Finkelstein comments:  A few days ago I wrote this to several correspondents:

Trump has to renew/not renew the Iran agreement every 120 days.  It’s true that back in January 2018 he said the next renewal date would be decisive.  But Trump has not been very punctual about his own deadlines.  So why is Netanyahu investing so much in this particular deadline? 

I am averse to conspiracy theories but I can’t resist this thought:  The next deadline is May 12.  The Great March of Return climaxes on May 15.  If Trump pulls out of the agreement on May 12, the media will be riveted on the fate of the Iran agreement.  It’s the perfect moment for Netanyahu to commit a large-scale massacre when Gazans attempt to breach the fence.  Netanyahu (and Israeli leaders generally) are finely attuned to the US news cycle, so this must be considered a real possibility.

Recall, e.g., that Netanyahu launched the ground invasion phase of Protective Edge the night of the same day that the Malaysian airliner was shot down over the Ukraine, when all the news cameras turned away from Gaza and towards the Ukraine.  Already as far back as 1989 during the First Intifada, Netanyahu criticized the Israeli government for not carrying out a large-scale expulsion of Palestinians while cameras shifted to the China’s Tienanmen  Square massacre.  The other possibility is, Netanyahu will carry out a large-scale atrocity or assassination of Hamas/Islamic Jihadi leaders on May 12 in order to provoke a “rocket” attack from Gaza, which will provide Israeli with a pretext to attack Gaza preempting the May 15 march.  In 2008, Israel waited until November 4, the day of the historic election carrying Obama into power, to launch the commando raid into Gaza that broke the ceasefire. No one noticed the commando raid because all the cameras were focused on Obama.  When the ceasefire broke down after the murderous Israeli provocation, Hamas was blamed.

​Today Israel almost certainly killed the six Hamas militants in Gaza just as it killed the six Hamas militants in Gaza on the eve of Operation Cast Lead in 2008.  ​It is desperately trying to provoke a violent Hamas reaction so as to have a pretext to drown the mass nonviolent Great March of Return in a sea of blood.  It is a very sad commentary that, as Gazans prepare to march into the Valley of Death in one last desperate bid to break out of the ​”​largest concentration camp ever to exist​” (Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling), the international Palestine solidarity movement is missing in action.​

The philosopher Étienne Balibar is one of the figures behind the solidarity fund in support of striking railworkers — a fund that now stands close to €1 million. Responding to questions from workers who are taking part in the rolling strike action, Balibar emphasised the need for what he calls “collective resistance against social regression.”

Anasse, a pointsman at Le Bourget: How can an intellectual today show solidarity with workers’ strike action?

There are (at least) two reasons for them to do so, and indeed these reasons overlap. The first reason is that the railworkers who are today defending fundamental social rights are also fighting to stop the rail service itself being dismantled. This is not just any company. It is an essential public service, and now we see various attempts to privatise it (opening it up to competition and aligning its rules of functioning with the managerial norms of private businesses). This is part of a general offensive, which we might call a “neoliberal” offensive. After the attacks on the post office and telecommunications, they are trying to get rid of an essential public service. And other important sectors are also in the firing line.

The second reason is connected to this. As a teacher and researcher (I entered the education system as a trainee teacher in 1960, and today I am an “emeritus” professor) I spent my life working to serve citizens, and not so that a company could make profits. The railways and education are not the same thing, but they do together make up part of a wider whole. And now competition-based standards of evaluation and management are also penetrating into the education system. So I welcome the railworkers’ strike, for the strikers are in the vanguard of the collective resistance to this social regression.

Karim, Landy maintenance centre: It is said that our status is a privilege dating back to a time that has now passed. In your view, what, today, is a right and what is a privilege?

That’s an essential question! The terminology around “privilege” is a propaganda tool, which is used to discredit the railworkers’ resistance against their status being dismantled (or condemned to future extinction). Their status is presented not only as somehow archaic, but as if it were indirectly exploiting other workers. This is the height of nonsense, when we actually look at the railworkers’ wages and working conditions. Without doubt, there are privileged people in our society, in which we can see an exponential rise in inequalities of wealth and power, inequalities before the tax system, and inequalities in terms of who gets to have their say. But these privileged types are not working on the railways. We would be better off looking for them in the Stock Exchange or in Neuilly [posh neighbourhood on the western edge of Paris].

Besides, the very idea of democracy (from the French Revolution onward) has always been based on the elimination of privileges — which have a class character — and the recognition of rights — which are, on principle, universal. Rights belong to everyone. In the nineteenth and particularly the twentieth century, these rights also began to include social rights, social security, and protections for workers. This was not the result of the ruling classes’ goodwill, but long and arduous struggles, and exceptional — sometimes even dramatic — circumstances. We should remember that the railworkers’ current status was established in two phases, in the aftermaths of the First and then the Second World War. That is no coincidence! In resisting the dismantling of their status, today’s railworkers are defending this historical inheritance and its continuation for the future generations, who risk living in a society of generalised precarity.

Laura, a pointswoman in Le Bourget: The strike could get tougher over time. They are talking about us as if we were taking people hostage. What do you think about this?

First of all, I should say that my hope is not that the strike “goes on” indefinitely, but that it wins, especially considering the general interest that it embodies. But given the positions to which the government is currently holding firm, it is possible that the strike will indeed have to get tougher, and endure for longer, if it is to emerge victorious. It will be essentially important, therefore, to win the battle of public opinion, to secure the understanding and if possible the active support of the service users (the large majority of whom are also workers). Given the inconvenience that a transport strike will cause for everyone, it is hardly self-evident that the strike will indeed win over public opinion.

“Intellectuals” like us have to do as much as possible to help make this happen. That is, insofar as intellectuals are able to make ourselves heard and affect public opinion (a French tradition that also needs protecting). Just like when they speak of “privileged” workers, the reference to the strikers “taking people hostage” is also mere propaganda. It is so over-the-top that I would be astonished if it worked. But we never know how public opinion could turn, and the government will stop at nothing to make the strikers look like “hardliners,” “selfish,” “terrorists,” etc. So, a lot will depend on the force of the movement, which will need to be united, to keep its cool, to be democratic, and to be clear in its objectives. Here, too, we intellectuals can play a role, even without ever substituting for the railworkers in struggle.

*

First published at Révolution Permanente. Translated from French by David Broder

Étienne Balibar is a French philosopher and the most celebrated student of Louis Althusser. He is also one of the leading exponents of French Marxist philosophy and the author of Identity and Difference and The Philosophy of Marx.

Featured image is from the author.

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Featured image: Turkish Prime Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu

In the latest sign that Turkey is seriously considering leaving NATO as its relationship with the security bloc (and the US in particular) continues to deteriorate, Turkish Prime Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned on Thursday that the country would retaliate if a bill being pushed by House Republicans to block arms sales to Turkey becomes law.

As Reuters reports, lawmakers released details on Friday of a $717 billion annual defense policy bill that included a provision to temporarily halt weapons sales to Turkey. During an interview with broadcaster CNN Turk, Cavusoglu criticized the measure, saying it was wrong to impose such a restriction on a military ally, alluding to the fact that Turkey has graciously allowed the US to use its Encirlik air base to launch its air strikes against ISIS (as well as against Turkey’s enemy the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad).

“If the United States imposes sanctions on us or takes such a step, Turkey will absolutely retaliate,” Cavusoglu said. “What needs to be done is the U.S. needs to let go of this.”

While still a ways away from becoming law (and its unclear if President Trump, who has publicly praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan) the proposed US National Defense Authorization Act would block sales of “major” arms to Turkey until a report on the relationship between the US and Turkey (which is also a component of the law) is completed by the Pentagon.

The implied target of the bill would be the 116 F-35 Lightning II fighters that Washington has promised to sell Ankara, of which 100 are almost ready to be delivered.

The bill is in many ways a response to Turkey’s recent purchase of S-400 air defense systems from Russia. Though Turkey’s relationship with Russia is still far from amicable (indeed, the two countries almost became embroiled in a military confrontation after Turkey shot down a Russian jet that was allegedly flying through its airspace back in 2015), the purchase has unnerved NATO and the US. The Russian weapons, Reuters notes, aren’t compatible with NATO’s defense systems.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Cavusoglu last month that the US was “seriously concerned” about Turkey’s buying of the S-400s (of course, we imagine American defense contractors weren’t thrilled either).

Cavusoglu criticized NATO’s consternation over the sale of Russian arms and accused it of trying to control Turkey and infringing on its sovereignty.

“Turkey is not a country under your orders, it is an independent country… Speaking to such a country from above, dictating what it can and cannot buy, is not a correct approach and does not fit our alliance,” he said.

Despite Trump’s warm feelings toward Erdogan, the Turkish president’s recent visits to the US have only served to inflame the conflict as his body guards repeatedly attacked Kurdish protesters that showed up to confront Erdogan during a trip to the home of the Turkish ambassador outside Washington DC and during a speech he gave in New York City while he was attending a session of the UN General Assembly. The beatings elicited charges against one of Erdogan’s body guards and a Turkish national living in New Jersey.

Last year, both countries temporarily curtailed embassy processing of visas after Turkey arrested an employee of the Turkish consulate in Istanbul as tensions flared.

Turkey leaving NATO would only be the latest sign that the Cold War alliance has entered a state of collapse as President Trump has repeatedly criticized it and castigated most of its members for not paying their fair share for their defense.

Of course, we doubt the bill will be successful – as it stands, it appears to be merely a threat by hawkish Republicans in the House. But if Turkey does eventually leave NATO, would that too be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fault?

The 300 asylum seekers who arrived at the US border on April 29 after a month-long, 2,000-mile journey have another grueling struggle ahead of them, according to the immigration attorneys who are donating their time to represent them.

More than three-quarters of asylum claims from Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans between 2012 and 2017 were denied, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, and this year’s caravan of asylum seekers are facing a climate made even more hostile by the xenophobic Trump administration.

Once the asylum applicants — who traveled in a caravan to the Tijuana-San Ysidro border from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — establish that they face a credible fear of persecution in their home countries, their ordeals are just beginning.

Source: Democracy Now!

Colleen Flynn, an immigration attorney with the National Lawyers Guild’s Los Angeles chapter, told Truthout that because of retaliation by the Trump administration, even those who establish “credible fear” could face years of detention.

“Some will bond out, but many others will be unable to raise the money for high bonds,” Flynn said. “There is a possibility their kids will be taken away.”

In the face of these fears, Flynn said, the asylum seekers she met in Tijuana are “incredibly resilient, incredibly hopeful, really brave.”

Hundreds of supporters, many of whom had marched 150 miles from Los Angeles, gathered on the US side of the border in solidarity with the asylum seekers.

It was “a really moving sight to see people coming together at the border,” said Kath Rogers, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild’s Los Angeles chapter.

When the asylum seekers arrived at the border, however, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers informed them that the port of entry was “at capacity” and repeated that mantra throughout the day. When Gilbert Saucedo, an attorney, human rights advocate and co-president of the LA chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, asked the CBP officers,

“Is that what you were told to say?” they said “yes,” Saucedo reported to Truthout.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group that has accompanied migrants and refugees on their journeys for 15 years, took issue with the officers, saying in a statement:

“Customs and Border Protection is the largest law enforcement agency in the country, and is able to detain, transport and incarcerate thousands of people in a day, but is pretending that they don’t have the ‘capacity’ to accept 150 refugee parents and children whose arrival has been anticipated and communicated weeks in advance.”

Image result for san diego caravan asylum

Source: Chattanooga Times Free Press

The asylum seekers have a legal right to have their applications considered, and many of them have meritorious claims. Notwithstanding Trump’s bloviating, CBP officers began slowly processing the asylum requests. By the end of the fifth day, roughly half of the caravan asylum seekers had been taken to San Diego for processing.

Meanwhile, the remaining asylum seekers continue to wait. They are camping on the ground in unseasonably cool and drizzly weather. Mostly women and children, they are cold and hungry, despite some rations provided by their supporters.

“It just broke my heart to see them,” Saucedo said.

Flynn spoke of a group of women whose lives are endangered in their home countries because they are transgender. These women “really kept spirits up” among the asylum seekers, “singing, dancing, elevating the mood and keeping people’s hopes alive.”

Trump Administration Tries to Keep Asylum Seekers Out of US

Donald Trump tweeted on April 23 that he ordered the Department of Homeland Security

“not to let these large Caravans of people into our Country,” adding, “It is a disgrace.”

Unsurprisingly, Trump demonstrated no compassion for those who made the dangerous trip by bus, train and on foot to escape persecution in their home countries, referring to them as “this problem.” On April 3, he tweeted,

“The big Caravan of People from Honduras … had better be stopped before it gets there.”

The caravan asylum seekers were “openly defying our border,” Trump tweeted on April 30, and wrote in a fundraising email to his supporters on April 26,

“We need a strong, impenetrable WALL that will end this problem once and for all.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, disagreed with Trump’s assessment.

“It’s overkill,” Thompson told HuffPost. “You would have expected [Trump] to have been briefed by intelligence officers exactly who was headed this way … We know who they are. We know where they are. And we even know why they’re coming. So to try to elevate this into some heightened sense of threat, it just didn’t measure up.”

Caravans of asylum seekers arrive at the US-Mexico border annually. But this year, Trump began his Twitter and verbal assaults on the caravan before it reached Tijuana.

“Are you watching that mess that’s going on right now with the caravan coming up?” he said at an April 29 rally in Michigan. “We have the worst laws anywhere in the world, we don’t have borders.”

Michael Knowles, president of the asylum officers union, told The San Diego Union-Tribune,

“If they’re coming to seek asylum, they need to be given due process. We shouldn’t be impeded from doing our job, and those applicants should not be impeded from having their cases heard.”

Trump betrayed his ignorance of US immigration law, tweeting,

“These big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA. They want in on the act!”

In fact, the asylum seekers have nothing to do with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allowed immigrants brought to the US as children relief from deportation before Trump sought to end the program.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as contemptuous of immigrants as his boss, called the caravan “a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system.” Sessions short-circuited immigration court policies, vacating a Board of Immigration Appeals decision that required immigration judges to provide asylum seekers with a full hearing. Now, thanks to Sessions, judges can deny applications without testimony from the asylum seeker.

The Legal Right to Apply for Asylum 

The 1951 Refugee Convention requires the United States to accept and consider asylum applications. Applicants must show they are unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.

Once an applicant demonstrates a credible fear of persecution, which can be shown by evidence of past persecution, he or she must establish that fear stemmed from the applicant’s membership in a particular social group or political opinion. These are the two categories that cover most of the caravan asylum seekers, immigration attorney Helen Sklar, a member of the LA chapter executive board of the National Lawyers Guild, told Truthout.

“Membership in a particular social group” requires that members of the group share a “common, immutable” trait that is “so fundamental to the identity or conscience of the member that he or she should not be required to change it.”

The roughly 35 transgender women on the caravan will likely apply for asylum based on membership in the particular social group of being transgender, Sklar explained.

“Political opinion” is the category that applies to many of the asylum seekers, particularly those fleeing violence in Honduras. Most people in the caravan came from Honduras.

Sklar interviewed one asylum seeker who was subjected to persecution by the current Honduran regime because of her opposition to government policies. She reported being threatened and beaten at an anti-government demonstration.

US policy, particularly during the Obama administration, helped create the conditions that caused the asylum seekers to undertake their long and perilous journey north. In 2009, the US government supported a coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya (image on the right) and made life nearly unbearable for many Hondurans.

As Pamela Spees, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote:

Honduras has been declared the most dangerous country in the world for land rights and environmental activists… It’s not surprising then that the rising and pervasive violence and deep economic insecurity in Honduras and the region has resulted in unprecedented numbers of refugees and migrants fleeing to seek safety and security.

Sklar, who is one of about a dozen attorneys who have been helping the asylum seekers without remuneration, criticized the Trump administration for suggesting that the asylum seekers’ motives are not legitimate.

“Who would undertake such hardship without a compelling need to find safety?” Sklar asked.

Trump’s Racist, Nativist Immigration Policy

Trump’s verbal attacks on the asylum seekers did not occur in a vacuum. From instituting the Muslim Ban to attempting to end the DACA program, he has consistently appealed to his base by pursuing racist, nativist immigration policies.

Late last year, the Trump administration stopped accepting applications for a program that allowed people from Central America legally residing in the United States to bring their children here. As a result, 3,800 people — primarily children — who were being processed under that program are stranded in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Trump has also drastically reduced the admission of refugees into the US and deployed National Guard troops to the border.

If he had his way, Trump would build a border wall and end the practice of family migration and the diversity visa lottery system. He would also halt the policy of releasing undocumented immigrants with notices to appear in court (a practice that he describes using the dehumanizing language of “catch and release”), opting instead to detain or deport them.

At his April 29 Michigan rally, Trump threatened to shut down the country if his wall did not get built.

“We need security. We need the wall … if we don’t get border security, we’ll have no choice. We’ll close down the country,” Trump declared.

Meanwhile, the asylum seekers brace for the next stage of their long struggle.

“Our trip isn’t over,” 17-year-old Jose Coello from Honduras said as he walked into the United States from Tijuana on May 2. “This is just the next step.”

*

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and an advisory board member of Veterans for Peace. The second, updated edition of her book, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, was published in November. Visit her website: MarjorieCohn.com. Follow her on Twitter: @MarjorieCohn. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Of relevance to the upcoming Malaysian elections on May 9 2018, this article first published in Feb 2016, confirms  that the outgoing Prime Minister Najib Razak received close to $700 million dollars in his personal account from the House of Saud.

The banning of Shia Islam is but the tip of the iceberg. This gift from Saudi Arabia has broad geopolitical and economic implications. It is directed against Iran and its relations with Malaysia.

It has contributed to the development of Saudi interests in Malaysia not to mention support for extremist wahhabi rebel groups.

It is tied up to the multibillion IMDB financial scandal.

M. Ch. GR editor

***

On Wednesday last week [February 2016] Malaysia’s attorney general confirmed that Saudi Arabia’s royal family gave Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak a $681 million personal gift. The confirmation of the scandal ended months of speculation about the source of the huge personal donation received from ‘a middle eastern donor’ by the Prime Minister. The country’s top anti-graft agency had recommended Najib Razak be charged with criminal misappropriation.

The transfer of almost $700 million was made ahead of the 2013 re-election of the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Najib Razak who had been in office since 2009 is widely known for his clamp down on Shia minority Islam in the nation.

In 2010 the nation declared that Shiites in the country, who have been termed a “deviant” sect, were barred from promoting their faith to other Muslims.

In December that year, 200 Shi‘a were arrested by the Selangor Islamic Religious Department for celebrating ashura under the Selangor state shari‘a criminal enactment law. Religious authorities who accused them of “threatening national security” in multicultural Malaysia.

The nation has since continued to persecute and arrest Shia citizens.

In 2014 in Perak another 114 were arrested during a Shia event.

Images filled global media of Shia Muslim, children and women laying sprawled in prisons in the nation.

shia prison

Countries In Contest To Persecute Shia Muslims For Saudi Dollars

The Saudi Royal family is known for sponsoring administrations and fanatic clerics that support its political campaign against Shia faithfuls in their countries. Its massive financial backing of the Malaysian Prime Minister is one such example of how billions of petrodollars from the nation’s oil sales are used to back radical fanatic administrators and politicians across the world.

Following a recent deadly crackdown by the Nigerian army that saw as many as 1000 Shia minority Muslims killed in Nigeria, the Saudi government immediately voiced public support of the massacre, elucidating similar fears of similar financial support towards the state and Federal administrators.

Zakzaky loaded in wheel barrow

Zakzaky loaded in wheel barrow

This week a former Chief Imam of the Saudi grand Mosque described Saudi policies as identical to those of ISIS.

Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani said, “We follow the same thought [as IS] but apply it in a refined way,” he said. “They draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, from our own principles.”

The cleric said that “we do not criticize the thought on which it (IS) is based”.

Notably, most notorious global terrorists groups, Boko Haram, AQIP, ISIS or Daesh, al-Qaeda and the like are Sunni-extremist groups who recruit their followers from extremist Sunni nations and are known to receive financing from these governments. There are no known Shia terror organizations.

The donations to the Malaysian Prime Minister have put suspicion in various countries who are worried that their political administrators may like wise be sponsored by the Saudi royal family.

 

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The only way PM Najib Razak could win this election on May 9 is by fraud and manipulation of the elections of results. 

The outgoing PM is desperate. A state of emergency is also contemplated. 

The grassroots support of the opposition coalition led by Tun Mahathir is overwhelming.

Across the land, Malaysians have united with a view to throwing Najib and his cronies out of office. 

In all likelihood, if Najib looses, he will be indicted on criminal charges. 

 

 

According to Pater Tenebrarum in a 2016 article: 

Mr. X Found: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Saudi Arabia’s Payroll

Mr. X Found: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Saudi Arabia’s Payroll

Overall, more than $1.05 [Aus] billion landed in Mr. X’s private account in a little over two years. This was bound to raise eyebrows, considering Mr. X’s official salary only amounts to approx. $100,000 per year. Not a bad salary to be sure, but even if he were to save half of it every year, it would take him 210,000 years to save up Aus$1.05 billion, not just two.

Then the head of a government-owned Malaysian company put millions of ringgit into Mr. X’s credit card accounts, which had been a tad overdrawn (by slightly over $ 1m.), due to Mr. X’s wife splurging a bit on jewelry in 2014.

Apparently Mr. X was not shy about spending some of his new-found wealth either. Apart from his wife’s predilection for expensive jewelry and other luxury items, he himself occasionally displayed a yen for fancy cars and reportedly also favored swanky accommodation. Friends and partners of Mr. X also enjoyed a windfall.

Thy “mysterious Saudi Prince” who wired sums ranging from $25 million to $50 million in one fell swoop into  Mr. X’s account was one “Prince Faisal bin Turki bin Bandar Al-Saud”. These deposits were accompanied by letters penned by yet another Saudi prince, “HRH Prince Saud Abdulaziz Al-Saud”, pledging quite generous “gifts” to Mr. X. One promise of $375 m. was accompanied by the following reassuring words:

“This is merely a token gesture on my part but it is my way of contributing to the development of Islam to the world. You shall have absolute discretion to determine how the Gift shall be utilized. This letter is issued as a gesture of good faith and for clarification, I do not expect to receive any personal benefit whether directly or indirectly as a result of the Gift. The Gift should not in any event be construed as an act of corruption since this is against the practice of Islam and I personally do not encourage such practices in any manner whatsoever.”

The title “HRH” (“his royal highness”) implies that the man is either a son or a grandson of King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, the first king of modern Saudi Arabia. Given that Ibn Saud had 22 wives, 45 sons and approximately 1,000 grandchildren, all of whom are “Al-Sauds”, with a great many “Abdulazizes” among them, this could really be anyone. It was nice of him though to provide Mr. X with this get-out-of-jail card (“there’s absolutely no corruption involved, honestly!”).

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Tun Mahathir for Next Prime Minister of Malaysia

May 6th, 2018 by Global Research News

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Aides to US President Donald Trump have reportedly hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to devise a “dirty ops” campaign against key Obama administration officials who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal in a scheme to discredit the agreement.

Trump administration officials contacted private investigators in May of last year, directing them to “get dirt” on former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl, the deputy assistant to former President Barack Obama, as part of an elaborate scheme to undermine the deal, UK-based The Observer newspaper revealed in a report on Saturday.

Screenshot: Guardian, May 5, 2018

The extraordinary development comes days before Trump’s May 12 deadline to either scrap or continue to abide by the international pact regarding Iran’s civilian nuclear program.

“These are extraordinary and appalling allegations but which also illustrate a high level of desperation by Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, not so much to discredit the deal but to undermine those around it,” said former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Officials linked to Trump’s team contacted Israeli intelligence elements days after the US president visited Tel Aviv a year ago. Trump then made a pledge to Netanyahu that Iran would never have nuclear weapons – despite the fact that Tehran has always maintained that it is principally and categorically opposed to development and use of nuclear arms.

The British newspaper further cited a source familiar with details of the “dirty tricks campaign” as saying that “the idea was that people acting for Trump would discredit those who were pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it.”

The Israeli investigators in the “dirty ops” mission were to look at Rhodes’ and Kahl’s personal relationships with Iran-friendly lobbyists, and to determine whether they had benefited personally or politically from the nuclear deal.

Rhodes slammed the the scheme by the Trump administration as “chillingly authoritarian” in a statement to the British newspaper.

“I was not aware, though sadly am not surprised. I would say that digging up dirt on someone for carrying out their professional responsibilities in their positions as White House officials is a chillingly authoritarian thing to do,” he said.

A spokesman for the White House’s national security council offered “no comment” when contacted about the revelation.

Trump has repeatedly signaled his intention to scrap the Iran deal, denouncing it as “the worst deal ever.” In a January speech, he accused his predecessor of having “curried favor” with the Iranian government so as to “push through the disastrously flawed Iran nuclear deal.”

The development comes days after Netanyahu again accused Iran of continuing to hide and expand its nuclear weapons know-how after the 2015 deal, in what was widely regarded as a scripted, publicity presentation to further pressure the Trump administration to reject the nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a scripted presentation broadcast on Israeli TV on April 10, 2018.

During the televised show, Netanyahu claimed that the Israeli regime possessed a wide array of “new and conclusive proof” of purported Iranian violations.

Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron visited the White House for an official state visit, during which he tried to persuade Trump to remain in the agreement. Following the visit, Macron told reporters that he still expects Trump to exit the deal.

“My view — I don’t know what your president will decide — is that he will get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons,” said the French president.

The European Union, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany have expressed support for the deal in the wake of the Israeli claims.

Iran has on numerous occasions asserted that its nuclear program is merely peaceful and not meant to make nukes.

This is while Israel is widely thought to possess hundreds of nuclear nuclear warheads and refuses to either allow inspections of its nuclear facilities or join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.


Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

Some explosions shook Syrian Arab Army positions in Aleppo and Hama provinces early Monday morning in what was widely reported to have either been an American, Israeli, or other Western allied strike on alleged Iranian military positions in the country that supposedly killed a few dozen people. It’s unclear exactly what took place because Israel won’t comment on its participation in the latest events, while unnamed sources in Iran told the national Tasnim news outlet that no attack even happened despite video evidence of the explosions.

Ominously, the Israeli Defense Minister warned right beforehand that his air force will continue to operate freely over Syria’s skies in spite of Damascus promising to defend itself and having previously shot down one of its neighbor’s jets in February. Netanyahu had also been making a big deal about what he alleged were 80,000 Iranian-backed fighters amassing in the Arab Republic, so circumstantial evidence points to Israeli involvement in what appears more and more likely to have been an actual attack.

Whether it was Israel, the US, or their allies, whoever carried out this bombing – if that’s indeed what it actually was – ended up proving a few points. The first is that Syria’s Soviet-era air-defense systems aren’t as effective as they were portrayed as being last month when they supposedly shot down most of the US, French, and British cruise missiles, drawing into question exactly what happened back then if they weren’t able to repeat their success this time around.

Furthermore, Russia’s militarily passive stance confirms its neutrality in what is increasingly shaping up to be an ever-escalating proxy war between the West and Iran in Syria. Not only that, but it’s highly unlikely that Moscow was even caught off guard by what happened judging by what its Ambassador to Israel said last week in reaffirming to the world that

“We are mutually coordinating and updating about Syria … So far, there have been no incidents between us, nor even hints at incidents, and I hope there will not be.”

Having acknowledged that, it’s improbable that Russia would be okay with Israel dropping a “tactical nuke” on Syria like what the viral fake news reports from some Alt-Media outlets are claiming, meaning that the 2.6 magnitude earthquake that followed the supposed strikes was probably triggered by a thermobaric or fuel-air bomb and not anything radioactive. Given Russia’s very close relations with Israel and its excellent ones with Iran, however, there’s a chance that Moscow could serve as a regional “balancer” in attempting to bring both sides together just like it might be trying to do through its interlinked Eurasian Union free trade deals.

Russia’s de-escalatory role will therefore be pivotal in determining the future of the proxy war between the West and Iran over Syria, but Moscow might ultimately have to “lean on” Damascus and “convince” it to make some “compromises” on Iran and Hezbollah’s post-Daesh military presence in the country if there’s to be any real chance of preventing these tensions from spiraling out of control.

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

Featured image is from the author.


150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

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Featured image: Pete Seeger performing in 1986

This was originally published on February 28, 2018 by The American Prospect.

Fifty years ago this week, folk singer Pete Seeger performed the controversial anti-war song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour show on CBS television. The story of that appearance, and that song, illustrates the tumultuous political tensions of the era and was a bold act of defiance against corporate media power.

Seeger, who died in 2014, is now viewed as a legendary figure in American history. But when Tom and Dick Smothers invited him on their show, many people still viewed him as a dangerous radical, marginalized by the nation’s political, business, and media establishment.

Seeger had been blacklisted from network television since the 1950s because of his leftist politics. For a brief period in the early 1950s, as a member of the Weavers quartet, he performed in prestigious nightclubs, appeared on network television shows, and recorded several hit songs, including “Goodnight, Irene,” “Tzena Tzena,” “Wimoweh,” and “So Long It’s Been Good to Know You.” But as engaged radicals, they were an easy target for the Red Scare’s blacklist. They lost their television show contracts and nightclub bookings. Radio stations stopped playing their songs and their records stopped selling.

Seeger left the Weavers but his solo career also fell victim to the Red Scare. In 1955, Seeger was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to discuss his political affiliations before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. (He never spent time in jail and the conviction was overturned on appeal in May 1962). Most colleges and concert halls refused to book him and he was banned from network television.

During the blacklist years, Seeger scratched out a living by giving guitar and banjo lessons and singing at the small number of summer camps, churches, high schools, colleges, and union halls that were courageous enough to invite the controversial balladeer. In the 1960s he sang with civil rights workers in the South and at the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and helped popularize “We Shall Overcome.” But ABC refused to allow Seeger to appear on Hootenanny, which owed its existence to the folk music revival Seeger had helped inspire.

Tom and Dick Smothers were among many musicians inspired by Seeger’s artistic and political contributions. In 1967, CBS invited the brothers to host their own variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which became a huge success, appealing to young viewers by inviting major rock and folk artists as well as comedians who reflected the political and cultural rebelliousness of the era. One sketch that lampooned President Lyndon Johnson so upset the president that he phoned CBS founder William S. Paley at home at 3 a.m. to complain.

The brothers had requested that Seeger be invited to perform, but CBS refused. Midway into the first season, however, the show’s popularity gave the Smothers more leverage with the recalcitrant network executives. Network chief Paley agreed on the condition that Seeger avoid singing any controversial songs—a demand that was, from the outset, guaranteed to provoke the Smothers brothers’ and Seeger’s defiance.

Seeger showed up to tape the second season’s opening show on September 1, which was scheduled to air September 10. At the taping, Seeger sang “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” a song he had written earlier that year, inspired by a photo of American troops slogging through a deep river in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

The song tells the story of a platoon of soldiers wading into the mud of a river while on a practice patrol in Louisiana in 1942. The captain, whom Seeger calls a “big fool,” ignores his sergeant’s warnings that the river is too deep to cross. The captain drowns and the sergeant orders the unit to turn back. The song doesn’t mention Vietnam but the “big fool” obviously refers to Johnson who got the country deeper into the quagmire in Southeast Asia.

Understandably nervous about offending Johnson again, CBS executives erased Seeger’s song from the tape of the show. The censors had no objection to his performance of the African song “Wimoweh” (in classic Seeger style, he had the whole studio audience singing along), the Cuban song “Guantanamera,” and “This Land Is Your Land.”

In his network comeback, Seeger sang four songs that reflected his internationalism and humanism, which helped him escape the media establishment’s blacklist—in prime time, no less. Close to 12 million American households watched the program.

But the Smothers brothers weren’t happy. Tom, in particular, made sure that the story of CBS’s censorship appeared in the media. Because of the bad press, an outcry among the public, and the Vietnam War’s growing unpopularity, CBS allowed the brothers to invite Seeger back later in the season.

To whet the public’s appetite, Tom Smothers leaked the story to The New York Times, even announcing that Seeger would perform the banned “Big Muddy” on the show. A week before the scheduled broadcast, Seeger taped the show in Los Angeles.

Seeger performed five songs, including a medley of anti-war songs from American history which led up to “Big Muddy.” He ended the song with an uncharacteristic dramatic flourish, bringing his guitar up to his face, suggesting both a sigh of relief and moment of pride that he had managed to pull it off.

The audience for this show—13.5 million households—was even larger than Seeger’s appearance five months earlier. Two days after Seeger sang “Big Muddy,” CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite—perhaps the nation’s most trusted person—called on Johnson to withdraw American troops from Vietnam. On March 31, Johnson—facing strong opposition from anti-war candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy—announced he would not seek re-election that year.

Meanwhile, the Smothers brothers continued to find themselves in trouble with CBS. In the 1968-1969 season premiere, the network deleted an entire segment featuring Harry Belafonte singing “Lord, Don’t Stop the Carnival” while newsreel footage of the violence at the 1968 Democratic national convention played in the background. In March 1969, folk singer Joan Baez paid tribute to her then-husband, David Harris, who was about to enter prison for refusing military service. CBS censors permitted Baez to mention that her husband was in prison, but edited out the reason.

But CBS CEO Paley abruptly canceled the show on April 4, 1969, explaining that the Smothers brothers had failed to comply with the order to submit the shows to network executives ten days in advance. (The show won an Emmy anyway.) The Smothers brothers sued CBS for breach of contract, and in 1973, a federal court ordered CBS to pay them nearly $800,000. Two years later the brothers returned to television with The Smothers Brothers Show that was less controversial and less successful, lasting only 13 episodes.

Image on the right: Pete Seeger

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The brothers continued to perform until they retired in 2010, but their popularity never recovered after the cancellation of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. But Seeger’s two appearances on the show—and the controversy surrounding “Big Muddy”—helped revitalize his career.

Over the next five decades, through persistence and unrelenting optimism, Seeger became a symbol of a principled artist deeply engaged in the world. Many of his eighty albums, which include children’s songs, labor and protest songs, traditional American folk songs, international songs and Christmas songs, reached wide audiences.

In 1994, at age 75, he received the National Medal of Arts as well as a Kennedy Center Honor, where President Bill Clinton called him “an inconvenient artist, who dared to sing things as he saw them.”

In January 2009, Seeger and Bruce Springsteen sang “This Land Is Your Land” at a Lincoln Memorial concert honoring President Barack Obama’s inauguration. That spring, more than 15,000 admirers filled New York City’s Madison Square Garden for a concert honoring Seeger on his ninetieth birthday. The performers included Springsteen, Baez, Dave Matthews, Emmylou Harris, Billy Bragg, Rufus Wainwright, Bela Fleck, Taj Mahal, Roger McGuinn, Steve Earle, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Dar Williams, Tom Morello, Ani DiFranco, and John Mellencamp. Seeger continued to perform, mostly benefits for social causes, until his death.

Seeger’s made his final television appearance in 2012 on another comedy program’s Stephen Colbert’s iconoclastic Colbert Report on Comedy Central. The 93-year-old Seeger talked with the awestruck Colbert about his new book, Pete SeegerHis Life in His Own Words, and then performed his song, “Quite Early Morning,” on the banjo. The song begins, “Don’t you know it’s darkest before the dawn. And it’s this thought keeps me moving on.”  Unlike “Big Muddy,” it is a song of hope, urging people to abandon cynicism and look forward to more “singing tomorrows.”

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The Houthi rebels in Yemen, officially known as Ansurallah, have vowed to intensify rocket attacks on Saudi Arabia’s critical oil infrastructure, warning that they are now manufacturing their own ballistic missiles to achieve those aims, the Financial Times reports.

The threat comes at a time when Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia have begun to increase. Just this Saturday, Saudi Arabia’s air defense system intercepted four ballistic missiles over the southwestern region of Jizan. The debris of those missiles reportedly killed one person. Just a week prior, two other missiles were launched at the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) facilities on the Red Sea.

At the beginning of April, the London-based IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center noted that the Houthis claimed to have carried out three separate rocket attacks on Aramco facilities in ten days, including an attack on a Saudi oil tanker, which suffered some damage and led to the intervention of a coalition naval vessel, which in turn repelled the attack.

The Houthis also unveiled their new Badr-1 surface-to-surface weapon system (a heavy artillery rocket system) approximately a week prior, which the rebels claimed they had used to attack Aramco facilities.

Mohammed al-Boukhaiti, a member of the Houthi political council, also told the Financial Times that these attacks were “only the beginning of the response” to the death of Houthi leader Saleh al-Samad, who was killed by Saudi air strikes in April.

“Yemenis will not pass on the death of Samad easily and they will do their best to take revenge for him,” Mr. Boukhaiti said.

Boukhaiti also dismissed allegations that Iran has supplied the Houthis with sophisticated missiles, claiming instead that the rebels have been developing and manufacturing their own rockets and drones.

“The Yemenis have added new systems for manufacturing missiles, so more missiles are targeting Saudi Arabia as a part of an escalation,” Mr. Boukhaiti also said.

The claim that Iran is responsible for the Houthis’ supply of arms is one that continues to skim the surface of mainstream discourse without being bolstered by any hard, credible evidence.

Despite this, these recent developments are raising fears that the war in Yemen may begin to spiral out of control even more so than it has already in the last three years. As even the Financial Times admits, so far into the conflict Saudi Arabia has struggled to make any decent advancement against the rebels. It is also worth noting that in recent times, the Houthis’ confidence only appears to be strengthening, and these recent attacks targeting vital Saudi infrastructure may only improve their standing in the conflict.

According to Graham Griffiths, a consultant with Control Risks Group, these Houthi-led attacks have raised concerns for the safety of employees and assets even if the Houthis cannot exact any significant damage to the Saudi-led coalition.

“This perception of the risk is likely to greatly increase if even a single strike hits a sensitive target,” Griffiths said, according to the Financial Times“The sustained pace of the attacks allows the Houthis to demonstrate that despite three years of war, they can still retaliate against a much more powerful foe.”

Most importantly — and largely missing from any serious analysis of this conflict — is Mr. Boukhaiti’s statement to the Financial Times that the Houthis will continue these attacks on Saudi Arabia until Riyadh “stops its aggression completely.”

As far as international law is concerned, Yemen is entitled to the right to defend itself from foreign aggression, including striking directly at Saudi Arabia, which is by all accounts the principal instigator of this conflict.

One might be inclined to believe a simple solution worth pursuing would be for the Saudi-led coalition to withdraw from its aggressive and criminal war in Yemen and allow Yemenis to conduct their own affairs.

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Featured image is from the author.

“Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.” — Professor Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Discourse in the Age of Show Business

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing.

Played out on the national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times, seem riveting, life-changing and suspenseful, even for those who know better.

Week after week, the script changes—Donald Trump’s Tweets, Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Michael Cohen’s legal troubles, porn star Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit over an alleged past affair with Trump, Michelle Wolf’s tasteless stand-up routine at the White House correspondents’ dinner, North and South Korea’s détente, the ongoing staff shakeups within the Trump administration—with each new script following on the heels of the last, never any let-up, never any relief from the constant melodrama.

The players come and go, the protagonists and antagonists trade places, and the audience members are forgiving to a fault, quick to forget past mistakes and move on to the next spectacle.

All the while, a different kind of drama is unfolding in the dark backstage, hidden from view by the heavy curtain, the elaborate stage sets, colored lights and parading actors.

