Global Research

Last week, former NSA intelligence analyst John Schindler posted a rather disturbing tweet. With a statement that one could only assume to be a reference towards Russia, Schindler wrote “Said a senior NATO (non-US) GOFO to me today: “We’ll probably be at war this summer. If we’re lucky it won’t be nuclear.” Let that sink in.”

So who is John Schindler? As a ten-year veteran of the NSA, he was in the news a bit more when Snowden was making frequent headlines. He used to be a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, and is currently a frequent contributor to Business Insider. According to his biography on Business Insider, he used to teach classes on security, strategy, intelligence, and terrorism, and he has “collaborated closely with other government agencies who would probably prefer he didn’t mention them.” It’s safe to say that Schindler probably brushes shoulders with high-ranking officials from time to time, so his tweet should be taken seriously.

It’s frightening to think that members of NATO may actually be preparing for, and expecting a war with Russia this summer, but unfortunately it’s not all that surprising. Given some of the activity we’re seeing around the world, it’s safe to assume that superpowers like the US, Russia, and China, are preparing for something big.  Infowars also reported on Schindler’s tweet, and noted some of the provocative moves that have been going on around the world lately.

Earlier this month NATO launched its biggest ever wargame exercise on Russia’s doorstep. Moscow responded by conducting “provocative” wargames in the Mediterranean Sea in coordination with the Chinese PLA, the first ever naval drill involving both superpowers.

NATO powers are also taking part in one of Europe’s largest ever fighter jet drills from today, with the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Finland, Norway and Sweden all involved in the 12 day exercise.

Tensions are also building between the U.S. and China, with The Global Times, a state media outlet owned by the ruling Communist Party, today warning that “war is inevitable” if Washington doesn’t halt its demands that Beijing stop building artificial islands in the South China Sea.

“If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a U.S.-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,” the newspaper said. “The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as ‘friction’.”

Last week, CNN revealed how China’s Navy has repeatedly issued warnings to U.S. surveillance planes flying over the South China Sea.

While these sorts of warnings come and go all the time, that in and of itself is kind of scary. The fact that we now live in a world where high-ranking officials just assume nuclear war is right around the corner, means we should be very concerned. Wars rarely, if ever, happen out of the blue. There are always quiet rumors of wars before the real deal comes to pass.

Contributed by Joshua Krause of The Daily Sheeple.

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .

Senate Intelligence chair Richard Burr: His bill, described by AP as a “compromise,” could put AP‘s sources away for 10 years.

The Associated Press(5/23/15) reported on what reporter Ken Dilanian called efforts by Congress “to prevent an interruption in critical government surveillance programs” by extending a section of the PATRIOT Act set to expire May 31.

If you’re more worried about the government spying on you than you are about the government losing “valuable surveillance tools”—well, I guess AP is not the news service for you, then.

One such PATRIOT Act preservation effort is labeled a “compromise” by AP—Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr’s proposal to extend the NSA’s bulk collection of domestic phone records until 2017—in what AP calls a “transition.”

As Marcy Wheeler of Expose Facts (5/26/15) points out, Burr’s plan would actually not be a simple extension of the PATRIOT Act’s Section 215, but instead would be “a breathtaking expansion of surveillance authority, probably even bigger than the FISA Amendments Act passed in 2008.” Among the Burr bill’s special features, Wheeler writes:

The bill basically would create its own mini Espionage Act, just for Section 215, creating a 10-year prison term for anyone who knowingly communicates information about Section 215 collection to an “unauthorized person.”

That’s interesting, because before Dilanian wrote about Burr’s “compromise,” he put this passage into his story:

But if Section 215 expires without replacement, the government would lack the blanket authority to conduct those searches. There would be legal methods to hunt for connections in US phone records to terrorists, said current and former US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But those methods would not be applicable in every case.

So “current and former US officials” spoke without authorization to Dilanian about Section 215—thereby committing the very crime that this “compromise” bill would punish with a 10-year prison sentence.

Wheeler points out that the anonymous officials who talked to Dilanian, while not legally authorized to do so, probably had the unofficial sanction of their superiors:

If the earlier reports were based on a sanctioned leak, there’s little chance US intelligence officials sharing information they clearly identified as classified would be sent to prison for 10 years. But sources who might provide the kind of information that would make this debate useful would face prison terms. For journalists to deem such a bill a “compromise” would be to suggest they’re okay working exclusively with one-sided official leaks.

 

Gentrification – the displacement of Black and brown urban residents by more affluent whites – is a function of the same forces that emptied the cities of much of their white populations, generations ago: the movement of capital. Capital wants the cities back, and clears spaces for whites. “The system is stacked in favor of moneyed interests and white people.”

There is no city in this country where black people are safe from the current method of displacement known as gentrification. Washington, DC, once had a majority black population and was known as Chocolate City. Perhaps it is now the Café au Lait city as the black population has fallen below 50%. That dynamic gathers steam in New York and other cities and continues to push people out of their homes, deprive them of needed services and erode their quality of life.

The situation in New York City is illustrative of this phenomenon. According to census data the city’s black population dropped by 5% between 2000 and 2010. Brooklyn alone lost 50,000 black residents during that time while the white population grew by 37,000 people. The impact of money is the explanation for this reversal of fortune. The same sources of capital that took money out of the cities in decades past are now changing course. These market manipulations determine where black people can and cannot live and create a cascade of negative impacts.

East New York was always one of New York’s poorest neighborhoods with a median income of only $32,000. Its majority black population and location in far eastern Brooklyn near the border of Queens had deemed it undesirable. That designation is now forgotten as big money sets its sights on new places to conquer. Now an area once thought to be too far from Manhattan is touted as being a 30 minute commute via public transportation. This formerly sneered upon and forgotten part of town is now “hot” and its residents have been identified as displaceable.

The phrase “prime real estate” can mean anything the market manipulators want it to mean. As the many headed hydra keeps sprouting heads, any place can suddenly be declared “hot” or “hip.” The inhabitants are pushed aside to make way for transplants who may come from the suburbs, another state or even from another country.

Gentrification is inherently racist, and Brooklyn shows the rest of the country how the dirty deeds are done. A recent article in New York Magazine included an interview with Ephraim, a pseudonym for a Brooklyn landlord and developer. He candidly described how black people facing foreclosure give him deeds to their homes or how renters are enticed to move out of rent regulated apartments in exchange for small sums of money.

“If there’s a black tenant in the house—in every building we have, I put in white tenants. They want to know if black people are going to be living there. So sometimes we have ten apartments and everything is white, and then all of the sudden one tenant comes in with one black roommate, and they don’t like it.”

Much has been made about this story but the outrage misses some important points. The emphasis for advocates should not just be that illegal practices should be stopped. The most important thing to remember is that black people have little stake in a system that will always find a way to disadvantage them. There can be no use for tired nostrums about black people making bad choices or not using their paltry “buying power” to better effect. The system is stacked in favor of moneyed interests and white people, no matter how well black people strive to behave in ways they are told will protect them.

The lack of assets means that even when black people own real estate they often do so precariously. Job loss or any other setback can mean financial crisis and foreclosure. That is where Ephraim comes in and gets these distressed home owners to give him their deeds.

Individual effort is no match for the rule of money. Black people who had money to buy and develop properties were prevented from doing so by redlining which prevented mortgages, bank loans and even insurance from being utilized in black neighborhoods across the country. Urban areas had large black populations because white people fled. White people left to get away from black people and capital paved the road to the suburbs. The tide is now turning because there is once again money to be made in the cities. Perhaps in the future the 1% will make different choices and make new determinations about where black people will live.

The nexus of corruption is vast. Real estate developers call the shots and politicians follow. That is how rent regulations in New York were eviscerated beginning in the 1990s. Now a vacant apartment can be decontrolled and no longer subject to regulated pricing if the rent rises above $2,500. A welfare program for developers, known as 421a, provides tax abatements meant to incentivize construction of low and moderate income housing. Instead, a developer recently received a 95% tax abatement on a $100 million condominium in Manhattan.

The demographic change generated by manipulations from the rich mean losses other than housing. Neighborhoods already considered “food deserts” are losing the few supermarkets they have if a developer buys those properties. Even defendants and plaintiffs in court cases pay a price. Juries in Brooklyn now have more white people with higher incomes which means they are more likely to decide in favor of the police or against plaintiffs in civil cases. One attorney explained it this way. “There’s an influx of money, and when everything gets gentrified, these jurors aren’t pro-plaintiff anymore.”

So black Brooklynites have fewer affordable places to live, to buy food or even to get the little bit of justice they once had. Gentrification is a destroyer and just one of the ways black people in this country are kept at the bottom. The fight against it must be fought on many fronts. The racism which gives white people a perceived right to be free of black people must be called out. The laws which give the wealthy advantages over everyone else must end. Politicians have to be called to account. If they aren’t, cities will become theme parks for the upper classes and everyone else will be pushed to the outskirts and to jail, the ultimate form of displacement.

Gentrification is just one of the ways in which capitalism manifests itself and it must be thought of in that way. If it isn’t, black people will be fooled into short sighted thinking and ineffective tactics. We can start with a new adage. As long as money wins, black people will lose.

Margaret Kimberley‘s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

This article was first published in January 2003, two months prior to the launching of the war on Iraq. It was subsequently included in my book entitled America’s “War on Terrorism”, Global Research, Montreal, 2005.

Since the publication of this article, the instruments of propaganda have gained in impetus and sophistication.  The global campaign against Muslims has continued unabated with a view to creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

Suspected terrorists are arrested on trumped up charges.  These arrests of individuals of Middle Eastern origin are not motivated by security considerations. Their main function is to provide legitimacy to the “Global War on Terrorism” and the Homeland Security State.  

The ultimate objective is to justify a war of conquest. 

Terrorist attacks by Muslims against the Homeland are said to be imminent. Counter-terrorism is intended to protect the Western World. 

Much of the justification for waging this war without borders rests on the legitimacy of the US  administration’s anti-terrorist agenda.  The latter forms part of the propaganda campaign, which in turn is used to sway the US population into an unconditional acceptance of the war agenda.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have covertly supported and financed international terrorism. They have used Al Qaeda as well as ISIS as their foot-soldiers, while also using the atrocities committed by the “Islamic terrorists” as a justification for intervening on humanitarian ground.

In Iraq, the Obama administration is supporting ISIS while at the same time waging a fake “war on terrorism” against ISIS. Without the support of media propaganda, the legitimacy of the “war on terrorism” would collapse like a deck of cards. 

The ISIS brigades are integrated by US-NATO sponsored special forces, often recruited by private mercenary companies on contract to the Pentagon. These special forces which integrate the terror brigades are in permanent liaison with their US-NATO counterparts.

Michel Chossudovsky, May 27  2015

*     *     *

One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to «fabricate an enemy» . As anti-war sentiment grows and the political legitimacy the Bush Administration falters, doubts regarding the existence of this “outside enemy” must be dispelled.

As the date of the planned invasion of Iraq approaches, the Bush Administration and its indefectible British ally have multiplied the “warnings” of future Al Qaeda terrorist attacks. The enemy has to appear genuine: thousands of news stories and editorials linking Al Qaeda to the Baghdad government are planted in the news chain. Colin Powell underscored this relationship in his presentation to the Davos World Economic Forum in January. Iraq is casually presented in official statements and in the media as “a haven for and supplier of the terror network”:

“Evidence that is still tightly held is accumulating within the administration that it is not a matter of chance that terror groups in the al Qaeda universe have made their weapons of choice the poisons, gases and chemical devices that are signature arms of the Iraqi regime.”1

In this context, propaganda purports to drown the truth, and kill the evidence on how Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda was fabricated and transformed into “Enemy Number One”.

Meanwhile, “anti-terrorist operations” directed against Muslims, including arbitrary mass arrests have been stepped up. In the US, emergency measures are contemplated in the case of war. The corporate media is busy preparing public opinion. A «national emergency» is said to be justified because «America is under attack»:

« the U.S. and Western interests in the Western world have to be prepared for retaliatory attacks from sleeper cells the second we launch an attack in Iraq.» 2

Defence of the Homeland

Emergency procedures are already in place. The Secretary of Homeland Defence -whose mandate is to «safeguard the nation from terrorist attacks»– has already been granted the authority « to take control of a national emergency», implying the establishment of de facto military rule. In turn, the Northern Command would be put in charge of military operations in the US «war on terrorism » theatre.

The Smallpox Vaccination Program

In the context of these emergency measures, preparations for compulsory smallpox vaccination are already under way in response to a presumed threat of a biological weapons attack on US soil. The vaccination program –which has been the object of intense media propaganda– would be launched with the sole purpose of creating an atmosphere of panic among the population:

«A few infected individuals with a stack of plane tickets–or bus tickets, for that matter–could spread smallpox infection across the country, touching off a plague of large proportions …. It is not inconceivable that a North Korea or an Iraq could retain smallpox in a hidden lab and pass the deadly agent on to terrorists.»3

The hidden agenda is crystal clear. How best to discredit the anti-war movement and maintain the legitimacy of the State? Create conditions, which instill fear and hatred, present the rulers as “guardians of the peace”, committed to weeding out terrorism and preserving democracy. In the words of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, echoing almost verbatim the US propaganda dispatches:

“’I believe it is inevitable that they will try in some form or other,… ‘I think we can see evidence from the recent arrests that the terrorist network is here as it is around the rest of Europe, around the rest of the world… The most frightening thing about these people is the possible coming together of fanaticism and the technology capable of delivering mass destruction.’”4

Mass Arrests

The mass arrests of individuals of Middle Eastern origin since September 11 2001 on trumped up charges is not motivated by security considerations. Their main function is to provide “credibility” to the fear and propaganda campaign. Each arrest, amply publicised by the corporate media, repeated day after day “gives a face” to this invisible enemy. It also serves to drown the fact that Al Qaeda is a creature of the CIA. “Enemy Number One” is not an enemy but an instrument.)

In other words, the Propaganda campaign performs two important functions.

First it must ensure that the enemy is considered a real threat.

Second, it must distort the truth, –i.e. it must conceal “the relationship” between this “fabricated enemy” and its creators within the military-intelligence apparatus.

In other words, the nature and history of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and the Islamic brigades since the Soviet-Afghan war must be suppressed because if it trickles down to the broader public, the legitimacy of the so-called “war on terrorism” collapses like a deck of cards. And in the process, the legitimacy of the main political and military actors is threatened.

The “9/11 Foreknowledge” Scandal

On 16 May 2002, the New York tabloids revealed that “President Bush had been warned of possible high jacking before the terror attacks” and had failed to act.5

The disinformation campaign was visibly stalling in the face of mounting evidence of CIA-Osama links. For the first time since 9/11, the mainstream press had hinted to the possibility of a cover-up at the highest echelons of the US State apparatus.

FBI Agent Coleen Rowley, who blew the whistle on the FBI, played a key role in unleashing the crisis. Her controversial Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller pointed to the existence of “deliberate roadblocks” on the investigation of the September 11 attacks:

“Minutes after the 9/11 attacks the SSA [David Frasca, Director of the Radical Fundamentalist unit in the FBI] said ‘this was probably all just a coincidence’ and we were to do nothing until we got their permission, because we might screw up something else going on elsewhere in the country” 6

In response to an impending political crisis, the fear and disinformation campaign went into overdrive. The news chain was all of a sudden inundated with reports and warnings of “future terrorist attacks”. A carefully worded statement (visibly intended to instill fear) by Vice President Dick Cheney contributed to setting the stage:

“I think that the prospects of a future attack on the U.S. are almost a certainty… It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying. And we have to be prepared.”7

What Cheney is really telling us is that our “intelligence asset”, which we created, is going to strike again. Now, if this “CIA creature” were planning new terrorist attacks, you would expect that the CIA would be first to know about it. In all likelihood, the CIA also controls the so-called ‘warnings’ emanating from CIA sources on “future terrorist attacks” in the US and around the World.

Propaganda’s Consistent Pattern

Upon careful examination of news reports on actual, “possible” or “future” terrorist attacks, the propaganda campaign exhibits a consistent pattern. Similar concepts appear simultaneously in hundreds of media reports:

• they refer to “reliable sources“, a growing body of evidence —e.g. government or intelligence or FBI.
• They invariably indicate that the terrorist groups involved have “ties to bin Laden” or Al Qaeda, or are “sympathetic to bin Laden”,
• The reports often points to the possibility of terrorist attacks, “sooner or later” or “in the next two months“.
• The reports often raise the issue of so-called “soft targets”, pointing to the likelihood of civilian casualties.
• They indicate that future terrorist attacks could take place in a number of allied countries (including Britain, France, Germany) in which public opinion is strongly opposed to the US-led war on terrorism.
• They confirm the need by the US and its allies to initiate “pre-emptive” actions directed against these various terrorist organizations and/or the foreign governments which harbour the terrorists.
• They often point to the likelihood that these terrorist groups possess WMD including biological and chemical weapons (as well as nuclear weapons). The links to Iraq and “rogue states”(discussed in Part I) is also mentioned.
• The warnings also include warnings regarding “attacks on US soil”, attacks against civilians in Western cities.
• They point to efforts undertaken by the police authorities to apprehend the alleged terrorists.
• The arrested individuals are in virtually all cases Muslims and/or of Middle Eastern origin.
• The reports are also used to justify the Homeland Security legislation as well as the “ethnic profiling” and mass arrests of presumed terrorists.

This pattern of disinformation in the Western media applies the usual catch phrases and buzz words. (See press excerpts below. The relevant catch phrases are indicated in bold):

“Published reports, along with new information obtained from U.S. intelligence and military sources, point to a growing body of evidence that terrorists associated with and/or sympathetic to Osama bin Laden are planning a significant attack on U.S. soil.

Also targeted are allied countries that have joined the worldwide hunt for the radical Muslim cells hell-bent on unleashing new waves of terrorist strikes. … The U.S. government’s activation of antiterrorist forces comes as the FBI issued a warning Nov. 14 that a “spectacular” new terrorist attack may be forthcoming – sooner rather than later. …

Elsewhere, the Australian government issued an unprecedented warning to its citizens that al-Qaeda terrorists there might launch attacks within the next two months. 8

Although CIA Director George Tenet said in recent congressional testimony that “an attempt to conduct another attack on U.S. soil is certain,” a trio of former senior CIA officials doubted the chance of any “spectacular” terror attacks on U.S. soil.9

“Germans have been skittish since the terrorist attacks in the United States, fearing that their country is a ripe target for terrorism. Several of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks plotted their moves in Hamburg.10

“On Dec. 18, a senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, briefed journalists about the ‘high probability’ of a terrorist attack happening ‘sooner or later.’… he named hotels and shopping centres as potential ‘soft targets’… The official also specifically mentioned: a possible chemical attack in the London subway, the unleashing of smallpox, the poisoning of the water supply and strikes against “postcard targets” such as Big Ben and Canary Warf.

The “sooner or later” alert followed a Home Office warning at the end of November that said Islamic radicals might use dirty bombs or poison gas to inflict huge casualties on British cities. This also made big headlines but the warning was quickly retracted in fear that it would cause public panic. 11

The message yesterday was that these terrorists, however obscure, are trying – and, sooner or later, may break through London’s defences. It is a city where tens of thousands of souls,… Experts have repeatedly said that the UK, with its bullish support for the US and its war on terror, is a genuine and realistic target for terror groups, including the al- Qaeda network led by 11 September mastermind Osama bin Laden.12

Quoting Margaret Thatcher: “Only America has the reach and means to deal with Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or the other wicked psychopaths who will sooner or later step into their shoes.”13

According to a recent US State Department alert: “Increased security at official US facilities has led terrorists to seek softer targets such as residential areas, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, hotels, schools, outdoor recreation events, resorts, beaches and planes.”14

Actual Terrorist Attacks

To be “effective” the fear and disinformation campaign cannot solely rely on unsubstantiated “warnings” of future attacks, it also requires “real” terrorist occurrences or “incidents”, which provide credibility to the Administration’s war plans. Propaganda endorses the need to implement “emergency measures” as well as implement retaliatory military actions.

The triggering of “war pretext incidents” is part of the Pentagon’s assumptions. In fact it is an integral part of US military history.15 In fact in 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had envisaged a secret plan entitled “Operation Northwoods, to deliberately trigger civilian casualties to justify the invasion of Cuba:

“We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,”

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington” “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

(See the declassified Top Secret 1962 document titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba”16 (See Operation Northwoods at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NOR111A.html ).

There is no evidence that the Pentagon or the CIA played a direct role in recent terrorist attacks. The latter were undertaken by organisations (or cells of these organisations), which operate quite independently, with a certain degree of autonomy. This independence is in the very nature of a covert intelligence operation. The «intelligence asset» is not in direct contact with its covert sponsors. It is not necessarily cognizant of the role it plays on behalf of its intelligence sponsors.

The fundamental question is who is behind them? Through what sources are they being financed? What is the underlying network of ties?

A recent (2002) classified outbrief drafted to guide the Pentagon «calls for the creation of a so-called « Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group » (P2OG), to launch secret operations aimed at “stimulating reactions” among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction — that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to “quick-response” attacks by U.S. forces.» 17

The P2OG initiative is nothing new. It essentially extends an existing apparatus of covert operations. Amply documented, the CIA has supported terrorist groups since the Cold War era. This « prodding of terrorist cells » under covert intelligence operations often requires the infiltration and training of the radical groups linked to Al Qaeda.

Covert support by the US military and intelligence apparatus has been channelled to various Islamic terrorist organisations through a complex network of intermediaries and intelligence proxies. Moreover, numerous official statements, intelligence reports confirm recent links (in the post Cold War era) between US military-intelligence units and Al Qaeda operatives, as occurred in Bosnia (mid 1990s), Kosovo (1998-99) and Macedonia (2001).18

The Republican Party Committee of the US Congress in a 1997 report points to open collaboration between the US military and Al Qaeda operatives in the civil war in Bosnia.19 (See US Congress, 16 January 1997, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html )

Ties to Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s Military Intelligence (ISI)

It is indeed revealing that in virtually all post 9/11 terrorist occurrences, the terrorist organization is said to have “ties to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda”. This in itself is a crucial piece of information. Of course, the fact that Al Qaeda is a creature of the CIA is neither mentioned in the press reports nor is considered relevant.

The ties of these terrorist organizations (particularly those in Asia) to Pakistan’s military intelligence (ISI) is acknowledged in a few cases by official sources and press dispatches. Confirmed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), some of these groups are said to have links to Pakistan’s ISI, without identifying the nature of these links. Needless to say, this information is crucial in identifying the sponsors of these terrorist attacks. In other words, the ISI is said to support these terrorist organizations, while at same time maintaining close ties to the CIA.

The Bali Bomb Attack (October 2002)

The Bali attack in the Kuta seaside resort resulted in close to 200 deaths, mainly Australian tourists. The bomb attack was allegedly perpetrated by Jemaah Islamiah, a group, which operates in several countries in South East Asia. Press reports and official statements point to close ties between Jemaah Islamiah (JI) and Al Qaeda. The JI’s “operational leader” is Riduan Isamuddin, alias Hambali, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war, who was trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to a report by UPI:

“The [Soviet-Afghan] war provided opportunities for key figures of these groups, who went to Afghanistan, to experience firsthand the glory of jihad. Many of the radicals detained in Singapore and Malaysia derived their ideological inspiration from the activities of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and Pakistan” 20

What the report fails to mention is that the training of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and Pakistan was a CIA sponsored initiative launched under President Jimmy Carter in 1979, using Pakistan’s ISI as a go-between.

JI’s links to Indonesia’s Military Intelligence

There are indications, that in addition to its alleged links to Al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiah also has links to Indonesia’s military intelligence, which in turn has links to the CIA and Australian intelligence.

The links between JI and Indonesia’s Intelligence Agency (BIN) are acknowledged by the International Crisis Group (ICG):

“This link [of JI to the BIN] needs to be explored more fully: it does not necessarily mean that military intelligence was working with JI, but it does raise a question about the extent to which it knew or could have found out more about JI than it has acknowledged.” 21

(International Crisis Group, http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/showreport.cfm?reportid=845 , 2003)

The ICG, however, fails to mention that Indonesia’s intelligence apparatus has for more than 30 years been controlled by the CIA.

In the wake of the October 2002 Bali bombing, a contradictory report emanating from Indonesia’s top brass, pointed to the involvement of both the head of Indonesian intelligence General A. M. Hendropriyono as well as the CIA:

“The agency and its director, Gen. A. M. Hendropriyono, are well regarded by the United States and other governments. But there are still senior intelligence officers here who believe that the C.I.A. was behind the bombing.”22

In response to these statements, the Bush Administration demanded that President Megawati Sukarnoputri, publicly refute the involvement of the U.S in the attacks. No official retraction was issued. Not only did President. Megawati remained silent on this matter, she also accused the US of being:

“a superpower that forced the rest of the world to go along with it… We see how ambition to conquer other nations has led to a situation where there is no more peace unless the whole world is complying with the will of the one with the power and strength.” 23

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration, had used the Bali attacks to prop up its fear campaign:

“President Bush said Monday that he assumes al-Qaeda was responsible for the deadly bombing in Indonesia and that he is worried about fresh attacks on the United States.” 24

The news [regarding the Bali attack] came as US intelligence officials warned that more attacks like the Indonesian bombing can be expected in the next few months, in Europe, the Far East or the US.”25

Cover-up

The links of JI to the Indonesian intelligence agency were never raised in the official Indonesian government investigation –which was guided behind the scenes by Australian intelligence and the CIA.

Moreover, shortly after the bombing, Australian Prime Minister John Howard “admitted that Australian authorities were warned about possible attacks in Bali but chose not to issue a warning.”26 Also In the wake of the bombings, the Australian government chose to work with Indonesia’s Special Forces the Kopassus, in the so-called “war on terrorism”.

Australia: “Useful Wave of Indignation”

Reminiscent of Operation Northwoods, the Bali attack served to trigger “a useful wave of indignation.”27 They contributed to swaying Australian public opinion in favour of the US invasion of Iraq, while weakening the anti-war protest movement. In the wake of the Bali attack, the Australian government “officially” joined the US-led “war on terrorism.” It has not only used the Bali bombings as a pretext to fully integrate the US-UK military axis, it has also adopted drastic police measures including “ethnic profiling” directed against its own citizens:

Prime Minister John Howard made the extraordinary declaration recently that he is prepared to make pre-emptive military strikes against terrorists in neighbouring Asian countries planning to attack Australia. Australian intelligence agencies also are very worried about the likelihood of an al-Qaeda attack using nuclear weapons.28

The Attacks on the Indian Parliament (December 2001)

The December 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament –which contributed to pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of war– were allegedly conducted by two Pakistan-based rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba (“Army of the Pure”) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (“Army of Mohammed”). The press reports acknowledged the ties of both groups to Al Qaeda, without however mentioning that they were directly supported by Pakistan=s ISI. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) confirms in this regard that:

“through its Interservices Intelligence agency (ISI), Pakistan has provided funding, arms, training facilities, and aid in crossing borders to Lashkar and Jaish…Many were given ideological training in the same madrasas, or Muslim seminaries, that taught the Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan. They received military training at camps in Afghanistan or in villages in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Extremist groups [supported by the ISI] have recently opened several new madrasas in Azad Kashmir.”29

(Council on Foreign Relations at http://www.terrorismanswers.com/groups/harakat2.html , Washington 2002)

What the CFR fails to mention is the crucial relationship between the ISI and the CIA and the fact that the ISI continues to support Lashkar, Jaish and the militant Jammu and Kashmir Hizbul Mujahideen (JKHM), while also collaborating with the CIA. Ironically, confirmed by the writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski (who happens to be a member of the CFR), the training of these “foreign fighters” was an initiative of US foreign policy, launched during the Carter Administration in 1979 at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war. Coinciding with the 1989 Geneva Peace Agreement and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the ISI was instrumental in the creation of the militant Jammu and Kashmir Hizbul Mujahideen (JKHM).30 The timely attack on the Indian Parliament, followed by the ethnic riots in Gujarat in early 2002, were the culmination of a process initiated in the 1980s, financed by drug money and abetted by Pakistan’s military intelligence.

Dismantling the Propaganda Campaign, Building an Anti-War Consensus

We are at the juncture of the most serious crisis in modern history, requiring an unprecedented degree of solidarity, courage and commitment. America’s war, which includes the “first strike” use of nuclear weapons, threatens the future of humanity.

Much of the justification for waging this war without borders rests on the legitimacy of the Bush administration’s anti-terrorist programme. The latter forms part of the propaganda campaign, which in turn is used to sway the US population into an unconditional acceptance of the war agenda.

In the US, and around the world, the anti-war movement has gained in impetus. While millions of people have joined hands in opposing the war, the Bush Administration’s fear and disinformation campaign, relayed by the corporate media, has served to uphold the shaky legitimacy of the Bush administration.

