials in the West and most other countries for the rights and needs of their citizens and residents.

Joy won’t arrive on Christmas morning for most people most everywhere – nor throughout the holiday period or any other time of year.

How can it for the homeless, hungry, exploited, or otherwise ill-treated millions worldwide.

I’ll spend Christmas and the holiday period like all other times of the year – doing what I love best, writing and speaking out for a nation and world safe and fit to live in, opposing my country’s imperial agenda, denouncing its high crimes.

I can’t change the world. I just hope to push it a little in the right direction.

It’s my way of giving back for my life’s blessings, hoping many others will join in working for responsible change – during the holiday period and all other times of the year.

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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.

Churchill’s “Love for War”

December 26th, 2018 by Richard Galustian

Some men simply enjoy guns, battles and all aspects of warfare.

In Churchill’s case, he found his ‘love’ for war during the time he spent in Afghanistan.

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” Winston Churchill said at age 22 in 1897 in Afghanistan.

But he was, as are many great men, a walking paradox.

Little did most know how shaky his hands were on many occasions. Also, for example, for decades, Churchill avoided standing too close to balconies and train platforms.

“I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand back and, if possible, get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.”

Churchill understood it and named it his “black dog”, who also like many great men, suffered from manic depression.

Churchill’s paradoxes were such that he was so paralysed by despair and even sometimes fear of war, aspects of his character not found easily in history books, that he spent time in bed, had little energy, few interests, lost his appetite, couldn’t concentrate. He was minimally functional; and this didn’t just happen once or twice in the 1930s, but also in the 1920s and 1910s and earlier. These darker periods would last sometimes a few months…and then he’d come out of it and be his normal self.

But normal for Churchill was in a sense also abnormal: when he wasn’t severely depressed and low in energy and lying in bed, Churchill had very high energy levels. He wouldn’t go to sleep until two or three in the morning, instead staying up and dictating his dozens of books. He would talk incessantly in a tantivy of whirling thoughts. So much so that the then US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, once said of him: “He has a thousand ideas a day, four of which are good.” These are manic symptoms, part of the disease of manic-depression.

After some time, Churchill would go back into months of not talking, not having any ideas, not having any energy. And then he’d be back up again. His mood swings were more than likely related to Churchill’s heavy drinking as much as what we now refer to as a bi-polar disorder.

Churchill was also by character very inscrutable, as likely to insult as to charm dinner party guests. He drank a lot, admitting: “I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me.” He was irascible, clear by his hot temper and easily provoked anger. However he remained self-assured to the point of arrogance, and wilful. Many who shared his conservative politics couldn’t stomach his erratic nature caused in the main by his heavy drinking bouts.

Churchill was no pacifist in fact, in the middle of World War I, he confessed:

“I think a curse should rest on me because I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands and yet I can’t help it, I enjoy every second of it.”

Winston Churchill was a complex, sometimes paradoxically contradictory and larger than life man who wrestled alcoholism and depression in addition to all these contradictions swirling in a cocktail nearing, some might say a form of insanity, a manic depressive personality that remained with him throughout his lifetime.

In 1897, British forces launched a savage campaign against Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribesmen, forebears of the Taliban, on the North West Frontier. It was the first time for Winston Churchill an aspiring journalist/war correspondent, while also ranked as a junior (lieutenant) cavalry officer, took part in serious and bloody military actions.

Rudyard Kipling best described what the experienced British soldier felt about ‘the locals’ in his ‘The Young British Soldier’: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains…”

War profoundly affects men which makes their love and hate for it like two sides of the same coin.

To conclude, it might seem an over simplification but must be said; women have more sense. Why I don’t know!

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On December 25, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces continued their low-intensity effort to defeat ISIS in the Hajin pocket in eastern Syria. Clashes were reported near the settlements of Abu Hasan, Abu Khatir and Susah. Technically, the SDF had captured Hajin, but it has not secured it yet.

On December 24, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) released a fresh propaganda video showing the group’s efforts against ISIS in the Hajin pocket. The video shows the YPG’s “deep” involvement in anti-ISIS efforts of the US-led coalition and is aimed at showing the importance of the group in this field.

It is interesting to note that with the development of the situation with the US troops withdrawal and the growing threat of a Turkish operation in northeastern Syria, the media forgery called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is collapsing. In the current situation, almost no pro-SDF and mainstream sources are able to pretend that the SDF is a multi-ethnic coalition with a limited participation of the YPG. All was forced to admit that the SDF is a Kurdish-dominated group, with the key role of the YPG and its political wing in its leadership.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the YPG/SDF is currently redeploying large forces from the Deir Ezzor province, including a frontline with ISIS, to the area of Manbij where the group is preparing to repel an expected Turkish advance.

In turn, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and Turkish-backed militants have continued their build up along the contact line with the SDF-held areas. Over the past few days up to 100 armoured vehicles and artillery pieces have been spotted moving in Turkey towards the border with Syria.

In the Idlib de-escalation zone, militants continue to violate the ceasefire regime on a constant basis. The most intense clashes were spotted in northern Hama.

On December 24, more than 1,000 refugees returned to Syria from Lebanon in the framework of the operation organized by the Syrian government, the Russian Center for Reconciliation and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Chief of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate Abbas Ibrahim told media December 21 that about 110,000 Syrians had returned to their homeland since July.

The Damascus government, with help from Russia, continue to recover infrastructure to create favorable conditions for returnees. As for December 23, 2018, 30,908 houses, 713 educational facilities and 121 medical centers has been restored and 926km of roads have been repaired.

A total of 209,513 persons have been granted amnesty in the framework of the ongoing reconciliation process.

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The dubious performance (failure) of genetically engineered Bt cotton, officially India’s only GM crop, should serve as a warning as the push within the country to adopt GM across a wide range of food crops continues. This article provides an outline of some key reports and papers that have appeared in the last few years on Bt cotton in India.

In a paper that appeared in December 2018 in the journal Current Science, P.C. Kesavan and M.S. Swaminathan cited research findings to support the view that Bt insecticidal cotton has been a failure in India and has not provided livelihood security for mainly resource-poor, small and marginal farmers. This paper was not just important because of its content but also because M.S. Swaminathan is considered to be the father of the Green Revolution in India.

The two authors provided evidence that indicates Bt crops are unsustainable and have not decreased the need for toxic chemical pesticides, the reason for these GM crops in the first place.

The authors cite the views of Dr K.R. Kranthi, former Director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research in Nagpur. Based on his research, he concluded in December 2016:

“Bt-cotton plus higher fertilizers plus increased irrigation also received a protective cover from the seed treatment of neonicotinoid insecticides such as imidacloprid, without which majority of the Bt-cotton hybrids which were susceptible to sucking pests would have yielded far less. It can safely be said that yield increase in India would not have happened with Bt-cotton alone without enhanced fertilizer usage, without increased irrigation, without seed treatment chemicals, and the absence of drought-free decade.”

In effect, levels of insecticide use are now back to the pre-Bt era as is productivity due to pest resistance and crop failures.

Following on from this, an April 2018 paper in the journal Pest Science Management indicates there has been progressive bollworm resistance to Bt cotton in India over a seven-year period. The authors conclude:

“High PBW [pink bollworm] larval recovery on Bt‐II in conjunction with high LC50 values for Cry1Ac and Cry2Ab in major cotton‐growing districts of central and southern India provides evidence of field‐evolved resistance in PBW to Bt‐I and Bt‐II cotton.”

This alongside other problems related to Bt cotton has had disastrous consequences for farmers. In a 2015 paper Professor Andrew Paul Gutierrez and his colleagues say:

“Bt cotton may be economic in irrigated cotton, whereas costs of Bt seed and insecticide increase the risk of farmer bankruptcy in low-yield rainfed cotton. Inability to use saved seed and inadequate agronomic information trap cotton farmers on biotechnology and insecticide treadmills. Annual suicide rates in rainfed areas are inversely related to farm size and yield, and directly related to increases in Bt cotton adoption (i.e., costs).”

In a new December 2018 paper, Gutierrez sends a warning to those considering rolling out GM food crops in India:

“… recent calls by industry and its clients to extend implementation of the hybrid technology in aubergine (brinjal, eggplant) and mustard and likely other crops in India will only mirror the disastrous implementation of the failed hybrid Bt technology in Indian cotton and, will only serve to tighten the economic hybrid technology noose on still more subsistence farmers for the sake of profits.”

He concludes that Bt cotton has placed many resource-poor farmers in a stranglehold. Bt cotton prevents seed saving and farmers must purchase costly seed, which leads to suboptimal planting densities. Stagnant/low yields have followed, insecticide use has grown and new pests resistant to insecticide/Bt toxins have emerged.

Giterriez says that leading Indian agronomists have proposed that adoption of pure-line high density short-season varieties of rainfed cotton which could more than double current yields and would avoid heavy infestations of pink bollworm, thus reducing insecticide use and pesticide disruption. This cotton is not a new technology and predates Bt cotton.

Given what Gutierrez says, it is quite timely that Kesevan and Swaminathan question regulators’ failure in India to carry out a socio-economic assessment of GMO impacts on resource-poor small and marginal farmers. They call for “able economists who are familiar with and will prioritize rural livelihoods and the interests of resource-poor small and marginal farmers rather than serve corporate interests and their profits.”

This mirrors what Gutierrez and his colleagues argued in 2015 that policy makers need holistic analysis before new technologies are implemented in agricultural development.

Naturally, corporations and many pro-GM scientists wish to avoid such things as much as possible. They try to convince policy makers that as long as the science on GM is sound (which it isn’t, despite what they proclaim), GM should be rolled out regardless. They regard regulators and regulations as a mere hindrance that is preventing GM from helping farmers. Deregulating GM is the order of the day. It’s a reckless approach. We need only look at Indian cotton farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been devastated due to the ill thought out roll-out of Bt technology.

Kesavan and Swaminathan criticise India’s GMO regulating bodies due to a lack of competency and endemic conflicts of interest and a lack of expertise in GMO risk assessment protocols, including food safety assessment and the assessment of environmental impacts. Many of these issues have been a common thread in five high-level official reports in India that have advised against the commercialisation of GM crops:

The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal [February 2010];

The ‘Sopory Committee Report’ [August 2012];

The ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee’ [PSC] Report on GM crops [August 2012];

The ‘Technical Expert Committee [TEC] Final Report’ [June-July 2013]; and

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment and Forests [August 2017].

In her numerous submissions to India’s Supreme Court, prominent campaigner Aruna Rodrigues has been scathing. She recently told me that:

“It is proven in copious evidence in the Supreme Court in the last 13 years that our regulators are seriously conflicted: they promote GMOs openly, fund them (as with herbicide-tolerant mustard and other public sector GMOs) and then regulate them. Truth is a massive casualty. This is not lightly stated.”

She added that “failed hybrid Bt cotton in India” has put farmers on a pesticide treadmill as increasing levels of pest resistance becomes manifest.

Prior to this, in 2017, Rodrigues also said:

“Never has an agri-tech been sold as a ‘magic bean’ to farmers, like Bt cotton, with opprobrium attaching to our regulators and ministries of governance who supported and continue to support this technology-castle built on sand, in the absence of evidence and when the hard data said the opposite.”