Such that it is, the realm of political theater with all of its drama, vitriol and scripted theatrics is what passes for “transparent” government today, with elected officials, entrusted to act in the best interests of their constituents, routinely performing for their audiences and playing up to the cameras, while doing very little to move the country forward.

Yet behind the footlights, those who really run the show are putting into place policies which erode our freedoms and undermine our attempts at contributing to the workings of our government, leaving us none the wiser and bereft of any opportunity to voice our discontent or engage in any kind of discourse until it’s too late.

It’s the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.

Indeed, while mainstream America has been fixated on the drama-filled reality show being televised from the White House, the American Police State has moved steadily forward.

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

Our losses are mounting with every passing day.

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

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

None of these dangers have dissipated.

They have merely disappeared from our televised news streams.

The new boss has proven to be the same as the old boss, and the American people, the permanent underclass in America, has allowed itself to be so distracted and divided that they have failed to notice the building blocks of tyranny being laid down right under their noses by the architects of the Deep State.

Frankly, it really doesn’t matter what you call the old/new boss—the Deep State, the Controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that no matter who occupies the White House, it is a profit-driven, an unelected bureaucracy that is actually calling the shots.

In the interest of liberty and truth, here’s an A-to-Z primer to spell out the grim realities of life in the American Police State that no one is talking about anymore.

A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE. A police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

B is for our battered BILL OF RIGHTS. In the cop culture that is America today, where you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police officer, and that officer is rarely held accountable for violating your rights, the Bill of Rights doesn’t amount to much.

C is for CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE. This governmental scheme to deprive Americans of their liberties—namely, the right to property—is being carried out under the guise of civil asset forfeiture, a government practice wherein government agents (usually the police) seize private property they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity. Then, whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, the government keeps the citizen’s property.

D is for DRONES. It is estimated that at least 30,000 drones will be airborne in American airspace by 2020, part of an $80 billion industry. Although some drones will be used for benevolent purposes, many will also be equipped with lasers, tasers and scanning devices, among other weapons—all aimed at “we the people.”

E is for ELECTRONIC CONCENTRATION CAMP. In the electronic concentration camp, as I have dubbed the surveillance state, all aspects of a person’s life are policed by government agents and all citizens are suspects, their activities monitored and regulated, their movements tracked, their communications spied upon, and their lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness dependent on the government’s say-so.

F is for FUSION CENTERS. Fusion centers, data collecting agencies spread throughout the country and aided by the National Security Agency, serve as a clearinghouse for information shared between state, local and federal agencies. These fusion centers constantly monitor our communications, everything from our internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails. This data is then fed to government agencies, which are now interconnected: the CIA to the FBI, the FBI to local police.

G is for GRENADE LAUNCHERS and GLOBAL POLICE. The federal government has distributed more than $18 billion worth of battlefield-appropriate military weapons, vehicles and equipment such as drones, tanks, and grenade launchers to domestic police departments across the country. As a result, most small-town police forces now have enough firepower to render any citizen resistance futile. Now take those small-town police forces, train them to look and act like the military, and then enlist them to be part of the United Nations’ Strong Cities Network program, and you not only have a standing army that operates beyond the reach of the Constitution but one that is part of a global police force.

H is for HOLLOW-POINT BULLETS. The government’s efforts to militarize and weaponize its agencies and employees is reaching epic proportions, with federal agencies as varied as the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration stockpiling millions of lethal hollow-point bullets, which violate international law. Ironically, while the government continues to push for stricter gun laws for the general populace, the U.S. military’s arsenal of weapons makes the average American’s handgun look like a Tinker Toy.

I is for the INTERNET OF THINGS, in which internet-connected “things” will monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free. The key word here, however, is control. This “connected” industry propels us closer to a future where police agencies apprehend virtually anyone if the government “thinks” they may commit a crime, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

J is for JAILING FOR PROFIT. Having outsourced their inmate population to private prisons run by private corporations, this profit-driven form of mass punishment has given rise to a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep their privately run prisons full by jailing large numbers of Americans for inane crimes.

K is for KENTUCKY V. KING. In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that police officers can break into homes, without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home as long as they think they have a reason to do so. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between us and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by law enforcement officials.

L is for LICENSE PLATE READERS, which enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country. This data collected on tens of thousands of innocent people is also being shared between police agencies, as well as with fusion centers and private companies. This puts Big Brother in the driver’s seat.

M is for MAIN CORE. Since the 1980s, the U.S. government has acquired and maintained, without warrant or court order, a database of names and information on Americans considered to be threats to the nation. As Salon reports, this database, reportedly dubbed “Main Core,” is to be used by the Army and FEMA in times of national emergency or under martial law to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security. As of 2008, there were some 8 million Americans in the Main Core database.

N is for NO-KNOCK RAIDS. Owing to the militarization of the nation’s police forces, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for routine police matters. In fact, more than 80,000 of these paramilitary raids are carried out every year. That translates to more than 200 SWAT team raids every day in which police crash through doors, damage private property, terrorize adults and children alike, kill family pets, assault or shoot anyone that is perceived as threatening—and all in the pursuit of someone merely suspected of a crime, usually possession of some small amount of drugs.

O is for OVERCRIMINALIZATION and OVERREGULATION. Thanks to an overabundance of 4500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules and regulations, it’s estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. As a result of this overcriminalization, we’re seeing an uptick in Americans being arrested and jailed for such absurd “violations” as letting their kids play at a park unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property, growing vegetables in their yard, and holding Bible studies in their living room.

P is for PATHOCRACY and PRECRIME. When our own government treats us as things to be manipulated, maneuvered, mined for data, manhandled by police, mistreated, and then jailed in profit-driven private prisons if we dare step out of line, we are no longer operating under a constitutional republic. Instead, what we are experiencing is a pathocracy: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.” Couple that with the government’s burgeoning precrime programs, which will use fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics in order to identify and deter so-called potential “extremists,” dissidents or rabble-rousers. Bear in mind that anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—is now viewed as an extremist.

Q is for QUALIFIED IMMUNITYQualified immunity allows officers to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing. Conveniently, those deciding whether a police officer should be immune from having to personally pay for misbehavior on the job all belong to the same system, all cronies with a vested interest in protecting the police and their infamous code of silence: city and county attorneys, police commissioners, city councils and judges.

R is for ROADSIDE STRIP SEARCHES and BLOOD DRAWS. The courts have increasingly erred on the side of giving government officials—especially the police—vast discretion in carrying out strip searches, blood draws and even anal probes for a broad range of violations, no matter how minor the offense. In the past, strip searches were resorted to only in exceptional circumstances where police were confident that a serious crime was in progress. In recent years, however, strip searches have become routine operating procedures in which everyone is rendered a suspect and, as such, is subjected to treatment once reserved for only the most serious of criminals.

S is for the SURVEILLANCE STATE. On any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

T is for TASERS. Nonlethal weapons such as tasers, stun guns, rubber pellets and the like have been used by police as weapons of compliance more often and with less restraint—even against women and children—and in some instances, even causing death. These “nonlethal” weapons also enable police to aggress with the push of a button, making the potential for overblown confrontations over minor incidents that much more likely. A Taser Shockwave, for instance, can electrocute a crowd of people at the touch of a button.

U is for UNARMED CITIZENS SHOT BY POLICE. No longer is it unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later, often attributed to a fear for their safety. Yet the fatality rate of on-duty patrol officers is reportedly far lower than many other professions, including construction, logging, fishing, truck driving, and even trash collection.

V is for VIPR SQUADS. So-called “soft target” security inspections, carried out by roving VIPR task forces, comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams, are taking place whenever and wherever the government deems appropriate, at random times and places, and without needing the justification of a particular threat.

W is for WHOLE-BODY SCANNERS. Using either x-ray radiation or radio waves, scanning devices and government mobile units are being used not only to “see” through your clothes but to spy on you within the privacy of your home. While these mobile scanners are being sold to the American public as necessary security and safety measures, we can ill afford to forget that such systems are rife with the potential for abuse, not only by government bureaucrats but by the technicians employed to operate them.

X is for X-KEYSCORE, one of the many spying programs carried out by the National Security Agency that targets every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. This top-secret program “allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals.”

Y is for YOU-NESS. Using your face, mannerisms, social media and “you-ness” against you, you can now be tracked based on what you buy, where you go, what you do in public, and how you do what you do. Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. The goal is for government agents to be able to scan a crowd of people and instantaneously identify all of the individuals present. Facial recognition programs are being rolled out in states all across the country.

Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE. We have moved into a new paradigm in which young people are increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, often for engaging in little more than childish behavior. In some jurisdictions, students have also been penalized under school zero tolerance policies for such inane “crimes” as carrying cough drops, wearing black lipstick, bringing nail clippers to school, using Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that resemble switchblades. The lesson being taught to our youngest—and most impressionable—citizens is this: in the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (politician, police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.).

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the reality we must come to terms with is that in the post-9/11 America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age.

You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state.

Whatever label you want to put on it, the end result is the same: tyranny.

*

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

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Russia: Washington’s Next Vassal?

May 6th, 2018 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Featured image: Alexei Kudrin

If reports coming out of Russia are true, Vladimir Putin is considering appointing Washington’s agent, Alexei Kudrin, to negotiate Russia’s surrender to Washington. See this and this.

In checking out this story with well-informed and connected experts, I am advised that John Helmer in his report might have put too much credence in the story planted on the Financial Times by Kudrin.  One expert whose judgment I trust told me that Kudrin and other members of the “pro-US lobby”—the traitors that The Saker calls the Atlanticist Integrationists—are playing their  usual games. Kudrin may have gone too far this time by planting the story in the UK’s Financial times of his forthcoming appointment as negotiator of Russia’s surrender to Washington. The expert, whom I trust, told me that everyone in the Putin administration really dislikes Kudrin as a person and political figure — the sly games he plays, exploiting Putin’s personal loyalty from the past. It is widely said in Russia that Putin is too loyal to old friends like Kudrin who no longer serve him well. Kudrin’s few allies are in Medvedev’s group, and Washington’s incompetence recently sanctioned a couple of Kudrin’s Russian allies.  

Another expert whom I trust responds that rumors fly in Russia like they do everywhere as ambitious people jocky to elevate themselves in the media.  In contrast to the rumors that Putin is going to turn Russia’s fate over to an American agent, he reports rumors that Putin, pushed by nationalist patriotism and the military, is about to purge the Russian Fifth Column—Kudrin and the pro-Washington faction.

On the other hand, a Russian journalist tells me that in actual fact Putin himself is the biggest pro-Western liberal of them all and that Kudrin was instrumental in bringing Putin from St. Petersburg and installing him in the Moscow establishment.

Perhaps Putin’s inaugural address will indicate whether Kudrin will be given the power to surrender Russia or whether the pro-American Fifth Column will be finally excluded from the government or whether nothing changes.

Kudrin sounds like a traitor who should be put on trial for treason.  It seems unlikely that Putin would make Kudrin the number two man in the Russian government.  Kudrin, a protector of oligarchic control of Russia by billionaires who stole their fortunes by “privatizing” public assets, is also known for his advocacy of austerity for the Russian population while creating more billionaires by privatizing state assets.

Possibly there is as much fake news in Russia as there is in the US and Europe and that the truth is that Kudrin is a nonentity and not a player in Russian government decisions.  However, if Kudrin is elevated, perhaps his rise is due to neoliberal economics.

Kudrin along with the Russian central bank and most Russian economists who have been brainwashed by American neoliberal economics—“junk economics” in Michael Hudson’s accurate characterization—believe that the success of Russia’s economy depends on being tied to Washington’s imperial system.  They believe—very erroneously and quite stupidly—that without American investment and the lifting of the sanctions, the Russian economy is doomed.  That is what they say. The case could be that, like global economic interests everywhere, the oligarchs are only concerned with money, not with their country’s sovereignty.

As Michael Hudson and I have pointed out, the neoliberal economics taught to Russians by Americans in effect makes Russian economists agents of the West.  The Russian economists represent policies that work to Washington’s, not to Russia’s, interest.  Pepe Escobar, who believes Putin is moving in the opposite direction from Kudrin, acknowledges the pro-Washington faction’s control over Russian economic and financial policy. See this.

As there are few economists to tell Putin any different, the Russian government receives advice that Russia will fail unless its economy is integrated with the West.  

Kudrin also intends to cut Russia’s military capability in order to save money with which to pay interest on foreign loans that oligarchs will use to privatize public assets. The consequence would be to make Russia’s vassalage permanent as a colony of the West.

In my article on May 3, I asked if Russia knows what’s up.  Apparently not in the Middle East.  The Russian government thinks Syria is about fighting terrorism and working out a peaceful settlement.  But this is the last thing that Washington and Israel want.  Washington and Israel want Assad and Iran overthrown so that Hezbollah is left without support and Israel can occupy southern Lebanon.  Perhaps the Russian government’s inability to decipher the situation is the reason that Russia, always hoping to involve Washington in a peace settlement, never decisively brought the war in Syria to an end.  Now Russia is faced with US, French, and British forces in the American-occupied part of Syria and with Israeli military attacks on Syrian army positions.

If Kudrin is permitted to put Russia under Washington’s control, China, whose government also seems impervious to the real situation that it confronts, will stand alone. By privatizing state assets and creating billionaire oligarchs more loyal to money than to China, the Chinese government has created levers for Washington to use to neutralize China.  

Even if Helmer’s report is true, Washington and its ally Kudrin might still fail for any number of reasons, including the mounting problems of the US.  Nevertheless, that Putin is reportedly considering endorsing Kudrin and his surrender policy is an indication that Russians face a challenge to their sovereignty from the pro-American forces in Russia.

*

This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

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

A foreign policy crisis is coming May 12. President Donald Trump’s likely decision on that day to not continue waiving sanctions on Iran under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will significantly increase the chances of war.

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by China, Russia, and most of western Europe requires the American president to certify every three months Iran’s nuclear program is in compliance with the deal. In return, the next quarter’s economic sanctions are waived against the Islamic Republic. Earlier this year, Trump warned he was waiving sanctions for the final time, setting a May 12 deadline for significant changes in the agreement to be made. Failing those changes, Trump’s non-signature would trigger sanctions to snap into place.

The changes Trump is insisting on — reduce Iran’s ballistic missile capability, renegotiate the deal’s end date, and allow unrestricted inspections — are designed to force failure.

Iran’s ballistic missile program was purposefully never part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action; as learned during the Cold War, trying to throw every problem into the same pot assured no agreement could ever be reached. Trump trying to add the missile program in three years after the agreement was signed is wholly outside the norms of diplomacy (and the art of dealmaking.) Ballistic missile capability lies at the heart of Iran’s defense. Sanctions have already kept the country from fielding any significant air force, and memories in Tehran of Iraqi air strikes on its cities in the 1980s when Iran lacked retaliatory capability lie deep. The missile program is the cornerstone of Iranian self-preservation and thus understood to be non-negotiable.

The 2030 agreement end date is to the Trump administration a ticking time bomb; Iran will nefariously lie in wait, springing whole into nuclear status 12 years from now. Leaving aside the original agreement was negotiated with such a deadline, and American policy has generally been for presidents to honor agreements in place as they take office, the worry over an Iran of the future going nuclear is pure drama.

Twelve years is a lifetime in the Middle East. Some 12 years ago Syria was at peace with its neighbors, and the United States happy to outsource torture to Assad as part of the War on Terror. Turkey was a democracy, Russia mostly a non-player in the region, and Iran was timidly facing the American military on two of its borders, open to broad negotiations with Washington. There is more than enough to focus on in the Middle East of 2018 than what the area might look like strategically in 2030, even assuming Iran could surreptitiously keep its nuclear development going such to pop out of the cake in 12 years with a nuclear surprise. Washington’s demand for an indefinite extension of limits on Iran’s nuclear activities is political theatre.

As for the concern Iran is not compliant with the agreement, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations body charged with monitoring the deal, has presented no such evidence. Iran has in fact shown itself anxious to stay in compliance; in two past minor instances where the Agency noted Iran exceeded its heavy water limits, Tehran immediately disposed of the excessive amount. Trump has suggested he wants unprecedented access to any and all Iranian sites, including military sites not known to be part of any nuclear program. The United States never allowed carte blanche to the Soviets during the Cold War, no nation with the power to say no would. Following the inspections ahead of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, where intelligence officers were embedded in the process and the results politicized, American credibility for this ask is low.

So these aren’t really negotiating points, they’re excuses for the United States itself to step out of compliance with an agreement.

“President Trump appears to have presented the [Europeans] with a false choice: either kill the deal with me, or I’ll kill it alone,’ said Rob Malley, a senior American negotiator of the deal, and now head of the International Crisis Group.

None of this is a surprise. Trump has always wanted out of what he calls the “worst deal ever.” His new foreign policy team — Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton — are also ardent opponents. While anything can happen inside a White House fueled by chaos, there is no plausible scenario that says the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will survive May 12. What happens next?

The likely effects of walking away from the agreement are global. Iran may immediately kick start its nuclear program. Tehran’s hegemonic efforts in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria would remain untouched if not intensify in retaliation. Iran’s current missiles will still be able to reach Jerusalem and Riyadh. The odds of the North Koreans agreeing to a nuclear deal decrease; imagine being the new State Department envoy sitting across from an experienced North Korean diplomat trying to answer his question “What is to say you won’t do this to us in three years?”

European allies will be reluctant to join in future diplomatic heavy lifting in the Middle East or elsewhere, shy to commit only to see the Americans turn up their noses following another election. Relations could easily sink to the level of 2003, when America’s bullheaded invasion of Iraq split the alliance. Russia and China, signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, will have a chance at being the “good guys,” seizing an opening to expand cooperation with Iran at a time when American diplomacy might instead be looking for ways to drive wedges among them.

Meanwhile, the impact of renewed sanctions may be quite limited strategically. It is unclear if American pique will be followed by all of Europe falling into line with re-imposed sanctions; there is a lot of money in doing business in Iran and absent unambiguous proof Iran violated the agreement it is hard to see them going along in earnest. It is even less clear Russia and China will follow the new sanctions regime. And even if some signatories agree to reimpose sanctions, there is little to suggest Iran’s ambitions have been severely thwarted by decades of sanctions anyway. Had they been fully effective, there’d have been no need for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in the first place.

Without the agreement, there is, to misquote Churchill, nothing left to “jaw jaw,” leaving Iran free to develop its weapons and America only the option of destroying them. It’s perhaps the dangerous scenario Washington, encouraged by an Israel who has sought the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities for years, wants. The Israeli air strikes which decimated Saddam’s nuclear program and Syria’s were small scale, directed against nearby, discrete targets, vulnerable above ground. Not so for Iran, whose nuclear facilities are far away, dispersed, underground, and protected by both a decent air defense system and a credible threat of conventional, terrorist, cyber, and/or chemical retaliation. And that’s all before the newly-emboldened Russians weigh in.

The chance of terminating Iran’s nuclear program is held against the risk of full-on war in the region. The United States is playing with real fire if it walks away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on May 12.


Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

Journalists in Syria on the US Drone ‘Kill List’

May 6th, 2018 by Middle East Monitor

Featured image: Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American citizen and journalist working in Syria (Source: Twitter)

Two journalists have today filed federal court cases in the United States to challenge their inclusion on a classified US “Kill List”, Reprieve said in a statement.

Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American citizen and journalist working in Syria, escaped being killed by drone strike on five occasions, including two strikes on cars he was travelling in. Two additional strikes were executed on his independent news agency, On the Ground News, while he was working in the studio.

Ahmad Zaidan (image on the right), a senior reporter with Al Jazeera has appeared in a top secret SKYNET document, a US computer programme which has classified him as an Al-Qaeda courier based on “metadata”. Zaidan was the first person to interview Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda’s former leader in the 1990s.

“Bilal and Ahmed are journalists, not terrorists. All they are asking for is the chance to prove it. Yet, the government seeks to deny them that chance. In doing so, he is asking the courts to jettison the very value, which sets America apart from dictatorships and despots – due process,” Jennifer Gibson, head of Reprieve’s drones project, said.

“The courts must not let him. The executive should not be allowed to act as judge, jury and executioner unchecked. In a country founded on the rule of law, these men have a right to challenge the government’s decision to kill them,” Gibson continued.

SKYNET, operated by the National Security Agency, pinpoints targets based on individuals’ mobile phone calls and travel patterns. It does not take into consideration any direct evidence to ensure legality, Reprieve said.

“The goveAhmad Zaidan, a senior reporter with Al Jazeera [Twitter]rnment has acknowledged that it maintains a ‘Kill List’ of suspected terrorists, and that there is a process to determine who should be included on that list. The plaintiffs were incorrectly placed on the kill list. They have the right to make the case that the government got it wrong,” Tara Plochocki, parter at Lewis Baac Kaufman Middlemiss PLLC, said.

Kareem and Bilal seek to remove their names from the US “Kill List” or any other list from which individuals can be targeted for lethal action. The case will also seek to address whether the US followed its own internal procedure on listing individuals and what that procedure comprises of.

Under the drones policy inked by former president Barack Obama and continued by Donald Trump, only individuals who pose a “continuing, imminent threat to US persons” may be targeted outside war zones. But Reprieve, a legal action charity seeks to argue that Kareem and Zaidan are journalists who are provided special protection inside and outside war zones.

Obama previously warned high risk counter-terrorism operations should be used sparingly and only after internal review. Trump has sidestepped that rule and provided the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US Military broader powers. In addition, the US considers some countries “areas of activity hostilities” or temporary battlefields where looser targeting rules apply. US drone warfare has taken the lives of some 10,858 individuals since 2004, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

“Prominent” economic analysts maintain the myth, including a NYT report in its latest edition, saying:

An “unemployment rate (was achieved) below the 4 percent threshold,” the Times calling it a “milestone,” claiming it indicates a “tight…labor market…”

Reality is polar opposite. Trump crowed about the phony Friday Labor Department (BLS) report tweeting: “JUST OUT: 3.9% Unemployment. 4% is Broken!”

America’s privileged class never had things better. Unreported is continuation of protracted main street depression conditions.

Economist John Williams reverse engineers monthly employment numbers based on how calculated in 1980.

The so-called headlined U-3 unemployment number omits individuals without jobs wanting them, including many long-term unemployed ones not looking after months of failure to find work.

Most jobs created are low-wage, poor-or-no benefit temporary or part-time ones. Monthly BLS reports reflect BS ones without the L in between. They conceal the nation’s true employment picture. It’s not pretty, nothing suggesting a robust jobs situation.

The broader U-6 figure comes closer. It includes:

(1) “Marginally attached workers: people wanting jobs but not actively looking in the past 30 days, but have looked unsuccessfully in the last year.”

This category also includes “discouraged workers” who completely gave up in frustration within, but not exceeding, the past 12 months.

(2) Also included are people looking for full-time work but forced to take part-time or temporary jobs to be employed.

Williams’ latest reengineered calculation, the most accurate unemployment picture, has U-3 at 4.07, U-6 at 8.0%, and his ShadowStats-Alternative at 21.7% – remotely distant from anything approaching full employment.

In the Labor Department’s latest Household Survey, full-time employment declined by 311,000, continuing the erosion of what long ago was the hallmark of industrial America, mostly now operating abroad in low-wage countries, why the trade deficit it so high.

The nation’s economic strength is weak. Williams cited “weakening annual growth and no economic expansion,” adding:

“Mixed but faltering annual real growth in construction spending continued in a pattern last seen leading into the 2007 recession.”

Paul Craig Roberts calls monthly Labor Department employment reports “a bad joke.”

David Stockman explained “if the U-3 unemployment rate actually measured labor ‘slack,’ wage rates would be rising smartly.”

They’re not, Stockman calling the latest U-3 report “statistical noise,” using “deeply flawed employment models,” adding:

The phony “Awesome Economy narrative is actually built on institutionalized lies that service the needs of Bubble Finance on both Wall Street and at the Fed -until the don’t” once inflated bubbles burst.

Job numbers are inflated, manufactured out of thin air, partly based on a so-called birth-death model, estimating net non-reported jobs from new businesses minus losses from others no longer operating.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics admits misreporting, saying

“(t)he confidence level for the monthly change in total employment is on the order of plus or minus 430,000 jobs.”

The headlined monthly unemployment number conceals the job market’s dismal state, along with deplorable economic conditions for most people, struggling to get by.

Except for its privileged class, the state of the nation’s economic health is far different from how its portrayed by the administration and major media – concealing reality from the public.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Selected Articles: Global Geopolitical Rundown

May 6th, 2018 by Global Research News

Dear Readers,

More than ever, Global Research needs your support. Our task as an independent media is to “Battle the Lie”.

“Lying” in mainstream journalism has become the “new normal”: mainstream journalists are pressured to comply. Some journalists refuse.

Lies, distortions and omissions are part of a multibillion dollar propaganda operation which sustains the “war narrative”.

While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.

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Global Geopolitical Rundown: Syria, Armenia, North Korea and Beyond. Mahdi Nazemroaya

By Michael Welch and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, May 06, 2018

Arabians have failed in Yemen, and what it wants to do is, and what the United States is doing and even Israel and Britain, is they are arming Saudi Arabia and they’re pushing Saudi Arabia to create an Arab front against Iran.

Israel’s Murderous Strikes on Syria, Via ‘Pacified’ Lebanon

By Andre Vltchek, May 06, 2018

This time, Lebanon, which in the past suffered from several brutal Israeli invasions, and where Israel is commonly referred to as ‘Palestine’, decided not to protest too loudly against the violation of its airspace. There were some statements made by individual Lebanese politicians, as well as a statement by the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which objected to the attack against Syria, claiming that Lebanon will file a complaint to the UNSC. Most of the statements, however, appeared only in the Arabic language. There was definitely no robust national response, as one would have expected.

The “Arab NATO” to Make Syria’s “Internal Partition” a Reality

By Andrew Korybko, May 06, 2018

The possible deployment of Saudi-led GCC and other fellow “coalition” troops to northeastern Syria would formalize the de-facto “internal partition” of the Arab Republic and represent the fulfillment of the RAND Corporation’s plans to “contain” Iranian influence in the region, thus forcing President Assad to finally decide on the post-Daesh military fate of his country’s most loyal ally.

De-Briefing Academics: Unpaid Intelligence Informants

By Prof. James Petras, May 05, 2018

In the course, of my activity I have discovered that many academics are frequently engaged in what government officials dub ‘de-briefing’! Academics meet and discuss their field-work, data collection, research finding, observations and personal contacts over lunch at the Embassy with US government officials or in Washington with State Department officials.

Trotskyist Delusions. Split into Rival Tendencies

By Diana Johnstone, May 05, 2018

In reality, a much more pertinent “framing” of Western intervention, taboo in the mainstream and even in Moscow, is that Western support for armed rebels in Syria was being carried out to help Israel destroy its regional enemies.

UK Media Told to Conceal Connections Between Sergei Skripal and MI6

By Thomas Scripps, May 05, 2018

A D-notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) is used by the British state to veto the publication of potentially damaging news stories. Formally a request to withhold publication, the slavishness of the mainstream media ensures these notices function for the most part as gag orders.

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“Since the Ukrainian crisis of 2013-2014, to many observers of the Russian scene it was clear that Putin was not a master strategist who plots his moves well ahead of his opponents. …  At best he is a manager who keeps divergent forces within Moscow’s power structure in balance, rather than a statesman.”

Tens of thousands of Armenians converged on the capital Yerevan on Wednesday morning, blocking roads and government buildings in protest over the ruling party’s reluctance to transfer power in the country to opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan.

Protesters said they would stay on the streets for as long as it takes to oust the ruling Republican Party and install Pashinyan as prime minister. Apparently it worked: by the end of the day Pashinyan announced that all parties would support his bid for power, and called for an end to protests.

“The issue has practically been solved,” he told the cheering crowd at a rally in Yerevan. “All [parliamentary] factions say they will support my candidacy.”

The regime-change operation in Armenia has been a textbook color revolution every step of the way, tried and tested in Belgrade (2000), Tbilisi (2003), and most notably Kiev (2004, repeated 2014). There is a significant difference, however. Unlike Serbia, Georgia or Ukraine, Armenia is a formal ally of the Russian Federation, a member of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEC)—two pillars of President Vladimir Putin’s presumed geopolitical strategy. Significantly, Armenia also hosts a major Russian military base in Gyumri, leased until 2044, which the current government’s defense minister Vigen Sargasyan described last year as “a vital component of our country’s national security system.”

Armenia is déjà vu all over again.

Envision people from all walks of life—students, teachers, workers, artists, journalists, clergy, soldiers—smiling, laughing, and hugging one another,” a friendly observer gushed. “A sea of flags . . . fills the square, and taxi drivers are honking their horns and popping champagne. The atmosphere is stirring and electric! These are ordinary people who stood up for transparent and accountable government. They mobilized to fight for a cause from a grassroots level, and they eventually won against almost impossible odds.”

Unsurprisingly, the “ordinary people” interviewed for major Western networks just happened to be young, well-groomed, fluent English-speakers. Initially they demanded the resignation of recently appointed prime minister Serzh Sargasyan, who had been Armenia’s president for a decade before arranging—contrary to earlier promises—the sideways move to the new post, which would let him keep old power. In the early days of protests Sargsyan appears to have expected support and advice from Moscow, and—failing to get it—resigned on April 23 with a strangely worded statement:

“The street movement is against my tenure. I am fulfilling your demand.”

But his admission of defeat no longer satisfied the protesters, however, who shifted their demand to an outright regime change, i.e. immediate transfer of power to Pashinyan.

Source: Russia Insider

The demand was hardly in line with the protesters’ claim to revere “democracy.” Described as “a muckraking journalist turned politician,” Pashinyan has modest electoral credentials. His Way Out Alliance won just under 8 percent of votes in Armenia’s 2017 parliamentary election, the legitimacy of which has not been disputed, and currently has only nine deputies in the country’s 105-seat national assembly. “Way Out” is a classic “pro-Western, pro-EU,” self-avowedly liberal party, intricately linked to a tight network of foreign-supported NGOs. It is opposed to Armenia’s membership of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and has been fiercely critical of what it regards as the current government’s excessive reliance on Moscow.

The script was familiar in every detail, including the unwillingness (or inability) of the Kremlin to anticipate and influence events.

In general, Russia acted with incredible caution,” noted a protest-friendly Armenian analyst, which is to say that Russia remained invisible.

There was nothing “incredible” about the Kremlin’s inertia, however: Moscow was equally unable or unwilling to exert influence in other color revolution theaters, most notably in Ukraine in 2014. When an openly Russophobic regime came to power in Kiev after the February coup d’etatPutin merely warned of the “tragic consequences of the wave of so-called color revolutions.”

As we now see, his warning was purely rhetorical. Four years later, with the same old scenario unfolding, he did nothing to prevent the reprise in Armenia—even though its objective was to topple the lawful government of a country (one of very few), which has entered both a military and an economic alliance with the Russian Federation.

Putin’s apologists in the Russian media and elsewhere were quick to claim that the change in Yerevan would not mean much in geopolitical terms, supposedly because its causes were “purely internal and any future government would need to rely on Russian protection against Turkey and/or Azerbaijan. With the same dismissive indolence, pro-government media have hardly taken note of the decision of Kazakhstan to discard Cyrillic and adopt Latin as the national language script. They consistently ignore the signs of estrangement of Belarus, where President Lukashenka is quietly trying to make himself grudgingly acceptable to the West . . . just as Montenegro’s Milo Djukanovic had successfully done in the waning days of Milosevic’s power.

(Talking of Montenegro, the Russians invested heavily in the tiny former Yugoslav republic in the early 2000’s, and actively supported its separation from Serbia in 2006, only to be rewarded by the imposition of sanctions by the Djukanovic regime in Podgorica in 2014, and its joining NATO in 2017.)

If the remaining two non-Russian members of the EAEC go, and the writing is on the wall, there will be literally nothing left. Moscow seems to display an extraordinary degree of complacency in areas Russia regards as safely within its historic sphere of influence, foreign affairs analyst James Jatras warns, even though the West—and especially the United States—explicitly rejects such assignment:

“The neglect Russia showed toward Ukraine after 1991 is now revealed to have been replicated in Belarus, Armenia, and Kazakhstan. After they’re ‘flipped,’ what does Russia have left except its own territory? Then Russia itself will be treated with no greater respect by the authors of regime change operations. As I have pointed out recently, Russia really IS America’s No. 1 enemy (as per Mitt Romney’s assessment), if ‘America’ means the ruling establishment, which is totally united in its Russophobia.”

It is not coincidental that the Armenian operation came in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s display of weakness in Syria, after the false flag operation in Douma (April 8) and the ensuing bombing of Syrian government targets by the United States, Britain and France (April 14). Putin has been indecisive and weak throughout the crisis, I concluded in these pages two days later, doing nothing after his senior officers repeatedly warned of a forthcoming stage-managed atrocity leading to a Western attack, and leaving Bashar al Assad’s air-defense units to their own modest devices.

On April 16 Putin merely reinforced the impression of weakness when he said that yet another such attack on his nominal Syrian ally would “cause chaos.” Predictably, this has prompted the Russophobic full-spectrum hegemonists in Washington (and their minions in London) to demand decisive escalation, because “Putin has blinked” and “Russia has shown itself to be a paper tiger.” One predictable consequence is that Assistant Secretary for Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell, during his visit to Kiev and Tbilisi, urged Russia to “withdraw troops from Georgia” (meaning Abkhazia and South Ossetia, an utterly impossible demand) and expressed support for both Ukraine’s and Georgia’s bid to join NATO.

Eventually the Russians may be forced to respond to ever-escalating provocations. The price of their current appeasement will be a radically reduced maneuvering space, however, and therefore an exponentially greater danger of lethal escalation. Part of the problem, according to an astute British analyst of Serbian origin, is that Russia simply does not understand soft power, its economy is about the size of Spain’s, its nuclear arsenal is useless in localized power ploys, its conventional forces have not impressed anybody, and Putin is too frightened of confronting the West except when things threaten to go over the top (Georgia 2008, Crimea 2014): “Russia is not behaving like a superpower because it isn’t one.”

An additional sign of disorientation and utter feebleness in the Kremlin is the news that former finance minister Alexei Kudrin will be brought back to “mend fences with the West” in order to revive Russia’s economy. Kudrin has repeatedly said that unless Russia makes her political system more democratic and ends its confrontation with Europe and the United States, she will not be able to achieve economic growth. Russia’s fifth-columnists were exalted:

“If Kudrin joined the administration or government, it would indicate that they have agreed on a certain agenda of change, including in foreign policy, because without change in foreign policy, reforms are simply impossible in Russia,” said Yevgeny Gontmakher . . . who works with a civil society organization set up by Mr. Kudrin. “It would be a powerful message, because Kudrin is the only one in the top echelons with whom they will talk in the west and towards whom there is a certain trust.”

Putting Kudrin—an opponent of de-dollarization and an upholder of the Washington Consensus—in charge of Russia’s international outreach would be equal to putting Bill Clinton in charge of a girls’ school. It would mark Putin’s de facto collapse as a leader. We shall know very soon. Either way, if anyone wondered what the approach to Russia would be from Bolton and Pompeo, we now know: they will play very hard ball with Putin, regardless of what he does (or doesn’t do), and with carefree readiness to risk an eventual snap.

Last but not least, over the past four weeks Israel has acted in a manner almost calculated to humiliate Putin. “Russia blames Israel for strikes on Syrian base,” the Western media reported on April 9, and Russia was right—Israeli jets did pound Syria’s T-4 facility near Homs, killing 14 people, seven of them Iranians, and turning the base to rubble. Israel did not officially declare that its aircraft attack the base at Tiyas, but Israeli military sources confirmed it. Calmly and deliberately, the government in Jerusalem thus ended its “deconfliction” arrangement with Russia which was negotiated between Putin and Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September 2015. The agreement gave Israel a free hand against weapons transfers from Iran to Hezbollah, and allowed continued Israeli deterrence on its northern border.

Putin responded meekly, literally pleading with Netanyahu on April 12 to refrain from further action in Syria. The response from Israel could hardly have been more harsh and offensive. Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman announced on April 25 that Israel would be prepared to strike at any S-300 missile defense system in Syria threatening Israeli planes. This effectively means that Israel declared its readiness to attack Russian-operated systems if they are not granted a free run, since Moscow had abided by its decision—made originally at Israel’s request!—not to send the S-300 to Bashar’s forces. As if to make the point, Israeli jets mounted a massive attack on another Syrian military base near Hama on April 29, allegedly destroying 200 Iranian missiles and killing over 20 military personnel. Yet again Russia did nothing (verbal condemnations and warnings are no longer worthy of mention). As a Washington insider told me, the war hawks inside the Beltway are delighted:

“When all is said and done, Israel is behaving as a world power, and Russia isn’t. With its strikes in Syria and threats against Russia and Iran, Israel—backed up by the U.S.—feels free to act with impunity. Moscow meanwhile restrains itself under some fictive notion of ‘partnership’ with western powers. This only spurs further provocations under the expectation, based on experience to date, that it is cost-free.”

The interventionists believe that it is now time to take advantage of Putin’s weakness by chasing the Russians out of Syria altogether, reopening the Ukrainian front, completing the regime change in Armenia, and encouraging the implosion of the remnant of the Russian-led security and economic alliances. My prediction is that they will also sabotage the FIFA World Cup, which is due to be held in Russia June 14 – July 15, by encouraging their proxies to stage another false-flag operation (which will be blamed on Moscow directly), or to carry out a terrorist attack on one of the competition’s venues.

Ever since the second Ukrainian crisis erupted in the winter of 2013-2014, to many observers of the Russian scene it was clear that Putin was not a master strategist who plots his moves well ahead of his opponents. As I noted here during my visit to Moscow a month ago, after 18 years in power he has been shockingly unable to sort out the structural deficiencies of Russia’s economy, which is still dominated by corrupt oligarchs and globalist fifth-columnists. At best he is a manager who keeps divergent forces within Moscow’s power structure in balance, rather than a statesman.

Over the past three weeks his credibility has been deeply eroded. It is uncertain whether he can regain it—belatedly acting more like Churchill than Chamberlain—and thus make the danger of nuclear holocaust less acute.

Protesters said they would stay on the streets for as long as it takes to oust the ruling Republican Party and install Pashinyan as prime minister.

*

The author is a Serbian-American writer on international affairs and foreign affairs editor for the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles.

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Janine Jackson interview Dahr Jamail about melting Antarctic ice for the April 27, 2018, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Link to the audio.

Janine Jackson: Antarctic glaciers are melting at dramatic rates, scientists are finding. Antarctica is of course a continent of ice, roughly twice the size of Australia. The retreat of its oceanfront glaciers raises serious concerns about the resulting rise in sea levels. The most severe projections of potential impact are almost impossible to grasp: billions of people displaced? coastal cities disappeared?

Yet the Washington Post was virtually alone among major outlets in reporting the latest findings. Corporate media have, in the main, stopped entertaining denial of human-driven climate disruption, but that’s a long, long way from the serious and sustained attention that would be appropriate to the myriad phenomena involved, and it’s categorically different than actually picking a side in the question of priority our guest’s work invokes: planet or profit?

Dahr Jamail is staff reporter at Truthout. He’s author of, most recently, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. His new book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, is forthcoming from New Press, and he is just lately recipient of the 2018 Izzy Award from the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, named for passionate, critical journalist I.F. Stone. He joins us now by phone from Port Townsend, Washington state. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dahr Jamail.

Dahr Jamail: Thank you. Great to be with you.

JJ: There’s more than one piece of relevant work here, of course. What is the research that you’d like to spotlight, and can you tell us, in layperson’s terms, what this new research seems to show?