At this critical crossroads, the anti-war/pro-democracy movement must necessarily move to a higher plane, which addresses the main functions of the Administration’s propaganda machine. The main purpose of propaganda is to sustain the legitimacy of the rulers and ensure that the rulers remain in power.

Undermining the Bush Administration’s « Right to Rule»

In other words, the mobilization of antiwar sentiment in itself will not reverse the tide of war.

What is needed is to consistently challenge the legitimacy of the main political and military actors, reveal the true face of the American Empire and the underlying criminalisation of foreign policy. Ultimately what is required is to question and eventually undermine the Bush Administration’s «right to rule».

Revealing the lies behind the Bush Administration is the basis for destroying the legitimacy of the main political and military actors.

Even if a majority of the population is against the war, this in itself will not prevent the war from occurring. The propaganda campaign’s objective is to sustain the lies which support the legitimacy of the main political and military actors, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Tenet, Armitage, Rice, et al. As long as the Bush Cabinet is considered a «legitimate government» in the eyes of the people and World public opinion, it will carry out the Iraqi invasion plan, whether it has public support or not.

In other words, this legitimacy must be challenged. Similarly in Britain, where a majority of the population is against the US-led war, actions must be launched which ultimately result in the downfall of the Blair Cabinet and the withdrawal of Britain from the US-led military coalition.

A necessary condition for bringing down the rulers is to weaken and eventually dismantle their propaganda campaign. How best to achieve this objective? By fully uncovering the lies behind the « war on terrorism» and revealing the complicity of the Bush administration in the events of 9/11.

This is a big hoax, it’s the biggest lie in US history. The war pretext does not stick and the rulers should be removed.

Moreover, it is important to show that « Enemy Number One » is fabricated. The terrorist attacks are indeed real, but who is behind them? The covert operations in support of terrorist organisations, including the history of Al Qaeda’s links to the CIA since the Soviet Afghan war, must be fully revealed because they relate directly to the wave of terrorist attacks which have occurred since September 11, all of which are said to have links to Al Qaeda.

To reverse the tide, the spreading of information at all levels, which counteracts the propaganda campaign is required.

The truth undermines and overshadows the lie.

And the truth is that the Bush administration is in fact supporting international terrorism as a pretext to wage war on Iraq.

Once this truth becomes fully understood, the legitimacy of the rulers will collapse like a deck of cards. This is what has to be achieved. But we can only achieve it, by effectively counteracting the official propaganda campaign.

The momentum and success of the large anti-war rallies in the US, the European Union and around the world, should lay the foundations of a permanent network composed of tens of thousands of local level anti-war committees in neighbourhoods, work places, parishes, schools, universities, etc. It is ultimately through this network that the legitimacy of those who “rule in our name will be challenged.

To shunt the Bush Administration’s war plans and disable its propaganda machine, we must, in the months ahead reach out to our fellow citizens across the land, in the US, Canada and around the world, to the millions of ordinary people who have been misled on the causes and consequences of this war, not to mention the implications of the Bush Administration’s Homeland Security legislation, which essentially sets in place the building blocks of a police state.

This initiative requires the spreading of information in an extensive grassroots network, with a view to weakening and ultimately disabling the Bush Administration’s propaganda machine.

When the lies – including those concerning September 11 – are fully revealed and understood by everybody, the legitimacy of the Bush Administration will be broken – Big Brother will have no leg to stand on, that is, no more wars to feed on. While this will not necessarily result in a fundamental and significant “regime change” in the US, a new “anti-war consensus” will have emerged, which will eventually pave the way for a broader struggle against the New World Order and the American Empire’s quest for global domination.

NOTES

1. Washington Post, 25 January 2003.

2. Ibid

3 Chicago Sun, 31 December 2002.

4 Reuters, 21 February 2003

5. See Ian Woods, Conspiracy of Silence, McKinney Vindicated, Global Outlook, No. 2, 2002.

6. Coleen Rowley, Memo To FBI Director Robert Mueller, quoted in Global Outlook, No. 3, 2003, p. 28.

7. The Boston Globe, 5 June 2002.

8. Insight on the News, 3 February 2003.

9. UPI, 19 December 2002.

10. New York Times, 6 January 2003.

11. Toronto Star, 5 January 2003.

12. The Scotsman, 8 January 2003.

13. UPI, 10 December 2002.

14. AFP, 3 January 2003.

15. See Richard Sanders, War Pretext Incidents, How to Start a War, Global Outlook, published in two parts, Issues 2 and 3, 2002-2003.

16.Operation Northwoods, declassified top secret document sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962,http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NOR111A.html .

17. William Arkin, The Secret War, The Los Angeles Times, 27 October 2002.

18. See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalisation, The Truth behind September 11, Global Outlook, 2003, Chapter 3, http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html

19. See Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base, Congressional Press Release, US Congress, 16 January 1997,http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html

20. UPI, 6 January 2002.

21. International Crisis Group, Indonesia Backgrounder: How The Jemaah Islamiyah Terrorist Network Operates, http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/showreport.cfm?reportid=845 , 2003

22, Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez, More Attacks on Westerners Are Expected in Indonesia, New York Times, 25 November 2002

23. Quoted in Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez, op cit.

24. USA Today, 15 October 2002.

25. Business AM, 15 October 2002.

26. Christchurch Press, 22 November 2002), (Similar warnings were made by the CIA).

27. Operation Northwoods, op cit.

28. Insight on the News, 3 February 2003.

29. Council on Foreign Relations at:

http://www.terrorismanswers.com/groups/harakat2.html, Washington 2002.

30. See K. Subrahmanyam, Pakistan is Pursuing Asian Goals, India Abroad, 3 November 1995.

---

ANNEX

Supporting evidence that successive US administrations have supported Al Qaeda is summarized below (references are provided to a selected bibliography):

• The “Islamic Brigades” are a creation of US foreign policy. In the post-Cold War era, the CIA continues to support and use Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda in its covert operations. In standard CIA jargon, Al Qaeda is categorized as an “intelligence asset”.
• The U.S. Congress has documented in detail, the links of Al Qaeda to agencies of the U.S. government during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Kosovo and Macedonia.
• The evidence confirms that Al Qaeda is supported by Pakistan’s military intelligence, the Inter-services Intelligence (ISI). Amply documented, the ISI, allegedly played an undercover role in financing the 9/11 attacks. The ISI has a close working relationship with the CIA.
• Pakistan’s ISI has consistently supported various Islamic terrorist organizations, while also collaborating with the CIA.
• These various terrorist groups supported by Pakistan’s ISI operate with some degree of autonomy in relation to their covert sponsors, but ultimately they act in the way which serves US interests.
• The CIA keeps track of its “intelligence assets”. Amply documented, Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts are known. Al Qaeda is infiltrated by the CIA. In other words, there were no “intelligence failures”! The 9-11 terrorists did not act on their own volition. The suicide hijackers were instruments in a carefully planned intelligence operation.

Centre for Research on Globalization, Foreknowledge of 9/11 A Compilation of CRG articles and documents in support of a 9-11 Investigation, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CRG204A.html

The Yemeni army, backed by popular committee forces, has destroyed four Saudi battle tanks after storming a base in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern city of Jizan. Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah satellite television network reported the development late on Monday. It also reported that the Yemeni army targeted three Saudi vehicles in the southwestern Saudi city of Najran, which is located near the border with Yemen, with rockets and artillery shells. Meanwhile, at least six people were killed and a woman sustained injuries in the US-backed Saudi airstrikes on a village in the district of Harad in Yemen’s western province of Hajjah early on Tuesday. We remember, Saudi Arabia is continuing its US-backed military aggression against Yemen since March 26, 2015.

The Syrian army has launched a major offensive against the ISIL Takfiri terrorists who recently overran the city of Palmyra in central Homs province. According to the military sources, the air force struck more than 160 Islamic State targets, killing and wounding terrorists and destroying weapons and vehicles equipped with machine-guns. Moreover, various military operations are also being carried out in the areas around the al-Suknah, the Arak, and al-Hail gas fields and all the roads leading to Palmyra. Over 50 ISIS militants have been killed during the offensive aimed at regaining the city from terrorists’ control, the Syrian state television reported.

Moscow has condemned the massacre of civilians in the city of Palmyra, urging the international community to denounce double standards in its approach to fighting terrorists, and unite against Islamic State aggression.

“Once again, we urge international and regional parties to abandon the vicious practice of using double standard approaches to fighting against terrorism, and launch efficient cooperation with the governments of Middle East countries, which are directly repelling the ISIS offensive,”

the ministry said in a statement. Moscow believes that US-led airstrike campaign against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria have not done enough to impede the jihadists’ advance in the two Middle Eastern states.

Monitors of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have confirmed that Russian representatives at the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination came under fire in Donbas on May 23.

“The Russian Federation Armed Forces Colonel-General said to the SMM that, on 23 May, his vehicle had come under AK47 fire. All passengers escaped unharmed but the vehicle suffered considerable damage and was abandoned on site,”

The Monday’s SMM daily update reads. On Sunday, spokesman for the defense ministry of the DPR Eduard Basurin told a briefing that a group of JCCC monitors had been attacked by Ukrainian subversives on May 23.

by Claire Bernish

Twelve years after George W Bush initiated the illegal invasion of Iraq, ostensibly under the premise of preemptive self-defense, a stark majority — as many as 75% in 2014 — feel the so-called war was a mistake. As evidence rapidly accumulates that Bush’s yearning to launch an aggressive attack was likelier due to a personal grudge than anything else, that number will surely swell. This past Tuesday, the former president’s intelligence briefer lent yet more plausibility to that theory in an interview on MSNBC’s Hardball, making an admission that the Bush White House misrepresented intelligence reports to the public on key issues.

Michael Morell’s stint with the CIA included deputy and acting director, but during the time preceding the US invasion of Iraq, he helped prepare daily intelligence briefings for Bush. One of those briefings, from October 2002, is an infamous example in intelligence history as how not to compile a report. This National Intelligence Estimate, titled “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction”, was the ostensibly flawed intelligence cited continuously by Bush supporters as justification to pursue a war of aggression against Iraq. However, this claim is dubious at best, and serves more as a smokescreen to lend credence to a president who was otherwise hellbent on revenge against Saddam Hussein, as evidenced in his statement a month before the report, “After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

In the Hardball interview, host Chris Matthews asked Morell about Cheney’s notorious statement in 2003:

“We know he [Saddam Hussein] has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” 

The following is the conversation that ensued:

MATTHEWS: Was that true?

MORELL: We were saying—

MATTHEWS: Can you answer that question? Was that true?

MORELL: That’s not true.

MATTHEWS: Well, why’d you let them get away with it?

MORELL: Look, my job Chris—

MATTHEWS: You’re the briefer for the president on intelligence, you’re the top person to go in and tell him what’s going on. You see Cheney make this charge he’s got a nuclear bomb and then they make subsequent charges he knew how to deliver it…and nobody raised their hand and said, “No that’s not what we told him.”

MORELL: Chris, Chris Chris, what’s my job, right? My job—

MATTHEWS: To tell the truth.

MORELL: My job—no, as the briefer? As the briefer?

MATTHEWS: Okay, go ahead.

MORELL: As the briefer, my job is to carry CIA’s best information and best analysis to the president of the United States and make sure he understands it. My job is to not watch what they’re saying on TV.

Discussion continued:

MATTHEWS: So you’re briefing the president on the reasons for war, they’re selling the war, using your stuff, saying you made that case when you didn’t. So they’re using your credibility to make the case for war dishonestly, as you just admitted.

MORELL: Look, I’m just telling you—

MATTHEWS: You just admitted it.

MORELL: I’m just telling you what we said—

MATTHEWS: They gave a false presentation of what you said to them.

MORELL: On some aspects. On some aspects.

And the host pushed just a little further:

MATTHEWS: That’s a big deal! Do you agree? If they claimed they had a [nuclear] weapon, when you know they didn’t.

MORELL: It’s a big deal. It’s a big deal.

He’s absolutely right, of course, and even further to that point, Morell made another admission of a direct misrepresentation: “What they were saying about the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda publicly was not what the intelligence community” had found. “I think they were trying to make a stronger case for the war.” Which the administration had to do, considering no such case existed. As a matter of fact, Cheney’s statement directly conflicts with what the NIE actually stated, which is that the intelligence community only found a “[lack of] persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.” Which is in line with the International Atomic Energy Agency report that came to the same conclusion: “[W]e have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program.”

All of this solidifies what former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan resolutely stated about the US invasion of Iraq in 2004: “I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal.”

The question most deserving an answer, and increasingly posed by the populace at large: If George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and others in the administration, deliberately misled the public on false pretenses, directly contradicted intelligence information through misrepresentation, and ultimately initiated a wholly illegal invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of well over 1 million civilian, non-combatants; WHY have they not been charged with war crimes?

This article (Top Bush Era CIA Official Just Confirmed the Iraq War Was Based On Lies) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TheAntiMedia.org. Tune in! The Anti-Media radio show airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: [email protected].

Copyright Claire Bernish, The Anti-Media 2015

Bloomberg says in a post today that the “confrontation between Russia and the US” over Ukraine was “provok[ed]” by Putin’s annexation of Crimea:

“…Putin annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea last March, provoking the biggest confrontation between Russia and the U.S. and Europe since the Cold War.”

That’s odd, though, because the reintegration of Crimea into Russia (after a vote in favor – but remember democracy is what we say it is) happened, as Bloomberg says and BBC confirms, in March, 2014, about five months after violent, US-backed protests began in November 2013, and ended in the the elected Ukrainian president, Victor Yanukovych, being driven out of the country by, as BBC put it, “radical groups”, including neo-Nazis: see BBC’s “Neo-Nazi Threat in Ukraine“, Feb. 28, 2014.  (“BBC Newsnight’s Gabriel Gatehouse investigates the links between the new Ukrainian government and Neo-nazis.”  Later articles covering the topic were published by, among many others, Glenn Greenwald, Robert Parry, and even, albeit 8 or 9 months too late to make a difference, NBC)

It’s also strange that BBC would say the following (even in a piece rife with the British state-run outlet’s typical pro-Western spin):

Pro-Russian forces [ie the Russian troops already stationed in Crimea by agreement] took control of Crimea in February.  They moved in after Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted after street protests.

So, they reacted to the US-backed overthrow of elected Yanukovych.  To be precise, Russian troops began the process of, in US political-speak, liberating and securing Crimea on “February 23rd, 2014“.

Yet, again oddly, here is Time on February 22nd, 2014:

“Ukraine protesters seize Kiev as President flees”

“Yanukovych fled to the eastern city of Kharkiv where he traditionally has a more solid base of support…”

It is noted in Wikipedia that Yanukovych had “won election in 2010 with strong support in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and southern and eastern Ukraine.”

Here is US historian William Blum, March 7, 2014, on these events:

The Ukrainian insurgents and their Western-power supporters didn’t care who their Ukrainian allies were in carrying out their coup against President Viktor Yanukovych last month … thugs who set policemen on fire head to toe … all manner of extreme right-wingers, including Chechnyan Islamic militants … a deputy of the ultra-right Svoboda Party, part of the new government, who threatens to rebuild Ukraine’s nukes in three to six months. … the snipers firing on the protestors who apparently were not what they appeared to be – A bugged phone conversation between Urmas Paet, the Estonian foreign minister, and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, reveals Paet saying: “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” … neo-Nazi protestors in Kiev who have openly denounced Jews, hoisting a banner honoring Stepan Bandera, the infamous Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the German Nazis during World War II and whose militias participated in atrocities against Jews and Poles.

And who could forget the pictures of Victoria Nuland and John McCain meeting with Ukrainian neo-Nazi and extremist leaders who use terms like “cleanse” and “kike”, or Nuland’s bragging to Chevron that the US had put billions and billions of dollars into these events, highly reminiscent of the US investment in overthrowing Iran’s democracy in 1953 after Iran nationalized its oil.

To the untrained eye, it would certainly seem that, in “liberating” Crimea, Russia was, very understandably, reacting to the above-mentioned series of events (not to mention the encroachment of a hostile, US-led, nuclear military alliance, NATO…).

So why would Bloomberg publish a piece that says the confrontation between Russia and the US was provoked by the annexation of Crimea, when it was provoked by a US-backed overthrow (one of about 60) of an elected president, who had strong ties to the highly ethnic-Russian east (including Crimea)?

We cannot credibly postulate that the Bloomberg author is unaware of the events prior to the “annexation of Crimea”, so we are forced to assume that he has a desire to paint Russia as the aggressor in the West/East standoff, as do so many working for the Western information systems.

This time, he has taken the easy way out by just pretending that nothing happened before Crimea, but other Western outlets have risen to the challenge, with impressive results.

When forced to acknowledge events that show the West as current aggressor in the (now perhaps winding down) West/East conflict, Western outlets have done what they do best: spin crackpot conspiracy theories about how everyone is trying to destroy the “free world” (the US happens to imprison more of its own people than any country in history, but in the free world we are smart enough to know that doesn’t count).

The New York Times, for example, attempted to explain the events that provoked Russia’s actions in Crimea (the US-backed protests and violent overthrow of an elected leader), by claiming Putin orchestrated all of that, too.

Robert Parry reports on the Times’ fanciful effort:

Is the New York Times really suggesting that Putin pulled the strings on the likes of Merkel and Nuland, secretly organized neo-Nazi brigades, and ruthlessly deployed these thugs to Kiev to provoke violence and overthrow Yanukovych, all while pretending to try to save Yanukovych’s government – all so Putin could advance some dastardly plot to conquer Europe?

…the Times’ narrative is something that would make even the most dedicated “conspiracy theorist” blush. Yet, the Times not only asserts this crazy conspiracy theory but calls it “incontrovertible.”

True to form, another times article recently proclaimed:

In all likelihood no one in the Kremlin actually ordered the killing [of Nemtsov]… The Kremlin has recently created a loose army of avengers who believe they are acting in the country’s best interests, without receiving any explicit instructions.

If someone in the US were to insist that Obama or Bush created a “loose army of avengers” who went around killing people “without receiving any explicit instructions”, he or she would be told to take off the tinfoil hat, leave mom’s basement, and get a job.

But when discussing the dark, ruthless, senseless forces of pure evil outside of our huddling “free world”, we are *free* to boldly rewrite history in our favor, concoct wild-eyed conspiracy theories to our hearts’ content, and use our new and improved histories and our nut-job theories to promote mass-violence against the bad people conspiring against “our freedoms”, and then kill millions of them.

Follow author Robert Barsocchini on Twitter @_DirtyTruths

Israel already gets at least $3 billion annually from Washington – plus a whole lot more. US taxpayers fund its killing machine.

It wants a 50% increase for more wars and ruthless daily persecution of millions of Palestinians – plus terror-bombing Syria, Yemen and southern Lebanon at its discretion as well as regional destabilizing activities.

On May 24, Defense News headlined “Israel Seeks Surge in US Security Support,” saying:

“(W)orking bilateral groups have (been) assess(ing) Israel’s projected security needs in (preparing) a new 10-year foreign military financing (FMF) deal” to begin when the current one expires in 2017.

According to an unnamed security source, Israel wants up to $4.5 billion annually besides additional amounts on request, resupplying its killing machine as needed, increasing amounts of US weapons and munitions in Israel for “emergency use,” and nearly $500 million annually for so-called anti-rocket/missile defense.

Washington’s House approved 2016 national defense authorization funding calls for financing an Israeli anti-tunneling defense system to deal with so-called subterranean threats.

Washington is expected to provide Israel with additional billions of dollars of aid if a nuclear deal with Iran is consummated.

Israel’s only enemies are ones it invents. Not according to AIPAC CEO Howard Kohr claiming it may need $160 billion for “defense” through 2025 – a big increase over current budgeted amounts.

Israeli military spending is for offense, not defense. It wants state-of-the-art weapons for maximum killing machine effectiveness.

According to Kohr, US military aid for Israel “is an essential component of America’s national security strategy” – code language for waging imperial wars of conquest and domination.

Earlier in May, the Al Mezan Center for Human Right reported escalated Israeli attacks on Gaza. The IDF fired on border areas at least six times.

They attacked farmers in their fields. Israeli naval forces assault Gazan fishermen regularly for the crime of fishing.

Palestinian children too close to Israel’s imposed buffer zone are shot at with live fire. Deaths and injuries result.

Gaza remains an active war zone. Overnight Wednesday, Israeli warplanes terror-bombed multiple sites outrageously claiming “Hamas’ territory is used as a staging ground to attack Israel…”

According to Press TV, Israel attacked Gaza despite Hamas and Islamic Jihad denying firing rockets into Israeli territory as its military claims.

Multiple strikes targeted the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, Rafah on Egypt’s border, Khan Younis and Beit Lahia.

The attacks followed a rocket fired by an unknown source striking southern Israel, causing no casualties or damage.

Israel’s Shin Bet security service claims Tuesday’s rocket attack was the third since last summer’s war.

The UN Special Coordinator (UNSCO) called Gaza’s ceasefire “perilously fragile.” Israeli border, air and sea attacks risk renewed war.

Hardline Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said

“if there won’t be quiet in Israel, Gaza will pay a very heavy price, which will cause all who plan to challenge us to regret their actions.”

“Hamas is advised to restrain any attempt to fire rockets at Israel or provoke it, otherwise we will be forced to act with greater power. I would not advise anyone to test us.”

Political analyst Talal Okal believes multiple Israeli attacks are in preparation for more war. Israel wants Palestinian resistance groups disarmed and weakened, he said.

When its provocative attacks are responded to in self-defense, it claims terrorism as justification for naked aggression.

Since December 2008, it waged three premeditated wars without mercy on Gaza. Is a fourth in prospect?

A Final Comment

Netanyahu maintains a steady drumbeat of anti-Iranian hate-mongering. He addressed his latest Big Lies to visiting US Senator Bill Cassidy (D. LA) claiming a nuclear deal with Iran

“paves (its) path to the bomb (and) fills (its) coffers with tens of billions of dollars to pursue its aggression throughout the Middle East and Israel’s borders.”

“Once Iran, the preeminent terrorist state of our time, acquires nuclear weapons, it will be a hundred times more dangerous, a thousand times more dangerous and more destructive than IS.”

His hyperventilating Big Lies wore thin long ago. Israel and America are the greatest threats to world peace, stability and security.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Do you know how many of us cried with joy when you were elected that heady day, in January 2008, when you held the goodwill and hopes of most everyone, everywhere throughout the United States and Europe – and even in Moscow and Beijing? It seemed like the long overdue beginning of a New Age with an imposing, young, erudite, black JFK.

Do you realise what a profound liability you have since become? A tragic disappointment to both Americans and Europeans, Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Jews, Hindus and Muslims, black and white, to those rich and poor, well or sick?

Do you know the bitterness that now abounds amongst those who trusted you to act for peace, security and civil rights but whom you have failed so spectacularly? Do you know of the millions of Palestinians now left abandoned and dispossessed?

Are you not aware of a dangerously destabilised Middle East and an Israel now more threatened that at any time since 1948 plus North Africa with its valuable oil deposits in the grip of insurgents?

Do you know of the black Americans still being harassed, and sometimes killed, by renegade, racist state police up and down America? Do you even realise the ridicule heaped upon a White House made impotent by a congress that despises your lack of leadership?

Do you appreciate that you have shattered the image of the once powerful American ship of state that now flounders in the shallows amongst dangerous rocks when it needed an experienced captain and crew to chart a well-planned and secure course so as to arrive at its destination with its valuable cargo for the people of the world, on time and in good order?

Instead, America and the world has now to try to deal with a slow-motion shipwreck … and the international community continues to suffer from having you still on board the bridge as captain, but in name only. A captain who never has been a naval officer capable of commanding a great, trans-oceanic vessel!

A tragically wasted presidency that could have achieved so much but, in nearly seven years, gained nothing for anyone, at any time, anywhere. Your sole achievement – if it be that – was the locating and elimination of one man, Osama bin Laden, in his Pakistani hideout. Now even your role in that is being questioned.

There has been, sadly, nothing else of interest during your overlong presidency. We now live in a world with little or no advance in either human or civil rights nor even in the field of sound economic governance.

A resignation could now be your only legacy of any value and I would be the first to wish you well in your early retirement.

God Bless America!

Within three days of a judge’s ruling acquitting a Cleveland cop who brutally murdered two unarmed people, the Obama administration announced a settlement with the city that holds no one accountable for a string of police murders and leaves the existing apparatus of violence and terror intact.

These developments taken together reveal a basic reality of social and political life in America: the categorical defense by the entire political establishment and all official institutions of a paramilitary police force that has been granted a license to kill.

The court ruling exonerated Officer Michael Brelo of manslaughter charges stemming from the deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, who were killed November 29, 2012 after police fired more than 130 rounds into their car. Forty-nine of those shots were fired by Brelo, who jumped onto the hood of the car and shot the unarmed occupants directly through the windshield 15 times.

Brelo was one of over a hundred cops who participated in a high-speed chase through Cleveland that culminated in a fusillade of bullets comparable to the killings of unarmed civilians at military checkpoints that became a common feature of the US military occupation of Iraq.

Judge John O’Donnell acquitted Brelo on the pseudo-legal grounds that the prosecutors had not proven that Brelo’s bullets were the ones that actually killed the two victims. Providing a judicial imprimatur for police to act as judge, jury and executioner, he declared, “Brelo’s entire use of deadly force was a constitutionally reasonable response to an objectively reasonably perceived threat of great bodily harm from the occupants” of the car.

Meanwhile, no charges have been brought against a Cleveland cop who last November shot twelve-year-old Tamir Rice for holding a toy gun, and then failed to provide first aid as the child lay dying on the ground.

The same glaring disparity between homicidal police violence and the official response is expressed in the Obama Justice Department’s toothless settlement with the Cleveland police. The settlement stems from a Justice Department investigation that cited multiple cases of wanton and unconstitutional police violence and concluded that the Cleveland police department engaged in a pattern of “unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons,” as well as “the unnecessary, excessive or retaliatory use of less lethal force including Tasers, chemical spray and fists.”

The agreement, signed by the city authorities, mandates a handful of trivial “reforms,” including the hiring of more minority officers and the creation of a Community Police Commission to give the appearance of oversight. It also calls for additional funding for the police.

Far from being an aberration, Cleveland is one of at least 19 cities where the Justice Department has since 2000 found a “pattern or practice of excessive force.” Just over the past three years, Justice Department inquiries have reported systematic brutality and violations of democratic rights by police in Ferguson, Missouri; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington.

This has not prevented President Obama from declaring that the murder last August of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson cop Darren Wilson is “not typical of what happens across the country.” Wilson was exonerated by a rigged grand jury, as was New York City Officer Daniel Panteleo for the choking death of Eric Garner.

In working-class communities throughout the United States, police function as de facto death squads, treating workers and youth as an occupied population to be held in check with brutality and even murder. The methods of military violence developed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the so-called “war on terror” have been brought home for use against the US population.

Brelo personifies the convergence between the police and the military. An Iraq war veteran, Brelo told police investigators that he used his Marine training in deciding to “elevate” himself onto the hood of his victims’ car and “push through the target.”

So far this year, police have killed 455 people in the United States, putting them on track to take significantly more lives in 2015 than the 1,100 they killed last year. Every year, cops kill more people in the United States than the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq in 2004, at the height of the conflict, and police killings account for one out of every 16 homicides in the US.

The wave of police violence in the United States is not some excrescence of American “democracy.” It is deeply embedded in the structure of American society and rooted in the capitalist system and its irreconcilable class antagonisms. These have been immensely heightened by the unprecedented growth of social inequality, itself bound up with the deindustrialization of cities such as Cleveland, the impoverishment of the working class, and the obscene enrichment of a new financial aristocracy.

The buildup of a militarized police force to occupy the cities is the ruling class’s response to the growth of popular opposition to its policies of war abroad and austerity at home. Far from doing anything to ameliorate mass poverty and inequality, America’s financial elite responds to any sign of opposition with overwhelming and murderous violence.

Japanese protesters gathered outside the parliament building in Tokyo on Sunday to demand the removal of a US base on the island of Okinawa. Numerous rallies have been held recently, both on the island and the Japanese mainland, to oppose the US military’s presence in the country.

An estimated 15,000 people took part in Sunday’s protest, denouncing plans to move the US Marine Corp Air Station Futenma base to a new location at Henoko, which is currently being constructed. Futenma is located in the city of Ginowan, while Henoko sits along a less populated coast in Okinawa. Many people held banners reading, “No to Henoko.” They demanded the base be removed from the prefecture altogether.

One protester, Akemi Kitajima, told the press: “We must stop this construction. The government is trying to force the plan, no matter how strongly Okinawa says ‘no’ to it.” The demonstrators also expressed opposition to US plans to deploy CV-22 Ospreys to the Yokota Air Base in Tokyo.