In the rush to plant these ‘magic beans’, the area planted under Bt cotton has often displaced vital food crops at a time when India should surely have been looking to achieve food security and self-sufficiency.

Writing in India’s The Statesman newspaper in 2015, for example, the knife-edge existence of the people that rich corporations profit from was highlighted in the case of Babu Lal and his wife Mirdi Bai who had been traditionally cultivating wheat, maize and millet on their farmland in Rajasthan. Their crops provided food for several months a year to the 10-member family as well as fodder for farm and dairy animals, integral to the mixed farming system employed.

Company agents (unspecified – but Monsanto and its subsidiaries dominate the GM cotton industry in India) approached the family with the promise of a lump-sum payment to plant Bt cotton seeds in two of their fields. Lal purchased pesticides to help grow the seeds in the hope of receiving the payment, which never materialised because the company agent said the seeds produced had ‘failed’ in tests.

The family faced economic ruin, not least because the food harvest was much lower than normal as the best fields and most labour and resources had been devoted to Bt cotton. It resulted in Lal borrowing from private moneylenders at a high interest rate to meet the needs of food and fodder. On top of this, the company’s agent allegedly started harassing Lal for a payment of about 10,000 rupees in lieu of the fertilisers and pesticides provided to him. Several other tribal farmers in the area also fell into this trap.

The promise of a lump-sum cash payment can be very enticing to poor farmers, and when companies co-opt influential villagers to get new farmers to agree to plant Bt cotton, farmers are reluctant to decline the offer. When production is declared as having failed, solely at the company’s discretion it seems, a family becomes indebted.

According to that article, there was growing evidence that the trend to experiment with Bt cotton has disrupted food security in certain areas and had introduced various health hazards and had damaged soil due to the use of chemical inputs.

Before finishing, it is certainly worth mentioning Stone and Flachs’s 2017 paper on how certain interests within and beyond India are attempting to break traditional farming cotton cultivation practices with the aim of placing farmers on yet another corporate treadmill. This time, the aim appears to be to introduce herbicide-tolerant (HT) cotton in India on the back of Bt cotton. The authors indicate just how hugely financially lucrative for corporations the relatively ‘undeveloped’ herbicide market is in India. These HT cotton seeds have now appeared illegally on the market.

Ultimately, as Gutierrez implies, the bottom line is cynical corporate interest and profit – not helping Indian farmers or some high-minded notion about feeding the world. Just ask Babu Lal and thousands like him!

Of course, given the track record of HT crops, it is another disaster in the making for Indian farmers and the environment. This warning has already been made clear by the Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee, which regards HT crops as being wholly inappropriate for India.

With various GM crops waiting in the wings, India should continue to adopt a precautionary approach towards GMOs as advocated by Jairam Ramesh and not implement another reckless gamble with farmers’ livelihoods, the nation’s health and the environment. About nine years ago, based on a rigorous consultation with international scientific experts regarding the commercialisation of Bt brinjal, Ramesh concluded that without any management of resistance evolution, Bt brinjal would fail in 4-12 years. Jairam Ramesh pronounced a moratorium on Bt brinjal in February 2010 founded on what he called “a cautious, precautionary principle-based approach.”

Isn’t such failure what we now witness with Bt cotton?  It serves as a timely warning for implementing a widespread GMO food crop regime in India. The writing is on the wall.

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Colin Todhunter was named in August 2018 by Transcend Media Services as one of 400 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models in recognition of his journalism. Join him on Twitter.

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Civil Rights Activist Walt DeYoung, a Lifetime of Caring…

December 26th, 2018 by Philip A Farruggio

As he lay in a hospice awaiting his next excursion as he would call it, Walt DeYoung has honored this writer with his presence for the past 15 years. Infirmed and using a walker, he still went about his street corner activism undaunted. The man has always been downright amazing!

To list his accomplishments as an activist would take too long and too much paper. Let me just say this: The man was out there marching for civil rights for our Afro-American brothers and sisters during the ‘Jim Crow’ early sixties in the ‘still Dixie ‘ Maryland Eastern shore. He was out there in New Jersey as a labor activist leading protests and strikes in the 70s, with a mob contract on his head. No kidding! Walt, early on in the Vietnam War protests, was out there raising hell. He even was a bodyguard for MLK’s widow at a Central Park anti war rally. He seemed to be everywhere! In the Minnesota area Walt stood with the American Indians in their protests of the environmental damages done by corporate malfeasance.

When this writer met Walt DeYoung after the Bush/Cheney Cabal invaded Iraq, he was always the first to show up at meetings and protests. Always! He feared no one from the power structure, whether it be local or national. He stood in front of a city council meeting in Port Orange and shared his knowledge while lobbying for city run community vegetable gardens. He knew his thing, because he created one right next door to his home in New Smyrna Beach. What a guy!

Imagine if we could get some of our millennial young folks to become active in regards to this empire. Walt DeYoung always spoke to his younger peers about his lifelong experiences with empire etc. He never tired of ‘ Speaking Truth to Power’ wherever he went. As a ‘topping’ to his ‘cake of life’ Walt would have ended it best with his famous Nuff Said!

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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]

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It is significant that US President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw his troops from Syria. The 14th December decision was followed immediately by another announcement by the President to pull out a sizable number of soldiers from Afghanistan where the US has been involved in a war for the last 17 years — the longest war in its history.

Both the decisions, especially the one on Syria, have been condemned by a lot of US Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. They feel that the decisions undermine the US’s role as a global power. US allies such as Britain and France have also criticised the pull-outs. By getting out of Syria in particular, the US has made it easier for certain powers from within and without the region to exert even more influence over the politics of that country and that of its neighbours to the detriment of the West. Most of the international media argue that US success in fighting the terrorists in Syria which Trump cited as the reason for the withdrawal will be rendered meaningless in no time since terrorist cells are still alive and capable of striking at civilians. In the case of Afghanistan, the US cut-back, the media contends, will expedite the Taliban’s goal of gaining total control over the country.

Conventional wisdom suggests that whether or not the US is around the Taliban will emerge victorious sooner than later. If anything, the US military presence — a foreign power on Afghan soil — has enhanced the Taliban’s reputation as a resistance force among the ordinary people. The eventual total withdrawal of the 16,000 US soldiers will allow the Afghan people themselves to determine their future which will be influenced to some extent at least by Afghanistan’s important neighbours, Pakistan, Iran, China, India and Russia.

If we now turn to the situation in Syria, we would realise that the US role in combating terrorism was limited. The Syrian Army, with the backing of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iranian militias and the Russian military were primarily responsible for the defeat of the multitude of terrorist outfits in the country between 2012 and 2017. Indeed, there is more than enough evidence to show that some of the more prominent terrorist outfits were in different times and in different circumstances aided and abetted by institutions and organisations associated with the US, Britain and France and countries in the region such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. They provided financial assistance, military training and critical intelligence, apart from establishing regional and global networks to buttress the activities of the terrorists.

Viewed against this backdrop, the end of the US military operation in Syria may well accelerate efforts within the country to bring about much needed constitutional and political reforms which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had tried to initiate in 2001. In formulating these reforms, he will have to work closely with his allies, Iran and Russia. But at the end of the day it is the Syrian people themselves who will determine the destiny of their historically and culturally rich nation.

Suppressing the independence and sovereignty of the Syrian nation — and not combatting terrorism – was the real reason behind the active intervention and involvement of numerous actors from within and without the region in the 7 year Syrian conflict. Simply put, the aim was to oust Bashar, the protector of Syrian sovereignty, to achieve regime change in pursuit of the US-Israeli agenda of perpetuating their hegemony. Trump realised even before he became President that he would not be able to achieve this. Hence, his troop withdrawal.

This should not give us the impression that Trump is in any way opposed to US-Israeli hegemony. His staunchly pro-Israel policy; his intimate relationship with the Saudi elite; his military support for the Saudi-led war on the people of Yemen; his aggressive stance against Venezuela and his lukewarm attitude towards Cuba; his perpetuation of sanctions against Russia stemming from US policy on Crimea and the Ukraine; and his trade war against China aimed at curbing its economic dynamism all seem to indicate that he believes in flexing US power on the global stage. Besides, under Trump US military expenditure has remained high at 610 billion dollars in 2017.

What are the real reasons then that persuaded Trump to act the way he did on Syria and Afghanistan?  In both countries the prospect of imminent defeat was a factor that influenced Trump’s decision. More than that was the financial cost of war in the two countries. It is estimated that the Syrian war would cost the US 15.3 billion dollars in 2019. The figures are even more staggering for Afghanistan. With 16,000 troops in the country, the war costs the US taxpayer 45 billion dollars a year. Between 2010 and 2012 when the US had 100,000 troops on the ground, the Afghan war cost a 100 billion a year.

Will some future analyst conclude that in withdrawing US troops from Syria and Afghanistan, Donald Trump acted on his well-honed business instincts?

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

The military-industrial complex revolving door keeps revolving. Sunday morning, President Donald Trump announced in a Twitter post that he plans to replace outgoing Secretary of Defense James Mattis, temporarily at least, with current Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan. Shanahan will assume the job on January 1 — two months before the departure date Mattis had proposed. Before taking on their current government jobs, Mattis and Shanahan worked for two of the largest military contractors — Mattis as a General Dynamics board of directors member and Shanahan as a Boeing senior vice president.

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What was the reaction to the warning by Russian President Putin when he said that the world underestimates the peril of nuclear war, and that this tendency is increasing?

The commentary in the La Republica is significant, speaking of his “highly alarming tone”. The almost absolute silence of the whole Parliamentarian arc is also eloquent. As if Italy had nothing to do with the race to stock up nuclear weapons which, warned Putin in his end-of-year Press conference, could lead to the “destruction of all civilisation or even the whole planet”. The scenario is not alarmist, but a realistic assessment by scientists who study the effects of nuclear weapons.

A specific danger – emphasises Putin – is the “tendency to lower the bar for the use of nuclear weapons, by creating tactical low-impact nuclear charges which may lead to a world-wide nuclear disaster”. This is the category including the new B61-12 nuclear bombs which the USA will begin to deploy in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and perhaps in other European countries, during the first half of the year 2020.

“High precision and the possibility of using less destructive warheads”  – warns the Federation of American Scientists – “may lead military commanders to insist on the use of nuclear  bombs in an attack, knowing that radioactive fallout and collateral damage would be limited”.

Italy shares the responsibility for the growing danger of nuclear war, since, in  violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and not being a signatory of the UNO Treaty forbidding nuclear weapons, it is providing the United States with a primarily anti-Russian capacity, not only with its bases, but also aircraft and pilots for the deployment of nuclear bombs. This comes with the explicit or implicit consent (by renouncing real opposition) of the entire arc of Parliament.

The other danger – warns Putin – is the “disintegration of the international system for arms control”, initiated by the retreat of the United States from the ABM Treaty (Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty) in 2002. Created in 1972 by the USA and the USSR, it forbade each of the two parties to deploy interceptor missiles which, by neutralising reprisals by countries under attack, would have favoured a « first strike », in other words a surprise nuclear attack. Since then, the United States have developed the “anti-missile shield”, stretching from Europe to the borders of Russia – two ground installations in Romania and Poland, and four warships cruising the Baltic and the Black Sea.  Equipped with launch tubes, these ships are able to launch interceptor missiles and also cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.