The End of Ice, by Dahr Jamail

DJ: The most important study recently regarding the Antarctic and sea level rise was published in Science Advances on the 18th of this month, and the title of the study is Freshening by Glacial Meltwater Enhances Melting of Ice Shelves and Reduces Formation of Antarctic Bottom Water.”

So what this essentially means is that even in the Eastern Antarctic, there are glaciers that are melting that are actually freshening the ocean around them. So the freshwater of the ice melts, flows into the oceans, and then that is, in turn, blocking a process: that normally cold, salty ocean water is dense and heavy and sinks down to the bottom, where it forms what is known as the densest water on earth, because it’s the coldest and the saltiest.

And so what’s happening is that bottom water is stopping being formed, because of the melting of these coastal glaciers in two places of Antarctica: off the Western Antarctic coast, as well as the Totten Glacier, which is in Eastern Antarctica. And so these are the two fastest-melting regions of the ice continent.

So what this is causing, according to this study, is the cold surface water is no longer making its way all the way down into the depths, so it’s not forming that deeper layer of water that can travel across areas where it normally would. And so what this essentially means is that these two regions of Antarctica’s glaciers are now in a feedback loop where they are melting, it’s causing this effect on the oceans, and then that’s causing even more melting.

And so this is worrisome for numerous reasons. One, that for a long time, scientists believed that Antarctica, being the ice continent, would either not be dramatically impacted by  human-caused climate disruption, or at least minimally. But now what this means is that at least 10 percent of Antarctica’s coastal glaciers are now in full retreat, and because of this feedback loop, that retreat’s only going to speed up, and ultimately this feedback loop will start happening on other glaciers in Antarctica as well.

And so for sea level rise, we already know that the Arctic sea ice is dramatically melting, which is going to only intensify the melt rate in the Arctic. Of course, Greenland, we know, is melting at record rates as well. And so now with Antarctica—save dramatic, dramatic changes in mitigation, in fossil fuel CO2 emissions across the planet, on a very, very abrupt timescale—right now, at current trajectories, we are on course, at a minimum, to hit the worst-case projections of sea level rise, which, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is 8.5 feet by 2100. But these worst-case projections, unfortunately, keep being upgraded every time more and more reports, like the one we’re discussing today, are being released.

JJ: In terms of attention to what is obviously an almost staggeringly important development, the New York Times had a big three-part photo piece last May, with really spectacular images of Antarctica, and a kind of virtual reality thing. At one point the piece said, if the sea level rise turns out to be as rapid as the worst-case projections, it could lead to “a catastrophe without parallel in the history of civilization.”

And then, since then, and that’s May of 2017, well, the Times hasn’t really gone back to the story. Their recent Antarctica stories have been about penguins, you know. I just don’t know that the attention is commensurate, and there’s all kinds of reasons for that, and I’m going to ask you, but I just want to throw in: There’s amount of coverage, and then I want to say a little thing about the tone of coverage, because within that same New York Times piece, in the Part One of it (it was three parts), it noted that US and British scientists were working to get better measurements in the main trouble spots, and then it added, “The effort could cost more than $25 million, and might not produce clearer answers about the fate of the ice until the early 2020s.” And the next sentence is, “For scientists working in Antarctica, the situation has become a race against time.”

Well, surely part of the reason we aren’t running as fast as we might is the amount of coverage, or lack of it, and then this tone that, “Oh, it’s expensive.” I just wonder what you make in general, on this issue in particular, of the way media are covering it.

Dahr Jamail

DJ: It is really shocking to me, and I think you really hit the nail on the head when you discussed the fact of the gravity of this crisis and the implications of this on the entirety of human civilization on the planet, not even to talk about other species. And one would think that that would demand a level of coverage that would be path-breaking, urgent and backed up by citing all of the scientific data that’s being released at a fairly rapid pace right now, whether it’s sea level rise, temperature-increase projections, what’s happening to methane in the arctic, etc., etc.

For example, I would add another quote by Dr. Eric Rignot, a glaciologist with UC Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, back in 2014, who said, “Today we present observational evidence”—we’re not talking about projections—“observational evidence that a large sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has gone into irreversible retreat…. It has passed the point of no return.” That was four years ago.

So the urgency is clear. Sea level-rise projections are being increased dramatically. We are talking, in the longer run, billions of people being displaced by sea level rise. Entire megacities on the coast, like New York and Tokyo, that are going to have to be relocated entirely, or completely abandoned to the sea.

And so with that being the context, the reportage of, “Oh, OK, well at least we’re not giving the denialists coverage….”  We need to be reporting on specifically what is happening, what the projections are, and what this means, because pretending, “Oh, it’s not that bad,” or “We’re still going to be able to mitigate it to the point where we’re not going to have to relocate much of New York City,” for example, it’s just not honest coverage.

JJ: And the idea it could cost more than $25 million—this particular project: $25 million is a pittance! They could have easily said it would cost “as little as $25 million.” The idea that we should be thinking in terms of millions of dollars and what that might cost, rather than putting it in a context of what we stand to lose…

DJ: Or put it in the context of $25 million for more studies, compared to the Pentagon budget, which is roughly between $700 and $800 billion that we know of, not even talking about the black budget, which puts it up at well over a trillion dollars annually. And so if we need $25 million or $50 million or, you know, heaven forbid, a billion dollars for some more scientific studies, not even talking about mitigation and starting a planned relocation of people and transfer of infrastructure, that that conversation is not happening is just mind-boggling to me.

Because the reality is, for example, the US military, in their Quadrennial Defense Review Report, they are already acutely aware of this. They know that at least half of their naval bases, their bigger naval bases in the US on the coast, have to be relocated. They’re watching the water come up to the docks and start to inundate infrastructure. So they’re acutely aware of this, and yet the coverage, as you just cited, in the New York Times is not even coming close to keeping up with that.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Dahr Jamail. You can follow his Climate Disruption Dispatches at Truthout.org, and his book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, will be out soon from the New Press. Dahr Jamail, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

DJ: My pleasure. Great to be with you.

*

Dahr Jamail is staff reporter at Truthout. He’s author of, most recently, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. His new book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, is forthcoming from New Press, and he is just lately recipient of the 2018 Izzy Award from the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, named for passionate, critical journalist I.F. Stone.

Janine Jackson is FAIR’s program director and producer/host of FAIR’s syndicated weekly radio show CounterSpin. She contributes frequently to FAIR’s newsletter Extra!, and co-edited The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s (Westview Press). 

Who Is Buying Votes at the Lebanon Election?

May 6th, 2018 by Brett Redmayne-Titley

Featured image: Campaign Posters Adorn Concrete Wall

Brett Redmayne-Tittley reporting from Beirut

Beirut, Lebanon: Sat, May 5, 2018- On this lovely morning here on the coast of the Mediterranean there is not a cloud in the sky. In less than twenty-four hours voting will begin. However, on this day before the election, a howling wind is blowing from the south making the thousands of posters, banners and building-sized placards that feature the faces of the scores of potential Lebanese parliamentarians dance and sway wildly above the throngs of tomorrows voters.

But this wind, one that just yesterday seemed to bring the promise of a new future for Lebanon, will it be an ill wind that instead dashes this attempt at populist democratic reform, one cast from nine years of progress, onto the rocks of US-backed history?

Judging from the past twelve hours on the streets of Beirut, there is suddenly strong pause for concern. Someone is buying votes!

And just about everyone knows it.

Prior to arriving in the wee hours of this morning, this reporter had checked the newspaper offerings in the three airports transited for features on this very important election. In the New York Times, London Times, UK Independent, Financial Times, their Friday-before-the-election editions included not so much as a mention. In the English language papers of Turkey to the north, neither the Daily News or the Daily Sabah had a similar omission.

Why?

These same papers had news about Armenian, Moldovan and/ or the Maldivian elections where the western powers were already far along in bringing their unelected candidates back to power despite contrary election results past. The many Lebanese spoken with this day did not know of this glaring omission but were not surprised. As one local commented, “Well, they always ignore us…until war breaks out, again.”

The Rules of Engagement.

It’s now 7 PM on this Saturday and the bars are closing; unheard of in this town known for its vibrant nightlife that routinely parties to 4 AM even on a Sunday. It has been nine years since this nation’s last election and the Lebanese government wants everyone sober enough tomorrow to make it to the voting booth. So, if you want a drink only a restaurant can legally serve alcohol; hopefully on a full stomach.

Voting for any of the almost seven hundred different candidates from across the country begins at 7 AM tomorrow. An interesting requirement for voting is that all Lebanese must return to their place of birth to do so, and because of the closed bars, tonight is extraordinarily quiet. As one taxi driver accurately stated, Sunday “will see the return of old Beirut.”

Ready to Vote for tomorrow 

In what appears to be a form of Gerrymandering, when the voters return home to vote, many travelling over a hundred miles to do so, they must vote from a set list of candidates specific to their region. This would appear to be a violation of the Lebanese constitution that allows for universal suffrage and will restrict these voters from voting for more favorable candidates within the party of their choice, but not on their ballot. Despite the excitement of tomorrows historic election, many are quite unhappy about this limited choice that certainly affects their decision at the ballot box.

These separate ballots will be divided across the nation- similar to US congresspersons- by population. This means that Beirut, the largest city, has three different districts and three different ballots. The smaller cites have only one and in the rural areas of many small towns and villages, their ballots are apportioned to a set region.

One hundred and twenty-eight candidates will be elected tomorrow- the entire parliament. This has never before happened and is just as unusual in other worldwide elections where the election cycle is split instead- as in the US- to every two, four or six years. This makes this election all the more important since, post-election, it is these same parliamentarians that will subsequently elect the new Prime Minister, the very powerful three-member Cabinet and the President. Hence the stakes for this election have never been higher and this election will see a wholesale and long-lasting change in influence.

In an attempt to level the playing field for all candidates, all of them are currently under a national gag order that began this morning and will be enforced until the election is over and the results are in. None may, in this period, speak with any Radio, TV, Internet, or newspaper news source. Additionally, any manipulation by virtue of misleading advanced polling data has been restricted making the outcome an unknown to the voter and a further encouragement to get out and vote.

Everyone interviewed, without exception, views the many Hizbullah candidates as the status quo that will prevail. The only question is the final tally of seats. Hizbullah’s growing power has been achieved in the past by it creating various coalition alliances such as the March 7 or March 14 coalitions of many years ago. So the question is not whether Hizbullah will retain power, but whether it may achieve an actual majority.

While there are many other candidates in opposition to Hizbullah, they are aligned with either the Christian, Alawite, Sunni, Druze religious factions. These have previously failed to garner significant support since they have done very little, compared to Hizbullah, to bring real societal change to Lebanon. They also have repeatedly done nothing to defend their country in the three previous wars of incursion by Israel, while the people of Lebanon and Hizbullah have fought side-by-side. This memory applied at the ballot box to the horrors of war past and will have many voters discounting religious affiliations in favor of the national defence. These concerns have given current Minister of the Interior (which manages the police and domestic security), Mouhad Al Mashouk, perceived front-runner status for many who are looking beyond the Hizbullah offerings.

Mashouk may have trouble with this since the Shia candidate, retired Colonel Ali Al Shaer is featuring his own defensive track record as a reason for votes.

Image on the right: Posters Everywhere: Saad Hariri on Pop Corn Machine

The image of Saad Hariri, son of venerated Rafik Hariri, is so prevalent by itself, and alongside those of the many candidates, that one would think he was running for election. His image and presence of support for these candidates are designed to hopefully bring him to power again via parliamentary vote. There is no doubt that he is riding the coattails of his father in a similar fashion to Justin Trudeau despite his brief resignation and defection to Saudi Arabia. This is not lost on the voters, but strangely many believe he has a chance since most have forgiven him for his treason.

Western Desperation: Who is Buying All Those Opposition Votes?

What does not bode well for a peaceful and long-lasting result of this election is that some of the opposition candidates are paying for votes. This reporter spoke with five different voters who all told the same story: The going price in South of Lebanon is $800 and the mortita for Beirut is as high as $2000…plus airfare!!

One woman voter spoke of her anguished conversation with her parents who wanted her to change her vote and had admitted to her that they had been given $1000 each for their votes. Another bar patron informed this reporter that, due to the requirement of voting in the district of one’s birth, opposition candidates were going to be bused in from across Lebanon since Beirut is the plum of this election, having far the most seats to win. One bartender spoke with disgust about an opposition staff member visiting his bar- not an hour before- and offering he and other patrons $1000 per vote.

Worse, yet another taxi driver spoke of his parents being contacted in Canada with an offer of airfare and $2000 per vote to come to Lebanon on Sunday.

While this might seem outrageous and expensive, it shows the panic that the opposition is in regarding the likely outcome in favor of Hizbullah. These allegations were made all the more legitimate based on this reporters observations and conversations with arriving passengers from Brazil, which, interestingly, has a larger Lebanese population that Lebanon itself.

On the inbound flight arriving to Beirut, a large contingent of twenty or more Brazilians was on the same flight. However, during a casual conversation, they revealed few things about their trip other than two key facts: They were staying only until just Monday morning… and had brought with them almost no luggage. This made little sense at the time; until the testimony of many in Beirut certified their true reason for an 11,000-mile, two-day vacation.

Of further concern was how these paid for voters would be monitored in performing their deeds in the confines of a secret voting booth. With the Lebanese being known for corruption, all spoken with assumed there would be secret monitoring to be sure the opposition got what it paid for.

These facts put together and many Lebanese are concerned about some sort of Maidan Square event taking place tomorrow. So is the army.

Beirut has a strong military presence at all times, but in recent days, here in Beirut, that presence has more than doubled. This morning, this reporter witnessed a convoy of troop transport vehicles head into the city carrying over 150 uniformed soldiers. Every soldier is armed and everyone you encounter is cautious, unsmiling… and locked and loaded.

Despite these tangible concerns, the Lebanese spoken with were taking it all in stride. As one woman put it, draining here cocktail glass and cheerfully chiming in, “ They bomb…we rebuild. They bomb…we rebuild. That’s Lebanon.”

Smacking her glass down loudly on the bar for emphasis, now staring me in the eyes directly, she concluded in an accurate note of optimism, “But they have never defeated us…and they never fucking will!”

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Author’s Note: For the previous article and for the upcoming Part Three please re-visit this publication or the author’s archive: www.watchingromeburn.com

Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 150 in-depth articles over the past seven years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated. On-scene reporting from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, KXL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out and many more. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

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Israel Bans Jordanian, Arab Publishers from Palestine Book Fair

May 6th, 2018 by The Palestinian Information Center

The Israeli occupation forces have barred Jordanian and Arab publishers from entering the Palestine International Book Fair, held in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Saturday.

The Jordanian Publishers Association (JPA) denounced the Israeli measure, describing it as another chain in Israel’s oppressive blockade imposed on the Palestinian people.

JPA said that Jordanian and Arab publishers have been denied access into the 11th Palestine Book Fair although their books have been already shipped through border crossings to the occupied Palestinian territories.

The association said that the Palestinian Authority has always submitted entry permits for publishers to Israeli occupation authorities to attend the periodical book fair and “have been always accepted except for this time”.

“This measure makes part of an Israeli policy to destroy all attempts to build bridges with the Palestinian people,” the statement read.

Describing the Israeli measure as an “aggression” on culture, history and humanity, JPA called on all concerned parties to intervene and pressurize the Israeli occupation to lift its ban on cross-cultural exchange with the Palestinian people and grant Arab publishers the necessary permits.

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Featured image is from TPIC.

In 1888, Marx wrote, “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”

On this 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx we focus on Marx as a political activist, rather than what he is best known for, an economist and philosopher who wrote some of the most important analyses explaining capitalism and putting forward an alternative economic model.

In the “Communist Manifesto”, Marx wrote,

“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”

He believed political change stems from the history of conflicts between people who are exploited against the people who are exploiting them. This exploitation leads to conflict and revolt, Marx posited revolution as “the driving force of history.”

The root of the political struggle for Marx was the economic system creating a struggle between classes. This conflict has varied throughout history, e.g. the serfs vs. the lords in the Feudal Era, the slaves vs. their owners in the era of slavery and today between workers and their bosses or capitalists.

Iconic picture of the 1848 revolution in Berlin. Unknown artist. Public domain.

Marx Was a Political Activist Working to Change the World

In an interview with Immanuel WallersteinMarcello Musto described Marx’s political activism, noting:

“For all his life, Marx was not merely a scholar isolated among the books of London’s British Museum, but always a militant revolutionary involved in the struggles of his epoch. Due to his activism, he was expelled from France, Belgium and Germany in his youth. He was also forced to go into exile in England when the revolutions of 1848 were defeated. He promoted newspapers and journals and always supported labor movements in all the ways he could. Later, from 1864 to 1872, he became the leader of the International Working Men’s Association, the first transnational organization of the working class and, in 1871, defended the Paris Commune, the first socialist experiment in history.”

Wallerstein adds that Marx played a major role in organizing people on an international level and that

“Marx’s political activity also involved journalism. . .  He worked as a journalist to get an income, but he saw his contributions as a political activity. He had not any sense of being a neutral. He was always a committed journalist.”

At 24 years of age, Marx was writing fiery articles opposing Prussian authoritarianism. The newspaper he edited was closed in 1842 by the government, he was exiled and moved to Paris from where he was expelled in 1844.

In 1848, Marx and Engels published the “Communist Manifesto.” “The Manifesto” was written as a declaration of the principles of socialism for the Communist League in Brussels. It remains a statement of the core principles of socialism to this day. At 45 years of age, Marx was elected to the general council of the first international where he was active in organizing the International’s annual congresses.

Marx’s vision of socialism had nothing in common with one-party dictatorships like the former Soviet Union that declared themselves to be socialist or communist. For Marx, the key question was not whether the economy was controlled by the state, but which class controlled the state. A society can only be socialist if power is in the hands of workers themselves.

Our Tasks: Expose Inequality, Create New Economic Systems

Marx’s critique of capitalism focuses on how it inevitably leads to concentration of wealth. Marxism was seen as extinct after the Reagan-Thatcher eras and the end of the Soviet Union. But, now after nearly 40 years of neoliberalism, the inequality of deregulated global capitalism has made the occupy meme of the 99 percent versus the one percent a factual reality.

The Independent reports on Marx’s anniversary:

“Unsurprisingly, several decades of neoliberalism have been the greatest testament to how a deregulated capitalism, red in tooth and claw, siphons wealth to the top 1 per cent or even 0.1 per cent. Recent figures show that the wealthiest eight billionaires in the world (whom you could fit into a people carrier) have as much wealth as the bottom half of the global population, or some 3. 5 billion people. Astonishingly, the equivalent figure was the 62 wealthiest billionaires in 2016. Back in 2010 it was more than 300. This is how rapidly wealth is being sucked up to the top – this may be termed the vacuum-up effect as opposed to the myth of trickle-down economics.”

In the United States, three people hold more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the domestic population, “a total of 160 million people or 63 million American households.” Roughly a fifth of USians “have zero or negative net worth.” That figure is even higher for black and Latino households, the result of decades of discrimination. In some US corporations, the CEO earns more than 1,000 times the average worker, i.e. workers would have to toil more than nine centuries to make as much as the CEO makes in just one year.

The contradiction between extreme wealth and widespread poverty and economic insecurity, between the efficient production of goods and services and the refusal to share the prosperity created by efficiency, and between the use of natural resources and the destruction of the planet and enormous threats of climate change are leading people to see the failures of capitalism.

In 2017, the National Review reported that a poll found as many as 40 percent of people in the U.S. “now prefer socialism to capitalism.” A 2016  YouGov survey found that respondents younger than 30 rated socialism more favorably than capitalism, 43 percent vs. 32 percent. “Socialism” was the most looked-up word on Merriam-Webster’s site in 2015. “Socialism has been near the top of our online dictionary look-up list for several years,” said editor-at-large Peter Sokolowsk.

In 2014, David Harvey, a top Marxist academic, wrote, in Seventeen Contradictions And the End of Capitalism, that the extreme contradictions are leading to major transformations:

“It is in a political climate such as this that the violent and unpredictable eruptions that are occurring all around the world on an episodic basis (from Turkey and Egypt to Brazil and Sweden in 2013 alone) look more and more like the prior tremors for a coming earthquake that will make the post-colonial revolutionary struggles of the 1960s look like child’s play.”

How will that change occur? The answer is in part up to what those working for change do. Youssef El-Gingihy writes in the Independent of one likely possibility:

“The transition of capitalism to an alternative political and economic system will likely play out over a protracted period, even if it is catalyzed by revolution. Much in the same way that feudalism evolved into capitalism through the dual industrial (economic) and French revolutions (political), in which the bourgeoisie superseded the aristocratic order preceded by the 17th-century English civil war.”

We see the slow transition in process with the development of a myriad of economic democracy projects that give workers control of their employment through worker cooperatives, give communities control over their development through land trusts, give people direct control over budget decisions through participatory budgeting and democratize banking through public banks. These are some efforts to create an economy that serves the people without limiting control to workers, whose numbers are shrinking due to automation. Many of these new economic models are in their early stages of development.

Marx believed that:

“No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.”

The lessons of Karl Marx show that our tasks are to heighten class conflict by exposing the reality of abhorrent inequality and create new systems to replace failing capitalism.

*

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are co-directors of Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

The War on Iran Has Begun. Russia Must End It

May 6th, 2018 by Dan Glazebrook

Things are escalating again in one of Syria’s many wars. On 29 April, two massive strikes – presumed to be Israeli – reportedly hit the Syrian Arab Army’s 47th Brigade military base and arms depots near Hama, as well as Nayrab Military Airport in Aleppo.

The strikes reportedly targeted Iranian surface-to-surface missiles intended for deployment in Syria, and killed between 26 and 38 people, including 11 Iranians.

Red lines updated

The attack appears to have been coordinated with the US, coming just hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left Jerusalem – where, according to Haaretz, he had “thrilled Netanyahu with hawkish talk on Iran”. That same day, noted the Times of Israel, “news also broke of a phone call between Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump“, while Israel’s defence minister, Avigdor Liberman, was meeting his US counterpart James Mattis in Washington.

This feverish activity came less than a week after General Joseph Votel, the head of the US army’s Central Command, or Centcom, whose sphere of responsibility includes Syria and Iran, made “a largely unpublicised visit to Israel.”

The Times of Israel article concluded:

“All this is beginning to look rather like a coordinated Israeli-American operation to limit Iran’s military activities in Syria – simultaneously conveying the message to Moscow that Russia’s green light for Iran to establish itself militarily in Syria is not acceptable in Jerusalem and Washington.”

The war on Iran, in other words, has begun. It has been brewing for some time.

In January 2018, with the battle against the Islamic State (IS) almost won, former US secretary of state Rex Tillerson announced new goals for US troops in Syria, vowing that they would remain until “Iranian influence in Syria is diminished, and Syria’s neighbours are secure from all threats emanating from Syria.”

In February the International Crisis Group warned that Israel had “updated its red lines – signalling it would take matters into its own hands if necessary to keep Iran from establishing a permanent military presence in Syria”.

Since then, Israel has been directly targeting Iranian personnel and facilities. Its shooting down of an Iranian drone on 9 February led to one of its own F-16s being downed by the Syrian army after it bombed the drone’s command centre, the first time an Israeli warplane had been shot down since the 1980s. Yet, in a very rare admission of responsibility, Israel still called the mission a success, claiming that between one third and one half of Syria’s air defences had been destroyed in the strikes.

Russia’s response

Two months later, on 9 April, Israeli missiles again struck the same “T4” military base they hit in February. The target was specifically Iranian installations and equipment, and 14 Iranian soldiers were killed. According to one Israeli official, this was the first time Israel had attacked “live Iranian targets”.

It was also, apparently, the first time Israel had failed to inform Russia to provide advance warning of an upcoming strike, breaking the “de-confliction” agreement made between Israel and Russia right at the start of Russian entry into the Syrian conflict in 2015.

Russia’s response was similarly unprecedented, with Russia immediately revealing Israel’s role in the attack, and Russian President Vladimir Putin calling Netanyahu to warn him that Israel can no longer expect to be able to attack Syria with impunity.

Then, following the US-UK-French air strikes on Syria on 13 April, the chief of the Russian General Staff’s main operations directorate, Colonel General Sergey Rudskoyfloated the idea of providing Syria with the powerful Russian-made S300 air defence system.

The S300, capable of tracking up to 100 targets simultaneously over a range of 200km, “would create a no-go situation for Israel if allowed to be made operational by the Syrian regime”, according to former US naval officer Jennifer Dyer, who added that:

“The kinds of low-level, preemptive strikes (in Syria) the IAF [Israeli Air Force] has executed in the last few years, against Hezbollah targets and the special weapons targets of Iran and the Assad regime, would become virtually impossible.”

Israel would lose the ability to carry out pre-emptive strikes. Russia had originally signed a contract with Syria to deliver the S300 system in 2010, but this was scrapped after pressure from Israel. But, on 23 April, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that the decision to reverse that suspension and supply the S300 had now been made, with only the technical details left to iron out.

A few days later, the Israelis struck again, this time with their earth-shaking bunker busters, directly targeting Iranian troops and equipment for the second time. No S300, you see.

The unfolding scenario

Media reports, both mainstream and alternative (my own included), are increasingly nervous about the scenario now unfolding, and rightly so. Yet while the danger of escalation and miscalculation – and specifically, the drawing in of Russia into the Israeli-Iranian conflict developing in Syria – remains real, many analysts have overstated the friction between Russia and Israel – and, indeed, the convergence of interests between Russia and Iran.

Despite both being opposed to western-backed regime change in Syria, Russian and Iranian objectives in the region are in fact very different. According to intelligence analysts Stratfor:

“Russia’s strategic vision is chiefly focused on eliminating sources of instability and preventing US-led military interventions”, with a “broader goal of establishing itself as an indispensable guarantor of collective security in the Middle East”.

In Syria, therefore, the Russians have the “limited objective of ensuring that Assad controls enough territory to negotiate with Syrian opposition factions from a position of strength” in order to create a mediated, negotiated settlement, overseen and guaranteed by Russia.

The Iranians, however, are more focused on “containing Saudi Arabia’s power projection capacity across the Arab world”, according to Stratfor analysis, leading to an “unwillingness to suspend military operations in Syria until Assad has completely vanquished opposition forces… Iran’s belief in the feasibility of a military solution in Syria has made it less willing than Russia to diplomatically engage with Syrian opposition or Kurdish factions during diplomatic negotiations, limiting the scope of the Moscow-Tehran partnership.”

Furthermore, “Iran’s use of Syrian territory to create a permanent transit point of weaponry to Hezbollah has alarmed Russian policymakers who seek to preserve strong relations with Israel.”

Iranian entrenchment

From this point of view, far from seeking to protect Iranian entrenchment in Syria, Russia has a direct interest in restricting it. Israeli strikes may thus serve a function for Russia, putting pressure on Iran to “rein in” the activities Russia views as disruptive to its own aims.

Furthermore, Russia may believe that the Iranian presence in Syria – as an alternative source of support for President Assad – makes the Syrian government itself less willing to sign up to Russia’s diplomatic initiatives. Indeed, on a very basic level, a reduced Iranian presence leaves Assad more thoroughly dependent on Russia.

And anyway, a cynic might argue, now the rebellion has been all but quashed, haven’t the Iranians served their purpose? Many people claim that the alliance with Iran is too important for Russia to risk a gambit like this.

And no doubt it is. But what if there is no risk? While the Russian-Iranian alliance remains crucial for Moscow’s projection of power into the Middle East, Russia may well calculate that Iran has no interest in jeopardising this, however poorly they are treated by their Russian “ally” in Syria.

After all, the provision of protection against a US attack on Iran is hardly a buyer’s market – Russia is a monopoly supplier. Safe in the knowledge that Iran really has no-one else to turn to, Russia can afford to let Israel loose on them in Syria.

Certainly, Israel’s belligerent defence minister does not appear to see Russia as an obstacle to Israeli plans for Syria. “What is important to understand is that the Russians, they are very pragmatic players,” he said in Washington recently. “At the end of the day, they are reasonable guys, it’s possible to close deals with them and we understand what is their interest.”

He certainly doesn’t sound like he is referring to a steadfast ally of a state Israel is just about to wage war on.

Isolating Russia

It may even be that Russia is still, against all hope, expecting to get something out of the Trump administration, in the form of sanctions relief, or at least some recognition of their security concerns in Ukraine and eastern Europe, and does not wish to damage that possibility by resisting strikes on Iran. Such hopes are surely forlorn.

I would like to think Russia is neither so cynical as to stand back and allow Israeli aggression against Iran in order to gain leverage in its own relationship with the Iranians and Syrians, nor so naive as to expect anything from the US. But the omens are not good.

The failure to deliver the S300s, or to create any other meaningful deterrent, even after the opening shots in this new war on Iran were fired on 9 April, suggests either cowardice or collusion. And the Russians are not cowards.

If Russia really is going to allow their erstwhile Iranian comrades to get wiped out, they really should understand that this is not simply a matter of Israel’s “legitimate security concerns”. This is about eliminating Iran’s chance of building up a deterrent in Syria, in advance of an all-out war against Iran itself.

And the destruction of states such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Iran is, in turn, about isolating Russia when its own turn comes.

*

Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and editor of stopstarvingyemen.org. He is author of Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis and blogs at danglazebrook.com.

A Time of Chaos

May 6th, 2018 by Boaventura de Sousa Santos

The bombing of Syrian sites where chemical weapons are allegedly being manufactured or stocked, allegedly to be used by the Bashar al-Assad government against the rebels, has left citizens all over the world in a state of confusion, filled with a mixture of perplexity and skepticism. In spite of the bombing by the Western media (a particularly apt metaphor in this case), in their attempt to persuade public opinion of the latest atrocities committed by al-Assad’s regime; in spite of the near unanimous opinion of political commentators that this was nothing but a humanitarian response, a fair punishment, and one more proof of the vitality of the “Western alliance”; in spite of all this, citizens in the West (and much more so in the rest of the world), whenever asked, expressed their doubts about this media narrative and for the most part spoke against the attacks. Why is that?

The consequences 

Because citizens who possess at least a modicum of information have a better memory than commentators, and because, although they lack expertise on the causes of such acts of war, they have an expert knowledge of their consequences, which is something that said commentators always fail to notice. They remember that in 2003 the justification for the invasion of Iraq was the existence of weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist. They remember that the photos that were exhibited at the time had been tampered with so as to lend credibility to the big lie. They remember that then, as now, the attack occurred on the eve of the arrival of an independent commission of experts sent to investigate the existence of such weapons.

They remember that the lie left behind a million dead and a destroyed country, with fat reconstruction contracts being handed over to US companies (such as Halliburton) and oil exploration contracts given to Western oil companies. They remember that in 2011 the same coalition destroyed Libya, turning it into a den of terrorists and traffickers in refugees and emigrants, and yielding the same type of fat contracts. They remember that so far the war in Syria has caused 500,000 dead, 5 million refugees, and 6 million displaced within Syrian borders. Above all, thanks perhaps to that mysterious cunning of reason whereof Hegel spoke, they remember what the media does not tell them. They remember that two genocides are underway in the region.

They are being perpetrated by state terrorism but they are almost never mentioned because the aggressor states are “our” allies: one is the Yemeni genocide at the hands of Saudi Arabia, the other is Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

These are the more visible consequences. But there are other victims, of which the ordinary citizen is hardly aware, her suspicions sometimes not more than a vague discomfort. I will focus on three of those victims. The first is international law, which has once again been violated, given that actions of war are legitimate only in case of self-defense or under a UN Security Council mandate. None of these conditions has been met. Bilateral and multilateral treaties are being thrown out one after another, as trade wars become increasingly fierce. Are we in the process of entering a new Cold War, with fewer rules and more innocent deaths? Are we heading toward a third world war? Where is the UN, to prevent it through diplomacy? What else can countries like Russia, China or Iran be expected to do but move further away from Western countries and their fake multilateralism, and come up with their own alternatives for cooperation? The second victim is human rights. Here the West reached a paroxysm of hypocrisy: the military destruction of entire countries and the killing of innocent populations has become the sole means of promoting human rights. It somehow seems that there is no other means of fostering human rights except by violating them, and Western-style democracy does not know how to flourish except among ruins. The third victim is the “war on terror”. No person of good will can accept the death of innocent victims in the name of some political or ideological goal, much less when perpetrated by the countries – the United States and its allies – that over the last twenty years have given full priority to the war on terrorism. So how can one comprehend the current financing and arming, by the Western powers, of groups of Syrian rebels that are known to be terrorist organizations and that, like Bashar al-Assad, have also used chemical weapons against innocent populations in the past? I allude in particular to the al-Nusra front, the extremist Salafist group also known as the Al Qaeda of Syria, which seeks to establish an Islamic state. In fact, the most frequent accusations, by US institutions, with regard to the financing of extremist and terrorist groups point the finger precisely at that most loyal of US allies, Saudi Arabia. What are the hidden goals of a war on terror that supports terrorists with money and arms?

The causes

Image on the right: Destroyed Syrian tanks

Given that the causes elude all the news noise, it is more difficult for ordinary citizens to identify them. Convention has it that one can distinguish between proximate and structural causes. Among the proximate causes, the dispute over the natural gas pipeline is the one most frequently mentioned. The large natural gas reserves in the Qatar and Iran region can take two alternative routes to reach the wealthy, voracious consumer called Europe: the Qatar pipeline, going through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey, and the Iranian pipeline, across Iran, Iraq and Syria. For geopolitical reasons, the US favors the former route while Russia prefers the latter. Bashar al-Assad was also in favor of the latter, as it benefitted Shiite governments only. From that moment on, the West viewed him as a target to be taken down. Major Rob Taylor, a professor at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College, wrote in the Armed Forces Journal of March 21, 2014:

“Viewed through a geopolitical and economic lens, the conflict in Syria is not a civil war, but the result of larger international players positioning themselves on the geopolitical chessboard in preparation for the opening of the pipeline in 2016”.

The structural causes are perhaps more convincing. It has been my contention that we are at a transitional moment between capitalism’s globalizations. The first globalization took place from 1860 to 1914 and was dominated by England. The second took place from 1944 to 1971 and was dominated by the US. The third began in 1989 and is now coming to an end. It was dominated by the US, but with the growing multilateral participation of Europe and China. In between globalizations, rivalry between would-be dominant countries tends to increase and can give rise to wars between them or their respective allies. At this point in time, the rivalry is between the US, an empire in decline, and China, a rising empire. In a study titled “Global Trends, 2030”, the US National Intelligence Council – an institution that could hardly be viewed as biased – states that in the year 2030 “Asia is going to be the center of world economy just as it was until 1500,” and China could become the world’s first economy.

The rivalry escalates but cannot lead to head-on confrontation because China already has a major influence in the domestic economy of the US and is a major creditor of its public debt. Trade wars are critical and they spread to the high-tech areas, because whoever gets to dominate those areas (namely automation or robotics) will be poised to dominate the next globalization. The US will only enter treaties that are likely to isolate China. Since China is already too strong as it is, it has to be confronted through its allies. The most prominent among them is Russia, and recent agreements between the two countries provide for non-dollar denominated transactions, especially oil-related, which poses a fatal threat to the international reserve currency. Russia couldn’t possibly be permitted to boast about a victory in Syria, a victory, let it be said, against terrorist extremists, and one that Russia has been on the verge of obtaining, thanks supposedly to President Obama’s lack of direction when he left Syria out of his list of priorities. It was therefore necessary to find a pretext for returning to Syria to resume the war for a few more years, as is the case with Iraq and Afghanistan. North Korea is also an ally and must be treated with hostility so as to embarrass China. Finally, there is the fact that China, like all rising empires, is pursuing (fake) multilateralisms and therefore is responding to the trade war by fostering open trade.

BRICS

But it has also pursued limited multilateral agreements aimed at creating alternatives to US economic and financial dominance. The most salient of these agreements was the BRICS, formed by Russia, India, South Africa and Brazil, besides China. The BRICS even created an alternative world bank. They had to be neutralized. Since Modi’s rise to power, India has lost interest in the agreement. Brazil was a particularly strategic partner because of the country’s articulation – albeit a reluctant one – with a more radical alternative that had emerged in Latin America at the initiative of a number of progressive governments, notably Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. Mention should be made, in this regard, to ALBA, UNASUR and CELAC, a set of political and trade agreements aimed at freeing Latin America and the Caribbean from US century-old tutelage. The most vulnerable of the BRICS countries was Brazil, perhaps because it was also the most democratic. The process whereby it was neutralized began with the institutional coup against President Dilma Rousseff and was taken further with the illegal imprisonment of Lula da Silva and the dismantling of every single nationalist policy undertaken by the PT governments. Curiously enough, South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, no doubt a corrupt leader and a BRICS enthusiast, has been replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa, one of the richest men in Africa (not as corrupt as Zuma?) and a staunch advocate of global neoliberalism. The Summit of the Americas, which took place in Lima on 13-14 April and was virtually ignored by the European media, was a most relevant geopolitical piece in this context. Venezuela’s participation was vetoed, and according to El Pais of 15 April (Brazilian edition), the meeting signaled the demise of Bolivarian America. The strengthening of US influence in the region has become very clear, judging from the way in which the US delegation criticized China’s growing influence on the continent.

For all these reasons, the war in Syria is part of a much broader geopolitical game, whose future looks very uncertain.

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Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Portuguese professor of Sociology at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra (Portugal), distinguished legal scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, and global legal scholar at the University of Warwick. Co-founder and one of the main leaders of the World Social Forum. Article provided to Other News by the author.

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“So the Saudis want to get back at the Iranians by fighting in Lebanon because they don’t like the support that Iran gives to Ansarullah … in Yemen…They’re called the Houthis.

So Iran supports the Houthis, not just the Houthis, also the other political forces which are Sunni Muslim as well… it’s mixed: secular, theocratic, Sunni, Shiite, Daesh… in Yemen are in a fight in a war with Saudi Arabia. And you can see that.

Arabians have failed in Yemen, and what it wants to do is, and what the United States is doing and even Israel and Britain, is they are arming Saudi Arabia and they’re pushing Saudi Arabia to create an Arab front against Iran.”

– Mahdi Nazemroaya (from this week’s interview)

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Some dramatic events have been playing out on the international stage in the first half of 2018.

In Syria, the Syrian Arab Army with the assistance of Russian forces is succeeding in capturing rebel held areas. Yet, at the same time, attempts to develop a mostly Kurdish border force, armed by the U.S. resulted in a major incursion to the Afrin canton by NATO partner Turkey!

And in the month of April alone, a supposed chemical weapons attack by Syrian military forces in the town of Douma was followed by a retaliatory missile strike a week later by the U.S, U.K, and France. Later Israel launched missile attacks against Iranian-backed militia in Syria. The international community very much divided on whether the U.S. led attacks constitute illegal aggression.

Meanwhile, the Caucasus State of Armenia has been undergoing tremendous upheaval with the elected President Sargsyan stepping down in the face of major demonstrations all over the country, reminiscent of the Maidan in 2013 Ukraine.

And perhaps most famously, after months of acrimonious rhetoric being exchanged between U.S. President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, peace on the Korean peninsula is starting to look like a distinct possibility.

But in a media environment where seeing is not always believing and where appearances can be deceiving, a closer examination of the ambitions of all the regional players is in order.