A larger protest took place on the previous Sunday, when 35,000 people gathered on Okinawa to oppose the base relocation plan. The protests began that Friday and continued throughout the weekend. On the Saturday, demonstrators marched around the Futenma base and were joined in other cities across the country by approximately 2,600 others. Besides their opposition to the base, people shouted slogans, such as “Oppose enhanced Japan-US defense ties,” directed against Japan’s turn to militarism.

Plans to move the Futenma base have been in the works since 1996, following the 1995 brutal kidnapping and rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three US servicemen, which resulted in widespread anti-US protests. Other, less publicized crimes by US personnel have also stoked anti-US sentiment.

Okinawa, however, is on the front lines of any conflict with China. A majority of the 47,000 American troops stationed in Japan are on the island, strategically located in the East China Sea adjacent to the Chinese mainland. Okinawa plays a key role in Washington’s “pivot to Asia,” designed to surround China militarily and economically subordinate it to US interests.

There is little chance the Obama administration would agree to relocate the Marine base off the island, especially at a time when it is engaged in provocations with China. The relocation of the base, which was outlined in a 2006 agreement between the US and Japanese governments, has provoked persistent protests. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to office in 2009 promising to revise the agreement, but the Obama administration refused point blank to discuss the issue with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, and worked to undermine him. He was forced to accept the 2006 deal, then resigned in June 2010. His DPJ replacement, Naoto Kan, quickly reaffirmed his full support for the US alliance.

The current Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government has not only made clear that the base relocation will proceed. It has stepped-up the remilitarization of Japan, acting in concert with Washington as part of the US “pivot” against China.

The recent demonstrations have been organized by citizens groups with ties to the Okinawan prefectural government. Governor Takeshi Onaga was elected last November as an independent, largely on his opposition to the Futenma base and its relocation. He is formerly of the ruling LDP and draws support from the conservative Shinpukai faction that left the LDP due to its support for the Okinawan bases.

Onaga is not opposed to the military alliance with the United States, nor to Japanese militarism. His is simply making the limited, parochial demand that the Marine base be moved to another location in Japan. Onaga recently declared: “I fully understand (the importance) of the Japan-US alliance. You should never break it down.”

At the same time, the governor has fostered illusions in the possibility of a shift by Washington. Onaga said recently: “Only Okinawa is burdened with this heavy load, and I want to let the United States, a democratic nation, know about this unfair situation.”

Despite his explicit backing for US militarism, Onaga has been backed by the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, both of which posture as opponents of Japanese re-militarization. They function as a political safety valve. The protests allow people to blow off steam while the governor plays to Okinawans’ sense of mistreatment at the hands of the mainland.

For politicians like Onaga, the battle over the bases also provides a pretext for land grabs. Nearly one-fifth of Okinawa is covered in US military bases, taking up territory that the wealthy elite would rather use to turn a profit. The governor views the bases as the “biggest impediment” to increased business opportunities.

Onaga hopes to turn the island into a hub for tourism, which means more hotels, restaurants, and other businesses to cater for visitors, as well as construction deals. In 2013, a record 6.58 million tourists visited Okinawa while the number of overseas visitors jumped 64 percent to 630,000 over the previous year. In total, tourism accounted for 448 billion yen ($US3.87 billion) in revenue during the 2013 fiscal year.

Onaga is seeking to attract foreign investment. He visited China in April as a delegate for the Association for the Promotion of International Trade Japan. Before the visit, an Okinawa prefectural government spokesperson stated:

“We would like to take this opportunity [of Onaga’s visit] to promote economic exchanges between Okinawa and China. We hope companies use special economic zones in China and Okinawa to trade with each other.”

Onaga is offering up the Okinawan people as a source of cheap labor. Okinawa is the poorest prefecture in Japan with an unemployment rate twice as high as on the mainland. “Companies were attracted by subsidies, low labor costs, and the abundant workforce,” Takehide Kinjo told the Wall Street Journal last November. Kinjo is president of Dinos Cecile Communications Company, based in Uruma City, an hour north of Naha, Okinawa’s capital.

Local investors are eager to get their hands on the land now occupied by the Futenma base. “Expectations are rising for redevelopment projects on the land after it is vacated,” an Okinawan bank official told the Asahi Shimbun. “Futenma has good transport connections, and the average land price there can rise higher than that in Naha’s new city center.” Naha’s city center, once the site of residences for US military personnel, now hosts shopping malls and duty-free shops offering luxury brands.

Okinawans have for decades had a strained relationship both with Japan and the United States. Known as the Ryukyu Kingdom until it was annexed by Imperial Japan in 1879, the island saw heavy combat at the end of World War II, during which more than 100,000 civilians were killed. Following the war, Okinawa remained under direct US control until 1972, two decades after the US occupation ended in the rest of Japan.

Japanese protesters gathered outside the parliament building in Tokyo on Sunday to demand the removal of a US base on the island of Okinawa. Numerous rallies have been held recently, both on the island and the Japanese mainland, to oppose the US military’s presence in the country.

An estimated 15,000 people took part in Sunday’s protest, denouncing plans to move the US Marine Corp Air Station Futenma base to a new location at Henoko, which is currently being constructed. Futenma is located in the city of Ginowan, while Henoko sits along a less populated coast in Okinawa. Many people held banners reading, “No to Henoko.” They demanded the base be removed from the prefecture altogether.

One protester, Akemi Kitajima, told the press: “We must stop this construction. The government is trying to force the plan, no matter how strongly Okinawa says ‘no’ to it.” The demonstrators also expressed opposition to US plans to deploy CV-22 Ospreys to the Yokota Air Base in Tokyo.

A larger protest took place on the previous Sunday, when 35,000 people gathered on Okinawa to oppose the base relocation plan. The protests began that Friday and continued throughout the weekend. On the Saturday, demonstrators marched around the Futenma base and were joined in other cities across the country by approximately 2,600 others. Besides their opposition to the base, people shouted slogans, such as “Oppose enhanced Japan-US defense ties,” directed against Japan’s turn to militarism.

Plans to move the Futenma base have been in the works since 1996, following the 1995 brutal kidnapping and rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three US servicemen, which resulted in widespread anti-US protests. Other, less publicized crimes by US personnel have also stoked anti-US sentiment.

Okinawa, however, is on the front lines of any conflict with China. A majority of the 47,000 American troops stationed in Japan are on the island, strategically located in the East China Sea adjacent to the Chinese mainland. Okinawa plays a key role in Washington’s “pivot to Asia,” designed to surround China militarily and economically subordinate it to US interests.

There is little chance the Obama administration would agree to relocate the Marine base off the island, especially at a time when it is engaged in provocations with China. The relocation of the base, which was outlined in a 2006 agreement between the US and Japanese governments, has provoked persistent protests. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to office in 2009 promising to revise the agreement, but the Obama administration refused point blank to discuss the issue with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, and worked to undermine him. He was forced to accept the 2006 deal, then resigned in June 2010. His DPJ replacement, Naoto Kan, quickly reaffirmed his full support for the US alliance.

The current Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government has not only made clear that the base relocation will proceed. It has stepped-up the remilitarization of Japan, acting in concert with Washington as part of the US “pivot” against China.

The recent demonstrations have been organized by citizens groups with ties to the Okinawan prefectural government. Governor Takeshi Onaga was elected last November as an independent, largely on his opposition to the Futenma base and its relocation. He is formerly of the ruling LDP and draws support from the conservative Shinpukai faction that left the LDP due to its support for the Okinawan bases.

Onaga is not opposed to the military alliance with the United States, nor to Japanese militarism. His is simply making the limited, parochial demand that the Marine base be moved to another location in Japan. Onaga recently declared: “I fully understand (the importance) of the Japan-US alliance. You should never break it down.”

At the same time, the governor has fostered illusions in the possibility of a shift by Washington. Onaga said recently: “Only Okinawa is burdened with this heavy load, and I want to let the United States, a democratic nation, know about this unfair situation.”

Despite his explicit backing for US militarism, Onaga has been backed by the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, both of which posture as opponents of Japanese re-militarization. They function as a political safety valve. The protests allow people to blow off steam while the governor plays to Okinawans’ sense of mistreatment at the hands of the mainland.

For politicians like Onaga, the battle over the bases also provides a pretext for land grabs. Nearly one-fifth of Okinawa is covered in US military bases, taking up territory that the wealthy elite would rather use to turn a profit. The governor views the bases as the “biggest impediment” to increased business opportunities.

Onaga hopes to turn the island into a hub for tourism, which means more hotels, restaurants, and other businesses to cater for visitors, as well as construction deals. In 2013, a record 6.58 million tourists visited Okinawa while the number of overseas visitors jumped 64 percent to 630,000 over the previous year. In total, tourism accounted for 448 billion yen ($US3.87 billion) in revenue during the 2013 fiscal year.

Onaga is seeking to attract foreign investment. He visited China in April as a delegate for the Association for the Promotion of International Trade Japan. Before the visit, an Okinawa prefectural government spokesperson stated:

“We would like to take this opportunity [of Onaga’s visit] to promote economic exchanges between Okinawa and China. We hope companies use special economic zones in China and Okinawa to trade with each other.”

Onaga is offering up the Okinawan people as a source of cheap labor. Okinawa is the poorest prefecture in Japan with an unemployment rate twice as high as on the mainland. “Companies were attracted by subsidies, low labor costs, and the abundant workforce,” Takehide Kinjo told the Wall Street Journal last November. Kinjo is president of Dinos Cecile Communications Company, based in Uruma City, an hour north of Naha, Okinawa’s capital.

Local investors are eager to get their hands on the land now occupied by the Futenma base. “Expectations are rising for redevelopment projects on the land after it is vacated,” an Okinawan bank official told the Asahi Shimbun. “Futenma has good transport connections, and the average land price there can rise higher than that in Naha’s new city center.” Naha’s city center, once the site of residences for US military personnel, now hosts shopping malls and duty-free shops offering luxury brands.

Okinawans have for decades had a strained relationship both with Japan and the United States. Known as the Ryukyu Kingdom until it was annexed by Imperial Japan in 1879, the island saw heavy combat at the end of World War II, during which more than 100,000 civilians were killed. Following the war, Okinawa remained under direct US control until 1972, two decades after the US occupation ended in the rest of Japan.

The ISIS narrative in Syria and Iraq continues to be twisted and the truth obscured by rampant western geostrategic power-plays in the Middle East…

‘ISIS is winning because Iraqi troops just aren’t fighting the terrorists’ – so says US Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

‘ISIS is winning because the U.S. is not helping enough’ – so says Iraq’s Interior Minister.

‘ISIS is winning because the US hasn’t done anything at all’ – so says Iran.

Why is ISIS on the move and why is the Iraqi army non-existent?

RT’s Senior Political correspondent and award-winning host Anissa Naouai speaks to 21WIRE geopolitical analyst Patrick Henningsen this week on In the Now…

Originally published on WhoWhatWhy

Now that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death for his involvement in the Boston Marathon Bombing, and the lengthy inevitable Death Row appeals process begins, the investigative work for conscientious journalists continues as well.

As readers of WhoWhatWhy know the case is chock full of unresolved issues, inconsistencies, and anomalies that cast doubt on whether we learned even the most basic truths of what happened on April 15, 2013, or why. Perhaps most troubling is the FBI’s successful effort to minimize its prior relationship with Tsarnaev’s dead older brother, Tamerlan—a relationship that demands focused attention because of the Bureau’s long, documented history of placing its own assets inside violent plots as infiltrators or informants. A cast of “highly interesting” secondary characters have behaved oddly enough that any serious inquiry would focus on them.

One in particular draws our attention: a Chechen native who immigrated with his family to Chelsea, MA in 2004, Viskhan Vakhabov. He received a telephone call from Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the bombings’ alleged senior conspirator, at an incredibly important moment: right after Tsarnaev allegedly shot an MIT patrol officer and was about to commit a carjacking.

Yet federal authorities have bizarrely shown almost no interest in Vakhabov. Indeed, the FBI and Justice Department seemed only too glad to let the man avoid testifying in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial. It is hard to see why those seeking the truth could possibly not consider Vakhabov crucial. The government appears to be shielding a man who may have crucial knowledge about the case, which supposedly was a “lone wolves” operation limited to the two brothers.

“I don’t have any comments or anything to talk about,” Vakhabov told WhoWhatWhy via phone.

Earlier, the government said that Vakhabov lied to the FBI about “matters of great import” relating to the Boston bombing investigation, according to a court transcript. But when Vakhabov refused to testify in court, citing his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, the prosecution fought to keep his FBI statements from being admitted into evidence.

Hiding What?

What could possibly be self-incriminating about Vakhabov’s statements to the FBI, if the Tsarnaevs (as the government claims), acted alone? Vakhabov spoke with the Tsarnaev brothers on their secret cell phones two hours before the carjacking on Brighton Avenue. Could Vakhabov have been in any way involved? If so, why hasn’t he faced any criminal charges?

Particularly interesting is that the government heavily redacted Vakhabov’s FBI 302 interview summary form. It could contain crucial and “self-incriminating” information relating to the bombing investigation—and specifically, the carjacking allegedly perpetrated by the Tsarnaevs after video with their images was released by the FBI three days after the bombings.

In order to justify that Vakhabov should be dismissed as an unreliable witness, prosecutor William Weinreb revealed in court some tantalizing facts about him. “I think it’s undisputed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev contacted him on April 18th, I believe, between the time that Officer Collier was murdered and the time that Dun Meng was carjacked,” Weinreb said. “And he has given quite inconsistent statements about what that conversation was about and about what Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have asked him or said to him.”

Why would Tamerlan Tsarnaev contact this man—or any person—while subject to an intense manhunt? Obviously, that call should have been important to investigators, perhaps even a crucial indicator of a larger conspiracy.

That phone call wasn’t even the only significant interaction between the two. According to phone records released by the DOJ last month, Weinreb failed to mention that the Tsarnaevs called Vakhabov from the prepaid “burner” cell phone account they opened in order to coordinate the bombings. Vakhabov is the only person they spoke with using the “burner” phone. Why did the brothers deem it acceptable to contact Vakhabov with this cell phone? If he had nothing to do with their actions, why not just call his number on their regular cell phones?

Last month, FBI Special Agent Chad Fitzgerald testified that Dzhokhar, or at least the phone registered under the name “Jahar Tsarni,” placed an 88-second call to someone at a number in the 617 (Boston) area code. This number traces back to Vakhabov. It was the first call Dzhokhar made on this burner cell phone since the day of the bombings. And, according to phone records released in court, Vakhabov’s number is the only one Dzhokhar called on this phone (other than his brother Tamerlan) since he opened the account on April 14.

Vakhabov has registered numerous websites to the address of 26 Park Vale Avenue, Allston, which is more or less a five-minute walk from the spot where Tamerlan allegedly carjacked Dun Meng’s Mercedes at 60 Brighton Avenue.

Given his proximity in time and location to the Brighton Avenue carjacking, could Vakhabov know more about the brothers’ plans or in some other way be connected?

Despite the wave of arrests, brutal profiling, and harsh crackdown on Tsarnaevs’ former friends for the slightest infraction in the FBI’s Boston bombing investigation, the government decided to let Vakhabov go. It also heavily objected to admitting his 302 FBI interview report into evidence at Tsarnaev’s trial, despite the fact that this report contains statements of “great import,” according to the government itself. Why?

Vakhabov remains free, and the government has acted to keep his “self-incriminating” statements to the FBI from being admitted into evidence at court. This kid-glove treatment is in sharp contrast to the way the feds have treated Khairullozhon Matanov and Robel Phillipos, two former friends of the Tsarnaev brothers who have been charged with lying during a terrorism investigation.

Matanov allegedly called the Tsarnaevs 40 minutes after the bombing, and invited them to dinner. He initially lied to the FBI about the fact that he had driven the Tsarnaevs to dinner, downplayed the extent to which he shared a similar philosophical justification for jihad as the suspected bombers, and deleted his computer history during the week of the bombing, according to his indictment. Downplaying one’s religious and philosophical views does not violate any laws; indeed, it’s a First Amendment right. Through these actions, the government claims Matanov intentionally misled investigators and destroyed evidence. But was Matanov’s computer history as important to the Boston bombing investigation as Vakhabov’s misleading statements to the FBI?

Where are the witnesses? 

Other potentially important witnesses seem to have vanished from public view. One is the man who attended the Wai Kru gym with the brothers three days before the attack. He is now identified as Magomed Dolakov. After meeting Tamerlan Tsarnaev at a mosque in August 2012, one month after the elder Tsarnaev returned from a six-month trip to Russia, Dolakov regularly discussed radical Islam with him. Is this not a matter of great import?

Tsarnaev’s defense had hoped to utilize Dolakov’s 302 report, but it too is unavailable, according to the court trial transcript. Neither the government nor the defense can locate Dolakov, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense attorney Miriam Conrad told the court.

Given the extensive surveillance and even harassment of the Tsarnaevs’ former friends and associates by the the FBI, the inability of the government to learn Dolakov’s whereabouts is striking. Investigators used a single spy drone to monitor Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s friend Khairullozhon Matanov at his home in the Boston suburb of Quincy for over a year after the bombing. This surveillance led to his arrest in May 2014, and to his guilty plea to the charge of making false statements in a federal terrorism investigation. Clearly, the authorities have the surveillance resources to locate Dolakov, if they wanted to. So why the hands-off treatment? If Dolakov had any prior knowledge of the marathon attacks from his regular discussions about jihad with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, why would the FBI not be interested in him? Could he have been an informant for the FBI? Given that Dolakov met Tamerlan Tsarnaev at the mosque right after his return from six months in Russia, odds say it’s possible.

Is the government really unable to locate these witnesses? Are they under any sort of protection? If yes, from whom, and for what purpose?

Who is the third friend?

Dolakov reportedly told the FBI that he and Tamerlan Tsarnaev hung out with an unnamed third friend and discussed topics relating to Islamic terrorism.

In August 2012, according to Boston.com, “Dolakov said he and Tamerlan went to a Quincy mosque together, after which they relaxed on a nearby beach with a third friend and discussed a recent suicide bombing.”

Khairullozhon Matanov lived and worked in Quincy. Could he be that unnamed “third friend”? If yes, what could he know about the relationship between Magomed Dolakov and Tamerlan Tsarnaev? Why did the FBI monitor Khairullozhon for over a year after the bombings before arresting him? Were they afraid Matanov would blow the whistle on matters of great import?

“The FBI is trying to destroy my life,” Matanov wrote to the Daily Beast last fall.

Historically, the FBI has targeted Muslim immigrants like Matanov to recruit informants. Refusing such recruitment is often a choiceless choice, with some recorded instances of the FBI torturing those who refuse.

After refusing to wear a wire for the FBI to speak with a former friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, another Chechen friend of Tamerlan, Konstantin Morozov, was detained. Morozov told the Boston Globe that the FBI offered to accept his application for political asylum if he cooperated.

Crackdown on Tsarnaevs Friends

Despite the official narrative adamantly claiming that the Tsarnaevs were lone wolves, the specifics of the FBI’s investigation show evidence to the contrary. There have been eight reported instances in which the Tsarnaevs’ friends and associates have faced charges for allegedly helping the brothers and misleading the FBI in its investigation.

Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov were charged in May 2013 with obstruction of justice and conspiracy after Kadyrbayev allegedly removed from the younger Tsarnaev’s dorm room and threw away a Jansport backpack that had shortly before been emptied of illegal fireworks. But, Assistant US Attorney B. Stephanie Siegmann said neither of the friends’ DNA was found on it.

Dzhokhar’s friend Phillipos denied knowledge that Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov had removed the Jansport backpack from Tsarnaev’s UMass Dartmouth dorm room. Phillipos now faces up for 16 years in prison for these statements to the FBI.

If Vakhabov lied to the FBI about matters material to the investigation, why does the government refuse to prosecute him, while expending great time, effort and expense to imprison all these other men on what appear to be petty matters?

Correction: An earlier version of this article was incorrectly edited to include an erroneous reference to an additional call to Mr. Vakhabov. In fact, Tamerlan Tsarnaev called Vakhabov only once (using Dzhokhar’s phone)—on April 18.

Photo: Official White House press photo by Pete Souza | Läs denna artikel på svenska 

By Jens Jerndal, spokesman for the political party Unity (Enhet)

The present Swedish debate about war refugees from the Middle East is an example of peer restricted expression. In the name of political correctness or perceived decency, any questioning of maximum generosity in opening Swedish borders for the refugees is indignantly rejected by the official mainstream. We have a humanitarian duty towards those who are forced to flee from areas ravaged by war, and there is no excuse for not opening our borders to them. – Sure.

BUT, what about exercising our brains and identifying the root of the evil? What about trying to stop the refugee problem from arising in the first place? – What about applying an overall holistic perspective to detect the real, original cause of the problem? – And demand that those who caused the problem also take care of its consequences? – And that they immediately stop causing any more of it?

Our politically mandated media will not discuss who is ultimately responsible for the endless stream of refugees. OK, they have us believe that it is all caused by terrorist organizations, by Muslim fanatics, against whom all the military might of the world is powerless.

And yet, we don´t need to be very brilliant or dig very deep to clearly see who and what is the real cause of today´s refugee problem.

• Who caused the devastation of Iraq with a million dead and many more mutilated, disabled, bereaved, and homeless? – Admittedly without reason or provocation.
• Who caused the same thing in Libya, and now in Syria?
• Not to mention Afghanistan and several more countries in Africa.

Continue reading

A dozen years before his recent sentencing to a 42-month prison term based on a jury’s conclusion that he gave classified information to a New York Times journalist, former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was in the midst of a protracted and fruitless effort to find someone in Congress willing to look into his accusations about racial discrimination at the agency.

ExposeFacts.org has obtained letters from Sterling to prominent members of Congress, beseeching them in 2003 and 2006 to hear him out about racial bias at the CIA. Sterling, who is expected to enter prison soon, provided the letters last week. They indicate that he believed the CIA was retaliating against him for daring to become the first-ever black case officer to sue the agency for racial discrimination.

As early as 2000, Sterling was reaching out toward Capitol Hill about his concerns. He received a positive response from House member Julian Dixon (D-Calif.), a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, who expressed interest in pursuing the matter of racial discrimination at the CIA and contacted the agency about his case, Sterling says. But the 20-year member of Congress died from a heart attack on Dec. 8, 2000.

Sterling recalls getting special firing treatment in early 2002 from John Brennan, then a high-ranking CIA executive, now the agency’s director and a close adviser to President Obama: “He personally came down to the administrative office to tell me that I was fired. Someone told me that, ‘Well, you pulled on Superman’s cape.’”

Soon after the CIA fired him, the New York Times, People magazine and CNN reported on Sterling’s lawsuit charging the CIA with racial discrimination. But Sterling found no support from civil rights organizations.

In a letter dated Jan. 9, 2003, to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Sterling recalled joining the CIA in 1993 “to serve my country” — “but the clubby and racially exclusive atmosphere in the Agency denied me such an opportunity.”

The letter went on:

“The Agency taught me Farsi and I was trained as an expert against Iranians and terrorists. I proved my abilities as a case officer, however, when the time came for my use in the field or to move up in the ranks of officers, I was ‘too big and too black.’ That and other discriminatory treatment I received during my time at the Agency are the impetus behind my suit.”

In an interview for the new documentary “The Invisible Man: NSA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling” (which I produced on behalf of ExposeFacts), Sterling told the film’s director Judith Ehrlich that CIA leaders quickly focused on him when they learned about a leak of classified information to Times reporter James Risen in the early spring of 2003. (At the emphatic request of the Bush White House, the story was spiked by the Times leadership and did not reach the public until a book by Risen appeared in January 2006.)

“They already had the machine geared up against me,” Sterling says in the film. “The moment that they felt there was a leak, every finger pointed to Jeffrey Sterling.” He added: “If the word ‘retaliation’ is not thought of when anyone looks at the experience that I’ve had with the agency, then I just think you’re not looking.”

His letters to members of Congress, being reported here for the first time, show that Sterling was anticipating severe retribution as early as mid-2003 — more than seven years before he was indicted on numerous felony counts, including seven under the Espionage Act, for allegedly informing Risen about the CIA’s Operation Merlin. That operation had given flawed design material for a nuclear weapon component to the Iranian government in early 2000. According to Risen’s reporting, Merlin “may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA.”

While the prosecution put on 23 witnesses from the CIA during Sterling’s trial in January this year, negative comments about his actual job performance at the CIA were rare during their testimony. An exception was David Cohen, who headed the CIA’s New York office when Sterling worked there. Cohen — a notably hostile witness who called Sterling’s job performance “extremely sub-par” — booted Sterling from the New York office in 2000.

Shortly after 9/11, Cohen left the CIA to head up a New York Police Department program that drew strong criticism and opposition from civil liberties groups. In 2002, as my colleague Marcy Wheeler wrote, Cohen

“got a federal court to relax the Handschu guidelines, which had been set up in 1985 in response to NYPD’s targeting of people for their political speech. … After getting the rules relaxed, Cohen created teams of informants that infiltrated mosques and had officers catalog Muslim-owned restaurants, shops, and even schools.”

The CIA fired Sterling in January 2002 after many months of administrative limbo. His letters the following year reflected escalating disappointment and anger at an absence of interest from members of Congress as well as from civil rights organizations including the Rainbow Push Coalition and the NAACP. Sterling says that none answered his letters.

“It has … become apparent there is a general fear of taking on the CIA,” said a June 26, 2003 letter from Sterling to the then-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).

“As a result, I have been engaged in a solitary and completely one-sided battle against the Agency that has left me ruined. There has been no one to stand with me either out of fear or ignorance. At every turn, the Agency has attempted to denigrate me and get rid of my case.”

(Sterling’s lawsuit was to continue along a convoluted judicial path for over two more years, until a court finally dismissed it on grounds that a trial would reveal state secrets.)

Sterling says he never got a reply from Rep. Cummings.

“Congressman Cummings does not recall receiving such a letter,” his press secretary Trudy Perkins told me this week.

Sterling’s letter to Cummings came two months after the White House had succeeded at persuading the Times management not to publish Risen’s story on Operation Merlin. Meanwhile, the government was searching for someone to blame for the leak. “Now it seems I am part of a leak investigation being conducted by FBI,” Sterling’s letter said. “Apparently, information related to very sensitive operations I was instrumental in conducting was leaked to the press thereby causing the FBI to launch an investigation.”

The letter added:

“As I have absolutely nothing to hide, I agreed to meet with the FBI to show my veracity and assist in their investigation. During that meeting, it was apparent that CIA has been instrumental in pointing the finger directly at me as a source of this leak. Though the FBI Agents conducting the session emphasized that I was not the target of their investigation, it was more than obvious to me that I will be the one to eventually take the fall.”

The indictment of Jeffrey Sterling came seven and a half years later, at the end of 2010.

Testimony at Sterling’s trial showed that the FBI did little or no investigation of other individuals who had extensive knowledge of Operation Merlin. For instance, the then-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts (R-KS), shielded the committee’s chief of staff by successfully insisting that the FBI not interview him about the leak — even though, or perhaps because, investigators viewed the committee’s chief of staff as a key suspect. Trial testimony showed that the FBI had initially suspected that the leak came from the Senate committee staff.

On July 17, 2003 — four months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq — Sterling sent a letter to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who had recently been chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and remained its ranking member. “Given the courage you have displayed along with a few other Senators in speaking out about the current intelligence controversy related to Iraqi WMD,” Sterling wrote, “I feel that you would be an appropriate Senator to reach out to. What I have to say is substantially related to the current debate about WMD intelligence.”

At Sterling’s trial four months ago, Judge Leonie Brinkema effectively barred defense efforts to present information related to Sterling’s concerns about such matters. But those concerns are evident in Sterling’s letter to Sen. Levin, which addressed issues of CIA activities related to weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East region.

Sterling’s letter to Levin stated that “since April 2000” — just two months after Operation Merlin gave flawed nuclear weapon design information to Iran —

“I have been reaching out to numerous members of Congress including both intelligence committees to bring to their attention my concerns about the CIA’s efforts directed at terrorism (focus on pre 9/11) and dangers of certain operations, particularly involving WMD in the Middle East. My efforts all fell upon deaf ears.”

The letter continued:

“Finally, after close to three years of trying, I gained an audience with the Senate Intelligence Committee — more specifically, Committee staffers this past March. I told them my concerns and provided necessary details and specifics. I pointed out though I had extensive experience in Iranian operations, the WMD information had significant impact on intelligence related to Iraq.”

(Sterling had gone through legal channels to meet with Senate Intelligence Committee staffers. A dozen years later, testimony at Sterling’s trial revealed that only negligible action had resulted. A high-ranking committee staff member told of asking the CIA if its Operation Merlin was problematic, and predictably the CIA replied that the operation was just fine.)