Italy shares the responsibility in this case also – the installation of the JTAGS (Joint Tactical Ground Station) at Sigonella (Sicily). This a US satellite station for the “anti-missile shield”, one of five on the planet. The situation is made worse by the fact that the USA now want to retire from the 1987 INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) – which eliminated the US nuclear missiles based in Comiso – in order to be able to deploy in Europe anti-Russian ground-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles. The Italian government is also implicated, since it endorsed this plan at the North Atlantic Council of 4 December, and is without a doubt favourable to the installation of these missiles in Italy.

“If these missiles arrive in Europe, the West should not be astonished if we react” said Putin.

A warning which was ignored by Conte, Di Maio and  Salvini (1) who continue to beat the drum for the anti-migrant “Security Decree”. But when US nuclear bombs and missiles arrive and put the real security of Italy in danger, they see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing.

Source: PandoraTV

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by Pete Kimberley

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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(1) – President and vice-presidents of the current Italian government.

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On December 19, Donald Trump announced in a Twitter message: “Our boys, our young women, our men, they’re all coming back and they’re coming back now. We won”. Shortly thereafter, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement: “We have started the process of returning US troops home from Syria as we transition to the next phase of the campaign”.

The reasons for Donald Trump’s move are many, but they are mainly driven by US domestic concerns. The temperature is heating up for Trump following the midterms, as the Democrats prepare to take command of the House of Representatives in January, something that Trump had always hoped to avert. He surrounded himself with generals, in the forlorn hope that this would somehow protect him. If the last two years of his presidency were constantly under the cloud of Mueller’s investigation, or insinuations of being an agent of Putin, from January 2019 the situation is going to get much more complicated. The Democratic electoral base is baying for the President’s impeachment, the party already in full pre-primary mode, with more than 20 candidates competing, with the incumbent of the White House offering the rallying cry.

The combination of these factors has forced Trump to change gears, considering that the military -industrial -intelligence -media- complex has always been ready to get rid of Trump, even in favor of a President Pence. The only option available for Trump in order to have a chance of reelection in 2020 is to undertake a self-promotion tour, a practice in which he has few peers, and which will involve him repeating his mantra of “Promises Made, Promises Kept”. He will list how he has fought against the fake-news media, suffered internal sabotage, as well as other efforts (from the Fed, the FBI, and Mueller himself) to hamper his efforts to “Make America Great Again”.

Trump has perhaps understood that in order to be re-elected, he must pursue a simple media strategy that will have a direct impact on his base. Withdrawing US troops from Syria, and partly from Afghanistan, serves this purpose. It is an easy way to win with his constituents, while it is a heavy blow to his fiercest critics in Washington who are against this decision. Given that 70% of Americans think that the war in Afghanistan was a mistake, the more that the mainstream media attacks Trump for his decision to withdraw, the more they direct votes to Trump. In this sense, Trump’s move seems to be directed at a domestic rather than an international audience.

The decision to get out of Syria is timed to coincide with another move that will also very much please Trump’s base. The government shutdown is a result of the Democrats refusing to fund Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall on the Mexican border. It is not difficult to understand that the average citizen is fed up with the useless wars in the Middle East, and Trump’s words on immigration resonate with his voters. The more the media, the Democrats and the deep state criticize Trump on the wall, on the Syria pull out and on shutting down the government, the more they are campaigning for him.

This is why in order to understand the withdrawal of the United States from Syria it is necessary to see things from Trump’s perspective, even as frustrating, confusing and incomprehensible that may seem at times.

The difference this time around was that the decision to withdraw US troops from Syria was Trump’s alone, not something imposed on him by the generals that surround him. The choice to announce to his base, via Twitter, a victory against ISIS and the immediate withdrawal of US troops was a smart election move with an eye on the 2020 election.

It is possible that Trump, as is his wont, also wanted to send a message to his alleged French and British allies present in the northeast of Syria alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and US soldiers. Trump may be now taunting: “Let’s see what you can do without the US!”

It is as if Trump is admonishing these countries in a more concrete way for not lifting their weight in terms of military spending. Trump is vindictive and is not averse, after taking advantage of his opponent, to kicking him once he is down. Trump could be correct in this regard, and maybe French and British forces will be forced to withdraw their small group of 400 to 500 illegal occupiers of Syrian territory. Macron has for now reacted angrily at Trump’s decision, intensifying the division between the two, and is adamant that the French military presence in Syria will continue.

There is also a more refined reason to justify the US withdrawal, even if Trump is probably unaware of it. The problem in these cases is always trying to peer through the fog of war and propaganda in order to discern the clear, unadulterated truth.

We should begin by listing the winners and losers of the Syrian conflict. Damascus, Moscow, Tehran and Hezbollah have won the war against aggression. Riyadh, Doha, Paris, London, Tel Aviv and Washington, with their al Qaeda, Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist proxies, failed to destroy Syria, and following seven years of effort, are forced to scurry away in defeat.

Those who are walking a tightrope between war and defeat are Ankara and the so-called SDF. The withdrawal of the United States has confirmed the balance on the ledger of winners and losers, with the clock counting down for Erdogan and the SDF to make their next determinative move.

The enemies of Syria survive thanks to repeated bluffs. The Americans of the military-industrial-intelligence apparatus maintain the pretence that they still have an influence in Syria, what with troops on the ground, attacking Trump for withdrawing. In fact, since the Russians have imposed a no-fly-zone across the country, with the S-300 systems and other sophisticated equipment that integrate the Syrian air-defenses into the Russian air defenses, US coalition planes are for all intents and purposes grounded, and the same goes for the Israelis.

Of course the French and British in Syria are infected with the same delusional disease, choosing to believe that they can count for something without the US presence. We will see in the near future whether they also withdraw their illegal presence from Syria.

The biggest bluff of all probably comes from Erdogan, who for months threatened to invade Syria to fight ISIS, the Kurds, or any other plausible excuse to invade a sovereign country for the purposes of advancing his dreams of expanding Turkish territory as far as Idlib (which Erdogan considers a province of Turkey). Such an invasion, however, is unlikely to happen, as it would unite the SDF, Damascus and her allies to reject the Turkish advance on Syrian territory.

The Kurds in turn seem to have only one option left, namely, a forced negotiation with Damascus to give back to the Syrian people, in exchange for protection, the control of their territory that is rich in oil and gas.

Erdogan wants to eliminate the SDF, and until now, the only thing that stood in his way was the US military presence. He even threatened to attack several times, even in spite of the presence of US troops. Ankara has long been on a collision course with NATO countries on account of this. By removing US troops, Trump imagines, relations between Turkey and the US may also improve. This of course is of little interest to the US deep state, since Erdogan, like Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), is considered unsuitable, and is accordingly branded a “dictator”.

Trump probably believes that with this move, as with his defense of MBS concerning Khashoggi, that he can try and establish a strong personal friendship with Erdogan. There are even talks about the sale of Patriot systems to the Turks and the extradition of Gulen.

When Will They Leave, and Cui Prodest?

It remains to be confirmed when and to what extent US troops will leave Syria. If the US had no voice in the future in Syria, with 2,000 men on the ground, now it has even less. Leaving behind 200 to 300 special forces and CIA operatives, together with another 400 to 500 French and British personnel, will, once they are captured with their Daesh and al Qaeda friends, be an excellent bargaining chip for Damascus, as they were in Aleppo.

The military-industrial-intelligence-media complex considers Trump’s decision the worst of of all possible moves. Mattis even resigned on account of this. The presence of US troops in Syria allowed the foreign-policy establishment to continue to formulate plans (and spend money to pay a lot of people in Washington) based on the delusion that they are doing something in Syria to change the course of events. For Israel, it is a double disaster, with Netanyahu desperate to survive, seeking to factor in expected elections in a now-or-never political move. Trump probably understands that Bibi is done for, and that at this point, the withdrawal of troops, fulfilling a fundamental electoral promise, counts more than Israeli money and his friendship to Bibi.

Erdogan has two options before him. On the one hand, he can act against the Kurds. On the other hand, he can sit down at the negotiating table with Damascus and the SDF, in an Astana format, guided by Iran and Russia. Putin and Rouhani are certainly pushing for this solution. Trump, on the other hand, would like to see Turkey enter Syria in the place of US forces, to demonstrate he concluded a win-win deal for everyone, beating the deep-state at their own game.

Erdogan does not really have the military force necessary to enter Syria, which is the big secret. He would be against both the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the SDF, though the two not necessarily in an alliance.

There is a triple bluff going on, and this is what is complicating the situation so much. On the one hand, the SDF is bluffing in not wanting help from Damascus in case Erdogan sends in his forces; on the other hand, Erdogan is bluffing in suggesting he is able to conquer the territory held by the SDF; and finally, the French and British are bluffing by telling the SDF they will be able to help them against both Erdogan and/or Assad.

Iran, Russia, Syria are the only ones who do not need to bluff, because they occupy the best position – the commanding heights. They view Trump’s decisions and his allies with distrust. They know very well that these are mostly moves for internal consumption by the enemies of Syria.

If the US withdraws, there is so much to be gained. The priority then becomes the west of Syria, sealing the borders with Jordan, removing the pockets of terrorists from the east, and securing the al-Tanf crossing. If the SDF will request protection from Damascus and will be willing to participate in the liberation of the country and its reconstruction, Erdogan will be done for, and this could lead to the total liberation of Idlib. It would be the best possible outcome, an important national reconciliation between two important parts of the population. It would give Damascus new economic impetus and prepare the Syrian people to expel the remaining invaders (ISIS and the FSA/ Turkish Armed Forces) from the country, both in Idlib and in the northeast in Afrin.

Russia is aware of the risk that Erdogan is running with the choices he will take in the coming days. Perhaps the reason why Putin chose diplomacy over war with Turkey after the downing of a Russian Su-24 in 2015 was in order to arrive at this precise moment, with as many elements as possible present to convince Erdogan to stick with Russia and Iran instead of embracing Trump’s strategy and putting himself on an open collision course with Damascus, Moscow and Tehran.

Putin has always been five moves ahead. He is aware that the US could not stay long in Syria. He knows that France and the UK cannot support the SDF, and that the SDF cannot hold territory it holds in Syria without an agreement with Damascus. He is also conscious that Turkey does not have the strength to enter Syria and hold the territory if it did. It would only be able justify an advance on Idlib with the support of the Russian Air Force.

Putin has certainly made it clear to Erdogan that if he made such a move to attack the SDF and enter Syria, Russia in turn would militarily support the SAA with its air force to free Idlib; and in case of incidents with Turkey, the Russian armed forces would respond with all the interest earned from the unrequited downing of the Su-24 in 2015.

Erdogan has no choice. He must find an agreement with Damascus, and this is why he found himself commenting on Trump’s words the following day, criticizing US sanctions on Iran in the presence of Iranian president Rouhani. The SDF know that they are between a rock and a hard place, and have already sent a delegation to start negotiations with Damascus.

Trump’s move was driven by US domestic politics and aimed at the 2020 elections. But in doing so, Trump inevitably called out once and for all the bluffs built by Syria’s enemies, infuriating in the process the neoliberal imperialist establishment, revealing how each of these factions has no more cards to play and is in actual fact destined for defeat.