To distill the interests at stake and the realities behind the official rhetoric, the Global Research News Hour is tapping the expertise of a seasoned geopolitical analyst and friend of the program. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya returns to the program for the first time in over a year to break down these and other developments on the world stage.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is an award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press) and a forthcoming book The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. He is a Sociologist and Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), a contributor to the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) and a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica, Italy.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . Excerpts of the show have begun airing on Rabble Radio and appear as podcasts at rabble.ca.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

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

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

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Featured image: Horrid border at Majdal al-Shams

On April 9, 2018 at least 14 people were killed during the murderous strike by the Israeli air force on the Syrian T-4 airfield at Homs.

Israeli F-15 fighter jets flew over Lebanese airspace, as they have done on many previous occasions, in total disregard of international law.

Both Israel and Lebanon are still technically at war, and the latest action could easily be considered as yet another shameless provocation.Apparently, whatever terror Western allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel decide to spread throughout the region, their actions will always go unpunished.

To add insult to injury, instead of condemning Israel, the Western mass media outlets began their predictable and embarrassing servile howling against the government in Damascus, some ‘correspondents’ even calling President al-Assad an “animal” (The Sun, 9th April, 2018).

This time, Lebanon, which in the past suffered from several brutal Israeli invasions, and where Israel is commonly referred to as ‘Palestine’, decided not to protest too loudly against the violation of its airspace. There were some statements made by individual Lebanese politicians, as well as a statement by the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which objected to the attack against Syria, claiming that Lebanon will file a complaint to the UNSC. Most of the statements, however, appeared only in the Arabic language. There was definitely no robust national response, as one would have expected.

Ms. Zeinab Al-Saffar, an Iraqi educator and television anchor based in Beirut, Lebanon, shared her thoughts on the subject:

“It is not the first time that this is happening.  Israeli forces have been violating the airspace of Lebanon, as well as the land and sea belonging to Lebanon. Violation of the territory of Lebanon [by Israel] became something ‘regular’. What happened recently is a flagrant intrusion which should not go unanswered, as they were using Lebanese air space in order to attack the Syrian land. I believe this is the right time for the U.N. to do something more than just to make the reports and write numbers. This is an extremely serious situation; to use the territory of a neighboring country in order to attack a third nation; it is a barefaced crime.”

*

Why do Lebanon’s protests not resonate louder?

There are several reasons. One: the country recently ‘secured’ an enormous package of mostly loans from the West, at a ‘Paris conference’, amounting to more than 11 billion dollars.

Two: A great percentage of the ‘elites’ of Lebanon is accustomed to taking orders from the West. The West is where their villas are, where their relatives live, and their permanent residency cards issued.

A much greater war may be nearing; both the U.S. and Europe are now attacking Syria directly. In this decisive time, the Lebanese rulers are opportunistically showing where their allegiances lie: not with the people of the devastated Middle East, but with Paris, London, Riyadh and Washington.

But back to the first point – to money. As reported by Reuters on April 6, 2018:

“The pledges include $10.2 billion in loans and $860 million in grants, France’s ambassador to Lebanon Bruno Foucher said on Twitter…

Donors in turn want to see Lebanon commit to long-stalled reforms. In a nod to those demands, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri pledged to reduce the deficit of the budget as a percentage of GDP by 5 percent in the coming five years.

Macron told Hariri in a news conference the aid aimed to give Lebanon a fresh start, adding that it put “an unprecedented responsibility” on authorities there to carry out reforms and preserve peace in the country. 

“It is important to continue reforms in the coming months,” Macron said, adding: “We’ll be by your side.” …

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told the conference: “… Lebanon needs major reforms of its economy, structural and sectoral.””

‘Structural reforms’ is a key term. This shameful package of loans which will further tie the hands of Lebanon could insure the complacency of the country: both economic and political obedience at the time when the West is ready to unleash a new wave of its military onslaught in the region.

There is hardly any transparency in Lebanon, and therefore almost no guarantee that the loans will be used to improve the standard of living of the suffering population. Corruption in Lebanon is endemic – it is institutionalized – to the point that it is often not even called ‘corruption’, anymore.

Social services are almost non-existent. Here, the contrasts are truly appalling. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, as well as outrageously expensive sailing boats, co-exist side-by-side with absolute misery and lack of social services, such as, at least periodically, garbage collection.

Hezbollah, a movement which is on the so-called terrorist list of many Western countries, is often the only reliable source of social services in the country.

The West will now demand more and more neo-liberal ‘reforms’. Almost nothing social will be build. Funds will disappear into the deep pockets of the shameless Lebanese ‘elites’ and ‘leaders’. It will be the poor, who will be expected to service the loans, as the rich in Lebanon hardly pay taxes.

In exchange for their booty, many Lebanese politicians will be further obliged to follow the Western line towards the region, including the neo-liberal and increasingly neo-colonialist policy of Washington and France (Lebanon’s former colonial master) towards Syria and the rest of the region.

*

And across the border line, the war is still raging. Washington and London fulfilled their shameful promises to perform ‘punitive actions’; to ‘chastise Syria’ for something that was clearly invented/manufactured just in order to justify an invasion, destabilization and in the end, the destruction, of this small but strong and proud nation.

In Damascus, shelling a park right next to Four Seasons Hotel, the UN accommodation, from East Ghouta

A Syrian intellectual, who lives in both Beirut and Damascus, offered his analyses for this article. However, he requested not to be identified by his name, afraid of repercussions from both Lebanon and the West:

The Israeli attack comes at a time when the Syrian army is winning its fight against terrorist groups in Damascus suburbs, and it could be read as an indirect answer to these wins. It is also a dangerous move since the T4 airbase is heavily involved in the fight against the remaining of ISIS in Syria. This attack is unacceptable aggression against a sovereign nation and it is a violation of international laws. It also shows that Israel is helping directly and indirectly various terrorists groups operating on the Syrian territory.”

*

However, the commentaries that are being spread by the Western mainstream press are increasingly defying all logic. They are progressively turning out to be racist, supremacist. Well, actually now they are what they have always been earlier, throughout the centuries of European and then North American colonialism.

Just read The Guardian article from April 9th, 2018- “Israel has launched countless strikes in Syria. What’s new is Russia’s response”:

“Israel has launched many previous strikes into Syria, mainly to protect its borders from a buildup of Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces and armaments on the Golan Heights. Israel, has not, as a rule, attacked al-Qaida or Islamic State positions in Syria.

On all previous occasions, Russia – which has controlled Syrian air space since it sent troops to defend the regime of Bashar al-Assad in 2015 – has turned a blind eye. There had been an understanding that Israeli interests in Syria would be preserved by Russia, primarily by limiting the presence of Iranian-backed troops in Syria’s south-west. The Israeli fear is that access to the Syrian side of the Golan Heights allows Hezbollah to launch attacks into Israel.”

At least The Guardian does not pretend that it believes in the Western fabrications that President Assad is poisoning his own people…

But the article is clearly trying to justify and find logic behind the Israeli terrorist attacks against the independent nation.

‘Poor Israel – it is worried about ‘Hezbollah forces and armaments on the Golan Heights.’

But the Golan Heights is by international law an inseparable part of Syria. I repeat: by all international norms! Including, the United Nations Security Council UN Resolution 497. Golan Heights had been attacked, occupied and forcefully (and it looks like indefinitely) annexed by Israel, during the so-called ‘Six-Day War’ in 1981.

I visited the Golan Heights. I worked there, for several days, clandestinely, some 5 days ago. What I encountered there was true horror: ancient villages were totally destroyed, most of the original population deported from their land, Israeli-paid spies and provocateurs approaching and scrutinizing random visitors. All around – scattered rich Israeli agricultural enterprises protected by barbed wire and tall concrete walls. It all felt like working in Angola or Namibia, during the South African apartheid, or perhaps even worse; divided communities, stolen land, electric wire, and omnipresent fear and oppression.

Spy – surveillance base on the hill overlooking Syria

But it is Israel which now has the right to ‘worry’ and to murder people in the name of its ‘security’. That is precisely what the tone of the Western mainstream periodicals clearly suggests.

Israel had stolen more than a thousand kilometers square of the Syrian territory in 1981, and now it is mercilessly bombing its victim; from Lebanese territory, in order to assure its ‘safety and security’. It is doing so from the territory of Lebanon, a country which was invaded by the Israeli military, on several occasions.

And the West is cheering.

*

Of course, Israel is acting with total impunity, because it enjoys both the support and encouragement from its allies: The United States, the U.K. and Macron’s France.

Lebanon is panicking. Its’ ‘elites’ are trying to both survive, and not to anger the West.

Syrians have, it often appears, nerves of steel.

They worry but are determined not to give one single inch of their land to the invaders.

My friend in Damascus wrote to me, just a few hours before I submitted this report:

“People are worried and they constantly follow up the news. My brother asked us to go to Safita for one month, as it is safer there. I’m not sure if we do it, but we are closely monitoring the situation.”

My colleagues and comrades on the ground in Syria are angry, very angry. They can clearly see through the lies, which are being spread by the West.

Israel is repeatedly bombing heroic Syria.

On April 29, 2018, the Israeli attacks killed 26 Syrians and Iranians, just before Midnight, near Hama and Aleppo.

The U.S. and Europe are bombing and threatening to cause even more damage.

But this is 2018, not those dark years when the West could murder and rape without any consequences. If these attacks continue, there will be a counterpunch: fully justified, determined and powerful.

Then even the tiny Lebanon would have to decide where it stands.

*

This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

The possible deployment of Saudi-led GCC and other fellow “coalition” troops to northeastern Syria would formalize the de-facto “internal partition” of the Arab Republic and represent the fulfillment of the RAND Corporation’s plans to “contain” Iranian influence in the region, thus forcing President Assad to finally decide on the post-Daesh military fate of his country’s most loyal ally.

The Mideast has been abuzz for the past couple of weeks about the possibility of Saudi-led GCC and another fellow “coalition” troops (the so-called “Arab NATO”) deploying to northeastern Syria ever since the US dropped several clear hints that there’s a distinct chance of this happening, and the Egyptian Foreign Minister just confirmed that this proposal is being seriously considered “during discussions and deliberations amongst officials of states”. Should it come to pass, then the US would essentially be “Leading From Behind” by calling in its military allies to do some of the “heavy lifting” in what’s partially being presented as “containing” Iran, at least according to one of the three main objectives that the US’ Representative to the UN Nikki Haley spoke about pursuing in the middle of last month.

Old News For Those In The Know

The scenario of foreign powers carving a “Kurdistan” and “Sunnistan” out of Syria for use as proxy buffer states against Iran isn’t new but was actually predicted by the author in a two–part analysis from October 2015 titled “The Race For Raqqa And America’s Geopolitical Revenge In ‘Syraq’”, after which the influential RAND Corporation published the third part of their “Syrian peace plan” in February 2017 describing “Agreed Zones of Control, Decentralization, and International Administration” to be presided over by a US-backed coalition in this very same region. The author also documented this and other think tank plots in a March 2017 analysis titled “SYRIA: Approaching the Finishing Line, Geopolitical ‘Jockeying for Position’ Intensifies”, proving that the possible occupation of northeastern Syria was planned long ago.

Yemen 2.0? Yeah Right!

While some might mock this as being nothing more than a disastrous repeat of the Yemeni quagmire, that example isn’t all that relevant to prognosticating the future success of this possible operation. Unlike in the South Arabian country where the majority of the inhabitants are fighting against the occupying forces that utterly destroyed their homeland, some of the people in the landlocked desert region of the Mideast might actually welcome a more robust international military presence and the billions of dollars of foreign aid that look likely to accompany it. The US-backed Kurds ethnically cleansed Arabs from Raqqa and other cities, and there’s indeed an incipient multisided “Rojava Civil War” simmering, but the West and its Arab allies have more than enough experiencing dividing and ruling others to be able to manage this.

Money Talks

It’s indeed possible that “Arab NATO” leaders Saudi Arabia and the UAE might enter into a “friendly competition” with one another in northeastern Syria over who ends up wielding more proxy influence over the Arabs and Kurds just like they’re already doing in Yemen when it comes to Hadi’s government and the South Yemeni separatists, with each wealthy monarchy pouring billions of dollars into rebuilding the capabilities of their preferred group. In addition, money – which is sorely missing from Yemen – won’t just pour into this part of the Arab Republic from the Gulf, but also from the US, which recently passed a bill that allows Washington to only fund reconstruction projects in areas that aren’t controlled by the democratically elected and legitimate Syrian authorities, which will likely prompt the Europeans to implicitly follow suit too.

New Cold War Standoff

This means that the remainder of Syria where the bulk of the population resides will have to court aid from supportive powers such as Russia, China, and Iran, which is already forthcoming but will lead to a crystallization of the New Cold War divide between the unipolar and multipolar “blocs” along the Euphrates River “deconfliction line”. It will naturally become much more challenging to bridge this de-facto “internal partition” line the longer that time goes on and the two parts of the country begin moving along totally separate geopolitical trajectories, though existing UNSC Resolutions such as 2254 will ensure that Syria remains nominally united, though it will probably never again exist as the constitutionally centralized state that it once was. Accordingly, the only realistic “solution” is to “decentralize” or “federalize” the country.

Divide And “Balance”?

The Russian-written “draft constitution” for Syria that Moscow unveiled in January 2017 leaves open this possibility via a collection of very vague clauses that in hindsight might have been included precisely for this reason, especially seeing as how the “progressive” faction of Moscow’s “deep state” is visibly succeeding in its quest to make their Great Power the 21st-century’s supreme “balancing” force in the Eurasian supercontinent and that this political outcome is best suited to advancing its grand strategic designs. The only “obstacle” standing in the way to its implementation and the peaceful “compromised” end to the war is Syria’s legitimate and sovereign right to refuse to recognize the foreign occupation of its territory by Turkey, the US, France, pro-“Israeli” proxies, and possibly soon even the “Arab NATO”, but there’s also the interlinked Iran-Hezbollah factors as well.

Après Iran, Le Déluge

Russia is the only foreign actor that accepts Syria’s decision to invite Iran and its Hezbollah ally into the Arab Republic for anti-terrorist assistance, but Moscow recognizes that their continued presence there after the defeat of Daesh is serving as a trigger for expanded “Israeli” military intervention that dangerously risks transforming the Hybrid War into a conventional state-to-state proxy one fought on Syrian territory. That’s why Russia is predisposed to “lean on” Syria and attempt to “convince” it to “compromise” on its relationship with the “Resistance” in the interests of regional peace, notwithstanding that Damascus has both the moral and legal right to continue cooperating with its anti-terrorist allies no matter what anyone—let alone the US, Saudi Arabia, and “Israel” (“Cerberus”) – thinks about it.

Damascus also realizes that the phased removal of the IRGC and Hezbollah from Syria would almost immediately lead to what already appears to be the inevitable “decentralization” or “federalization” of the state after the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) loses its last hope (key word) to have ever stood a chance at regaining what President Assad previously promised would be “every inch” of the country. That’s already all but impossible as it is because Russia refuses to overstep its strictly anti-terrorist military mandate in directly intervening to support the SAA in confronting the dizzying array of foreign occupiers all across the Arab Republic, but the patriotic population nevertheless believes that Iran and Hezbollah might help them with this anti-imperialist effort, however unlikely it is to succeed for all practical intents and purposes.

“Multi-Aligning” In A Neo-Realist World

The deployment of “Arab NATO” troops to northeastern Syria will make this even much more difficult than ever before, crushing the last glimmer of hope that many may have had for this liberation scenario to succeed, thereby – as the US-backed “coalition” probably anticipates – putting even more pressure on Iran to downscale its military commitment to the country. It’s ultimately Syria’s choice whether the IRGC and Hezbollah remain or leave, but Damascus has an economic-strategic self-interest in retaining their support in order to avoid overreliance on any one partner, in this case Russia. “Multi-alignment”, as the Indians call it, is the zeitgeist of contemporary International Relations, so it’s reasonable for Syria to believe that it can use Iran to “balance” Russia as well as reward Tehran for its loyalty throughout the war.

From the Neo-Realist perspective of the “19th-Century Great Power Chessboard” paradigm that’s powerfully shaping Russia and other similarly important countries’ strategic calculations at the moment, that would become much harder to pull off if Iran’s elite forces and their Hezbollah allies were requested to leave the Arab Republic, as the remainder of Syria not under the occupation of foreign forces and solidly under the SAA’s control would then fall almost entirely within Moscow’s de-facto “sphere of influence”. Instead of “provoking” the neighboring countries by entering into joint projects with their Iranian rival, Russia would more likely cooperate with China here instead, thus possibly representing the loss of future economic dividends that Tehran may have counted on to help compensate for the financial costs that it bore in supporting Syria throughout the war.

Syrian “Stubbornness”

President Assad is aware of this geostrategic reality and has accordingly operated with it in mind, ergo why he has yet to “comply” with what can be presumed has been Russia’s “gentle suggestion” behind the scenes to progressively disengage from his country’s wartime alliance with Iran and Hezbollah for the “greater good”. Syria’s leaders don’t want to accept that they’re powerless to reverse the occupation of their country’s periphery by the US, France, Turkey, pro-“Israeli” proxies, and possibly soon the “Arab NATO”, nor do they want to make themselves almost entirely dependent on Russia after some of them feel that Moscow should have “done more” to prevent this from happening and/or are incensed that it’s leveraging this development to its grand strategic advantage in advancing multipolarity as it understands it.

There’s almost nothing that Syria can realistically do at this point to reverse the de-facto “internal partition” dynamics that have already set in, with or without IRGC and Hezbollah support, but as the saying goes, “hope dies last”, and no patriot wants to be forced to confront the fact that there’s no longer any chance of this happening. President Assad is, therefore, loathe to limit his country’s excellent relations with Iran and Hezbollah because he understands the importance of keeping hope alive among his people, but he also knows how the optics of it would look in the sense of them being framed to make it appear as though he’s “submitting to foreign pressure”, something that’s totally unacceptable to his base that have fought, struggled, and died for over seven years to prevent this from happening.

Concluding Thoughts

Syria is therefore stuck in a state of strategic paralysis at the moment and would probably prefer not to have to make any decision in this regard, though it accepts the Catch-22 dilemma that it’s in and is aware that there is no “good move” in this case, with the choice between both options – allowing the IRGC and Hezbollah to remain, or requesting their phased removal – essentially being over which of the two is the “least bad” for the country’s long-term interests. The possible introduction of “Arab NATO” troops to northeastern Syria might have the effect of forcing Damascus to make a decision in the near future, though this will probably be the opposite of what the US-backed “coalition” and, it can be said, maybe even Russia at this point, expects, with President Assad potentially throwing down the gauntlet and daring the world to do something about his two most loyal allies.

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This article was originally published on Regional Rapport.

Andrew Korybko is Moscow-based political analyst, journalist and a member of the expert council for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Predictions at the People’s Friendship University of Russia. He specializes in Russian affairs and geopolitics, specifically the US strategy in Eurasia. His other areas of focus include tactics of regime change, color revolutions and unconventional warfare used across the world. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

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The month of May is always associated with V-E Day. The sentiments of “never again” were strong 73 years ago, in 1945 when the UN was founded. Since then Europe has put a huge amount of effort into creating a unique security system to prevent armed conflicts. It was never perfect, but by and large it worked. Other continents used to look on with envy and try to establish security regimes of their own.

Multiple agreements are still in force, working to prevent the worst scenarios, but today they appear to be somewhat forgotten and are failing to meet their objectives. Yet by no stretch of the imagination would anyone have imagined that May 2018 would be a month spent teetering on the brink of war, with the experts left trying to guess when it will ignite, how far it will spread, and how many actors are likely to be involved. It’s scary but that’s where we are. It’s never been this tense since the worst days of the Cold War.

On May 2, Siil (Hedgehog), the largest NATO exercise to be held in the Baltics since 1991, began in Estonia and Latvia, involving 3, 000 troops from 16 countries. It will last until May 14. Estonia and Latvia border the Russian Federation. Latvia will host five military exercises in May and June. All of this activity is intensive enough for Moscow to interpret it as preparation for war.

June will see large-scale BALTOPS and Sabre Strike 2018 exercises in the Baltics. Europe will host a US armored brigade – a force of at least 4,000 soldiers accompanied by about 90 Abrams tanks, Bradley combat vehicles, 18 self-propelled Paladin howitzers, and other vehicles.

The largest-ever NATO exercise, Anakonda 2018, will be held in Poland this summer. This is the biggest event staged by the alliance since the end of the Cold War and will include about 100,000 troops, 5,000 vehicles, 150 aircraft and helicopters, and 45 warships. Such a huge force will naturally make Russia wary. The NATO Air Policing was stepped up last month. The alliance will conduct 80 joint exercises in Europe this year, mainly aimed at prepping for a war with Russia.

This intensified training is taking place at a time when the Donbas conflict in Ukraine is really heating up. The escalation of tensions is coming on the heels of the US deliveries of Javelin antitank systems to the Ukrainian military. This is the first transfer of lethal weapons.

On May 1, the US State Department released a statement announcing that the American military is shifting to a new phase in its Syria operation. The US-led coalition, the SDF, and its mysterious “local partners” are to be involved. Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon have also been mentioned as having a role. The Islamic State has not been much of an issue for Beirut, but now Lebanon is very likely to become a battlefield that will draw in many actors, especially Israel and Iran.

Officially the mission is intended to sweep away the remnants of the Islamic State (IS) forces, but that claim should be taken with a grain of salt. Whatever is left of IS is insignificant and can be dealt with without the help of the US-led coalition. The situation in Syria is very explosive now that the US has ratcheted up the tensions instead of pulling out as President Trump said he wanted to do. A wider conflict is right around the corner there. The US-led SDF and the Syrian regular forces have recently been involved in direct clashes — a very worrisome development and coinciding with the Israeli airstrikes against Syrian and Iranian forces.

These war preparations are taking place at the same time that Prime Minister Netanyahu is accusing Tehran of allegedly cheating on the nuclear deal. The US was quick to claim that the evidence was “compelling.” The Israeli parliament has just voted to grant the prime minister the authority to declare war or to order a major military operation without the prior approval of his security cabinet.

US President Trump is widely expected to decertify the Iran deal on May 12 and pay a high-profile visit to Israel when the new US embassy’s provisional site in Jerusalem opens on May 14. The opening ceremony will be the right place and time to announce new moves against Iran — a country that works closely with Russia in Syria and elsewhere.

All the events taking place in Europe and Syria have a direct impact on Russia’s security. A spark is enough to kindle a conflict in Europe. The never-ending NATO exercises and other operations conducted right up against Russia’s borders are extremely provocative. A war against Iran in Syria appears to be almost certain, since Russian forces are deployed near Iranian positions. It will be next to impossible to strike Iranian or Syrian sites without provoking the Russian military into taking measures to defend itself. A single strike against Iranian forces could be contained but a military campaign against them will inevitably put Russian personnel at risk. Russia has some very formidable military forces positioned in Syria that must be a serious factor in any war scenario.

Tensions are running high in Europe and a wider conflict could ignite at any time in Syria. In either situation it won’t be Russia that provokes the explosive situations that threaten to deteriorate into a full-blown conflict.

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Peter Korzun is an expert on wars and conflicts.

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Trump Hurtles Toward Three Nuclear Crises

May 6th, 2018 by Daryl G. Kimball

One year into the unorthodox presidency of Donald Trump, the United States faces an array of complex and dangerous foreign policy challenges that require principled leadership, pragmatism, patience, and smart diplomacy.

So far, Trump has not exhibited any of these traits. Nevertheless, he will soon make consequential decisions affecting the future of the successful 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the course of the North Korean nuclear crisis, and the potential for renewed strategic nuclear competition with Russia.

Unfortunately, his appointment of the bellicose John Bolton to serve as national security adviser (Trump’s third in 16 months), along with hawkish CIA Director Mike Pompeo as secretary of state, could tilt the malleable president in the wrong direction. The result could be three full-blown nuclear crises.

The Iran deal. 

By May 12, Trump must extend waivers on nuclear-related sanctions to avoid violating U.S. commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. A decision to not extend the waivers will worsen proliferation risks in the Middle East and undermine U.S. credibility.

Trump has threatened to blow up the Iran deal if European partners do not agree to impose additional missile- and nuclear-related restrictions on Iran. The Europeans have made it abundantly clear they will support additional measures to address Iranian ballistic missile and arms transfers that violate UN Security Council resolutions. But because “a deal is a deal,” they will not seek to renegotiate certain nuclear-related requirements already agreed to under the existing agreement. Unfortunately, Bolton, who has long advocated bombing Iran instead of pursuing a deal to verifiably curb its nuclear program, has said he wants the United States to abrogate the accord with Tehran.

There is no rational reason why Trump, without cause, should trigger another Middle East proliferation crisis. It would be the greatest U.S. foreign policy blunder since the 2003 invasion of Iraq under false claims about weapons of mass destruction.

The argument that the deal can or needs to be “fixed or nixed” is misplaced and dangerous. Common sense suggests the United States should strictly enforce the deal and build on it, rather than scrap it without a Plan B. There is nothing in the deal that constrains the United States and Europe from pursuing a follow-on agreement to reduce Iran’s incentives to expand its nuclear program once certain restrictions on uranium enrichment and fuel cycle activities expire.

North Korea negotiations. 

Trump’s appointment of Bolton is odd in that Bolton’s policy prescriptions on North Korea run counter to Trump’s stated policy and that of ally South Korea of using sanctions pressure and diplomatic engagement, including a summit with Kim Jong Un, to halt and reverse North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

In the early 2000s, Bolton was among those in the George W. Bush administration who called for confrontations and ultimatums rather than dialogue with North Korea, an approach that ultimately allowed North Korea to advance its nuclear program and test nuclear weapons.

More recently, Bolton argued that it would be legal for the United States to launch a “preventive attack” on North Korea, which would result in a catastrophic war. Three days before his appointment in March as national security adviser, Bolton said that if the summit takes place, Trump should not offer economic aid nor should the United States offer security assurances to North Korea, the latter being the very basis of Kim’s offer to negotiate about his nuclear weapons program.

Bolton’s formula is a recipe for confrontation and possibly war. Instead, Trump should recognize that his planned summit with Kim, at best, can solidify the suspension of North Korean nuclear and missile testing and launch serious sustained negotiations on steps toward denuclearization and a peace regime on the peninsula.

Avoiding a new arms race with Russia.

In the next year or so, Trump will also need to decide whether to engage in talks with Russia to extend the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which is due to expire in 2021. Bolton has never supported the treaty, calling it “an execrable deal.”

As U.S.-Russian relations have deteriorated, New START serves an even more important role in reducing nuclear risks, and it continues to enjoy strong support from the U.S. military. Now is the time for the two presidents to agree to extend the treaty for five years, until 2026, which is essential to avoiding an unconstrained arms race. It would also buy time for the two sides to explore new, follow-on approaches to maintain strategic stability at lower nuclear force levels.

Given Trump’s new set of advisers, Congress and U.S. allies will need to play a stronger role to steer him in the right direction and away from avoidable nuclear crises.

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Daryl G. Kimball is Executive Director of Arms Control Association.

Featured image is from the author.

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VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

A nation affording rights to its favored people over others is profoundly hostile to democratic values – what apartheid is all about.

Arabs aren’t welcome or wanted in Israel except as servants to Jews. Israeli laws and customs discriminate against them – hostility toward Arabs in the Occupied Territories extreme.

“Israel’s regime of occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations,” B’Tselem explained, adding:

“End(ing) (it along with Israeli Arabs afforded rights no different from Jews) is the only way forward to a future in which human rights, democracy, liberty and equality are ensured to all people, both Palestinian and Israeli, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”

Institutional racism is longstanding Israeli policy – its 20% Arab population (Muslims and Christians) mistreated and consider a fifth column threat. [Arab Jews are not categorized as Arabs despite the fact that a significant share of Israel’s Jewish population is of Arabic descent]

In 2011, legislation was introduced to enshrine Israel’s definition of a Jewish state into Basic Law. No constitution exists. Basic Laws substitute.

Initially not acted on, it resurfaced in November 2014. Extremist cabinet ministers voted to draft a New Basic Law for consideration, saying it’s to:

“(D)efine the identity of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and to anchor the values of the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the spirit of the principles of the Declaration of the Independence.”

Proposed legislation declared “the right to express national self-determination within the State of Israel only to the Jewish people.”

The measure failed to become law. A revised version was drafted, calling the “State of Israel…the national home of the Jewish people.”

Its draft language declared the “right to self-determination…unique to the Jewish people,” codifying discrimination against Arab citizens.

On Tuesday, the measure passed its first reading – three readings required for enactment into law.

If adopted as Israeli Basic Law, it would enshrine the nation as “the national home of the Jewish people.”

The measure was sent to a Knesset committee for further consideration. Its controversial provisions include recognizing Israel’s Jewish character over democratic values when both are at odds.

Another section approved establishment of exclusive Jewish communities, codifying apartheid into Basic Law, making it more binding and permanent than already.

The measure declares Hebrew the official “language of the state,” Arabic permitted but subordinated, aiming to limit its public use.

Advancing the bill to second and third readings will likely occur after the next election. Kulanu, Yisrael and ultra-orthodox parties oppose the current version.

Having passed its first reading by a 64 to 50 margin in the 120-seat Knesset, eventual enactment into Basic Law is likely.

According to co-sponsor Likudnik MK Avi Dichter,

“(a)nyone who does not belong to the Jewish nation cannot define the State of Israel as his nation-state,” adding:

“The Palestinians will not be able to define Israel as their nation-state. The nation-state law is the insurance policy we are leaving for the next generation.”

The measure is hugely discriminatory, affording rights to Jews denied to Arabs.

Despite language saying everyone has the right “to preserve his or her culture, heritage, language and identity,” the right to self-determination “is (declared) unique to the Jewish people” – indicating opposition to Palestinian self-determination in any future no-peace/peace process talks.

The final version of law adopted may differ in part from its current form, its discriminatory nature virtually certain to be kept intact.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

The US State Department has confirmed the delivery of anti-tank missile systems Javelin to Ukraine.

“They have already been delivered,” a US State Department official said on April 30 in response to an RFE/RL query on the handover of Javelins.

In March, the US confirmed the deal to sell 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 Javelin launchers to Ukraine. According to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the deal also includes “United States Government and contractor technical assistance, transportation, training and other related elements of logistics and program support”

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also confirmed the delivery and said his country would continue “to strengthen” its “defense potential.”

“I am sincerely grateful for the fair decision of [U.S. President] Donald Trump in support of Ukraine, in defense of freedom and democracy,” Poroshenko said.

“Washington not only fulfilled our joint agreement, it demonstrated leadership and an important example.”

Ukrainian Minister of Defense Stepan Poltorak thanked Poroshenko and wrote on his Facebook page that Ukrainian troops would begin training with the new weapons on May 2.

Further details of the delivery have not been provided yet.

Meanwhile, Czechoslovak Group (CSG), a private defensive and industrial company, secured a contract to deliver refurbished Russian-designed BVP-1 (BMP-1) amphibious tracked infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and 2S1 amphibious tracked self-propelled howitzers (SPHs) to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the US Jane’s Defence Weekly reported on May 3.

“The contract was signed recently and is worth hundreds of millions of crowns and involves dozens of vehicle platforms,” the CSG spokesman Andrej Cirtek told Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“Excalibur Army will completely overhaul the armoured vehicles and self-propelled howitzers at VOP 026 Sternberk and then transport them to our partner Wtorplast in Poland, which will export them to the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine,” Cirtek added.

Moscow has repeatedly warned against supplies of weapons to Ukraine saying that this would result in the escalation of the military conflict in the country’s eastern Donbas region, ongoing since 2014.

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Featured image is from South Front.

You may be aware of the recent CBC coverage of Dr. Hassan Diab’s ordeal and the role the Canadian Department of Justice played in facilitating his extradition to France. When the case against Hassan was falling apart, after the defense discredited the French handwriting analysis, Senior Department of Justice lawyers urged French authorities to produce “new” handwriting analysis. Justice Department lawyers also suppressed fingerprint evidence showing Hassan’s innocence.

We are gravely concerned about the problematic role that Department of Justice lawyers played in pushing for Hassan’s unjust extradition, and troubled by Canada’s deeply flawed extradition law that puts all Canadians at risk.

We urge you to join us in calling for an independent public inquiry into Hassan’s case and reforming Canada’s extradition law so that no other Canadian is subjected to such a flawed and unfair process. We do not have faith in an internal review by the Department of Justice which, in the first place, was responsible for Hassan’s ordeal.

Amnesty International Canada and the BC Civil Liberties Association sent an open letter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Foreign Affairs calling on them to launch a thorough public inquiry into Hassan’s case. Also, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) called for an independent public inquiry into Hassan’s treatment. MP Murray Rankin, Vice-Chair of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, raised Hassan’s case in Parliament and called for an independent public inquiry.

We ask you to add your voice by writing to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling upon him to launch a thorough, independent public inquiry into Hassan’s case. Please copy the Ministers of Justice and Foreign Affairs and your member of Parliament on your letter, and share your correspondence with [email protected].

Email addresses:

A sample letter is available:

Also, please post on social media and write articles and op-eds calling for a public inquiry.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Featured image: A woman living in the New York City subway. Liberation News photo.

Picture the Homeless, a NYC-based organization that advocates for the rights of homeless people and affordable housing solutions, recently published a report that highlights the inadequacy of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s so-called progressive plan to tackle the housing crisis. The group goes so far as to claim there is a “shelter-industrial complex” which has as its main priority securing funding instead of ending homelessness.

The homelessness crisis in New York City is dire. There are approximately 76,000 homeless people here according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  In one of the richest cities on earth, there are over 18,000 children who don’t have a roof over their heads thanks to unchecked real estate speculation and the commodification of housing. In fact, almost 30 percent of the country’s homeless families with children can be found here, according to DHU. On top of that, roughly 1 million residents rely on outdated, underfunded public housing.

Rather than addressing the root cause of homelessness by building long-term housing that all can afford, the city’s approach prioritizes for-profit development and homeless shelters. The city government’s emphasis on for-profit housing development will likely make more people homeless, and the over-emphasis on shelters will actually prolong the homeless crisis, Picture the Homeless says.

Why people become homeless

Homelessness is not the result of individual shortcomings or “laziness.” The primary cause is the lack of affordable housing.  Working class and poor people don’t get to decide how much rent will cost, which is oftentimes over 30-50 percent of wages. Nor do we have guaranteed access to healthcare, including mental health services. Medical emergencies that cause job loss or inability to work are oftentimes the straw that breaks the camel’s  back when it comes to housing security.

Another contributor to homelessness is the lack of legal protections for LGBTQ children who are often forced to leave their homes due to bigotry, abuse and violence. LGBTQ young people make up 40 percent of homeless minors in the U.S. today, and many of them wind upon the streets of New York City.

Luxury housing displacing affordable rentals

Why are rents too high? All fingers point back to the city government and capitalist developers as the ones to blame.  In the name of “cleaning up” the city’s image, construction of luxury housing has raged unabated for decades at the expense of working class communities, particularly Black and brown working class communities.

On paper, it looks as though de Blasio is attempting to turn this trend around and develop more affordable housing. The city’s primary response, however, is pumping over $1.8 billion into shelters. While shelters play a necessary part in the fight against homelessness, they are an incomplete and dehumanizing solution.

The Picture the Homeless report questions the disproportionate role of shelters in the Mayor’s plan, when permanent subsidized housing could best help homeless individuals and families get back on their feet.   “Over the next  7 years, the city will spend more on operating shelters than the amount of city subsidy required to create new housing for every single homeless household in NYC, ” the group says.  This will prolong the crisis rather than resolve it.

Politicians use technical language to deceive the people

One of the report’s key advantages is that it clearly defines some of the technical language associated with zoning and housing laws. Local politicians sometimes hide behind this language so only they can tell the public what is “possible,” “impossible,” or “affordable.” As organizers and activists, we need to make use of this language to articulate an alternative vision based on the idea that people have a right to a home and a right to live in the communities they grew up in without the fear of racist gentrification/displacement.

Area Median Income, or AMI, is one such politically loaded term. AMI is a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development standard that looks at the median, or middle figure of reported incomes in a given area. The AMI figure is used to establish standards for assessing poverty/affluence relative to one’s peers. Politicians have been quick to call anything below AMI “affordable” for everyone. However, a family who can only afford  housing at 15 percent AMI  will not be helped by projects developed for households at 50 percent AMI.

Speaking on de Blasio’s ambitious plan to create 200,000 new units which the city calls “affordable,” the report states, “tenants’ rights and homeless activists were quick to observe that the plan’s focus on households at 50-80 percent AMI (between $34,360- $68,720 for a household of three) put it largely out of reach to New York City households most severely at-risk of displacement and homelessness.”

The most in need are left out

Rather than providing genuinely affordable housing for the city’s poorest residents, de Blasio’s plan is accommodating to for-profit developers and prioritizes the needs of lower middle income families. While the creation of some new units, even if only affordable to middle income residents, provides a much-needed respite from seemingly limitless rent hikes, the mayor’s strategy is not intended to rapidly assist those most negatively and most violently affected by the housing crisis.

What’s worse, “affordable housing” developed for lower middle income families deployed in poor neighborhoods can actually drive gentrification and displacement. Since the median income is calculated at the level of a city as a whole, households at 80 percent AMI can be making thousands of dollars more than their neighbors in a new “affordable” development. The Picture the Homeless report speaks to the city’s use of “affordable”  housing to drive the rezoning and gentrification of historically working class/oppressed neighborhoods:

“These concerns were further amplified with the adoption of the Mayor’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) proposal by the City Council in 2015. The proposal leveraged floor area increases through rezoning in order to require landlords to provide a set-aside of affordable units in private housing, without any need for subsidy. …But the devil is in the details: the MIH proposal approved by the council required only 25-30% of units in private buildings to be affordable to households earning between 60-80% AMI (an annual salary of $42,950-$68,720 for a family of three) but in many of the neighborhoods where MIH was set to be implemented — low income neighborhoods like East New York, East Harlem, and the Jerome Avenue corridor in the Bronx — most residents would not be eligible for any of the units created through MIH.”

Residents of neighborhoods targeted for rezoning countered by demanding that the city provide housing they could actually afford, and subsidies in local affordable housing developments, especially those built on public land. They were told by the city that this was “too expensive,” “not economically viable.”  Low income housing, the city said, had to be “tied to a greater number of units at market rate rents or, in some cases, “affordable” rents that met or exceeded the market rate in rezoned neighborhoods,” the report says.

The business of homelessness

To make up for the lack of deeply affordable units, the city continues to rely on shelters to pick up the slack. Picture the Homeless identifies a “shelter-industrial complex” that, rather than trying to solve homelessness, relies on homelessness to exist in the first place. Shelter staff, administrators and associated contractors receive funding based on the continued use of shelters.

A whole business of homelessness has emerged and views homeless individuals as potential sources of revenue, thanks to the local, state and federal funding that keeps homeless shelters in operation. What should be a temporary, emergency measure on the path to ending homelessness has become the solution in and of itself.

The Picture the Homeless report calls for diverting resources away from shelters to preserve and expand housing for the most at-risk individuals and families; capital subsidies to develop new affordable housing for people below 30% AMI; and a more rigorous inspection and accountability process for the shelters that remain open.

Despite harsh conditions, a hostile political environment and government inaction, many homeless advocates and housing groups continue to fight for real change in New York City. Most recently, Picture the Homeless was instrumental in getting the City Council to agree to audit all vacant city-owned land with the intention of developing truly affordable housing on it in the future.  In East Harlem, rent stabilized tenants have filed a suit to stop that area’s rezoning for high-rise luxury buildings.