Shortly after he met with Senate committee staff, Sterling’s letter to Sen. Levin said,

“in early April the information was evidently leaked to the press. I have no idea what the staffers did with the information, but it is difficult for me to assume that the leak did not somehow originate from the Senate Intelligence Committee. From the frantic way the CIA threatened my attorney with sanctions and threats to send their security folks to pay me a visit, it was clear that CIA automatically assumed I was the source of the leak without even confirming that I had talked with individuals cleared to hear the information. …

“I have been trying to do the right thing, and I found myself in the middle of a firestorm involving the [Bush] Administration and the highest levels of CIA and FBI. Given the current debate on intelligence and the credibility of the President, I can certainly understand the attempts to make me just ‘go away.’ Despite the great personal risk I am undertaking reaching out to you, I feel it my duty to bring to your attention information that is vital to the national security of this country. I feel this especially given the way the President and the administration has skewed the truth with regard to WMD intelligence.”

Sterling’s letter to Levin noted that “as a Senator, you should have the proper clearance for me to discuss intelligence matters with you,” and closed with a one-sentence paragraph: “I do hope to hear from you soon.”

Sterling told me that he never heard from Sen. Levin.

Likewise, Sterling says, he received no reply to the October 2, 2006 letter that he sent to Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), who then chaired the Congressional Black Caucus. (Watt, like Levin, is no longer in Congress.) That year had begun with publication of Risen’s book “State of War,” followed by an FBI raid on the home near St. Louis that Sterling shared with his then-fiancee and current wife Holly. “Now there is a federal grand jury sitting attempting to come up with something to indict me on,” Sterling wrote. Recalling how his discrimination suit was tossed out of court on “national security” grounds, he added: “I think it is deplorable how I am denied the opportunity to utilize the courts to defend my civil rights, yet they can use the same system to most likely charge me with a supposed crime.”

Like his going through channels to file an internal complaint with the CIA and then a court lawsuit alleging racial discrimination at the agency, Sterling’s going through channels to express concerns to the Senate Intelligence Committee was to be repeatedly used against him during the January 2015 trial that resulted in a prison sentence of three and a half years. Inside the courtroom, in front of the jury, the prosecution often cited his lawsuit and his contact with Senate Intelligence Committee staffers as clear indications of bitterness, vengefulness and motive for taking the actions alleged in the indictment.

At the CIA and the Justice Department, authorities routinely depicted Jeffrey Sterling as a “disgruntled” employee. During interviews for “The Invisible Man,” he addressed how that depiction has played out for him:

“I think the label ‘disgruntled’ came from the moment that I complained, in any aspect. I was not being part of the team. … People say that individuals play the race card. What about the other side of that? The race card was certainly being played with me. And you can say it was the white race card because I wasn’t white. They had all those cards. … And if there isn’t going to be a true, real, honest investigation with any veracity, the natural conclusion is going be ‘disgruntled.’ It’s a very easy label to place.”

Norman Solomon’s books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and coordinates its ExposeFacts project. Solomon is a co-founder of RootsAction.org, which has encouraged donations to the Sterling Family Fund. Disclosure: After the guilty verdict four months ago, Solomon used his frequent-flyer miles to get plane tickets for Holly and Jeffrey Sterling so they would be able to go home to St. Louis.

Image: Judge James Boasberg (photo Diego M. Radzinschi-National Law Journal)

A federal judge has thwarted an attempt to force the release of the Senate report on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture program.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s full report on the CIA interrogation program. The executive summary of the report was previously made public, albeit with numerous redactions.

But U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg rejected the ACLU’s request, ruling the report remains a congressional record and thus isn’t subject to the FOIA. When Congress created FOIA in 1966, it made sure to exempt the legislative branch from its provisions.

Boasberg, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, appears to be the go-to judge if you don’t want something released to the public. Judicial Watch filed an FOIA request in 2011 to force the release of images of Osama Bin Laden’s death and burial, but Boasberg ruled (pdf) against the group.

“A picture may be worth a thousand words. And perhaps moving pictures bear an even higher value. Yet, in this case, verbal descriptions of the death and burial of Osama Bin Laden will have to suffice, for this Court will not order the release of anything more,”

Boasberg wrote to begin his decision.

In his latest ruling, Boasberg said letters sent to the CIA in 2009 and last year by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the former Senate intelligence chairman, revealed Congress has not relinquished control over the report, according to Josh Gerstein of Politico.

“Her [2014] letter does not evince Congressional intent to surrender substantial control over the Full SSCI report,” Boasberg wrote.

“While it does bestow a certain amount of discretion upon the agencies to determine how broadly to circulate the Report, such discretion is not boundless. Most significantly, the dissemination authorized by the letter is limited to the Executive Branch alone. It plainly does not purport to authorize the agencies to dispose of the Report as they wish — e.g. to the public at large.”

Feinstein has said she has no objections to the report being released, but she’s no longer in charge of the Senate intelligence panel, which now is led by Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina. Burr opposes the report’s release to the public and has fought to have copies that were sent to federal agencies returned to his committee.

While many eagerly await the day when China will finally reveal its latest official gold holdings, a number which when made public will be orders of magnitude higher than its last 2009 disclosure of just over 1,000 tons, or less even than Russia, China continues to plough ahead with agreements and arrangements to obtain even more gold in the coming years.

Exhibit A: two weeks ago, Xinhua reported that China National Gold Group Corporation announced it has signed an agreement with Russian gold miner Polyus Gold to deepen ties in gold exploration. The companies will cooperate in mineral resource exploration, technical exchanges and materials supply, the largest gold producer of China said.

Polyus Gold is the largest gold producer in Russia and one of the world’s top 10 gold miners.

The agreement between the two gold miners is one of many deals signed between China and Russia in energy, transportation, space, finance and media exchanges during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia from May 8 to May 10.

“China’s Belt and Road Initiative brings unprecedented opportunities for the gold industry. There is ample room for cooperation with neighboring countries, and we have advantages in technique, facilities, cash, and talents,” said Song Xin, general manager of China National Gold Group Corporation.

In light of such developments, it is little wonder there has been increasing chatter in recent months that Russia and China are setting the stage for a gold-backed currency, in preparation for the day the Dollar reserve hegemony finally ends (a hegemony whose demise is accelerating with every incremental physical gold repatriation such as those of Germany, the  Netherlands, and now Austria).

And now, Exhibit B: overnight Xinhua also reported that a gold sector fund involving countries along the ancient Silk Road has been set up in northwest China’s Xi’an City during an ongoing forum on investment and trade this weekend. (read more about the “New Silk Road” which could change global economics forever here). The fund, led by Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), is expected to raise an estimated 100 billion yuan (16.1 billion U.S. Dollars) in three phases. The amount of capital allocated to nothing but physical gold purchases (without plans for financial paper intermediation a la western ETFs) will be the largest in the world.

The billions of dollars in allocated funding will come from roughly 60 countries that have invested in the fund, which will in turn facilitate gold purchase for the central banks of member states to increase their holdings of the precious metal, according to the SGE.

As Xinhua notes, China is the world’s largest gold producer, and also a major importer and consumer of gold. Among the 65 countries along the routes of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, there are numerous Asian countries identified as important reserve bases and consumers of gold.

“China does not have a big say in gold pricing because it accounts for a small share of international gold trade,” said Tang Xisheng of the Industrial Fund Management Co. “Therefore, the Chinese government seeks to increase the influence of RMB in gold pricing by opening the domestic gold market to international investors.”

As a reminder, the reason why China has been aggressively building out and expanding its Shanghai Gold Exchange is precisely that: to shift the global gold trading center away from London (and certainly the US where only paper gold is relevant these days) and to its own native soil: China’s ambition is nothing short of becoming the world’s new gold trading hub.

In other to do that, it is already setting up the regional infrastructure to facilitate such a goal: according to Tang, the fund will invest in gold mining in countries along the Silk Road, which will increase exploration in countries such as Afghanistan and Kazakhstan.

The good news for China is that with the BIS and virtually all “developed” central banks in desperate need of keeping the price of gold as low as possible while they debase their own paper currencies to unprecedented levels over fears of faith in fiat evaporating, China’s gold fund will be able to procure gold for its members at a very reasonable price until such time as the lack of physical gold supply can no longer be swept away by mere paper shorting of the yellow metal.

While many eagerly await the day when China will finally reveal its latest official gold holdings, a number which when made public will be orders of magnitude higher than its last 2009 disclosure of just over 1,000 tons, or less even than Russia, China continues to plough ahead with agreements and arrangements to obtain even more gold in the coming years.

Exhibit A: two weeks ago, Xinhua reported that China National Gold Group Corporation announced it has signed an agreement with Russian gold miner Polyus Gold to deepen ties in gold exploration. The companies will cooperate in mineral resource exploration, technical exchanges and materials supply, the largest gold producer of China said.

Polyus Gold is the largest gold producer in Russia and one of the world’s top 10 gold miners.

The agreement between the two gold miners is one of many deals signed between China and Russia in energy, transportation, space, finance and media exchanges during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia from May 8 to May 10.

“China’s Belt and Road Initiative brings unprecedented opportunities for the gold industry. There is ample room for cooperation with neighboring countries, and we have advantages in technique, facilities, cash, and talents,” said Song Xin, general manager of China National Gold Group Corporation.

In light of such developments, it is little wonder there has been increasing chatter in recent months that Russia and China are setting the stage for a gold-backed currency, in preparation for the day the Dollar reserve hegemony finally ends (a hegemony whose demise is accelerating with every incremental physical gold repatriation such as those of Germany, the  Netherlands, and now Austria).

And now, Exhibit B: overnight Xinhua also reported that a gold sector fund involving countries along the ancient Silk Road has been set up in northwest China’s Xi’an City during an ongoing forum on investment and trade this weekend. (read more about the “New Silk Road” which could change global economics forever here). The fund, led by Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), is expected to raise an estimated 100 billion yuan (16.1 billion U.S. Dollars) in three phases. The amount of capital allocated to nothing but physical gold purchases (without plans for financial paper intermediation a la western ETFs) will be the largest in the world.

The billions of dollars in allocated funding will come from roughly 60 countries that have invested in the fund, which will in turn facilitate gold purchase for the central banks of member states to increase their holdings of the precious metal, according to the SGE.

As Xinhua notes, China is the world’s largest gold producer, and also a major importer and consumer of gold. Among the 65 countries along the routes of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, there are numerous Asian countries identified as important reserve bases and consumers of gold.

“China does not have a big say in gold pricing because it accounts for a small share of international gold trade,” said Tang Xisheng of the Industrial Fund Management Co. “Therefore, the Chinese government seeks to increase the influence of RMB in gold pricing by opening the domestic gold market to international investors.”

As a reminder, the reason why China has been aggressively building out and expanding its Shanghai Gold Exchange is precisely that: to shift the global gold trading center away from London (and certainly the US where only paper gold is relevant these days) and to its own native soil: China’s ambition is nothing short of becoming the world’s new gold trading hub.

In other to do that, it is already setting up the regional infrastructure to facilitate such a goal: according to Tang, the fund will invest in gold mining in countries along the Silk Road, which will increase exploration in countries such as Afghanistan and Kazakhstan.

The good news for China is that with the BIS and virtually all “developed” central banks in desperate need of keeping the price of gold as low as possible while they debase their own paper currencies to unprecedented levels over fears of faith in fiat evaporating, China’s gold fund will be able to procure gold for its members at a very reasonable price until such time as the lack of physical gold supply can no longer be swept away by mere paper shorting of the yellow metal.

Gary Null, PhD, age 70

Gary Null has been a popular, longtime radio host with the longest running health talk show which airs on Progressive Radio Network. He has authored and directed dozens upon dozens of books and documentaries.

A few weeks ago, he was asked as an honored guest on Bonnie Faulkner’s show, Guns and Butter which talks about the politics of economics and airs on Pacifica KPFA public radio stations. In the spirit of truth, Bonnie wanted listeners to hear the other side of the vaccine talk, not the “case closed” version. What you’re not being told about vaccines. And specifically SB277, the California bill to mandate vaccines for virtually all Californian school children. Who better to ask then Null, an alternative health expert, medical activist and Pacifica veteran?

When it came time to air, however, they were told they weren’t allowed – or rather, they were outright censored and the show was cut – the first time for Guns and Butter in over 11 years. But Bonnie could not let this breach of truth rest…

Bonnie went on the Gary Null Show and they did a “reverse interview.” Bonnie then interviewed Gary and they both shared the Sound Cloud file to their listeners. Listen to the banned talk with updated information on SB277 and the censorship here, while you read what happened next…

Download

An excerpt from KPFA’s mission:

Over the years we’ve advanced the discussions and told the truth about historical moments of political impasse, racial tensions and economic inequality.

But not if it’s politically incorrect or goes against what’s popular, eh? Not very public radio-y of them… Listeners did not donate to have hard-hitting info yanked from their ears.

To make matters worse, KPFA Program Director, Laura Prives, publicly declared [bottom of page] her reasons for the cut and aired her ignorance as a result. It is clear that she must have done a lazy Google search as she is quoting directly from propagandist Website Quackwatch run by anti-alternative therapy psychiatrist Stephen Barrett – always somehow #1 on Google. Or maybe she found Null’s Wikipedia entry which is only a harsh, heavily skewed rehash of…Quackwatch. Without knowing anything about Null’s work, she declares he has no credentials, has unsound theories and his work is only a vehicle to hawk products.

She says the station has a “serious responsibility to provide its listeners with accurate, science-based information on public health, most especially on issues that could potentially cause harm to people.” She says it’s not censorship but “protecting the airwaves from mis-information and from people who stand to profit by offering dubious remedies to sick and vulnerable listeners.” !!! Because pharmaceutical companies who have the media on a short leash never do that…

The title is of course a little misleading because China has many options, none of which except one in my opinion will actually work.  Options to what exactly you ask?  Options to a collapsing global economy and an imploding financial system which will surely affect China as much as anywhere else, but with one caveat.  I take these events as a given, others do not but betting against an outright panic and global bankruptcy is betting against pure mathematics itself.

Let’s back up a little bit and look at where China is currently.  They are the second largest economy in the world (maybe the largest, we can’t really know because the numbers here, there, and everywhere are made up).  China is by far THE largest manufacturer in the world and also an enormous exporter.  China is also in a three horse race as to who owns the most U.S. Treasuries with Japan and unbelievably the Federal Reserve itself.  They have an oversized shadow banking system which has already been shown as fraudulent in several cases regarding copper, zinc and lead as “collateral” (or not).

The Chinese also have a stock market bubble boiling that makes the tulip craze look tame.  Because of sheer size of the country, they are opening something like four million brokerage accounts per month.  In recent days they have had several stocks hit new highs only to drop 50-60% or more in just one day.  In fact, they had one company stock hit a new high and then go to ZERO the following day because it was discovered their books were cooked to a crisp.

We also know China is a huge importer of gold AND the largest producer of gold in the world.  NONE of their production ever leaves their borders.  There have been estimates of gold tonnage held by many.  Alisdair Mcleod believes they may have 25,000 tons or more, I personally believe it is possible if you include legacy or “elders” gold.  Others believe the number is closer to the 5,000 ton range.  My belief is that 10,000 tons is a justifiable number and very easily proven, if this is true, much of it had come from the U.S. and other Western sources and thus depleting the reserves.

I assume the number is 10,000 tons or more, this is a safe number in my mind.  I think it is also a safe bet to say the U.S. has sold a minimum of one half of “our” gold which would leave about 4,000 tons.  If this is the case, there is already a  new world order where China has as much gold as numbers 2, 3 and 4.  Looking backwards in time, after the Bretton Woods agreement, the U.S. had every incentive to keep the “price” of gold down at $35.  This is so and evidenced by the old saying “it’s as good as gold”.  The saying originally came about as a description of the dollar.  As it turns out, the dollar was NOT as good as gold, in fact it was not as good as anything, even a cup of coffee.  The dollar was overprinted and abused (inflated) by politicians (the Fed) in order to hide anything and everything “bad”.  This worked until we hit the wall, let’s call this wall “debt saturation”.  Now, the process is reversing and will end in a massive deflation versus real money while fiat currencies follow their issuers into insolvency.

Getting back to China, whenever they do make an announcement of how much gold they have, the yuan will appreciate greatly versus all fiat currencies.  Many will pooh pooh this thought because “China will never do that, they will kill their own manufacturing base”.  Let me answer this before moving forward.  The Chinese are very smart people, they can see the West is hitting the debt wall.  They also know that as the wall is hit and markets begin to implode, their “customers” are going to have an even harder time buying Chinese produced goods.  In fact, they already know this.  They already know this is happening and can see it in their trade figures …which is why they recently formed the AIIB and are working feverishly to open the “old silk road” trade route!  They are simply lining up new customers from one end of the silk road to the other!

I have hypothesized many times in the past, China has built out their infrastructure and even “ghost cities” using credit.  Once the credit markets begin to default, they will be left with “stuff”, in place and will last for the next 50 to 100 years.  Roads, bridges, buildings, airports, ports, etc., you name it they have already built it.  And yes, their stock market will crash, their real estate market is already softening, in reverse and declining.  I am not saying it will be all rosy, to the contrary, there will be bankruptcies galore in China… with a caveat.  The “government” of China will go through this liquidation phase with the most gold in the world.

Moving forward, since China will be hurt badly as investments default, I believe they will re price their gold higher initially.  I believe marking their gold higher in terms of yuan will be their only option.  They will be forced to in order to “recapitalize” themselves (and their banking system) and begin to fill in the black holes created by defaulted U.S. Treasuries and other “assets” held.  You see, not only is the old saying “he who owns the gold makes the rules” true, it is also true that he who owns the gold has the ability to PRICE IT.

This has been true for so many years as the U.S. (the West) has wanted low gold prices as a show or display that their fiat currencies were “good”.  Now, as the curtain goes down on the West, China will want a very high gold price in yuan for when the curtain rises again.  A gold price maybe even higher than it should be will give the PBOC more power initially AND will allow them some room to inflate and grow.  Please notice I am only talking about China in this paragraph.  As for the dollar and other Western currencies, they will be revalued downward versus the yuan which gives gold priced in dollars a double whammy of re pricing.

Let’s tie this all together and look at the old silk road and the trade route China is focusing on.  It goes from Asia, through the Middles East and into Europe.  Could this be why various European nations are repatriating their gold?  Not only because they have lost trust in their custodian but they also know China will put an emphasis on gold holdings in the future?  What do many Asians hold as money?  Yes, Gold.  Indians?  Gold.  Arabs?  Again gold.  The point I am trying to make is the “old silk road” might as well be called the “yellow brick road” and one paved with gold from beginning to end!  It seems to me, the only ones who don’t understand this or even disagree are Westerners and in particular, Americans.  Our standard of living is about to pulled right out from under us while violently proclaiming “it can never happen”.  I would say, it should have already happened but has not because we still had a few kilos left to supply the paving crew of the “Wizard of OZ paving company”.

The above was finished midday on Saturday, since then two new pieces of news have come out.  First, China announced it is setting up “the world’s largest gold fund” .  They will earmark $16 billon to purchase physical gold.  If you do the math, this is around 500 tons or about 20% of global production.  By calling it “the world’s largest gold fund”, maybe China is saying they do not believe “GLD” is real?  Just an observation.

In the latest piece of news, http://rt.com/business/261289-brics-new-development-bank/  RT ran an editorial piece pointing out that China already lends more to Africa and Latin America than the World Bank and IMF combined.  Is this posturing “for” the Chinese before the IMF readjusts the SDR?  Seemingly disconnected pieces to the puzzle, don’t bet on it!

There’s a vicious war taking place in South America, and the weapon of choice is none other than Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide, the primary active ingredient in the company’s nefarious Roundup formula. Reports indicate that the Colombian government’s “war on drugs”, which in that country means actively fighting the cultivation of the coca plant (which is used to manufacture cocaine), involves spraying glyphosate and other deadly chemicals from aircraft in order to forcibly kill the plants.

Little-known to the rest of the world is the fact that glyphosate is right now being used in the same way as military machine guns to target and destroy nature in one of the most bio-diverse regions of the world. And in the process, thousands of indigenous Colombians are being exposed to a chemical that the World Health Organization (WHO) recently admitted is a “probable human carcinogen,” meaning it causes cancer.

The Guardian‘s David Hill recently wrote about his experience investigating the goings on of this coca-rich region of the world, accounting how many locals there have been forced to make a lifestyle out of avoiding routine glyphosate sprayings for their own health. Aircraft blasting Monsanto’s death poisons on fields are not only damaging other crops and polluting groundwater, but they’re ultimately making the people that live in and around these areas deathly ill.

“Many people, both in Colombia and abroad, have condemned and protested the fumigations for years,” he writes, noting that Colombia has been actively using glyphosate as a weapon in the U.S.-promulgated war on drugs for more than 20 years.

“The state reasons – aside from the fact they haven’t succeeded in eradicating coca cultivation – are legion. One such reason is that they have killed 1,000s of hectares of legal crops belonging to 1,000s of campesinos, Afro-Colombians and indigenous people, and because of devastating environmental impacts including destroying soil fertility, contaminating water, and pushing coca cultivation deeper into particularly environmentally sensitive, biodiversity-rich regions like the Amazon.”

The “war on drugs” needs to end, and so does Monsanto

Similar to the disastrous consequences of “the war on drugs” that continue to plague the U.S., Colombia’s aggressive actions against a natural plant have also spurred the growth of paramilitaries, guerrillas, and violent cartels throughout Colombia, which are spreading to Ecuador and other nearby countries. The war on drugs has also vastly increased the poverty rate while contributing to widespread disease.

“We find significant effects of spraying campaigns on the probability of occurrence of dermatological problems (skin irritations, highlight burnings, etc.) and abortions,” revealed a recent study co-written by Daniel Mejia, president of the Colombian government’s Advisory Commission on Narcotics Policy, which looked at glyphosate fumigations between 2003 and 2007.

“Our results corroborate some of the results in the medical literature (e.g., the negative effects of exposure to glyphosate on dermatological problems and abortions).”

So what can we do to stop these heinous crimes against humanity? The first and most logical step would be to immediately stop “the war on drugs” and stop waging combat against nature, which ultimately amounts to endless aggression against people like you and me. Colombia has proposed removing glyphosate from its spraying endeavors based on the WHO report, but the sprayings themselves also need to stop.

You can also sign the following two petitions to have Roundup removed from the home improvement chains Home Depot and Lowe’s.

www.change.org

www.change.org

Sources for this article include:

http://www.theguardian.com

www.change.org

www.change.org

A Palestinian child from occupied East Jerusalem has lost an eye after being shot in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet fired by an Israeli soldier.

Yahiya al-Amudi, 10, was struck by the bullet as he walked near an Israeli military checkpoint in Shuafat refugee camp on Thursday last week. The boy was subsequently hospitalized “with a fractured skull, jaw and left ear and had surgery to remove his left eye,” Ma’an News Agency reports. Al-Amudi was described as being in a critical condition.

Rubber-coated steel bullets are among Israel’s so-called arsenal of “non-lethal weapons.” The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has referred to them, however, as “less fatal” weapons.

Although Israel promotes rubber-coated and sponge-tipped bullets, tear gas and stun grenades as “non-lethal,” they “are dangerous weapons that can cause death, severe injury or damage to property if improperly used,” a B’Tselem report notes.

Between 2005 and January 2013, at least ten Palestinians were killed by “less fatal” weapons, according to the group’s statistics.

Much like al-Amudi, Suliman al-Tardi, 20, also lost his eye after Israeli forces shot him in the face with a sponge-tipped bullet last month in the Issawiyeh neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Children and adolescents are at particular risk of severe injury from weapons like rubber-coated steel and sponge-tipped bullets.

Children targeted

Last August, Muhammad Sunqrut, 16, was fatally shot in the head with a sponge-tipped bullet. Though police claimed he was shot in the leg while throwing stones, a subsequent autopsy showed that the bullet struck him in the head and his uncle dismissed the assertion that he was protesting.

Between January 2011 and December 2013, more than 1,500 of the estimated 8,500 Palestinians injured by weapons other than live ammunition were children, according to a report published by Amnesty International in March 2014.

In December last, a five-year-old boy, Muhammed Obeid, was shot in the face with a sponge-tipped bullet fired by an Israeli police officer as police forces clashed with local residents in the Issawiyeh neighborhood.

Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability director with Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-Palestine), explained that Israeli forces regularly misuse “non-lethal weapons.”

“From our documentation, we have discovered that Israel doesn’t abide by its own military regulations for the use of firearms and weapons like rubber-coated bullets,” he told The Electronic Intifada by telephone.  “According to Israel’s rules, these weapons should not be used against women and children, but the evidence suggests that they are regularly used against them.”

Live ammunition

Israeli forces’ use of live ammunition against Palestinians, among them children, also continues unabated. At least 35 children have been injured by live ammunition since the beginning of this year, Abu Eqtaish said.

“The most important issue is that Israeli authorities do not open legitimate investigations into these violations, so Israel shows soldiers that they are immune from any responsibility,” he added.

A September 2014 report published by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din found that only 1.4 percent of complaints submitted to Israeli military authorities between 2010 and 2013 resulted in an indictment.

At least eleven children were killed by live ammunition in the occupied West Bank throughout 2014, according to DCI-Palestine’s statistics.

Ali Abu Ghannam, 17, became the first Palestinian child or teenager killed by Israel in 2015 as he made his way home from a wedding party last month. Israeli Border Police shot him at the al-Zaim checkpoint near the al-Tur neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

The Israeli authorities claimed he attacked them with a knife, but his family rejects the assertion and insists he was killed “in cold blood,” as The Electronic Intifada reported at the time.

Electronic Intifada Editor’s note: an earlier version of this story erroneously referred to “steel-coated bullets” in two places where it was meant to state “rubber-coated steel bullets” and “sponge-tipped bullets.” The story has since been corrected.

The New York Times‘ vision of women in the workplace. (Anna Parini)

Familiar, frustrating construction from today’s New York Times (5/26/15):

It turns out that generous maternity leave and flexible rules on part-time work can make it harder for women to be promoted — or even hired at all.

That’s one way to put it, and the article, by “Women at Work” columnist Claire Cain Miller, puts it that way repeatedly. Women are paid less in Chile as a “result” of the law that requires employers to provide childcare for working mothers. Maternity leave measures “have meant that” European women are less likely to achieve powerful positions at work. Policies intended to mitigate the penalty women pay for their traditional “dual burden,” the Times says, “end up discouraging employers from hiring women in the first place.”

The workplace repression of women is described as the “unintended” impact of family-friendly policies. Sure, such impacts weren’t intended by the policies’ drafters, but that makes it sound as though there were no conscious human beings behind decisions to pay working mothers less or not to hire women. It isn’t the policies that “make it harder” for women, but the male-centric management structure’s unwillingness to integrate those policies into the way work is done. Why not say that?

The Times suggests it might be better if employers didn’t have to pay for policies that make it possible for caregivers to earn a living, or maybe they should be “generous but not too generous.”

Finally, it floats the idea that making family-supportive measures gender-neutral might alleviate some of employers’ punitive responses. This at least starts to broach some of the societal questions—like the idea of making workplaces that support family and community life, rather than the other way around—that, in a better world, might form the starting point for such an article.

 

On May 26, China’s official press agency Xinhua headlined “China rolls out military roadmap of ‘active defense’ strategy,” saying:

An official white paper issued by the State Council Information Office titled “China’s Military Strategy” pledged “closer international security cooperation.”

It stressed “the principles of defense, self-defense and post-emptive strike.” It said China isn’t aggressive. It will “counterattack” if attacked.

Focus will be placed on “winning informationized local wars.” International security cooperation will be stressed “in areas crucially related to overseas interests.”

Four “critical security domains” were highlighted – “ocean, outer space, cyberspace and nuclear force.”

China’s navy will defend offshore and “open seas” waters. Cybersecurity will be prioritized.

Beijing opposes weaponizing space. It “vowed to secure its space assets.” It pledged no nuclear arms race with other countries.

It stressed a commitment to world peace and stability. It won’t “pursue military expansion.”

It fundamentally opposes hegemonism and power politics in all forms. It faces multiple complex security threats – including “illegal, military presence on China’s territory, and outside parties involving themselves in South China Sea affairs,” a clear reference to US regional meddling.

Beijing considers US South China Sea surveillance flights unacceptable provocations. The Pentagon admits flying its most advanced P-8A-Poseidon spy plane regularly in the area – monitoring Beijing activities primarily.

A May 25 state-run Global Times editorial bluntly warned:

“If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea.”

“China will have no choice but to engage” in response to US provocations. Beijing’s waters are its own. Its message says it won’t tolerate US intervention where it doesn’t belong.