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Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. 

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Syria Withdrawal Enrages the Chickenhawks

December 26th, 2018 by Philip Giraldi

President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw from Syria has been greeted, predictably, with an avalanche of condemnation culminating in last Thursday’s resignation by Defense Secretary James Mattis. The Mattis resignation letter focused on the betrayal of allies, though it was inevitably light on details, suggesting that the Marine Corps General was having some difficulty in discerning that American interests might be somewhat different than those of feckless and faux allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia that are adept at manipulating the levers of power in Washington and in the media. Mattis clearly appreciates that having allies is a force multiplier in wartime but fails to understand that it is a liability otherwise as the allies create an obligation to go to war on their behalf rather than in response to any actual national interest.

The media was quick to line up behind Mattis. On Friday, The New York Times featured a lead editorial entitled “Jim Mattis was right” while neocon twitter accounts blazed with indignation. Prominent chickenhawk mouthpieces David Frum and Bill Kristol, among many others, tweeted that the end is nigh.

During the day preceding Mattis’s dramatic announcement, the press went to war against the Administration over Syria and also regarding other reports that there would be troop reductions in Afghanistan. The following headline actually appeared on a Reuters online article the day after the announcement by the president: “In Syria retreat, Trump rebuffs top advisers and blindsides U.S. commanders.” It would be difficult to imagine stuffing more bullshit into one relatively short sentence. “Retreat,” “rebuffs” and “blindsides” are not words that are intended to convey any sort of even-handed assessment of what is occurring in U.S. policy towards the Middle East. They are instead meant to imply that “Hey, that moron in the White House has screwed up again!”

Consider for a moment the agenda that Reuters is apparently pushing. It is supporting an illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Syria by the United States that has a stated primary objective of removing a terrorist organization which is already mostly gone and a less frequently acknowledged goal of regime change for the legitimate government in Damascus and the expulsion of that government’s principal allies. Reuters is asserting that staying in Syria would be a good thing for the United States and also for its “allies” in the region even though there is no way to “win” and no exit strategy.

Reuters is presumably basing its assessment on the collective judgments of a group of “top advisers” who are warmongers that the rest of the world as well as many Americans consider to be psychopaths or possibly even insane. And then there are the preferences of the “blindsided” generals, like Mattis, who have a personal interest in career terms for maintaining a constant state of warfare. If you want to really know how what the military thinks about an ongoing war ask a sergeant or a private, never a general. They will tell you that they are sick of endless deployments that accomplish nothing.

The New York Times lead story headline on Thursday also let you know that its Editors were not please by Trump’s move. It read “U.S. ExitSeen as a Betrayal of the Kurds, and a Boon for ISIS.” They also editorialized “Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria Is Alarming. Just Ask His Advisers.”

The Washington Post was not far behind. It immediately ran an op-ed by the redoubtable neocon chickenhawk Max Boot, whom Caitlin Johnstone has dubbed The Man Who Has Been Wrong About Everything. The piece was entitled Trump’s surprise Syria pullout is a giant Christmas gift to our enemies making a twofer with an incredible “Fuck the EU” Victoria Nuland’s piece entitled “In a single tweet Trump destroys U.S. policy in the Middle East,” which appeared simultaneously. That anyone would regard Boot and Nuland as objective authorities on the Middle East given their ultimate and prevailing loyalty to Israel has to be wondered at, but then again Fred Hiatt is the editorial/opinion page editor and he is of the same persuasion, both ethnically and philosophically. They are all, of course, devoted Zionists and the big lie about what is going on in the region is apparently always worth repeating. As Joseph Goebbels put it in 1941 “…when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it…even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”

Comments relating to the articles, op-eds and editorials in the Post and Times bordered on the hysterical, sometimes suggesting that readers actually believe that Trump was following orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin. And what was stirring at Reuters, The Times, and the Post was only the tip of the iceberg. The mainstream television news providers united in condemning the audacity of a president who might actually try to end a war while the only favorable commentary on Trump’s having taken a step that is long overdue came from the alternative media.

One might profitably recall how Trump has only been praised as “presidential” by the Establishment twice – when he staged cruise missile attacks on Syria based on faulty intelligence. The Deep State wants blood, make no mistake about it and it is not interested in “retreat.” And Trump will also get almost no support from Congress, with only longtime critics of Syrian policy Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee as well as Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard praising the move initially.

The arguments being made to criticize the Trump initiative were essentially cookie cutter neocon soundbites. The Reuters piece in its first few lines of text asserts that the reversal of policy “stunned lawmakers and allies with his order for U.S. troops to leave Syria, a decision that upends American policy in the Middle East. The result, said current and former officials and people briefed on the decision, will empower Russia and Iran and leave unfinished the goal of erasing the risk that Islamic State, or ISIS, which has lost all but a sliver territory, could rebuild.” The article goes on to quote an anonymous Pentagon source who opined that “… Trump’s decision was widely seen in the Pentagon as benefiting Russia as well as Iran, both of which have used their support for the Syrian government to bolster their regional influence. Iran also has improved its ability to ship arms to Lebanese Hezbollah for use against Israel. Asked who gained from the withdrawal, the defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, replied: ‘Geopolitically Russia, regionally Iran.’”

Another so-called expert Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute was also cited in the article, saying

“It completely takes apart America’s broader strategy in Syria, but perhaps more importantly, the centerpiece of the Trump administration policy, which is containing Iran.”

Israel is also turning up the heat on Trump, claiming that the move will make it more insecure. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to increase air attacks on Iranian targets in Syria as an added security measure to make up for the American betrayal. Normally liberal American Jews have joined the hue and cry against Trump on behalf of Israel. Filmmaker Rob Reiner tweeted on Thursday that the president is a “childish moronic mentally unstable malignant narcissist” who is “committing Treason” against the United States.

The real story, lost in the wailing and gnashing to teeth, is that even after conceding that Donald Trump’s hyperbolic claim that the United States had defeated ISIS as the motive for the withdrawal is nonsense, there is still no good reason for Washington to continue to keep troops in Syria. The U.S. in reality did far less in the war against the terrorist groups infesting the region than did the Russians, Iranians or the Syrians themselves and, as a result, it will have less say in what kind of Syria emerges from the carnage. That is almost certainly a good thing for the Syrian people.

But let’s assume for sake of argument that the U.S. invasion really was about ISIS. Well, ISIS continues to hold on to a small bit of territory near the Euphrates River and is reported to have between one and two thousand remaining fighters. There are other estimates suggesting that between 10,000 and 20,000 followers have dispersed and gone underground awaiting a possible resurgence by the group. The argument that ISIS will reorganize and re-emerge as a result of the American withdrawal assumes that it is the 2,000 strong U.S. armed forces that are keeping it down, which is ridiculous. The best remedy against an ISIS recovery is to support a restored and re-unified Syria, which will have more than enough resources available to eliminate the last bits of the terrorist groups remaining in its territory.

So we go to fallback argument B, which is “containing Iran.” “Containment” was a U.S. policy devised by George Kennan in 1947 to inhibit the expansion of a powerful and sometimes aggressive soon-to-be nuclear armed Soviet Union, which was rightly seen as a serious threat. Iran is a second world country with a small military and economy with no nuclear arsenal and it neither threatens the United States nor any of its neighbors. But Israel supported by Saudi Arabia does not like Iran and has induced Washington to follow its lead. Withdrawing from Syria recognizes that Iran is no threat in reality. Positioning American military forces to “counter” Iran does not reduce the threat against the United States because there was no threat there to begin with.

And then there is the argument that the U.S. departure empowers Iran and Russia. Staying in Syria is, on the contrary, a drain on both those countries’ limited resources. The more money and manpower they have to commit to Syria the less they have to become engaged elsewhere and it is hard to imagine how either country would exploit the “victory” in Syria to leverage their involvement in other parts of the world. Both would be delighted if a final settlement of the Syrian problem could be arrived at so they can get out.

And as for the United States, the military should only be deployed anywhere to defend the U.S. itself or vital interests. There is nothing like that at stake in Syria. So, is American national security better or worse if the U.S. leaves? As Russian and American soldiers only confront each other directly in Syria, U.S. national security would in fact be greatly improved because the danger of igniting an accidental war with Russia would be dramatically reduced. There have reportedly already been a dozen incidents between U.S. and Russian troops, including some involving shooting. That has been a dozen too many. Even the possibility of starting an unintended war with Iran would potentially be disastrous for the United States as well as for everyone else in the region, so it is far better to put some distance between the two sides.

And finally, it is necessary to go to the argument for disengagement from Syria that is too little heard in the western media or from the usual bonehead politicians named Graham and Rubio who pronounce on foreign policy. How has American intervention in the Middle East and south and central Asia benefited the people in the countries that have been invaded or bombed? Not at all. By some estimates four million Muslims have been killed as a consequence of the wars since 2001 and millions more displaced. More than eight thousand U.S. military have died in the process in wars that had no purpose and no exit strategy. And the wars have been expensive – $6 trillion and counting, much of it borrowed. War without end means killing without end and it has to stop.

Withdrawing from Syria is the right thing to do, though one has to be concerned that there might be some secret side deals with Israel or Turkey that could actually result in more attacks on Syria and on the Kurds. Donald Trump is already under extreme pressure coming from all directions to reverse his decision to leave Syria and it is quite possible that he will either fold completely or bend at least a bit. It is to be hoped that he will not do so as a Christmas present to the American people. And he might want to think of a Christmas present for 2019. One might suggest a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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As our nation debates the merits of President Trump’s call for withdrawing US troops from Syria and Afghanistan, absent from the debate is the more pernicious aspect of US military involvement overseas: its air wars. Trump’s announcement and General Mattis’ resignation should unleash a national discussion about US involvement in overseas conflicts, but no evaluation can be meaningful without a clear understanding of the violence that U.S air wars have unleashed on the rest of the world for the past 17 years.

By our calculations, in this “war on terror,” the U.S. and its allies have dropped a staggering 291,880 bombs and missiles on other countries—and that is just a minimum number of confirmed strikes.

As we contemplate that overwhelming number, let’s keep in mind that these strikes represent lives snuffed out, people maimed for life, families torn apart, homes and infrastructure demolished, taxpayer money squandered and resentment that only engenders more violence.

After the horrific crimes of September 11th, 2001, Congress was quick to pass a sweeping Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). While three presidents have claimed that the 2001 AUMF legally justifies these endless wars as a response to the crimes of 9/11, no serious reading of the Authorization could interpret it that way.  What it actually says is:

“That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

As former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz told NPR a week after 9/11,

“It is never a legitimate response to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done… We must make a distinction between punishing the guilty and punishing others. If you simply retaliate en masse by bombing Afghanistan, let us say, or the Taliban, you will kill many people who don’t believe in what has happened, who don’t approve of what has happened.”

And yet here we are, 17 years later, mired in wars in which we are bombing ever more “nations, organizations (and) persons” who had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes committed on September 11th.  We don’t have a single real or lasting success we can point to in 17 years of war in 7 countries and “counter-insurgency” operations in a dozen more.  Every country the U.S. has attacked or invaded remains trapped in intractable violence and chaos.