A multitude of solutions exist to solve the housing crisis and end homelessness in this country, but they must be fought for.  They require the de-commodification of housing and the recognition that the capitalist real estate market exists to make a profit, and will never go out of its way to meet people’s needs.

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Freedom No More. England’s Local Elections

May 5th, 2018 by Craig Murray

As I write, with over 75% of all yesterday’s English local election results in, Labour has a net gain of 55 councillors compared to the high water mark of the 2014 result in these wards, while the Tories have a net gain of one seat against a 2014 result which was regarded at the time as disastrous for them, and led the Daily Telegraph to editoralise “David Cameron Must Now Assuage the Voters’ Rage”.

Yet both the BBC and Sky News, have all night and this morning, treated these results, in which the Labour Party has increased by 3% an already record number of councillors in this election cycle, as a disaster. What is more, they have used that false analysis to plug again and again the “anti-Semitism in the Labour Party” witch-hunt. It was of course the continuous exacerbation of this mostly false accusation by Blairite MP’s which – deliberately on their part – stopped the Labour Party doing still better. The Blairites are all over the airwaves plugging this meme again today.

What is more this Labour result has been achieved despite the complete collapse of the UKIP vote, which collapse had been expected to boost the Tory Party. In fact the net loss of over 100 UKIP seats has not resulted in overall net gains for the Tory Party, even though those ex-UKIP voters demonstrably did mostly split to Tory. The very substantial UKIP voter reinforcements simply saved the Tories from doing still worse. The Liberal Democrats are showing some signs of life.

Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day, and the tendentious media misrepresentation of the election results reminds me why I could not get excited about it. A media with the extremely concentrated ownership we see in the UK can never be free, and certainly does not represent a wide spread of political opinions. Even the views of the official Leader of the Opposition are almost entirely deemed to be outside the Overton window. In Scotland the Scottish government is subject to unreasoning media attack, day in and day out, which contrasts strikingly with the treatment of Westminster ministers and issues.

There is a seriously worrying example from Leeds of the decline of free speech, where disgracefully a meeting discussing the bias of the corporate and state media has now been banned by Leeds City Council because of its content. We are not allowed even to get together to discuss media bias. Retired Ambassador Peter Ford, Professors Piers Robinson and Tim Hayward, Vanessa Beeley and Robert Stuart were to address the meeting at Leeds City Museum entitled “Media on Trial”. I cannot sufficiently express my outrage that Leeds City Council feels it is right to ban a meeting with very distinguished speakers, because it is questioning the government and establishment line on Syria. Freedom of speech really is dead.

British society truly has changed fundamentally if a former British Ambassador to Syria is banned from speaking in public premises on his area of expertise. What is still worse is the tone of this sneering report from Huffington Post, now firmly a part of corporate media, in which Chris York libels the speakers as “Assad supporters”, interviews none of the speakers and nobody to make the argument for free speech, but does manage to interview the “founder” of the jihadist “White Helmets.” In terms of banning dissent while simultaneously ramping up the official narrative, York has won himself top establishment brownie points. The man – and I use the term loosely – is unfit for polite company.

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De-Briefing Academics: Unpaid Intelligence Informants

May 5th, 2018 by Prof. James Petras

This article is also available in Russian, read here.

Introduction

Over the past half-century, I have been engaged in research, lectured and worked with social movements and leftist governments in Latin America. I interviewed US officials and think tanks in Washington and New York. I have written scores of books, hundreds of professional articles and presented numerous papers at professional meetings.

In the course, of my activity I have discovered that many academics are frequently engage in what government officials dub ‘de-briefing’! Academics meet and discuss their field-work, data collection, research finding, observations and personal contacts over lunch at the Embassy with US government officials or in Washington with State Department officials.

US government officials look forward to these ‘debriefings”; the academic provided useful access to information which they otherwise could not obtain from paid, intelligence agents or local collaborators.

Not all academic informants are very well placed or competent investigators. However, many provide useful insights and information especially on leftist movements, parties and leaders who are real or potential anti-imperialist adversaries.

US empire builders whether engaged in political or military activities depend on information especially regarding who to back and who to subvert; who should receive diplomatic support and who to receive financial and to military resources.

De-briefed academics identify ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ adversaries, as well as personal and political vulnerabilities. Officials frequently exploit health problems or family needs to ‘turn’ leftists into imperial stool pigeons.

US officials are especially interested in academic gate-keepers who exclude ‘anti-imperialist’ critics, activists , politicians and government officials.

At times, US State Department officials claim to be sympathetic ‘progressives’who oppose ‘Neanderthals’ in their institution, in order to elicit inside information from leftist academic informants.

Debriefing is a widespread practice and involves numerous academics from major universities and research centers, as well as non-governmental ‘activists’ and editors of academic journals and publications.

Academic participates in debriefing frequently do not publicize their reporting to the government. Most likely they share their reports with other academic informers. All claim they are merely sharing research and diffusing information for ‘science’ and to further ‘humane values’.

Academic informers always justify their collaboration as providing a clear and more balanced picture to ‘our’ policymakers, ignoring the predictable destructive outcomes likely to ensue.

Academics in the Service of Empire

Academic informants never study, collect research and publicize reports on US covert, overt and clandestine policies in defense of multi-nationals and Latin American elite which collaborate with empire builders.

US officials have no interest in ‘debriefing’ academics conducting anti-imperialist research.

US officials are keen to know any and all reports on ‘movements from below’: who they are, how much influence they have, their susceptibility to bribes, blackmail and invitations to the State Department, Disneyland, or the Wilson Center in D.C.

US officials fund academic research on militant trade unions , agrarian social movements , feminist and ethnic minorities engaged in class struggle ,and anti-imperialist activists and leaders, as they all serve as targets for imperial repression.

The officials are also keen on academic reports on so-called ‘moderate’ collaborators who can be funded, advised and recruited to defend the empire , undermine the class struggle and split movements.

Academic informants are especially useful in providing personal and political information on Latin American leftwing intellectuals, academics, journalists, writers and critics which allows US officials to isolate, slander and boycott anti-imperialists, as well as those intellectuals who can be recruited and seduced with foundation grants and invitations to the Kennedy Center at Harvard.

When US officials have a difficult time understanding the intricacies and consequences of ideological debates and factional divisions within leftist parties or regimes, ex-leftist academic informers, who collect documents and interviews , provide detailed explanations and provide officials with a political roadmap to exploit and exacerbate divisions and to guide repressive policies, which undermine adversaries engaged in anti-imperialist and class struggle.

The State Department works hand and glove with research centers and foundations in promoting journals which eschew all mention of imperialism and ruling class exploitation; they promote ‘special issues’ on ‘class-less’ identity politics, post-modern theorizing and ethnic-racial conflicts and conciliation.

In a study of the two leading political science and sociological journals over a period of fifty year they published less than .01% on class struggle and US imperialism

Academic informants have never reported on US government links to narco-political rulers.

Academic informants do not research widespread long term Israeli collaboration with death squads in Colombia, Guatemala, Argentina and El Salvador, in cases because of their loyalties to Tel Aviv and in most cases because the State Department is not interested in debriefings which expose their allies and their joint complicity.

Academic Informants: What do they want and what do they get?

Academic informers engage in debriefing for various reasons. A few do so simply because they share the politics and ideology of the empire builders and feel it is their ‘duty’ to serve.

The great majority are established academics with ties to research centers who inform because it fattens their CV– which helps secure grants, prestigious appointments and awards.

Progressive academics who collaborates have a Janus face approach; they speak at Leftist public conferences , especially to students and in private they report to the State Department.

Many academics believe they can influence and change government policy. They seek to impress self-identified ‘progressive’ officials with their inside knowledge on how to ‘turn’ Latin critics into moderate collaborators. They invent innocuous academic categories and concepts to attract graduate students to further collaboration with imperial colleagues.

The Consequence of Academic Debriefing

Former leftist academic informers are frequenly cited by the mass media as a reliable and knowledgeable ‘expert’ in order to slander anti-imperialist governments, academics and critics.

Ex-leftist academics pressure rising scholars with a critical perspective to adopt ‘moderate’ reasonable critiques , to denounce and avoid anti-imperialist ‘extremists’ and to disparage them as ‘polemical ideologues’!

Academic informants in Chile helped the US Embassy identify neighborhood militants who were handed over to the secret police (DINA) during the Pinochet dictatorship.

US academic informants in Peru and Brazil provided the Embassy with research projects which identified nationalist military officials and leftist students who were subsequently purged, arrested and tortured.

In Colombia, US academic informers were active in providing reports on rural insurgent movements which led to massive repression. Academic collaborators provided detailed reports to the embassy in Venezuela on the grass roots movements and political divisions among Chavista government and military officials with command of troops.

The State Department financed academics working with NGO who identified and recruited middle class youth as street fighters, drug gangsters and the destitute to engage in violent struggles to overthrow the elected government by paralyzing the economy.

Academic reports on regime ‘violence’ and ‘authoritarianism’ served as propaganda fodder for the State Department to impose economic sanctions , impoverishing people, to foment a coup.US academic collaboraters enlisted their latin colleagues to sign petitions urging rightwing regimes in the region to boycott Venezuela.

When academic informers are confronted with the destructive consequences of imperial advances they argue that it was not their ‘intention’; that it was not their State Department contacts who carried out the regressive policies.The more cynical claim that the government was going to do their dirty work regardless of the debriefing.

Conclusion

What is clear in virtually all know experiences is that academic informers’ ‘de-briefings strengthened the empire-builders and complemented the deadly work of the paid professional operatives of the CIA, DEA and the National Security Agency.

*

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

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1. Who is the new Cuban President and how was he elected?

The new Cuban President is 58 year-old Miguel Díaz-Canel. He was born on April 20th, 1960, one year after the advent of the Cuban Revolution. After graduating as an engineer in 1985, he began teaching at the Central University of Las Villas. In 1994, he was elected First Secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of Villa Clara Province. He quickly acquired a reputation for being modest, hardworking and honest. Ten years later, in 2003, he came to hold the same position in Holguín province. In 2003, his exceptional record, as well as the recognition of the inhabitants of the region, allowed him to accede to the Political Bureau of the Cuban Communist Party. From 2009 to 2012, he held the position of Minister of Higher Education. In 2012, he made his entry into the Council of Ministers as Vice-President in charge of Education, Science, Sport and Culture. In 2013, he was elected by the Cuban Parliament as First Vice-President of the Councils of State and Ministers, which is Cuba’s highest office after the Presidency of the Republic itself.

Miguel Díaz-Canel has been President of the Republic of Cuba since April 19, 2018. He was elected, though indirect suffrage, by the 605 deputies of the Cuban Parliament, the President of the Council of State and the President of the Council of Ministers for a five-year term of office. His position combines the functions of President of the Republic and Head of Government. He succeeded Raul Castro, in power from 2006 to 2018, and thus became the first leader born after the triumph of the Revolution to occupy the highest office in the country.

2. Why are Cuban presidential elections indirect?

In order to come to power, Miguel Díaz Canel was first elected as a member of the Cuban Parliament by direct, universal and secret ballot. He was then elected by the Parliament as head of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers, in other words, the Presidency of the Republic.

Cubans are convinced that, in terms of presidential elections, indirect suffrage is the most democratic means. Indeed, other than symbolically, it is materially impossible for a directly elected President of the Republic to be held accountable to voters. On the other hand, if the President is elected by Parliament, as is the case in a number of Western countries, Spain or the United Kingdom for example, Parliament is in a position to exercise control over the executive. Thus, it is much easier to hold accountable the Head of State who must come before Parliament to defend his or her actions and answer the questions posed by those who directly represent the nation. Furthermore, an indirectly elected President will be less likely to feel omnipotent, a characteristic that sometimes defines those who claim the direct legitimacy of all the people. In other words, a President elected by a Parliament has less power than a President directly elected by the people.

3. Have Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro led the country since 1959?

Contrary to popular belief, revolutionary Cuba, that is to say post-1959 Cuba, has had no less than five Presidents of the Republic. Manuel Urrutia was the first to occupy this position, a post that he held from January to July 1959. Osvaldo Dorticós assumed  the position from July 1959 to December 1976. Then, after the adoption of the new Constitution of 1976, Fidel Castro held the post of President of the Republic from 1976 to 2006, having been duly voted into office every five years. Following his retirement from politics in 2006 for reasons of health, two years before the end of his mandate, Raúl Castro, then Vice-President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers, took over until 2008, as provided for in the Constitution. From 2008 to 2018, Raúl Castro was elected President of the Republic and served two successive terms. During his second term, wishing to limit the duration of executive mandates to a maximum of ten years, he expressed his desire not to run again for office. The executive mandate measure should be integrated into the next constitutional reform. Thus, Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected President of the Republic until 2023, with the possibility of carrying out a second mandate until 2028.

If the importance of Fidel Castro in the history of Cuba is undeniable, talk about a Castro brothers’ Cuba is inaccurate on the political level. After 17 years as Prime Minister, Fidel Castro served as President of the Republic for 30 years. For his part, Raúl Castro was President of the Republic for 12 years. No other Castro siblings have held executive positions in Cuba. Fidel Castro has seven children and Raúl Castro, four. None of them has ever held any position in the government.

In terms of longevity in power, for comparison, François Mitterrand was President of the French Republic for 14 years. Felipe González was head of the Spanish government for 14 years. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, once her fourth term ends in 2021, will have spent 17 years as the head of Germany.

4. Can one speak of democratic elections when there is but a single party?

In Cuba, unlike other countries in the world, the Communist Party is not an electoral party. It does not propose electoral candidates. Cuban legislation is formal in this regard. Only electors can nominate candidates at the municipal, provincial and legislative levels. It is therefore strictly forbidden for the CCP to present any candidate for election.

This is the procedure: before the elections, citizens gather at public meetings in their constituencies to nominate candidates. For each election, a minimum of two and a maximum of eight candidates are required. Once chosen by the base, the candidates’ résumés are posted within their constituencies. Election campaigns are strictly prohibited. For municipal, provincial and legislative elections, suffrage is universal and secret.

Cubans are convinced that their system is more democratic than those of many Western countries. Their point of view is the following: France has a multi-party system. In the vast majority of cases, whatever the election, it is the political parties that designate the candidates. Thus, French citizens choose between the various candidates designated by the various political currents. In France, however, less than 5% of the citizens are members of a political party, the only affiliation that gives them the opportunity to participate in the nomination of candidates. Thus, 95% of all voters have no opportunity to participate in the nomination of candidates for various elections, their choice being limited to opting for such and such a candidate designated by a particular political party.

5. What is the composition of the new Cuban Parliament?

The composition of the new Cuban Parliament is broadly representative of Cuban society and its ethnic and social diversity. First of all, voter turnout was 85%. Therefore, nearly 50% of the deputies (293) are neither members of the Communist Party nor of the Communist Youth Union. Contrary to popular belief, one does not become a member of the CCP by simply applying. Quite to the contrary. To join the CCP, you must be proposed by a member and go through a protracted selection process. The idea that all Cubans are required to be members of the CCP is pure fantasy. Of the more than 8 million voters in Cuba (out of a total population of 11.2 million), only 800,000 are CCP members, barely 10% of the electorate. If we add the 400,000 members of the Communist Youth Union, that makes a total of 1.2 million people, or 15% of the voters. Thus, 85% of the electors are not members of the CCP or the UJC.

More than 53% (322) of the deputies are women. More than 56% (338) have been elected to the Parliament for the first time. The average age of the Parliamentarians is 49 and 13% of the elected representatives (80 members) are between 18 and 35 years old. Nearly 90% of MPs were born after 1959. More than 40% are black or of mixed heritage. The Speaker of the Cuban Parliament, Esteban Lazo, is black. Ana Maria Mari Machado, a woman, is Vice-President. The Parliament’s secretariat is also headed by a woman, Miriam Brito.

Salim Lamrani

Université de La Réunion

 

Original text :

Cinq questions/réponses sur les élections présidentielles à Cuba

humanite.fr, April 23 2018

Translated from the French by Larry R. Oberg

 

 

Ph.D in Iberian and Latin American Studies at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne, Salim Lamrani is a lecturer at the University of La Réunion, and a journalist specializing in relations between Cuba and the United States.

His new book is titled Fidel Castro, héros des déshérités, Paris, Editions Estrella, 2016. Preface by Ignacio Ramonet.

Contact:[email protected]; [email protected]

Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/SalimLamraniOfficial

 

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The Maiming Fields of Gaza

May 5th, 2018 by Dr. Derek A Summerfield

Since 30 March 2018, Palestinians civilians living as refugees and exiles in Gaza ever since they were driven out from Palestine have been gathering in mass, unarmed demonstration about their right of return to the homeland they lost in 1948. Confronted by the Israeli army, including 100 snipers, the toll of dead and wounded Palestinian civilians is mounting at a shocking rate as we write.

There is a background to this. Firstly, there is the ongoing impact of the 12 year long Israeli blockade of Gaza on the care and health of her people, and the degrading of its health services. The violence and destruction inflicted by Israeli military action in Operation Protective Edge in 2014 and Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 marked a distinct turning point in the pauperization of Gaza, against a backdrop of an ever tightening blockade since 2006.That assault in 2014 killed over 2,200 civilians, a quarter of whom were children, wounded 11.000, destroyed 15 hospitals, 45 clinics and 80,000 homes.(1)

Since 2014 Israel has further tightened the passage of essential medicines and equipment into Gaza, and of the entry of doctors and experts from abroad who offer technical expertise not available locally. Gazan hospitals have been depleted of antibiotics, anaesthetic agents, painkillers, other essential drugs, disposables, and fuel to run surgical theatres. (2) Patients die while waiting for permission to go for specialist treatment outside Gaza. All elective surgery has been cancelled since last January 2018, and 3 hospitals have closed because of medication, equipment and fuel shortages (3). Medical personnel have been working on reduced salaries. Gazan health professionals find it almost impossible to get Israeli permission to travel abroad to further their training.The regular episodic military assaults on Gaza and the current targeting of unarmed demonstrators are part of a pattern of periodically induced emergencies arising from Israeli policy. The cumulative effects of the impact on healthcare provision for the general population have been documented in multiple reports by NGOs, UN agencies and the WHO. (4).This appears to be a strategy for the de-development of health and social services impinging on all the population of Gaza.

The current systematic use of excessive force towards unarmed civilians, including children and journalists, is provoking a further crisis for the people of Gaza. Since 30 March 2018, snipers firing military grade ammunition have caused crippling wounds to unarmed demonstrators.(5) As of 23 April 2018,5511 Palestinians, including at least 454 children, have been injured by Israeli forces, including 1,739 from live ammunition according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. As of April 27, the death toll has reached 48 and additional hundreds wounded.

Even the BBC has shown films of the deliberate shooting of people who were standing harmlessly or running away, including children and journalists (6). The sniper-fire is mostly not to the head, with most of the wounds to the lower torso and legs. Dozens have needed emergency amputation of either one or both legs, and a further 1,300 required immediate external fixations which will entail an estimated 7,800 hours of subsequent complex reconstructive surgery if the limbs are to be saved. This is calculated maiming. More may die or incur life-long disability because of the degraded state of health service sand the prohibition by Israel of the transfer for the seriously wounded (7). How is Gaza to survive this situation? And meanwhile, the many that have lost non-emergency healthcare because of the ongoing lack of medicines and energy will be joined by many more now that all scarce resources are going to life and limb saving efforts.

Whilst various UN and WHO agencies have condemned Israeli actions, Western governments have not uttered a murmur and thus bolster the impunity Israel seems always to have enjoyed in its treatment of Palestinian society. Others who seek to document and to draw attention to events like this, including in medical journals, are often subject to vilifying ad hominem attacks, as have journal editors (8). These are matters of international shame.

*

Derek Summerfield, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College, University of London.

David Halpin, Retired orthopaedic and trauma surgeon. Member – British Orthopaedic Association.

Swee Ang, Consultant Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgeon, Barts Health, London

Andrea Balduzzi, Researcher, University of Genoa, Italy

Franco Camandona, MD, OspedaliGaliera, Genoa, Italy

Gianni Tognoni, Mario Negri Institute, Milan, Italy

Ireo Bono, MD, Onncologist, Savon, Italy

Marina Rui, PhD Università di Genoa, Italy

Vittorio Agnoletto, MD, University of Milan, Former MEP, Italy

Notes

(1) 50 days of death and ddestruction. Institute for Middle East Understanding. https://imeu.org/article/50-days-of-death-destruction-israels-operation-…

(2) Emergency Delegation to the Gaza Strip. Physicians for Human Rights Israel.
http://www.phr.org.il/en/phri-emergency-delegation-to-the-gaza-strip-apr…

(3) –https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180213-work-at-main-gaza-hospital-st… February 13, 2018
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/palestinians-die-israel-refuses-me…

(4) -Unnecessary loss of life http://gisha.org/updates/8742
-Humanitarian Coordinator calls for protection of Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza alongside support for urgent humanitarian needs –https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-coordinator-calls-protectio…
-Israel/OPT: Authorities must refrain from using excessive force in response to Palestine Land Day protests https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/israelopt-authorities-mus…

5) World Health Organisation Special Situation report- Gaza, Occupied Palestinian Territory.https://israelpalestinenews.org/who-special-situation-report-gaza-occupi…

6) The Palestinian Day of Return: from a short day of commemoration to a long day of mourning K. Elessi 27 April 2018, Lancet
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30940-1
Civilians, health workers, journalists and children killed and wounded march 30-april 27, 2018
http://www.msf.org/en/article/palestine-msf-teams-gaza-observe-unusually…
-Horrific injuries reported among Gaza protesters https://www.map.org.uk/news/archive/post/828-horrific-injuries-reported-… Palestinians killed and hundreds injured in Gaza during demonstrations along the fence https://www.ochaopt.org/content/four-palestinians-killed-and-hundreds-in…
-New MAP film from Gaza: health workers under attack
https://www.map.org.uk/news/archive/post/827-new-map-film-from-gaza-atta…
-Adalah& Al Mezan petition Israeli Supreme Court: Order Israeli army to stop using snipers, live ammunition to disperse Gaza protests http://www.mezan.org/en/post/22754/Adalah+%26+Al+Mezan+petition+Israeli+…

(7) – https://www.ochaopt.org/theme/casualties
https://mailchi.mp/phr/muwsh5pulz-991741?e=19b7f93641

(8) Pressure on ‘The Lancet’ for Gaza letter another example of pro-Israel assault on freedom of expression 11 novembre 2014 |Catherine Baker pour Mondoweisshttp://www.aurdip.fr/pressure-on-the-lancet-for-gaza.html?lang=fr

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Western Chauvinism Against Russia Gone Berserk

May 5th, 2018 by Michael Averko

For you non-sports minded Russia watchers, the ethically flawed antics of the IOC (International Olympic Committee), WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) and Western mass media at large, highlight a predominating anti-Russian bias that have a definite bigoted aspect. Having personally penned the title of this essay, let me say that the February 1 CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) decision favoring Russian athletes, is proof positive that not everyone in the West is motivated (subconsciously or otherwise) by anti-Russian sentiment.

Upon announcing its decision to ban Russia from the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics (with some Russian athletes competing under the Olympic flag and “Olympic Athlete from Russia” designation), the IOC indicated that the WADA propped McLaren report’s claim of a Russian state-sponsored Olympic and Paralympic doping campaign hasn’t been proven. Yet, this fact hasn’t stopped the BBC and New York Times from falsely stating that the IOC decision is based on a primary Russian government culpability. Without definitively making the case in the open, the IOC said that there were testing irregularities at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, that favored some Russian athletes.

The February 1 CAS decision took into consideration that a good number of the IOC banned Russian athletes have been extensively tested inside and outside of Russia over a lengthy period of time, without ever being found guilty of a drug infraction. In addition, the CAS (on the known facts) reasonably concluded that the claimed 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic testing irregularities haven’t been firmly concluded. Even if these irregularities occurred (something that remains unclear on account of the claim not being fully presented in the open), one then practically wonders whether it was with the knowledge of any or all of the effected Russian athletes and if their actual test results were indeed positive? Meantime, the prior and post 2014 Winter Olympic Olympic drug tests of a good number of these athletes reveal innocence.

In reply to these particulars, I’ve heard some Western chauvinist spin, saying that the CAS cleared Russians athletes aren’t necessarily innocent, on account that they still could’ve cheated without getting caught. That very same logic applies to non-Russian athletes who might very well have succeeded in finding a way around the process.

The CAS found 11 Russian Olympians to have been previously found guilty of a drug infraction, that warranted a ban from Pyeongchang, as opposed to the hypocritically flawed IOC decision to implement a lifetime ban against them. The hypocrisy concerns the number of non-Russian athletes found guilty of doping, who didn’t receive lifetime bans.

On the matter of gross anti-Russian hypocrisy, note famed US Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps’ 2009 admission of smoking pot. Phelps wasn’t banned from Olympic competition for that action. On the other hand, the IOC feels that it’s appropriate to ban the Russian 1500 meter speed skating world record holder Denis Yuskov from the upcoming Winter Olympics, for a prior marijuana smoking episode in 2008. The unfairness of that move has been noted by some earnest folks in the West. Another of several repugnant anti-Russian IOC acts, concerns the banning of Russian short track speed skater Viktor Ahn.

As I’ve previously noted, Richard McLaren’s claim that 1000 Russian athletes benefitted from a Russian government involved illicit regimen of cheating, would likely mean that ALL of the Russian athletes in question, would be shown beyond a reasonable doubt to have taken such a course. This hasn’t been proven at all, with a note that the combined Russian Summer and Winter Olympic and Paralympic participating athletes is (if I’m not mistaken)under 1000.

On the US based National Public Radio, I heard the WADA connected American legal sports politico Travis Tygart (in rather self serving fashion) suggest his objectivity, by noting how he went after the legendary American cyclist Lance Armstrong. This is sheer BS, as Tygart never advocated banning all American cyclists and-or all US athletes from major competition.  In comparison, Tygart (along with Canadian sports legal politico Dick Pound and some other pious blowhards) have favored a collective ban on all Russian athletes.

The likes of Tygart have a committed track record of extreme bias against Russia. In contrast, the IOC President Thomas Bach, comes across as a wishy washy sort, not fit to serve his position. It’s a high point of chutzpah for Bach to second guess the CAS ruling on Russia, by saying that the CAS needs to be revamped. Bach and his fellow IOC cronies have belittled the CAS decision, with the announcement that none of the cleared Russian athletes will be invited to the upcoming Winter Olympics. Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko befittingly said that the IOC and WADA are in need of restructuring.

At the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, Bach took the position that the individual sports federations should decide on whether to restrict Russian partition. With rare exception, most of these IOC affiliated sports bodies decided (based on facts) that Russia shouldn’t be penalized at that Olympiad. This time around, Bach has leaned towards the “pressure”, as constantly rehashed by leading Western mass media outlets “to do something” against Russia.

February 2 RT article, provides a healthy offset to the overall biased Western mass media reporting on the subject of Russian sports doping. The former details numerous reasons for not believing much of the negative allegations against Russian Olympians. Among the particulars, is the faulty notion that Russian athletes live and train under the same state manipulated structure. In actuality, a good number of them train outside Russia, with non-Russian coaches. Touching on this last point, The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins had an August 10, 2016 article, that showed how Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova, had taken performance enhancing drugs on her own, while training in the US, as opposed to some Russian state-sponsored method. (On the subject of Russian sports doping, Jenkins’ aforementioned piece is an exception to the generally biased trend in Western mass media.)

It’s matter of established record that Italy has the most Olympic sports dopers, despite having a smaller number of competing athletes when compared to Russia. Per capita, India, Turkey and Iran have higher rates of such doping infractions than Russia, with South Africa and Belgium having about the same percentage of positive doping as Russia. The December 24, 2017 Worlds Apart show, suggests that a disproportionate number of Western athletes have been given exemptions for drugs having a performance enhancing capability. (That RT show had earlier featured Dick Pound, which I followed up on.)

Moments before the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic opening ceremony, CAS came out with another decision on Russian athletes, which contradicts its February 1 ruling. Bigotry has been given a boost over the idea of judging people as individuals. To quote The New York Times’ Juliet Macur:

The whistle-blowers are holding their breath. The Russians and clean athletes are, too.”

As I noted:

Substitute ‘Russians’ for some other group in such a negatively applied way and see the selective outrage. No NYT journo would write a bigoted comparison that differentiates between law abiding citizens and African-Americans, followed by a utilization of crime statistics as ‘proof’ for such a presented contrast.”

Along with numerous other Western mass media journalists, some of Macur’s other commentary have a noticeable anti-Russian bias. I wonder if she learned that slant from her father, who she wrote about?

*

This article was originally published on Eurasia Review

Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic. A closely related version of this article was initially placed at the Strategic Culture Foundation’s website on February 8.

Featured image is from the author.

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Trotskyist Delusions. Split into Rival Tendencies

May 5th, 2018 by Diana Johnstone

I first encountered Trotskyists in Minnesota half a century ago during the movement against the Vietnam War.  I appreciated their skill in organizing anti-war demonstrations and their courage in daring to call themselves “communists” in the United States of America – a profession of faith that did not groom them for the successful careers enjoyed by their intellectual counterparts in France.  So I started my political activism with sympathy toward the movement.  In those days it was in clear opposition to U.S. imperialism, but that has changed.

The first thing one learns about Trotskyism is that it is split into rival tendencies. Some remain consistent critics of imperialist war, notably those who write for the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).

Others, however, have translated the Trotskyist slogan of “permanent revolution” into the hope that every minority uprising in the world must be a sign of the long awaited world revolution – especially those that catch the approving eye of mainstream media.  More often than deploring U.S. intervention, they join in reproaching Washington for not intervening sooner on behalf of the alleged revolution.

A recent article in the International Socialist Review (issue #108, March 1, 2018) entitled “Revolution and counterrevolution in Syria”indicates so thoroughly how Trotskyism goes wrong that it is worthy of a critique. Since the author, Tony McKenna, writes well and with evident conviction, this is a strong not a weak example of the Trotskyist mindset.

McKenna starts out with a passionate denunciation of the regime of Bashar al Assad, which, he says, responded to a group of children who simply wrote some graffiti on a wall by “beating them, burning them, pulling their fingernails out”.  The source of this grisly information is not given.  There could be no eye witnesses to such sadism, and the very extremism sounds very much like war propaganda – Germans carving up Belgian babies.

But this raises the issue of sources.  It is certain that there are many sources of accusations against the Assad regime, on which McKenna liberally draws, indicating that he is writing not from personal observation, any more than I am.  Clearly, he is strongly disposed to believe the worst, and even to embroider it somewhat. He accepts and develops without the shadow of a doubt the theory that Assad himself is responsible for spoiling the good revolution by releasing Islamic prisoners who went on to poison it with their extremism.  The notion that Assad himself infected the rebellion with Islamic fanaticism is at best a hypothesis concerning not facts but intentions, which are invisible.  But it is presented as unchallengeable evidence of Assad’s perverse wickedness.

This interpretation of events happens to dovetail neatly with the current Western doctrine on Syria, so that it is impossible to tell them apart.  In both versions, the West is no more than a passive onlooker, whereas Assad enjoys the backing of Iran and Russia.

“Much has been made of Western imperial support for the rebels in the early years of the revolution. This has, in fact, been an ideological lynchpin of first the Iranian and then the Russian military interventions as they took the side of the Assad government. Such interventions were framed in the spirit of anticolonial rhetoric in which Iran and Russia purported to come to the aid of a beleaguered state very much at the mercy of a rapacious Western imperialism that was seeking to carve the country up according to the appetites of the US government and the International Monetary Fund”, according to McKenna.

Whose “ideological lynchpin”?  Not that of Russia, certainly, whose line in the early stages of its interventionwas not to denounce Western imperialism but to appeal to the West and especially to the United States to join in the fight against Islamic extremism.

Neither Russia nor Iran “framed their interventions in the spirit of anticolonial rhetoric” but in terms of the fight against Islamic extremism with Wahhabi roots.

In reality, a much more pertinent “framing” of Western intervention, taboo in the mainstream and even in Moscow, is that Western support for armed rebels in Syria was being carried out to help Israel destroy its regional enemies.  The Middle East nations attacked by the West – Iraq, Libya and Syria – all just happen to be, or to have been, the last strongholds of secular Arab nationalism and support for Palestinian rights. There are a few alternative hypotheses as to Western motives – oil pipelines, imperialist atavism, desire to arouse Islamic extremism in order to weaken Russia (the Brzezinski gambit) – but none are as coherent as the organic alliance between Israel and the United States, and its NATO sidekicks.

It is remarkable that McKenna’s long article (some 12 thousand words) about the war in Syria mentions Israel only once (aside from a footnote citing Israeli national news as a source).  And this mention actually equates Israelis and Palestinians as co-victims of Assad propaganda:  the Syrian government “used the mass media to slander the protestors, to present the revolution as the chaos orchestrated by subversive international interests (the Israelis and the Palestinians were both implicated in the role of foreign infiltrators).”

No other mention of Israel, which occupies Syrian territory (the Golan Heights) and bombs Syria whenever it wants to.

Only one, innocuous mention of Israel!  But this article by a Trotskyist mentions Stalin, Stalinists, Stalinism no less than twenty-two times!

And what about Saudi Arabia, Israel’s de facto ally in the effort to destroy Syria in order to weaken Iran?  Two mentions, both implicitly denying that notorious fact. The only negative mention is blaming the Saudi family enterprise for investing billions in the Syrian economy in its neoliberal phase.  But far from blaming Saudi Arabia for supporting Islamic groups, McKenna portrays the House of Saud as a victim of ISIS hostility.

Clearly, the Trotskyist delusion is to see the Russian Revolution everywhere, forever being repressed by a new Stalin.  Assad is likened to Stalin several times.

This article is more about the Trotskyist case against Stalin than it is about Syria.

This repetitive obsession does not lead to a clear grasp of events which are not the Russian revolution. And even on this pet subject, something is wrong.

The Trotskyists keep yearning for a new revolution, just like the Bolshevik revolution.  Yes, but the Bolshevik revolution ended in Stalinism. Doesn’t that tell them something? Isn’t it quite possible that their much-desired “revolution” might turn out just as badly in Syria, if not much worse?

Throughout history,revolts, uprisings, rebellions happen all the time, and usually end in repression.  Revolution is very rare.  It is more a myth than a reality, especially as Trotskyists tend to imagine it: the people all rising up in one great general strike, chasing their oppressors from power and instituting people’s democracy.  Has this ever happened?

For the Trotskyists, this seem to be the natural way things should happen and is stopped only by bad guys who spoil it out of meanness.

In our era, the most successful revolutions have been in Third World countries, where national liberation from Western powers was a powerful emotional engine.  Successful revolutions have a program that unifies people and leaders who personify the aspirations of broad sectors of the population.  Socialism or communism was above all a rallying cry meaning independence and “modernization” – which is indeed what the Bolshevik revolution turned out to be. If the Bolshevik revolution turned Stalinist, maybe it was in part because a strong repressive leader was the only way to save “the revolution” from its internal and external enemies.  There is no evidence that, had he defeated Stalin, Trotsky would have been more tender-hearted.

Countries that are deeply divided ideologically and ethnically, such as Syria, are not likely to be “modernized” without a strong rule.

McKenna acknowledges that the beginning of the Assad regime somewhat redeemed its repressive nature by modernization and social reforms. This modernization benefited from Russian aid and trade, which was lost when the Soviet Union collapsed.  Yes, there was a Soviet bloc which despite its failure to carry out world revolution as Trotsky advocated, did support the progressive development of newly independent countries.

If Bashar’s father Hafez al Assad had some revolutionary legitimacy in McKenna’s eyes, there is no excuse for Bashar.

“In the context of a global neoliberalism, where governments across the board were enacting the most pronounced forms of deregulation and overseeing the carving up of state industries by private capital, the Assad government responded to the heightening contradictions in the Syrian economy by following suit—by showing the ability to march to the tempo of foreign investment while evincing a willingness to cut subsidies for workers and farmers.”

The neoliberal turn impoverished people in the countryside, therefore creating a situation that justified “revolution”.

This is rather amazing, if one thinks about it.  Without the alternative Soviet bloc, virtually the whole world has been obliged to conform to anti-social neoliberal policies.  Syria included.  Does this make Bashar al Assad so much more a villain than every other leader conforming to U.S.-led globalization?

McKenna concludes by quoting Louis Proyect:

“If we line up on the wrong side of the barricades in a struggle between the rural poor and oligarchs in Syria, how can we possibly begin to provide a class-struggle leadership in the USA, Britain, or any other advanced capitalist country?”

One could turn that around.  Shouldn’t such a Marxist revolutionary be saying:

“if we can’t defeat the oligarchs in the West, who are responsible for the neoliberal policies imposed on the rest of the world, how can we possibly begin to provide class-struggle leadership in Syria?”

The trouble with “Trotskyists” is that they are always “supporting” other people’s more or less imaginary revolutions.  They are always telling others what to do. They know it all. The practical result of this verbal agitation is simply to align this brand of Trotskyism with U.S imperialism.  The obsession with permanent revolution ends up providing an ideological alibi for permanent war.

For the sake of world peace and progress, both the United States and its inadvertent Trotskyist apologists should go home and mind their own business.

*

Diana Johnstone can be reached at [email protected]. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse with this Congress, a bipartisan pair of senators have teamed up to write the single most dangerous piece of unconstitutional legislation of this Congress. 

Last week, Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced S. Res. 59, which is a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). An AUMF is roughly the modern equivalent of a declaration of war, and the Corker-Kaine AUMF gives President Trump and lots of future presidents the authority to take the country to war against an endless list of groups and individuals in an endless list of countries.

The result will be true global war without end.

The two senators wanted to get a quick vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week and have the bill rocket through the Senate and House and onto the president’s desk. Fortunately for all of us, senators from both parties, from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to Sen. Jeff Merkely (D-Ore.), forced a slowdown. But Corker and Kaine are working overtime to try to jam through their AUMF, which is a dumpster fire of bad ideas.

Here are just some of the harms packed into their proposed AUMF:

It immediately authorizes war against eight groups. With literally no strategic or operational restrictions, the Corker-Kaine AUMF authorizes immediate war against eight groups in six countries. The American military could be sent into battle in countries such as Libya, Somalia, or Yemen to fight groups that most Americans have never even heard of. This could lead to the immediate deployment of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of American military service members to fight if Congress passes and Trump signs this AUMF.

The U.S. could declare war on a person. The president — not just President Trump, but likely every president for the next generation or longer — will be able to add new groups or new countries to the AUMF by simply sending a one-paragraph note to Congress. Absurdly, the Corker-Kaine AUMF even gives the commander-in-chief the option of going to war against a “person.” The president would not even have to explain why the new group or person is an enemy or what kind of danger awaits from military action in a newly added country.

Congress abdicates its war-making powers. In a stunningly unconstitutional move, the Corker-Kaine AUMF takes the most important power that the Constitution gives to Congress alone — the power to declare war — and turns it almost entirely over to this president and every future president. The only way that Congress would be able to stop a determined president from going to war everywhere and against anyone the commander-in-chief chooses would be to get a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress to override the president’s veto.

This flips the constitutional order on its head since the Constitution says a majority of both houses must agree to go to war before military action is taken. By contrast, the Corker-Kaine AUMF requires two-thirds of both houses to try to stop a president from using the war power that the AUMF would give the president.  This provision to swap the Constitution’s requirement of a majority in both houses to declare war for a two-thirds majority of both houses to stop war breaches checks and balances and the separation of powers. It can’t possibly be constitutional.