China is concerned about America’s increasing Asia/Pacific presence as well as Japan’s intent on “overhauling its military and security policies” cooperatively with Washington.

“(A)nti-China forces have never given up their attempt to instigate a color revolution” against Beijing, the white paper said. The risk of potential conflict is real.

Hawkish US senators want a comprehensive anti-China strategy adopted. In a letter to Defense Secretary Carter, they said “longstanding interests of the United States, as well as our allies and partners, stand at considerable risk.”

They want Beijing challenged in its own part of the world – perhaps belligerently. On the one hand, they slam China’s legitimate military presence in its own territory.

On the other, they ignore menacing US bases, nuclear-armed navy and tens of thousands of US combat troops close to China’s borders – a direct threat to its security.

Last week, US Pacific Command (PACOM) hosted military officials from 22 Asia/Pacific countries in Hawaii. China notably was excluded.

A symposium discussed amphibious military strategies, tactics and capabilities. A US marines amphibious assault demonstration was featured.

Washington aims to integrate amphibious operations with Pacific area nations and ally them against China’s growing regional strength and influence.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Washington may expand military patrols in Pacific rim waters – including around China’s Spratly Archipelago land reclamation project involving construction of artificial islands atop coral reefs.

US Pacific fleet commander Admiral Harry Harris accused Beijing of building a “great wall of sand” in disputed waters.

He claimed “the scope and pace of building man-made islands raises serious questions about Chinese intentions.”

The area involved is 1.5 square miles. “How China proceeds will be a key indicator of whether the region is heading towards confrontation or cooperation.” Harris said.

America’s belligerent presence risks the former. Apparently nothing was learned from lost Korean and Southeast Asian wars.

China justifiably claims the right to build in its own territorial waters – “indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha (Spratly) Islands and adjacent waters,” it says.

Washington has no right to meddle in a part of the world not its own. China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said America should avoid “risky and provocative approaches to maintain regional peace and stability.”

She stressed China will defend its territorial sovereignty. Unauthorized intrusions will be challenged.

Longstanding US overreach may lead to direct confrontation with China. The risk of potential conflict is real.

On May 26, China’s official press agency Xinhua headlined “China rolls out military roadmap of ‘active defense’ strategy,” saying:

An official white paper issued by the State Council Information Office titled “China’s Military Strategy” pledged “closer international security cooperation.”

It stressed “the principles of defense, self-defense and post-emptive strike.” It said China isn’t aggressive. It will “counterattack” if attacked.

Focus will be placed on “winning informationized local wars.” International security cooperation will be stressed “in areas crucially related to overseas interests.”

Four “critical security domains” were highlighted – “ocean, outer space, cyberspace and nuclear force.”

China’s navy will defend offshore and “open seas” waters. Cybersecurity will be prioritized.

Beijing opposes weaponizing space. It “vowed to secure its space assets.” It pledged no nuclear arms race with other countries.

It stressed a commitment to world peace and stability. It won’t “pursue military expansion.”

It fundamentally opposes hegemonism and power politics in all forms. It faces multiple complex security threats – including “illegal, military presence on China’s territory, and outside parties involving themselves in South China Sea affairs,” a clear reference to US regional meddling.

Beijing considers US South China Sea surveillance flights unacceptable provocations. The Pentagon admits flying its most advanced P-8A-Poseidon spy plane regularly in the area – monitoring Beijing activities primarily.

A May 25 state-run Global Times editorial bluntly warned:

“If the United States’ bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea.”

“China will have no choice but to engage” in response to US provocations. Beijing’s waters are its own. Its message says it won’t tolerate US intervention where it doesn’t belong.

China is concerned about America’s increasing Asia/Pacific presence as well as Japan’s intent on “overhauling its military and security policies” cooperatively with Washington.

“(A)nti-China forces have never given up their attempt to instigate a color revolution” against Beijing, the white paper said. The risk of potential conflict is real.

Hawkish US senators want a comprehensive anti-China strategy adopted. In a letter to Defense Secretary Carter, they said “longstanding interests of the United States, as well as our allies and partners, stand at considerable risk.”

They want Beijing challenged in its own part of the world – perhaps belligerently. On the one hand, they slam China’s legitimate military presence in its own territory.

On the other, they ignore menacing US bases, nuclear-armed navy and tens of thousands of US combat troops close to China’s borders – a direct threat to its security.

Last week, US Pacific Command (PACOM) hosted military officials from 22 Asia/Pacific countries in Hawaii. China notably was excluded.

A symposium discussed amphibious military strategies, tactics and capabilities. A US marines amphibious assault demonstration was featured.

Washington aims to integrate amphibious operations with Pacific area nations and ally them against China’s growing regional strength and influence.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Washington may expand military patrols in Pacific rim waters – including around China’s Spratly Archipelago land reclamation project involving construction of artificial islands atop coral reefs.

US Pacific fleet commander Admiral Harry Harris accused Beijing of building a “great wall of sand” in disputed waters.

He claimed “the scope and pace of building man-made islands raises serious questions about Chinese intentions.”

The area involved is 1.5 square miles. “How China proceeds will be a key indicator of whether the region is heading towards confrontation or cooperation.” Harris said.

America’s belligerent presence risks the former. Apparently nothing was learned from lost Korean and Southeast Asian wars.

China justifiably claims the right to build in its own territorial waters – “indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha (Spratly) Islands and adjacent waters,” it says.

Washington has no right to meddle in a part of the world not its own. China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said America should avoid “risky and provocative approaches to maintain regional peace and stability.”

She stressed China will defend its territorial sovereignty. Unauthorized intrusions will be challenged.

Longstanding US overreach may lead to direct confrontation with China. The risk of potential conflict is real.

By Chen Heying

Experts on Sunday warned of a potential military conflict over heightened US surveillance in the South China Sea and cautioned that both sides should try their best to avoid miscalculation in the world’s most important bilateral relations.

Analysts believe that recent US military activity is another example of how the US is struggling to maintain the status quo while coping with the rise of China as a global power. They urge the US to face up to the reality that China is becoming a maritime power and that China’s determination to protect its sovereignty should not be underestimated.

“The South China Sea issue makes up a small portion of Sino-US ties,” wrote Cen Shaoyu, an international relations commentator. “Leaders from both countries should understand that the future of China and the US, as well as the future of Asia, are far beyond just that.”

China electronically jammed Global Hawk long-range surveillance drones spying on China’s Nansha Islands, a possible attempt to capture a Global Hawk by causing one to crash in shallow waters, or to snatch one in flight using a manned aircraft, The Washington Free Beacon reported on Friday.

Disclosure of the jamming came as a US P-8A anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft flew over waters off China’s Nansha Islands for reconnaissance activities on Wednesday.

It is the US that travelled thousands of miles to China’s doorstep to force China to safeguard national territorial sovereignty and maritime interests, Peng Guangqian, a specialist in military strategy at the PLA Academy of Military Science, told the Global Times.

“China’s responses were justified acts of self-defense when the US flights approached China’s territory and were in accordance with international practice,” Tao Wenzhao, a research fellow with the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

China will very likely strike back if the US comes within 12 miles of the islands, Peng said, adding that the US was deliberately provoking China.

“The US provocation has boosted the chance of military confrontation between Beijing and Washington,” Zhu Feng, director of the Collaborative Innovation Center of South China Sea Studies under Nanjing University, told the Global Times.

Once China dispatches aircraft to drive away the US fighters, both sides are likely to exchange fire due to high flight speed, Zhu said.

“The reconnaissance conducted by the US military aircraft poses a potential threat to the security of China’s maritime features, and is highly likely to cause miscalculation, or even untoward maritime and aerial incidents,” Hong Lei, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a regular press conference on Friday.

The presence of the US military in the South China Sea also encouraged countries neighboring the waters to increase military build-up, making the region more unstable and deterring peaceful settlement through dialogue, said Jin Canrong, vice director of the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China.

The Pentagon’s moves came after US Secretary of State John Kerry finished his two-day visit to China on May 17. Kerry reaffirmed the US government’s stance of not taking sides on the South China Sea issue and said the same stance will apply to other parties involved in the dispute, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

“The conflicting attitudes adopted by the US government and its military demonstrated the disunity within the US,” Jin said.

“Of course the involvement of great powers outside the region complicates the South China Sea situation. However, the involvement of major countries also means more convoluted interests are at stake when it comes to making the decision to enter military conflicts,” said Xue Li, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Copyright Chen Heying, Global Times 2015

A growing segment of the American population is waking up to the implications of the Jade Helm 15 military operation to be conducted by Special Forces in conjunction with local law enforcement, the FBI, DHS, the DEA and Border Patrol across the entire Southwest. This massive unprecedented exercise will also commence in June sooner than first announced and last for 10 weeks through the summer till September 15.

The risk of it triggering civil unrest or that it may coincide with a potential false flag scenario followed by another possibly timed crisis situation is both feasible and real, despite mainstream media’s ridicule dismissing any such possibilities as pure paranoid conspiracy theory. What we do know for sure is this nation has turned into a militarized police state and that both the military and the government lie all the time.

We also are aware of the globalists’ long planned agenda of a national crisis that would induce Obama to quash civil unrest by declaring martial law. A recent poll of Americans found that near half (45%) see Jade Helm as imposing more control over the states. If martial law doesn’t actually come to pass this time around, it certainly sets the stage for next time in this incrementally increasing militarization of America.

We also know that a specific Department of Defense manual FM 3-39.40 has existed since 2010 delineating how the federal government in cooperation with the UN will respond to civil disturbance that includes FEMA camp roundups to fill waiting empty Haliburton-refurbished prison camps after a $385 million no bid contract during the former CEO Cheney’s vice presidency. We also know that each prison camp includes a tribunal section and a mortuary section along with psychological officers responsible for reprogramming US detainees. Despite this layout presented so matter-of-fact and by-the-book, Americans will be killed. During the upheaval of a national crisis, a lethal outcome is also most probable. Meanwhile, countdown to global war appears to be ticking away as troops from virtually every nation are busily training in preparation for a likely West versus East endgame scenario of World War III.

President Kennedy spoke of subversive forces operating inside the shadow government several months prior to those same forces killing him. And those demonic forces posing as our international crime syndicate government boldly went on unconsequenced by the JFK assassination to stage the worst false flag in history on 9/11 giving birth to the neocons’ war on terror. And it’s been all downhill ever since with nonstop wars, a runaway deficit (over $18 trillion), a fragile and broken global economy, and within a few years after 9/11 a militarized totalitarian police state. Long gone is America’s once democratic republic, replaced by a fascist oligarchy controlled by a military-security-prison complex. As Obama’s personal army, Homeland Security has grown gluttonously evil bringing tyranny and oppression to the United States of America as never before.

But to those of us aware enough to study and learn from history, there are no accidents and no surprises here. Armed with the latest technology, the global elitists in control have done their homework, long in advance manipulating everything in its Orwellian place for these shuttering events and developments to unfold. From the overreaching CIA grooming their Manchurian Candidate president to his unqualified meteoric rise to puppet power, Obama was the perfect made man for the job. Obscured by a shadowy, made over past that includes a fake birth certificate, he was steeped in Communist ideology and socialist collectivism by his deep connection with ex-terrorist Bill Ayers (who also was the Common Core architect responsible largely for dumbing down public education) and fellow mentor Saul Alinsky. Obama displayed dazzle as an early orator on the big stage of big politics, wore the right skin color to prey on people’s hope for change and progress, appearing as a different kind of leader who many thought would represent the common people, a unifier and uplifter for the downtrodden. Boy were they dead wrong!

Once elected, Obama became the Manchurian Trojan Horse presidential imposter occupying the White House. This is the same man as presidential candidate who bragged and promised as a former constitutional law professor for over 10 years that he’d be the most open and transparent president in US history after the criminal Bush regime. Then once Obama became president, he only demonstrated that he is the most secretive and closed off president in history. Even worse, in the same speech he denounced Bush and Cheney for violating America’s rule of law, he proposed to develop “an appropriate legal regime for indefinite prolonged detention of American citizens” prior to ever breaking the law based purely on the government’s suspicion that they may become a future threat to national security. This statement uttered early in his first term ominously spelled out his sinister agenda to lock up and throw away the key to any citizen that he and his minions believe might become a future threat.

Based on Obama and his administration’s subsequent actions, their definition of “future threat to national security” is simply anyone who disagrees with his treasonous policies, DHS declaring them a greater threat than even ISIS, which is really quite telling. Those citizens honest and brave enough to expose the criminal truth about his evil agenda betraying our Constitution, nation and people have been singled out and targeted on dissident watch lists.

Americans believing in our Constitution who object to the feds’ criminality of constantly violating the nation’s rule of law that used to protect citizens with privacy rights over unlawfully invasive surveillance and search and seizure, the right to peaceful assembly to public protest, the right to own a gun, the right to freedom of speech and religion, the right to due process, the right to habeas corpus dating back to the 1066 Magna Carta, all these previously guaranteed civil liberties under Bush-Obama were usurped and denied Americans. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act was a traitorous package deal depriving us of all these rights, as well as violating and repealing the 1878 Posse Comitatus law prohibiting US military from involvement in civil matters that fall under state National Guard and law enforcement jurisdiction.

This president and his DHS in one fell swoop have equated US patriots who are returning veterans from warfronts(regardless of war) as potential home grown terrorists. So after placing their life on the line for their nation in combat, risking and often incurring serious life threatening injuries while experiencing the trauma of witnessing their comrades die sacrificing their lives for their nation, upon return home from US Empire’s blood for oil wars, their nation turns on them in betrayal, calling them terrorist threats and developing a criminally subversive plan to remove not only their private weapons violating their Second Amendment right, but physically removing them from society by locking them away in prison or worse killing them under false suspicion they might become homegrown terrorists. This is how our diabolically treasonous and insane government led by our current commander-in-chief repays our veterans. It’s unbelievably despicable that America’s come to this.

On to another targeted population, Obama has harassed, threatened, accused and locked up more journalists and whistleblowers than any previous administration ever. Moreover, he has charged more whistleblowers with violating an antiquated 1917 espionage act for treason than all past presidencies combined, sentencing them to jail time 25 more times than all previous combined. The least transparent president in history also denied more Freedom of Information Act requests in 2014 than all previous administrations, only proving himself to be the most vindictive, revengeful, secretive despot president in history.

When Obama came to power everything was in place for the globalist war machine to continue uninterrupted, unleashing the same imperialistic US Empire aggression launched by the war criminal invaders and occupiers Bush and Cheney. Following his globalist marching orders, Obama seamlessly maintained the Empire’s role as world policeman and murderous bully around the globe. He prolonged the war in Iraq for another three years in time to claim credit for ending the Iraq War during his reelection campaign. In the other decade-long war he ensured the fighting in Afghanistan would continue unabated for another half dozen years. Then with the help of Israel and Saudi Arabia, he created ISIS, which conveniently provided the fine print disclaimer ensuring the US-NATO military presence in both war ravaged nations would be on an as needed, permanent basis.

In the meantime hidden from public view, Obama guaranteed the proliferation of new, sneakier kind of lower intensity, out of sight, out of mind wars around the world fought by none other than the killer elite Special Forces. Now Americans cannot even tell you who the US is at war with because it’s all a deep state secret. Did I mention Obama’s the most secretive prez in history? Investigative reporter and author Nick Turse has determined the exponential growth of US Special Operations at last count over a year ago is deployed in more than 134 nationsaround the globe with the highest concentration throughout most of Africa and much of Central and East Asia. That’s most nations on earth along with a thousand US military posts around the world.

Expanding the presence of US proxy wars, Obama refined a new and improved formula for churning out the most barbaric, savage, seemingly unstoppable monster enemy of them all – the Islamic State (IS). Pretending IS jihadists are the most evil enemy since Russian Communists, complicit in showcasing their staged youtube beheadings to horrify the world for effect, Obama secretly engineered their expanding global dominance in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and possibly just eight miles from the US border near El Paso in Mexico where reports from Judicial Watch recently claimed a high ranking Mexican police and a military officer stated ISIS is currently undergoing joint training operations with the drug cartel ostensibly to potentially terrorize Americans on US soil during Jade Helm. Of course the US government vehemently denies the presence of Islamic State in Mexico yet speculation still lingers based on US FBI and DHS meetings with Mexican authorities. In any event, the bottom line if the US really wanted to destroy ISIS, as the most lethal killing force on earth, it could eliminate Islamic State forces within a month.

Apparently it was two homegrown ISIS fighters from Arizona that showed up in Dallas bent on a shooting spree at a cartoon contest lampooning Islam earlier this month in what seemed a staged event, the same state deemed “hostile” by the Jade Helm game plan. Then came the bizarre mass biker gang shootout killing 9 in Waco, Texas a week ago. Evidence is coming to light that hidden ISIS recruiters are presently embedded in US, UK and Canada college campuses around those Western nations attempting to entice non-Muslims to join their cause. Based on a recent UN report almost two months ago, more than 25,000 new recruits did join from most countries in the world just since June last year. Whether ISIS is really here in North America amongst us or not, Washington’s been hyping the eminent dangers posed by right wing domestic terrorists lurking to kill government authorities like police, almost as if to prep us for an upcoming false flag that could occur during Jade Helm.

As the US-created hired gun, after training, arming and financing Obama’s secret ally that holds a calling card reading “Terrorism-R-Us-Will-Travel,” Obama and his globalist puppet masters have been increasingly outed with incontrovertible evidence of newly declassified documents that the so called ISIS enemy is actually a mere extension and creation of the US, its Western allies and their oligarch masters. It was just released that the Pentagon had devised a plan back in August 2012 for the rise of ISIS (that we never even knew existed then) to later take over two key Iraqi cities Mosul and Ramadi. Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces simply cut and ran without a fight from both cities?

The latest disturbing revelations surfacing are disclosures from whistleblowers inside the military high command and a recently retired Homeland Security officer. One recently purged lieutenant general among the 270 high ranking military officers Obama has forced out of the service has just revealed in an email that this summer’s Jade Helm will in fact bring not only dissident extraction but the start of “a ground war, city by city, street by street” to America. The anonymous retired three star general went on to write:

     Additionally what is coming will be unlike any civil war in history, it will be very personal, the government will call the Patriots forces terrorists and traitors, they will arrest, intern, torture and murder suspected terrorists families, this will result in bloody reprisals which will start a vicious cycle lasting for years.

Lending credibility to his dire prediction was the general’s assignment in 2012 to be part of a Pentagon study assessing the rank and file personnel in all the US armed forces on whether they would be willing or not to fire upon and kill US citizens in a civil war scenario. He revealed that 80% of the National Guard would side with the American people, 90% of the Marines also, 60% of the Army would, the Navy would remain on active patrol in defense to interdict any possible foreign intervention and only the Air Force will side with Obama’s government at 75%. So from his email he believes the majority of US military would fight right alongside Americans against the government oppressors. It was alluded that a number of veterans up and down the ranks would also be armed as patriots actively resisting the government attack on its own citizens, which would far outnumber the treasonous government forces. But the bottom line according to this high ranking flag officer, an all-out civil war is fast approaching where many US citizens are likely to die and be imprisoned.

Another anonymous career insider from Homeland Security just admitted:

Preparations have been finalized to respond to a crisis of unprecedented magnitude within the United States. The response will include the use of lethal force against US citizens under the instructions of Barack Obama.

The whistleblower described the atmosphere inside the DHS mega-bureaucracy as forebodingly paranoid where no one trusts anyone and workers are leaving in droves. Afraid of information leaks, conditions have become so oppressive to create an ultra-hostile, toxic work environment. The DHS retiree maintains that the upcoming crisis will be “rooted in an economic collapse.” He said a key precursor just before the crash to look for will be falling gold and silver prices. The orchestrators behind it are the Wall Street bankers who of course like with every fixed crash in the past will be busily buying up all the precious metals for untold illegal profiteering. The insider maintains that America’s already sliding into crash mode though most people don’t realize it yet, adding:

The ‘big bang’ comes at the end, when people wake up one morning and can’t log in to their bank accounts, can’t use their ATM cards, and find out that their private pension funds and other assets have been confiscated.

He states that the above scenario of a cyberattack on the US banking system is but one possible plan he was privy to. Though the whistleblower admitted that DHS, the NSA and IRS are all militant, totalitarian arms of the White House, he doubly emphasized that it’s not Obama pulling all the strings:

[Obama] is a creation of the globalists who have no allegiance to any political party. He is the product of decades of planning, made for this very time in our history. He was selected to oversee the events I just disclosed. Who has that ability? He’s a product of our own intelligence agencies working with the globalists. He should be exhibit ‘A’ to illustrate the need to enforce the Logan Act.

Unlike the whistleblowing general, the former Homeland Security employee said he did not know the exact timing of when he foresees the plan being executed with high probability of two near simultaneous false flags triggering martial law and the violence directed against US citizens. But the general did, feeling certain that Jade Helm would go live in response to government induced crises. Because we live in an interconnected global economy, the disaster that will soon afflict the US will reverberate with ripple effects around the globe. And though many Americans will refuse to believe any such malevolent harm can possibly come to the United States that relative to most of the world has had it so good for so long, the globalists responsible are heartless evildoers who have no compassion or guilt for the atrocities and suffering they directly inflict on humankind. Bringing down America puts them one huge step closer to one world government. It will be up to us patriots like the revolutionaries of our War of Independence to fight for our liberty and life for a rebirth of a new nation fashioned after what originally was our Founding Fathers’ lasting legacy.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed. blogspot. com/. He is also a regular contributor to Global Research and a syndicated columnist at Veterans Today.

There are no free financial markets in America, or for that matter anywhere in the Western word, and few, if any, free markets of any other kind. The financial markets are rigged by the big banks, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury in the interests of the profits of the few big banks and the dollar’s exchange value, which is the basis of US power.

There is a contradiction between a strong currency on one hand and on the other hand massive money creation in order to sustain zero and negative interest rates on the massive debt levels. This inconsistency is revealed by rising gold and silver prices.

When gold hit $1,900 an ounce in 2011 the Federal Reserve realized that the precious metal market was going to limit its ability to provide enough liquidity to keep the thoughtlessly deregulated financial system afloat. The rapid deterioration of the dollar in terms of gold and silver would sooner or later spill over into the exchange value of the dollar in currency markets. Something had to be done to drive down and to cap the gold price.

The Fed’s solution was to take advantage of the fact that the prices of gold and silver are determined in the futures market where paper contracts representing gold and silver are traded, and not in markets where the physical metal is actually purchased by people who take possession of it. The Fed realized that uncovered short sales provided enormous leverage over the prices of the metals and that it would be profitable for the bullion banks, such as JPMorgan, Scotia, and HSBC, to short the market heavily and then cover their shorts at lower prices produced by selling as a result of triggering stop-loss orders and margin calls.

Dave Kranzler and I have shown on numerous occasions that the bullion banks and the Federal Reserve make profits and protect the dollar by suppressing the prices of gold and silver. They do this by illegally selling huge numbers of uncovered shorts in the futures market. This illegal operation is supported by the so-called “regulatory authorities” who steadfastly refuse to intervene.

It has just happened again. Dave Kranzler describes it in detail here:

http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/bullish-news-for-precious-metals-and-goldsilver-get-paper-smashed/

If memory serves, Matt Taibbi explained a few years ago how Goldman Sachs got position limits removed from speculators, so that now speculators can dominate market forces.

Neoliberal economists in service to the financial sector have created a rationale for why interest rates can be negative in the face of massive debt and money creation and a slew of troubled financial instruments from corporate junk bonds to sovereign debt. The rational is that there is too much saving: The excess of savings over investment forces down interest rates. The negative interest rates will discourage people from saving and encourage them to spend, because the price of consumption in terms of foregone future income from saving is zero. It even pays to consume, because saving costs more than it earns.

Economists argue this even though the Federal Reserve reported that a majority of Americans are so low on savings that they cannot raise $400 without selling personal possessions.

That economists would concoct such an absurd explanation for negative interest rates, an explanation obviously contradicted by empirical evidence, shows that economists are now prostitutes just like the media. The economists are lying in support of a Federal Reserve policy that benefits a handful of mega-banks at the expense of the rest of the world.

The absence of integrity in Western institutions and politicized professions is proof that Western civilization has declined into total decadence just as Jacques Barzun said.

It is amazing that there still are some Russians and some Chinese who want to be part of the sordid decadence that is the Western world.

It is just as amazing that Americans and Europeans are so trapped in The Matrix that they have no inkling that their future has been destroyed.

As the US government comes up with ever more creative stall tactics, Sri Lanka’s newly elected president, Maithripala Sirisena, has announced that the import of Monsanto’s favorite killing-tool, glyphosate, will no longer be allowed in the country.

Sirisena is a farmer and ex health minister, and blames glyphosate for rising rates of chronic kidney disease (CKD) throughout the Sri Lankan farming community.

Not only has the Sri Lankan president banned glyphosate herbicide, but stocks of already-imported Roundup will be stopped.

CKD has already affected 15% of people working in the northern part of Sri Lanka which amounts to around 400,000 patients and a death count, directly related to Monsanto’s chemicals, of 20,000.

This may seem shocking, but these numbers simply relay a truth that another study previously stated: that kidney disease is five times higher in countries that are over-run with glyphosate chemicals. Though this is due in part to the fact that farmers in these countries often where very little in the way of protection when they are spraying Roundup on their rice fields, there is no excuse for such an abominable number of preventable deaths.

If you aren’t convinced of the reality of this problem, there are two short documentaries: “Mystery in the Fields” and “Cycle of Death,” both of which can shed light on this unfortunate phenomenon happening throughout the world.

Sri Lanka decided to ban glyphosate, not after the World Health Organization announced that the chemical was ‘probably carcinogenic,‘ but after seeing the results of two scientific studies led by Dr. Jayasumana. These detail how drinking water from abandoned wells, where concentrations of glyphosate and metals are higher, along with spraying farms with glyphosate, increased the risk of the deadly chronic kidney disease (CKDu) by up to 5-fold.

Sri Lanka has already banned the sale of glyphosate herbicides in March of 2014, but the decision was overturned in May 2014 after a review.

The decision by Sri Lanka’s new president to ban glyphosate this time around is expected to stand.

Sri Lanka now becomes the second country to fully ban the sale of glyphosate herbicides. Bermuda has also issued a temporary ban on glyphosate imports and is holding a review to determine whether or not to make it permanent.

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An endless sea of money flowing into the field of military technology creates constant advancements in new and terrifying ways to die, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is on the front lines in that mission. DARPA’s latest defense system, HELLADS, is one step closer to arming aircraft and drones with an exceptionally powerful and destructive, weaponized laser beam.

Set to begin testing at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico this summer, the High-Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System program has been developing an electrically and optically efficient laser for output from a lighter and more compact platform through DARPA contractor, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA ASI). The Gen 3 High Energy Laser System (HEL) measures just 4.26 x 1.31 x 1.64 feet, and uses a compact lithium-ion battery to produce a beam of between 150-300 kW for“deployable tactical platforms.”

To understand how alarming this latest technology actually is, a comparison to current laser weaponry is in order. Already in use on board the USS Ponce, the Navy’s Laser Weapon System produces a beam of lightcapable of destroying the electronics systems and overheating the engines of drones, small boats, and small aircraft — and can even explode warheads. And those lasers are just 30 kW. Lasers to be used with the HELLADS system are up to ten times more powerful, and even when tested at 50 kW, were able to deliver a consistently high-quality beam for up to 30 seconds at a time, and then only limited in scope by battery life.

But there’s more. Remember the goal of putting this framework in the air? Well, the same contractor that streamlined the laser has also developed the jet-powered Avenger drone which generates enough energy in flight to continually recharge that battery — giving the weapon unlimited ammunition from an agile, unmanned aircraft, capable of speeds around 450 mph, that can stay aloft for up to 18 hours at a time. But not yet.

HELLADS will first be tested on the ground against “rockets, mortars, vehicles and surrogate surface-to-air missiles,”according to a DARPA statement. “The technical hurdles were daunting, but it is extremely gratifying to have produced a new type of solid-state laser with unprecedented power and beam quality for its size,” said program manager Rick Bagnell. “The HELLADS laser is now ready to be put to the test on the range against some of the toughest tactical threats our warfighters face.”

Though marketed primarily as a defense system, the statement adds, “Laser weapon systems provide additional capability for offensive missions as well—adding precise targeting with low probability of collateral damage […] Following the field-testing phase, the goal is to make the system available to the military services for further refinement, testing or transition to operational use.”

So, the question must be posed: When so many fight simply to survive, how gratifying can perfecting an obscenely destructive weapon of war really be?

by International Anti-Occupation Network on 25-05-2015

A Chinese state-owned newspaper said on Monday that “war is inevitable” between China and the United States over the South China Sea unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt the building of artificial islands in the disputed waterway. 