Please look at this chart, and take a few moments to reflect on the mass destruction it represents:

Numbers of bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the U.S. & its allies since 2001

These figures are an absolute minimum of confirmed strikes, based on U.S. Airpower Summaries for Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s count of confirmed drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen; the Yemen Data Project‘s count of Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen; and other published statistics.  Figures for 2018 are through October for Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan; through November for Yemen; and incomplete for other countries.

There are several categories of airstrikes that are not included on this chart, so the real total is certainly much higher. These are:

  • Helicopter strikes: Military Times published an article in February 2017 titled, “The U.S. military’s stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported.”  The largest pool of airstrikes not included in U.S. Airpower Summaries are strikes by attack helicopters.  The U.S. Army told the authors its helicopters had conducted 456 otherwise unreported airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2016.  The authors explained that the non-reporting of helicopter strikes runs throughout the post-9/11 wars, and they still did not know how many actual missiles were used in those 456 attacks in Afghanistan in 2016.
  • AC-130 gunships: The airstrike that destroyed the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan in 2015 was not conducted with bombs or missiles, but by a Lockheed-Boeing AC-130 gunship.  These machines of mass destruction, usually flown by US Air Force special operations forces, are designed to circle a target on the ground, pouring howitzer shells and cannon fire into it, often until it is completely destroyed.  The U.S. has used AC-130sin Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Syria.
  • Strafing runs:  U.S. airpower summaries for 2004-2007 include a note that their tally of “strikes with munitions dropped… does not include 20mm and 30mm cannon or rockets.” But the 30mm cannons on A-10 Warthogs and other ground attack planes are powerful weapons, originally designed to destroy Soviet tanks.  They fire up to 65 shells per second and can blanket a large area with deadly and indiscriminate fire, but that does not count as a “weapons release” in U.S. airpower summaries.
  • Yemen: Journalist Iona Craig, who has reported from Yemen for many years and manages the Yemen Data Project (YDP), told us she doesn’t know what proportion of actual airstrikes its data represents, and that the number of bombs or missiles recorded in each “air raid” in the YDP’s data is only a minimum confirmed number. Whatever fraction of total air raids YDP’s data represents, the actual number of bombs dropped on Yemen is certainly higher than these figures. YDP just doesn’t know how much higher.
  • The U.S. and allies conducting “counter-insurgency” operations in West Africa and other regions.

The U.S. public soon lost its appetite for sending our own sons and daughters to fight and die in all these wars.  So, like Nixon with Vietnam, our leaders reverted to bombing, bombing and more bombing, while small deployments of U.S. special operations forces and larger numbers of foreign proxies do most of the real fighting on the ground.

Our enemies call us cowards, especially when we use drones to kill by remote control, but more importantly, we are behaving like arrogant fools.  Our country is acting as an aggressor and a bull in a china shop at a critical moment in history when neither we, nor the rest of the world, can afford such dangerous and destabilizing behavior from a hyper-militarized, aggressive imperial power.

After U.S.-led bombing, artillery and rocket fire destroyed two major cities in 2017, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the U.S. and its allies conducted fewer airstrikes in 2018, but actually increased the number of strikes in Afghanistan.

We are heading into 2019 with new initiatives to reduce U.S. military involvement overseas. In Yemen, that initiative is the result of massive grassroots pressure on Congress, and is being done in opposition to Trump’s continued support for Saudi aggression in Yemen. In the case of Syria and Afghanistan, it is coming from Trump himself, with broad popular support but bipartisan opposition from Congress and DC elites.

Those who are part of the bipartisan war consensus should reflect on the growing public awareness of the murderous futility of U.S. overseas wars. A survey by the Committee for a Responsible Foreign Policy revealed “a national voter population that is largely skeptical of the practicality or benefits of military intervention overseas.” Donald Trump seems to realize this public disdain for endless war, but we shouldn’t let him get away with reducing U.S. troop presence but continuing—and in some cases escalating—the devastating air wars.

A good New Year’s resolution for the United States would be to put an end to the wars we have been engaged in for the past 17 years, and to make sure we do not allow the same military madness that got us into this mess to sucker us into new wars on North Korea, Iran, Venezuela or other countries.  Yes, let’s bring the troops home, but let’s also stop the bombing. Sustained advocacy toward the Trump administration and the new Congress by peace-loving Americans will be critical if we are to fulfill this resolution.

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This article was originally published on Common Dreams.

Nicolas J S Davies, a researcher for CODEPINK, is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq and of the chapter on “Obama At War” in Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, is the author of the new book, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her previous books include: Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection and Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control

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Managing a bank will always be a more lucrative criminal enterprise than raiding one but this Brechtian styled analysis only goes so far.  A closer look at the extraordinary nature of Goldman Sachs and its operations reveals not merely a bank but a cult of considerable proportion, brazen in its operations and indifferent to authorities.  While states have been surrendering their functions to banks with more regularity than unconscious organ donors, the catch-up was bound to happen. In Malaysia, a country at times irritable with the liberties taken by financial institutions, a retaliation of sorts is taking place.

The Malaysian government now claims that the bank’s subsidiaries, two ex-bankers from Goldman Sachs and Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, engaged in an enterprise of misappropriation to the tune of $2.7 billion.  To that can be added claims of bribery and supplying false statements.  But Goldman remains an old hand at this, already doing what it is famed for: minimising any alleged role of impropriety.

Wherever one turns to this mercenary of the finance world, the pattern is tried and familiar.  Clients of varying moral persuasions are targeted; books and accounts are cooked to order; loans and purchases are arranged.  The result is often murky and often seedy.

Examples of this proliferate in the financial jungle.  Greece stands out as one such client, entering into derivatives contracts with Goldman permitting a part securitisation of debt that evaded European Union rules on reporting.  This came via cross-currency swaps on a historically implied foreign exchange rate, meaning that a weaker Euro rate was used to obtain more Euros in exchange for Greece’s Yen and Dollar reserves.  The derivatives effectively functioned as loans from Goldman to the Greek government, enabling an easy fudge on deficit and debt figures.

Malaysia, with its suitable stable of malleable figures and functionaries keen for the quite literal steal, was also ripe for arrangements.

 “We cannot have an egalitarian society – its impossible to have an egalitarian society,” claimed former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak in September 2013 before an audience at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco.

Najib is now chief target of Malaysia’s current Mahathir administration.

That meeting also had another addition.  Tim Leissner, one of the anointed from the Goldman Sachs Group, was there.  In his role as Southeast Asia chairman, he presided over a financial empire with smooth channels of access to those in power.  Najib’s coming to office in 2009 saw an approval of Goldman’s application to conduct fund management and corporate finance activities.  Then came the deals with the state fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).  Goldman made a stunning $600 million in raising $6.5 billion for 1MDB in 2012 and 2013 on three bond sales.  Its justification for such a figure lay in the underwriting of risks undertaken by the bank itself.

The matter with the 1MDB fund started going off.  It was rumoured that money was not going to the necessary infrastructure projects but making its way into private accounts.  Najib is now the target of a corruption case that has legs linking him to a former subsidiary of IMDB, namely SRC international.  Swiss prosecutors are investigating suspected misappropriations from the 1MDB amounting to $4 billion.

Leissner, like Najib, is out of favour, pleading guilty to US bribery charges in August.  Investigators are now interested to see whether Goldman Sachs had the temerity to mislead bondholders and break anti-corruption laws.

The bank is attempting to run by the old playbook of limited responsibility.  (It should be rebadged limitless irresponsibility.)  Isolate the virus; defer focus and accountability.  The rogue employee argument becomes the default position in such a manoeuvre.  Leissner and managing director Ng Chong Hwa, have been singled out as the villainous architects, while Andrea Vella has been put out to grass – for the moment.

Such a tactic is known and questionable.

“No matter how senior you are,” opined an anonymous former Goldman employee to CNBC, “there’s always somebody above you.  So a lot of people had to decide they were comfortable committing billions of dollars to this.”

Individuals like chief financial officer Stephen Scherr would have had a say, not to mention current CEO David Solomon and his predecessor Lloyd Blankfein.

That approach is also supplemented by the added incentive of libelling the client.  When things go wrong, the customer is not always right.  How, argues the company, could they have known that the raised revenue would be misappropriated?  In a statement from Goldman,

“Under the Malaysian legal process, the firm was not afforded an opportunity to be heard prior to the filing of these charge against certain Goldman Sachs entities, which we intend to vigorously contest.”

The institution knows it will get into regulatory hot water and insures against it.  That’s the Goldman way.  It will bet against the very same derivatives it sells to clients while using mortgage investment schemes that are immune to success.  It will engage in insider trading and, as happened in April 2012, be fined a mere $22 million.

The sheer audacity of this financial institution is finally captured by its confidence that failings, when not given minor punishment, might well be rewarded by the state.  Goldman Sachs is the sort of institution which has thrived on the largesse of government assistance – the old socialise your losses but privatise your gains sort of philosophy runs through its operational philosophy.  It knows, whatever the weather, it will always be guaranteed a safe place to moor.

As the financial crisis of 2008-9 began to bite with ferocity, the banking concern received some $10 billion, followed by $12.9 billion in credit default swap insurance via the bailout of AIG.  As John Lanchester pointed out at the time, the sensitive, well-thought out response of gratitude duly followed: the bank paid itself $16.7 billion in pay and bonuses for the first three quarters of the year.  That’s bankocracy for you.

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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]

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Away from the media glare, the war on Afghan civilians at the hands of America and its local allies continues to take a toll on everyday life, with hundreds killed as a result.

Three weeks ago, Mullah Abdul Manan Akhund, a powerful Taliban commander in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, was killed by an American drone strike. Several journalists and political observers, both Afghan and foreign, shared the news on their Twitter feeds and beyond. Mullah Manan’s death was a big headline, and it also strengthened the 17-year narrative of the so called ‘War on Terror’, which is supposed to be a success.

On the very same day that Mullah Manan was killed, another event occurred in Paktia, a province in eastern Afghanistan. At least 12 civilians were killed in one night of airstrikes and night raids conducted by Afghan and American forces. In fact, the Afghan forces who have been involved – the CIA-backed Khost Protection Force (KPF) – is notorious for killing and torturing civilians.

The next day, family members of the victims buried their loved ones in public, and by holding this ceremony, they also expressed their protest.

Such an event is not rare in Afghanistan. While the world’s – especially the Western public’s focus – often lies on Kabul and other cities, the country’s rural areas have become the main setting of brutal night raids, drone strikes and other military operations.

Often, civilians are killed. In recent weeks, massacres like the one in Paktia took place in several other provinces such as Nangarhar or Helmand, where Mullah Manan was killed. But contrary to the death of the Taliban commander, civilian casualties often go unnoticed. Nobody cares about some ‘alleged militants’, as civilian victims are regularly described in news reports and their families in Afghanistan’s uncovered hinterland. They are, for many, just collateral damage.

In fact, drone strikes like the one that killed Mullah Manan, rarely kill militant leaders. The very first drone operation in the history of mankind took place in October 2001 in Kandahar, and its target – Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar – survived. Years later, he died naturally, the many drones did not kill him but instead killed others, people without faces and names. Other American hunts were unsuccessful too.