So, what more could be added to a piece of legislation that unconstitutionally sets us up for war everywhere and forever?

How about amping up the authority for any president to use the military to lock people up with no charge or trial? And expanding this authority with no boundaries — and with no statutory prohibition in the AUMF against locking up American citizens or anyone picked up even in the United States itself?  We believe it would still be unlawful for a president to try it (again), but why risk it?

Congress went down this same road in 2011, with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and hundreds of thousands of activists from the ACLU and our allies called and emailed their members of Congress urging its defeat. It narrowly passed, and President Obama signed it — with a promise not to use it against American citizens, but without denying that a president could have the power to order military detention.

The Intercept has an explanation of how this new detention provision could work. It is truly hard to believe that anyone in Congress would believe that it is a good idea for the legislature to head down this road again. Please sign our petition urging your senators to do everything they can do to make sure the Corker-Kaine AUMF never becomes law.  

The Corker-Kaine AUMF is beyond dangerous.  It is unconstitutional. And it is set up to never end. The Senate has a duty to kill this legislation immediately and show all members of Congress and the executive that abdicating Congress’s duty to declare war stays with the people’s representatives and no one else.

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Christopher Anders is Deputy Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons.

This article was published on April 24, 2010 by Occupation Magazine.

Shalom and good evening,

My name is Rami Elhanan. Thirteen years ago, on the afternoon of Thursday the fourth of September 1997, I lost my daughter, my Smadar, in a suicide attack on Ben-Yehuda street in Jerusalem. A beautiful sweet joyous 14 year old girl. My Smadar was the granddaughter of the militant for peace, General (Ret.) Matti Peled, one of those who made the breakthrough to Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. And she was murdered because we were not wise enough to preserve her safety in Matti’s way, the only correct and possible way – the way of peace and reconciliation.

I do not need a Remembrance Day in order to remember Smadari. I remember her all the time, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 60 seconds a minute. Without a pause, without a rest, for 13 long and accursed years now, and time does not heal the wound, and the unbearable lightness of continuing to exist remains a strange and unsolved riddle.

But Israeli society very much needs Remembrance Days. From year to year, like clockwork, in the week after Passover, it is drawn into the annual ritual: from Holocaust to the Rebirth of the nation, a sea of ceremonies, sirens and songs – an entire people is swept into a whirlpool of addictive sweet sorrow, eyes tearful and shrouded; mutual embraces accompanied by `Occupation songs` and sickle and sword songs [1] against the background of images of lives that were cut short and heart-rending stories … and it is hard to avoid the feeling that this refined concentration of bereavement, fed directly into the vein, is intended to fortify our feeling of victimhood, the justice of our path and our struggle, to remind us of our catastrophes, which God forbid we should forget for a single moment. This is the choice of our lives – to be armed and ready, strong and resolute, lest the sword fall from our grasp and our lives be cut short.[2]

And when all this great sorrow is dispersed with the smoke of the barbeques, [3] when Israelis return to their daily routines, I am left enveloped in great sorrow. I miss the old good Land of Israel that never existed, and I have feelings of alienation and estrangement that keep increasing with the passage of years, from war to war, from election to election, from corruption to corruption.

And I think about the stations of my life, on the long journey that I have taken on my way to a redefinition of myself, of my Israeliness, of my Jewishness and of my humanity. About the light-years that I have travelled, from the young man who 37 years ago fought in a pulverized tank company, on the other side of the Suez Canal, from the young father who 28 years ago walked the streets of bombed Beirut, and it did not at all occur to me that things could be otherwise. I was a pure product of a cultural-educational and political system that brainwashed me, poisoned my consciousness and prepared me and others of my generation for sacrifice on the altar of the homeland, without any superfluous questions, in the innocent belief that if we did not do it, they would throw us – the second generation after the Holocaust – into the Mediterranean Sea.

Nearly 40 years have passed since then, and every year this armour of victimhood continues to crack. The self-righteousness and the feeling of wretchedness keep dissipating, and the wall that separates me from the other side of the story keeps crumbling.

When Yitzhak Frankenthal recruited me to the Bereaved Families Forum 12 years ago, for the first time in my life I was exposed to the very existence of the other side – to this day I am ashamed to say that for the first time in my life (I was 47) I encountered Palestinians as normal human beings, very much like me, with the same pain, the same tears and the same dreams. For the first time in my life I was exposed to the story, the pain and the anger, and also to the nobility and the humanity of what is called “the other side.”

The climax of that journey was the meeting between me and my brother, the “terrorist” who spent seven years in an Israeli prison, the peace-warrior Bassam Aramin, who wrote to us, among other things, the following moving words:

“… Dear Nurit and Rami. I wanted to express my identification with you as a brother on this sad day, the anniversary of the death of your beautiful and pure daughter, Smadar. There is no doubt that this is one of the saddest days, and from the moment we met I did not have the courage to write to you about it, for fear of adding more sorrow and pain to your hearts. I thought that time would likely heal that deep wound. But after I myself drank from that same bitter cup that you drank from before me, when my daughter Abir was murdered on 16 January 2007, I understood that parents never forget for a moment. We live our lives in a special way that others do not know, and I hope that no other human beings, Palestinians or Israelis, will not be forced to know …”

Today my perception of the two sides is completely different from what it was 40 years ago.

For me, the line that separates the two sides today is not between Arabs and Israelis or Jews and Muslims. Today the line is between those who want peace and are willing to pay the price for it, and all the rest. They are the other side! And today, that other side, to my dismay, is the corrupt group of politicians and generals that leads us and behaves like a bunch of mafia dons, war criminals, who play ping-pong in blood among themselves, who sow hate and reap death.

But this evening I want to talk specifically to those who are in between, who are sitting on the fence and watching us from the sidelines, I want to talk to the satiated Israeli public that does not pay the price of the Occupation, the public that sticks its head in the sand and does not want to know, that lives within a bubble, watches television, eats in restaurants, goes on vacation, enjoys the good life and looks after their its own interests, shielded by the pandering media that help it to hide from the bitter reality that is concealed only a few metres from where they live: the Occupation, the theft of lands and houses, the daily harassment and oppression and humiliation, the checkpoints, the abomination in Gaza, the sewage on the streets of Anata …

On this evening, especially, I want to address the Left public in all its shades, those who are disillusioned and angry, those who are afflicted with apathy, with despair and weakness, those who enclose themselves in the bubble of themselves and grumble on Friday nights, but are not involved with us in this hard war against the aggressive pathogen of the Occupation that threatens to destroy the humanity of all of us. And on this evening, the evening of Remembrance Day for the dead on both sides, I want to ask them to join us in our war against this fatal affliction! I want to tell them that to be bystanders is to be complicit in crime! I want to tell them that there are many who are not willing to stand aside, who are not willing to be silent in the face of evil and stupidity and the absence of basic accountability and justice!

And I want to tell them about the true anonymous heroes of our dark age!

About those who are willing to pay a high personal price for their honesty and decency, those who dare to stand in front of the bulldozers with rare and amazing courage, the refusers who say no to the omnipresent militarism, the combatants for peace who discarded their weapons in favour of non-violent resistance, the resolute demonstrators who crush against the terror of the police and the army in Bil’in, in Ni’lin, in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan every weekend, the lawyers who struggle every day in the Ofer camp military Court, and in the High Court of Justice, the heroic women of Mahsom Watch, the dedicated peace activists from abroad, like the late Rachel Corrie who gave her life, and also the those who blow the whistle on crimes and conspiracies, from Anat Kam to Gideon Levy and Akiva Eldar, and also the peace organizations of both peoples, and especially the bereaved Palestinian and Israeli families who are bringing about the miracle of reconciliation despite their tragedies.

The darker the sky gets, the more visible are these stars gleaming in the darkness! [4] The more the oppression becomes opaque and evil, the more they, with their heroism and their noble struggle, save the honour and the humanity of all of us!

And today we desperately need to expand the circles of non-violent opposition to the Occupation! This evening I call on you from here and from the bottom of my heart: get out of your bubble! Join the mosquito that buzzes unceasingly in the ears of the Occupation, [5] that annoys and irritates and harasses, and does not let Filth prevail in silence! [6] Don’t let the other side steal the future of all of us! Don’t let the other side continue to endanger the security of our remaining children.

Thank you.

*

Translated from Hebrew for Occupation Magazine by George Malent

Notes

[1] The sword and sickle songs of the singing company of the Nahal (a brigade in the Israeli army). http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Nahal2.jpg

[2] Moshe Dayan’s Eulogy for Roi Rutenberg (April 19, 1956).
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/dayan1.html

[3] Israelis traditionally have barbeques on the eve of Independence Day.

[4] Martin Luther King

[5] Ali Abu Awad

[6] Ze’ev Jabotinsky: Betar Song. www.saveisrael.com/jabo/jabobetar.htm

New York Times Cairo bureau chief Declan Walsh went to Benghazi, Libya, which is in ruins, to find out how it got that way.

“When I went to Benghazi, I was guided by one main question: How did the city come to this?” he declares in his multimedia presentation, which combines text, audio, video and large-format photography. One thing that’s not conveyed via any medium, though: Seven years ago, the United States and its allies used military force to overthrow Libya’s government. The country has been in almost continual civil war since then, which you would think would be crucial in explaining “how the city came to that.” But apparently you don’t think like a New York Times bureau chief.

The thing is, when President Barack Obama—egged on by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—called for an attack on Libya, the justification they offered was that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi would otherwise destroy Benghazi. So the fact that military intervention actually turned out to lead to the destruction of Benghazi seems like something you might want to tell Times readers, or Times consumers of multimedia, anyway.

But Walsh, despite his stated objective, seemed to go out of his way to avoid talking about how Libya has come to be a place where major cities are turned to rubble. Here’s how the piece opens:

NYT: Chasing the Ghosts of Benghazi

When a “mob attack” killed the US ambassador in 2012—”that’s when the real fight began.” In other words, the “real fight” didn’t begin a year earlier, when NATO added its overwhelming military might to a rebel uprising against Gadhafi.

It’s almost as if Walsh thinks that his audience, conditioned as they are by corporate media’s indulgence of the Republican Party’s absurd obsession with whether  Clinton accurately characterized the motivations of the militants who killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, can only use that frame of reference to understand Benghazi. So we get assurances that not every Benghazi resident hated the United States—some brought flowers!—but no explanation for why Libyan resentment of the United States might be justified:

NYT: Fahad Bakoosh

“That shouldn’t be forgotten”—unlike the US destroying the government of Libya and leaving the nation to be fought over by warlords.

It’s not like Walsh hasn’t heard of history—he notes the historical trivia that Benito Mussolini once gave a speech from a Benghazi balcony. There’s room  in the piece to mention Mussolini, but Obama and Clinton? They don’t come up.

NYT: In the old royal palace, a balcony lay crumbling where Benito Mussolini...once delivered grand speeches.

This is not the first time US media, or the New York Times in particular, have erased US responsibility Libya’s travails. Ben Norton wrote a piece for FAIR (11/28/17) about coverage of the return of slave markets to Libya; the Times did better than most outlets by acknowledging that the resurgence of slavery was connected to the chaos following the downfall of Gadhafi—but couldn’t bring itself to remind readers that their own government helped bring about that downfall.

But when a journalist sets out—”guided by one main question”—to understand the roots of devastating violence in a particular city, and fails so utterly to take the overwhelming role of Washington intervention into account…. Well, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I have to say I was startled by the complete erasure of quite recent, utterly relevant events.

You’re left wondering what Walsh does intend to offer as an explanation for Benghazi’s destruction. Perhaps it’s inherent in the Libyan character, as he suggests is illustrated by locals’ enthusiasm for doing “doughnuts” in their cars—a sport that reminded Walsh “of so many young Libyans I met—restless after years of war, impatient to go somewhere and yet turning in circles.”

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Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org, the website of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. Since 1990, he has edited Extra!, FAIR’s print publication, now a monthly newsletter. He is the co-author of Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s. 

All images in this article are from the author.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, has published evidence suggesting that a D-notice has been issued to the press to protect MI6, hiding its connections to the Russian double-agent, Sergei Skripal. According to the Conservative government and a pliant media, Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by Russia with a “novichok” nerve agent.

A D-notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) is used by the British state to veto the publication of potentially damaging news stories. Formally a request to withhold publication, the slavishness of the mainstream media ensures these notices function for the most part as gag orders.

Murray initially reported the claims of famous whistleblower Clive Ponting that a D-notice had likely been issued in relation to some aspect of the Skripal affair. He then noted Channel 4 journalist Charles Thomson’s confirmation that a D-notice had, in fact, been issued and that it related specifically to censoring the identity of Skripal’s MI6 handler.

Murray suggests that the MI6 agent in question is called Pablo Miller.

As Murray notes, the specific attempt to protect Miller’s identity is highly significant. Miller is an associate of former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, first in espionage operations in Russia and more recently in the activities of Steele’s private intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.

Steele was responsible for compiling the Trump–Russia dossier, comprising 17 memos written in 2016 alleging misconduct and conspiracy between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Putin administration. The dossier, paid for by the Democratic Party, claimed that Trump was compromised by evidence of his sexual proclivities in Russia’s possession. Steele was the subject of an earlier (unsuccessful) D-notice, which attempted to keep his identity as the author of the dossier a secret.

If Miller and, by extension, Skripal himself were somehow involved in Orbis’ work on the highly-suspect Steele–Trump dossier, alongside representatives of British and possibly US intelligence, then all manner of motivations can be suggested for an attack on the ex-Russian spy and British double agent by forces other than Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB.

Miller’s official career comprised a period of service in the British Army—the Royal Tank Regiment and the Royal Green Jackets—and then postings as a diplomat in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Nigeria from 1992, Tallinn in Estonia from 1997, and Warsaw in Poland from 2010 to 2013. In 2015, he was awarded an OBE by the Queen “for service to British foreign policy.”

In 2000, the FSB accused Miller of being “head of British intelligence in Tallinn” and claimed he had turned an FSB officer, Valery Ojamae, for MI6. Seven years later, Miller was again named as an intelligence operative, this time in connection with another MI6-recruited former Russian security officer, Vyacheslav Zharko. The FSB statement at the time indicated that Miller had also been suspected of involvement in the turning of Sergei Skripal.

His connections with Skripal do not end there. On March 7, before the government had got its narrative in order, the Telegraph newspaper reported that the Russian had been close to a “security consultant” living nearby: “The consultant, who The Telegraph is declining to identify [i.e. has been told not to], lived close to Col Skripal and is understood to have known him for some time.”

Miller, according to his LinkedIn profile—swiftly deleted following the Skripal affair—had retired from British diplomacy/intelligence to settle down in Salisbury. The same profile also reportedly listed Miller’s “consultancy work” at Orbis Intelligence, linking Skripal, Miller and Steele.

When this connection was first made in early March, the BBC’s security correspondent Gordon Corera and Guardian ’s Luke Harding rushed to issue denials. Corera tweeted:

“No link Chris Steele to Sergei Skripal: sources close to Orbis Intelligence—ex MI6 officer Chris Steele’s company which did Trump ‘dossier’—tell me no links whatsoever to Russian targeted with nerve agent.”

Harding joined him, saying,

“The @Telegraph story claiming a link between Sergei #Skripal and Christopher Steele’s company Orbis is wrong, I understand. Skripal had nothing to do with Trump dossier. Nor did unnamed ‘security consultant’ ever work for Orbis.”

At the time, replies to Harding pointed out that, though Miller’s LinkedIn page had been deleted, a search for “Pablo Miller” and “Orbis Business Intelligence” still brought the dead page up first on Google’s listings—with none of the other Pablo Millers on the site featured in the results. Another pointed to a forum on which the presence of Orbis Intelligence on Miller’s profile was mentioned, with a link to the same LinkedIn address.

Beside these points, there is the timing of Steele’s, Miller’s and Skripal’s intelligence activities in Russia. Miller, as we have seen, was closely involved with the turning and handling of Russian double-agents at least during his time in Tallinn from 1997 to 2010. Skripal was passing information to the British from 1995. Steele was posted to Moscow as a spy between 1990-1993, returned to London as part of a group of Kremlin specialists and was head of MI6’s Russia desk by 2006.

Professor Anthony Glees, the director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, has commented,

“It is beyond doubt that he [Skripal] would have known Steele and Steele would have known him.”

Miller, meanwhile, would have been working under Steele.

As to why Corera and Harding omitted any research along these lines, in Corera’s case, one could point to the recent National Security Capability review which cited the BBC as an element of Britain’s programme for advancing its geostrategic position. Harding, on the other hand, seems to have a telepathic link with the minds of Britain’s leading security personnel. His most prominent work of late consists of hatchet jobs on Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and propaganda pieces against Russia.

While the precise nature of the relations between Skripal, Miller, and Steele are hidden, enough is already known to raise sharp questions about Skripal’s ongoing involvement with British intelligence.

Was he, as Murray suggests hypothetically, in fact, a participant in the creation of Steele’s Trump dossier? Did he have inconvenient knowledge of ongoing British operations in and against Russia? And, most significant of all, was he targeted by MI6 or the CIA in a preemptive strike to ensure his silence?

These revelations come amid the latest expression of the ongoing collapse of the official Skripal narrative. Yesterday, the UK’s National Security Advisor, Sir Mark Sedwell, admitted that the security agencies had no suspects in the Skripal case.

On April 20, the Daily Telegraph reported,

“Police and intelligence agencies have identified key suspects in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia… Counter-terrorism police are now trying to build a case against ‘persons of interest,’ who are believed to be back in Russia.”

The Telegraph had “been told” that “a search of flight manifests in and out of the UK has yielded specific names in the hunt for the Skripal’s would-be assassins.”

This story had a shelf-life of eleven days. None of these issues will be probed by the media because the war drive against Russia will suffer no criticism.

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Featured image is from the author.

On May 20th Venezuelans will exert their right to elect their president and other local officials. It will be the 25th time that election of any type, and the fifth presidential election to take place since 1999 when Hugo Chavez was elected president. Venezuelans take great pride in this fact in a region that has seen far too many coups, military and otherwise.

However, there is a persistent campaign, endorsed by the US and Canadian governments, that this election will be a fraud. They will not give any proof for their assertion.  On the other hand I decided to learn more about the Venezuelan electoral system to see if such a deception is even possible. For that purpose I interviewed Wilfredo Perez Bianco who is Consul General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Vancouver, BC. What follows is my report from our conversation.

The first thing that Mr. Perez pointed out was that in order to understand the process that guarantees the right of Venezuelans to fairly elect their representatives, two articles of the Venezuelan constitution have to be kept in mind.

Article 62 of the Venezuelan constitution of 1999 establishes the democratic foundation of the electoral process in Venezuela. The first paragraph says,

All citizens have the right to participate freely in public affairs, directly or through their elected representatives.”

And the last paragraph concludes,

It is the obligation of the State and the duty of society to facilitate the generation of the most favorable conditions for its practice.”

It is significant to note that both State and society have a role in this process.

Article 63 of the constitution in turn establishes,

Suffrage is a right. It is exercised through free, universal, direct and secret ballots. The law will guarantee the principle of individuality of suffrage and proportional representation.”

The Venezuelan Electoral Power bases all its actions on the 1999 constitution, the Organic Law of the Electoral Power, the Organic Law of the Electoral Processes and the Organic Law of the Civil Registry. According to the division of powers established in the constitution, it has functional and budgetary autonomy, which guarantees its independence from other State bodies.

“Its governing body is the National Electoral Council (CNE for its name in Spanish), responsible for the transparency of electoral and referendum processes that guarantee to all Venezuelans, the efficient organization of all electoral events that take place in the country,” stated Mr. Perez. “It is their responsibility to regulate, direct and supervise the activities of their subordinate bodies, as well as guarantee compliance with the constitutional principles attributed to the Electoral Power,” he continued.

Currently, the voting system in Venezuela is a fully automated process and can be audited in all its phases. In 2004, Venezuela became the first country in the world to hold a national election with machines that printed the voucher or receipt, and in 2012, the first elections were held with biometric authentication of the elector and the subsequent activation of the voting machine.

This technological platform allows the use of a conventional voting (electronic) ballot where the voters press the name, face or party affiliation of the candidate for the election office. This method of voting was further strengthened with the use of the Integral Authentication System (SAI), the last phase of automation, which allows the voter to activate the machine with his fingerprint.

“This represents another guarantee for the integrity of the vote.”

Once the fingerprint of the voter is authenticated, the machine is activated so that the voter can vote directly on the machine’s screen or on the electronic ballot. The selected option appears on the screen and the voter has the possibility to confirm his vote by pressing the VOTE option.

This vote is stored randomly in the memory of the machine and at the end of the day is recorded in the printed totaling records. Said votes are collated with the physical vouchers of the receipt box in the subsequent audit.

Mr. Perez emphasized,

“The voting package of each machine travels encrypted through a secure network provided by the state telecommunications company CANTV. The network is isolated from the Internet and has multiple levels of security and authentication. No external computer can penetrate the election results.”

The totaling system rests on powerful servers, which receive the electoral results from all the voting machines distributed in the country. The totaling system only receives data from voting machines authenticated and authorized by the CNE, which are protected with an encrypted alphanumeric key through an electronic signature. This key does not depend on any single party because it is shared between the CNE and all participating political organizations.

The Automated Voting System follows various phases of vote verification protocol:

  • Audit of the automated system itself
  • Citizen verification
  • Processes following the election in the presence of representatives of the parties.

The complete system of electoral guarantees also includes an international presence – International Electoral Accompaniment Program – to accompany and observe the electoral process, get to know the operation of the Venezuelan system, and even contribute to its improvement.

Mr. Perez clarified,

“The participation allows electoral experts and other accredited persons, in all the technical and institutional stages, prior to the electoral event, during its development and after it. At all time, the accompanying persons interact with electoral authorities, technical teams of the CNE, electoral officials and with technical and political representatives of the participating political organizations, as well as with the media, within the framework of the conditions set by the CNE for the sovereignty and independence of Venezuela.”

In the upcoming elections of May 20 fifteen audits will be conducted in the different areas involved in the process of the Presidential Elections and Legislative Councils, and will comply with the standards used in the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections of 2015 to guarantee transparency in the exercise of the vote.

The audits will be carried out in the presence of witnesses of political organizations, national observers, international accompaniers, and technicians from different accompaniment missions. Mr. Perez informed

“these activities of revision can be followed in live broadcasts by clicking on the banner Canal CNE TV of the official site www.cne.gob.ve for anyone, anywhere to see.”

It appears that in compliance with the constitutional mandate, the CNE has created a unique legally bound and technologically sound electoral system, backed by the most comprehensive system of guarantees, which makes elections in Venezuela a safe, transparent and reliable expression of the sovereign will of the people and a full demonstration of a vibrant, participatory and protagonist democracy.

In concluding, the Venezuelan Consul stated,

“democracy is taken very seriously and is intensely lived in Venezuela. For Venezuelans, to live in a democracy is to debate, participate and be full protagonists in the construction of their destiny. In Venezuela, the right to elect or be elected is conceived as an essential human right and the State strives to guarantee and secure that right by all means available. Transparency is at the heart of the electoral system for the May 20 elections in Venezuela”

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Nino Pagliccia is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Israeli Nuclear Elephant in the Room

May 5th, 2018 by Stephen Lendman

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Iran and Israel are polar opposites on the nuclear issue – what’s rarely acknowledged in Western capitals or publicly discussed.

The Islamic Republic has no program to develop them, and wants them entirely eliminated to prevent their use.

The power of today’s thermonukes can turn metropolitan areas like New York to irradiated rubble.

Nuclear wars can’t be won. They risk nuclear winter if nukes are used in enough numbers.

“(N)uclear technology threatens life on our planet with extinction,” Helen Caldicott explained, adding:

“If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced.”

A “single failure of nuclear deterrence (could) start nuclear war.”

Devastating consequences would follow, potentially killing “tens of millions of people, and caus(ing) long-term, catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer.”

“The result would be a global nuclear famine that could kill up to one billion people.” Enough thermonuke detonations could potentially end life on earth.

Nuclear winter is the ultimate nightmare. No antidote exists, no coming back if things go this far. What should terrify everyone is never discussed publicly, largely ignored by Western media.

Humanity has a choice – eliminate these weapons entirely or they may eliminate us.

Washington, its Western partners and Israel unjustifiably criticize Iran over the issue of nuclear weapons it doesn’t have or want.

Run by extremely dangerous Zionist zealots, the Jewish state has been nuclear armed and dangerous since development of its capability began shortly after the nation’s founding.

David Ben-Gurion (Israel’s first prime minister) and Shimon Peres were the driving forces behind Israeli development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

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

In 1964, France built the Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev. Israeli production of nukes began in the 1960s. South Africa collaborated with Israeli nuclear weapons development until the early 1990s.

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

Image on the right: Mordechai Vanunu in 2004 shows the article for which he was imprisoned.

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

Today its thermonukes can potentially destroy large cities. In 2009, anti-nuclear activist John Steinbach published a paper on Israel’s nuclear weapons program, saying:

“With several hundred weapons and a robust delivery system, Israel has quietly supplanted Britain as the world’s fifth largest nuclear power, and now rivals France and China in terms of the size of its nuclear arsenal” – while maintaining nuclear ambiguity to this day.

Israel has no nuclear power plants for electricity generation. It’s nuclear program is focused on weapons development and production.

Its sophisticated capability heightens the regional and global risk it poses. Its open secret is well known.

In Pentagon report, a Pentagon report titled “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations” was Washington’s first official acknowledgment of Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

It includes a vast array of facilities – “equivalent to (America’s) Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” the report said, adding:

They’re “an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories.”

Its program includes extensive R&D facilities, factories, private companies, and government research centers devoted to developing, upgrading, producing and maintaining Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

Today, Israeli nuclear sophistication is far more advanced than 30 years ago. Its regimes were given or stole US technology for decades.

Knowledge about it was systematically ignored or suppressed. Political, economic, military and technological partnership between both countries is longstanding.

Washington actively aided Israel develop sophisticated nuclear weapons able to incinerate cities far distant from its borders – violating US law.

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

Both nations are run by neocon extremists, waging endless wars, Israel against Palestinians and Syria, America against humanity at home and abroad.

Iran hasn’t attacked another nation in centuries, threatening none now. It’s armed with conventional weapons alone – solely for defense, not offense.

Yet Washington and Israel consider it an existential threat – a bald-faced lie, a pretext for wanting its sovereign independence replaced by pro-Western puppet rule.

Iran threatens no one. Washington and Israel threaten world peace and humanity’s survival.

If launched, war on Iran could be devastating far beyond its borders. Catastrophic global war could follow, the world’s two dominant nuclear powers possibly pitted against each other.

What’s unthinkable could happen because of extremists in charge of warmaking in Washington and Israel.

The human species could become the first one ever to destroy itself – and virtually everything else along with it.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

China’s reported deployment of anti-ship and cruise missiles to its reclaimed islands in the South China Sea was the inevitable action of a country that chose to act first in order to thwart its American adversary from doing the same thing at a more disadvantageous time in the future.

All of Asia seems to be talking about what’s being framed in the Mainstream Media as China’s “provocative” decision to deploy anti-ship and cruise missiles to its reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, with pundits decrying this move as “militarizing” the region and therefore signifying a “threat” to so-called “freedom of navigation”. Avoiding the polemical quagmire of forever arguing over the international legality of Beijing’s nine-dash line, the simple fact is that China was the strongest regional party to assertively stake out its claim, a dramatically proactive measure that stands in stark contrast to this country’s characteristic overabundance of caution.

The People’s Republic must have intensely carried out years of scenario planning before ever making its first move in the South China Sea, understanding that the process that it set into motion would be irreversible and have a global strategic impact given the importance of this waterway to the world economy and the symbolism of China going so far as to establish tangible “facts on the ground” (or rather, in this case, water) to back up its claim. Evidently, China came to the conclusion that it would be better for its long-term interests to act and risk international opprobrium than to passively sit back and let the US reclaim its regional allies’ islands and fortify them with military equipment instead.

It might seem “unfair” for the comparatively weaker countries of the South China Sea to countenance, but the only real actors that matter when it comes to this waterway are China and the US, with the remaining states leaning more closely to one or the other in helping their “patron” establish the control that they aspire to wield. Extrapolating even further, the dichotomy is essentially between the competing models of multipolar and unipolar globalization, whereby the former Chinese-led model sees Beijing attempt to reform the existing “rules of the game” to it and its partners’ advantage while the latter American-led one tries its best to retain the current system to it and its own partners’ benefit.

Vietnam is firmly in the American camp when it comes to the delineation of the South China Sea, whereas the US’ former colony of the Philippines has pivoted towards China ever since President Duterte came to office almost exactly two years ago. The Pentagon’s “pincer” plan to “trap” China between two weak but American-backed “Lead From Behind” claimants supported by the “Quad’s” other Indo-Japanese and Australian members has therefore failed and presented Beijing with the window of opportunity that it needed in order to break through the “containment” wall that was being built around it. It’s in this geopolitical context that it felt comfortable enough with the progress it’s made in backing up its claims to deploy state-of-the-art weaponry there.

The US and its allies are predictably fear mongering that this will somehow infringe on what they like to term as “freedom of navigation”, but the reality is that China wouldn’t “cut off its own nose to spite its face”, so to say, by interfering with maritime shipments through this route and inadvertently sabotaging its own trade networks. For that matter, Japan also wouldn’t be interested in this either, but the economic survival of the remaining three members of the “Quad” and their regional Vietnamese partner isn’t dependent on traversing the South China Sea beyond the disputed islets, hence why they’re less sensitive to any potential trade disruption here as the expected result of a forthcoming crisis.

China has proven that it’s the most powerful force in the South China Sea and has neutralized the US’ Vietnamese-Philippine “pincer” through the skillful use of Silk Road diplomacy with Manilla, meaning that Washington’s only real hope for responding to Beijing’s latest missile move in the region is to enhance its and the rest of the “Quad’s” military cooperation with Hanoi. As a prelude to this eventuality kicking into high gear, it can be anticipated that an infowar offensive will be launched in the near future in attempting to scare Vietnam into thinking that these Chinese armaments are directed against it and not the US naval assets in the area.

The “Quad” wants to formalize Vietnam’s already de-facto inclusion into this framework in order to create what could then be described as the “Quint”, but it first needs to manufacture a “publicly plausible” pretext for selling this unprecedented foreign policy realignment to the country’s public. The ASEAN state isn’t anywhere near powerful enough to challenge China on its own, hence why it would need to rely on the military expertise that only the US could realistically provide for it through a military partnership focusing mostly on naval and missile technologies. As ironic as it may be to imagine, there’s the distinct possibility that China’s missiles might one day soon be countered by American ones sold to Vietnam, but only if the infowar succeeds in making this “deal with the devil” “acceptable”.

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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.

Featured image is from EF.

2018: When Orwell’s 1984 Stopped Being Fiction

May 5th, 2018 by Jonathan Cook

This is the moment when a newspaper claiming to uphold that most essential function in a liberal democracy – acting as a watchdog on power – formally abandons the task. This is the moment when it positively embraces the role of serving as a mouthpiece for the government. The tell is in one small word in a headline on today’s Guardian’s front page: “Revealed”.

When I trained as a journalist, we reserved a “Revealed” or an “Exposed” for those special occasions when we were able to bring to the reader information those in power did not want known. These were the rare moments when as journalists we could hold our heads high and claim to be monitoring the centres of power, to be fulfilling our sacred duty as the fourth estate.

But today’s Guardian’s “exclusive” story “Revealed: UK’s push to strengthen anti-Russia alliance” is doing none of this. Nothing the powerful would want hidden from us is being “revealed”. No one had to seek out classified documents or speak to a whistleblower to bring us this “revelation”. Everyone in this story – the journalist Patrick Wintour, an anonymous “Whitehall official”, and the named politicians and think-tank wonks – is safely in the same self-congratulatory club, promoting a barely veiled government policy: to renew the Cold War against Russia.

It is no accident that the government chose the Guardian as the place to publish this “exclusive” press release. That single word “Revealed” in the headline serves two functions that reverse the very rationale for liberal, watchdog-style journalism.

First, it is designed to disorientate the reader in Orwellian – or maybe Lewis Caroll – fashion, inverting the world of reality. The reader is primed for a disclosure, a secret, and then is spoonfed familiar government propaganda: that the tentacles of a Russian octopus are everywhere, that the Reds are again under our beds – or at least, poisoning our door handles.

British diplomats plan to use four major summits this year – the G7, the G20, Nato and the European Union – to try to deepen the alliance against Russia hastily built by the Foreign Office after the poisoning of the former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March.

This – and thousands of similar examples we are exposed to every day in the discourse of our politicians and media – is the way our defences are gradually lowered, our critical thinking weakened, in ways that assist those in power to launch their assault on democratic norms. Through such journalistic fraud, liberal media like the Guardian and BBC – because they claim to be watchdogs on power, to defend the interests of the ruled, not the rulers – serve a vital role in preparing the ground for the coming changes that will restrict dissent, tighten controls on social media, impose harsher laws.

The threat is set out repeatedly in the Guardian’s framing of the story: there is a self-evident need for “a more comprehensive approach to Russian disinformation”; Moscow is determined “systematically to divide western electorates and sow doubt”; “the west finds itself arguing with Russia not just about ideology, or interests, but Moscow’s simple denial, or questioning, of what the western governments perceive as unchallengeable facts.”

Tom Tugendhat, son a High Court judge, a former army officer who was honoured with an MBE by the Queen in his thirties, and was appointed chair of the Commons’ important foreign affairs select committee after two years in parliament, sets out the thinking of the British establishment – and hints at the likely solutions. He tells the Guardian:

Putin is waging an information war designed to turn our strongest asset – freedom of speech – against us. Russia is trying to fix us through deception.

Second, there is a remedy for the disorientation created by that small word “Revealed”. It subtly forces the reader to submit to the inversion.

For the reasons set out above, a rational response to this front-page story is to doubt that Wintour, his editors, and the Guardian newspaper itself are quite as liberal as they claim to be, that they take seriously the task of holding power to account. It is to abandon the consoling assumption that we, the 99 per cent, have our own army – those journalists in the bastions of liberal media like the Guardian and the BBC – there to protect us. It is to realise that we are utterly alone against the might of the corporate world. That is a truly disturbing, terrifying even, conclusion.

But that sense of abandonment and dread can be overcome. The world can be set to rights again – and it requires only one small leap of faith. If Russian president Vladimir Putin truly is an evil mastermind, if Russia is an octopus with tentacles reaching out to every corner of the globe, if there are Russian agents hiding in the ethers ready to deceive you every time you open your laptop, and Russian cells preparing to fix your elections so that the Muscovian candidate (Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn?) wins, then the use of that “Revealed” is not only justified but obligatory. The Guardian isn’t spouting British and US government propaganda, it is holding to account the supremely powerful and malevolent Russian state.

Once you have stepped through this looking glass, once you have accepted that you are living in Oceania and in desperate need of protection from Eurasia, or is it Eastasia?, then the Guardian is acting as a vital watchdog – because the enemy is within. Our foe is not those who rule us, those who have all the wealth, those who store their assets offshore so they don’t have to pay taxes, those who ignore devastating climate breakdown because reforms would be bad for business. No, the real enemy are the sceptics, the social media “warriors”, the political activists, even the leader of the British Labour party. They may sound and look harmless, but they are not who or what they seem. There are evil forces standing behind them.

In this inverse world, the coming draconian changes are not a loss but a gain. You are not losing the rights you enjoy now, or rights you might need in the future when things get even more repressive. The restrictions are pre-emptive, there to protect you before Putin and his bots have not only taken over cyberspace but have entered your living space. Like the aggressive wars of “humanitarian intervention” the west is waging across the oil-rich areas of the Middle East, the cruelty is actually kindness. Those who object, those who demur, do so only because they are in the financial or ideological grip of the mastermind Putin.

This is the moment when war becomes peace, freedom becomes slavery, ignorance becomes strength.

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Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The world is in a depth of crisis that extends well beyond the more obvious outbreaks of geopolitical strife.

Regardless of who, if anyone, is a “good guy” or a “bad guy,” science and technology have allowed collective humanity to develop weapons of mass destruction sufficient to destroy not just homo sapiens, but all life on Earth. Pollution and environmental degradation from industrial, military, and technological uses, including ubiquitous electronic and/or chemical contamination of air, water, and soil, have resulted in a level of peril difficult to diagnose and seemingly impossible to regulate.

We are also seeing a telling correlation between the soaring human population and an epic die-off of non-human species. One result is a documented decline of species at the bottom of the food chain: pollinating insects on land and plankton in the oceans. Already we are seeing a decline in bird populations that feed on the vanishing insects.

As the food chain collapse works its way up to the level of human food supplies, mass starvation could result. We are already seeing adverse effects through lower food quality, as high-glycemic products containing empty calories replace more nutritious and natural foods. A probable result is an explosion of inflammation-caused illnesses like diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.

The spectacle of nations and alliances fighting over supremacy on our radically endangered planet shows humanity’s insane short-sightedness, even as communication and transportation technology have brought people from faraway places closer together. Politically, the destruction is being wrought under a paradigm of nationalism and imperialism that reflects underlying ideologies of competition/predation vs. cooperation/compassion.

“Get what you can while there’s still time,” seems to be the ruling age-old mantra.

All is not lost, perhaps, as sizeable numbers of people are seeking truth through the spirit, which conceivably could also result in a greater sense of personal responsibility and long-term improvement of external conditions. But the immediate danger remains. Can anything bring us out of it short of global catastrophe?

What about the organized religions? The number of people who declare themselves “spiritual but not religious” testify that the two are not the same. Where then is hope for the future to be sought, and how does that hope play out in social, economic, and political life within and among nations?

I have written on these themes since retiring as a federal government analyst in 2007 and publishing my book Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age. I believed then, and do now, that the Challenger disaster was a microcosm of our era: incredibly complex technology blowing up in our faces and taking human life, mainly due to failures arising from our dishonesty and hubris.

Today’s crisis has a profound ethical dimension: what is right and wrong in our approach to life, how did we get into the present mess, and what we can do now, at the 11th hour, to solve our dilemmas? Inevitably, these questions invoke theology: the study of the divine.

Is there a God? How does He/She/It factor into the problems we face? Can we pray for help or are we stuck with the necessity of solving problems on our own? Are human beings ultimately immortal in spirit, or are we even moral, spending as much time as we do fighting each other over who is right and wrong and over things?

In presenting the following thoughts I want to acknowledge at the outset that I am speaking mainly of life in the West: largely the Americas and Europe (along perhaps with Australia and New Zealand), which is the portion of the world shaped historically by Christianity.

I limit myself in part because of the constraints of time and space. Also, I do not have the direct personal experience needed to comment similarly on life in the Islamic world or those nations formed historically by followers of the Eastern religions.

Nevertheless, the same questions may apply to those parts of the world as well. Let the reader be the judge.

Also, at the outset, I wish to offer the reader an apology. I am neither a scholar nor a specialist, nor someone with any unique knowledge or wisdom. I am an ordinary man, a retired analyst with the U.S. federal government, and an occasional commentator on world events.

But I like to write, and I like to think about “the big issues.” I believe that the urgency of the times requires us to speak up, despite our limitations.

I am grateful to the Global Research website for carrying my material over the last decade. The internet gives may of us a voice who otherwise would have been ignored or suppressed by the powers that control the corporate media.

So, if the thoughts expressed in this essay are of any interest to you, that’s fine. If not, that’s okay too.

The article is long, so relax and take your time. Comments are welcome at the email address appearing at the end.