The Global Times, an influential nationalist tabloid owned by the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper the People’s Daily, said in an editorial that China was determined to finish its construction work, calling it the country’s “most important bottom line.”

The editorial comes amid rising tensions over China’s land reclamation in the Spratley archipelago of the South China Sea. China last week said it was “strongly dissatisfied” after a US spy plane flew over areas near the reefs, with both sides accusing each other of stoking instability.

China should “carefully prepare” for the possibility of a conflict with the United States, the newspaper said.

“If the United States’ bottomline is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,” the newspaper said. “The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as ‘friction’.”

Such commentaries are not official policy statements, but are sometimes read as a reflection of government thinking. The Global Times is among China’s most nationalist newspapers.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have overlapping claims.

The United States has routinely called on all claimants to halt reclamation in the Spratlys, but accuses China of carrying out work on a scale that far outstrips any other country.

Washington has also vowed to keep up air and sea patrols in the South China Sea amid concerns among security experts that China might impose air and sea restrictions in the Spratlys once it completes work on its seven artificial islands.

China has said it had every right to set up an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea but that current conditions did not warrant one.

The Global Times said “risks are still under control” if Washington takes into account China’s peaceful rise.

“We do not want a military conflict with the United States, but if it were to come, we have to accept it,” the newspaper said. —Reuters

Copyright GMA Network News 2015

A Chinese state-owned newspaper said on Monday that “war is inevitable” between China and the United States over the South China Sea unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt the building of artificial islands in the disputed waterway. 

The Global Times, an influential nationalist tabloid owned by the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper the People’s Daily, said in an editorial that China was determined to finish its construction work, calling it the country’s “most important bottom line.”

The editorial comes amid rising tensions over China’s land reclamation in the Spratley archipelago of the South China Sea. China last week said it was “strongly dissatisfied” after a US spy plane flew over areas near the reefs, with both sides accusing each other of stoking instability.

China should “carefully prepare” for the possibility of a conflict with the United States, the newspaper said.

“If the United States’ bottomline is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,” the newspaper said. “The intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as ‘friction’.”

Such commentaries are not official policy statements, but are sometimes read as a reflection of government thinking. The Global Times is among China’s most nationalist newspapers.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have overlapping claims.

The United States has routinely called on all claimants to halt reclamation in the Spratlys, but accuses China of carrying out work on a scale that far outstrips any other country.

Washington has also vowed to keep up air and sea patrols in the South China Sea amid concerns among security experts that China might impose air and sea restrictions in the Spratlys once it completes work on its seven artificial islands.

China has said it had every right to set up an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea but that current conditions did not warrant one.

The Global Times said “risks are still under control” if Washington takes into account China’s peaceful rise.

“We do not want a military conflict with the United States, but if it were to come, we have to accept it,” the newspaper said. —Reuters

Copyright GMA Network News 2015

American spy agencies have intentionally weakened digital security for many decades. This breaks the functionality of our computers and of the Internet. It reduces functionality and reduces security by – for example – creating backdoors that malicious hackers can get through.

The spy agencies have treated patriotic Americans who want to use encryption to protect their privacy as extremists … or even terrorists.

As Gizmodo’s Matt Novak points out, this attack started at the very birth of the internet:

In the 1970s, civilian researchers at places like IBM, Stanford and MIT were developing encryption to ensure that digital data sent between businesses, academics and private citizens couldn’t be intercepted and understood by a third party. This concerned folks inthe U.S. intelligence community who didn’t want to get locked out of potentially eavesdropping on anyone, regardless of their preferred communications method. Despite their most valiant efforts, agencies like the NSA ultimately lost out to commercial interests. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.

***

When the NSA got wind of the research developments at IBM, Stanford and MIT in the 1970s they scrambled to block publication of their early studies. When that didn’t work, the NSA sought to work with the civilian research community to develop the encryption. As Stowsky writes, “the agency struck a deal with IBM to develop a data encryption standard (DES) for commercial applications in return for full pre-publication review and right to regulate the length, and therefore the strength of the crypto algorithm.”

Naturally, in the Watergate era, many researchers assumed that if the U.S. government was helping to develop the locks that they would surely give themselves the keys, effectively negating the purpose of the encryption. Unlike IBM, the researchers at Stanford and MIT didn’t go along with the standard and developed their own encryption algorithms. Their findings were published (again, against the wishes of the NSA) in the late 1970s after courts found that researchers have the right to publish on the topic of cryptography even if it makes the government uncomfortable. According to Stowsky, the NSA retaliated by trying to block further research funding that Stanford and MIT were receiving through the National Science Foundation.

Novak also notes that – right from the start – people realized the potential of the internet as a tool for conducting mass surveillance on the public. And see this, this and this.

More than 4,000 troops from six NATO countries and three non-member states began a major air exercise over far northern Europe Monday in one of the largest military mobilizations of the year. Arctic Challenge is to last two weeks and involves more than 100 warplanes from the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Norway, and the Netherlands, all NATO members, plus Sweden, Finland and Switzerland.

The US Air Force will contribute 12 F-16 jet fighters as well as AWACS radar aircraft. The European countries are contributing their own F-16s as well as Eurofighter Typhoons and Tornado GR4 fighters. Norway’s Chief Brigadier General Jan Ove Rygg, in overall command of the exercise, said it would test “orchestration and conduct of complex air operations, in close relation to NATO partners.”

The exercise is clearly directed against Russia, which borders on Norway, the host country for the drills, as well as on Finland. Both Finland and Sweden have raised the alarm over alleged Russian submarine penetration of their coastal waters in recent months, and tensions have worsened throughout the region because of ongoing anti-Russian provocations over Ukraine and the Baltic states.

On May 20, only five days before the beginning of the drill, Swedish fighter jets intercepted two Russian Tu-22M “Backfire” bombers over the Baltic Sea. While Swedish officials said the bombers were heading toward the Swedish island of Land, south of Stockholm, they conceded that the planes had remained throughout in international airspace.

The military exercise, which lasts until June 5, will include operations over northern Norway, Sweden and Finland as well as the Arctic Ocean, all areas a short flying time from northern Russia and critical military bases such as Murmansk, headquarters of the Russian Northern Fleet.

The exercises could easily trigger a confrontation with Russian air force planes. According a report by journalist Ahmed Rashid in the New York Review of Books, a similar drill in Estonia in April brought Russian and American planes within 20 feet of each other over the Baltic Sea. The near-collision had a “high probability of causing casualties or a direct military confrontation between Russia and Western states,” Rashid wrote.

Arctic Challenge 2015 is the second such mobilization to include the two non-NATO Scandinavian countries and give NATO warplanes experience in operating in northern Swedish and Finnish airspace above the Arctic Circle.

It follows a series of operations testing the coordination of NATO forces against Russia on land, sea and air. There were NATO submarine detection drills off the Norwegian coast earlier this month, and two major ground exercises—Operation Hedgehog, in which 13,000 ground troops simulated a response to a Russian invasion of Estonia, and Operation Lightning Strike, involving 3,000 troops in Lithuania. Next month, the annual BaltOps exercise will bring a large number of NATO warships into the Baltic Sea.

The Washington Post wrote on May 16:

“Training efforts have swept the region, and in the past week alone separate exercises took place in Poland, Lithuania, Georgia, Estonia and the Baltic Sea. Military planners said they were a practical attempt to drill new lessons about how Russia wages war… US military trainers are also in Ukraine trying to strengthen that nation’s fighting forces even as a war burns in the eastern part of the country.”

Next to eastern Ukraine, the Baltic states remain perhaps the most dangerous flashpoint between NATO and Russia, since the right-wing governments of the three countries have escalated tensions with Russia, claiming that they are the imminent targets of Russian military aggression although nothing of the kind is actually in evidence. Moscow has repeatedly denied it has any designs on their territory.

On May 14, the three Baltic countries formally requested that NATO institute a permanent deployment of some 3,000 troops on their soil to reinforce the guarantee made by President Obama last year that he would invoke Article Five of the Atlantic Charter and go to war with Russia in the event of a military attack on Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania. Some NATO member countries are opposed to such a deployment, since it would violate a 1997 NATO-Russia agreement limiting the size of NATO forces stationed in the Baltics.

On May 22, the European Commission met in Riga, the Latvian capital, for discussions with the leaders of six former Soviet republics—Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus. It was the first such meeting of the European Union’s “Eastern Partnership” since November 2013, when the EU offered a deal for economic association to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. It was Yanukovych’s decision to reject the association agreement that prompted the campaign, backed by the US and the EU, which led to the overthrow of his government by the ultra-right elements who now hold sway in Kiev.

On the eve of the Arctic Challenge exercise, NATO defense chiefs from all 28 member countries met in Washington to discuss “challenges from Russia and from non-state actors,” according to a Pentagon press release. Danish General Knud Bartels, who chaired the May 22 gathering, said the NATO powers “are implementing the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.”

In addition to tensions with Russia over Ukraine, Bartels pointed to NATO playing a larger role in southern Europe, where refugee flows across the Mediterranean are being treated as a military issue.

NATO Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove said,

“To the south, we face a different set of challenges that involve multiple state and non-state actors. Our members are facing the consequences of instability in North Africa, Sahel and sub-Sahara as well as other regions, which is driving migration and proving fertile ground for extremism, violence and terrorism.”

In the fall, the Pentagon said, NATO will conduct one of its largest-ever exercises involving the southern European countries. Trident Juncture 15 will mobilize 35,000 troops from 33 countries, as well as personnel from international and non-governmental organizations.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday that the US had agreed to provide air support for so-called “moderate rebels” being trained in Turkey, once they cross the border into Syria.

Cavusoglu told the Daily Sabah that there was “a principle agreement” between the two governments for Washington to provide air cover for the proxy forces being trained in a US-funded program aimed at toppling the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Asked if there would be cooperation with the US in providing air support for the “train-and-equip army,” the foreign minister replied, “Of course. They have to be supported via air. If you do not protect them or provide air support, what is the point?”

Cavusoglu refused to give any details when asked if the air support would include armed American drones flown from Incirlik Air Base in the southern Turkish city of Adana. “These are technical details,” he stated. “There is a principle agreement on providing air support. How it is going to be provided is in the responsibility of the army.”

As of Monday evening, the US government had not officially responded to Cavusoglu’s statement, neither affirming nor denying its accuracy. Such an agreement would, however, mark a major escalation in the four-year-long US-instigated civil war that has devastated Syria, killing hundreds of thousands of people and turning millions more into refugees.

The Turkish claim comes at a point of mounting military successes against Syrian government forces by US-backed “rebels” in league with the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front and by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The provision of air cover by the US for its proxy forces on the ground in Syria would follow the pattern of the 2011 US-NATO air war in Libya, which ended with the torture and assassination of deposed ruler Muammar Gaddafi and led in turn to the collapse of the country into bloody civil war between rival Islamist militias.

The US has been flying a fleet of four unarmed Predator surveillance drones over Syria and Iraq from Incirlik since 2011. Three additional Predator drones were deployed to the Turkish base in April.

While the drones reportedly remain unarmed, Turkish military officials agreed in principle last month to the deployment of armed drones at the air base, which is located approximately 360 miles north of the Syrian capital of Damascus and 250 miles northwest of the ISIS Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, well within the flight range of the Predator drones.

The US and Turkish governments are undertaking the military training operation as part of a $500 million program approved by Congress in September 2014 that also involves the training of Syrian “rebels” at camps in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

According to the Hurriyet Daily News, approximately 123 US soldiers arrived in Turkey at the end of April to initiate the training and equipping program. Forty of these soldiers were deployed to the Hirfanli army base in central Turkey to train supposedly moderate anti-Assad forces. The remaining 83 were deployed to Incirlik to oversee the transfer of weapons to Syrian insurgent groups. Turkey has provided an equal number of soldiers to work alongside the US advisers.

According to Hurriyet, the fighters trained at Hirfanli will be transferred to Hatay province, where they will be armed with rifles, machine guns and anti-tank weapons before being sent back across the border into Syria.

The US has already initiated a similar program in Jordan, where some 400 soldiers from the US and 100 others from countries allied to the US have been training an initial group of approximately 100 Syrian fighters. Washington and its allies are planning to train 15,000 anti-regime Syrian fighters over the next three years.

While launched under the pretense of developing an effective force to fight ISIS, which has taken control of large swaths of Syria and Iraq, the training programs are aimed ultimately at the overthrow of Assad.

Cavusoglu made this clear in response to a question about his expectations for the operation, stating, “The opposition forces are fighting on both fronts. While the fight against ISIS is prioritized, the regime must be also stopped.”

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter told the New York Times earlier this month that Washington would be obligated to assist the “rebels” they trained if they came into conflict with the Syrian military. “If they are contested by regime forces, we would have some responsibility to help them,” he stated, adding, “We have not yet decided in detail how we would exercise that responsibility.”

Since last summer, when ISIS moved across the border from Syria to Iraq, seizing control of large portions of that country, the US has been gradually building up direct military operations against the extremist group inside Syria.

ISIS developed out of the civil war stoked up by the US and its imperialist allies as part of its effort to overthrow Assad, a key ally of Iran and Russia. The CIA and the US military have funneled massive quantities of weapons and ammunition as well as thousands of foreign fighters into Syria since 2011.

On September 10, 2014, US President Barack Obama announced the beginning of a consistent campaign of air strikes against ISIS targets throughout Syria. Since then, the US and its allies have carried out several thousand air strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria at a cost of more than $2.4 billion, or roughly $8.9 million per day.

US Special Forces carried out a raid in eastern Syria on May 17, killing 32 reputed members of ISIS, including a reportedly high-level ISIS officer. American Special Forces carried out their first attack inside Syria last summer in an unsuccessful raid against an ISIS complex in Raqqa, ostensibly to rescue US hostages who were later killed.

The US-led military operation in Iraq and Syria continued on Sunday and into Monday with 10 air strikes in Syria and 25 in Iraq. US strikes in Iraq hit ISIS targets near Fallujah, Baiji, Bahghdadi and Ramadi.

Shiite militias are preparing for a counter-offensive to retake Ramadi, which fell to ISIS forces last week after the Iraqi military was routed. On Monday, Shiite militia forces fighting alongside local Sunni tribal fighters took over part of Al Tash, a rural village 12 miles south of Ramadi.

Sunni fighters loyal to the Iraqi government were reported to be laying landmines on Monday to reinforce the defense of Baghdadi, which was retaken from ISIS forces in March. The city, 63 miles northwest of Ramadi, is the site of the Al Asad air base, where several hundred US military advisers are currently stationed.

Since June 2014, more than 3,000 US soldiers have been deployed throughout Iraq as part of anti-ISIS military operations.

FORTY years after the end of the Vietnam War this is a country which should be rising back to its feet.

Instead it is crippled by the effects of Agent Orange, a chemical sprayed during combat, stripping leaves off trees to remove enemy cover.

Its contaminant, dioxin — now regarded as one of the most toxic chemicals known to man — remains in Vietnam’s ecosystem, in the soil and in the fish people eat from rivers.

Nearly 4.8 million Vietnamese people have been exposed, causing 400,000 deaths; the associated illnesses include cancers, birth defects, skin disorders, auto-immune diseases, liver disorders, psychosocial effects, neurological defects and gastrointestinal diseases.

According to the Red Cross of Vietnam, up to one million people are currently disabled or have health problems due to Agent Orange, 100,000 of which are children.

In Ho Chi Minh City’s Go Vap orphanage, five-month-old Hong gazes serenely from her metal-barred cot, empty, save for a soft yellow teddy bear watching over her.

From her head grows a huge veiny mass — a rare neural tube defect known as encephalocele, which research suggests could be caused by Agent Orange exposure.

Without successful surgery, Hong’s future is bleak. She could suffer from paralysis of the limbs, vision impairment, mental disability and seizures.

In the capital’s Tu Du Hospital, within the Children’s Agent Orange ward lives 13-year-old Tran, with Fraser Syndrome. A rare genetic disorder, it’s characterised by completely fused eyelids, partially webbed fingers and toes and genital malformations. Tran’s nurses explain how he spends hours each day crying out relentlessly, rocking himself back and forth in his cot.

Named Agent Orange after the coloured stripe on the barrels it was stored in, the US Army, supporting the South Vietnamese, spent a decade from 1961, spraying approximately 80 million litres over 30,000 square miles of southern Vietnam. The aim was to “smoke out” and weaken the Viet Cong enemy of the north, by decreasing their food supplies.

Studies have shown that dioxin still remains at alarmingly high concentrations in soil, food, human blood and breast milk in people who live near former US military bases.

But it’s not just families in Vietnam that are affected. Here in Australia, where almost 60,000 troops served in the war, a growing number of veterans, their children and now grandchildren believe they’re battling with the effects of Agent Orange exposure.

Hope White, 39, from the Sunshine Coast, suffers from fibromyalgia, spinal problems and infertility. In 1968, her father was deployed for a year in Vietnam’s Phuoc Tuy Province, which was widely sprayed with Agent Orange.

“I’ve had a number of health problems from a young age — especially with my spine forming. I’m only on my feet through heavy medication, lots of physiotherapy and treatments for my back. I feel like my body’s fighting itself all the time, some days I can’t even get out of bed,” she explains.

Although statistics on the number of people affected by Agent Orange in Australia and their associated illnesses aren’t currently recorded, animal studies have shown that exposure to dioxin can lead to female infertility.

“I’ve found that childlessness is very common across the daughters of Vietnam veterans that I’ve spoken with”, says Hope. “It’s had a massive impact on my husband and me. Not having children has changed our lives significantly.”

Dr. Wayne Dwernychuk, a retired senior scientist, adviser with Hatfield and Agent Orange specialist, warns that “countless more generations could be affected in the future”. Research suggests that another six to twelve generations will have to pass before dioxin stops affecting the genetic code.

Support services, however, are steadily increasing for Agent Orange-affected families in Vietnam. In Da Nang, the NGO, Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange, operates two day centres for disabled children, offering vocational training, rehabilitation and the chance to make friends. It’s a safe haven for children often left on the margins of society because of their disabilities.

Charitable donations also help children like 16-year-old Thao in Cu Chi, who’s waiting for funding for an operation on his legs. Unable to walk unaided, his legs bound from birth, he practices twice a day on his father’s makeshift rehabilitation walkway, steadied by wooden rails.

A quiet, timid boy who’s never been to school because of his disability, Thao sits beside his 15-year-old able-bodied brother, Hieu. Their grandfather fought in the war.

“When I see my brother like this, I feel sorry for him”, says Hieu, “I help him at home, sometimes I feed him and we play marbles together around the house.”

“What do you usually do at home?” I ask Thao. “I just lay there. I don’t have anything to do. I don’t feel sad, I’m used to it”. He only has one wish. “I just want to be able to walk,” Thao says quietly.

To make a donation or volunteer your time to help Vietnamese families affected by Agent Orange, visit VAVA (Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange) or SJ Vietnam

Copyright News.Com.Au 2015

Finland, Norway and Sweden are readying for one of Europe’s largest fighter jet drills this year – the Arctic Challenge Exercise 2015, kicking off on Monday. Nine northern countries are taking part, with up to 90 aircraft expected in the sky at once.

Eurofighter Typhoons, Tornado GR4 fighters, as well as Lockheed Martin F-16s are just some of the aircraft that will take part in what Norway’s chief Brigadier General Jan Ove Rygg calls “orchestration and conduct of complex air operations, in close relation to NATO partners,” as cited by the Norwegian Armed Forces press release.

The jets will be joined in the air by various other multirole aircraft, among them NATO’s early warning and control jets, known as AWACS, and the DA-20 Falcon Jets, specializing in electronic warfare.

Among the participants are the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and France.

The games, to last for 12 days, will include close to 4,000 personnel, together with European and American planes adding to the list of equipment put forth by the three organizers.

The exercise was conceived in 2009 and meant at first as a joint exercise between the three organizing members, and based off of Sweden’s Nordic Air Meet and the Finnish-Swedish cross-border training.

The maneuvers are to take place close to the Arctic Circle – an area of much contention between the regional and major world powers of the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway.

Russia has just set up a drifting research station there, ensuring its scientists’ ability to carry out prolonged studies for months on end. It has had floating research stations there since 1937, the last of which had to be evacuated in May 2013, because the ice floe had started to break apart.

At the end of last year, Russia adopted a new version of its military doctrine until the year 2020, which, for the first time, placed the protection of the country’s national interests in the Arctic among its top priorities. Within its framework, a joint strategic Arctic command was organized as part of the Northern Fleet in order to control and coordinate troops above the Arctic Circle.

Moscow recently carried out its own massive Arctic drills, launched on President Putin’s orders.

The incidence of military training and war games is almost never devoid of politics; NATO is currently readying other drills – the naval kind – which are set to get underway just miles off the Russian coastal exclave of Kaliningrad, a gulf area sandwiched just between Poland and Latvia.

The games are to last two weeks and will feature 17 participants, mostly NATO members. Sweden, however, is among those where no consensus on NATO membership exists; and the games are largely seen as a signifier of an impending membership with the military bloc.

The common theme is a military fear of Russia, often expressed by its Baltic neighbors as intensified by their view of Russia’s alleged actions in Ukraine. Britain has just sent its biggest warship to Poland for the upcoming naval drills in this latest display of NATO’s military prowess.

These latest developments follow the NATO Secretary General’s promises that the alliance is going to increase its activity along the eastern borders, with more air and sea patrols, as well as regular drills.

My distrust has deepened of Seymour Hersh’s retelling of the Obama regime’s extra-judicial murder of Osama bin Laden by operating illegally inside a sovereign country.

That Hersh’s story, which is of very little inherent interest, received such a large amount of attention, is almost proof of orchestration in order to substantiate the Obama regime’s claim to have killed a person who had been dead for a decade.

Americans are gullible, and thought does not come easily to them, but if they try hard enough they must wonder why it would be necessary for the government to concoct a totally false account of the deed if Washington kills an alleged terrorist. Why not just give the true story? Why does the true story have to come out years later from anonymous sources leaked to Hersh?

I can tell you for a fact that if SEALs had encountered bin Laden in Abbottabad, they would have used stun grenades and tear gas to take him alive. Bin Laden would have been paraded before the media, and a jubilant White House would have had a much photographed celebration pinning medals on the SEALs who captured him.

Instead, we have a murder without a body, which under law classifies as no murder, and a story that was changed several times by the White House itself within 48 hours of the alleged raid and has now been rewritten again by disinformation planted on Hersh.

Perhaps the release of book titles allegedly found in bin Laden’s alleged residence in Abbottabad is part of the explanation. Who can imagine the “terror mastermind” sitting around reading what the presstituteLondon Telegraph calls bin Laden’s library of conspiracy theories about 9/11 and Washington’s foreign and economic policies? (See Philip Sherwell, Osama bin Laden’s bookshelf featured conspiracy theories about his terror plots, Telegraph, May 26, 2015)

Keep in mind that the government’s claim that these books were in bin Laden’s Abbottabad library comes from the same government that told you Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that Assad used chemical weapons, that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and that Russia invaded Ukraine.

There is no evidence whatsoever that bin Laden had these books, just as there is no evidence for any claim made by Washington. In the absence of evidence, Washington’s position amounts to this: “It is true if we say so.”

I would wager that the Hersh story was planted in order to gin up renewed interest in the bin Laden saga, which could then be used to discredit Washington’s critics.

Notice that the authors in bin Laden’s alleged library are those careful and knowledgeable people who have severely whipped Washington with the truth. The whip wielders are Noam Chomsky, David Ray Griffin, Michel Chossudovsky, Greg Palast, Michael Scheuer, William Blum. You get the picture. You mustn’t believe these truth-tellers, because bin Laden approved of them and had their books in his library. By extension, will these truth-tellers be accused of aiding and abetting terrorism?

Obama claims to have settled the score in mafia godfather fashion with bin Laden for 9/11. But there is nobody and not even a consistent story about what happened to the body. The sailors aboard the ship from which the White House reported bin Laden was given a burial at sea report no such burial took place.

The SEAL unit that allegedly supplied the team that killed an unarmed and undefended bin Laden was mysteriously wiped out in a helicopter crash. It turns out that the SEALs were flown into combat against the Taliban in an antique, half-century-old 1960s vintage helicopter. Parents of the dead SEALs are demanding to have unanswered questions answered, a story that the presstitute media has conveniently dropped for Washington’s convenience.

Other than 9/11 itself, never has such a major event as bin Laden’s killing had such an enormous number of contradictory official and quasi-official explanations, unanswered questions and evasions. And the vast number of evasions and contradictions arouse no interest from the Western media or from the somnolent and insouciant American public.

Now it turns out that Washington has “lost” the bin Laden “death files,” thus protecting in perpetuity the fabricated story of bin Laden’s killing. http://www.globalresearch.ca/pentagon-orders-purge-of-osama-bin-ladens-death-files-from-data-bank/5342055

Here is Tom Hartman’s interview with David Ray Griffin: Is bin Laden dead or alive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI5b3Ir012k

Here is Philip Kraske’s OpEdNews article on Steve Kroft’s orchestrated “60 Minutes” interview with Obama on the killing of Osama bin Laden: http://www.opednews.com/populum/printer_friendly.php?content=a&id=143300

The importance of Alexey Mozgovoy on the world stage today can’t be measured through his tactical genius and success against Kiev. It’s not what his political views were or that he was the “hometown hero” in Donbass.

What made Mozgovoy extraordinary is that he didn’t care what your politics are. He wasn’t a nationalist or a socialist like his critics try to paint him. If you loved people he could work with you. He was a normal guy that woke up in extraordinary circumstances and rose to the occasion. If Maidan hadn’t happened the world wouldn’t know him and obscurity wouldn’t have diminished him in the slightest. We may know about people we consider great because of events but those qualities were there to begin with.

The reason LPR (Lugansk People’s Republic) and Prezrak (Ghost Battalion) love this leader was his humanity. It’s also why he is respected in Kiev by regular army leaders. It is a very odd quality for a wartime military leader to be known for.

He engaged and spoke with counterparts from across the front line in the Ukrainian military leadership regularly to find a way to stop the war he often described as “brother against brother.”

This is in spite of the fact that Mozgovoy’s Prizrak battalions have been one of the most potent forces on the battlefield in Donbass. According to Mozgovoy the true enemy of the people in both Donbass and Kiev are the Oligarchs that own the government, the resources, and businesses in Ukraine.

“… Another issue is that we defend the interests of the people, not the government. Because governments change, but the people – never. With those who honestly perform their duties to the people, we always find a common language.” From an interview with Alexey Mozgovoy

Under him, Prezrak battalion set up a humanitarian aid battalion that is getting international attention today as a model of how a military can deliver aid and help the civil population survive under the harsh conditions driven by Kiev’s war. Recently this was enhanced with the addition of humanitarian battalion “Angel” which joined Prezrak this spring.

Contrast this with Amnesty International’s report blasting Kiev for torture, Ukraine’s repeal of any human rights in Donbass, and the ongoing humanitarian blockade keeping food and medicine out of the region, its easy to see why both he and Prezrak battalion are so respected.

“Senior Advisor to the international human rights organization Amnesty International Joanne Mariner said that the report on the use of torture against prisoners in Ukraine will shock Europe. Kiev has to immediately bring to justice the perpetrators of such crimes and if this does not happen, the EU should put economic pressure on the Ukrainian authorities.”

When I heard about his murder I looked across the spectrum of Ukrainian social media and the reaction was mixed. Some and the emphasis is some, Ukrainian nationalists saw his assassination as a mistake. His was among the clearest voices constantly suing for peace in Donbas, and trying to save the lives of soldiers on both sides.

Why Alexey Mozgovoy was Assassinated

A reporter for the Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alexey Kots concluded that the Prezrak commander was murdered to sow discord between the battalions and government in LPR (Lugansk People’s Republic). By killing one of the few people that acted like a natural bridge between all parties in the conflict, a civil war could be started in LPR between the different military units. The hope of peace and unifying Dontesk People’s Republic (DPR) and LPR destroyed.

Kots adds credibly that it is quite possibly a Ukrainian Special Services operation and ultimately the goal is to stop the building of the country to be known as Novorossia. Mosgovoy was seen as a primary figure in this project.

What the Murderer’s Don’t Understand

On that note I received a communication that paints the assassination of Mozgovoy squarely into Alexey Kots’ conclusion, and gloating Novorossia would never happen now. This came from the person organizing Ukraine’s Information War. What the murderers and planners didn’t comprehend is that Prezrak was run by an intellectual that loved humanity, not an ego bent on gaining power. Mozgovoy’s commanders care about the people as much as he did and the work will continue.

The only way Kiev’s terrorists could win is if all the work and organization of the battalion were centered on promoting a single strongman leader. Prezrak’s leadership is as far from a cult of personality situation as it gets.