Recently, it has been revealed that Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, a senior Taliban leader, is dead. He death was caused by sickness and old age, not by a Hellfire rocket. During the last 17 years, Haqqani – who is also considered as the founder of the so-called ‘Haqqani network’ – has been declared dead a couple of times.

Other people, such as Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, have been ‘killed’ several times by drone strikes. According to Reprieve, a human rights organisation based in the United Kingdom, between 2002 and 2014, at least 1,147 people in Pakistan and Yemen have been killed by drone strikes for the sake of 41 actual targets.

In some cases, targets have been killed after several drone strikes. In others, like in the case of al-Zawahiri, they are still alive today. The question remains, who has been killed instead of them in all these attacks?

This is also one of the reasons why it is problematic that some journalists, analysts and politicians decided to highlight Mullah Manan’s death, despite seemingly not caring about the many civilian casualties of drone strikes and similar operations in the past. It is just strengthening the flawed narrative of ‘precise’ drones and killer squads that solely kill ’terrorists’.

Another such strike took place last weekend in Logar province. According to different reports, at least 12 civilians were killed.

“They were driving home and were mistaken for Taliban fighters. Will this make it on to the news anywhere? Will, anyone, be brought to justice for this?”, a victim’s relative said on social media.

According to recent US military figures, more than 5,000 bombs have been dropped on Afghanistan in 2018. This is a record in the in the 17-year long war. Numbers from 2001 to 2003 are not available. Besides, it is also known that the military’s numbers are flawed and problematic. Last year, research by the Military Times revealed that US military data from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan was factually wrong.

“The American military has failed to publically disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years,” the media outlet reported.

In short, many more bombs have been dropped. They just did not want to tell us.

While Afghanistan and Afghans are being bombed more than ever, the Taliban – Afghanistan’s largest insurgent group – is controlling more territory than it has since 2001. Additionally, Daesh, also known as Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), has made crucial gains too and is capable of conducting complex brutal attack in the middle of big cities like Kabul.

Unsurprisingly, many people are asking themselves the following: Who are these bombs killing?

The answer is simple: Definitely not militants, because the nameless and faceless people who are getting killed regularly are civilians, and the mass murder of these people has created a massive blowback. Thus, militancy and extremism have increased in the region.

Just as in many other places on Earth, the US War on Terror has failed in Afghanistan too. While at least some American policymakers and observers have understood this reality, their Afghan allies in Kabul and their supporters apparently have not. Over the last few years, war crimes committed by Afghan forces have increased significantly.

At this very moment, the Afghan National Army and brutal militias such as the CIA-backed KPF are using American weapons, and they use them much more brutally than the Americans themselves, as whistle-blower who used to be part of the US drone programme, told me after Afghan forces bombed a religious school in the northern province of Kunduz last April.

At least 36 civilians, mostly children, were killed back then while the Kabul government spread fake news, claiming that a ‘Taliban meeting’ took place inside the school.

After the UN confirmed the civilian casualties, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani apologised in public. Since then, his government has done nothing to prevent more civilian casualties but continues to create more of them.

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Were charges evidence-based or politically motivated? Most likely the latter. More to develop on this ahead.

Hostile US political, economic, and financial actions against China, Russia and Iran risk developing into something much more serious than already.

China is America’s main economic rival – why Canada acted as a US proxy in the arrest and detention of Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, still holding her as a virtual prisoner under house arrest.

The action was all about aiding corporate America over foreign competition, notably China’s aim to be an economic, industrial and technological powerhouse, well on its way toward achieving it.

Huawei is a cutting-edge, privately owned, Chinese tech giant, a pioneering firm, the world’s largest multinational telecom equipment maker, the second largest smartphone maker – behind Samsung, ahead of Apple.

It’s a Fortune top 100 global company, its revenue last year around $92 billion, a market leader in scores of countries worldwide – competing successfully against rival US firms.

The Trump regime wants US telecom/tech companies, getting an international advantage over Huawei by fair or foul means – what targeting Meng is all about.

It’s notably an effort to undermine Huawei’s efforts to become the world’s leading fifth generation (5G) cellular communications company.

The same thing appears to lie behind the Trump regime’s Justice Department action against two Chinese nationals, Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, reportedly employed by Huaying Haitai Science and Technology Development Company.

They’re accused of being hackers for a group known as APT 10, standing for Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) – undetected cyberattacks over a prolonged period. They’re more about monitoring network activity than data theft or attempts to damage invaded networks or organizations.

Zhu and Zhang were indicted on dubious charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

According to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, ‘(t)he  indictment alleges that the defendants were part of a group that hacked computers in at least a dozen countries and gave China’s intelligence service access to sensitive business information,” adding:

“This is outright cheating and theft, and it gives China an unfair advantage at the expense of law-abiding businesses and countries that follow the international rules in return for the privilege of participating in the global economic system.”

FBI Christopher Wray claimed “China’s goal…is to replace the US as the world’s leading superpower—and they’re breaking the law to get there, adding:

“They’re using an expanding set of non-traditional and illegal methods. And Chinese state-sponsored actors are the most active perpetrators of economic espionage against us.”

Hostile actions against Huawei and the above named Chinese nationals may undermine Sino/US trade talks.

In response to charges against Zhu and Zhang, Beijing accused the Trump regime of “fabricating” them, “smearing the Chinese side on cybersecurity issues.”

Trump’s Justice Department alleges that Zhu and Zhang acted on behalf of Beijing’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded strongly to the charges, saying:

“The US move is vicious in nature, severely violating the basic norms governing international relations and damaging cooperating between the two countries. China resolutely opposes the accusations and has lodged a solemn representations to the US side,” adding:

“The Chinese government’s position on cybersecurity issues is consistent and clear. China is a staunch defender of cybersecurity and has consistently opposed and cracked down on any form of cybersecurity.”

“For a long time, it has long been an open secret for the relevant departments of the United States to conduct large-scale and organized network theft and monitoring and monitoring activities for foreign governments, enterprises and individuals.”

Washington’s Five Eyes partnered countries, jointly cooperating in signals intelligence – Australia, Britain Canada, and New Zealand – are in cahoots with the Trump regime in lodging charges against China.

Will hacking charges and unacceptable treatment of Meng derail Sino/US talks to resolve major differences between the world’s dominant economies?

Are further hostile US actions against China coming? Is Beijing’s patience with the Trump regime wearing thin?

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

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Is it simply business as usual or a corporate conspiracy to destroy the planet? However one characterizes it our planet is being cooked so already wealthy people can make even more profit.

Last Friday the New York Times published a front-page story titled “The Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules.” The article pointed out that Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Marathon Oil, Koch Industries and other oil/refining interests won “rollbacks” to vehicle fuel mileage rules that “have gone further than the more modest changes automakers originally lobbied for.” The legislative changes are expected to “increase greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by more than the amount many midsize countries put out in a year.”

With internal combustion engines consuming nearly two-thirds of US petroleum, industry profits are threatened by measures that cut gasoline consumption (be it better fuel mileage, diverting funds from roadway, eliminating auto infrastructure, etc.). About 150,000 gas stations do hundreds of billions of dollars in sales every year. In The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World Paul Roberts explains that the oil industry’s business model is planned around the gasoline pump, “from the kind of crude oil it sought to the kind of refineries it built, to its intense focus on retail marketing.”

The oil industry’s recent opposition to regulating automakers is consistent with its history of promoting automobility, as I and Bianca Mugyenyi detail in Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay. As far back as 1925, oil representatives packed a committee organized by the US surgeon-general concerning the health effects of leaded gas. They successfully argued that lead was harmless despite the fact that companies such as Standard Oil of New Jersey knew leaded gasoline  was a health threat. Over the next 60 years lead levels increased a hundred-fold until it was finally banned in 1986.

In the 1930s and 40s Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum were part of the corporate conspiracy against trolleys  that changed the face of urban landscapes across North America. With General Motors and other companies they set up a network of front organizations that ripped up, converted and resold a hundred electric transit systems in 45 cities.

Amidst increasing smog in California in the 1950s, oil interests engaged in a fight against anti-pollution legislation. They financed  the Stanford Research Institute to contest the findings of Professor Arie J. Haagen-Smit who demonstrated that automobiles  and oil refineries were the major sources of smog.

In 1970 oil companies helped defeat  California’s Proposition 18, an initiative to divert a small portion of the state gas tax to public transit.

Oil companies were part of the National Highway Users Conference (NHUC) that was set up during the Depression to lobby for roadway funding. When the Chicago Transit Authority proposed using $30 million in state fuel tax to finance improvements to mass transit in the mid-1950s, the NHUC sent in two full-time workers to successfully coordinate opposition (with the Illinois Highway Users Conference) against the proposal.

In 1951, the NHUC launched Project  Adequate Roads, which called for a national highway system. Project Adequate Roads helped win the massive Interstate Highway System.

Oil interests were part of another group that lobbied for the Interstate. Beginning in 1942 the “Road Gang”, a secret society of men representing, automobile, truck and tire makers as well highway engineers, top highway bureaucrats, etc. met regularly in a private Washington, DC, restaurant to push for more roadway.

The private automobile has risen to dominance in large part because of its ability to draw together a wide array of powerful corporate interests from steel makers to real estate developers, rubber companies to big box retailers. During the automobile’s embryonic phase, the oil industry was already big business. At that time, oil was mainly used to fuel the kerosene lamp, a business destroyed by the emergence of gas and electrical illumination. The powerful oil interests of the day, led by the Rockefeller family, were bailed out of this crisis and set up for life with the advent of the automobile. And as barrel upon barrel was drained from the earth and pumped into gas tanks, big oil swam in its profits.

So, in many respects, oil interests lobbying against restrictions on automakers is simply business as usual, given their history of promoting automobility. But, given the dangers of climate disturbances ‘business as usual’ takes on the appearance of a criminal corporate conspiracy to destroy civilization.

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GMOs in Many Foods Will Go Undisclosed Under Trump’s Final GMO Rule

December 26th, 2018 by Environmental Working Group

Today the Department of Agriculture released a final rule to implement the mandatory GMO disclosure law passed in 2016. It will allow the genetically engineered ingredients in many foods to remain hidden from consumers. Below is a statement from Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group:

No one should be surprised that the most anti-consumer, anti-transparency administration in modern times is denying Americans basic information about what’s in their food and how it’s grown.

The Trump administration has yet again put the interests of pesticide and biotech companies ahead of the interests of ordinary Americans.

The final GMO disclosure rule fails to meet the clear intent of Congress to create a mandatory disclosure standard that includes all genetically engineered foods and uses terms that consumers understand. A fair standard should address the needs of consumers who don’t have expensive phones or who live in rural places with poor cell service but the rule put forward today simply fails to do that.

At a time when consumers are asking more and more questions about the use of genetic engineering, today’s rule will further undermine the technology by sowing greater confusion among Americans who simply want the right to know if their food is genetically modified – the same right held by consumers in 64 other countries.

Despite today’s disappointing, and likely unlawful, decision, we are pleased that companies that trust consumers – including Campbell’s, Mars, Danone, Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola and Unilever – will voluntarily disclose all GMOs in all their foods, not just in those required by the final rule.

EWG is announcing today that it has created a new portal on its Food Scores website for consumers who want to seek out certified organic and non-GMO options. The website lists more than 3,000 food products that are both certified organic and certified GMO-free.