Lets Start with the American “Evangelicals”

We are talking about “big issues” indeed. Here in the U.S., we are accustomed to the notion of “separation of church and state,” where matters of faith are not supposed to influence public discourse. We are expected to get by through manmade laws, social customs, discussion and compromise, representative democracy, and our innate sense of right and wrong.

You now may be laughing. How is any of this helping today? How much of these things, and their effectiveness, is self-delusion or wishful thinking? Maybe all of it?

Where does religion then fit in? It’s a fact that despite the separation of church and state, the laws of the U.S. and most other nations are religion-based and may be found, for instance, in the Ten Commandments—at least portions of those Commandments that contain prohibitions on murder, stealing, bearing false witness, and adultery, plus an admonition for fair play implied by the prohibition on coveting what belongs to our neighbor.

Like it or not, our laws are rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, even though portions of our society, including many corporations, politicians, and intelligence agencies—not just common criminals—appear to consider themselves exempt.

But in both the U.S. and other nations, religious establishments—some ancient but others newly minted—struggle to find relevance. Still, at least in the U.S., public figures cite religious beliefs or predilections to gain support or justify decisions. Beneath the surface, however, is a tremendous spiritual ferment that affects all of society.

Onlookers generally agree that the election of Donald Trump as president of the U.S. would have been unthinkable without the votes and vocal support of white “evangelical” Christians, especially in the South and Midwest. The role of the evangelicals as a political force dates from President Richard Nixon’s 1968 “Southern Strategy,” when the Republicans brought about a shift of the “Solid South” away from the Democrats by playing on white resentment of President Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights reforms.

Image below is from Politico

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Now, as the Trump administration attempts to navigate “Russiagate” and keep the Republican Party afloat with the 2018 midterm elections approaching, the president’s strongest source of cheerleading comes from the so-called “Christian Right,” via such figures as former Arkansas governor Mike Hukabee, who broadcasts on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and standby Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network. Also instrumental, among many others, is the support of Jerry Falwell, Jr., who succeeded his father as the head of the immensely influential Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.

Observers underestimate the emotional force that drives these allegiances. How strongly did Hillary Clinton’s calling-out of Trump’s “deplorables” in the 2016 election backfire?

The politicians who rely on evangelical support have an array of hot-button social issues at their disposal to arouse anger and fear and get out the vote, including abortion, crime among racial minorities, same-sex marriages, and “entitlements,” including the numbers of people on welfare, food, stamps, and Medicaid.

Underlying much of the resentment is good-old-fashioned racism. Many of the more politically visible evangelicals are angry white people. Some of the anger even extends to social programs largely paid for by individual lifetime earnings, such as Medicare and Social Security.

The evangelicals, being good Republicans, are among those who oppose government “interference” in social and economic life, including limitations on assault weapons. Yet they support the biggest “welfare” program of all—the military/industrial/intelligence complex with its millions of employees and multi-trillion dollar budget.

A potent alliance has also taken shape between the evangelicals and the nation of Israel. The evangelicals are heavily influenced by the ideas of “Dispensationalism,” which is a system of theology that began in Great Britain early in the 19th century and takes as literal the supposed prophecies in the Biblical Book of Revelation pertaining to a time of great tribulation, culminating in a final battle between good and evil preceding the Second Coming.

The return of the Jews to Israel in modern times is viewed as an essential stage, with war in the Middle East culminating in the battle of Armageddon. But then comes the “Rapture”(!) when the Chosen People of God will be rewarded for their faith and fortitude.

Some find traces of modern-day Zionism in the political agitation carried out over a century ago by the British Dispensationalists who first developed it into a system under someone named John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). This agitation, along with centuries-old persecution of the Jews in Europe, often led by the Catholic Church, led to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the creation of the state of Israel in Palestine after World War II.

The leaders of modern Israel have consciously allied themselves with the American evangelicals, including financial support for institutions like Liberty University, paid trips to the Holy Land, etc. Dispensationalism has also made inroads into the Catholic Church, as well as the chaplain services at the military academies and the regular armed forces.

But is Dispensationalism the truth? Its claims have been debunked by many scholars, including Elaine Pagels of Princeton University.

In her book Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Pagels makes clear that the Biblical text does not refer to a supposed “end of the world” that may happen any time, much less in the 20th-21st centuries, but rather images, themes, and ideas growing out of the destruction of Israel through the Jewish-Roman wars of the 1st and 2nd centuries.

For followers of the author of The Book of Revelation, John of Patmos (not John, the disciple “whom Jesus loved” and supposed author of the Fourth Gospel), the “Whore of Babylon” was pagan Rome and the state religion based on emperor-worship. But by the 4th century, when Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine, this “Whore” became whatever “heresy” happened to be current among competing groups of Christians.

Many of those labeled heretics were so-called because they did not accept, or had no need, for the increasingly powerful hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons ruling over the dioceses the imperial rulers had parceled out.

In other words, Church officialdom didn’t have a clue of what John of Patmos might have meant when he wrote The Book of Revelation three centuries earlier. Rather the violent imagery of God smashing up the enemy of the hour proved a handy device of power politics for the ruling structure.

“God is on our side” has a long pedigree.

This organizational imperative assured that, under Constantine and his successors, the strange document John of Patmos wrote made it into the official Bible. Ever since, Christians have been wondering what The Book of Revelation is really about, with some gaining encouragement to periodically give away all they own and stand on hilltops awaiting an end that does not come.

One of the latest was Harold Camping, “the California preacher who used his evangelical radio ministry and thousands of billboards to broadcast the end of the world and then gave up public prophecy when his date-specific doomsdays did not come to pass.”

Camping died in 2013 at age 92. “His independent Christian media empire spent millions of dollars—some of it from donations made by followers who quit their jobs and sold all their possessions—to spread the word on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the Judgment Day message.”

A few centuries ago, the great Protestant reformer Martin Luther said the Bible should not even contain The Book of Revelation, as “there is no Christ in it.” (Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Viking Penguin, 2012, p.3) Yet today, John of Patmos’s narrative, with the Four Horsemen, the Apocalypse, Armageddon, and the rest, still provides immense emotional backing for U.S. policy of endless war in the Middle East.

Spirituality in the West Today

With Catholics also, the social issues of abortion, etc., have brought about a shift toward the right, even though Catholics, back when many were newly-immigrated from such nations as Ireland, Italy, and Poland, traditionally formed the backbone of big-city Democratic Party politics. The growing conservatism of Catholics has manifested through the ongoing reaction against the reforms of Vatican II, reforms that began in the early 1960s but have largely ground to a halt today.

This conservatism has led many Catholics to oppose Pope Francis, who has had the nerve to suggest that divorced people might still be allowed at Mass or that Catholics should stop breeding “like rabbits.” Some even regard Francis as an “anti-pope,” due to his attitudes of inclusivity.

The 1960s not only saw Vatican II, along with a tremendously popular surge among Catholics in individual religious experience through the Charismatic Renewal, but liberalizing tendencies among both Protestants and Jews that played important roles in the agitation against the Vietnam War, and in the civil rights and antipoverty movements. But the upsurge of the 1960s was not carried on by the next generation, so, along with the aging population from that era, has tended to fade away.

For many people who no longer found sufficient meaning in the Christian churches or Jewish synagogues, Eastern spirituality also appeared on the scene in a big way in the 1950s and 60s. Today, Eastern practices such as yoga, meditation, and traditional Chinese medicine have replaced or supplemented church participation for millions of people.

Some Christian churches have taken to practices like “meditation with mantra,” a kind of spiritual exercise borrowed from Hinduism/Buddhism, but also found among such early Christians as the Desert Fathers.

Unlike the evangelicals, practitioners involved in Eastern teachings tend to support progressive causes or have dropped out of politics altogether. Also influential, especially among Middle Eastern immigrants or many African-Americans, are the teachings of Islam.

Another spiritual movement with major social impact has been Alcoholics Anonymous and related 12-Step recovery programs. AA is based on principles of spiritual practice drawn largely from Christianity but often much more intensely personal and experiential than what is found in the churches.

AA provides a home for many people who are, or consider themselves to be, outcasts. AA can be found worldwide, including among Native American populations, and specifically eschews any political bias. Members may still have strong political opinions, of course.

Speaking of Native Americans, a powerful revival of native spiritual traditions is underway throughout the Americas, sometimes, but not always, in combination with Christianity. This includes some Amazon shamans who venerate Our Lady of Guadalupe along with Jesus and the saints.

Many people find spiritual value in their activities of daily life—family, profession, team or individual sports, interpersonal relationships, or contact with nature. This may or may not be found in combination with institutional religion or may satisfy a person for a while but intensify into something deeper or more personal as time passes. Of course such activity may be mixed up with motives of greed, fear, or obsession, but so may formal religious practice.

There are also people who find a deeper spiritual sense by grappling with personal or psychological problems, including the huge numbers affected by childhood traumas and abuse, by PTSD, or by issues arising through health crises, addictions, financial stress, or victimization. Often these issues are impervious to generalized religious guidance and require intense one-on-one-work with a professional therapist. Such therapy may include a spiritual dimension.

For many people, one-on-one or group therapy doesn’t work or is not affordable. Many rely on the vast array of psychoactive drugs for relief. For some, such medication is the only thing that makes normal life even possible.

Even atheism and agnosticism may attempt to offer a quasi-spiritual solution to the problems that beset everyone as part of human life. The philosophy of existentialism speaks to people in their loneliness and lack of guidance in a world where everyday values of achievement and acquisition offer little comfort.

Much of modern literature, art, and music is based on existential themes. Carson McCullers’ book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter captured the mood. So did J.D. Salinger’s A Catcher in the Rye. Existentialism has penetrated theology through such works as Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be.

Of course there is often a thin line between existentialism and a nihilism that may lead to self-destruction.

With these diverse movements underway, all of which can be experienced in combination with others, and taking into account the pervasive materialism of consumer culture, attendance at mainstream churches has plummeted, with many closing their doors or barely keeping afloat.

Some churches attempt to remain relevant by offering meeting space to community groups or by doing volunteer work among the poor, the sick and dying, or prison populations. Others try to survive as bastions of tradition, though often with declining congregations.

Others rely on emotionalism or spreading the fear of damnation to attract, engage, or keep followers. Often churches or individual ministers broaden their appeal by TV, radio, or on-line broadcasts.

But many people are sleepwalking through life without being particularly interested in anything other than the ups and downs of daily existence. For them, such a life may be sufficient, although they are easily manipulated by propaganda, advertising slogans, political electioneering, mindless media fare, etc. The sleepwalking masses may in fact be the most dangerous component of society.

The Dark Side

Spirituality definitely has a dark side. We already discussed some of that with our reflections on the link between Dispensationalism and endless war.

There are many other inhabitants of the shadowy world of borderline cults—the lairs of gurus, secret societies, occultists, covens, esoteric groups, channelers, “the UFO community,” on-line “masters,” various spiritual predators, etc. Fortunes are often made by these practitioners through their appeal to people’s fascination with the mysterious and the unknown, thereby taking advantage of our genuine need for companionship and reliable guidance.

Cheats and swindlers abound in these fields, including many, it is said, who are themselves deceived by demonic entities that inhabit the twilight spheres. The internet is an apt vehicle for all this.

Then there is the world of alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitution, pornography, loan sharking, money laundering and other deviant pastimes intended to captivate souls. There does in fact appear to be a powerful Satanic presence on planet Earth that utilizes these things for its purposes.

One of these purposes may be to waylay or even destroy souls that are seeking to escape the downward pull of planetary life through their spiritual striving. All who are serious about their spirituality recognize the power of such allurement, as well as the temptations of fame, power, and greed.

The Satanic forces are aided by their human minions who make billions of dollars off their fellow beings by corrupting and destroying them. These minions pay a heavy price, of course, for the benefits received.

It would be nonsense to claim that such deviance does not have a political role. Hitler and the Nazis were occultists. It has been acknowledged by the CIA Office of Inspector General that the spy agency is involved in international drug dealing. Profits are widely believed to fuel the “black budget” used to overthrow foreign governments, etc.

One of the kingpins who was key in financing Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential bid, thereby contributing to the upright goals of the Christian evangelicals (!), was a Las Vegas casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson. Among the most important early financiers of Israel was the American organized crime figure, Meyer Lansky.

This is not to say, of course, that religious institutions that appear on the surface to be legitimate are not corrupted as well. Sometimes such corruption breaks the surface, as with the scandal involving widespread pederasty among the Catholic priesthood. When asked about corruption in the Papal Curia, Pope Francis reportedly said:

“And, yes…it is difficult. In the Curia, there are also holy people, really, there are holy people. But there also is a stream of corruption, there is that as well, it is true….The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there….We need to see what we can do…”

But the existence of evil in the world does not necessarily support the perspective presented by the Book of Revelation that has been used over millenniums to justify attacks by the orthodox on dissenters. It was the Christian churches that exploited the “good vs. evil” paradigm it inherited from the Roman Empire, with those who are “good” going to “heaven” and the “evil” going to “hell.”

As Elaine Pagels describes in her book previously mentioned, this attitude actually was formed in a very short time during the formation of what became the Catholic Church in the 4th century C.E., when Christianity became the Roman Empire’s official religion. (Ibid, p.133ff) As noted earlier, the Book of Revelation then became the club the Church used to bludgeon people who fell outside the structure of diocesan religion headed by bishops, priests, and deacons. For them, ordination assured a salary, state approval, security, and status.

Gradually, the clergy became a celibate cadre of professionals who held the “Keys to the Kingdom.” Scripture, often ambiguous in meaning, was used—possibly even forged—to prop up the system.

The good vs. evil mythology has continued ever since to support wars, crusades, genocides, inquisitions, pogroms, witchcraft trials, “clashes of civilization,” etc.

The same mentality continues today as the U.S. fights much of the world to uphold its self-image—and privileges—as the “exceptional nation.” It’s part of the same self-centered delusion. Meanwhile, the real sources of evil slip through the net of discernment.

The brand of organized Christianity that developed through history as the handmaiden of the imperial state was based on an “us vs. them” psychology. The “us” would be saved; the “them” condemned.

It’s really the psychology of the wolf-pack—the destruction by the strong of the weak. Social Darwinism has played into this mentality.

The Protestant Reformation was intended at first to correct this twist by allowing every believer to be a “priest” in studying and applying the teachings of Jesus. But the Protestants were never able to complete their revolution. They were taken over by the rise and dominance of the European nation-state.

Protestants too fell in line with the power of the imperial establishment, eventually becoming the evangelicals of today. Jesus, the mediator of love for all, cannot be blamed for this.

Of course the European nation-state gave way to the might of the U.S. through two world wars and countless smaller ones. We might note the strange resemblance between the power and privileges of the Christian clergy, at least up until recent times, to today’s military hierarchy. Both are afforded an adoration verging on worship.

Both are intensely conservative. Both also have as their objective control—of human populations and of resources.

Both aim to preserve the wealth and power of societal elites. Both give lip service to religious values.

Both have depended for their livelihood on demonization of an enemy—heretics for the churchmen, “terrorists” and Russians for those in uniform today. It’s even more uncanny that both derive at least some of their justification from The Book of Revelation, with today’s evangelicals bridging the gap of almost two thousand years.

The fact that both are outdated is shown by their total inability to bring humanity back from today’s brink of self-annihilation. Something new, different, unique, and positive is needed.

Listening to the Germans

While the foregoing provides enough material about the present status of spirituality in the U.S. to make the necessary points, the same also applies to what may be found in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand. There is one big difference in that the clergy of mainstream churches in some countries are paid a salary by the government. This may keep a church in operation, even though it may have little active congregation.

Not that such support is inappropriate. Many European churches, for instance, are very old and integral parts of a nation’s cultural heritage. They can and should be preserved, including their traditional liturgy for those who want and need it. Nevertheless, in countries with a state-supported church, taxpayers can usually opt out by declaring that they do not have a religious affiliation.

As in the U.S., most churches in Europe today are searching for a mission. In both England and Ireland, we see a search for the spirituality of the past going back to Celtic or Druid days. Europe, including Russia, is also host to a huge diversity of spiritual paths, including those from indigenous Eastern religions. Also within Russia can be found a profound revival of the Orthodox Church.

But Europe has something the U.S. and the other English-speaking nations lack; namely, a deep familiarity with the cultural accomplishments of the Germans, including those of the German-speaking Austrians and Swiss.

We are familiar with parts of this tradition. We appreciate the heritage of the great German composers, especially Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. In philosophy we have a passing acquaintance with Kant and Hegel. We have heard of Goethe. We know that modern psychology was pioneered by German-speaking practitioners like Freud and Jung.

We are handicapped by an anti-German prejudice left over from the two world wars. Another handicap is American ethnocentrism that prevents us from learning foreign languages. This is caused by a combination of factors: national pride, the size and relative isolation of the U.S. from other parts of the world, and plain laziness.

But to truly plumb the depths of what the German world has to say to us today, we must humble ourselves and dig deeper. If we do so, we sooner or later will end up at the doorstep of Karl Barth. Standing near him is the martyr of World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Karl Barth: 20th Century Prophet

First, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), who died too young, executed by the Nazis even as the Americans were fighting their way into Germany at the end of World War II. Bonhoeffer was hanged for his association with the army plots to assassinate Hitler. Much of his relatively slender body of work is available in English translation, including the poignantly-titled The Cost of Discipleship.

When Bonhoeffer came to the U.S. as a young man to study for a couple of semesters at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, he found the lectures boring because they mainly aimed at preparing students for holding jobs as church pastors.

This led to shallowness and complacency in the teaching. Nor could Bonhoeffer abide the fundamentalism and racism he found when traveling to the American South.

So he ended up spending much of his time at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem presided over by Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. He said the blacks were the only ones he found in America with enthusiastic devotion, and for the rest of his short life he continued to play and sing their music—he was a pianist—among his students back in Germany.

But it is Karl Barth (1886-1968) to which I wish to devote most of the rest of this essay. Barth’s is a name many have heard spoken, but few know what he actually said and how that is relevant today. He became world-famous after World War II, making the cover of Time in 1962, when he traveled to lecture to large audiences in the U.S.

But time was not kind to Barth. He was not easy to understand, though contemporaries compared him to such figures as St. Augustine, St. Thomas of Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. His writings were studied by Catholics and Protestants alike, as a small library of commentaries appeared.

But today the English translations of most of his books are not even in print. Copies of his magnum opus, the fourteen-volume Church Dogmatics (a forbidding name!) are almost impossible to locate, and even so, may cost hundreds of dollars for a used edition.

The German Protestant theologians were tough-minded thinkers. They started the “historical Jesus” movement and rejected notions they thought were borrowed from Greek mythology like the Virgin Birth. Many rejected infant baptism or argued against a physical resurrection of Jesus’s human body.

Like their forebears Luther and Calvin, Protestants rejected the idea of a celibate clergy, so their clergy married and raised families. The Protestants also viewed monasticism as unnatural and running away from life. Many of them also took seriously Jesus’s affections for the poor and downtrodden.

In his first assignment as a pastor in Safenwil, Switzerland, the young Karl Barth spent so much time helping the workers in his congregation organize a trade union that he was called “Comrade Pastor.” This earned him the ire of local industrialists who thought a clergyman should help the riff-raff happily keep quiet. Later Barth joined the Social Democratic Party.

In December 1911, at the age of 25, Barth published an article in the socialist daily Free Aargau that defined his views of the relationship between social justice and Christianity to which he would adhere for his entire life. The article was explained decades later by his biographer, Eberhard Busch:

“In it, Barth drew a contrast between the church, which for 1800 years had failed to deal with social needs, and Jesus Christ as the partisan of the poor, for whom there had been ‘only one God, in solidarity with society,’ and according to whom one ‘has to be a comrade to be a man at all.’ True socialism was the true Christianity for our time. However, true socialism was not what the socialists were doing but what Jesus was doing. This was also the socialists’ ultimate aim, but only their aim.

“Barth did not say all this in order to win the workers to the church. How could he? ‘Jesus is not the church’; indeed, with its ‘pie in the sky’ attitude towards material needs, the church was opposed to Jesus Christ.

“Barth spoke as he did, rather, because he believed that the Kingdom of God was close to the poor and that Jesus identified himself with them. In this sense, ‘the real significance of the person of Jesus can be summed up in the two words ‘”social movement.”’ Therefore, ‘the spirit which counts before God is the social spirit.’” (Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1994, p.70)

At a time when mankind had fallen in love with his own image, following on the Enlightenment and the triumphs of the Industrial Revolution, Karl Barth, of a lineage of Swiss Reformed theologians and growing up in small Swiss city of Basle with its palpable medieval heritage, saw humanity instead as a community of down-to-earth people striving to live by faith, but always susceptible to failings of character and intent.

While some theologians were tearing down the mythology the churches had always attached to the person of Jesus and seeking through liberalism and humanitarianism to find a way to have human goodness without qualification or sacrifice, Barth felt deeply the inability of people to live decent and humble lives without the revelation from God the Father that came through his Son Jesus Christ.

For Barth, the parable of the prodigal son was central to an understanding of how far unredeemed humanity could stray from the true meaning of life. He took seriously the idea that a Christian life began with the baptism of repentance as taught in the pages of the New Testament and saw as its central image the suffering of Jesus on the cross, followed by his death and spiritual resurrection.

Barth’s journey brought him eventually to a theology based on the Word of God as taught in the Bible and given to mankind through grace. His departure from the newfangled and modernistic doctrines that departed from this vision led him to a lifelong work referred to today as “neo-orthodox.”

His teachings were also called “Christocentric,” in that theologians were not called upon to give their own interpretations but to make accessible to contemporary humanity what Jesus was really saying. Notably, he did not include any of the “millennial” teachings based on The Book of Revelation in his ministry.

As indicated in his views on social justice, Barth viewed Jesus as having special care for those broken in life and needful of compassion. At the height of his fame, and upon his mandatory retirement from teaching at age 70, he spent a significant part of his time ministering to men and women in prison.

He didn’t just preach there; he also spent time with individuals in their prison cells, getting to know them, and seeing the light of goodness in their hearts, minds, and souls.

Barth’s attitude saw special meaning in the horror of World War I and the complete destruction of human pride, especially in Europe, by the useless sacrifice of millions of young men in the trenches and on the battlefields of both the Western and Eastern fronts. Following that war, the demoralization of humanity was complete, with a Germany seething in anger at the punitive measures adopted by the Allies at Versailles.

After the war, Barth became known for his book on The Epistle to the Romans. Here was a theologian who actually believed what the Gospels said, without promulgating his own subjective interpretations to suit the church politics of the day.

Barth first published his book on The Epistle to the Romans when he was only 32 years old. It was significant that he found the heart of Jesus’s teaching in the presence of God manifested through the interaction between the Apostle Paul and the early Roman Christian congregation.

Paul wrote the Epistle sometime between 55-58 CE. This was long before a formal church with bishops, priests, deacons, dioceses, and a formally-approved canon of approved scriptures even existed.

Accordingly, Barth was not writing about the churches. In The Epistle to the Romans, he spoke of “the criminal arrogance of religion,” as opposed to “that final apprehension of truth which lies beyond birth and death—the perception, in other words, which proceeds from God outwards.” (Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, Translated from the Sixth Edition by Edwyn C. Hoskyns, Oxford University Press, 1933/1968, p.37)

Barth’s book became a best-seller and radically altered the course of theology in the German-speaking world. He was not attempting to destroy organized religion, but to get it to change.

After a time, he was called to teach at Bonn University in Germany. While there he saw the rise of Nazism first-hand and was appalled. The elevation of the German state and later of Hitler as Führer to semi-divine status was, to Barth, in direct contradiction to the First Commandment: “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20: 1-3)

When the German churches fell in line behind a Nazi-ordered dictate to make religion a branch of the almighty German Reich, Barth was instrumental in organizing a counter-movement called the Confessional Church. In a statement written by Barth, Jesus Christ was affirmed as the sole head of the German Protestant religious establishment.

In 1935, after Barth was dismissed from his post in Bonn by the Nazi regime, he was accompanied on a train out of the country by the Gestapo. Barth was not the first, nor the last, to be persecuted by government for “whistleblowing.” He returned to Basle, where he taught at the university for over two decades.

It was then he wrote Church Dogmatics as guidance and instruction to the Protestant ministry, along with many shorter books, sermons, addresses to meetings and conventions, and an enormous private correspondence.Church Dogmatics eventually reached 14 volumes, though Barth viewed it as unfinished.

Barth knew everyone of spiritual stature in Europe and welcomed students and visitors from around the world, including the U.S., India, and Japan. He was also read and studied by Catholic scholars and was invited as an observer to Vatican II, though he declined to attend for health reasons.

But he was not always popular, especially with the press, with both church liberals and conservatives, and with many political authorities. After World War II he encouraged the churches to reach out and minister to the defeated Germans, including ex-Nazis, and he refused to take a stand against communism, sometimes traveling behind the Iron Curtain and helping ministers who were in trouble with state authorities.

Barth took a public position firmly against atomic weapons, as well as any preparations for atomic war. He considered even the existence of these weapons a sin against God and urged their abandonment by Western governments, even unilaterally.

He opposed any hint of rearmament in Germany as well as any movement toward militarization in Switzerland. But he was not a doctrinaire pacifist. He believed in the right of self-defense and carried a rifle during World War II as part of the home reserve.

He also opposed the literalism of Biblical fundamentalists and the vehemence of evangelism, even though the German Lutherans also called themselves “evangelical.” Barth had some harsh words for Billy Graham, who came to preach in Switzerland in 1960. He wrote:

“He acted like a madman, and what he presented was certainly not the gospel. It was the gospel at gunpoint. He preached the law, not a message to make one happy. He wanted to terrify people. Threats—they always make an impression. People would much rather be terrified than be pleased. The more one heats up hell for them, the more they come running.”

The gospel, wrote Barth, is not an “article for sale.…We must leave the good God freedom to do his own work.” (Eberhard Busch, op.cit., p.446)

Barth addressed the idea of “sin” differently from most. This concept is perhaps the chief stumbling block for people faced with the stance of most Christian churches in the West.

People have been berated, preached at, made to feel guilty, threatened with damnation, and even burned at the stake for their “sins.” Jesus’s saying to “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is thus ignored.

Catholics and Protestants alike have “cast the first stone,” with many people leaving the churches as a result, while viewing church authorities, often concealing their own peccadilloes, as hypocrites. This led Barth to conclude that many churches are not Christian at all. Some churches he saw as “dead,” while others as anti-Christian.

Condemnation of suffering humanity as an attitude was foreign to Barth. He chose instead to view sin as error, often, if not always, resulting from ignorance, immaturity, or illness. He equated sin with “stupidity.”

For Barth the three primary “sins” that separate us from God are “arrogance, sloth, and lies.” He wrote, however, that “Christian ethics cannot itself give commands, but only guidance on the right way to put the question, ‘What shall I do?’, so as to hear God’s answer readily and openly.” (Ibid, p.443)

In other words, Barth did not abandon or water down the central teachings of Jesus, but he focused on Christ as a person, “appointed” as the Son of God, who gave up his earthly life in order to show people that there were higher values than physical existence and that once it ended here on Earth, life still went on. Jesus was living proof of the immortality of not just the soul, but of the human person.

In our time, this insight has been strongly affirmed by the testimony of the many people undergoing near-death experiences who returned with messages about the continuation of life on the “other side,” and about the love emanating from the spiritual beings they have met, including, at times, a figure sometimes referred to as Jesus Christ himself.

If you want to know what Karl Barth was talking about, first read the Gospels carefully, especially the Sermon on the Mount. But I would suggest you read them with joy and gratitude for what has been made available to us as individuals and a community. We can try to see how they might be applied in our daily lives, not as a club to beat up others with.

The goal, as Barth wrote about at length in Church Dogmatics, is reconciliation between man and God. God always takes the initiative in this, though man must seek help and then cooperate when it comes. It was Jesus on the cross that made—and makes today—reconciliation possible.

We can now return to the opening theme of the crisis in human affairs that threatens annihilation but may also mark the end of an era and the start of the next. Karl Barth was a prophet of the next stage of human development.

But he said, and this is important, that Christianity “is not a religion.” By that he seemed to be referring to all the paraphernalia of religion, including services, structures, organizations, and the blasphemous worship of the state. Barth said there “may be a religious West, but there is not a Christian West: there is only Western man confronted with Jesus Christ.” (Ibid, p.468)

So for Barth, what life is about is the resurrection of the individual. “…The experience of salvation is what happened on Golgotha.” (Ibid, p.447)

What makes this possible while we are alive on Earth is a spiritual energy that can reach us within our own consciousness. This energy Barth associated with the Holy Spirit. He said that a person “can have the experience of God’s spirit come on him and over him.” (Ibid, p.456)

Decline of Religion

Meanwhile, church membership in Europe has plummeted far more than in the U.S. Barth was aware this would happen. He even foresaw a time when followers of Jesus would meet in small groups. This decline includes Germany, in spite of the fact that Germany’s ruling coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel is headed by the party that calls itself the Christian Democratic Union.

The traditional strongholds of the CDU are in Catholic regions of Germany to the west and south, including, in particular, Bavaria. There, an independent Christian Social Union exists parallel to the national CDU.

But even in Germany, the prevailing post-World War II cultural affinity to a resurgent traditional Christianity is fading as society changes. A 2013 article entitled “Germany’s Great Church Selloff,” in Spiegel Online said, “Dwindling church attendance and dire financial straits are forcing the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany to sell off church buildings en masse. Some are demolished, while others are turned into restaurants or indoor rock climbing centers.

My own sense is that people today are so distracted by the spectacle and busyness of life they have lost acquaintance with the world of the heart, soul, and spirit that lies within A major factor that numbs consciousness is the obsession with media fare, whether it be on a computer (iPad, iPhone, laptop, tablet, Kindle, etc.), in front of a TV, or at a movie or a loud concert, or some other dream activity or event.

It is as though a spell has been cast on humanity, as in the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty.” The sleep is a fitful one, of course. More often than not, it is a nightmare. Each of us inhabits his or her own nightmare, though they often overlap or coincide.

No one knows what will happen to the world and humanity over the decades to come. Of course we hope that sin, a.k.a. “stupidity,” will not play itself out to its seemingly logical conclusion of a worldwide nuclear war.

To see leaders of the U.S. and some other nations flirting with such a possibility is appalling. To see religious leaders falling in behind such political figures can only be viewed with astonishment—and disgust.

A greater betrayal of real spirituality cannot be imagined. What are they thinking?

What must be changed is the fundamental idea that “goodness”—defined, of course, by the power structure—can only be brought about by force through the might of the totalitarian state acting as God’s agent on Earth. This idea is destroying humanity and the planet.

Spirituality for the Future: The Teachings of Bô Yin Râ

Let us hope that out of the darkness a new day may dawn. I believe this could happen, especially for those who care to investigate the possibilities voiced by another German who began speaking in the early 20th century.

Few people outside of Germany have heard of the spiritual master Bô Yin Râ, who was a little older than Karl Barth. He was born near Frankfurt, Germany, in 1876, and passed away in Massagno/Lugano, Switzerland, in 1943.

His birth name was Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken. Bô Yin Râ was a name he received from his spiritual mentor whom he discusses in his work, The Book of Dialogues. 

By profession, Schneiderfranken was a talented landscape painter. As a spiritual guide, he had thousands of students in the German-speaking world. Some readers may have heard his name in association with Eckhart Tolle, who was inspired by the writings of Bô Yin Râ while a young man.

To conclude this essay, I will quote verbatim from a review on Amazon.com of Bô Yin Râ’s book, Bô Yin Râ: An Introduction to His Works. The review is by someone named “Richard Montana”:

“The man who was perhaps the most important spiritual master in the West during the 20th century is almost unknown to English-speaking readers. He was a German artist and author whose spiritual name was Bô Yin Râ. (Birth name Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943.)    “For the last 20 years of his life he resided with his family in Switzerland. During his lifetime he published a 32-volume compendium of spiritual books that he termedHortus Conclusus, meaning, in his words, a ‘self-protecting enclosed garden.’
“In the latter part of the 19th century, starting with the Theosophical Movement, rumors had begun to circulate in the West that somewhere in the heart of Asia was a high spiritual center that was the source and overseer of all planetary spirituality. Bô Yin Râ confirms the existence of such a center and identifies himself as its authorized representative in bringing true information about its teachings to light.

“In 1976 the Kober Press of Berkeley, CA, began to publish translations in English of books in the Hortus Conclusus cycle. The result is an astonishing unfoldment of deep and authentic spiritual guidance that, in my experience, has no parallel, including the publications in English from other schools and centers that claim to possess hidden knowledge.
“What is unique about Bô Yin Râ is the clarity and force of his expositions that not only explain spiritual ideas but also show clearly how they may be put into practice in life-changing ways. The volume Bô Yin Râ: An Introduction to His Works is an invaluable companion to the much larger body of work, with the added benefit of containing commentaries on his life and work by the master himself.

“Among the many topics covered are the awakening of an individual’s spiritual senses, making contact with helpers from the spiritual world, and how he himself acquired his spiritual experience and decided to make his teachings public, despite his natural inclination to remain silent.
“Bô Yin Râ also includes in his body of work detailed information about the life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth, whom he describes as an authorized Luminary from the planetary center. While the life and teachings of Jesus (known as Jeshua during his lifetime) were utilized to construct the religion we know as Christianity, deeper meaning on individual spiritual transformation is available.

“For instance, Volume 11 of Hortus Conclusus, entitled The Wisdom of St. John, has chapters on ‘The Authentic Teaching’ and related topics that will prove highly practical for seekers who wish to delve beyond the explanations found in religious creeds. I am grateful to the Kober Press for their work in opening Bô Yin Râ’s work to English-speaking readers and am looking forward to more volumes appearing in the months and years ahead.”

I would only add to this review Bô Yin Râ’s indications that, if a person is satisfied with the simple faith of his or her inherited religion, there is no need to read his books. For the rest of us, including the “lost,” the case may be different. These are the ones he was trying to help.

Today, we in the West are indeed “lost.” But in his book On Prayer, Bô Yin Râ explains the meaning of Jesus’s advice: “Seek, and ye shall find.” This is advice well worth investigating.

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Richard C. Cook is a retired federal government analyst. He is author of “Challenger Revealed: How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age,” along with “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform,” and numerous print and internet articles on public policy issues. Mr. Cook may be reached at [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Florida’s Senate Race: Does It Matter?

May 5th, 2018 by Renee Parsons

In recognition that the two party system is little more than an innocuous venue for the election of empty vessels on both sides of the political spectrum, the 2018 Senate race in Florida is one such prime example.

Florida print media, in an effort to build readership, has referred to the race as the “clash of the titans” which may, in reality, be more like a contest against the Mouse that Roared as hackneyed 75 year old  incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D) is being challenged by the intransigent 64 year old Gov. Rick Scott (R), both of whom continue to accept Big Sugar campaign money and are perfunctory supporters of Israel.

Until recently, the Florida Senate race has been a safe bet for the Democrats to retain their Senate seat until Scott announced his candidacy in early April labeling himself  an ‘outsider’ and Nelson a “career politician”.

What makes this race one to watch, besides the obvious implications on the balance of power in the Senate, is whether Florida voters are so self-satisfied to re-elect Nelson as an old guard, “moderate milquetoast” establishmentarian  or whether Scott’s avoidance of criminal prosecution will still matter two decades later  or whether thousands of newly-arrived emigrants from Hurricane Maria will register to vote; thus perhaps permanently altering Florida’s voting demographic.

Despite what might appear to be radical differences between the candidates in style, personality or occasional social policy, those differences are worth little comparative attention given that the most critical, vital issue of foreign/military policy, the cutting-edge issue of our time, continues to spiral out of control; especially as that policy relates to the Middle East and Israel.

The Nelson-Scott match up is, upon closer examination, little more substantive than peas in a pod or birds of a feather who will flock together just as the unlikely duo of Sen. Marco Rubio (Fl-R) and Nelson have established a level of curious camaraderie.

A bona fide son of Florida whose family settled the Panhandle in 1826 and a past president of the International Kiwanis (1959-1960), Sen. Nelson  has followed a political career having been elected to the Florida State Legislature (1972-1979) followed by six terms in the House of Representatives (1979-1991), then elected as Florida State Treasurer and Insurance Commissioner (1994-2000) and finally to the US Senate in 2001 where he currently serves.  A graduate of Yale University and member of its “Book and Snake” society and the University of Virginia’s School of Law, Nelson joined the US Army Reserve in 1965 as the Vietnam War escalated and retired in 1971 as Captain.

In 2009, while the Affordable Care Act was being debated in Congress, Nelson attended the Democratic Party’s Nominating Convention.   As Nelson took the stage to speak, the assembled delegates rose from their seats in unison with one passionate voice chanting “Public Option, Public Option” until Nelson, with no words of support, fled the stage to a safe space.   No doubt a long forgotten incident, Nelson will now need those same Democrats to keep his Senate seat.

While early polls suggest a Nelson-Scott tie with Nelson at 51% approval rating and Scott at 58% approval, Nelson has had the good fortune to run against a bevy of significantly lackluster Republican candidates than Nelson himself who attributes his electoral successes to ‘I assume nothing.  I run scared like a jackrabbit.”  In facing his most formidable opponent since 1972, Nelson will need every jackrabbit advantage he can muster.

By 2010, as Scott was gearing up to run for governor, many Floridians were already familiar with his name as GW Bush’s co-owner of the Texas Rangers and as CEO of a company under Federal investigation for the largest Medicare fraud case in history.   A political novice before his 2010 election, the aggressive Scott has proven to be a master at eking out two state-wide  election wins with a 1% margin, both against conventional  Democrats like Nelson.

In 1987, venture capitalist Scott began buying and merging hospitals across the country into what became Columbia/HCA as his publicly traded company grew to the nation’s largest health care chain including more than 340 hospitals, 135 surgery centers and 550 home health locations in 37 states and two foreign countries.

With insider whistleblower assistance in 1997, the Federal government raided Columbia’s offices and hospitals and four months after the investigation became public,CEO Scott was forced to resign.   The company was charged with “systemic fraud”by padding Medicare/Medicaid bills, charging for tests not ordered and procedures not conducted, falsifying diagnoses to increase hospital reimbursements and kickbacks to doctors.   Four Columbia executives were indicated, the company was charged with fourteen felonies, plead guilty to three conspiracy fraud charges and paid $1.7 billion in fines.

By July, 2000, Scott invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination by refusing to answer seventy five questions during a deposition hearing on a related civil case.  In the aftermath, a former FBI agent voiced regret that criminal charges were not pursued against Scott who was never questioned by a grand jury nor ever personally contacted by Federal investigators.   Scott left Columbia with a$10 million severance payout and $350 M in stock and options.    His net worth as of December, 2016 is estimated at $149 Million and spent $88 Million on his two gubernatorial races.

As the country’s third largest state with a population of 20.4 million, the increase of Puerto Rican emigrants after Hurricane Maria may dramatically alter the state’s voting patterns just in time for the 2018 election.  The 2000-2010 Census tallied the Puerto Rican population at 847,000 while the current total island population in Florida reached 1.06M by 2016.  The Demographic Estimating Conference estimated in December, 2017 that at least 53,000 evacuees arrived from Puerto Rico at Relief Centers throughout the state immediately after Maria.  Enough new voters to decide an election, Nelson has been quick to suggest that newly arrived evacuees immediately register to vote thereby increasing his own election odds.