Why They Failed

The battalion is centered on humanitarian responsibilities that define Prezrak in LPR. Every officer is a capable leader and although he’ll be missed Alexey Borisavich Mozgovoy left Prezrak Mechanized Battalions in capable hands. The dream of Novorossia that started last year will go to completion.

Looking back to the beginning of the war the commander’s own words describing how Prezrak “Ghost” battalion was birthed:

 Thanks to the idiocy of Avakov we gained our name. Through the incompetence of Poroshenko we gained our weapons. Keep up the good work, and soon, we will have a free country  which will be a free, social civil society! – Alexey Borisavich

I only met commander Mozgovoy once when we spent some time together doing an interview. I got to know him very well through his men throughout the course of a year. I spent time embedded with them and interacted with them in a variety of situations.

May he rest in peace.

“The greatest victory will be if we create a government that thinks of the people; not victory in the war, but victory over ourselves, over our own minds.” Alexey Mozgovoy

In late May 1945 Josef Stalin ordered Marshall Georgy Zhukov to leave Germany and come to Moscow. He was concerned over the actions of British allies. Stalin said the Soviet forces disarmed Germans and sent them to prisoners’ camps while British did not. Instead they cooperated with Germans troops and let them maintain combat capability.

Stalin believed that there were plans to use them later. He emphasized that it was an outright violation of the inter-governmental agreements that said the forces surrendered were to be immediately disbanded. The Soviet intelligence got the text of secret telegram sent by Winston Churchill to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, the commander of British forces. It instructed to collect the weapons and keep them in readiness to give back to Germans in case the Soviet offensive continued.

According to the instructions received from Stalin, Zhukov harshly condemned these activities speaking at the Allied Control Council (the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and France). He said the world history knew few examples of such treachery and refusal to observe the commitments on the part of nations that had an allied status. Montgomery denied the accusation. A few years later he admitted that he received such an instruction and carried it out. He had to comply with the order as a soldier.

A fierce battle was raging in the vicinity of Berlin. At his time Winston Churchill said that the Soviet Russia became a deadly threat to the free world. The British Prime Minister wanted a new front created in the east to stop the Soviet offensive as soon as possible. Churchill was overwhelmed by the feeling that with Nazi Germany defeated a new threat emerged posed by the Soviet Union.

That’s why London wanted Berlin to be taken by Anglo-American forces. Churchill also wanted Americans to liberate Czechoslovakia and Prague with Austria controlled by all allies on equal terms.

Not later than April 1945 Churchill instructed the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff to draw up Operation Unthinkable, a code name of two related plans of a conflict between the Western allies and the Soviet Union. The generals were asked to devise means to

“impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire”.

The hypothetical date for the start of the Allied invasion of Soviet-held Europe was scheduled for 1 July 1945. In the final days of the war against the Hitler’s Germany London started preparations to strike the Soviet Union from behind.

The plan envisioned unleashing a total war to occupy the parts of the Soviet Union which had a crucial significance for its war effort and deliver a decisive blow to the Soviet armed forces making the USSR unable to continue fighting.

The plan included the possibility of Soviet forces retreating deep into the territory according to the tactics used in previous wars. The plan was taken by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible due to a three-to-one superiority of Soviet land forces in Europe and the Middle East, where the conflict was projected to take place. German units were needed to balance the correlation of forces. That’s why Churchill wanted them to remain combat capable.

The War Cabinet stated:

“The Russian Army has developed a capable and experienced High Command. The army is exceedingly tough, lives and moves on a lighter scale of maintenance than any Western army, and employs bold tactics based largely on disregard for losses in attaining its objective. Equipment has improved rapidly throughout the war and is now good. Enough is known of its development to say that it is certainly not inferior to that of the great powers. The facility the Russians have shown in the development and improvement of existing weapons and equipment and in their mass production has been very striking. There are known instances of the Germans copying basic features of Russian armament.”

The British planners came to pessimistic conclusions. They said any attack would be “hazardous” and that the campaign would be “long and costly”. The report actually stated:

“If we are to embark on war with Russia, we must be prepared to be committed to a total war, which would be both long and costly.” The numerical superiority of Soviet ground forces left little chance for success. The assessment, signed by the Chief of Army Staff on June 9, 1945, concluded: “It would be beyond our power to win a quick but limited success and we would be committed to a protracted war against heavy odds. These odds, moreover, would become fanciful if the Americans grew weary and indifferent and began to be drawn away by the magnet of the Pacific war.”

The Prime Minister received a draft copy of the plan on June 8th. Annoyed as he was, Churchill could not do much about it as the supremacy of the Red Army was evident. Even with a nuclear bomb in the inventory of US military, Harry Truman, the new American President, had to take it into account.

Meeting Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, President Truman took the bull by the horn. He made a thinly veiled threat to use economic sanctions against the Soviet Union.

The Yalta conference: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill  

On May 8, the US President ordered to greatly reduce the lend-lease supplies [military aid] without prior notification. It went as far as the return US ships already on the way to the Soviet Union back to home bases. Some time passed and the order to reduce the land lease was cancelled otherwise the Soviet Union would not have joined the war against Japan, something the United States needed. But the bilateral relationship was damaged.

The memorandum signed by Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew on May 19, 1945 stated that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. It called for taking a tougher stand in the contacts with the Soviet Union. According to him, it was expedient to start the fighting before the USSR could recover from war and restore its huge military, economic and territorial potential.

The military received an impulse from politicians. In August of 1945 (the war with Japan was not over) the map of strategic targets in the USSR and Manchuria was submitted to General L. Groves, the head of US nuclear program. The plan contained the list of the 15 largest cities of the Soviet Union: Moscow, Baku, Novosibirsk, Gorky, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Kuibyshev, Kazan, Saratov, Molotov (Perm), Magnitogorsk, Grozny, Stalinsk (probably Stalino – the contemporary Donetsk) and Nizhny Tagil. The targets were given descriptions: geography, industrial potential and the primary targets to hit. Washington opened a new front. This time it was against its ally.

London and Washington immediately forgot they fought shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet Union during the Second World War, as well as the their commitments according to the agreements reached at the Yalta, Potsdam and San-Francisco conferences.

Monsanto may be expanding its operations in the United States, but elsewhere, lawmakers, scientists, activists and ordinary citizens are increasingly questioning (and in many cases banning) the introduction of GM crops, along with the use of the glyphosate herbicide (Monsanto’s Roundup).

State consumer protection ministers in Germany are advocating an EU-wide ban on glyphosate herbicides in response to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) categorization of the chemical as “probably carcinogenic.”

On May 8, the German state ministers introduced a resolution calling for “the supply to and use by private persons to be banned for precautionary reasons.” The resolution also recommends prohibiting use of the herbicide near consumers.

Christian Meyer, chairman of the Consumer Protection Minister Conference, said: “This pesticide should not be found in gardens, parks or on children’s playgrounds. I also do not think use in private gardens is appropriate.”

Unfortunately, the German federal government sees “no need for action,” according to the news website EurActiv.com.

This latest battle between those who recognize the dangers associated with glyphosate use and those who seek to protect the immensely powerful and profitable GMO agriculture industry as a whole reflects the global controversy surrounding the technology.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that the German federal authorities see no reason to take action, particularly when one considers the fact that two of the biggest players in the industry — Bayer and BASF — are German firms. As in the U.S., it can be assumed that these corporations have considerable influence on the “opinions” and actions of the German federal government.

The struggle over the GMO industry and its promotion of the use of glyphosate has typically played out along these lines throughout the world in various countries and situations. The biotech firms do their best to spread pro-GMO propaganda, often through enlisting the press to ridicule those who oppose it and, of course, buying influence over politicians.

The industry has managed to hoodwink the American public through lobbying and propaganda to the point where, as of now, glyphosate pesticides are sprayed on 84 percent of the major U.S. crops, including corn, soybean, cotton, sugar beets and canola/rapeseed.

However, the fight against the GMO industry continues to make headway, both in the U.S. and abroad. There is fierce opposition to the use of these technologies, and even in the face of massive pressure on the part of the industry, some progress has been made towards halting its spread.

Currently, there are 64 countries which require GMO labeling on foods. Many European nations, including France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and others have banned GMO crops. Australia, Russia and India have also banned GMOs.

In the United States, food labeling bills are currently being introduced in several states. Vermont has already passed a law requiring GMO labeling.

But the influence of the industry on governments and the press is formidable. A case in point was the media reaction to the recent announcement by the Chipotle restaurant chain that they would begin excluding GMO products from their menu. The admirable decision on the part of the popular American chain was immediately met with derision and ridicule on the part of the media, with accusations of “capitulating to ‘scare tactics’ of the anti-GMO lobby to increase burrito sales.”

The L.A. Times went as far as accusing Chipotle of joining “the ranks of companies that endeavor to deceive the public.”

Oh, really?

As far as many of us are concerned, the real deception has been on the part of the GMO industry, along with the politicians and presstitutes who have willingly become their servants.

The battle is far from over, and although there has been some encouraging progress towards the banning of GM crops and the use of glyphosate, there remains much to be done.

Ordinary citizens must let it be known that they do not support the industry. Only 37 percent of the American public believe that GMOs are safe, and polls have repeatedly shown that up to 90 percent of Americans want GMO labeling.

Signing petitions, joining demonstrations, writing letters to congressmen, educating yourself and your peers about the dangers of GMOs and glyphosate are all small, but important, steps towards fighting the insanity which continues to be promoted by corporations whose apparent aim is to endanger our health and upset the balance of global ecosystems in the reckless pursuit of massive profits.

Sources:

http://www.euractiv.com

http://www.crozetgazette.com

Ira Glass tell advertisers:  “Public radio is ready for capitalism.” (photo: Matthew Septimus/NPR)

“My hope is that we can move away from a model of asking listeners for money and join the free market,” host of public radio’s This American Life Ira Glass declared last month (Ad Age, 4/30/15):

I think we’re ready for capitalism which made this country so great. Public radio is ready for capitalism.

The context was “Hearing Is Believing,” an event sponsored by NPR and member stations WNYC and WBEZ to pitch public radio (and its podcasts) as an advertising vehicle (American Community Radio, 5/12/15).

Last week, Glass wrote a column in the public broadcasting trade paper Current (5/13/15) to “clarify” his comments: He was not suggesting that programmers “chase ratings and destroy everything that makes public radio special.” Instead, he meant he wanted “companies [to] come on our shows and pay lots of money,” and then public radio should use that money for good things–not bad things, as you might have assumed that he meant.

“It feels almost insulting to have to say,” Glass says, that he’s not calling for “turn[ing] public radio into a moronic money-grabbing wasteland of commercial shillery.” Likewise, it feels almost insulting to point out to Glass that noncommercial broadcasting was founded to be an alternative to commercial broadcasting.

The problem with commercial broadcasting was not that everyone in it had bad intentions. Nor was noncommercial broadcasting set up as place where all the broadcasters with good intentions would gather. The founding principal, rather, was that there needed to be a space on the broadcasting spectrum where programming was not dependent on advertising dollars–because it was recognized that relying on corporate sponsors inherently limits the kind of shows you can do and colors what you put on the air.

That’s why they called it “noncommercial radio” rather than “good intentions radio.”

In a “trust me” moment, Glass quotes his mother:

She used to say that the best predictor of a person’s future behavior is his or her past behavior. I see no reason why public radio programmers would be exempt from that principle.

When FAIR has looked in the past at the programming of public radio, actually, we’ve found it’s left a lot to be desired. Public radio has long depended on corporate “underwriters” for a significant segment of its funding, and it’s long exhibited the same narrow guestlists typical of the commercial broadcasting that public radio is supposed to be an alternative to.

When we did a study in 2004 (Extra!, 5-6/04), for example, of the sources on All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition, we found that these shows’ regular commentators were 80 percent white and 76 percent male. An earlier study of All Things Considered and Morning Edition (Extra!, 4-5/93) found commentators who were 96 percent white and 85 percent male.

Both studies found that viewpoints from outside the two-party system were rare, and within that system there was a conservative slant: Among partisan sources (politicians, campaign officials and the like), Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent) in 2004, during the Bush administration, and by a smaller margin (57 percent to 42 percent) in 1993, when Bill Clinton was president.

It’s unclear how going after corporate dollars more aggressively is going to make NPR‘s programming more inclusive or less narrow.

Glass also clarified that when he said he wanted to “move away from a model of asking listeners for money and join the free market,” he didn’t mean he wanted to stop asking listeners for money:

Listener donations are not going away. And they shouldn’t go away. Public support is one of the foundations of public radio, one of its great strengths, something that gives listeners a connection to our work and a sense of ownership over what we do that’s literal. It’s hard to imagine a healthy public radio system without it.

It’s not clear, though, why getting money from listeners gives them “a sense of ownership over what we do that’s literal” but getting money from corporations does not likewise give them a literal sense of ownership. Perhaps Glass can clarify that in a future column.

Hear Jim Naureckas debate advertising on public radio on KCRW‘s To the Point (5/22/15).

It now appears that menace may realize the goal set by the US and its Gulf Emirate allies to unseat the government of Syria and absorb the country into the ISIS Wahhabi Caliphate now gobbling up large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Al Arabiya News reported on Tuesday Syrian airstrikes against ISIS in and around the ancient city of Palmyra have not stopped the advance of the terror army. ISIS took Palmyra last week.

Palmyra is strategically located. It provides access to military bases and gasfields in addition to highways leading to Damascus and the central city of Homs.

“ISIS has made further progress on the Tadmor-Damascus highway and grabbed the Khnaifess phosphate mines and nearby houses,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the Arab newspaper.

Reports by the organization, however, are considered suspect due to its association with anti-Assad activists.

Additionally, ISIS last week captured part of the industrial city Sheikh Najjar in Syria’s northern Aleppo province.

It has also taken control of the Iraqi-Syrian border gate of al-Waleed. It is the third border crossing to fall into ISIS’ hands over the last few weeks.

On Saturday the Financial Times reported:

There are fears that Isis will now target the countryside ringing Damascus, Mr Assad’s seat of power. Known as the “Ghouta”, the rebel-held area has been under a regime blockade for nearly two years. Activists in Damascus and its environs have long worried about the potential for Isis sleeper cells within rebel ranks demoralized by the opposition’s inability to end the siege.

According to Syrian opposition activists, ISIS will not move on Damascus immediately, but will instead “go to the Ghouta and break the siege so it can gain the support of the people inside it.”

Analysts estimate ISIS now controls 50 percent of the country.

Infowars has argued from the outset that both al-Qaeda and ISIS are controlled assets of western intelligence designed specifically to sow destruction and chaos in the Middle East and also provide a pretext for a continuation and expansion of the war on terror.

In the short term, ISIS will be used to topple the government of Syria and convert the country into a failed state similar to the one created in Libya. Short of more direct support from Iran and Russia, al-Assad and the Syrian government cannot fend off ISIS indefinitely.

While the Western mainstream media and even independent gatekeepers like Noam Chomsky for years spread the lie that any suggestion that the United States and NATO were supporting ISIS was a “conspiracy theory,”recently uncovered and declassified documents from the Defense Intelligence Agency have proven the Western press and the likes of Chomsky wrong and, yet again, the so-called “conspiracy theorists” right.

This is because, on May 18, Judicial Watch published a selection of recently declassified documents that were obtained from the US Department of Defense and the US State Department as a result of a lawsuit filed against the US government. The lawsuit and most of the documents contained within the release revolved around the Benghazi scandal but a deeper look into the documents dating back to 2012 reveal an even bigger story – that the US and NATO have admitted in their own documents to supporting al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

Docs Show Al-Qaeda Involvement From Beginning – No Moderates

The documents demolish the “official story” of Western governments promoted from the beginning of the Syrian crisis until the present day – that the “rebellion” was organic, grassroots, and made up of moderates and freedom-loving democracy proponents. The document states unequivocally that “The Salafist [sic] the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” It points out that “The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.” Tellingly, the report then states that “AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media . . .”

Indeed, the documents clearly admit that the crisis unfolding in Syria was never a moderate rebellion fighting for democracy, it was made up of fighters from the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda (al-Qaeda In Iraq/Al-Nusra Front) from the very beginning.

US, Turkey, NATO Supporting ISIS and al-Qaeda – Supporting the Creation of Buffer Zones

The document continues in its revelations by stating that:

Opposition forces are trying to control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to the western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar), in addition to neighboring Turkish borders. Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts. This hypothesis is most likely in accordance with the data from recent events, which will help prepare safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command center of the temporary government.

“Opposition forces,” of course, are al-Qaeda, al-Nusra Front, and ISIS, as mentioned and defined earlier by the DIA document. Thus, any questions of whether or not the US and its NATO/GCC allies have been supporting jihadists and terrorists, should be answered with the admissions made within these pages.

If al-Qaeda/ISIS = the “opposition,” then the US support for the “opposition” = US support for al-Qaeda/ISIS.

What is also well-known but now finally admitted to by the US government itself is the plan to establish “buffer zones” and “safe zones” on the Libyan model inside Syria. Such a plan has been covered extensively by myself and Tony Cartalucci (as well as many others in the alternative media) when the concept was considered a “conspiracy theory.”

Dividing Iraq and Syria – Fighting Iran and Shi’ite Expansion

In regards to geopolitical concerns and the breakup and destruction of the Syrian government as well as the Iraqi leadership, the document states:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria, (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

This “Salafist principality” is obviously the Islamic State, particularly when one visualizes the maps of territory claimed by the jihadist organization. As the DIA document admits, the expansion of the ISIS principality is taking place with the support and assistance of Western powers. This much is evidenced by the fact that the ISIS fighters running rampant across Iraq and especially Syria could never have been able to do so were it not for the support given to them by the GCC and NATO. These fighters certainly could never have held such territory if Western military assistance, Saudi money, and Turkish/Israeli logistics and intelligence had not been provided to them.

Note also the justification provided for such support: not only is the goal to “isolate the Syrian regime,” it is to prevent the “Shia expansion,” meaning the arc of influence held by Iran, growing daily largely due to Western imperialism, hypocrisy, tyranny, and double standards. Instead of attempting to combat Iran’s influence in a race for development and the raising of living standards, the West funds jihadist savages to behead and rape their away across civilized nations. This is because the goal is not merely to disrupt Iranian influence, it is to destroy Iran completely. Even Iran itself is a stepping stone to a greater confrontation with Russia and China.

Tony Cartalucci understands this concept well as he writes in his own article “America Admittedly Behind ISIS ‘Surge,’” when he says:

The Syrian war is not a localized conflict with limited goals. It is one leg of a much larger agenda to destroy Iran next, then move on to Russia and China. Combined with the Syrian campaign, the West has attempted to create arcs of destabilization across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and completely encircling China in Southeast Asia.

What this constitutes is a World War executed through the use of 4th generation warfare. At the same time, the West attempts to seek temporary appeasement and accommodation for itself so that it can more effortlessly advance its plans. Attempts to portray itself as interested in “negotiations” with Iran while it wages a proxy war on its doorstep is a prime example of this.

The corporate-financier special interests that have hijacked the United States and Europe have essentially declared war on all lands beyond their grasp, as well as on any and all among their own ranks who oppose their hegemonic aspirations.

The vile conspiracy now openly unfolding in Syria, seeing to its destruction at the hands of terrorists the US is openly backing after claiming for over a decade to be “fighting” is a harbinger of the destruction that complacency and failure to resist will bring all other nations caught in the path of these special interests. Nations not immediately caught in the grip of chaos created by this conspiracy must use their time wisely, preparing the appropriate measures to resist. They must study carefully what has been done in Syria and learn from both the mistakes and accomplishments of the Syrian government and armed forces in fighting back.

Conclusion

While the Western mainstream press and other “independent” gatekeepers were attempting to paint the suggestion that the United States was supporting ISIS in Iraq and Syria as a “conspiracy theory,” the US government was indeed supporting ISIS in Iraq and Syria but hiding behind a narrative of democracy-loving freedom fighters and “moderate rebels” as it did so. This narrative was disseminated by the same Western press that labeled the alternative media as a collection of paranoid schizophrenics for reporting what has now been confirmed by the DIA document release a full four to ten years ago.

The truth is that the United States has been funding ISIS all along and that the terrorist organization would not exist were it not for its being created by American intelligence agencies as far back as the 1970s under the name Al-Qaeda and Mujahadeen.

While the DIA document release is only news in terms of the confirmation of US support for ISIS, it can be chalked up as one more reason the mainstream and traditional media outlets have become entirely irrelevant and overwhelmingly discredited.

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1and volume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. 

The terrifying film ‘The man who saved the world’ has been showing in London. Stanislaw Petrov, who appears himself in the film, was the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Russian early warning system when the electronic alarms blared deafeningly and insistently in his command centre. All checks confirmed that there was no malfunction. They confirmed a nuclear attack from the US was on its way. It was not possible to wait for radar confirmation of the incoming ballistic missiles because by that time it would be too late to retaliate. Petrov knew that if he reported the alarm to the high command they would immediately order a retaliatory strike¹ initiating a global nuclear war and the end of most of the human race. On his own imitative he decided that he did not trust the computers and did nothing.

The author Steve Taylor, in his book ‘The Fall’, expresses the view that the human race became, to a significant degree, insane about six thousand years ago when we introduced warfare as a way of ‘solving’ disputes. It is difficult to deny that it is insane to set up a system in which it is down to the humanity of one man to save the planet. The insanity is compounded when we realise that, rather than learning from the past, we have perpetuated the same mad system. We even call it MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).

Over a thousand nuclear weapons are held, right now, ready for launch at the press of a button. Missiles travel at more than fifteen thousand miles an hour so we are entirely dependent on computers to warn of an attack. We know that computers malfunction. But those manning the early warning centres are rigorously trained to follow orders to the letter. They have a protocol and they are trained to follow it robotically. It seems most unlikely that the next time the alarms go off there will be a Stanislaw Petrov present with the immense courage to go against his training. Putting his humanity first under enormous pressure to obey orders was heroism of the highest order. This was recognised when he was honoured at the United Nations and it is reiterated by Kevin Costner in the film (Stanislaw Petrov is a fan of Costner and Costner is a fan of Petrov so they met when Petrov visited the US). Introducing Stanislaw to his film crew Kostner said ‘I act heroes. Here is the real thing’.

There will be a next time. Unbelievably, in spite of this terrifying experience, we continue to perpetuate the same arrangement; with missiles ready for immediate launch at the press of a button and the only way of deciding to do this is on the basis of incoming electronic signals from a system which we know cannot be trusted!

The threat is escalating

The more nuclear weapons states there are the more likely that the weapons will be launched by accident or malfunction. The number has been escalating since the US used nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945. Already there are nine; US, Russia, China, UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Inevitably the leaders of other states want them. The leaders think it gives them status. According to a Sunday Times report Saudi Arabia has given Pakistan billions of dollars in subsidized oil, while the latter has unofficially agreed to supply the Gulf state with nuclear warheads². An anonymous British military official told the Sunday Times “The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers — Turkey and Egypt — may feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race”²

Yet not all states want to take the nuclear path. A wide range of countries capable of building nuclear weapons, including many living in actual or potential “conflict zones,” have elected not to pursue this option, including Japan and South Korea. Countries such as South Africa and Ukraine have dismantled existing arsenals.

Deterrence

The logic of the deterrence concept leads to more and more states wanting nuclear weapons. If one state needs a deterrent then, of course, other states need a deterrent. It also leads to the ones which have these weapons upgrading and extending them since it is thought that the more in number and the more in destructive power your arsenal is the more it will be an effective deterrent.

Apart from the appalling risks from malicious and inadvertent use, misunderstandings and terrorist attacks, there are major safety risks. A recent Whistleblower, a Royal Navy submariner, William McNeilly, exposed the safety risks in an 18 page report and says the Trident deterrent is a ‘Disaster Waiting To Happen’. He tells us “ We are so close to a nuclear disaster it is shocking, and yet everybody is accepting the risk to the public.” He also tells us that poor security checks could leave the door open for the “worst terrorist attack the UK and world has ever seen”.

The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty 

In an attempt to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to get rid of the existing ones The Nuclear Non proliferation Treaty (NPT) was drawn up and came into force in 1970.

The NPT is an international treaty of which a primary goal is to rid the world of nuclear weapons. A treaty review conference is held every five years and this year it extended from 27^th April to 22^nd May. This treaty is the only binding international commitment to the goal of nuclear disarmament of all states. 190 states are now party to the treaty. Four UN member states have never joined the NPT: India, Israel, Pakistan and South Sudan.

Nuclear states who are signatories to the treaty undertake to pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals. The UK has been legally bound by the treaty since 1970. In spite of this the signatories to the Treaty, including the UK, essentialy ignore the obligation they have incurred.

In view of the refusal of the nuclear states to disarm the matter was taken to the International court of justice for an Advisory Opinion on the obligations of the states which have signed up to the treaty. Their opinion was unequivocal. They declared ‘There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control’. Can’t be much clearer than that.

Never mind. In terms of getting the nuclear states to honour their obligations to humanity and their treaties, the recent NPT Review Conference has been another disastrous failure. It contains no meaningful commitments on nuclear disarmament. Our leaders are following their own power/influence focussed agenda and are ignoring the wishes and wellbeing of the people just as they did with the Iraq war.

The primary nuclear weapons states, all founder members of the United Nations Security (!) Council, are doing the exact opposite of ridding us of this curse. They are all rebuilding their nuclear arsenals; US, Russian, China, UK and France. The determination of the main ‘Security’ Council state leaders to ignore the wishes and real security of peoples of the world has become clear as a result of the 2015 NPT Conference. The leaders of these states are parking their humanity and putting their power politics before the safety of the people. The enormity of this crime is arguably even greater than that of Blair and Bush in starting the Iraq war.

It is even more clear now, after this conference, that the non-nuclear weapons states must make nuclear weapons illegal without the participation of the nuclear weapons states. And this is what they are doing.

A crime against humanity

There are 193 states in the United Nations. So there are 184 states which do not have nuclear weapons. Realising the intransigence of the nuclear states many of the non-nuclear states decided on another approach to having them banned. The existence of nuclear weapons threatens the commission of crimes against humanity. They are weapons for committing genocidal-scale attacks on civilian populations. There have now been three conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons (in Oslo, Nayarit and Vienna). At these the non nuclear and less wealthy states were able to have a much greater impact than at the NPT conferences which were dominated by the nuclear states 159 states supported a joint statement on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons arguing that nuclear weapons have catastrophic humanitarian consequences and must never be used again under any circumstances. These states have affirmed that elimination is the only way to prevent use.

Having nuclear weapons is, of itself, a crime against humanity. It implies the willingness to use them ‘if our vital interests are threatened’ as ex-Prime Minister Blair put it in his 2006 White Paper, ‘The future of the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent’. It is also criminal because it puts us all at totally unnecessary risk. As President John F Kennedy put it:

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

This is as true now as it was when he declared it.

The Humanitarian Pledge

The non-nuclear states are putting the interests of humanity before power in the teeth of opposition from the nuclear states.

Consequently the major outcome of the 2015 NPT is the Humanitarian Pledge which has over 100 endorsements³by states round the planet. It was proposed by the Austrian government and includes the pledge to join efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons in light of their unacceptable humanitarian consequences and associated risks. 

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) tells us,

‘Based on the evidence of the humanitarian impacts from any nuclear weapon detonation and an acknowledgment of the increasing risk of use of nuclear weapons, the humanitarian pledge reflects a fundamental shift in the international discourse on nuclear disarmament over the past five years…
The wide and growing international support for this historic pledge sends a signal that a majority of the world’s governments are ready to move forward with the prohibition of nuclear weapons, even if the nuclear weapon states are not ready to participate.’

The executive Director of ICAN, Beatrice Fihn, said from the conference,

“Regardless of what has happened here today, the humanitarian pledge must be the basis for the negotiations of a new treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons. It has been made clear that the nuclear weapon states are not interested in making any new commitments to disarmament, so now it is up to the rest of the world to start a process to prohibit nuclear weapons by the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

What citizens must do 

600 million people demonstrated round the world to stop the Iraq War. But the war happened. Blair and Bush were determined that it would. The leaders had their own agenda. The lust to kill won out. It has been said that one of the reasons that this massive demonstration was not successful is because it only happened once. Stopping the rabid militarists and MAD yielders of nuclear weapons will require massive people-power. And protesting will have to be relentless; it must persist until the goal is achieved. Mass demonstrations cannot happen everyday but they could happen once a month. They can be supplemented by vigils, acts of civil disobedience, bombarding the media with letters and articles promoting the passion of the people for peace. We are many and they are few.

Notes

1.       Even if the computers were correct it would be an act of insanity to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack. Why incinerate more millions because some are doomed?

2.       http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41890.htm

3.       http://www.ican.org

The EU and Russia have begun speaking about the concept of democratic security, an idea which means absolutely different things to each side.