The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

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US Withdrawal from Syria Paves Way for Israeli Strikes

December 26th, 2018 by Tony Cartalucci

The US suddenly and unexpectedly announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria after years of illegally occupying the country. The US presence aimed at ousting the Syrian government, boosting militant groups the US and its partners have armed and backed since the 2011 conflict started, and denying Damascus access to its own resources, particularly oil concentrated east of the Euphrates River.

The US occupation of Syria is only one part of a much larger, decades-long campaign of achieving, maintaining, and expanding US hegemony across North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia – as well as the ultimate goal of encircling and containing both Russia and China.

A genuine withdrawal from the Syrian conflict would signal a seismic shift in US foreign policy and mark an irreversible decline in American hegemony.

It is difficult to believe such a seismic shift could happen, and so suddenly.

It is also a shift not founded in US foreign policy or fact.

There are several key possibilities to consider:

  • A US withdrawal paves way for unilateral Israeli strikes;
  • It also paves the way for an expanded Turkish incursion;
  • US troops won’t be on the ground as targets in the immediate aftermath of any wider conflict Israel or Turkey provokes;
  • US troops can re-enter theater with renewed pretext to fight Damascus directly in defense of allies Israel or Turkey and;
  • US troops can re-enter theater along the better formed and protected front Turkey seeks to create.
The above possibilities are drawn not from speculation, but from multiple US policy papers spanning decades.

US Withdrawal From Syria Removes Obstructions to Escalation, Not Peace 

US policymakers have drawn up plans for years regarding US primacy in the Middle East. In the 2009 policy paper published by corporate-financier funded think tank – the Brookings Institution – the use of US proxies like Israel to carry out major attacks on Iran were given its own chapter.

However, the only obstruction to this option was the necessity of Israeli warplanes to fly over either US-ally Jordan or US-occupied Iraq.

The report would claim under a chapter titled, “Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike” (.pdf) that (emphasis added):

An Israeli air campaign against Iran would have a number of very important differences from an American campaign. First, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has the problem of overflight transit from Israel to Iran. Israel has no aircraft carriers, so its planes must take off from Israeli air bases. It also does not possess long-range bombers like the B-1 or B-2, or huge fleets of refueling tankers, all of which means that unlike the United States, Israel cannot avoid flying through someone’s air space. The most direct route from Israel to Iran’s Natanz facility is roughly 1,750 kilometers across Jordan and Iraq. As the occupying power in Iraq, the United States is responsible for defending Iraqi airspace. 

It would also state (emphasis added):

From the American perspective, this negates the whole point of the option—distancing the United States from culpability—and it could jeopardize American efforts in Iraq, thus making it a possible nonstarter for Washington. Finally, Israeli violation of Jordanian airspace would likely create political problems for King Abdullah of Jordan, one of America’s (and Israel’s) closest Arab friends in the region. Thus it is exceedingly unlikely that the United States would allow Israel to overfly Iraq, and because of the problems it would create for Washington and Amman, it is unlikely that Israel would try to fly over Jordan.

And finally, the Brookings paper would claim (emphasis added):

An Israeli attack on Iran would directly affect key American strategic interests. If Israel were to overfly Iraq, both the Iranians and the vast majority of people around the world would see the strike as abetted, if not authorized, by the United States. Even if Israel were to use another route, many Iranians would still see the attack as American supported or even American orchestrated. After all, the aircraft in any strike would be American produced, supplied, and funded F-15s and F-16s, and much of the ordnance would be American made. In fact, $3 billion dollars in U.S. assistance annually sustains the IDF’s conventional superiority in the region.

Thus, by removing US troops from Iraq regarding 2009 US plans to have Israel strike Iran then – or to have US troops withdrawn from Syria to distance the US from culpability ahead of Israeli strikes in the near future – the US can remove this critical obstruction toward greater escalation and even major war – not toward peace.

As to what the US would do in the wake of a supposedly “unilateral” Israeli strike – Brookings had an answer for that too (emphasis added):

However, as noted in the previous chapter, the airstrikes themselves are really just the start of this policy. Again, the Iranians would doubtless rebuild their nuclear sites. They would probably retaliate against Israel, and they might retaliate against the United States, too (which might create a pretext for American airstrikes or even an invasion). And it seems unlikely that they would cease their support for violent extremist groups or efforts to overturn the regional status quo in the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes. Their opposition to an Arab-Israeli peace treaty would likely be redoubled. Hence the United States would still need a strategy to handle Iran after completion of the Israeli airstrikes, and this could mean a much longer time frame to achieve all of America’s goals.

This policy within a Syrian context could mean major, unprecedented Israeli strikes on Syrian targets – a major escalation from previous and more limited strikes – but avoiding Russian targets, under the assumption Moscow will fall short of retaliating to avoid full-scale war.

Israel has already made its intentions clear that it will continue confronting “Iran” in Syria after the withdrawal of US forces.

Any retaliation by Damascus – real or staged – will be used to bring the US back into the conflict with a wider claimed pretext to take on Damascus directly – with the added benefit of not having US troops on the ground serving as easy targets in the immediate fallout of a much larger conflict.

Turkey Too? 

There is also Turkey to consider – a nation that has played a central role in facilitating the proxy war against Syria since it began in 2011. US policymakers have included Turkey in tandem with Israel as two coordinating pressure points against Damascus for decades.

A 1983 document signed by former CIA officer Graham Fuller titled, “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria” (PDF), states (their emphasis):

Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey. 

The report also states:

If Israel were to increase tensions against Syria simultaneously with an Iraqi initiative, the pressures on Assad would escalate rapidly. A Turkish move would psychologically press him further. 

More recently, US policymakers in 2012 Brookings Institution document titled, “Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change” (PDF), which stated (emphasis added):

Some voices in Washington and Jerusalem are exploring whether Israel could contribute to coercing Syrian elites to remove Asad. 

The report continues by explaining (emphasis added):

Israel could posture forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Asad regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training. Such a mobilization could perhaps persuade Syria’s military leadership to oust Asad in order to preserve itself. 

Regarding events on the ground now – Turkey is already signaling its intentions to enter Syria east of the Euphrates and expand its military occupation across more Syrian territory.

Turkish forces entering into Syria would serve as a front against Syrian forces in the outbreak of wider war with supply lines protected all the way to the Turkish border and deep into Turkish territory. US forces re-entering the theater can do so from Turkey and avoid being cut off in US bases currently scattered across eastern Syria.

Whether or not Russia and Iran have created a sufficient amount of incentives and deterrents to place  between Turkey and its continued role in destabilizing Syria since then remains to be seen. Only Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus can know what deals they have with Ankara and where its apparent plans to enter Syrian territory fit into them.

Empire Dies Hard 

US involvement in Syria was always aimed at eventually undermining, encircling, containing, and eventually overthrowing first Iran, then closing around Russia further.

Unless we are to believe the US has abandoned its wider hegemonic ambitions – and there is no evidence to suggest that it has – it is irrational and ill-advised to believe the US is truly walking away from Syria without plans to dangerously escalate the conflict while minimizing its own culpability.

The United States has gone from an uncontested global superpower at the end of the Cold War, to an increasing dangerous, desperate fading hegemon today. The weaker it appears, the more unpredictable and dangerous its actions are becoming. A genuine withdrawal from Syria would neither fit America’s current global ambitions, nor fit its recent pattern of increasingly dangerous and desperate policies implemented from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and North Africa, into Central Asia, and across East Asia.

A skeptical public leaves no room for the US to capitalize on the apparent “good will” the US is trying to cultivate through its supposed withdrawal from Syria ahead of provocations by proxy it will have fully underwritten and will immediately move to exploit toward greater war.

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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

Development vs. Destruction: China and the U.S.

December 26th, 2018 by Sara Flounders

Escalating U.S. military confrontations, political threats, extreme tariffs and an ominous trade war against China are having global repercussions. These provocations impact the economy and the political alliances of every country, not only China.

The emerging policies of China and the U.S. reveal, in the starkest light, a fundamental difference in the form of each state. The two countries are all too often lumped together as “superpowers.” This hides the underlying struggle.

The current threats against China are an extension of the U.S. military policy called the “Pivot to Asia.” This is an overarching strategy to rebalance and realign U.S. military power to focus on China as a rising power. It was initiated in the Obama administration in 2012 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It was recognition that, counter to the hopes of Wall Street, the People’s Republic of China had not collapsed in chaos under the weight of U.S. capitalist investment and political pressure.

Now 400 of the U.S.’s 800 overseas military bases encircle China. The goal, in the terminology of military planners, is to create a “ring of steel,” a “perfect noose” around the large developing country whose very existence is a threat to U.S. global domination.

Aircraft carriers, destroyers, nuclear submarines, jet aircraft, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile batteries and satellite surveillance infrastructures are being moved into place across the Pacific region. The U.S. military presence is, by its very nature, an assault on the sovereignty of the host countries.

On existing U.S. bases, building is underway for additional aircraft parking, hangars, fuel storage tanks and ammunition storage facilities.

Chokehold threat

The realignment of U.S. policy is more than a vast construction project. It also involves constant military operations to demonstrate U.S. power in so-called “freedom of navigation” (FON) operations by aggressively sailing warships, overflights by combat aircraft and positioning troops in China’s territorial waters in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

U.S. imperialism has long used blatant and open military threats, economic destabilization and strangulation, along with sanctions and blockades, to impose concessions on targeted countries.

Along with high-tech equipment of death and destruction comes the media barrage of demonization and blatant propaganda. This, in turn, is picked up by politicians, think tanks, social media and well-funded nongovernmental organizations.

A great deal of U.S. strategy is focused on how the Pentagon’s vast military capacity can be used to strangle China by cutting off shipping routes for its export industries as well as blockading its access to needed imports of oil and raw materials.

More than 80 percent of the materials essential for China’s economy come into the South China Sea through the Straits of Malacca, a narrow waterway running between Malaysia and Indonesia that also passes the strategic city-state of Singapore. One U.S. aircraft carrier battle group could choke the Straits closed.

Each FON operation by the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea is a threatening reminder to the Chinese government of its vulnerability.

In what was formerly an impoverished, semicolonized country with uneven development, the People’s Republic of China is still in an intense struggle for survival. Its national sovereignty and continuing development are at stake.

In response to U.S. military threats, China is building its military capability and reinforcing islands it claims in the South China Sea.

But it is also doing something that the U.S. government and its corporate rulers are incapable of doing: conducting vast, unfolding construction and economic integration projects that benefit China as well as many other countries. This coordinated loan and aid program is known as the Belt and Road Project.

Cooperation, not competition

Following the U.S. Pivot to Asia, President Xi Jinping announced China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 as a plan to create an infrastructure corridor linking China to Central Asia and Europe through new rail and road networks as well as shipping routes.

Four years later, at the 2017 Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, Xi described its goal: to build “land, maritime, air and cyberspace connectivity” and create “networks of highways, railways and sea ports.”

Securing sea lanes and developing ports and refueling stations will help China’s exporters reach overseas markets and give China uninterrupted access to energy imports. Establishing overland connections, pipelines, warehouses and roads to the Indian Ocean through Pakistan, Thailand and Myanmar will make China less vulnerable to chokepoints.