Enter Florida’s junior Sen. Marco Rubio (Fl-R) who told state wide media recently that he would not campaign against Nelson stating that “I could not ask for a better partner.”  Rubio has, however, reconsidered his earlier purge of Scott saying that  “I want to be in the majority.  I want to be Chair of the Small Business Committee and then Chair of Intelligence or Foreign Relations after that.”   A former Rubio staffer explained that during the 2016 campaign “Nelson never campaigned against Marco…there was a moment when (Dem candidate former Rep. Patrick Murphy) Murphy made some unfair attack on Marco and Nelson came to our defense.”

So what can be attributed to this unusual level of solidarity between a staid Dem and an ambitious Republican and how will Rubio will tread the fine partisan line?

One perspective may be found in the US Federal Election Commission data of PACs and individual donations over $200 as reported by the Center for Responsive Politics.   According to the CRP’s Top 20 list of Pro-Israel PAC recipients, Nelson received a minimum total of $662,901 beginning with his 2000 Senate campaign in which he received $110,370 with donations in 2006 of $324,141 and another in 2012 for $228,450.  These numbers reflect Nelson’s donations to include him in the CRP’s list of “Top 20” recipients of Pro Israel Pac money and do not identify other monies from Pro Israel PAC’s that were not large enough to qualify as a Top 20 recipient.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl) was elected in 2010 and became The Top 20 Senate recipient in 2016 of Pro-Israel money with $468,307, according to the CRP.

Although Scott’s Pro-Israel campaign donations as Governor have not yet been tracked, the recent announcement of his third trip to Israel to attend the May 14th dedication of the US Embassy’s move to Jerusalem is indicative of Scott’s priority in wooing the state’s powerful block of Jewish voters.   In affirming support for Israel on a 2017 trip while lobbying for Israel start-ups to join a Florida high tech accelerator project,  Scott affirmed that ‘it is important that our Embassy is moved to Jerusalem.  We should do whatever we can to constantly support Israel.  They are a great ally to the US.”

It may be assumed that Nelson and Rubio have already signed their loyalty oath to Israel and that if Scott has not yet done so, he will in the near future.

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Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31

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Environmental campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, Vice President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans and Health Commissioner Vytenis Andruikaitis. As set out below, she asks these top officials some very pertinent questions about the EU’s collusion with the agrochemical corporations. 

1) In authorising glyphosate on behalf of the Glyphosate Task Force led by Monsanto, why did President Juncker fail to state the European Chemicals Agency’ (ECHA) risk assessment in full?

2) Why did the EU collude with corporations that made nerve gases in WW2 for chemical warfare and for use in the Nazi concentration camps? These firms continued to use similar chemicals in agriculture to poison ‘pests’, beneficial insects, birds and people.

3) Could it be that is it is because biocides regulations in the EU are merely designed to make corporations money and are ultimately controlled by the agrochemical industry?

4) Why did Monsanto, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the ECHA and the industry-funded UK Science Media Centre suppress the paper by Gilles-Eric Seralini of the two-year rat feeding study of GM crops and Roundup that produced organ damage and tumours at four months?

5) Do the commissioners know that Cancer Research UK was hijacked by the Agrochemical Industry in 2010 with the full knowledge of the UK government? Michael Pragnell, former Chairman of Cancer Research UK (CRUK), was founder of Syngenta and former chairman of industry lobby group CropLife International. The CRUK website says that there is no convincing evidence that pesticides cause cancer. Instead, CRUK links cancer to life style choices and individual behaviour and blames alcohol use, obesity and smoking.

6) Why did the EU regulators and David Cameron, on behalf of the British government, ignore the Letter from America in 2014 from nearly 60 million citizens, warning you not to authorise GM crops and Roundup because of their toxicity to human health and the environment?

7) Where have all the insects and birds gone as a result of intensive chemical agriculture? The UK, Germany, France, Denmark and Canada are rapidly losing biodiversity. US farmland growing GM Roundup Ready crops has become a biological desert.

8) Did Monsanto and President Juncker conceal the ECHA harmonised classification of glyphosate as “toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects” because it would explain the accelerating deterioration of coral in the Great Barrier Reef?

Mason concludes her letter by reiterating the damning advisory opinion of the International Monsanto Tribunal delivered in 2017. She also sent the commissioners a recent letter signed by 23 prominent organisations criticising the EU’s decision to renew the license for glyphosate and outlining Monsanto’s undue influence over decision making.

Along with her letter, Mason also sent a 22-page document containing detailed information on:

  • The European Commission’s flawed renewal of the license for glyphosate
  • The causes of decline in coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef
  • European legislation existing for the benefit of the agrochemical industry
  • Contamination by glyphosate and neonicotinoid insecticides causing dramatic declines in insects and birds
  • Glyphosate being present everywhere
  • The International Monsanto Tribunal and various alarming reports on pesticides, their use and impacts

To date, there has been no response from the commissioners to Mason.

In 2003, the World Wide Fund for Nature (UK) concluded that every person it tested across the UK was contaminated by a cocktail of highly toxic chemicals, which were banned from use during the 1970s. Over the years, Mason has cited a range of sources to show the harmful impact of pesticides and that the amount and range of pesticide residues on British food is increasing annually. She also notes a massive rise in the use of glyphosate between 2012 and 2014 alone.

In her many detailed documents and letters (which contains her own views on all the questions she poses above to the commissioners) she has sent to officials over the years, Mason offers sufficient evidence to show that the financial and political clout of a group of powerful agrochemical/agribusiness corporations ensure that its interests are privileged ahead of public health and the environment to the detriment of both. Mason has gone to great lengths to describe the political links between industry and various government departments, regulatory agencies and key committees that have effectively ensured that ‘business as usual’ prevails.

The corporations which promote industrial agriculture and the agrochemicals Mason campaigns against have embedded themselves deeply within the policy-making machinery at both national and international levels. From the flawed narrative that industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world to providing lavish research grants and the capture of important policy-making institutions, global agribusiness has secured a bogus ‘thick legitimacy’ within policymakers’ mindsets and mainstream discourse.

By referring to the Monsanto Tribunal, Mason implies that governments, individuals and civil groups that collude with corporations to facilitate ecocide and human rights abuses resulting from the actions of global agribusiness corporations should be hauled into court. Perhaps it is only when officials and company executives are given lengthy jail sentences for destroying health and the environment that some change will begin to happen.

From Rachel Carson onward, the attempt to roll back the power of these corporations and their massively funded lobby groups has had limited success. Some 34,000 agrochemicals remain on the market in the US, many of which are there due to weak regulatory standards or outright fraud, and from Argentina to Indonesia, the devastating impact of the industrial chemical-dependent model of food and agriculture on health and the environment has been documented by various reports and writers at length.

What is worrying is that these corporations are being facilitated by the World Bank’s ‘enabling the business of agriculture’, duplicitous trade deals like the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, the Gates Foundation’s ‘opening up’ of African agriculture and the bypassing of democratic procedures at sovereign state levels to impose seed monopolies and proprietary inputs on farmers and to incorporate them into a global supply chain dominated by these powerful companies.

For the reasons set out in my previous piece, pleading with public officials to roll back the actions and influence of agrochemical/agribusiness corporations may have no more impact than appealing to a slave master to set you free.

Ultimately, the solution relies on people coming together to challenge a system of neoliberal capitalism that by design facilitates the institutionalised corruption that we see along with the destruction of self-sufficiency and traditional food systems. At the same time, alternatives must be promoted based on localisation, the principles of a politically-oriented model of agroecology (outlined herehere and here) and a food system that serves the public good not private greed.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.


seeds_2.jpg

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

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

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

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

Report by Wol-san Liem

After a hassle with cancelled flights, a US Labor Against the War delegation arrived in Seoul May 1. They will spend a week in Korea showing solidarity for Korean workers and peace-loving people’s fight for peace and unification and to imprisoned labor leaders and discussing steps for collective action to end US militarism in East Asia with their Korean counter parts. On Tuesday, they participated in the Korean Confederation of Trade Union’s (KCTU) International Workers Day (May Day) rally and march. Korean workers are welcoming the improvement in North-South relations following the inter-Korea summit on April 27. They are calling for a peace treaty and other real measures to ensure a lasting peace ahead of the U.S.-North Korean summit. They are also clear that they want the new era of peace to be accompanied by greater rights and equality for workers and ordinary people. To this end the May Day rally focused on the KCTU’s demands for reform of the chaebol-centered economic system, eradication of precarious work, and amendment of the Constitution and labour law to expand workers’ rights. The rally also highlighted the labor movement’s work for peace and unification, including exchange with North Korean workers, and efforts to bring the #MeToo movement to the workplace.

Report by Jason Roe

Standing in front of the US Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, workers from Korea and the United States of America held a joint press conference demanding the US end its interventionist policies and work toward a path to peace on the Korean Peninsula. Among their demands is that the US military stop the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system in South Korea, an extension of Cold War era policies. Speakers were affiliated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and a delegation of American workers, students, and organizers lead by US Labor Against the War (USLAW).

(Source: U.S. Labor Against the War)

“As a grandchild of someone who fought in the Korean War, I understand my role in what we’ve done to your country,” said Elandria Williams of People’s Hub.

“We are calling on the US government to rise up to this occasion and opportunity for peace and end its historic role in the world as a force for evil, oppression, and colonization,” said Aaron Goggans, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

“It is an opportunity for the people in the United States to discuss our own transition from a military economy and towards a peaceful, just, and sustainable economy,” said Michael Leon Guerrero, Executive Director of Labor Network for Sustainability.

The May 3rd event comes days after the April 27th Inter-Korean Summit where South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Jong-un met. This was the first meeting of Korean heads of state on the divided peninsula in 11 years. US foreign policy has an integral role in achieving a lasting peace in Korea.

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Wol-san Liem is Director of international and Korean Peninsula affairs, KCTU-Korean Public Service and Transport Workers Union (KPTU)

Jason Roe is a member of the U.S. Labor Against the War Solidarity Delegation to Korea.

All images in this article are from the authors.

Respondents indicated widespread dissatisfaction with the quantity and quality of mainstream news coverage and highlighted a desire for more investigative reporting and scrutiny of the aid sector itself.

The in-depth survey was conducted before the widely reported Oxfam UK sexual misconduct scandal by Dr Martin Scott, a senior lecturer in media and international development at the University of East Anglia (UEA), and humanitarian news agency IRIN News.

It investigated how people working or interested in the humanitarian aid sector view global media coverage of humanitarian issues. Does the coverage do justice to critical issues? Does it include sufficient field reporting and reflect subject expertise? What are the main news sources? What impact, if any, does news coverage have on the respondents’ professional work?

Many of the 1,626* respondents, who included aid workers, researchers and government officials, said mainstream news coverage concentrates on a small number of crises, thus relegating most crises as ‘neglected’ or ‘forgotten’. More than 70 percent of respondents said the mainstream news media does not offer enough coverage of humanitarian issues. A common complaint was that mainstream news coverage was “sensationalist” and “lacked in-depth analysis”. Reporting of humanitarian issues and crises was frequently referred to as “reductive”, “cursory”, “simplistic” and “shallow”.

Overall, the most sought after aspect of reporting on humanitarian issues is expert analysis.

“Respondents want more and bolder investigative reporting and more consistent expert analysis of humanitarian issues and crises, including analysis of the aid sector as a whole,” said Dr Scott.

However, many think there is insufficient investigative reporting on the sector.

One reader commented that “bosses are more likely to react to news stories about sexual harassment of and by employees, than to their own employees raising concerns”. That view was echoed by UK International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt‘s recent words:

“Remember, we only learned about… the recent Oxfam scandal… from journalists, operating in a free press, in our democratic country.”

Respondents indicated that quality news coverage can play an important role in shaping responses to crises, most commonly by stimulating further research and/or advocacy and by informing organisational or operational priorities.

“These findings show that news coverage of international humanitarian crises matters – and that quality journalism matters,” said IRIN Director Heba Aly.  “Readers are yearning for deeper, more meaningful journalism about the challenges our world faces; and when we as media organisations deliver that kind of reporting, we can have real impact. We shouldn’t underestimate the power – nor the responsibility – that we hold.”

Only three mainstream news outlets were mentioned by more than half of the respondents as a key source for news and analysis on humanitarian issues: the BBC, The Guardian and Al Jazeera English. Alongside The New York Times and the Washington Post, these were frequently described as the only “exceptions” to the mainstream news media’s poor coverage of humanitarian crises.

Respondents identified the most popular specialist news providers as Devex, Foreign Policy, IRIN, ReliefWeb, News Deeply, the Thomson Reuters Foundation and UN Dispatch.

Read more about IRIN’s survey results here.

***

Note

*the majority of respondents were IRIN readers and the results have been interpreted with this in mind.

Survey respondents included individuals working for international NGOs (28%), the United Nations (9%), academia (9%), national or local NGOs (8%), government organisations (8%) and in the corporate sector (5%). A majority of respondents were either mid-career (32%) or senior professionals (41%) and had either “some” (34%) or a “significant” amount (30%) of decision-making authority within their organisations. While most were based in the US or Europe, others worked around the globe, from Mexico to Kenya, at headquarters and in the field.

The survey is part of an ongoing research project into humanitarian journalism. The Humanitarian Journalism project is investigating how the news media report on humanitarian crises, what shapes their coverage and its impact and influence. It is supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Led by Dr Scott, the research team includes Dr Kate Wright (Edinburgh University) and Dr Mel Bunce (City, University of London).

For further information about the project and to view the survey report “Attitudes towards media coverage of humanitarian issues within the aid sector”, see www.humanitarian-journalism.net

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Selected Articles: Washington’s War on Western Minds

May 4th, 2018 by Global Research News

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What’s Washington Really Doing in Armenia? Color Revolution against Moscow?

By F. William Engdahl, May 04, 2018

There has been considerable speculation in recent days as to whether the recent and ongoing protests across former Soviet Armenia constitute another Washington Color Revolution destabilization or whether it represents simply the angry revolt of citizens fed up with the deep corruption and lack of economic development under the regime of Prime Minister Serzh Sargysan.

Trump’s Phony Trade War

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, May 03, 2018

Trump announced his 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs in early March, getting the attention of the US press with his typical Trump bombast, off-the-wall tweets and extremist statements. The steel-aluminum tariffs were originally to apply worldwide. But the exemptions began almost immediately.  In fact, all US major trading partners were quickly suspended from the tariffs—except for China.

Has Critical Thinking Become Extinct? Washington’s War on Western Minds

By Mark Taliano, May 03, 2018

The late Zbigniew Brzezinski was an architect in the use of fanatical terrorists to invade and destroy countries.  Washington used the tactic in Afghanistan, and Washington is still using so-called “jihadi” terrorists to destroy non-compliant countries.  Washington has been destroying Syria with these anti-democratic,  extremely misogynist, cult-intoxicated “Wahhabi” terrorists for over seven years now.

The Koreas Unified and at Peace? – How About Syria, Iran and Venezuela?

By Peter Koenig, May 03, 2018

Peace – in the Koreas, is what the world expects; and Peace in the world is what humanity expects, the vast majority – 99.9% of the world population wants peace, but it’s the 0.1% that commands war and destruction, since war and destruction is what runs the western economy.

North and South Korea: A Handshake that Shook the World

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung, May 03, 2018

One of the memorable events of the Summit of Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un was the unexpected impact of the historical handshake between the two leaders. Many would agree with me that the Kim-Moon handshake shook the world. But I am asking this: “Did the handshake make the summit a success?”

Video: The North-South Korean Peace Agreement. Michel Chossudovsky

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Michael Welch, May 02, 2018

In a special breaking report for GRTV, Professor Michel Chossudovsky comments on the significance of this meeting, coming as it does weeks before another expected meeting between the North Korean leader and US President Trump.

Japan to Build Roads Out of Radioactive Fukushima Dirt

By Vicki Batts, May 04, 2018

Even in 2017, the amount of radiation being produced by the damaged reactors was lethal. In spite of the obvious risk, Japanese government officials are now looking to make use of the radioactive Fukushima — by using dirt from the site to build new roads.

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On April 30th, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada released the first ever section 63 report under the Species at Risk Act, (SARA), where the Minister found that outside of protected areas, provinces and territories have failed to protect almost all of boreal caribou critical habitat.

Seven environmental groups from across North America welcome the report’s release and are concerned by its findings.

This marks the first time the federal government has released one of these reports updating the public on at-risk species protection as required by law. The public has a right to know whether provincial and territorial laws are protecting critical habitat for boreal caribou. This is an important step toward increasing transparency.

As concerned citizens, scientists and people on the ground expected, the results are troubling.

The environmental groups remain concerned that even after the October 2017 deadline, provinces and territories continue to abdicate their responsibilities to threatened caribou. For example, in the past six months:

  • the Government of Ontario extended the forestry industry’s exemption to the province’s Endangered Species Act, allowing significant leeway to degrade caribou habitat and stymieing recovery efforts;
  • the Government of Quebec announced that it was too costly to recover caribou in the Val D’Or range and abandoned the herd after allowing decades of industrial development degrading boreal caribou critical habitat; and
  • the Government of Alberta announced that it was suspending efforts to protect areas identified as viable in an earlier mediation process.

This must change. The groups call on all responsible provinces and territories to stop expansion of the industrial footprint in boreal caribou ranges that have exceeded 35 per cent disturbance, and take immediate steps to protect critical habitat. We expect provinces and territories to do this in partnership with Indigenous Peoples, fully respecting their knowledge and rights including the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).

Image result for Mishigamish

There is hope in Canada, and it is coming from the leadership of First Nations and other communities. For example, Fort Nelson First Nation completed a Boreal Caribou Recovery Plan for their territory called the Medzih Action Plan. Doig River First Nation identified priority areas for caribou habitat restoration based on Indigenous knowledge and science. The Cree First Nation of Waswasnipi have been waiting for years to resume negotiations with the Quebec government on their proposal to protect the Mishigamish, which includes critical boreal caribou habitat. We are also heartened by voluntary recommendations for creating a sustainable economy recently reconfirmed by leaders in northeastern Ontario on the Abitibi River Forest that overlaps with boreal caribou in the Kesagami Range. There are all examples of good work being done across the country. Provincial governments need to support and build upon them.

The groups call on the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change to fulfill her duties under SARA by, for example, continuing to issue timely section 63 reports for boreal caribou and begin issuing them for other species, and also by issuing safety net orders for critical habitat that remains unprotected.

Signed:  

Alberta Wilderness Association
David Suzuki Foundation
Greenpeace Canada
Natural Resources Defense Council
Ontario Nature
Wilderness Committee
Wildlands League


Overview of the Status of Provincial Boreal Caribou Protection

This backgrounder provides an overview of the state of caribou protections in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia at the time of the release of the Canadian Government’s Progress Report on Unprotected Critical Habitat for the Woodland Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), Boreal Population, in Canada (hereafter 2018 Progress Report). This backgrounder also includes information on the international marketplace’s call for Canadian governments to implement increased caribou protections. 

Ontario:

Boreal caribou in Ontario are in a decline. Today, only two of Ontario’s thirteen boreal caribou ranges have sufficient undisturbed habitat to sustain caribou in the long-term. The others are uncertain or insufficient. And latest disturbance information shows increasing disturbances in southern caribou ranges where there has been long history of industrial development along with a declining population trend. At current rates of decline, the species could be extinct in the province within the lifetime of children living today. Since 2008, the government of Ontario has failed to implement protections for caribou consistent with original intentions of the provincial Endangered Species Act (ESA). In October 2017, the Ontario government missed the federal government’s five-year deadline for protecting critical habitat. While Ontario has released a recovery strategy and other habitat guidance documents for caribou, these do not create any mandatory and enforceable protection for boreal caribou critical habitat.

In April 2018, the Ontario government announced it was extending the exemption for forest operations from the province’s ESA for another two years. This exemption was originally enacted in 2013 and allows logging companies to harm or harass caribou and destroy caribou habitat, as long as they are operating under an approved forest management plan. The situation is bleak in Ontario and the ongoing exemption for the forest industry does not promote the recovery of species at risk. There are solutions being put forward that the government of Ontario needs to build upon like the work being done in northeastern Ontario by municipal leaders, First Nations, industry and environmental groups in the Abitibi River Forest to ensure a sustainable economy and healthy caribou population. See more about that innovative effort here.

Quebec:

Quebec has some of the most at-risk caribou populations in Canada. In 2015, Quebec’s Chief Forester found that 70 percent of studied caribou habitat in the province was too disturbed to support caribou populations in the long-term. This unsustainability will only increase, the Chief Forester concluded, as “the current management strategies will provide, in the long run, a decrease the remaining habitat where caribou self-sufficiency is still possible.” Despite this warning, Quebec failed to meet the federal government’s October 2017 deadline for creating caribou range plans.

Quebec did create an action plan for boreal caribou habitat management, which commits the province to take “immediate” steps to protect boreal caribou. However, Quebec set no timetables, gave little guidance as to what habitat would be protected, and set no plans for implementation. Under this plan, in November 2017 Quebec created a protected area for caribou habitat in the Montagnes-Blanches region of the province. While this is an important step, the protection plan still allows for mineral exploration and does not include certain critical habitat areas. The starkest example of Quebec’s failure to protect boreal caribou is seen in the decline of the Val d’Or caribou herd. Despite decades of warnings from that the herd was declining, Quebec took little action to protect the herd. In 2016, the herd had declined to 18 individuals, and in 2018 the province announced that it was too costly to recover the herd and that it would not take action to restore the population.

Alberta:

Because of years of intensive industrial activities that have fragmented or cleared older forests, Alberta has some of the most highly disturbed caribou ranges in Canada. Its overall caribou population is estimated to be falling by 50% every eight years. Alberta has spent decades in research and planning processes, but has not yet produced effective habitat management plans. In September 2015, Alberta’s Environment Minister affirmed her government’s commitment to achieving self-sustaining caribou populations. However, two years later, ECCC reported that human-caused habitat loss continues to rise in almost every Alberta caribou home range, pushing them further towards local extinction. Alberta’s December 2017 Draft Provincial Woodland Caribou Range Plan presented broad ideas to restore and protect caribou habitat, but it did not include range-specific plans showing how the minimum 65% undisturbed habitat threshold would be achieved and maintained. The government has yet to produce range plans that would adequately protect habitat.

Image result for caribou habitat in the Montagnes-Blanches

Woodland Caribou in river (Source: NRDC)

In March 2018, Alberta’s Environment Minister announced they were “suspending” consideration of potential Northwest protected areas until socio-economic impacts could be determined. These are the same areas that her appointed consultant, now her Deputy Minister, identified in his May 2016 report as having minimal negative economic impacts. In March 2018 the Alberta government also requested federal funding and even more time to complete range plans, while range habitat worsens.

British Columbia:

Woodland caribou populations in British Columbia are in various states of long-term decline. The southern mountain caribou (a woodland caribou ecotype distinct from boreal caribou) are currently facing extinction in British Columbia in the near term, with declining populations across their historic ranges. The 2018 census showed a reduction of the entire southern mountain caribou population from about 4,500 last year to 3,800 this year. Two herds of the southern mountain caribou have now become functionally extinct—the South Selkirk and the south Purcell herds. Boreal caribou, meanwhile, have an estimated minimum of 728 animals across five range areas in northeast British Columbia, and are facing declines as a result of widespread habitat loss and displacement. Northern mountain caribou are likewise declining.

The B.C. government missed the federal government’s October 2017 deadline to create a SARA-compliant boreal caribou protection plan, and now is insisting that more time is needed for recovery planning for both boreal woodland and mountain caribou. B.C. has drafted a recent caribou recovery strategy that will include plans for each of the province’s 54 herds. However, First Nations and conservation groups have criticized the plan for falling short on setting proper population targets, adequately protecting critical habitat, and facilitating restoration. The B.C. government also created a Section 11 Conservation Agreement for the protection of the Southern Mountain Caribou. Yet, this plan does not put any habitat protection targets on low-elevation or other key habitat that is more accessible for resource extraction. Caribou will not recover under a plan that does not protect a majority of their habitat. When it comes to caribou recovery, the B.C. government is putting forestry and oil and gas interests first, over the primary goal of caribou population recovery across the province. In response to this inaction, First Nations have led their own recovery efforts, including creating their own action plans.

International Marketplace Response

International demand for forest products, especially from the United States, is a major driver of the Canadian forestry industry’s continued push into undisturbed boreal forest and remaining boreal caribou habitat. The international marketplace consumes about half of the Canadian forest products by revenue, and of these exports, the United States alone accounts for more than two-thirds. Major purchasers like Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Ben & Jerry’s have expressed increasing concern regarding Canada’s lack of sufficient boreal habitat protections. In October 2017, these and other companies voiced their desire for “materials that are free of controversy and have been acquired through sustainable harvesting.” The companies asked for “robust caribou habitat protection plans that are grounded in science” and created in consultation with Indigenous Peoples. Today, companies are continuing to press the federal and provincial governments to fulfill their obligations to protect boreal caribou, demonstrating the international marketplace’s desire to purchase forest products that do not come at the expense of boreal habitat and wildlife.

The full October letter from companies can be found here.

I find myself wondering if Russia understands the Washington criminal with whom Russia is so desperate to negotiate peace and understanding.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is excited that Trump has invited Putin to the White House “to jointly curb the arms race.”

Of course the US military/security complex wants to curb an arms race in which Russia is 30 years ahead. Will the Russian government in all its delusions and romanticized view of the US and its vassals again be sucked into meaningless agreements that leave Russia exposed to annihilation?

How can Russia expect any agreement with Washington or any European country to mean anything when in front of Russia’s very eyes the US, alone in the world, is breaking the agreement the US made with Iran with regard to Iran’s enrichment of uranium?

Why does Lavrov want to negotiate another agreement with Washington that Washington will break as it has every other negotiated agreement with Russia since the Clinton regime. Does the Russian Foreign Ministry find it difficult to learn from experience?

Russia has the winning hand, but does not know how to play it. The caution with which the government operates encourages more provocations, whereas a more decisive policy would discourage provocations.

Washington interprets Russia’s conciliatory behavior as weakness, and now also so does the tiny country of Israel. Believe it or not, Israel has issued an ultimatum to Russia. Israel, a country so small that it can be wiped out by conventional weapons alone has now ordered the world’s primary military power to get out of the way of Israel’s illegal military attacks on Syria.

A country that can be given an ultimatum by Israel, whose army was twice routed and utterly defeated by a small Lebanese militia, has no respect in the West. This is Russia’s problem. Even the militarily impotent British talk about going to war with Russia as if that is a riskless undertaking.

As long as the Russian government conveys indecisiveness and weakness in its responses to extreme provocations, the provocations will continue to push the world to World War 3.

*

This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

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

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Diplomatic work continues in some of the areas with the highest geopolitical tensions in the world. In recent days there have been high-level meetings and contacts between Turkey, Iran and Russia over the situation in Syria; meetings between Modi and Xi Jinping to ease tensions between India and China; and finally, the historic meeting between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un. The common component in all these meetings is the absence of the United States, which may explain the excellent progress that has been seen.

The last seven days have brought a note of optimism to international relations. The meeting between Modi and Xi Jinping in China offered a regional example, confirmed by the words of Wang Yi, member of the State Counsel of the People’s Republic of China:

“Our [India and China] common interests outweigh our differences. The summit will go a long way towards deepening the mutual trust between the two great neighbors. We will make sure that the informal summit will be a complete success and a new milestone in the history of China-India relations”.

Given the tensions in August 2017 in the Himalayan border area between the two countries, the progress achieved in the last nine months bodes well for a further increase in cooperation between the two nations. Bilateral trade stands at around $85 billion a year, with China as India’s largest trading partner. The meeting between Modi and Xi also serves to deepen the already existing framework between the two countries in international organizations like BRICS, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), in which they are integral participants. It is imaginable that negotiations on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will be in full swing, with Beijing keen to involve New Delhi more in the project. Such a prospect is particularly helped by three very powerful investment vehicles put in place by Beijing, namely, the New Development Bank (formerly the BRICS Development Bank), the AIIB, and the Silk Road Fund.

Image on the right: Indian PM Modi and Chinese President Jinping

Image result for modi and jinping

Xi Jinping will be seeking to ​​progressively entice India closer to the BRI project through attractive and mutually beneficial commercial arrangements. However, this objective remains complicated and difficult to implement. Beijing is aware of this and has already expressed its intention not to impose the BRI on the neighboring country. With much of the future global and regional architecture depending on these two countries, the good understanding shown between Xi Jinping and Modi bodes well, especially given the commonly aligned objectives represented by the multitude of international organizations and frameworks on which China and India sit side by side.

Another bit of important news for the Asian region has been the meeting between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un, which was recently examined in an article published in Strategic Culture Foundation. As discussed in that article, the intention of the two leaders is to reunite the two Koreas, to denuclearize the peninsula, and to sign a peace treaty between the North and South, whose unprecedented implications entail such questions as whether there is a future role for the United States on the peninsula. As stated before, the rapprochement between the two Koreas does not play into Washington’s favor, which relies on the South as a strategic foothold to contain China, justifying its presence on the purported need to confront North Korea. With an all-encompassing peace agreement, this justification would cease to exist. It seems that the goal for US policy-makers will be to find an opportunity to sabotage the North-South agreement and blame Kim Jong-un for its failure. Without engaging in a diplomatic tiff with its South Korean ally, the deep state in Washington does not intend to surrender one inch of its military presence on the peninsula, and would even look favorably on the negotiations failing to further damage Trump and his administration.

This is an internal deep-state war that has been going on for years. Obama wanted to abandon the Middle East in order to focus on containing China, altering the military’s structure accordingly to return to a more Cold War stance. This explains the agreement with Iran in order to free the US from its Middle East involvement so as to be able to focus mainly on Asia and to promote it as the most important region for the United States. This strategic intention has met with enormous opposition from two of the most influential lobbies in the American political system, the Israeli and Saudi Arabian. Without the United States, these two countries would be unable to stop Iran’s peaceful but impressive ascent in the region.

Listening to four-star generals like Robert Neller (Commandant of the Marine Corps) and others less distinguished, one comes to appreciate the extent to which the US military is in strategic chaos. The military has been the victim of epochal changes with each presidency. Pentagon planners would like to simultaneously confront countries like Russia, China and Iran, but in the process only decrease effectiveness due to imperial overstretch. Other politicians, especially from the neocon area, argue for the need to transform the US armed forces from a force suitable for fighting small countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria), Middle Eastern insurgencies, or terrorist groups (a pretext originating from the 1990’s and the first Gulf War), to a military able to face its peer competitors with all weapons available. Such a realignment does not occur over a short period of time and requires an enormous amount of money to reorganize the armed forces.

In this struggle between components of the deep state, Trump lumbers into a policy that stems from his electoral campaign rather than a considered strategy. Trump showed himself in his campaign to be strongly pro-Israel and strongly pro-armed forces, which has had the practical result of increasing military spending. Tens of billions of dollars worth of agreements have been realized with the richest country in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, for arms purchases, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is viewed negatively. Trump’s interventions in Syria confirm that he is under the strong influence of that part of the deep state that is adamant that the United States should always be present in the Middle East, should openly oppose Iran, and, above all, should prevent the Shiite arc from extending its influence to cover Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The reasoning employed by Trump and his administration confirms this direction in Washington’s strategy, involving greater cooperation with Beijing to solve the Korean issue; less of an effort to decrease Moscow’s influence in Syria and in the Middle East in general; and greater belligerence towards Iran, with a general shift away from Asia and towards the Middle East, backtracking away from Obama’s pivot to Asia.

Trump seems to give the impression of wanting to face China from an unprecedented direction, with a trade war that would inevitably end up damaging all sides.

In this ad hoc strategy, the European allies play an important role in Washington’s intention to cancel or modify the Iranian nuclear agreement. Following the meetings in Washington between Trump and Macron, and then with Merkel, both European leaders seem more or less open to a modification of the JCPOA, provided that Trump backs away from placing tariffs on European countries, an appeal to which the English premier Theresa May adds her name. It seems a desperate tactic, given that one of the issues Trump is pinning his 2020 campaign on is being able to fix the trade imbalances between the US and the EU, without which he will be unable to claim to have kept his promises.

The United States has many cards to play, but none is decisive. In Korea, the peace process depends very little on Trump’s intentions and more on the willingness of the two key parties to reach a historic agreement to improve the lives of all citizens of the peninsula. I predict the deep state will try to blame the DPRK for a failure of the negotiations, thereby bringing to Asia the chaos in international relations that the US has successfully brought to other parts of the world. The People’s Republic of China will therefore try to replace the United States in negotiations in order to bring the two negotiating parties closer together.

In the same way, an attempt to sabotage the JCPOA will only drive Russia, China and Iran into a strategic triangle, about which I was writing more than a year ago. A unilateral exit from the nuclear agreement will help delegitimize Washington’s international role, together with the sabotage by the deep state of the peace agreement in Korea. It will be a pincer effect resulting from the chaos and the internal struggle of North American and European elites.

Success in the negotiations in Korea could pave the way for a protection umbrella for the DPRK guaranteed by China and Russia, in the same way the two could grant Iran all the diplomatic support necessary to resist the American and European pressure to cancel the JCPOA. Ultimately, the rapprochement between India and China, in view of important agreements on the BRI, could seal comity and cooperation between the two giants, leading the Eurasian area under the definitive influence of India, China, Russia and Iran, and guaranteeing a future of peaceful economic development to the most important area of ​​the globe.

The United States finds itself divided by a war within the elite, where Trump’s presidency is continually attacked and de-legitimized, while the coordinated assault on the dollar continues apace through gold, the petroyuan, and blockchain technology. US military power is showing itself to be a paper tiger unable to change the course of events on the ground, as seen recently in Syria. The loss of diplomatic credibility resulting from the sabotage of the JCPOA, and Washington’s inability to sit down and sincerely negotiate with the DPRK, will deliver the final coup de grace to a country that is struggling to even remain friendship with her European allies (sanctions imposed on Russia, sanctions on European companies participating in the North Stream 2, and tariffs in a new trade war).

The US deep state remains on this path of self-destruction, perennially torn between opposing strategies, which only accelerates Washington’s unipolar decline and the emergence in its place of a multipolar world order, with New Delhi, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran as new poles over an immense area  comprising the Middle east and all of Eurasia.

*

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

The Skripal incident was likely hatched by both countries, one episode among numerous longstanding efforts to demonize Russia – improved relations ruled out entirely.

US/UK policies toward Russia are joined at the hip, both countries partnering in Russophobic harshness.

On Thursday, Sergey Lavrov blasted Britain, saying

“Russia is worried over the health and position of the Skripals, whom the British authorities dragged into this provocation,” adding:

“The British authorities’ refusal to grant consular access is a reason enough to consider the current situation as abduction or intentional isolation.”

This is utterly unacceptable” – Washington equally responsible for what happened, he failed to stress. Virtually all Russophobic actions by either country are joint efforts, neither regime going it alone on relations with Moscow.

Despite no chance for improved relations with both countries in the near, intermediate, and likely longterm, official Russian policy seeks mutual cooperation.

Lavrov:

“We are ready for concrete cooperation with Britain. We urge London to cooperate honestly within the framework of the criminal case Russia’s Investigative Committee opened over an attempt at premeditated murder and of the relevant queries the Prosecutor-General’s Office dispatched to Britain.”

He extended a similar overture to Washington, despite continuing deterioration in bilateral relations, nothing showing signs of improvement, endless examples of the most dismal relations in the post-WW II period.

Lavrov:

“We have repeatedly stated that we positively assess President Donald Trump’s desire to establish normal dialogue between our countries,” adding:

Despite positive-sounding Trump rhetoric, it’s “reversed by Russophobic sentiments soaring in the US establishment” – near unanimously by Congress, notable hostility from Trump’s war cabinet.

Raging hawks John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are militantly Russophobic. Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation director Alexandra Bell said

“(b)etween (them), you’re looking at a neocon foreign policy jacked up on steroids.”

Lumping Russia, China, Syria, Iran, and North Korea together, Bolton said

“(a) national security policy…based on…faith that (these countries) will honor their commitments is doomed to failure.”

He called (nonexistent) Russian US election meddling “a casus belli, a true act of war, and one Washington will never tolerate,” adding:

“For Trump, it should be a highly salutary lesson about the character of Russia’s leadership to watch Putin lie to him” – a bald-faced lie, continuing:

“And it should be a fire-bell-in-the-night warning about the value Moscow places on honesty, whether regarding election interference, nuclear proliferation, arms control or the Middle East: negotiate with todays Russia at your peril.”

Diplomatic engagement with Washington expecting positive results when betrayal followed many times before is hoping for what’s unattainable.

Pompeo considers Russia Washington’s mortal enemy. During his Senate confirmation hearing, he said

“Russia continues to act aggressively, enabled by years of soft policy toward that aggression. That’s now over,” adding:

“The actions of this administration make clear that President Trump’s national security strategy, rightfully, has identified Russia as a danger to our country.”

Relations are polar opposite – Washington a mortal threat to Russian security, not the other way around.

As America’s top (undiplomatic) diplomat, Pompeo promised toughness in advancing US interests, notably in dealing with sovereign independent countries like Russia, China, Iran and others.

Lavrov said the Kremlin wants to establish “friendly relations with the US” without compromising its principles and national interests.

Washington demands no less, wanting all other nations bowing to its will, making improved relations with Russia and other independent countries unattainable.

Hoping for improving relations won’t change things. Hegemons don’t operate that way, wanting control, not mutual cooperation.

America wages endless wars of aggression to achieve its goals, Russia on its target list for regime change. Chances for improved bilateral relations are virtually nil.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

The Ministry of Defence has revealed for the first time – seemingly accidentally – that British drones are firing thermobaric weapons in Syria.  The disclosure comes in an Freedom of Information (FoI) response to Drone Wars detailing the use of Reaper drones over the previous three months.

In the response, officials give a breakdown of the type of Hellfire missiles fired, stating that 19 AGM-114N4 and 44 AGM-114R2 had been used. The ‘N’ version of the missile uses a Metal Augmented Charge (MAC) warhead that contains a thermobaric explosive fill using aluminium with the explosive mixture. When the warhead detonates, the aluminium mixture is dispersed and rapidly burns. The sustained high pressure explosion is extremely damaging, creating a powerful shock wave and vacuum. Anyone in the vicinity is likely to die from internal organ damage.

Thermobaric weapons, sometimes called ‘vacuum’ weapons have been condemned  by human rights groups and, as the Times reported in 2008 ,

“the weapons are so controversial that MoD weapons and legal experts spent 18 months debating whether British troops could use them without breaking international law.”

The ‘debate’ came to an end when a ‘Yes Minister’ solution was offered – they “redefined” the weapon as an ‘enhanced blast missile’.

Test of thermobaric missile warhead

In 2010, the MoD specifically refused to answer questions in the House of Commons by then Oxford East MP Andrew Smith on whether British drones were firing the thermobaric version of the Hellfire missile.  Thanks to this diligent answer from an MoD official we now know they are.

However, the answer raises new questions.  Given the extremely harmful nature of the weapon why are so many – roughly a quarter of the weapons fired from British drones in the first three months of the year – being used?  Has the use of this weapon been at the same level since 2014?  Or are they being used more frequently now?

The revelation comes alongside news that UK drone strikes have hugely intensified in Syria since January.  In the first three months of 2018, UK drones fired as many weapons in Syria (92) as they have over the previous 18 months. And, despite the MoD regularly insisting that its Reaper drones are primarily used for surveillance and intelligence gathering, UK Reaper drones have now fired more weapons in Syria than the UK’s dedicated bomber, the Tornado.

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All images in this article are from the author.