At the most recent meeting of the Council of Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland discussed the need for democratic security, with Russia emphasizing that this is especially relevant for Macedonia at the moment. While no further public comments were released on the matter, it’s clear that Brussels and Moscow have two completely different conceptualizations of this idea in mind. As can be seen by the case of Macedonia, the EU views pragmatic, independently minded leaders as ‘threats’ to the unipolar (supposedly ‘democratic’) world order, but Russia sees Color Revolutions and externally plotted coups against national leaders as constituting the true danger to democracy.

Same Word, Different Worlds Of Meaning

Let’s take a look at how the EU and Russia differ in their implicit understanding of democratic security:

Definition:

EU

Judging by Brussels’ behavior towards Macedonia, it can be surmised that it understands ‘democratic security’ as being the retention of personal pawns and Western-dependent countries. In the EU’s understanding, Bulgaria under obedient Prime Minister Boyko Borissov is ‘democratically secure’, whereas Macedonia under pragmatically assertive Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski is ‘democratically insecure’. It’s also no coincidence that Borissov is embraced for stonewalling South Stream but Gruevski is shunned for supporting Balkan Stream.

Russia

Moscow feels differently, of course. It holds the view that the West shouldn’t consider multipolar and independent leaders as threats to democracy (either domestically or internationally), and that the polls are the only acceptable ‘regime change’ option for a country. Thus in Russia’s view, democratic security is about safeguarding the administration of elected leaders. Accordingly, Gruevski is lauded for his democratic credentials and anti-Color Revolution stance, but post-Color Revolution Ukrainian leader Aleksander Turchinov was decried as being anti-democratic.

Focus:

EU

Democratic motions such as regular voting and subjectively defined ‘free media’ are important to Europe, and if a party or candidate emphasizes their commitment to ‘Euro-Atlantic values’, then it does wonders for their ‘democratic’ credentials. This all changes, however, if they don’t agree to walk in lockstep with Brussels’ foreign policy (as ‘official’ Euro-Atlantic aspirant Macedonia has refused to do), which then apparently invalidates all previously acknowledged democratic progress.

Russia

Europe judges democracy based on its surface presentation, but Russia looks at the actual substance involved. Key to its assessment is whether the leader in question was elected and represents the general mood, sentiment, and interests of the country. Gruevski undoubtedly satisfied these requirements by rallying nearly 100,000 people to the streets of Skopje to defend against the anti-democratic aggression being waged against Macedonia, while the Color Revolutionaries could only procure a fraction of that.

Cause For Concern:

EU

The Europeans become alarmed whenever a strong, determined, and pragmatic leader (a.k.a. not a technocrat) is elected and engages in multipolar policies and independent rhetoric. As it stands, Gruevski fits these characteristics more fully than any other European leader today, ergo the Color Revolution attempt.

Russia

Russia raises extreme concern whenever a radical political minority (particularly one that’s outside-supported) tries to (violently) overthrow a democratically elected and legitimate government, as is currently underway in Macedonia right now.

Solution:

EU

When faced with what it views to be a ‘democratic security crisis’, the EU (as guided by its American supervisors) assists with a Color Revolution and/or public shaming attempts in an effort to lasso the wayward leaders and the countries they represent back into the unipolar corral. This explains why some European politicians (notably Bulgaria’s Sergey Stanishev) publicly threw their weight behind Sunday’s destabilization inauguration, since they clearly felt compelled to interfere in Macedonia’s domestic affairs in order to ‘correct’ its ‘wayward’ geopolitical tract.

Pro-government rally in Moscow: “No to Maidan, No to War!”

Russia

Russia’s response to democratic security threats against its partners is to engage in supportive information campaigns that aid them in exposing the intelligence-guided regime change plot. Strategic guidance, political cooperation, and diplomatic support are also ways that Russia helps defend democracies that are under attack.

The Conundrum

The insurmountable obstacle between these two views of democratic security is Brussels and its American partner’s response to strong, determined, and pragmatic leaders. Instead of waiting for democracy to run its course, they actively try to sabotage the system by staging a Color Revolution. The most ironic thing about this whole dichotomy is that the West partakes in anti-democratic measures ostensibly to ‘protect democracy’, yet it accuses Russia of ‘supporting despots’ whenever Moscow voices support for legitimate governments like Syria’s, for example. The core of the contradiction between the EU and Russia can actually be traced down to the emergence of independent leaders in the first place, as this is what upsets the West to the point that they try to deploy a Color Revolution against the targeted government.

First things first, such individuals are elected by their people in free, fair, and internationally recognized elections, meaning that it’s the people themselves who are responsible for placing their leaders into power. It may possibly be the case that the Prime Minister or President in question hadn’t focused much on foreign policy during the electoral season, thereby signifying that they reached a certain understanding of international affairs (or publicly began expressing their existing standpoint) only after they entered office, but even in this case, the country’s leader is still the legitimate representative of his country’s interests abroad.

Saving The Multipolar Choice

The very fact that foreign leaders have the choice to pursue unipolar or multipolar policies is because of these 5 very important characteristics of the post-Cold War order:

* Russian nuclear parity with the US and Putin’s Great Power revival of the country enabled it to retain its position as a solid military counterweight to the unipolar world.

* The US helped build up China in order to counter the USSR, but eventually, Beijing became ‘uncontrollable’ and now has a sense of destiny in rising as an independent global actor.

* The popularly recognized period of unipolarity stretching from 1991 until at most 2013 (when the US backtracked from conventionally attacking Syria amid Russian counter-pressure) brought with it a slew of military mistakes (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.) that discredited the Western foreign policy model and made the global audience more receptive to the multipolar alternative.

* The shift of economic gravity from the West to the Asia-Pacific changed the global focal point from the solidly unipolar world to the frontier of multipolarity.

* Democratic double standards in preaching about ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ but buddying up with the Gulf Kingdoms (some of the most anti-democratic and least humane states in the world) dealt irreparable soft power damage to the Western message and planted fruitful seeds of unipolar suspicion in the global consciousness.

Concluding Thoughts

Democratic security is the most important emerging strategic field in the world today, as it forms the crucible of conflict between the unipolar and multipolar camps. Unipolar states and their proxies will continually seek to overthrow disobedient or independent leaders, while the multipolar world does what it reasonably can to support the people’s choice of government. At the end of the day, however, democratic security comes down to the targeted people’s will to resist the regime change attempt being thrust upon them, and as Italian journalist and Balkan specialist Umberto Pascali remarked, Macedonia’s resistance may signify a strategic Stalingrad in the fight against Color Revolutions worldwide.

Andrew Korybko is the political analyst and journalist for Sputnik who currently lives and studies in Moscow, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW.

Monsanto recently made a bid to take over European agrichemical giant Syngenta, the world’s largest pesticide producer. The $45 billion bid was rejected, but there’s still a chance for a merger between these two chemical technology giants.

Monsanto is reportedly considering raising the offer, and as noted by Mother Jones,1 “combined, the two companies would form a singular agribusiness behemoth, a company that controls a third of both the globe’s seed and pesticides markets.”

As reported by Bloomberg,2 the possibility of Monsanto taking over Syngenta raises a number of concerns; a top one being loss of crop diversity.

“…[A] larger company would eventually mean fewer varieties of seeds available to farmers, say opponents such as [science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, Bill] Freese.

Another is that the combined company could spur increased use of herbicides by combining Syngenta’s stable of weed killers with Monsanto’s marketing heft and crop development expertise.

‘Two really big seed companies becoming one big seed company means even less choice for farmers,’ said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch, a policy group in Washington.

‘From a public health and environmental perspective this is a complete disaster,’ said Bill Freese… ‘The more I look at this, the more it worries me and the more it needs to be opposed.’”

What’s in a Name?

According to one analyst, the takeover might boost Monsanto’s reputation, as Syngenta has been “less publicly enthusiastic” about genetically engineered (GE) crops.

Personally, I don’t foresee Monsanto ever being able to shed its toxic reputation, no matter how it tries to rebrand itself. It recently tried to do just that by declaring itself “sustainable agriculture company.”

But actions speak louder than mere words, and there’s nothing sustainable about Monsanto’s business. Taking on the Syngenta name would do nothing to change the obnoxious dichotomy between Monsanto’s words and deeds.

In fact, Mother Jones astutely notes that by trying to acquire Syngenta, Monsanto contradicts “years of rhetoric about how its ultimate goal with biotech is to wean farmers off agrichemicals.”

It’s quite clear Monsanto has no desire or plans to help farmers reduce the use of crop chemicals. On the contrary, it has and continues to push for the increased use of its flagship product, Roundup.

Roundup Also Being Used to Harvest Non-GMO Crops

Not only has Monsanto created a line of GE Roundup-ready seeds, it also promotes the use of Roundup on conventional crops, pre-harvest, as described in its Pre-Harvest Staging Guide.3

Applying herbicide directly before harvesting helps dry the crop, boosts the release of seed, and is said to promote long-term control of certain weeds.

The practice is known as desiccation, and according to researchers Samsel and Seneff,4 the desiccation of conventionally grown wheat appears to be linked to the rapid and concurrent rise in celiac disease.

Applying glyphosate, which was recently classified as a Class 2A probable human carcinogen, on crops directly before harvest is one of the dumbest things we could do to our foods, yet Monsanto wholeheartedly supports and promotes it.

Speaking of reputation, Syngenta is hardly a poster child for sustainability and right action either. Not only is it the main supplier of the “gender-bending” herbicide atrazine in the US, it also makes neonicotinoids—a class of insecticide linked to the mass die-offs of bees and other pollinators

Both of these chemicals have come under increasing scrutiny as researchers have learned more about their environmental and human health impacts, and both are banned in Europe while still widely in use in the US.

Suppressing Science for the Chemical Industry?

As scrutiny into the effects of chemicals has intensified, so has strong-arm tactics by the industry, which has successfully infiltrated the very agencies charged with their oversight.

An open letter5 signed by more than 25 farmworker, environmental, and food safety organizations was sent to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on May 5, demanding the agency investigate reports of retaliation and suppression of research relating to the dangers of neonicotinoids and glyphosate.6

“It is imperative that the USDA maintains scientific integrity and does not allow for harassment, censorship, or suppression of findings that counter the interests of industry,” the letter states.

In March, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a citizen petition requesting that the US Department of Agriculture adopt new policies that would further job protection for government scientists who question the health and safety of agricultural chemicals.

The petition urges for the agency to adopt policies that would specifically prevent the ‘political suppression or alteration of studies and lay out clear procedures for investigating allegations and of scientific misconduct.’

PEER has found that more than 10 USDA scientists have faced consequences or investigations when their work called into question the health and safety of agricultural chemicals.

These scientists documented clear actions that violated their scientific integrity, including USDA officials retracting studies, watering down findings, removing scientists’ names from authorship, and delaying approvals for publication of research papers.”

Many Elementary School Children at Risk of Elevated Pesticide Exposure

Monsanto’s marketing materials still proclaim its GE crops reduce the need for pesticides, but usage has steadily and significantly risen since the advent of GE seeds. The rapid emergence of resistant superweeds have led the industry to invent crop seeds resistant to even more toxic herbicides, such as 2,4-D and dicamba.

According to Dr. Medardo Ávila-Vázquez,7 a pediatrician and neonatologist at the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the National University of Córdoba, glyphosate use in connection to GMO seeds is having a notably deleterious effect on the health of the local people, particularly children.

In light of the approval of these next-generation pesticides, it would behoove us to take notice to such warnings, because our kids are also becoming increasingly exposed. As reported by Global Research,8 children attending hundreds of elementary schools across the US are in harm’s way as toxic weed killers are doused on nearby GE fields in ever greater amounts:

“A new EWG interactive map shows the amounts of glyphosate sprayed in each US county and tallies the 3,247 elementary schools that are located within 1,000 feet of a corn or soybean field and the 487 schools that are within 200 feet. Click on any county on the map to see how much GMO corn and soy acreage has increased there as well as the number of nearby elementary schools.”

You will see that several states are outlined. This is where the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved the use of Dow AgroSciences’ Enlist Duo. This new herbicide, which is a mix of glyphosate and 2,4-D, will be used on a new generation of GE corn and soybeans engineered to withstand both of these toxins. Many of these states are already heavily sprayed with Roundup, and with the introduction of Enlist Duo, children who go to school near these farm fields may be exposed to greater risks than ever before.

The Organic Effect

While environmental exposure is certainly a concern, most people are exposed to pesticides via their diet. Claimed to be the largest of its kind, a study9 published in the Environmental Health Perspectives looked at the diets of nearly 4,500 people living in six US cities, assessing exposure levels to organophosphates (OPs), which are among the most commonly used pesticides on American farms.

Participants’ organophosphate levels were estimated using USDA data10 on the average levels of pesticide residue found in the fruits and vegetables that each individual reported eating. To verify the accuracy of their estimates, they compared their calculated pesticide exposures to the actual levels of pesticide metabolites (breakdown products) excreted in the urine of a subset of 720 participants.

Not surprisingly, those who ate conventionally grown produce were found to have high concentrations of OP metabolites, whereas those who ate organic produce had significantly lower levels. Those who “often or always” ate organic had about 65 percent lower levels of pesticide residues compared to those who ate the least amount of organic produce. According to lead author Cynthia Curl: “The study suggests that by eating organically grown versions of those foods highest in pesticide residues, we can make a measurable difference.”

The “organic effect” was also recently demonstrated by a Swedish family that agreed to eat nothing but organic food for two weeks. 11 Pesticide levels were measured before and after the switch, and after a fortnight of eating an all-organic diet, the family members’ toxic load had diminished to virtually nothing. While many organic foods have been shown to contain higher levels of nutrients,12,13,14 one of the major benefits you reap from eating organic is what you don’t get from your diet—all those toxic chemicals!

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A Stanford University meta-analysis15 published in 2012 found that people who eat an organic diet not only tend to have lower levels of toxic pesticides in their system, organic meats were also far less likely to contain multi-drug resistant bacteria, which is yet another major health threat.

Many still insist we don’t know what the health ramifications are from eating pesticide-tainted foods, but common sense will tell you the effect is not going to do your health any favors. Many pesticides also do have well-established health effects. Organophosphate (OP) pesticides, for example, have been linked to reduced IQ and attention deficits in children.16,17 Symptoms of exposure include weakness, headache, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting.

Long-term exposure has been linked to neurological effects, such as18 confusion, anxiety, and depression. According to data19from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 75 percent of the US population has detectable levels of OPs in their urine, and unless you’re a farmer, or live near a farm, your diet is one of the most likely routes of exposure. Considering depression affects one in 10 Americans, who’s to say OP pesticide exposure isn’t part of the problem?

Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce

To protect your health, your best bet is to buy only organic fruits and vegetables. That said, not all conventionally grown fruits and vegetables are subjected to the same amount of pesticide load. One way to save some money while still lowering your risk is by focusing on purchasing certain organic items, while “settling” for others that are conventionally grown. To do this, I recommend familiarizing yourself with the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) annual Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides in Produce.20

Of the fruits and vegetables tested by the EWG for the 2015 guide, the following “dirty dozen” had the highest pesticide load, making them the most important to buy or grow organically. Also remember that swapping your regular meat sources to organic, grass-fed/pasture-raised versions of beef and poultry may be even more important than buying organic fruits and vegetables. The same goes for dairy products and animal by-products such as eggs.

Apples	Peaches	Nectarines
Strawberries	Grapes	Celery
Spinach	Sweet bell peppers	Cucumbers
Cherry tomatoes	Imported snap peas	Potatoes

In contrast, the following foods were found to have the lowest residual pesticide load, making them the safest bet among conventionally grown vegetables. Note that a small amount of sweet corn and most Hawaiian papaya, although low in pesticides, are genetically engineered (GE). If you’re unsure of whether the sweet corn or papaya is GE, I’d recommend opting for organic varieties. To review the ranking of all foods tested, please see the EWG’s 2015 Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides in Produce.21

Avocado	Sweet corn	Pineapple
Cabbage	Frozen sweet peas	Onions
Asparagus	Mangoes	Papayas (non-GMO. Most Hawaiian papaya is GMO)
Kiwi	Eggplant	Grapefruit
Cantaloupe	Cauliflower	Sweet potatoes

Where to Find Healthy Food

One of the most compelling reasons to eat organic is to avoid toxins. Organic foods do tend to have a better nutritional profile, but even if they do not, the absence of drugs, pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics is more than enough of a reason to make the switch to protect your health. For a step-by-step guide to making healthier diet choices, please see my freely available optimized nutrition plan, starting with the beginner plan.

While many food stores carry organic foods these days, your best bet is to source it from a local grower, as much of the organic food sold in grocery stores is imported. Not only has this food traveled a long distance, adding to the carbon footprint, but some countries may have more lax organic standards than others.

Buying local food also supports local farmers and promotes the establishment of a more sustainable local food system. If you reside in the US, the following organizations can help you locate farm-fresh foods in the vicinity of where you live. Even better would be to grow it yourself. The nation’s health would radically improve if we could reestablish World War II Victory gardens.

Weston Price Foundation22 — has local chapters in most states, and many of them are connected with buying clubs in which you can easily purchase organic foods, including grass fed raw dairy products like milk and butter.

Local Harvest — This Web site will help you find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.

Farmers’ Markets — A national listing of farmers’ markets.

Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals — The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.

Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) — CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.

FoodRoutes — The FoodRoutes “Find Good Food” map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSAs, and markets near you.

What Are GMOs?

GMOs are a product of genetic engineering, meaning their genetic makeup has been altered to induce a variety of “unique” traits to crops, such as making them drought-resistant or giving them “more nutrients.” GMO proponents claim that genetic engineering is “safe and beneficial,” and that it advances the agricultural industry. They also say that GMOs help ensure the global food supply and sustainability. But is there any truth to these claims? I believe not. For years, I’ve stated the belief that GMOs pose one of the greatest threats to life on the planet. Genetic engineering is NOT the safe and beneficial technology that it is touted to be.

Help Support GMO Labeling

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA)—Monsanto’s Evil Twin—is pulling out all the stops to keep you in the dark about what’s in your food. For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture. For example, Monsanto has made many claims that glyphosate in Roundup is harmless to animals and humans. However, recently the World Health Organization (WHO) had their research team test glyphosate and have labeled it a probable carcinogen.

Public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We’re fighting back. That’s why I was the first to push for GMO labeling. I donated a significant sum to the first ballot initiative in California in 2012, which inspired others to donate to the campaign as well. We technically “lost the vote, but we are winning the war, as these labeling initiatives have raised a considerable amount of public awareness.

The insanity has gone far enough, which is why I encourage you to boycott every single product owned by members of the GMA, including natural and organic brands. More than 80 percent of our support comes from individual consumers like you, who understand that real change comes from the grassroots.

Recently, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan) has reintroduced a bill (HR 1599) that would preempt states’ rights to enact GMO labeling laws. This bill would create a federal government program to oversee guidelines for voluntary labeling of products that do not contain GMOs. It would specifically prohibit Congress or individual states from requiring mandatory labeling of GMO foods or ingredients. It would also allow food manufacturers to use the word “natural” on products that contain GMOs. TAKE ACTION NOW! Your local representatives need to hear from you! Please contact them today by CLICKING HERE.

Thankfully, we have organizations like the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) to fight back against these junk food manufacturers, pesticide producers, and corporate giants.

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

• Non-GMO Shopping Guide
• GMA Boycott List
• GMA Traitor Brands

Non-GMO Food Resources by Country

• Australia
• Canada
• New Zealand
• United Kingdom
• United States

Together, Let’s Help OCA Get The Funding They Deserve

Let’s Help OCA get the funding it deserves. I have found very few organizations who are as effective and efficient as OCA. It’s a public interest organization dedicated to promoting health justice and sustainability. A central focus of the OCA is building a healthy, equitable, and sustainable system of food production and consumption.

Please make a donation to help OCA fight for GMO labeling.

These are sad days in Washington and Wall Street. The once unchallenged sole Superpower at the collapse of the Soviet Union some quarter century ago is losing its global influence so rapidly that most would not have predicted anything comparable six months ago. The key actor who has catalyzed a global defiance of Washington as Sole Superpower is Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President. This is the real background to the surprise visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry to Sochi to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then a four hour talk with “Satan” himself, Putin.

Far from a “reset” try, Washington’s hapless geopolitical strategists are desperately trying to find a better way to bring the Russian Bear to her knees.

A flash back to December 2014 is instructive to understand why the US Secretary of State holds out an apparent olive branch to Russia’s Putin at this juncture. At that point, Washington appeared about to pin Russia to the ground, with its precision targeted financial sanctions and its deal with Saudi Arabia to collapse oil prices. In mid-December the Ruble was in free fall against the dollar. Oil prices were similarly plummeting down to $45 a barrel from $107 only six months earlier. As Russia is strongly dependent on oil and gas export revenues for its state finances, and Russian companies held huge dollar debt obligations abroad, the situation was bleak as seen from inside the Kremlin.

Here fate, as it were, intervened in an unexpected way (at least by the USA architects of the financial warfare and oil collapse strategy). Not only was John Kerry’s September 2014 deal with ailing Saudi King Abdullah delivering heavy pain in the Russian finances. It was also threatening an explosion of an estimated $500 billion in high-risk-high-yield “junk” bonds, debt that the US shale oil industry had taken on from Wall Street banks in the past five years to finance the much-touted US shale oil revolution that briefly propelled the USA ahead of Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer.

US strategy backfires

What Kerry missed in his clever Saudi horse trading was the sly double agenda of the Saudi royals. They had earlier made clear they did not at all want their role as world premier oil producer and market king to be undercut by an upstart US shale oil industry. They were happy to give Russia and also Iran pain. But their central aim was to kill the US shale oil rivals. Their shale projects were calculated when oil was $100 a barrel, less than a year ago. Their minimum price of oil to avoid bankruptcy in most cases was $65 a barrel to $80 a barrel. Shale oil extraction is unconventional and more costly than conventional oil. Douglas-Westwood, an energy advisory firm, estimates that nearly half of the US oil projects under development need oil prices greater than $120 per barrel in order to achieve positive cash flow.

By end of December a chain-reaction series of shale oil bankruptcies threatened to detonate a new financial tsunami at a time the carnage from the 2007-2008 securitization financial crisis was anything but resolved. Even a few high-profile shale oil junk bond defaults would have triggered a domino-style panic in the US $1.9 trillion junk bond debt market, no doubt setting off a new financial meltdown that the over-stressed US Government and Federal Reserve could scarcely handle. It could have threatened the end of the US dollar as global reserve currency.

Suddenly in the first days of January, IMF head Lagarde was praising Russia’s central bank for its “successful” handling of the ruble crisis. The US Treasury Office of Financial Terrorism quietly eased off on further attacks on Russia while the Obama Administration pretended it was “World War III as usual” against Putin. The US oil strategy had inflicted far more damage on the US than on Russia.

USA Russia policy failure

Not only that. Washington’s brilliant total war strategy against Russia initiated with the November 2013 Kiev EuroMaidan coup d’etat has become a manifest, utter failure that is creating the worst imaginable geopolitical nightmare for Washington.

Far from reacting as a helpless victim and cowering in fear before the US efforts to isolate Russia, Putin initiated a brilliant series of foreign economic, military and political initiatives that by April added up to the seed crystal of a new global monetary order and a new Eurasian economic colossus to rival US sole superpower hegemony. He challenged the very foundations of the US-dominated dollar system and her global world order everywhere from India to Brazil to Cuba to Greece to Turkey. Russia and China signed mammoth new energy deals that allowed Russia to redirect its energy strategy from the west where the EU and Ukraine, both under strong Washington pressure, had sabotaged Russian EU gas deliveries via Ukraine. The EU, again under intense Washington pressure threw one monkey wrench after another into Gazprom’s South Stream natural gas pipeline project to southern Europe.

Rather than be defensive, Putin shocked the EU during his visit to Turkey and meeting with President Erdogan when he announced on December 1 that he had cancelled Gazprom’s South Stream project. He announced he would seek an agreement with Turkey to deliver Russian gas to the Greek border. From there, if the EU wants the gas they have to finance their own pipelines. The EU bluff was called. Their future gas needs were more remote than ever.

The EU sanctions on Russia also backfired as Russia retaliated with a ban on EU food imports and a turn to Russian self-sufficiency. And billions of dollars of contracts or exports from German firms like Siemens or France’s Total were suddenly in limbo. Boeing saw large aircraft orders to Russian carriers cancelled. Russia announced it was turning to national suppliers in production of critical defense components.

Then Russia became an “Asian” charter member of China’s remarkably successful new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) designed to finance its ambitious New Silk Road Economic Belt high-speed rail network across Eurasia into the EU. Rather than isolate Russia, US policy backfired badly as, despite strong pressures, US staunch allies including Britain, Germany, France and South Korea all rushed to join the new AIIB.

Further, at their May meeting in Moscow, China’s President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin announced that the China silk road rail infrastructure would be fully integrated with Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union, a staggering boost not only to Russia bit to Eurasia into China, a region containing the majority of the world’s population.

In short, by the point John Kerry was told to swallow hard and fly to Sochi, hat in hand, to offer some kind of peace pipe to Putin, US leading circles, the American Oligarchs had realized their aggressive neo-conservative warhawks like Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland of the State Department and Defense Secretary Ash Carter were propelling the creation of a new alternative world structure that could spell the ruin of the entire post-Bretton Woods Washington-dominated Dollar System. Oops.

In addition, by forcing her European “allies” to toe the US anti-Putin line, to the severe detriment of EU economic and political interests, alone her vigorous participation in the New Silk Road Economic Belt project and the economic boom in investment that will bring with it, Washington’s neo-conservatives have managed also to accelerate a probable parting of the ways between Germany, France and other Continental European powers to Washington.

Finally, as the whole world (including even Western anti-Atlantists) came to view Putin as the symbol of resistance to the American dominance. This perception first emerged at the time of the Snowden story but has solidified after the sanctions and blockade. Such perception, by the way, plays a significant psychological role in the geopolitical struggle – the presence of such a symbol opens up novel venues in the fight against the hegemony.

For all these reasons, Kerry was clearly sent to Sochi to sniff out possible soft points for a renewed assault in the future. He told the rogue US-backed lunatics in Kiev to cool it and respect the Minsk cease-fire accords. The demand came as a shock in Kiev. US-installed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told French TV, “Sochi is definitely not the best resort and not the best place to have a chat with Russian president and Russian foreign minister.”

At this juncture the only thing clear is that Washington has finally realized the stupidity of its provocations against Russia in Ukraine and globally. What their next scheme will entail is not yet clear. Clear is that a dramatic policy shift has been ordered on the Obama administration from the highest levels of US institutions. Nothing else could explain the dramatic shift. If sanity replaces the neo-con insanity remains to be seen. Clear is that Russia and China are resolute about never again leaving themselves at the mercy of an incalculable sole superpower. Kerry’s pathetic attempt at a second Russia “reset” in Sochi will bring Washington little at this point. The US Oligarchy, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet put it, is being “hoist with their own petard,” as the bomb maker blows himself up with his own bomb.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Robert Reich Explains How to Tame Wall Street In New MoveOn Video

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration and currently Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, is an important voice for tackling income inequality in America by bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, busting up the too-big-to-fail banks,and imposing a securities transaction tax.

In 2013, Reich released a documentary, “Inequality for All,” that demonstrated that there is a finite equilibrium of income distribution at which the U.S. economy can grow and prosper. In 1928 and 2007, the year before each of the greatest financial crashes in our nation’s history, income inequality peaked. When workers are stripped of an adequate share of the nation’s income, they are not able to function as consumers, creating a vicious cycle of layoffs and slow economic growth – the situation the U.S. has been mired in since the Wall Street crash of 2008.

Unfortunately, Reich, an otherwise clear-eyed progressive has a deep blind spot. Her name is Hillary Clinton. In a column posted to his blog last month, Reich had this to say about Hillary:

“In declaring her candidacy for President she said ‘The deck is stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion and I want to be that champion.’

“Exactly the right words, but will she deliver?

“Some wonder about the strength of her values and ideals. I don’t. I’ve known her since she was 19 years old, and have no doubt where her heart is. For her entire career she’s been deeply committed to equal opportunity and upward mobility.”

This is more than a dangerous, rickety limb for Reich to be climbing out on when the financial stability of the nation hangs in the balance. During the primary challenge in 2008 between Barack Obama and Hillary, Reich made headlines by endorsing Obama despite his long-term friendship with the Clintons. That decision was at least partly influenced by what Reich called Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (HRC’s) “Odd Economics.” In an April 2008 post on his blog, Reich appeared to intuitively understand that the same men who deregulated Wall Street and mushroomed the derivatives gambling casino under Bill Clinton would be back in power in a Hillary presidency.

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