This global project is an opportunity for China to put to more active use its large but vulnerable currency reserves, most of which are in U.S. Treasury notes.

Some of China’s currency reserves have been used in the creation of the New Development Bank, which provides funds for the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), as well as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the proposed Shanghai Cooperation Organization Bank.

The construction projects and trade being financed are especially helpful in furthering China’s predominance of state-owned industries. This makes China less dependent on precarious Western investments.

The scale and scope of these initiatives are staggering. Estimates vary, but more than $300 billion has already been spent, and China plans to spend $1 trillion more in the next decade or so.

The vast network of new road, rail and pipeline projects is also a huge boon to development throughout a vast region.

In addition to infrastructure development, the initiative now includes efforts at “financial integration,” “cooperation in science and technology,” “cultural and academic exchanges” and the establishment of trade “cooperation mechanisms.”

Larger than the World Bank

Many developing countries in Africa, Central Asia and Latin America are embracing conscious planning for connective infrastructure as a way to stimulate economic activity in their most remote and rural areas.

Within a few decades, China has gone from being an aid recipient to a donor, following its emergence as the world’s second-largest economy. In the 1980s and 1990s, China was the world’s largest recipient of World Bank and Asian Development Bank loans. Now it makes more loans to developing countries than does the World Bank.

This undermines the ability of U.S. and European banks to impose onerous conditions on developing countries’ financial dealings. China’s loans and development plans are increasingly more popular, because they have fewer strings attached. This has become a growing source of contention with U.S. imperialism, which has had unrivaled dominance over the world’s financial system since World War II.

The top 10 recipients of official Chinese development aid are eight African countries, Cuba and Cambodia. Meanwhile, according to CIA figures, 92 countries counted China as their largest export or import partner in 2015 — far more than the 57 partnering with the U.S.

A fundamental struggle

What should be the attitude of the progressive and working-class movement to this growing confrontation? Is it just a rivalry between two superpowers? Or is there a more fundamental struggle at the root of the confrontation?

Compared to U.S. imperialism’s vast construction projects — which number hundreds of military bases — China’s response to U.S. military encirclement shows a fundamental difference in the character of the two states.

The U.S. capitalist economy is dominated by “defense” contractors and oil industries. These giant corporations have enjoyed the highest rates of profit for decades. They predominate in the U.S. economy.

Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, United Technologies and the banks behind them are assured a guaranteed multibillion-dollar subsidy on military contracts. War is profitable. Arms sales and weapon transfers predominate in U.S. foreign aid.

Trump recently signed legislation establishing the International Development Finance Corporation, with $60 billion in funds to finance investments in developing countries. That amounts to only 6 percent of China’s $1 trillion development project.

U.S. humanitarian aid for famine, earthquakes and other disasters is a meager 14 percent of total U.S. aid. That includes State Department and Defense Department disaster relief efforts, as well as purchases of U.S. agricultural goods and funding for the International Red Cross.

In fiscal year 2019, the total U.S. government spending for defense is budgeted at $952 billion. It is clear what U.S. imperialism’s priority is.

The big problem

U.S. aid is based on war. It generates war and military confrontations, which in turn lead to the sale of more U.S. weapons.

U.S. intelligence agencies and military contractors have a material interest in antagonizing relations with neighboring countries, creating terror threats, coups and civil wars. It’s good for business.

Military aid, advisors and trainers further dislocate the economy and the social fabric of receiving countries. Military aid is designed to strengthen the military and police apparatus and all the most repressive institutions of the receiving country. It enriches the most corrupt individuals and ruling families.

The arms industry invests heavily in an army of well-paid lobbyists. Some 700 to 1,000 each year besiege Capitol Hill to keep the subsidized funds and contracts flowing. Most of the lobbyists are well-connected retired military officers and congressional staffers.

The U.S. infrastructure of bridges, roads, housing, sewage and sanitation is collapsing from neglect and lack of funding for the same reason that U.S. aid is not directed to development or planning infrastructure around the world.

In the U.S. 20 million people a year get sick from contaminated water. Life expectancy is declining. But it is more profitable to bomb sanitation, sewage and irrigation structures than it is to build or repair them, whether in the U.S. or around the world.

Aid and development projects are based on maximizing profits for the largest U.S. corporations. As we have noted, these happen to be military corporations, military services and base support services.

In fiscal year 2016, the Pentagon issued $304 billion in contract awards to corporations. The top five firms grabbed $100 billion in government funds, or about one-third of all contracts. But military spending is also good for lots of other small capitalists. More than 600,000 private contractors receive funds from the military budget.

Korea: Bases or reunification?

Looking beyond the confrontation with China, U.S. imperialism is facing similar problems in Korea.

After 70 years of a state of war, the U.S. military occupation that divides Korea is now confronted by the enormous enthusiasm shown by Koreans, north and south, for trade, exchanges and mutual cooperation. Reunification is the aspiration of millions of Koreans. The last right-wing, pro-U.S. government in South Korea was literally overwhelmed by millions of Koreans who demonstrated every week for a year in order to bring it down and move the country in a new direction. An opening to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north was unstoppable.

Despite the meeting between President Trump and President Kim Jong Un of the DPRK, the real response of the U.S. to the people of South Korea has been the construction of the largest overseas U.S. military base in the world — Camp Humphreys, just a few miles from Seoul.

The U.S. Army calls Camp Humphreys “the largest power projection platform in the Pacific.” It has the busiest U.S. Army airfield in Asia and a 8,124-foot runway.

More than 650 buildings are being built or renovated across a land area the size of Washington, D.C.

The decade-long expansion project is costing $10.8 billion. When fully operational, the base is expected to house 45,000 troops, contractors and family members.

How to spend $1 trillion

While China plans to spend $1 trillion in the coming years on its Belt and Road development program, the Pentagon’s plan is to spend more than $1 trillion on a whole new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, submarines, and land- and air-based missiles.

The United States has more than 4,000 nuclear warheads in its active stockpile, with 1,700 deployed and ready to be launched at a moment’s notice.

That is a danger to the whole planet.

U.S. imperialism can dump surplus agricultural products or equipment, or it can plunk down factories to take advantage of cheap labor if this is profitable for individual corporations. But the capitalist economy in the U.S. is not geared to developing economic competitors.

The United States today is the world’s largest capitalist economy, but its predatory practices around the world are suddenly being challenged in a wholly unexpected way. New programs coming from China are radically different from the alliances and aid programs coming from the U.S.

In a capitalist economy investment money will overwhelmingly go into producing what will earn the highest rate of profit. This is an inexorable pull. The entire system is based on maximizing profit, not on producing what is needed by society.

While it justifies interventions and sanctions with claims of counterterrorism or just being at odds with the West, the U.S. ruling class will find it harder to impose its will. Because there is now a clear alternative.

State-owned enterprises

China has 150,000 state-owned enterprises, of which 50,000, or one third, are owned by the central government; the remainder are owned by local and state governments. They account for 30 to 40 percent of the gross domestic product, and that is growing.

Twelve of the largest Chinese firms listed on the Fortune 500 are state-owned industries. (“Top Ranks of China’s Fortune 500 Still Dominated by State-Owned Enterprises,” chinabankingnews.com, Aug. 1, 2017)

Nevertheless, it is very obvious that the capitalist market has made enormous inroads into China. China has a mixed economy, which the government calls “market socialism.”  But central planning has been maintained under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Based on this reality, such leadership is able to make far more rational and planned decisions. The state is able to consciously subsidize the state sector and plan development. This has dramatically improved the lives of hundreds of millions of working people.

China’s foreign loans and infrastructure development are not mainly based on revolutionary solidarity, although Cuba is the largest recipient of Chinese aid. For the most part, economic decisions are pragmatic, spurred by the need to break out of the hostile imperialist encirclement and imposed isolation.

Nevertheless, the development of roads, industries, ports, telecommunications, sanitation and health as interconnected infrastructure across wide regions will enlarge and strengthen the working class in both China and the other countries. This will also break down competition and aid cooperation.

Originally published on Workers World

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Throughout the long Cold War Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University was a voice of reason. He refused to allow his patriotism to blind him to Washington’s contribution to the conflict and to criticize only the Soviet contribution. Cohen’s interest was not to blame the enemy but to work toward a mutual understanding that would remove the threat of nuclear war. Although a Democrat and left-leaning, Cohen would have been at home in the Reagan administration, as Reagan’s first priority was to end the Cold War. I know this because I was part of the effort. Pat Buchanan will tell you the same thing.

In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the “Russian threat,” Wohlstetter’s accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA’s assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to attack the US.

The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team B caused.

Today Cohen is stressed that it is the United States that thinks it can win a nuclear war. Washington speaks openly of using “low yield” nuclear weapons, and intentionally forecloses any peace negotiations with Russia with a propaganda campaign against Russia of demonization, villification, and transparant lies, while installing missile bases on Russia’s borders and while talking of incorporating former parts of Russia into NATO. In his just published book, War With Russia?, which I highly recommend, Cohen makes a convincing case that Washington is asking for war.

I agree with Cohen that if Russia is a threat it is only because the US is threatening Russia. The stupidity of the policy toward Russia is creating a Russian threat. Putin keeps emphasizing this. To paraphrase Putin: “You are making Russia a threat by declaring us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless repetition.”

Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach?

The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared.

The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex’s resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA’s successful use of the CIA’s media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA’s use of the media, including Udo Ulfkotte’s “Bought Journalism,” the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned.

The demonization of Russia is also aided and abeted by the Democrats’ hatred of Trump and anger from Hillary’s loss of the presidential election to the “Trump deplorables.” The Democrats purport to believe that Trump was installed by Putin’s interference in the presidentail election. This false belief is emotionally important to Democrats, and they can’t let go of it.

Although Cohen as a professor at Princeton and NYU never lacked research opportunities, in the US Russian studies, strategic studies, and the like are funded by the military/security complex whose agenda Cohen’s scholarship does not serve. At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where I held an independently financed chair for a dozen years, most of my colleagues were dependent on grants from the military/security complex. At the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where I was a Senior Fellow for three decades, the anti-Soviet stance of the Institution reflected the agenda of those who funded the institution.

I am not saying that my colleagues were whores on a payroll. I am saying that the people who got the appointments were people who were inclined to see the Soviet Union the way the military/security complex thought it should be seen.

As Stephen Cohen is aware, in the original Cold War there was some balance as all explanations were not controlled. There were independent scholars who could point out that the Soviets, decimated by World War 2, had an interest in peace, and that accommodation could be achieved, thus avoiding the possibility of nuclear war.

Stephen Cohen must have been in the younger ranks of those sensible people, as he and President Reagan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matloff, seem to be the remaining voices of expert reason on the American scene.

If you care to understand the dire threat under which you live, a threat that only a few people, such as Stephen Cohen, are trying to lift, read his book.

If you want to understand the dire threat that a bought-and-paid-for American media poses to your existence, read Cohen’s accounts of their despicable lies. America has a media that is synonymous with lies.

If you want to understand how corrupt American universities are as organizations on the take for money, organizations to whom truth is inconsequential, read Cohen’s book.

If you want to understand why you could be dead before Global Warming can get you, read Cohen’s book.

Enough said.

Originally published on PaulCraigRoberts.org

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